Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Weekend Review



 Ok, so maybe this was Thursday, but it's always the weekend with kids, right? No? Sleep deprivation? Well, it's always the weekend at Yogoberry then!


Thanks to people that still offer to take our photos here like we are tourists, I have this photo of all of us. It still strikes me as funny that people offer to take our picture in front of places like Yogoberry because we live here, but not really when I think about it because no matter how hard we try to fit in and become Brazilian we are so obviously not. Even though we want to be. We had Yogoberry and parquinho time where Peter adopted a Brazilian family at the park, joining the mom on her bench, playing frisbee with their family and begging for snacks. He is quite the charmer.



Also, they're sharing! They're really sharing! ...and they like it! I didn't even have to yell at them. Something about frozen yogurt with gummi bears, mini m & m's and marshmallows brings siblings together like free money.


Friday Clementine decided that laying down is for babies (which it so is):


She also decided that rice cereal is awesome. Way awesome, "Give me more or I'll eat your hand" awesome. This is pretty much what I look like when I'm really hungry, so she comes by it rightly, just ask Paul:


Our maid/nanny, Sheyla aka my "Weekday lady-husband" was here to witness and partake in Clem's first cereal feeding and it was awesome. Watching her little mouth discover  a new texture and her eyes light up...and then turn crazed with desperation for more like a little rice cereal vampire.


Also laying down in the bathtub is for babies.


We headed to McDonalds for dinner on Friday night, because when in Brasilia...We downed some of their new "real potato fries," which are so real and potato-y that they aren't really McDonalds anymore, but what can you do. We support the image change.

Peter, budding engineer that he is, proved to you McDonalds, that your cone-shaped cone is not going to get in the way of his ice cream break and thus crafted this "nugget cone holder" (Which for the record is still not real chicken).


Seeing Double? Yes that is Petey the boy with Petey the giraffe sandwiched between double blankies. "Back-up blankie" and "real blankie."



Saturday morning I headed out for a run and afterwards met up at Peter's salon for the haircut he requested and one for Paul, too. Peter has decided he loves having his hair cut as much as I do and wouldn't you if you could sit in that cool car, watch cartoons, play with toys and video games and eat lollipops. These kid-loving Brazilians are genius. 

This is Peter's guy, who he is always sure to confirm "Is my guy here?" before entering. His guy also happens to be named "Pedro," and Pedro and Pedrinho have bonded over hair and Brazilian songs about dogs making "xixi" (pee pee).


He even scored a little gel this time and style session making him look exactly, WAY TOO OLD and nearly confectionary.


Double Brazilian thumbs up. That's how Brazilian we are now...when we eat at Subway...the day after we ate at McDonalds. Food nostalgia dies hard.


Then we waited for Paul at his barber. Where I stay in case I need to drive him home from severe blood loss after his usually "nickish" beard shave.



I whiled away the minutes nursing the baby shopping for hot Brazilian work out wear. While the boys entertained ten Brazilian men in waiting just inside the shop.


Cheekentine Hanna:


Saturday at naptime, I made a fort for Peter in the form of a quilt over his crib. Sam was so jealous of it that we later found him snoring beneath Clementine's crib. He had dragged his pillow and blanket and her sheepskin rug beneath it and zonked out. We thought a bear had snuck into her room until we finally discovered him sawing logs.




Saturday night, Date night: We may be overindulging a bit in our Saturday night date nights recently, but we've found at this point in our marriage, that is it vital to our success and our ability to reconnect away from the chaos that is three children under the age of five. So, while we have Sheyla, we will continue to throw down date nights like we used to throw down margaritas. (FYI: Now we throw down a single adult beverage, some good food and yawn our way home to a 10pm bedtime) We are so hardcore. 

We are also storing up date nights like chipmunks store nuts for winter, so that when the time arrives too quickly that we move back to DC and we can't find, let alone afford, someone who loves our children and wants to change their diapers and kiss their dirty faces we can pull out a nut of a memory of exotic Brazilian date nights and power through Saturday nights at Chuck-e-Cheese until we get to India.

This weekend we headed to a highly recommended joint in Asa Norte, Fulo do Sertao, which was, if I must be honest, the most wonderful restaurant that has ever happened to us....since Kee Grill. (For those of you late comers, that is where we met and fell hopelessly in love over trays of surf and turf and bottles of wine and whining complaints of snowbirds. Memories!







We ate food from the northeast of Brazil: acaraje and escondidinho, sipped a giant bottle of ice cold Antartica from tiny glass cups and listened to the most soul soothing music played by a band of collected men and women who sat around a table and jammed on drums and tiny tambourines. No one could stay still and most danced in between the tables and in the entryways. Grown men hugged and shed tears at the next table over. I could barely make it through dinner without shedding tears myself, of happiness for the time not so far from now when we will have to leave this beautiful place. I can't bear to go there now, not while the Antartica still flows and the Forro still plays and my friends are just a few conjuntos away.

On Sunday we awoke at 6:30 am, a gift from the Gods of Toddlers and Newborns. The sun was already up, which seemed to happen quite magically while we were asleep, usually it happens quite methodically in front of our begging, sleepy eyes. I took to the kitchen for my usual weekend baking and something like 4 hours, 12 sticks of butter and 5 hungry mouths later created this: Monkey Bread. Which I had to explain to a horrified Sheyla this morning, does not actually contain monkeys. This would only beckon explanation in a country where our backyard is infested with the little scavenging hooligans.


It wasn't all baked goods and date night dreams though, to keep it real I must admit at one point I did enlist the services of the always terrifying Shell Silverstein to frighten the children into good behavior. Thanks Shell! Works every time.


Until next weekend.....

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