Days of Dead People and Presidents

So in the last week or so we've had our wedding anniversary, Halloween, Day of the Dead and Election Day. It has been a holiday extravaganza! On the other hand, Sergio was super-allergic to the world for about a week, Sasha got pink eye and Ivan has been teething. So our celebrating has been a little weaker than we might have liked. At any rate, here are some of the highlights.

For Halloween, we went to get family flu shots. Scary! Actually, Ivan got to skip this vaccination (he gets to wait until he's 6 months old) so it was a lot less terrifying than most of our trips to see the nurse. Overall, our Halloween celebrating was pretty low-key here; we stayed home and ate leftover Anniversary cupcakes. Ivan wore a seasonal t-shirt, but that was about it for dressing up.

Halloween. Boo.

Since we live in Mexico City, we decided to give Day of the Dead top-billing this year, and spent some time looking at skulls and sneezing around all the gorgeous flowers. Interestingly, a lot of the kids around here take the whole stretch from Halloween to November 2nd to wear costumes and "trick or treat" (i.e. beg for candy), mostly at busy intersections. Sadly, it's not much different than other forms of begging, except done while wearing devil horns.

Not what we meant.

'Cause this is thrill-er...

Seriously, that's the whole costume.

The skull-pope

We also stumbled on to a neighborhood festival in Coyoacan where we were visiting the Museum of Foreign Interventions, a sizable gallery of imperialism. etc. with halls chronicling Spanish, French and American exploits in this part of the world. As Americans, you feel compelled to say "my bad" after every exhibit. The museum itself is the site of one of the last battles of the Mexican-American War, and a huge plaque outside commemorates the spot of the last stand against the American invaders...

Right here. (My bad).

But hey, remember the Alamo.

Translation: "We should prove to the world that there are still men in Mexico."

The museum is also the site of a former convent, with beautiful painted walls and a sweet little garden.


Ivan is a huge fan of trees, plants, flowers and so forth. He personally examined every specimen in the garden.

Done.

The museum had their own ofrenda as well. And some bored looking teenagers. Mexican kids wear the skinny pants better than anyone. And the haircuts! Fab, fab, fab.

"No I will not mow the lawn..."

After getting schooled at the museum, we walked over to the neighborhood party to check out the doings.

Skulls, skulls, skulls...

...skulls...

After a shop and a stroll, we headed over to the main plaza in Coyoacan and looked at dozens of ofrendas.

In the Cathedral:



In the zocalo:

This one is made entirely of vegetables.

At the Museum of Popular Culture:

And this one entirely of seeds, grains, and fruit.

And typically, we ended the day with some neighborhood snacks. Ivan has become quite interested in what we eat and drink. In about a month, he'll get his chance to start using a spoon. We wonder if he will be as excited about rice cereal as he seems to be about guacamole?

Back at home, we got ready for the week ahead -- Election Week! And what an exciting week it turned out to be! We really missed being home in the USA on Tuesday. We got in the spirit of things with our red, white and blue clothing and a lot of CNN's Wolf Blitzer, but it just wasn't the same.

Vote! Or drool. Or both.

And yes, grandparents, that's Ivan sitting unassisted ---more or less. He props himself up in a gorilla pose, with his hands out in front of him. He's also quite competent at rolling from back to belly and belly to back now, but still seems to like being held in a lap most of all. Lots of these developmental milestones in the last few weeks, but what we're really anxious to see are some teeth. Because this kid is drooling like a rushing river and seems to have something (usually most of his fist) stuffed in his mouth pretty much 24/7. And in case there was any doubt that this kid is from the Moreno-Dennis lines, he's already expressing interest in the family beverage of choice.

That settles it. He's ours.