Oh the Places You'll Go, Baseball Potty

My mom's visit is sadly drawing to a close. We've had such a nice visit and it has helped me out so much to have her here, and not just in the potty training department. Gaupo had some issues with his back last week that left him immobilized for several days and it just so happens that the kids also had the week off school- so had my mom not been here I for sure would have gone crazy trying to take care of him and amuse 4 kids in an apartment.

At least half of the "Hey Mom-watch this!" were converted into "Hey Grandma, watch this!" which was key in keeping my sanity.

But, let's be honest here, when you're potty training, life is all about potty training for a time (how long that time is depends on the kid). My mom selflessly went through the very demanding first week with me, keeping me enthusiastic about it when at times I felt like throwing in the towel.

And another special thanks to Margarita, she has done way more potty training with Pedro this week than I have. She has spent a lot of time sitting close to him while he's doing his business, reading books or playing airplanes. Once again, she has amazed me with her goodness. :)

So, let's have a look at some of our activities during the past week keeping in mind that potty training is an all-consuming task:

We visited the zoo

I wanted to put Pedro in a diaper so we could actually enjoy the zoo, but my mom insisted that he not be confused by wearing a diaper again. She even volunteered to carry his bulky baseball potty around the zoo with us.

It paid off, he was accident free (although he doesn't look to happy about being out in the open with me taking his photo, does he?).

The zoo here has your basic elephants, giraffes, lions, tigers, bears etc. but it is also LOADED with Brazilian monkeys. Here are a couple of my favorites:

Here my mom is with the kids, all very interested in a much less exotic animal: your garden variety stray cat.

We visited the jungle

There's a cool place near us called Parque Lage that used to be a coffee plantation and now it's a jungle-y park you can walk through. It has a cave the kids can explore and a waterfall you can climb up. We actually had never been until Guapo's brother and his wife came for a visit in May and now we go all the time.

Here's the cave:

Here are some cool frogs the kids caught:

Here are some hungry monkeys (finally, on her third trip down here, my mom got to see monkeys in the wild. I'm always talking about them and then when I take her to places where I see monkeys without fail, there are none to be found.)

And here's Pedro on his baseball potty:

My mom loves this picture because she thinks it looks like I'm praying that Pedro will hurry up and go.

Here's my mom, dutifully carrying the potty around again. It's got a flusher that makes a cheering sound every time it's touched in the slightest. Darn thing kept going off and driving us crazy.

We Went Biking

We went on a 45 minute bike ride around the lake and Pedro went in underwear and kept them dry.

Afterwards we all had a coconut and Pedro was able to hold it until we got home.

We Celebrated Julio's Birthday (Birthday Post Forthcoming, For Now It's All About the Potty)

Here's Pedro, enjoying Julio's birthday cake whilst upon the throne. I know, it's gross to eat on the pot, but it's even grosser to be cleaning up pee in the dining room while everyone else is eating cake.

When you gotta go, you gotta go.

We Went Swimming

Again, with the eating. I think it's a good technique-it seems to get things moving.

Ok, who's feeling sorry for Pedro here? None of my other kids have had their potty training chronicled for the world to see. I feel bad, but not bad enough not to post. I hope he forgives me. He's been a great little potty trainer. Very few accidents so far (and yes, he finally did go #2 on his potty. We left him alone in his room with lots of books and toys and it finally happened).

On Sunday, Margarita took him (and the baseball potty) out during Sacrament meeting to go to the bathroom. He came running back in a few minutes later and as he approached our bench bellowed out, "I POOHED. COME ON EVERYONE, COME AND SEE!" (he's become a little too accustomed to all of us encircling him and clapping when he "produces")We don't have a lot of English speakers at church so nobody found his outburst too amusing.

I owe all of this potty training joy to my mom; if it had been up to me, I probably would have waited until we got back from our Christmas trip at the end of January.

It does make me a little sad though-he's less and less of a baby every day.

Oh well, such is life.

Thanks for the fun visit and great memories mom, we love you!

One More Sleep

I'm so excited, my mom just left Denver (where it is 24 degrees and snowing) and is on her way here to visit us. She's the greatest visitor we have- this is her 3rd trip in just over 2 years. Another reason she's the best? She's been receiving all my Amazon packages and buying goodies of her own for us-2 full suitcases worth.

Hopefully it will stop raining here at some point; it's been pretty constant now for I don't know how many days-3? 4?They're all blending into one, long, dreary day. The kids are off school next week (there're two Brazilian holidays during the week, of course requiring an entire week off school), so being stuck in the apartment all together could get a little...cozy.

Here she is earlier this week, out on a bike ride:

Do you know what she wants to do while she's here? Potty-train Pedro. I think she's crazy as potty training pretty much my least favorite parenting activity so far, but I'll give it a shot with her. The kid does NOT want to sit on the potty and he's probably our most stubborn kid. She's armed with potty treats and potty presents, so we'll see.

But, at least for now, the score is even: Grandma 0 - Pedro 0.

I'll be sure to keep you updated.

Happy Mother's Day!

Ahhhh. I just woke up from a refreshing nap. Now I'm sitting here, all by myself, in my room, grazing from a new stash of American candy that my brother and sister-in-law brought us, while Guapo manages the chaos of the children whilst making dinner. I already had breakfast in bed and help with the kids this morning as Guapo didn't have an early morning meetings at church.

Oh how I love Mother's Day.

As I was sitting here trying to decide which leisurely activity to engage in next, I remembered my poor little blog who hasn't seen much of me this week because of our candy-bearing visitors. Not that they were difficult or anything, on the contrary, they were very easy to have around; they played with the kids, helped with the dishes, and even toured all the sites on their own, sparing me the chore of seeing things I've already seen 100 times. But, visitors always make for a nice excuse for a little vacation from the blog, ya know?

Here they are hanging out with Pedro:

The only negative thing about their visit was the fact that I kind of feel aged now. To hear them talk about the "old" people in their ward, those decrepit old geezers in the 35-to 40-year old range, was more than a tad bit disturbing. I'm sure felt the same when I was that age, but man, it's painful to be on the other end!

So, anyway, back to Mother's Day.

I got a very delicate orchid that I'm afraid to look at directly for fear it will die instantly (I do not have a good track record with orchids. Or any live plants to be perfectly honest):



Ballerina girl gave me this lovely bouquet of flowers (much less stressful-these flowers are supposed to die):



Juan Carlos gave me a ladybug box:



The three big kids make me great cards:



And Harold, I mean Pedro, made some "wittle houses" for me during his nap time with his famous purple crayon that he must have snuck in in his diaper.




And, as you can see, he's trying to find his own fashion-sense these days.

It has been a great day.

Happy Mother's Day to my wonderful mom and mother-in-law to whom I am so grateful for their friendship and support; to my sister and sister-in-laws (my brother's wife became a mom just yesterday with the birth of her sweet little boy!); and to all my friends-past and present, real and virtual, who make me a better mom. And a special thanks to my wonderful, precious kids-I am proud to be called your mom, and to Guapo, for without him, none of this would be possible.

Happy Mother's Day!

Carnaval: The Beach

It's been a pretty slow posting week. Not because my Internet was down, although it was at times, but because my parents are here for a visit. Yay! They have come down to experience Carnaval (albeit boring Mormon-style) with us.

Today's activity-a morning at the beach. We got there before 9:00 am when most of the Brazilians are still in bed. The beach looked like this:

Nice, peaceful, calm. Guapo and my dad obviously see something interesting.

An hour later:


And two hour later (at which point we left):



Here's an example of how Brazilians and Americans have a different space needs (Brazilians need much less):



The yellow and white chair is ours. The pink and white sarongs are not. They were laid there by our beach neighbors. Geesh-back off people! (just kidding) (kind-of)

Here's another view of the beach as we were heading home:



And here's a cute one of Pedro and Margarita:

Have a great weekend!

I'm Back. (Finally!)

Been a while, eh? Happy Belated Thanksgiving, I hope everyone had a great day.

We had Gaupo's brother, his wife and two of their four kids visit us for 8 days. We had a super time-I was sad to see them leave on Wednesday (it helped though, that we will see them in a few weeks!!!). We've had our parents visit and some of our single siblings, but we've never had any of the kids' cousins come to our house; it was a highlight of the year for my kids. We stayed so busy, I fell into bed every night exhausted!

We went to the beach:

Saw some sites:

Did some hiking (sadly, we did not see any monkeys while they were here :( ):

Ate (a LOT):

Had some funky sleeping arrangements for the 5 big kids:

The grown-ups went to "The City of Samba" one night where they give you a little taste of what Carnaval is like:

here's Guapo's very tall brother with two Carnaval people on stilts:

Margarita and her cousin, who are in the same grade, were inseparable-he even went to school two days with her which I think is pretty cool since he was on vacation. At night after we'd get the "little kids" to bed, they would stay up a little later reading:

(The grown-ups, on the other hand, stayed up watching our favorite episodes of "The Office". Good times, good times)

It was a great week, and we really appreciate the time and effort it took for them come to Brazil to visit us.

In Pedro News, the paint-in-the-hair trick was just the beginning of his "putting-gooey-stuff-in-his-hair" phase. Since then he has also put milky-cereal, yogurt and my personal favorite, vaseline in his hair. Any tips on how to get vaseline out of his hair? It's been 3 days and numerous baths and he is still totally greasy.

He has also started telling me "don't want to" when I try to get him dressed, and screaming "MINE!!!" when his (preceived or otherwise) belongings are touched by anyone. Aggggggh!!! 3 weeks until the dreaded 10 hour flight.

Not good.

Rudy on Fire

So my dad left this morning.

It’s probably for the best.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my dad and all, but that guy was wearing me out. You know in travel books, how they always have a paragraph that starts, “If you only have one day in such-a-such place…” and it proceeds to give you a seemingly impossible dawn-to-midnight list of places to go, restaurants to try, things to see? That’s pretty much my dad’s vacation philosophy no matter how many days he has. And he always comes prepared with at least one, but some times several, travel guides; all cross referenced with newspaper and Internet articles that he’s been collecting for the last 3 years. He didn’t disappoint this time, he arrived Saturday night with his Brazil travel book that I got him for his birthday last August well-read and well-marked (and then proceeded to read two other Brazil books that I had laying around).

I have done these types of trips with my dad before; Washington D.C., San Francisco, 5 Italian cities in 10 days. And I saw more of Mexico City in the three days that he was there last December than I did the whole other 10 months combined. “Vacation Rudy” has an attitude that’s almost palpable. The more he sees, the more excited he gets, the more excited he gets, the faster he starts moving and the more he wants to see. Guapo describes this state as “being on fire”. A new place just doesn’t feel like home until my dad has made his inaugural visit to get us feeling excited about where we are living. With his contagious enthusiasm, it’s no surprise that my two favorite cities in the US are D.C. and San Francisco.

Oh, and I should mention, he LOVES public transportation. If there’s a bus that will take you somewhere, why would you want to drive yourself? Or take an airplane for that matter? Once while we were living in Small Town, Mexico, he flew in to Cancun and then took an EIGHT hour bus ride from Cancun to Small Town, stayed for 2 days (plen-ty of time to see the big shrimp), and then hopped back on the bus for Cancun. He always chooses such complicated itineraries in the name of “saving money” but I know he really does it so he can experience the local public transportation and see a bit more of the country.

I’m sure he was sorely disappointed when he met Sergio the Driver whose primary objective is to keep me off of public transportation. What he really wanted to do was to catch the bus by our house that drops you off at the Metro station and then take the Metro to Centro. While I ultimately had to deny him his dream of riding the bus, after two days of catching him gazing longingly at the buses and signs for the Metro, I finally decided to be a nice daughter and agreed to have Sergio drop us off at the Metro station so he could experience at least a portion of Brazilian public transportation. (I’m not an uppity kind of girl, but I’ll admit I do have issues with city buses after having my parents trying to make me, unsuccessfully I might add, take one to my oh-so-affluent-high school.)

He had just 5 days to see the sites here (well, really only 4 since we Mormons are soooo boring on Sundays) and three of those days it rained. Did it stop Rudy? No way! We were out there pounding the pavement seeing the sites everyday. I won’t bore you with a detailed description of all that we saw but here’s an idea of all that we accomplished Monday morning until Wednesday night:

National Library (just the foyer; I told my dad it didn’t matter if he wore shorts. It did.)
Some other Portuguese Library type place -very cool old books
Lunch at some famous place-tasty
Some big, dark church
Dinner at my favorite restaurant-very tasty
Sugarloaf Mountain-always cool
Lunch with Guapo
3 separate laps around the 5 mile lake (ok, I only did one with him, I was recovering from whatever it was that my kids had last week)
Watched Star Wars 1 with the kids
Watched lots of 30Rock with me and Guapo (oh how I heart 30Rock)
Watched You’ve Got Mail with me
Played Monopoly with me and Margarita
Breakfast out
Modern Museum of Art
Some other cool, old building
Another, less modern, art museum
Lunch downtown
2 metro rides
1 Giant Ferris wheel ride-have you seen it on CNN?



Yesterday the sun finally came out, at least for a little while, so we did the “sunny” things. We went up to the Christ the Redeemer statue, did the beach thing after the kids got off of school, and ate dinner at our favorite pizzeria on the Lake.

The highlight of the day, and maybe the year, was when my dad treated me to a helicopter trip over Big City. It was AMAZING. It was my first time in a helicopter and I really had to force myself to get on it. I knew I would love it once we were up in the air but I had heard that the take-off process is a little scary. It was. I screamed but then I was ok. Here’s the helicopter:

Here we are before take off:

Yes, that’s Sergio the Driver (fully clothed, thank goodness). We had to have 3 people to go and my dad graciously invited Sergio to come along. It was his first time in a helicopter as well. I think he was just as scared as I was.

The views were simply breathtaking.

(my new header photo is from our trip! No more Christmas tree and it's not even February. Pretty good, eh?)

What a great visit. My dad is a great guy to do touring with. I feel so blessed that Guapo and I both have parents that are willing to come visit us wherever we are-it makes doing this much, much easier.

Tchau!

Most Depressing Day of the Year? I Think Not.

According to British researcher Cliff Arnall, yesterday, January 21, was supposedly the "most depressing day" of the year. Factors that create this "perfect storm" (forgive the overused cliche) of gloominess include: weather, Christmas debt, failed New Year's resolutions, lack of motivation, and nothing to look forward in the near future.

I, for one, had a terrific day. I agree that we are having bad weather. Big City, Brazil is very unlike my home state of Colorado where it can be snowing and freezing in the morning and then reach the high 60's by the afternoon (or vice-versa). Here, when the rain starts to fall you'd better grab some good DVDs because once it starts it doesn't usually stop for a few days.

My New Year's resolutions are still hobbling along-I'll post about them sometime before January's over. Motivation levels? Fine. Christmas debt? None. Something to look forward to? Three trips to the States-one in February by myself, our summer trip in June/July and now a fall trip to California thanks Guapo's little brother who just got engaged and is planning to get married in September.

And how could I possibly have bad day when I start it off with a bowl of frosted mini-wheats???


And how is it that I have normal, American cereal in my house?

Because my dad is here for a visit!



He came in late Saturday night and will be here until Friday.

Despite the weather we took a couple kids and saw some of the historical sites of Big City.



Then I made chocolate chip cookies:

And to finish things off right, we went out to dinner at my favorite Brazilian Steak house.



It was a perfectly non-depressing day!