It's Tough...

...potty training when you have bigger responsibilities:

I'd say Grandma's winning the potty training war- Pedro's doing great with #1; he gets lots of practice since he seems to go every 3 1/2 minutes. Number 2 has yet to be released into his potty.

Please advise- how do we get him to do #2 on the potty?

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.

Confessions of a 1st Grade Room Mom

Sorry, I don't really have any confessions, it just sounds a lot more interesting than:

• How I Got Bullied into Being a Room Mom
• Why I Hate Being a Room Mom
• Remind Me NEVER to be a Room Mom Again

Juan Carlos' first grade class had no volunteers for a room mom. I have avoided that job like the plauge ever since the one and only time I've ever done it; it was for Margarita's kindergarten class long ago, back in our Venezuela days. But when his very nice teacher begged me to do it and promised me she would ask nothing of me, that I would be a room mom in name only, I warily accepted the position.

Why don't I want to be a room mom?

1) I hate planning parties
2) I hate when other people complain about the parties I've planned when they offered no input or support in the first place. (I've had a little experience with this)

Well, it's true, she has asked nothing of me in my two month term. The PTA President is an entirely different story. She and I are good friends, our daughters are best friends so when I complain about her demands, I do it with love in my heart. And, it's not her fault the Children's Day Ice Cream Social and Teacher's Day with its accompanying parent-provided Teacher's Appreciation Lunch fell in the same week this year, leaving me to collect the many items that my class was responsible for.

It's almost as if parents didn't enjoy receiving my daily emails imploring them to send in this many kilos of sprinkles and that many kilos of M&M's, a half dozen pasta salads, and, oh yeah, enough money to get two decent presents for the kids' teachers.

Do I like being responsible for a group gift?

Ummmm, NO.

When I asked for suggestions, several people recommended buying clothing or handbags for the teachers. Ok, if any of you know me, you know I have a problem with shopping (other than at Target and other stores that have carts), fashion, trends, etc. I would NEVER in a million years purchase a handbag for someone else. So why that might have been a perfectly acceptable suggestion to someone with a normal level of fashion sense, it made me break out into a sweat.

I ended up going with a gift certificate to a popular bookstore here. Gift certificates are not as mainstream here as they are in the States, so I had to really do some ground work to find an acceptable store that offered them. I added a nice lotion gift set and baked some banana bread. The teachers both seemed happy with their gifts (If they were hoping for a nice handbag, they hid their disappointment well).


It was worth all of the frustration when I saw how pleased they were to be recognized and how excited the kids were to know their parents were all apart of the gift (well, most of their parents, but we won't discuss names right now). I really have a deep respect for good teachers; especially early education teachers-I could never do it and I'm glad there are people who can and even seem to enjoy it.

So, I'll be room mom to help them out and I'll try not to complain too much.

(Well, maybe just one more little thing and then I'll stop complaining; just when I thought I could relax until the Christmas party, it's one of their birthdays and I have to send a cake in tomorrow.)

Aggggh!

Why I Fear for the Olympics

Remember my post about the ceiling in Julio's and Juan Carlos' room?

That was 2 weeks ago today. Would you like to see what it looks like now?

The main problem area is larger, a lot of the drywall has fallen off; the red arrows are pointing to areas that are now bubbling up (down?) and dripping water.

What has been done to fix this problem?

Ab-so-lute-ly NOTHING.

Let's review timeline of events, shall we?

Three weeks ago:

The problem starts.

Many calls were put in to the owner of the apartment, as she, under Brazilian law, is to have a say in who fixes her property.

She doesn't answer her phone. Her husband doesn't answer his.

Two weeks ago:

Guapo has someone at his office find a reputable company to come out and take a look at the problem. They come out the day of my last post about it, and tell us they will send someone the next day to take the measurements to do the estimate.

Guapo finally gets a hold of the apartment owner. She is irritated with us that we have "waited" so long to call her, implying that it is now our fault that this is such a big problem. She insists on sending out her guy to check things out. But of course, he can't come until the next week.

He finally comes and says the same thing the first guy said, basically that the whole apartment is falling apart and it needs to be redone. It's raining the day he comes and he says he has to wait until it's been dry a few days to see if it drips when it hasn't been raining, even though I already explained to him that it had been dripping for 2 weeks rain or shine. I mean, who am I to know about such technical issues as dripping water? He tells me he'll come Monday if it is dry over the weekend. It was dry.

He NEVER came back.

1 week ago:

The landlady and her husband are once again unavailable.

The estimate guy from the "reputable" company finally shows up. He promises the estimate the next day. Although Guapo's secretary has called every day since then, they still don't have an estimate for us.

Today:

No Landlady. She knows we have a serious problem and she won't answer her phone or call us.

No Estimate.

Noth-ing.

We are now in the process of looking for another "reputable" company, but we will just be starting over from square 1 (or -1).

The rent is being withheld from the landlady. She'll eventually call as we pay a lot every month.

My blood pressure is now up from writing this. I have to go find my happy place now. All I can do is laugh, right? I can't believe I was ever worried about having workers in the house.

Dog Church

We didn't have church today; twice a year we have what's called "General Conference" where the entire church watches a broadcast via satelite or Internet given by the general leaders of the church. Because of the time difference, it doesn't start for us until 1:00 in the afternoon, so we took advantage of the morning and went out to the Lagoa, a lagoon a block away from our house, to check things out. Since we were all going together I decided to chance it and take the good camera; I figured the large group of us might deter someone from ripping it off my neck as they rode by on a bike. I got lucky and am still in posession of the camera (and my neck).

The big kids rode their bikes which was slightly traumtic for Juan Carlos who just learned to ride this past summer. You can see how many people were out and about:

As far as I know, as a group we only caused 1 near accident. Not bad.

As we approached the dog park, we noticed a lot of commotion and we figured it was some kind of dog competion. We pulled over to check it out:

Lots of dogs. Lots of people. They all seemed to be in a line waiting for something.

Turns out it was a religious service for animals, with what appeared to be a priest and everything (everything including a guy with a blue dog ears hat and a microphone):

"Blessing of the Animals":

While the priest individually blessed each dog, the blue-eared man was screaming into a microphone about why we should buy a particular brand of flea medication. Over and over and over.

It was all very interesting.

Have I ever mentioned how much the people around here love their dogs (ummm....obviously)? There are dogs everywhere. And not just any dogs. Lots of purebreads. Not a lot of mutts in these parts.

They get to drink cocounut water straight from the coconut after their walks:

Here's a couple walking 4 of some kind of Yorkie. We thought her tatoo on the back of her calf was also a Yorkie which would make her some kind of serious Yorkie freak, but unfortunately, it was just a scary looking cat (click the photo if you'd like to see for yourself).

These little whippets are all over the place. They always cause me a little bit of menal grief because every time I see one, the first thought I have is about how easily I could snap their little legs in two. I have never and would never hurt an animal, so this always bugs me. There's just something about those little teeny legs...:

We finished with the dog services and headed over to the dock where we feed the fish all of our old bread:

Today there was this cool bird their fishing for our fish. He (or she) had quite a lunch catching the fish that were gathered to eat our bread.

On the way home we saw a little pick-up baseball game:

...and really good water skier:

and then the kids climbed their favorite branches:

I hope your your weekend was wonderful. :)

*Apparently No One Cares What I Think

So Rio won.


I am shocked, really. It was pretty exciting here those last few minutes and then everything errupted when they announced it; cars honking, people cheering in the streets. This place will be partying all weekend. I just hope Guapo can make it home from work as he has to pass through Copacabana where somewhere between 500,000 and a million people gathered for the announcement.


It's exciting for Rio. If there's one thing they know how to do, it's host a party. They are definitely a warm, welcoming, energetic people that love to have a good time. Hopefully all of the other little issues like infrastructure, organization, and crime will come together over the next 6 1/2 years. (I'm not holding my breath though)

Today's the Day

Today it will be decided where the 2016 Summer Olympic Games will be held. Rio is one of four bidding cities.

Work today in the city is "optional" for all workers. Why this annoys me so much I'm not sure, but it does. Public schools are closed, so I've got my maid's two kids here today for a "visit" which always makes my day a little more...high strung. A half a million people are expected on Copacabana Beach for the announcement this afternoon.

What do I think? It's a beautiful city and I think it would put on a great show, what with all of the Carnaval experience, but I think they'd be crazy to award Rio the Olympics. The main reason?

CRIME.

It's awful here-and it only gets worse during peak tourist times so I can only imagine what it would be like with such an influx of people. I don't ever blog about the crime we see here because 1) you'd all think we were insane for living here, and 2) I don't want to jinx myself, we've been pretty lucky so far. But I know, personally, many people who have had bad stuff happen to them. Fun stuff like armed robbery, car-jackings, attempted kidnappings. And those are just to people I know-there are worse things that happen in our area that I hear about, but don't actually know the people.

And we live in a "good" part of town!

So, we'll see. Today at 1:00 our time. I imagine if they win the entire next week will be an "optional" work week.