Double Birthday

Last Saturday was a big day for the kids of Gamboa. DJ turned 3, Catalina turned 5, and the two of them celebrated a huge joint birthday party. Complete with two piñatas, two swimming pools, two birthday cakes, a bouncy house, and lots and lots of toys. In Gwendolyn's own words, "WOW!"

Three hours and three outfits later (yay for water play!), this was our exhausted daughter. We think this may have been Gwendolyn's best day in Panama yet.

Duck duck duck!

Tropical Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is not a Panamanian holiday, but there are so many Americans in Gamboa, and so many friends of Americans, and so many people eager for any excuse for a party, that Thanksgiving is a big deal here.

The day started with some cooking. The four of us put together two big dishes of scalloped potatoes. Gwendolyn was very helpful, as always.

Especially in distributing and redistributing the potato slices. After several minutes of this, Graciela and Gwendolyn left to feed the potato peels to the agoutis, and our progress on the dish picked up.

A little after 4 pm we headed to Justin and Myra's house for a big potluck dinner. They have been hosting Gamboa Thanksgiving for the last 4 years, and have it down to a science. There were probably 50 people at the party, and the hosts remained calm, cool and collected.

Here's Gwendolyn, taking her first stab at the Thanksgiving fare.

And here is some of the grownup crowd, enjoying their meal outside. It still seems strange to us to have November be so warm.

Highlights of the party for Gwendolyn? A sandwich hug from Margarita and Manuela.

Chair climbing with Diego.

And perhaps best of all, being able to sit in the front seat of the truck on the (very short) drive home.

Silly billy

Gwen Wren, putting a cell phone down her shirt.

Still teething?

David and Gwendolyn sharing a chew toy.

Rachel and Gwendolyn sharing a book.

Woodpecker

This morning a red-crowned woodpecker flew into our living room window. He was stunned for a few minutes, but we gave him a little sugar water and he revived quickly. Gwendolyn was really excited. She took a good look at him, and a few minutes later he flew off.

Flitting About

A typical morning: Gwendolyn wakes up, plays a bit upstairs, eats a bowl of Cheerios, then grabs her shoes, reaches for the door knob and starts saying, "Side? Side?" In other words - take me outside, right away!!

Because apparently there is quite a bit a small toddler must explore.

This morning we bumped into one of her new friends, Manuela, who lives across the street. They teamed up and took off running. Toward Manuela's father's Heliconius butterfly colonies.

Chris and Margarita showed us the butterflies.

And that evening, we went to their house for dinner. And there Gwendolyn got to hang out with Manuela's older sister, Catalina, too.

Which goes to show that a LOT of fun can be packed into one day.

Gwendolyn goes bat netting...

...with Dina.

It was hard to tell if she remembered her earlier bat netting experiences in Bulgaria, but she had the same reaction now as then - putting her fingers right in the bats' faces - lots of quick intervention required!

Note - the red dot on her cheek is not a bug bite (a few of those came later). It's one of the stickers her Grandma Theo gave her before leaving NH. These stickers have gotten a lot of mileage. They are all over our house and her toys and her books - I even found one on my shirt during a meeting one of my first days at work. She LOVES them, I'm already on the lookout for replacements for when these run out.

Sol de la India

It seems like we have spent the last weeks racing around, attempting to complete an unending list of errands. Setting up our lives abroad has been made even more difficult by torrential rains and 3 national holidays in the short time since we've arrived - and lots of folks taking the time off in between too (November seems to be a vacation month). But discounting the less fun errands (like the 2.5 hours we spent setting up our local bank account), we've done a few fun things too. Buying fabrics at Sol de la India, an Indian import store full of great stuff, was one. Here we are with a few of our finds.

New friends

Gwendolyn's world is changing rapidly. One of the major new adjustments to our life in Panama is that she has a nanny here. We were all really excited and a little nervous to meet Graciela, but we need not have worried, she is amazing. Gwendolyn took to her immediately. Twice now Graciela has brought her 5 year old granddaughter, Isabelina, to play as well, and Gwendolyn spends these days in what seems to be complete rapture. So far so good!

Arrived!

We have arrived! And are slowly settling in. In addition to trying to connect our computers to the internet, retrieve stored boxes, and establish the lab, we're struggling with new challenges - where to buy high chairs, diapers and baby gates in Panama? But things are slowly coming together. Here are a few pictures to give you an idea of where we've landed, more to come.

View of the backyard from the kitchen window.

David put up the hummingbird feeder, and within minutes it was teeming with honeycreepers.

Gwendolyn was impressed. She seems a little confused by all the new wildlife. She keeps pointing to the enormous rodents that wander freely throughout town (agoutis) and saying "dog! dog!"

The front gate.

Extremely busy, checking it all out.

And extremely exhausted, taking it all in.

Transit

Here we are again - on another airplane adventure. Gwendolyn did pretty well on the Boston-Newark leg. We had a long layover in Newark (where, coincidentally, President Obama arrived at nearly the same time. They thought this might delay our departure but everything seemed on schedule). And then a very active flight to Panama City. 5 hours, no nap! Whew!