Simon Photos

Simon is growing quickly...just passed the 7-week mark yesterday and is somewhere around 13 lbs. these days. Here are a few photos from the past few weeks.

One More Year

We're almost at the 2.5 year point of our 3-year term of service with MCC. So we've had to make some decisions...end our term in Dec. of this year (2009) or extend until Dec. of next year (2010). Right before Simon was born we decided that we'd like a little more time here in Nicaragua. We've learned a lot over the past 2.5 years and we feel that God will be able to use our gifts for continuing service in an extra year. Also, we like our jobs, we love our neighborhood, and we think Nicaragua is a good fit for us at this stage of our lives.
We'll have a 60-day home leave in the US sometime in Dec./Jan./Feb. of this coming year. After that, we'll return to Managua for our fourth year of service. We appreciate your continued prayers and support! - Alan & Beth & Simon

What's in a nombre?

We wanted to share some of our inter-cultural experience of trying to get all of Simon’s paperwork. A few days after he was born, Alan went to the city offices of Managua to register him and get his birth certificate. In Nicaragua (as well as most of Latin America), naming children generally works in the following way: Maria del Carmen Martinez Hernandez and Jose Guillermo Medrano Lopez have a child and want to name him Jose David. Little Jose gets the dad’s first last name and the mom’s first last name (no one changes names when they get married . . . if they get married). Jose David Medrano Martinez. Easy!

We strange North Americans show up in the office with passports showing the following names: Elizabeth Jill Claassen Thrush and Alan Geoffrey Claassen Thrush. Alan explains that we would like him to have only one last name (Thrush), with Claassen as a middle name. They write “First name: Simon” “Middle name: Claassen.” Then they come to the last names. According to the law, he has to have the first last name of the father followed by the first last name of the mother. Simon Claassen Claassen Claassen. Alan shows both our birth certificates and our marriage license to explain what our family names are, what we did, and what we would like to do. Unfortunately, the law cannot budge.

Alan continues to try to push. What if the mother doesn’t know who the father is? In that case, the child can have the 2 last names of the mother. Good! We could do that. But, you're the father, they say, perplexed by this gringo who can't decide what he wants--first he takes his wife's name (strange!) and then he wants his name recognized. They insist that, for the baby to have the last name Thrush, he cannot appear as the father.

So, little Simon has a birth certificate identifying him as Simon Claassen Claassen Thrush. He is the child of a single mother, with a married boyfriend.

(We got it worked out OK on all his official paperwork for the US government :)).

Simon's first birthday party

On Sunday one of our neighbors turned 2. She threw a party (well, her parents did) for all the kids of the block, including Simon. Not only was it his first invitation received, but it was also his first round of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, his first party hat, and his first piñata. Going to the party was just too much, however, and he slept through all these events, waking up only at the end. Here are a few pictures, including the birthday girl hitting her Barney piñata and playing musical chairs.

diapers and laundry, nica style

Simon has added a new dimension to our morning routine - mainly a huge increase in the volume of laundry we have to do. We use cloth diapers for Simon during the day, disposibles at night; he's averaging 7-9 cloth diapers a day thus far. We have a combination of Nicaraguan diapers (usually very thin and not absorbant) and diapers we bought in the US (tri-fold standards and motherease snaps, all w/ nifty diaper covers). And in spite of our best efforts, Simon still has managed to pee on quite a number of our clothes and his own.
Since we wash all our clothes by hand, we've had to create some systems for efficient work, especially given the water shortages. Here's a look at our morning routine.
- prepare yesterday's diapers by putting them in hot, soapy water (heated on the stove)
- scrub them on the new lavandero - a concrete washboard w/ an attached concrete basin that holds about 10 gallons of water
- rinse them in the lavandero, making sure that the bucket that's collecting the water doesn't overflow
- empty the bucket into the toilets as necessary
- wring out the diapers and hang them in the sun
Here's Beth scrubbing away, and the finished results on the line (motherease in front, nica diaper on the front right, tri-folds in the back).
We wash all our other clothes at the old, non-diaper lavandero. We actually actually bought a new one (the one for diapers) shortly before Simon was born, so that we wouldn't have to wash dishes and poopy diapers in the same place. The water from the old one drains directly to the sewer, so we don't have to empty any buckets. Here, Mom Claassen gets into the action. She arrived the day after Simon was born, and her support has been invaluable.

Even Uncle Peter, who came up from Costa Rica for the weekend on a break from his semester abroad, gets into the laundry action.
And the finished results. The best time for hanging clothes is between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m., as the sun comes directly into our patio. This works great during the dry season (Nov. through May) as things dry quickly. We'll have to figure out a whole new system during the rainy season (June through Oct.), as it takes clothes a lot longer to dry.
While mommy and grandma are busy washing clothes and diapers, daddy is busy sweeping and mopping the floors, emptying buckets (mommy can't lift heavy things after the birth), and preparing breakfast. It's a good team effort.

Before Simon was born, we could get all our chores done in about an hour; now we need a lot longer. :-)

Water Management, Part 2

A month or two ago we did a post about our water situation - water cuts and our attempts at storage. The situation is now a bit worse. We now lose our water every morning around 6 or 6:30 a.m. Most days it doesn't come back on until 6 p.m. This means that all the water we use for the day - laundry, cleaning, flushing toilets, bathing, and washing dishes - has to be stored somehow. Between our barrel, basins, and buckets, we now have the capacity to store about 110 gallons. This lasts us only for a day, and then we have to refill everything once the water comes on in the evenings. We're much more conscious of our water usage these days, and we try to conserve as much as possible. For instance, the water that we use to mop the floors can water our garden. The water that we use for washing diapers can be saved and then used to flush the toilets.
Here's a picture of our patio as we get started with our chores in the morning.

Simon's Friends

Here are a few pictures of all the people who have visited Simon in his first week of life.