Wet!

So, here's Natty hanging out with her friend Santiago, who happens to have just turned one. Natty is 4 1/2 months old. Whoa- she weighs more than this little guy (she's looking particularly chubby in this photo, don't you think?). Santi is the son of our friends and fellow SIM-ers, Javier and Roxanna. He was born 2 months premature, so hasn't quite caught up to those of his age yet- plus, Ro is a tiny lady. It is always fun for me to hear peoples' surprise when they find out I am just breastfeeding and Natalie is so big- apparently, even though this is a breastfeeding culture, women tend to have problems making it work for them. Praise God Natalie is a healthy baby!

So, after little Santi left, I decided to rush off to find a sun hat for Natalie while she still had a few minutes of "awake time". We went down to the gallery of shops under Scotty's office and searched high and low for a sunhat- a necessity here where the sun is 50 times stronger than at sea level (i.e. skin cancer city). I even had a complete stranger approach me in the airport to warn me about Natty's light eyes and how I should avoid having her face windows because even the bright light coming in from them can do serious damage. This Bolivian woman and her sister confirmed that because her eyes had not been guarded as a child, she would eventually wind up blind. Scary! Anyway, the typical outfit of any kid in La Paz includes a sun hat, yet, I could not find one anywhere! We finally found a little shop tucked away that had some cheapy hats that tend to fall down in her eyes, but I bought one anyway. We then moved on to make a quick stop at the office to say hello, but got trapped by the heavy rain that seemed to come almost from out of nowhere. I decided we'd wait it out, even though we were pushing the limits for Natty's nap time. I gave her a little duck to chew on to keep her distracted from her tiredness (chewing on plastic seems to bring peace to her soul), which worked until she let out her sudden scream of "I'm not OK with this anymore, I want to go to sleep". I decided we'd have to make a run for it, even though I was parked pretty far away, and there's no running in Crocs with a baby in the rain. Thankfully, our lawyer was in the office and she volunteered to hold Natty while I got the car and pulled it up to the building. By the time I had dashed through the hail and rain, I was soaked, and our car was completely fogged up, being that our defrost doesn't work. I went about a block before I realized I was driving completely blind and had almost run into several vehicles. I refused to drive Natalie home this way. So, I called Scotty (who can somehow manage a million times better in these situations than me) and he came down and got us around to the front of the building where Natalia was holding a screaming, tired Natty. She fell instantly asleep in her carseat and I calmed down out of my stressed-outness. It's funny how quickly things can change from happy sunny hat shopping to blind driving, someone-else-is-holding-my-screaming-baby, what-do-I-do panic...