Festa Junina 2013

Many hours were spent behind the sewing machine before I could proudly take this picture of Leila in her own dress for the festa junina, based on Coline's most favorite every day dress. The joy of wearing this dress and dancing with it makes it totally worth the hours of work and the km of ribbons, even though while in the making I was convinced of the opposite. 

On Saturday June 22nd we took part in Leila's school's festa Junina, which included folkloric dance presentations by Leila's pre-school fellows and no crying at all, as opposed to last year. In this respect I agree with the director of the school who told me on our first visit that this is a happy school. 

There was also lots of bouncing on a pula-pula and an inflatable castle, helium balloons, a fishing game, and a break for a confederation cup match on a big screen that insured that the parents actually attended the event. After weeks of an almost vegetarian diet to accompany Cristiano the girls had a feast with roasted meat skewers. I was going to allow them to eat their weight in meat as long as they stayed away from all the transgenic corn of the "traditional" festa junina food. 

The day ended with a bonfire, lit with the help of more than one bottle of alcohol, as they do it here, which almost made me regret the smell of firelighters. I felt warm and soft remembering the many fires I warmed myself by in South Africa, in the house on Helderberg mountain, in La Colline, at the many campsites we have been to. We now are hosting visitors from South Africa and will soon meet up with some friends from there in France and the fire reminded me of all this.

School and a five-year-old's birthday

 

Since dropping off from school last year in July Leila enjoyed very much staying at home with Coline and I. I did not attempt any form of homeschooling, but of course encouraged her learning whenever she asked for it. When I asked her whether she would like to go back to school she used to say no, maybe perhaps when she turned five. 

One day last April, her friend Anita was out of town and Leila was desperate to play with someone her age. So, we set out to visit a school we did not know yet but only had heard good things of. It was not love at first sight, but we did not dislike it. Leila agreed to start school in June. And then we both thought about how enjoyable it would be to hold her birthday party at school and how much better it would be if she had friends there already. And so she decided she would start school at the beginning of the following month, in May, so that she was sure to have friends at her birthday. And friends she does have there. She has been loving school (and homework) since the first day. Unlike last year at her previous school, getting ready to go to school is easy and ... she even sometimes tells us some of the stuff that happened during the day!

Let's go back to the birthday story. For weeks Leila and I prepared for the party with the aim to follow local rites and customs in our own creative way. Leila drew and we wrote together the invitation, I sew and embroidered party bags with her help, for which she wrote an individual thank you card for each one of her 19 classmates. On the occasion she learnt how to write Obrigada! short of being good at saying it loud. And then I baked and baked some more, pao de queijo, bala delicia and cupcakes for twenty, and regretted getting myself into this mess. But it was worth it! 

School gave us permission to have a picnic party on the playground and I was most happy not to have to sit in a tiny classroom with such a large set of overexcited children, which they were. We sat outside in the soothing late afternoon winter sun and that was good. 

After quenching their thirst and hunger (grape juice, chocolate and vanilla cupcakes and above all plain ripe strawberries were a complete hit) we lighted five pink candles on five beetroot and strawberry cupcakes (why did I chose that particular recipe? well, because the dough was made during my french class at the Alliance francaise and I thought it was fun to play with beetroot for color - given that I made an oath not to use synthetic food coloring - and the cupcakes were used as a platform for the candles because they actually do taste a lot more like beetroot than the author of the recipe announced!). We sang "Parabens" (happy birthday) and signed it (the teacher, who is a also a sign language instructor in the mornings taught the class how to sign it). We then made a round and fulfilled Leila's birthday wish to sing all together a silly song that involves clapping on each other's legs and making monkey gestures. After that they just had a ball playing on the rusted old toys of that playground that the school hopes to change for new ones soon. Coline who is currently torn between wanting to stay in that school so that she can play on that playground and not wanting to let go of my leg played away from the party the whole time even though she was keeping an eye on us and on her daddy from a distance.

Leila was all smiles for the whole day. And the party continued at home with her and our friends and so many presents that two days later she has not finished yet finding out what they all are. 

Lately we have noticed how much Leila has changed since we arrived in Brazil. Our first year or so here was not at all easy. Now Leila is mostly cheerful and enthusiastic, she loves staying home to play with Coline and also likes going out when we do. She enjoys any type of creative activities that I start, tries hard when it is difficult and complains loud when failure and frustration come. She is fun, she gives strong hugs, she says she understands when I only allow one sweet per day, and she is keen to give the barbie dolls that she received on her birthday because it will make another little girl happy to get one, and I understand that she wants to make me feel good too when she says so. I do not shout at her anymore, I am thankful my anger went away, I just simply love her, I love living with her.

I owe a big and loud thank you to my friend Francesca for setting up the party in the park and cleaning the dishes while I was icing a cake, in particular since butter cream is not easy to rinse off in cold water. And another big thank you to Michelle for giving us sweet that went into the party bags. Thank you my friends!

Sunday in Ouro Preto

This week-end in Ouro Preto, we woke up too late to join the procession of "Corpus Christi" but we bumped into a pack of horse riders on the way to Mariana.

We spent the week-end with the cousins who live in Belo Horizonte. Leila somewhat dissappeared for two days, as busy as she was playing with her cousin Heitor. Coline took longer to feel at ease but eventually had fun in her bath with Sofia. They all had a delightful time as Debora read one of our favorite books: "Na frente a minha casa" (original title: "Devant ma maison", http://www.amazon.fr/livres/dp/2203031891) by Marianne Dubuc, which I warmly recommend for young toddlers and anyone in the process of learning a foreign language.

this that happened

After such a long absence, it is not easy to come back and select a few things to say on what happened here in the past few months. Or perhaps it is, because in retrospect I can see what was important to us, what was a big change, what I want to remember in the years to come.

Coline turned two on March 22nd. She is a big girl now, as she puts it, "no baby, me". I called her "little sausage" last week, which triggered a suspicious look on her face and her putting it straight this way: little sausage, me, no, big sausage, me.

After some early morning presents and wishes we took a walk to the park and to the bakery where she got a bouncing ball as a special birthday treat. We had a relatively big gathering on her birthday, as mamie and grandpa had arrived the night before and our friend Munyke joined us with her children. Coline took part in making the dough for her most favorite food of all: pao de queijo, and had a feast with the final baked version of it.

Leila had prepared a special birthday pillow for her and mamie had brought a suitcase full of goodies for us.

Since she is 2, Coline has been mastering the art of cutting small pieces of thread, drawing circles and spiders with lots of legs, hanging, swinging and twirling from the rings under our stairs, she talks and plays a lot with her "baby" Corentaine, who used to be Leila's, and is generally a happy and chilled two-year-old.

It was only last week that I was able to finish the blue dress that I started knitting for her in March... my first piece of such enormous dimensions to cover a 2 year-old from neck to knees... and she only allowed me to try it on her once and for 2 min. Luckily I had fun in the process.

portraits

Just to say that I will be back soon with some pictures and news.

Goodbye Tintin

Tintin was hit by a car two days ago. We have been holding each other close since then. Leila cried a lot, from deep inside her tummy. We were most concerned for Scratchy, who used to play with Tintin so much and always follow him wherever he was, even though Tintin would not stop wrestling with him. So the first thing that Leila did was to hug Scratchy and let him nibble on her fingers.

We went out and told our friends and family and neighbors. Leila wanted to tell everybody, she said, but we stuck to those who knew and liked him. I have been thinking about how I could have made his life better and loved him better and hope to make sure I do for those who are still here. We made a picture album of who is in our hearts. It made us feel warm.

Today we spent the day in Ponte Nova. On the way we saw a horse in a field, and Leila said "he is on the grass, like Tintin (she knows that having no garden to bury him we laid him on the grass under a tree outside of town), except that the horse is not dead". She has been talking a lot about what Tintin used to do and what we used to enjoy about him, sometimes conjugating in the past, sometimes in the present.

When we got home and as I took Coline out of the car, she woke up and saw Scratchy on the stairs. She said "Scratchy pas mort" (Scratchy not dead), "Tintin mort" (Tintin dead), and we hugged.