Gingerbread men are so much fun to make because the decorating possibilities are endless. Sure, you could always make a traditional gingerbread man, who is rather cute and irresistible with his plain sweet smile and buttons. But why not add a little personality with a range of facial expressions – curious, mischievous, deadpan, dour or dreamy.  Or, you could even go further …

I was thinking of how I wanted to decorate these sweet little things this year, when it hit me to make them into luchadores. My bicultural train of thought went something like this: gingerbread = marranitos = panadería = Mexico = lucha libre. Of course, who doesn’t love lucha libre?! I’m a HUGE fan of the masked Mexican wrestlers, especially those vintage folk heroes like Mil Máscaras, Blue Demon and El Santo. I like classic lucha and kitschy lucha, and the idea of two identities and two sides to everyone. And I knew my daughter would just love them, because she could, in her words, “Fight them!” Yeah, too much My Little Pony Equestria Girls for her.

Disclaimer here: I am no cookie artist, so that means anyone can make these. I’m not even that good at baking cookies. As a mom, you work at the things you want to be great or just good at. And you’re okay with being mediocre or even bad at some things. I’m okay with being an okay cookie-maker. I make up for it by being an absolute pro at cookie-eating.

This holiday season, I did use a little help in the kitchen from my old friend Betty. Yup, I bought a box of gingerbread cookie mix (take your pick, from Betty Crocker to King Arthur to Williams Sonoma mixes) and called it a day. We’re in the thick of the holidays, I’ve got a fussy, teething one-year-old who wakes up at all hours of the night, blah, blah. Best decision ever, and they turned out pretty delish. Still, there are plenty of great gingerbread cookie recipes online, and this soft gingerbread cookie recipe by Inspired by Familia looks yummylicious.

If you’re new to decorating with royal icing, it’s awesome (until your hand starts cramping and you have to clean up!). It’s the type that hardens after you decorate, so it’s perfect for using on plain cookies like gingerbread or sugar cookies. One of my favorite cookie decorating blogs is Sweetopia. Who knew cookies could look sooooo pretty? I especially love her 10 tips on how to decorate cookies with royal icing.  In the past, I’ve actually followed her tips closely and come out with Pinterest-worthy cookies. Below is her recipe for royal icing.

For ideas on how to decorate the luchador masks, go to Flickr or Google and just search for lucha libre mask and you’ll get an array of photos showing various masks and designs. Pick a few and practice freehanding the design on wax or parchment paper before actually piping onto the cookie.

My luchadores didn’t turn out perfect looking, but in our house, they were just the thing we needed to give our holidays a bit of Mexican flavor. Here are the two recipes you need to follow. Have fun!

Ingredients:

Soft Gingerbread Cookies (via Inspired by Familia)

• 3/4 cup butter
• 1 cup brown sugar, packed
• 1 egg
• 3 tablespoons molasses
• 2.5 cups flour
• 1.5 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Royal Icing (via Sweetopia)

• ¾ cup of warm water
• 5 Tablespoons meringue powder
• 1 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 2.25 lbs./1kg powdered sugar
• **Add one teaspoon of clear vanilla to this recipe if using a meringue powder with no vanilla flavor.

**You will also need several decorating piping bags and tips, available online or in most craft stores. You can also add candy or sprinkles to your gingerbread.

Directions:

Soft Gingerbread Cookies

-Preheat over to 375F

-Cream softened butter and add brown sugar, and beat until fluffy.

-Add egg and molasses.

-Add the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, clover and salt.

-Refrigerate the dough for an hour. Roll it out on a floured surface, and cut out into gingerbread men using a cookie cutter. Bake for 10 minutes, and then let cool before icing.

Royal Icing

-In mixer bowl, pour in the warm water and the meringue powder. Mix it with a whisk by hand for 30 seconds. Add the cream of tartar and mix for 30 seconds. Add the powdered sugar, and using the paddle attachment mix on the lowest speed for a full 10 minutes, until icing turns thick and creamy.

-Cover the bowl with a dampened kitchen towel to prevent crusting and drying.

-Now you can tint smaller batches of the icing with food coloring, or thin it by adding small amounts of warm water until you reach the desired consistency.

I’ve enjoyed sharing cultural holidays with my little girl over the past four years, but Día de los Muertos is one that I’ve held off delving into until now. I recently wrote about my daughter’s obsession with death following my grandmother’s funeral last year. But I felt that after talking so extensively about the subject of loss for more than a year now, I was ready to talk to her about the life of my father, whom she never got to meet, and her great-grandparents. So, I decided that for Day of the Dead, we’d make mini-altars out of shoeboxes and mini-matchbox shrines, and in the process of creating, I could share stories about our antepasados.

I started with a stack of old photos to spark the conversation. I chose photos with our loved ones at various ages to show her the progression of life. I let her pick the one she wanted to use in her altar. She chose a photo of my dad from his years as a high school math teacher. I took a photo of my grandparents together, to use for a mini-matchbox altar, and another of my father and his mother to use for my shoebox altar.

There are many ways to build an altar. In the end, it’s really about honoring your loved ones, not mourning them, so using things like bright colors, glitter and beautiful flowers is key. I took several empty kids shoeboxes and painted them over with brightly colored water-based acrylic paints. I actually lucked out because I had several shoeboxes of See Kai Run brand baby shoes, which come in a cute silver shoebox with a clear opening to see inside – perfect for shoebox altar-making!

I then lined the inside of the shoeboxes with black cardstock. I wanted to stick with some of the essential elements of Day of the Dead, so to decorate the inside of the shoeboxes, we used calaveritas (which I painted over in pink and turquoise), marigolds (artificial), religious imagery, paper-punched Monarch butterflies (we used a Martha Stewart butterfly border) and lots of glitter and glittery embellishments. I used a simple glue stick or regular glue to affix mostly everything, but I did have to whip out the glue gun for the artificial flowers. Finally, I added a flameless, battery-powered tea light, which flickers like a real candle.

The mini-matchbox shrines were even easier to make – just paint over or cover with paper the outside of the matchbox, affix with a glue stick an image of your favorite santo and place an image of your loved one inside. You could also add glitter and embellishments around the outside image. I added a self-adhesive magnet on the back so that we can keep the matchbox shrine on our refrigerator after the holiday is over.

We’ve put our little altars and shrines next to our Halloween pumpkins in our dining room. Yes, we are having a truly bicultural celebration this year! A few days before Day of the Dead, we’ll put out some food and drink by the altars to beckon the spirits. I know they’ll be happy with our offerings, which were made with much love and care.

Have you ever created an altar for a loved one? What do you use to create the altar or shrine?

Her obsession with all things death began when my grandmother passed away last year. My then 3-year-old daughter Kalila had grown fond of Mamá Leonor, and I never really considered not taking her with us to the funeral. Just the year before, she had sat on my lap at my grandfather’s funeral, although I’m sure she didn’t remember. There were other small children there, too, and I had always grown up believing that children were just as much a part of this ritual as anyone else. Children always went where the adults did – to church, to weddings, to funerals.

Maybe she had expected to see Mamá Leonor alive, because when she finally saw her, lying so still and serene, she became quiet and concerned. After a while she summoned the courage to ask, “Is she sick?”

Death is something Latinos celebrate every year during Día de los Muertos. It isn’t something to fear – it’s colorful, playful, it’s a part of the celebration of life. In past years I’ve made altars and mini-shrines; I have a beautiful statuette of La Catrina in our living room; and my little girl has colored countless calacas and calaveras on coloring pages. But at that moment in the funeral home, when I was confronted with explaining what it all really meant to my own daughter, I felt awash in doubt, and I thought to myself, what have I done?

But it was too late to change course now. I answered my daughter’s question: yes, she was very sick and she died after a long and good life, and she went on to heaven to be with Papá Orlando. That seemed like an appropriate response, and she seemed okay with that answer. When we got to the cemetery – a dry plot of ranch land broken up by caliche roads and dotted with oversized gravestones and brightly colored artificial wreaths and bouquets – Kalila turned to my husband and me and asked, “Is this heaven?”

It was searing under the hot South Texas sun, and the warm breeze was kicking up dirt all over the cemetery.

“God, I hope not,” my husband blurted out.

It was then that I realized my simple explanations were going to be no match for a 3-year-old’s curiosity. Despite having mourned the loss of my father and three grandparents in the past five years, I had not really thought much about the meaning of death beyond my own grieving. But mostly, I had never had to explain it to a child.

For Kalila, Mamá Leonor’s funeral was the start of many questions to come over the next weeks and months.

Just a few days after we got home, Kalila told us, randomly, that Mamá Leonor had become a statue. That’s what happens when you die, she said. I started to explain otherwise, but she seemed set on this theory, so I just let it be.

Later, we dealt with a sickness, just a cold, but it came along with questions about whether that was going to lead to death, too.

Then one day she heard the words “children” and “dead” on the news over the radio, and she asked again and again why the kids had died. There was such sadness in her voice. I explained that we all die, eventually, and yes, sometimes children die, too.

Even subtle mentions of death in children’s movies or books have stirred up questions from her. What happened to Lilo’s (Lilo & Stitch) parents? Why did they die? And at the end of Charlotte’s Web, Charlotte the spider dies, but not before explaining to a grief-stricken Wilbur, “After all, what’s a life, anyway? We’re born, we live a little while, we die.” When I read that to her, Kalila shook her head in agreement as if to say, I get it.

I’m still not sure what she really gets, though. But she seems at peace with her own ideas about death, and I know it isn’t something that consumes her. Dying is part of life and it’s only a matter of time before we have to talk to our children about it. And after talking about the issue so much over the past year, I feel at peace with my decision to take her to my grandmother’s funeral. I’m glad I trusted my instinct. I think we’re finally ready to celebrate Día de los Muertos together as a family, and I plan on making mini-matchbox shrines for our loved ones this year, and of course, sharing that here on SpanglishBaby in the next few weeks.

{Image by  rainy city}

I’ve had baby names on the mind lately, and at this late stage of my pregnancy it’s kind of hard not to. Every sharp kick, jab and foretelling Braxton Hicks contraction is a reminder to stop procrastinating and decide on something, anything, before delivery day.

For my first pregnancy four years ago, it was different, as most first pregnancies tend to be. I was so excited that I basically peed on a stick and ran to a bookstore to purchase a baby name book and started scouring baby name websites immediately in search of a name I would fall in love with. But if you’ve ever looked at one of these books or been on any of these websites, you’ll see that the possibilities are seriously endless. In much the same way I feel when I enter a multi-story department store, I was totally overwhelmed by all the categories, meanings, spelling variations, etc. etc. So many choices, too many choices, and you get to pick just one (well, two, if you use a middle name). One name that will be with your child FOREVER. So I took a breath and a step back and asked myself: Well, what do you want in a name?

Read: In The Name… of Culture?

So I started sorting things out in my head: Do I go with trendy, traditional, classic, cool, strong, sweet or unique? Should it be international, American as apple pie, or a name in Spanish picked off the family tree? Does it have to flow with our last name? How is it going to come off once he or she becomes an adult? Are there any weird nicknames that could come out of it? And importantly, if it’s English-sounding, how will the abuelos and my husband’s family in Central America pronounce or butcher it?

With the first one, once my husband and I found out we were having a girl, it made one part of our baby naming job easier. Her middle name would be the same as mine, Leonor, which is also my mother and grandmother’s name. Now that I’m an adult, I absolutely cherish this name, but truth be told, as a kid, I despised this name. It felt so old-fashioned. But that’s exactly why I love the name now, and the fact that it was passed on to me makes me feel more connected to my family and my roots. I think of my great-grandparents, and what they must have been thinking when they gave this name to my grandmother. Of course, it’s also kind of cool that in recent years, la Infanta Leonor of Spain brought the name back in vogue, and other variations of the name have become a popular choice in naming the newest little princesas of Europe.

After we settled on Leonor for a middle name, picking the all-important first name wasn’t too difficult. We wanted something that flowed nicely into the last name, so we soon settled on Kalila Leonor. Kalila is Arabic in origin. We liked the way it sounded, plus, it has a wonderful meaning: beloved. And yes, the abuelos have no trouble pronouncing it.

In the end, we went down a route that is fairly telling of our hybrid, bicultural and bilingual American-Latino lives. We were definitely very American in giving our daughter an uncommon first name, something that would distinguish her from the herd. But we are also very proud of our culture and heritage and wanted a name that reflected that. And since I already had a family name that had been passed on to me it was easy to pass along the torch.

We’ll probably go down the same route of choosing a not-so-common first name and family middle name for this new baby girl. I do have a short list, and that’s a good thing because we have a short amount of time to decide. As I write, I’m feeling those practice contractions, yikes!

How did you chose your children’s names? Did your heritage play a part in the decision?

{Photo courtesy of Cynthia Leonor Garza}

Bizarre cravings aside — like a few months ago when my intense thirst for something salty led me to slurp down pickle juice straight from the jar — this, my second pregnancy, has been marked mostly by cravings for the foods I grew up with and the wonderful and diverse sabores from all across Latin America: Tex-Mex enchiladas and chalupas covered in yellow cheese; chorizo con huevo breakfast tacos with salsa; tacos de pastor drizzled with chopped onion and cilantro and finished with a squirt of lime; media noches; ceviche peruano; fried Nicaraguan cheese and gallo pinto; dulces de leche quemada; and, of course, Frito Pie—the best Texican culinary invention ever. And this is for starters.

So when my sister-in-law accidently told me that my husband’s family was throwing me a baby shower a few weeks before I visited Miami last month, I just knew what would make my ever-growing and apparently very hungry fetus and this ever-expanding mama super happy would be a shower theme built around Latino comfort foods, drinks and desserts. After all, I think if you get the chance to have a baby shower for baby #2 or #3 or so on, you can get away from pastel colors, storks, pacifiers and delicate finger foods and pick a theme that’s going to surprise and delight everyone (yes, even the men in the room) and send them home panza llena, corazón content.

And I know, I know, for most baby showers the mom should be hands-off. I mean, if there was ever a time to let others do the work of planning and setting up, it’s when you’re pregnant. But I did that for the four awesome baby showers I was given my first go-round, and this time I had so many ideas and an apparent streak of high energy (maybe I can blame the cortaditos I drank in Miami?) that I just had to help with pulling this fete together. I figured it would also be fun to gather the girls for a comadre crafts night to make paper flowers and paper pom poms for decorations. Plus, since we already have a 3-year-old daughter, we’re pretty much set with everything we need for baby #2, so it takes the pressure off everyone in the gifts department.

We stuck with the bright beautiful trio of colors of turquoise, magenta and yellow which automatically brought in a bold and festive feel. But to make sure the “baby shower” wasn’t lost, we integrated a pink gingham ribbon throughout as a reminder of our new baby girl. The food was mostly Mexican, but we did have a smattering of Peruvian and Nicaraguan foods mixed in there, too.

Here’s how we pulled of this Latino-inspired baby shower:

The Menu:

• Tacos al pastor, carnitas y alambre
• salsa, lime wedges, chopped onion & cilantro
• Mexican tamales of pork, beef and cream cheese & jalapeño
• Layered bean dip (refried beans, sour cream, guacamole, salsa, pico de gallo and shredded cheese) served with corn tortilla chips

Drinks:

• Jarritos, assorted flavors
• Aguas Frescas de melón y sandía

Dessert Table:

• Basket filled with Assortment of Mexican candies, including obleas, leche quemada and Canel’s chicle
• Alfajores
• Nicaraguan cake
• Arroz con leche
• Pink Cupcakes

Latino-inspired Decorations:

• Paper Flowers and Paper Pom Poms for hanging
• Lavender sachets in calaveras print bag
• Mexican matchbox favors filled with baby rattle candy
• Pink maracas
• Custom food labels and invitations
• Custom-made Papel Picado-inspired cupcake toppers that read Nena, Niña, Bebita, Chavala, Escuincla, etc.
• Floral napkins and pink and turquoise colored plates

We played a few traditional baby shower games, including bilingual baby shower bingo, meaning the announcer had to translate for the non-English guests playing along. We had music, Shakira radio on Pandora, and I also pulled together a slideshow that played on repeat showing photos of my daughter, me, my husband and our parents as babies. It was fun for guests to try to figure out who was who, and my 3-year-old got a huge kick out of seeing her abuelos and parents as babies, especially the photo of her dad as a 3-month-old lying on his tummy in the buff.