Sam Should Turn Three More Often

A change has overcome the eldest Hanna boy. Perhaps, he finally believes that we will be staying in our “Brazil house” for more than a few weeks or perhaps the digging in the hard red clay with his bare fingers, running hauls of water back and forth across the patio in his giant dump truck naked or listening for the parrots squawking in our mango trees are finally having the therapeutic effects we had hoped for. A calm has descended on the boy. He’s gone easier on his little brother. He enthusiastically strips himself down for bath, placing his dirty clothes in the dirty clothes pile and his diappey in the waste basket. He eats with utensils. He calls our adult friends “Mr.” and “Miss” as appropriate, shakes hands, introduces himself and says “Excuse me” when he wants to say something when an adult is speaking. He goes on the big boy potty. He surprises us with words and phrases in Portuguese, like when he busted out “Tudo Bom!” when I got home from work the other day. He smiles and laughs with ease (though he’s always smiled and laughed with ease). Though he did have to have a shot a few days ago and you would have thought the way he acted for the rest of that day that someone had shot him in the leg.

He had no sympathy for Peter who had FOUR shots and barely whimpered (well, that’s not entirely true….I’m pretty sure the entire compound was brought to just shy of Defcon 1 when they heard Pete’s shriek). Speaking of Pete, I would be remiss in failing to mention the youngest Hanna is full on walking. Mark your calendars. January 6th. He takes upwards of five, six or seven steps at a time, changes direction, everything short of parallel-parking. They better get that baby gate up….STAT! Video to come, though it won’t be nearly as entertaining as the video of him barking like a puppy dog. Every time he hears a dog (which is quite frequent in our neighborhood), Pete perks up, puckers his lips and lets out a “Whoo whoo whoo!”

The pieces of our Brazilian life are falling into place. We have a car, though our air freight shipment which we had hoped would be here in time for Christmas—because my “biggie” gift to Elise is in there—is now slated to be here 6 weeks after our arrival….fingers crossed. I need to buy windshield wipers so I don’t hit a capybara or pot hole driving in the rain at night. Elise started her Portuguese class on Wednesday. We’ve been waiting for the jogging stroller to get here before we start running, but I don’t know if we can wait anymore. Elise ordered two craft books, though she swears she only placed them in the shopping cart, and the Amazon shopping cart bought them for her. Faced with a lack of evidence to contrary, I will have to take her word for it. She is threatening to buy a third on jarring, preserving and pickling which I am secretly really excited about because I, too, think the shelves in our home should be lined with mason jars full of sweet deliciousnesses (and pickles once we get the garden in and the cucumbers growing. I see corn stalks like spikey green obelisks on the side of the road and can’t wait to try that in our backyard, too. I hear a rooster every morning through the bathroom window before I start getting ready for work. They sell chickens and roosters at the pet store. I wanted to buy one, but Elise wouldn’t let me, even though we have talked about having a chicken coop someday so that we can always have fresh eggs. She’s told me people in Seattle have chicken coops in their backyard, up to a certain number and size. We went to the pet store in search of rabbits, big fluffy ones, but didn’t buy any after Elise intimated that she wouldn’t be able to handle it if one of the bunnies passed which prompted my response, “Like, you emotionally and psychologically couldn’t deal with it or just that I would have to dispose of the body which I would expect to have to do anyway.” I think it was the later, but since I’m not sure, we haven’t bought any rabbits yet.).

I was outside with Sam playing ball when it struck me one of the subtle ways a place can seem so alien. Though Brazil reminds us a lot of Florida, it is different. And not just in the fact that we have to share the highways with horse-drawn carts. The birds are different. The butterflies are different. The pigeons aren't grey, but a dusty reddish-brown, like the color of the earthern clay. I saw a butterfly and expected it to be a monarch butterfly, but it was all different colors of purple and pink and with wings that weren't shaped like I had expected them to be shaped but long and pointy.

Yesterday, Sam went on like a six hour play date and skipped nap. Sam’s become somewhat of a night owl since arriving in Brazil so the fact that we were able to get him in bed shortly after 8 as opposed to 9:30 or later was a welcome respite. I ran out for pizza and Elise and I sat at the kitchen table, sipping red wine and having dinner. The pizza crust had the same weird processed-cheese filling it had in it the last time (I had forgotten to ask if they had a different kind of crust which may have pushed my Portuguese to its limits anyway), but we ate around it. Though the fluorescent tubing in the kitchen is far from candles, it was by far one of the nicest meals we’ve had, though dinnertime, too, is easier since Pete switched to solid food and will basically eat anything you put in front of him, peas, hamburger, broccoli, salami, the list goes on ad infinitum. He truly is the human garbage pail. Unfortunately, he also eats dirt, toilet paper and Styrofoam.

A thunderstorm knocked out our cable for two weeks. We don’t feel as though we’ve been missing anything. I should say I haven’t. I’m not sure Elise feels the same. But the only TV we’ve watched since we’ve been here was Hell’s Kitchen with Portuguese subtitles running along the bottom of the screen (since Gordon Ramsey is somewhat of a hot-head—which is putting it mildly—we learned a lot of…”choice” phrases). There is no football and if it did come on it is at 11:30 at night.

Another one of my favorite times of the day is when Elise and I lie in bed and read after the boys go to sleep, often listening to the rain. I just like having her next to me, regardless of where we are. Before the second installment in the “Hunger Games” series arrived, she would flip through a Brazilian fashion magazine and ask me to translate phrases for her like, “Roxo é o novo preto.” By doing so, she was putting herself weeks and months in front of her peers in mastering the language, though she acts surprised she understands as much as she does. Rarely does she give herself enough credit.