Elsa María; the best thing since air!

It's official...I'm smitten.

Last weekend, we held a 'naming party' for our little lady and announced to the world that she will be called Elsa María Kolbeinsdóttir. It is common for parents in Iceland to wait a long time before naming their babies (though waiting more then six months will get you fined!). I think the reason people here wait so long to name their babies has to do with the harsh historical trends underlying the culture of child-rearing in such a difficult environment. Lots of families in the olden days lost children, so to save themselves the heartache (and probably to avoid tempting fate) they held off on the naming until they were sure the baby was going to be strong enough to survive. The tradition stuck around, and as my mother-in-law explained to me, preparations for the baby's arrival in Iceland should be done quietly. You don't blab to all your friends about the nursery decorations or the new baby clothes you just bought, and you certainly don't have a baby shower! Such excitement will wait until the baby is born (healthy) and survives (God willing!). In Iceland, most babies have a christening party in which the parents announce the name and the baby is baptized. While we opted for the secular route, we still wanted to have a celebration to officially mark the special event that was choosing a name for our little lady, as well as give family and friends a chance to meet her.

Can I talk a little bit about how cool Iceland is? First of all, one of the reasons I decided to move here (well, aside from Tumi, obviously) was to go to graduate school. The Environment and Natural Resources program here is taught in English, and because of the overwhelming governmental support for education, tuition for grad school works out to about $600 a year. The one year I worked for Pacific Science Center between undergrad and moving to Iceland earned me a tax return that paid my entire graduate school tuition! In my opinion, this is the way education should be handled all over the world. And then there's healthcare. All of my prenatal care, and delivery, and postnatal care was free....that's right, FREE! We paid about $50 for the ambulance ride to the hospital, and I've paid about $30 for breast feeding advice, but other than that, all of our care was paid for by the government. The midwife COMES TO YOUR HOUSE EVERYDAY for a week after the baby is born to check up on you and answer your questions. Then, a nurse comes to visit every week or so for the first month to weigh the baby and provide even more help. We have an appointment to take Elsa in for her first check up actually IN the clinic in two weeks. I absolutely love this set-up, and when I feel homesick, it helps me to remember the really good things about the place I chose to live; like that the government invests its resources in creating a healthy, well-educated society, which are both goals I can fully support!

People here pay ridiculously high taxes, but that money goes to education, healthcare, social security, and other services the government provides to take care of its people. In America, our tax dollars do go to some support services, but a huge amount also goes to killing people in less fortunate places. All of which begs the question; Why can't Americans take better care of themselves?! We pretend like we're the biggest, strongest, best-est country in the world, but we neglect the poorest of our citizens. Only recently have we started to embrace the idea that adequate health care is a human right! Imagine an America where a university education costed $600 per year....what kind of a country would we be able to make then? Think of all the talent that is going to waste because of the prohibitively expensive price of a college education, and higher taxes to support a 'socialist' state doesn't sound that bad. That's the end of my lil' rant...mostly I feel very lucky to have been given such excellent education and care and support while living here.

Oh, and Tumi gets 6 months PAID PATERNITY LEAVE! Thank you, Iceland!

Elsa María is a wonderful baby. She is growing more and more everyday, and getting even more adorable all the time. Sometimes I find it hard to believe that I made something as beautiful as she is! Looking around the room at all the people who came to meet her last weekend and celebrate her entrance into the world, it is clear that she already has a fabulous community of people who love her dearly, and are happy she is here with us...It struck me during the party that all those people are really only HALF of Elsa María's folk. There is a whole other bunch of people across the sea waiting to meet her and see how she grows up. How lucky we are to have such a community of support! We are planning a trip to the Pacific Northwest next Christmas, and are very excited to meet the other branch of Elsa María's family tree :)

(Hey Aunt Gunnhildur....Does this look like somebody you know?!)