Fruity

I love this picture of H, because it really describes her diet here.  She is always eating, but at least she has a banana in one hand and is peering into a bowl full of tangerine slices.  We struggle with good, healthy on-the-go snacks, which are easier to come by in the States, but at home she eats a lot of fruit.

Compacto

I don't mind things that are compact.  I appreciate the need to save on shipping, I like to save space.  I do not, however, appreciate toilet paper rolls smashed in the name of "easy to take home and store" as the package advertises.  Really?  Maybe I am out of the loop, are they doing this there too?  Imagine for me if your husband decided to take all the toilet paper rolls you have on hand and smash them all so he could fit them into a smaller space.  Fast forward to the next time to replace the roll.  You try to make it round again so it fits nice on the holder.  Strike one.  You try to pull off some paper, but the roll doesn't roll because it's not round! Strike two.  This ingenious idea was anything but.

Bedtime, Bottles, and Binkies

I have to say with all certainty, childrearing has the biggest culture shock I've encountered here.  The way people raise their children here is just so so SO different.  I have tried to write this post 4 times, and every time it comes off as culturally insensitive, and very ethnocentric.  In other words, it oozes an attitude of "we're right, and they are wrong."  Parenting is just like that, I think.  Even within our own country, even within my own circle of friends, there is always a bit of whispering gossip about what everyone is doing "wrong".....nursing their toddler, putting baby to sleep on their tummy, spanking, not spanking, working, staying home, using loose blankets in the crib, co-sleeping, crying it out....I'm rubbing my temples just thinking about it.  In spite of that, please consider this post strictly for cultural enlightenment, and not a dig on Brazilian (or at least Horizontinian) parenting styles.

1. Bedtime:  My kids go to bed at 7:30/8/8:30.  That has always been pretty firm.  I can count on one hand the number of times any kid of mine saw 9PM with open eyes before coming here.  Now, on rare occasions, special events, I have been known to let them stay up as late 10.  I cringe, but the classmates of my children go to bed between 10-midnight every night.  This has been hard for me to work around.  The earliest you can have a pizza delivered is 7, and that's on a really lucky night, otherwise plan on 8 or after.  The "family" Christmas party started at 7:30, dinner was served after 9.  We're learning to cope, or bow out early, or occasionally find an excuse to stay home.
2. Bottles: My kids never really had bottles, and I have to say I'm quite proud of that.  A few early bottles to "train" them to take breast milk out of a bottle, and that was it.  I think peds encourage US parents to move away from the bottle around 12 months.  M, who is in preschool with 4 and 5 year olds, has classmates who bring bottles of juice to school every day.  Our maid told me the child she used to care for took a bottle of milk to bed with him until he was 9.  (I really want to fly off on a tangent about this, but I am holding myself back.)  Now, all that said, looking from the eyes of a Brazilian, the sippy cup my 20 month old is hauling around....it looks an awful lot like a bottle, and really, we just gave it a hard nipple, changed it's name and feel better about ourselves for using it instead.
3. Binkies: ditto to above.  If you are under 5 or 6, pacifiers are no problem here.  Compare that to the US where parents are told by pediatricians and dentists to ditch the paci by age 2.  Just recently we said bye bye to the binkie in our house, and I told the maid H was no longer using it.  She was shocked, saddened, and asked why H doesn't like it anymore.  I'm not trying to win any cultural battles, so I just shrugged a kind of "I don't know" and decided not to say "maybe it's because I snipped off the end of it and there is no satisfaction sucking on a pacifier without any suction."
4. Childcare: I'm all for women with careers.  I also totally get a need for 2 incomes.  I am greatly blessed with a wonderfully bright, hardworking husband.  He pays the bills and then some.  We don't have a need to even consider childcare.  Here, childcare is the norm, and at least for our relative economic peers, a nanny or "tata" takes care of the little ones.  I know families who have two tatas.  One for the morning through lunch and another to pick the kids up from school and feed them dinner and take care of them until bedtime.  Oftentimes they also work at least part time on Saturday.  I know more tatas at my kids school than moms.  I know a few stay at home moms here.  They have full time tatas too.  If I needed childcare, I think a nanny would be the ultimate choice, financially inconceivable in the States, but here very doable.  I like that the kids are one on one and not in a big group day care.  To me, though, and American moms I know (working moms included), we want to spend as much time as we have available with our kids.
5. Medical Consult Required: There are hypochondriacs everywhere, but I have learned not to mention a fever in a child to any Brazilian, or I will find myself with the favor of a doctor appointment squeezed in for 1 o'clock this afternoon, or an offer to accompany me to the ER.  I have never heard "wait and see" or "watchful waiting" related to an illness.  A few weeks ago, M  woke with a bug, no fever, one bout of vomiting, 2 hours later eating a second bowl of oatmeal, and by noon perfectly herself.  When she returned to school the next day some moms were commenting about it going around and that the ER doc said it's viral, gave their kids IVs and sent them home.  They all took their kids to the ER for a 1-day fever-less vomiting virus.
6. Discipline: We are not spankers, but we discipline our kids.  They know the rules and the consequences (some of them better than I wish!)  I have rarely seen a Brazilian child disciplined, by parents or teachers.  When I asked about M's complaint of being regularly pushed down by a classmate, the teacher more or less told me "kids are kids."  I have gotten more than one look by passers-by for correcting behavior in my children.  Our maid tries to cheer up and engage M while she's having a "time-out" although I've asked her to let her be.  She just can't stand her being unhappy.  After we moved here I commented to DaddyHealy about how much more our kids cry than Brazilian kids.  He explained it well, Brazilian kids are never told no.
7. The Count: Oddly of the 6 American families here, 3 of us have 3 children and one is expecting their 3rd. I don't think 3 kids is the norm in the states, but to Brazilians in this town, it probably looks like it. Here I see a LOT of only children. And when I see families with 2, I see baby #2 coming, well planned, about 8-12 years after baby #1. I talked about this with my Portuguese teacher and explained how we want to get "past the diaper stage" then "past the toddler stage" the "get all the kids in school" and so on until eventually we "get them all out of the house." Why drag that out? She laughed at me and said Brazilians want to enjoy their first child, all those moments, and when they grow and start moving on--becoming more independent, parents start to desire being able to do that over again. Why rush through it? That is such a wonderfully Brazilian attitude....one I could well learn from.

Sozinho

This word, "sozinho" is one of my favorite Portuguese words.  It means alone, but the nuance is something more like "a little bit alone."  As opposed to completely alone, I guess.  I hear it a lot, and use it almost as much.  Baby H likes to eat her food sozinho (in other words, she holds the spoon and nobody, I mean nobody can help her).  M doesn't like to stay in school sozinho.  She wants to go to D's class, or have me stay with her.  And this week, were are staying here sozinho, because DaddyHealy is "home" or "away" depending on how you look at it.  Regardless he is in the States, and we remain here.

I've been asked a lot, by Brazilains and expats alike, how things are going.  I get lots of offers for help.  People have been so kind to look out for us.  For me, though, this week has signified a bit of independence (and enlightened me to a bit of dependence) I have here in Brazil.  Before DaddyH left, I asked him to do 2 things: withdraw some money from our bank account and fill the car with gas.  These are 2 things I either don't know how to do or have just never attempted.  He's only gone 9 days, I can survive on a tank and one ATM withdrawal. 

I was feeling pretty accomplished, considering that DaddyH arrives home in just a few days and we're doing just fine.  I'm letting M do the dishes (she volunteered) and they are clean enough.  D reads to baby H so I can make supper.  I survived some minor crises all by myself.  Yesterday I was granted the opportunity to just suck it up and take care of the biggest spider I've ever killed in my life.  (I am sure it was comical from an outside perspective).  I was feeling pretty proud of myself, until I talked to an expat friend who had just used a broomstick to maim and kill a bat that was creeping about her house.  I'm not feeling quite as impressed with myself now, but still....we're surviving sozinho.

The first night DaddyH was gone, I asked the kids to make a list of everything they wanted to do and eat during this little hiatis.  D was determined to scribe:

We're making our way through, but we'll need to pick up the pace if we're going to finish by Sunday night! We ordered pizza, we stayed up late watching a movie, we baked, we went to the park, today we're pretending to be on vacation. Unfortunately I don't think we're going to swim, which was the #1 item on the list. The only time it's been warm enough the kids were at school.

New Passion

I have a new passion since arriving here.....this little gem of a fruit, maracujá.  We call it passion fruit.  I have, of course, heard of it but I am certain I have never eaten a passion fruit before we moved here.  I actually bought and threw away passion fruits 3 times before I ever tried one because I wasn't sure what to do with it, and never got around to figuring it out until it was spoiled.

Interestingly, you want them to look all wrinkled and old like this.  That is how you know they are ready and ripe.  It is not uncommon for people to have a passion fruit tree in their yard.  In fact, our maid brought us this whole bowl of them from her tree.

It is very popular here to make juice (which is good), and mousse (which is amazing) with passion fruits.  Some people eat it right out of the shell.  That's how I love it.  Can you say simple?! It has a very unique, but sour taste.  Scraping the shell with a spoon, it reminds me of eating a grapefruit.  You can sprinkle on a little sugar if you like.  The seeds are edible and full of fiber.  The pulp itself is a great source of vitamins A & C, iron and potassium. 

Unfortunately, so far, I am the only one who eats it, save for an occasional spoonful to H.  I tried putting some pulp into my kids multi-fruit smoothies, but they immediately detected something different and didn't care for it.  So for now, it's my special treat...and I don't even have to share!

A Igreja

One of the things that I love about being Catholic is that you can go to mass anywhere in the world and have at least a pretty decent idea of what is going on. ...the order, the responses, the actions, they are all the same.  Here even the vocabulary of the mass is easy enough to follow....we have words like Jesus (prounouced "Jay-Zeus") Maria (Mary), comunhão (communion), celebração (celebration), procissão (procession), and so on.  It doesn't take too much Portuguese to realize that this Sunday we were talking about Maria Imaculada (Immaculate Mary).

Our church, Nossa Senhora Do Rosário (Our Lady of the Rosary) has been a big part of our lives the 7 months we've lived here.  We've had a lot of language and cultural development through that weekly hour of worship.  Our church has about 7,000 members.  In addition there are a number of smaller satellite churches in the neighborhoods.  You should know that Brazil has a proclaimed "national religion" of Catholicism.  That does not mean citizens are obligated to practice it.  In fact, there are a large number of other denominations here in our town, but the overwhelming majority of people are at least baptized Catholics.

Interestingly, the church building wouldn't hold over 800 people, and there are 7,000 members.  We have 3 weekend masses: Saturday at 7pm, Sunday at 8:30 am and 7:30 pm.  Do the math.  Most people do not attend mass regularly.  What I find interesting is that there is such a large number who actually bother to register, but they attend so infrequently. 

Tithing is quite different here.  When we registered, adults and children over 7 years (or younger, if requested) get a tithe envelope with your name and address, a separate envelope for every member of the family, but one envelope to use all year.  Once a month you bring a tithe (any Sunday of your choice) and drop the envelope in the collection.  At the end of the month, they check off that you made a contribution for the month on the front of the envelope and hand deliver them to your home in time for the next month. 

My kids love communion time at mass here.  They may be spoiled for life.  Standing next to each Eucharistic Minister, an alter server is holding a basket of cookies (or on special occasions like Easter and Christmas, a basket of chocolate bon bons).  When parents get communion, children get a treat, and they will chase you down if you don't take one.  We learned the routine pretty quickly and even baby H starts asking for a cookie about the time people start lining up in the aisle.

Music is a very big part of the mass here.  That goes for the culture in general, but it is a beautiful addition to the mass.  There are no misalettes and no song books in the pews, but lyrics to each song (without musical notes) are projected on a screen at the front of the church.  It actually makes it quite easy for a busy mom to follow along.  And they sing parts of the mass I never imagined would be musical.  In fact, they sing the sign of the cross.  Most of the songs are very good, usually easy to follow, and some really catchy.  My kids walk around the house at least through Tuesday singing mass songs.  One of their favorites is "Lord Have Mercy."  A good habit to sing it all week I think. Occasionally, we've heard a song we recognize, it feels so wonderful to sing a familiar song, even in a foreign language.

For all the differences, I find the similarities striking.  Four-year-old Brazilian kids always have to go to the bathroom about the time of the Eucharistic prayer, too.  Brazilian mothers unconsciously sway to the music while holding a child the same way we unconsciously do in the US.  The people who are involved, really involved in the church are doing the jobs every week.  People love to gather and talk after mass.  They (us included) have to eventually be guided of the church so the doors can be locked.  People are so friendly.  We have been so welcomed.  We have been so blessed.