The Nativity at St. Charles Borromeo -- Christmas 2017

[lblanchard]

"This is for pondhopper" -- I mentioned that the local parish priest, a former engineer from Chile, created an epic Nativity.

Comments

[pondhopper]

Yes! You did post this but I have loved revisiting it. This is exactly like the ones created even by families in their homes in Spain. I have never been quite that ambitious but we did more of a layout like this and the girls carried on until they left home creating mountains, caves and such. It's a deep-rooted tradition and Father Esteban did it well.

Has he done anything similar since then?

AND...he has a reclining Mary! (Mine is reclining, after childbirth it's all you can do!).

Thanks, Laura!

[lblanchard]

Speak for yourself! After childbirth I was ravenously hungry. I delivered at 9 am. Oh, we didn't think you'd want to eat anything right after having your baby, they said, so we didn't order you any breakfast. WHAT??? Wrath and destruction! and a demand for not one but two breakfast trays, which I got and which I demolished. After that I reclined.

[pondhopper]

You superwoman, you. I was exhausted but admit to really needing food shortly thereafter. And then I started nursing the baby and that really made me hungry.

[lblanchard]

I was in a Navy hospital and they wouldn't give me the baby! I stood there at the nursery window, milk streaming out and staining my hospital gown, listening to him wailing while they told me his blood sugar was low and they were going to give him sugar water! My ex- and I both threw wild fits on the spot and they grudgingly handed him over.

(I was their first Lamaze mother and their first nursing mother in decades. All their protocols were set up for women who'd had some kind of anesthetic and were bottle feeding. They also made me go nurse behind a screen, segregated from the bottle-feeding mommies.)

Edited to add yet more detail...)