Jonas: Week 9, 10, 11?

Weeks have blurred and I cannot remember quite how old our little guy is.  What I do remember is that he was born on October 13 and I see at the bottom of my computer screen that it is December 28, so he is over two months and under three.  My original plan (as I found on Pinterest) was to take a picture of Jonas every day against the same background and have a full year of pictures on his first birthday.  That would have been really cool.  That plan quickly evaporated and it turned into weekly, which should be every Sunday.  I thought I could at least take a picture of him weekly, and post it here to enlighten my readers about how cute our child is and how he is growing.  Anyways, I believe I added Weeks 7 and 8 to a recent post, but had nothing around the Week 9 mark to post.  And I just counted the weeks and realize he is 11 weeks tomorrow.  So for your viewing pleasure, I have a video taken perhaps sometime during his ninth week of life.

I believe we have our first thumb sucker.  There are definite pros and cons to this, and I know that it is cute now but that it may be a hard habit to break later.  He does take a soother, which is easier to take away in a year or so, but during the night he finds his thumb.  This I think could be the primary reason he is sleeping usually around 11 hours a night the past two weeks!

I believe this picture is courtesy of Hazel.  Notice the Canucks romper.  This was given to Seth when he was born by none other than.... Aunty Lorene and her sister Aunty Juju.  This was before Aunty Lorene was officially an aunt.  The tag says 18 months, which sucks because it is obviously mis-sized and Seth never wore it.  So fun that it fits Jonas at 2 months and I actually get to use it!

Lyla wanted to decorate Jonas.

If I did hashtags it would say something about "joysofbeingtheyoungest."

Obviously this is why I don't do hashtags.

Thank you Grandma for the six month sleeper you sent!  It fits me perfectly :)

The 6-9 month onesies are also a perfect fit.  Hopefully I don't outgrow them too quickly!

Here is my mommy reading me a tome.  Can't start too early, right?

Have a great night everyone!

So This is Christmas

To be truthful, I was dreading Christmas since we arrived.

No snow (or chance of snow I should say.... seeing as BC is usually only a wet wonderland).

No name exchange of presents.

No crazy brother dressed like Santa.

No turkey and mashed potatoes and stuffing.

No Christmas programs for the kids.

No Christmas parties.

No lights or decorations.

No Christmas music EVERYWHERE we went.

No.... coziness.


Now to be fair, we've had a warm Christmas before.  We were in Florida with Shaun's family two years ago.  And we survived just fine.  Was it the fact that we still had all of the above around the date?  We still had the Christmas parties, the food with family, the Christmas programs at church and school, the searching for the perfect present, the decorations in our house...  maybe.  Somehow it is different being away for months and not really knowing when we are returning.  Then suddenly Christmas at home feels very far away.

Of course in Brazil there is Christmas.  The malls are decorated (if you've seen my facebook picture).  There are lights and trees on some houses around here, which makes me smile.  The city of Maragogi decorated the palm trees and along the plaza in the centre of town.  But I have to admit when Shaun played Christmas music on December 1st I cried.  Don't tell anyone.  And every so often when I heard "I'll be home for Christmas" those pesky wet droplets entered my eyes.  Who thought that song was a good idea to write anyway?!

I knew that wallowing wasn't going to do anyone any good.  So on December 1st I joined an advent Bible study online.  This was great for me to remember the real reason for the season, instead of feeling sorry for myself for "missing" Christmas.  And there was a children's resource study guide, so I got to involve my whole family.  We did some crafts that looked somewhat Christmas-y.  

At times in the hot weather it is hard to remember it even was Christmas.  Such a different feel.  In fact, the feeling around Christmas mirrors the party type feeling of New Years' Eve.  We spent Christmas Eve having a service at the church and then went to a party with everyone in the church.  Everyone stayed up until midnight to say Feliz Natal!  My impression is that Christmas becomes almost a celebration of the start of summer holidays, or is very linked to that feeling you get when the kids are done school  .

Anyways, since our Christmas Eve was a very late night, we were thinking we were going to have quiet family day on Christmas.  We got a welcome phone call to join some friends for a Christmas barbecue.  It really was a wonderful, relaxing, fun-filled day.  I kept getting that song in my head: "So this is Christmas, and what have you done? another year older, and a new one just begun...."  It is almost overwhelming to think of what has happened this past year(S).

Here's a collection of pictures reflecting a wonderful Brazilian Christmas.  Not better, not worse, just different.  I just wish we could be in two places at once.

After the church service there was a little program with the youth of the church and the women of the church singing.

At the party you could sing.

Potluck style.

A giant balloon full of goodies.

It got dangerous.

On Christmas morning we did a puzzle together that was a christmas present to our family.

Then we got invited to Moizes and Bete's house.  This lovely lady is often the one working in the kitchen.

Christmas barbecue.

Let me out of here!  I've heard what they do to us once we are caught!

He said my parents would be jealous....

Luiz, you need to put some weight on before the wedding!

Revenge of the Crab

Seth and Gabriel spent a long time biking down a very rocky, treed, and bumpy terrain as fast as the bike would go.  I could barely watch.  Where's the North American helmets!?!

Hazel and Lyla and their "Uncles!"

And in case anyone was worried, there was turkey and mashed potatoes at our church Christmas party ;)   

Hazel's Birthday Week

I thought I'd better catch you up on Hazel's birthday before blogging about that other big holiday that comes in December.

We started out the celebrations on the weekend before Hazel's birthday.  Two families from Recife that we know were on the coast, so I baked a [pathetic attempt at a] cake and brought it there for a little happy birthday singing.  I found out that my oven is hot (it only has the numbers one through five on the temperature gauge, no actual temperature) and the cake was super dry.  Plus I had nothing to make icing with.... Fortunately children are very forgiving, and her smile got a lot larger than this :)

Here is the birthday girl on her birthday, and we are singing away to her.

A birthday song from her cousins!  They phoned before they went to school.  She also missed two other phone calls, but received e-cards, emails, and video messages.  I think she felt very loved.

We made plans to drive to Maragogi and have ice cream with our family, then remembered we had a tiny little car, so we went for a walk for ice cream instead.  Our power also went out for around nine hours on her birthday, and our neighbour strung a wire from his house to ours to at least let us have lights.  The sun is down around 5:30 here and it goes from light to dark seemingly instantaneously, so that was really nice of him.  It only affected around a quarter of the homes in Peroba, and depended on what wire you had strung to your house.  This is the second time we've had a lengthy power outage.  To other time was for around twelve hours, but we've had it go out for a couple of seconds probably five to ten times a week, and once for two hours.

We think the neighbourhood kids expected a party here, so they were hanging around waiting for cake.  Whoops that wasn't very Brazilian of us!  We fed them all peanut butter cookies and then as we were kicking them out of the house so we could send the kids to bed, this is what we got:

Just as a side note, our kids go to bed around seven, and that I think is super early for the Brazilians in our neighbourhood.  They are usually up until nine or ten.  And generally they do not appear to nap.  We don't know how they function, since our children are exhausted by the end of the long, hot day.

Our neighbour's electricity wasn't enough to run our air conditioners, so we put mosquito netting on the girls' window and we had a mosquito net around our bed and Seth's.  We were dreading the night of mosquitoes.  Fortunately the power went back on around 9:30.

We made cookies on her birthday and she wanted a star one.

The Saturday after her birthday we made pizza and invited a few families over from the church and of course, the neighbourhood kids.  They would have jumped over our wall even if we didn't invite them.  This is Sandro and Djane's daughter Sofia.  Unfortunately the battery to my camera died :(  so I missed taking pictures of anything else.

Hazel also had the church sing happy birthday to her after the service on Sunday, which they do for everyone here.

So thanks to all the different people in her life that helped her feel loved and special on her birthday.  Hazel is a dear, sweet, bright little girl who loves to please and take care of others, and we love watching her grow up!  We are thankful that God has given her another year and we pray that she is blessed in the coming year as well. 

Policia Federal

In my quick attempt to catch up my readers on the past three weeks, I got caught up in the visit to the Federal Police and how it involved fees for not extending our tourist visas.  However, the whole point of why we went to the federal police got lost in that story.  So for the purpose of an accurate update, I thought I'd quickly include the rest of our visits to the federal police the past three weeks.  The Federal Police offices are at the airport in Recife, which is a little under two hours away.... if all goes well.  There is one office for Foreigners and one for Residents of Brazil.

So as I reported, we went to the police to apply for our permanent residency and found we needed to include our children in the process, as well as have every page in our passport copied and certified.  So the next week we headed back with everything we needed.  Upon application, if you have all the required documents, they give you something called a protocol number, which you can use while you wait for the actual permanent residency documents.  Then she told us to head over to the Federal Police for residents of Brazil (on the other side of the airport) and get our Certificate of Legal Status (Certidao do Estado Legal).  We hadn't heard of this before, but by this time it was almost two o' clock in the afternoon, so we thought we'd grab lunch before we headed there.  Our kids had patiently been waiting for almost three hours.  By the time we headed back to the Federal Police they were closed for lunch.  No worries, we don't need this cerificate we had never heard of.... or do we?

Shaun eagerly set out the very next day to open a bank account.  We had Everything We Needed.  A contract or an electric bill for proof of residency, passport for identification, and our protocol number saying WE BELONG HERE IN BRAZIL.  Hmmmm, two days and two banks later....no can do.  Apparently our magical protocol number means nothing.  Shaun was ready to throw in the towel.  I felt absolutely no surprise.  I knew it wouldn't be as simple as that.

Shaun returned to Recife airport to exchange the Dublo for a five-seater car a few days later, as it was a quarter of the price and we have found in general we use the car for groceries and running errands that don't require all of us to go.  Shaun and Hazel had an enjoyable time together, and stopped by the other Policia Federal to see about this Legal Status in Brazil, whatever that was.  They told him that I had to do it separately, so Shaun said he would just wait until we were in Recife together.  Doing further research he found that the Policia Federal should have given us a number called a SINCRE (don't ask me what that stands for), at the same time as the protocol number.  Well, guess what, that number, the SINCRE has been replaced by... you guessed it.... the Certidao do Estado Legal.  Which of course you need to go to the other Federal Police for residents to receive.  I guess they decided the Polica Federal for residents needed to start doing more work, or maybe the Policia Federal for foreigners needed to do less.  Whatever the reason, the number is now issued by the opposite Policia Federal than we were expecting.

Shaun has gone up to Recife a couple of times for work and to exchange our rental vehicle one more time to a cheaper version that had air conditioning.  They both still had five seats, so we could not all head up.  And this last car is a tiny little hatchback that doesn't even fit four of us comfortably.   As an aside this is why having a car with five seats does not work if we ever want to head to Recife or Maragogi or even our friend's house a five minute drive down the road.  And here they do have similar car seat laws and occasionally police that want a bribe, so even if I felt comfortable driving the six of us in a five-seater car (which I don't), there are often police check points on the road. Anyways, a few days ago we dropped Seth and Hazel off at a friend's to go see about this number....

Poor Lyla gets carsick, so we had to stop and run around the car a few times, but it isn't really that effective.  She ended up falling asleep moaning about how sick she was.  She awoke super happy and we spent an hour or two at the airport, applying for the legal status.  Fortunately Shaun brought every document we owned, because they needed Jonas' birth certificate.  We thought we just needed our protocol number (from the other Federal Police) and our ID, so that was a relief.  We should be able to pick up our certificates of legal status on January 2nd for everyone!  The kids need it to register in school, and we need it to open a bank account (these were the reasons she told us to write on our application).  And we just need to bring Jonas in to pick them up!  Well, it's not exactly like that, but Jonas appears to be like a little card we carry around to say we can stay in this country.

So while this may only be an interesting post if you are trying to live and work in Brazil after having a child here while on a tourist visa, it may be interesting to know that we are still busy with this concept of opening up a bank account.  And it looks like we are only two weeks away.  Notice that there is no real excitement in my voice.... because I'll believe it when I see it.  Also notice that I'm not really disappointed or frustrated.... this is just the way it is.  But when we have a bank account open, I might just buy a bottle of champagne!

Working on It

So this is more of a catch-up post, as I've had a number of loyal followers ask me to post again.  To be exact, three of them.  I told Shaun that was probably the extent of my followers, but to appease the masses I will oblige with this post of hodge-podge items.

A few weeks ago we had a Fiat Dublo rented, which has seven seats.  As you may remember, we have had difficulty finding a car that will fit us all.  We went up to Recife to apply for our permanent residency, based on the fact that Jonas is a little brasileiro.  We had to go to the Federal Police for Foreigners (In Brazil there are a number of types of police, such as military and civil police).  We had tried once before, but needed to have certified copies of every single page of our passport as well as our children's.  We had been told by our lawyers that the kids didn't need this done, and also had relied on someone's information that you only had to get certified copies of the pages with the actual passport information.  We also needed two passport type pictures of all of us.  So we headed back up to Recife once we had that all together.  The Federal Police offices we have been using are at the airport.  One is for Foreigners, and issues visas, the other is for Brazilians, and issues passports and certificates of legal status, once you get your visa from the foreigner side.  We've dealt with the Brazilian one when we applied for Jonas' passport, and surprisingly we got his passport within a week.  These police in the same way as Canada has police.  The Federal Police are more a paperwork processing for visas, passports, etc.  They make sure that you submit all the right documents, and then they issue you the certificates. We are getting really familiar with some of the government employees there.  Anyways, it took around three hours to wait for our turn and then process everything at the Federal Police for Foreigners.  Unfortunately we had a fee because we had stayed in the country without extending our visa.  This was super irritating because when we were there the week before we were still within our time limit, but when we didn't have all the right documents for our permanent visa we didn't think about extending our tourist visas, which would have been legitimate to do and quite easy.  Our tourist visas (and I think most tourist visas) state we can stay in the country for 90 days and extend for a further 90 days, up to 180 days in a calendar year.  There is apparently no problem with extending it.  We just didn't think of it because we knew we were legally in the country because we have a Brazilian child.  So we got charged for 5 days x 5 people.  Fortunately for us, we don't have to pay the charge until we leave Brazil and then want to return.  And although it is a lot of money for us to in terms of it being unnecessary, relatively speaking it is very cheap to stay in Brazil illegally.  It costs R$8.50/day up to a maximum of R$850. 

The road to Recife from Maragogi is really windy for the first 45 minutes (of a 2 to 2 1/2 hour drive).  We have discovered that Lyla has a tendency to get carsick...notice the grey pallor.  The way back is better because it is the end of the journey that she gets sick.  She doesn't throw up often, but just feels terrible. 

In general everyone else does fine on the drive.

Okay, maybe not Seth.  He sometimes gets a little squirrelly.

Here's a picture of sugar cane fields on fire when we were driving home at night.  The terrain here is hectares and hectares of rolling hills, and from what we see, the sugar cane is harvested by hand.  I missed the picture of that during the daylight, but there are dozens of workers in the field hacking away at the burnt sugar cane. 

We got the kids a decent soccer ball, and Hazel had to put on her soccer socks and shoes.  It totally went with the little skirt she had on.

Oh no! A soccer injury!

She truly is a futebol player already....

Because you haven't seen Jonas for around three weeks, I tried to pick out a picture for each week.  This would be Week 7.  Let me tell you, it is hard to pick out a picture looking through all my files, and now that I see this one I think I could have found something better.  But I guess you need to see him in all lights, so I'm not going to look through them again.  Way too much like work.

My attempt at artistic.

My dear friend Bel did Profession of Faith two weeks ago.

In the same service the church that we attend ordained a missionary to the south of Brazil.

Yes, I am a giant here.

Week 8

No one is sick of this yet.

He will be her size before we know it.  Right now she can only carry him a minute or two at a time before she's exhausted.

One of the many moments of overwhelming love coming from Lyla.  Typically it comes in the form of a song "Jonas I love you. Jonas I love you."  Also every single day her prayer sounds something like this:  "Thank you for Jonas.  Thank you for mommy loving Jonas.  Thank you for Jonas could be healthy and thirsty.  Thank you that Jonas can have yummy milk from mommy.  Thank you for that we could all love Jonas.  Thank you that God the Holy Spirit.  Thank you that Jesus could die on the cross for our sins.  Amen."

Our Christmas decoration.  It is a paper chain with all the names of Jesus.

Jonas and Daddy talking to Uncle Randy.

Just a picture to demonstrate his chub.

Seth's idea of a relaxing way to read books.  I don't remember if I've written that we don't have a couch, so we have this mattress set up in the living room to sit on and we have six kitchen chairs that came with the house that are literally falling apart.  They have foam coming out the bottom or the side, and are wobbling like crazy.  But we make do.

In other news we also have finally figured out a school schedule that seems to work for everyone.  We have school from 9:30-10:30, have a half hour recess (in which I can start making lunch, which is the hot meal of the day).  Then school from 11:00-12:00.  Then lunch until 1:30.  We spend a lot of that time doing devotions and singing, the kids have memory work each week and they pick songs they want to sing.  Then from 1:30-2:00 Seth and Hazel rotate each day doing Rosetta Stone.  Then from 2:00-3:00 they watch Backyardigans and Dora in Portuguese on TV.  This is a work in progress, but everyone seems to feel this is an acceptable schedule, although Jonas sometimes gets hungry at the wrong times.  Even then, we have been working with the same books long enough that I can direct them through the distractions.

Me and my girls :)

Aren't they adorable?  The other day they called each other best friends... music to a mama's ears.  And of course they have little fights daily, but the amount they play together and that they play so well is really a blessing.

Well, I think that you are all caught up in general.  Stay tuned, I have a couple posts planned regarding Hazel's birthday week, Shaun's foray into making coconut oil at home, and our neighbourhood and neighbourhood kids.