blowing our hair back

This is what we do to blow our hair back lately. For me: taking care of the garden on the terrace, baking bread and creating presents, for Leila: science experiments and lots of drawing and for Coline: puzzles, trains and towers (such as the one she sits on) and pretend-playing that she owns all the money in the cash-register.

(all types of puzzles indeed)

Favorite children books

For some time I have had it in mind to write about the books we read, those that we love reading, over and over and over again.

Before leila and Coline were one year old their most favorite book was an introduction to kissing goodnight and a few familiar words along with bright and simple drawings:
"Pour qui ce petit bisou?" by Benedicte Guettier

Coline liked the melody of Mem Fox's poetry and Jane Dyer's beautiful watercolor illustrations in "Time for bed". She loved seeing mummies cuddle their little ones to sleep.

More recently we moved on to singing Mem Fox's" Ten little fingers and ten little toes"

And for some fun during the day we would make animal sounds with "My book of sounds around the farm"

and following the trail of Marianne Dubuc's "devant ma maison", a kind of word book with one drawing and a couple of words on each page, which as I read it in Portuguese was a wonderful opportunity to enrich my vocab in a children fairy tale-oriented way.

Coline just recently started enjoying being read to in the presence of Leila, as opposed to turning pages as quickly as possible and throwing herself on the book in a worm-like motion and with much noise. I can now sit with them jut before bedtime and get instructed to read some 5 to 15 books in the most pleasant, relaxed and attentive atmosphere. Their favorite books at the moment are fun and witty.

"De la petite taupe qui voulait savoir qui lui avait fait sur la tete" by Wolf Erlbruch, about a little mole who was accidentally pooped on and sets off to find out who did it. 

"The odd egg" by Emily Gravett, about birds and a duck who found an egg and a big surprise at the end.

"Bloub bloub bloub" by Yuichi Kasano, where a swim in the sea moves on to doing acrobatics with daddy, a turtle, a whale and other sea animals.

I find it somehow surprising that a six-page hardcover book can be a two-year-old's favorite book, but not so surprising in fact as it is one of crazy Claude Ponti's books, "Dans le loup". And it is about this obscure, puzzling and just inexplicable moment in little red ridding hood's story where we are lead to think that she and her grandmother are dead, but after all they are not. Quite a heavy topic to deal with in such little space and words, but so well dealt with by Ponti with the help of down-to-earth, straight-to-the point wording and amazingly explicit illustrations.

hmm, that just reminded me how much I love every one of Claude Ponti's delirious stories, he who thinks that imagination is like cycling, if you master the skill early enough, you will never stop pedaling. And on this note, I'll grab myself my own of Ponti, Gravett and Fox's favorite books and read myself to sleep. Good night!

I hope to read about your favorite children books too!

welcome to the newest member in our family

Last Friday was quite a special day. Instead of insisting to take Leila to school on time I allowed her and Coline to play after lunch, just because they are always in the best mood for playing right after a meal. A few minutes later we set off, not to school, but to hospital. While I thought that Coline had broken her arm at the same spot it got broken last year, I was, thankfully, wrong. She just had a dislocated elbow, which apart from being visibly very painful, was put back in place in a blink by a very annoying yet sufficiently competent intern. This all happened in less than an hour (I am grateful to the hospital staff who made sure that Coline was attended in a hurry simply because she was weeping).

After coffee (for me) and ice-cream and chocolate cake (for Coline who does have a sweet tooth lately) we then had the rest of a sunny afternoon to enjoy in the parc. This is where the idea germinated in my heart that I was going to the pet shop and adopt the adorable young dog who was being given away. As I said, we are moving to a house with a garden soon. And well, I just fell in love with her at first sight, and Cristiano kind of gave me a go-ahead when I mentioned her. She is very shy and soft and easily frightened. She gives Scratchy a lick on the nose when she sees him. I think he is the member of the family that she likes the most. Actually, she does not seem to be very interested in the girls, and rather scared of Cristiano, although she does like the hands that give her food and cuddles. She has a few names already, we are waiting to see which one will stick. A true nature lover she has eaten all the radish leaves from my vase and some other leaves too and she has been confusing my bedroom with her bathroom. I am working on a better understanding of the house rules.

Just because we have a new member in the family does mean that I am allowed to forget the others, quite the opposite. Scratchy - "the King" makes a point at sitting on top or above any of us and gets his share of dog food and water before she "the dog" does. Leila and Coline make sure I take pictures of them too.

"winter" tomato harvest

Last March, with the help of grandpa, we replanted cherry-tomato seedlings that had started growing all by themselves in a container on the terrace. One particular one grew amazingly tall and strong. Just as the first tomatoes started to ripen its leaves were stripped by two different kinds of caterpillars that I hand-picked away (some fifty of them). Even though it is now quite bold, cherry tomatoes have been a "winter" delicacy much appreciated by Leila and to an even larger extent Coline, who strictly only eats tomatoes from the terrace. It has become a daily routine for Coline to climb up to the terrace on the roof and check how many tomatoes "turned red". This generally amounts to a maximum of six per day, and so we call it a treat. It is very strange to me that tomatoes be harvested in the cooler months of the year, but they are also the driest. Since the caterpillar attack the plants now look fairly unhealthy with very little leaves, some of which are half eaten and brown, but it does not seem to stop producing fruits. I have no idea how to improve its condition and just regularly feed it earthworm compost which makes me even more grateful for the joy and pleasure at picking and eating these sweet winter treats. I cannot wait to move to our house with a piece of garden to plant more of these and much more.

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.