Tag: parenting

Throwing a Brazilian Halloween Party: An Odyssey of Prep

I threw a Halloween party for fifteen preschoolers last Saturday. It was a huge success, but I feel I owe my guests an apology.

Multiple parents came up to me and said I was “muito animada”, a very fun-loving, party-throwing person. I realized that by throwing a fun children’s party, I had completely misrepresented myself to them. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lie. The fact is I’m not a creative, crafty mom who saves egg cartons to make earthworm condos for the compost pile. My perfect Sunday afternoon is sitting quietly with a good a book and cup of coffee. Ideally on the beach and without people unable to wipe their own bottoms.

So why did I throw a class Halloween party?

Because they don’t traditionally celebrate Halloween in Brazil. I loved Halloween as a kid, and if I don’t throw the party, my Brazilian daughter won’t know one of my favorite childhood traditions.

Why did I make such an effort on the crafts and decorations?

Because the day after I announced my intention to have a party, one of the moms came up to me at school and told me she’d always dreamed of going to a real Halloween party. To which I thought “Oh crap! I’m fulfilling someone’s dream of Halloween? I don’t want that kind of responsibility!” But I accepted it. And that brings us to the last and really most revealing question.

How was I able to come up with such creative and age-appropriate themed snacks and crafts if I’m not a creative crafty mommy?

I’m an intelligent and highly-organized, type-A personality with access to the Internet and a working knowledge of Pinterest. That’s it. That’s the real me. If I take on the responsibility of a project, it will be done well. Even if it’s something I usually avoid.

Like baking.

Let me tell you about the cookie baking.

While in Atlanta in August, I found Halloween themed cookie cutters and decorating supplies. Bat, ghost, and pumpkin cutters. Black, orange, and green slime icing. The kids could decorate cookies! It would be awesome.

I knew I was going to have to make the dough from scratch. Shortly after arriving in Brazil, I tried to bake a pecan pie for reasons again related to culture sharing. I asked my husband where I could buy the crust. He stared at me brow furrowed. “Buy the crust? You mean the ingredients?” I laughed. Ha. Ha. Good joke. I’m not making my crust from scratch. Not even my South-Georgia raised, preserve-making grandmother makes her own crust anymore. Nobody does. “Uh, they do in Brazil.” Oh.

So I knew I was going to have to make sugar cookie dough from scratch and having baked maybe four times in my life, I knew I’d need a practice run. I planned out every day of the week leading up to the party. Saturday I went online and found a simple and well-rated sugar cookie recipe. Sunday I bought the ingredients. Tuesday was the baking run-through.

After my experience with the pie crust, I brought measuring cups back from the US because I’d learned I’m a victim of the US education system and can’t think in metric. Also, the Brazilian versions of recipes often call for “tea cups” which is not a standardized form of measurement! I find baking stressful enough without vague instructions, so American measurements and tools it is.

Recipe. Ingredients. Measuring cups and spoons. I thought I was prepared.

Preheat the oven to 350 F. My oven only has a line decreasing in thickness and the numbers 1 through 5, but my plan was to pick a number and once the first batch was in check them every minute and figure out the right amount of time at that setting. First problem solved.

Mix dry ingredients. Easy.

Cream butter and sugar. That’s when I realized I had a handheld beater with no beaters. They had been lost somewhere between a school project and kitchen renovation. Ok. People were obviously baking before electricity, so I decided to mix by hand. If I had known I would be creaming butter three times in a week, I would have gone out and bought a damn beater right then. But I didn’t.

Fifteen minutes and two sore arms later…mix in dry ingredients.

Two quivering arms and one sore back later…put dough on cookie sheet. Looking at the dough, I could tell using the cutters was out the question. The dough stuck to everything. I could have wallpapered with it. I went ahead and baked globs of it to test the flavor but knew I was going to have to address the stickiness.

One minute of internet research later, I’d learned the dough must be refrigerated for at least an hour before attempting to cut out cookies. Great! I had learned a valuable lesson. This is why test runs are important.

Friday morning I made the dough for a second time, breaking a sweat mixing by hand. I left it in the fridge all afternoon. I was going to bake the cookies after my daughter was asleep, but on a whim I decided to do one batch before I picked her up from school.

Within minutes I learned that firm dough doesn’t stay that way for long in an 85 degree kitchen. Central air conditioning in the kitchen would have been a big help, but I shrugged it off. People baked without air conditioning for most of human history. No big deal. I simply raced, hunched over my kitchen table, to roll out, cut, and dump cookies onto to the baking tray before the dough softened into a gooey mess.

I put cats, bats, and witches’ hats into oven and pulled out 8 amoebas. Son of a bitch.

I collapsed in a chair. Beads of sweat dripped down my back and forehead. My shoulders ached. And the prospect of mixing another batch of dough by hand loomed before me and crushed my soul.

I hate cooking. No matter how much I research and prepare, I feel I always, always, end up facing a dozen unexpected challenges that keep the results from being perfect. And perfect is the end goal, people. And it should be achievable with good planning and organization. That doesn’t seems to be the case with cooking, which is why I hate it.

The silver lining is that by making that test batch before I picked up my daughter, I was able to swing by the store and get more flour and butter for a third batch. Because I was making the cookies. My daughter had already found the cookie cutters and asked for a cat to decorate. I had brought the icing and spider sprinkles from the United States. I was making those damn cookies.

And by 1:12 a.m I had forty cookies in recognizable shapes.

At the party the next afternoon, a mom asked my husband where I bought the cookies. He told her I had baked them. She exclaimed “Really? Oh, those creative moms.”

That’s why I want to apologize to her and the other moms because I’m not the person the cookies make me out to be. I don’t get a thrill from making my daughter’s birthday cupcakes. I get stress knots above my shoulder blades. I don’t jump at every chance to throw a party. I cringe remembering the mess after the last one. I wish my Portuguese was better, then maybe I could translate my sarcasm when I talk about the joys of crafting.

I may have given my daughter wonderful Halloween memories and successfully represented a piece of my culture abroad, but I misrepresented myself in the process.

Which could be true for a lot party hosts. Maybe behind every Pinterest image, there’s a sweaty person popping painkillers and muttering obscenities at a tray of cookies.

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November 3, 2015
A Parent’s Weekly Writing Routine

MONDAY

Morning:

School Holiday so entertain and feed kid

Afternoon:

Entertain and feed kid

Evening:

Entertain, feed kid, and persuade her to take a bath

Night:

Fight with kid over everything because you’re both exhausted, Fight about getting out of the bath, brushing teeth, number of bedtime stories, going to sleep

9:30pm Open computer and stare listlessly at manuscript, pour wine, search new releases on Netflix

TUESDAY

Morning:

8 am Wake up & work on social media – Wake up late because child had a nightmare about Mommy getting her head bitten off by a monster and we were up for an hour in the middle of the night, race to get to swim class on time

9:59am Arrive at school on time

10:00am Watch kid’s swim class

10:40am Gym – Because yesterday was a school holiday – Think about dialogue for a tricky scene while on treadmill – Stand in front of gym for five minutes trying to remember what it was I needed to get at the drugstore…Bug Repellant!! I noticed my daughter’s almost out when packing her backpack.

Afternoon:

12:30pm Lunch w/ husband

1:30pm Write – Computer reminds me of family member’s birthday, quickly search internet for present

3pm Get back to Writing – Make mistake of checking phone and finding 41 messages from parents in kid’s class on the firing of a favorite teaching assistant in addition to a few suggestions for weekend playdates

4:15pm Get back to Writing – Suddenly remember a package for my daughter waiting to be picked up, race to post office, Dammit! race back home to get wallet, race to post office, realize there’s not enough time to get back home before school pick-up, go to bakery and get dinner

5:45om Pick up child

Evening:

6-6:30pm Dinner – eaten while child is having her snack

6:30-7:30pm Family Playtime

7:30 Begin persuading child to take a bath

7:50 Get child in bath

8:15 Finally persuade child to leave bath

Night:

8:30 Argue about teeth brushing

9pm Read bedtime stories

9:30 Write for two hours

WEDNESDAY

Morning:

8am Wake up & work on social media – Wake up to wet sheets and crying child because she peed in her bed. My fault. I gave her the whole bottle of coconut water after dinner. Can’t give her coconut water after dinner. Gotta remember that.

9:30am Take child to school

10:15am Gym, Revise previous night’s writing while on treadmill

11:30am Stop by toy store to pick up birthday present for kid’s classmate

11:50am Make appointment for kid’s haircut on way home

Afternoon:

12:30pm Lunch with Husband

1:15pm Write – Get call from school saying child is fine but has fallen and hit her head on the corner of a concrete pillar and now has a giant knot on her forehead, decide to pick her up from school early because I can watch her more closely than the school and it’s better to be safe than sorry

Evening:

6pm Dinner

6:30-7:30pm Family Playtime

7:30 Begin persuading child to take a bath

7:50 Get child in bath

8:15 Finally persuade child to leave bath

Night:

8:30 Argue about teeth brushing

9pm Read bedtime stories

9:30 Write for two hours

THURSDAY

Morning:

8am Yes. Finally. I am waking up to work… –Another school holiday?! Are you kidding me? Schools are closed and teachers don’t work on Teacher Appreciation Day?! What sort of socialist hellscape am I living in?

Afternoon:

Entertain and feed kid

Evening:

Entertain, feed kid, and persuade her to take a bath

Night:

Fight with kid over everything because you’re both exhausted, Fight about getting out of the bath, brushing teeth, number of bedtime stories, going to sleep

9:30pm Open computer and stare listlessly at manuscript, pour wine, search new releases on Netflix

FRIDAY

Morning:

8am Wake up & work on social media

9:30am Take kid to school

10am Gym, Tweak scene that has been complete in my head for a week while on the treadmill

11:30am Write – in total amazement that I’m looking at manuscript before lunch

Afternoon:

12:30pm Lunch with Husband

1:15pm Write – get call from school that daughter is complaining of a headache, she doesn’t have a fever, tell school she’s just trying to come home early and that I’ll pick up right after dinner

2:30pm Get back to Writing – get call from school saying that child has just thrown-up, race to pick her up driven by crushing guilt because she was not in fact lying about feeling bad

Evening:

Hover over sick child with bucket

Night:

Hover over sick child, Give her a bath, Get her to sleep in my bed, Read in bed to keep an eye on her

SATURDAY

No working. Family day.

SUNDAY

No working. Family day.

I imagine books entitled Write a Novel in 30 have a special chapter for parents that starts “First, find a place to send your children for the month.” If I get 2,000 words down, it was an awesome writing day and I don’t even have to do the daily household chores. We have a housekeeper! It’s one of the perks of living in a country that values human labor less than tomatoes. Imagine throwing in cooking, cleaning, ironing, grocery shopping, and basic home maintenance to that schedule. Imagine more than one kid! That’s the life of a parent trying to write.

A writer and mom I follow on Twitter recently wrote about finishing the 6th draft of a manuscript she’s been working on for 3 years. Honestly, I’m surprised she’s been able to get through so many drafts in that amount of time.

I raise a fist in salute to my fellow writers and parents. I bow in deep admiration to those…oh crap, I forgot to get the cotton balls for the ghost craft happening at the Halloween party I’m throwing on Saturday. Better go now. Gotta pick up the kid in an hour.

October 26, 2015
I Gave My Daughter a Dinosaur

It all started when the Littlest Pet army wanted to steal Polly Pocket’s kitty.

In her desperation, Polly called on her big sister, Wonder Woman, to defend her from the oncoming hoard of Littlest Pets. Wonder Woman joined the battle, the tide seemed to turn, but the Littlest Pets called on their Pteranodon freed from Jurassic World for air support. Wonder Woman countered by summoning her dragon, Storm Fly, and together they defended Polly and her pets from the Pteranodon. The battle raged. A pink poodle was decapitated. Then everyone stopped to have dinner.

I’ve clearly screwed up my daughter.

I should have realize it sooner, but it only became clear as I separated the earth-toned reptiles from the candy-colored pets. My daughter is terribly confused, and I have only myself to blame.

I should never have put both super heroes and Polly Pockets in the same playroom. I wasn’t thinking. She’s a girl. It’s not enough that she likes Littlest Pets and Polly Pocket; she must like only Littlest Pets and Polly Pockets. By acting out “Polly has a new pet kitty” and “Epic Battle to the death”, I have no idea what label to ascribe to her. Tomboy? Animal lover? Warrior? Caretaker? What is she?!

If I’m confused, I can only imagine everyone else in her life. How are people supposed to know what present to get her when she’ll play with anything? I can’t ask friends and family to walk down more than one aisle at the toy store.

Also I don’t think these toys can be used together safely. Thomas the Train’s wheels might fall off if he has to pull the Littlest Pets. What if Elsa’s dress gets glitter on the Pteranodon? Dinosaurs that were bred in a lab from DNA preserved in prehistoric mosquitoes weren’t meant to be covered in glitter. Neither are the toys inspired by them. The glitter will probably erode the wings off. I’m worried Batman might combust if he’s made to ride a My Little Pony.

The effects of this cross-play on the toys themselves are actually minor concerns compared to the effects on my daughter. If I had only stuck to tea sets, maybe she wouldn’t insist on climbing the bookshelves. Or leaping off the bed. Or running. Or moving. She would have learned that girls are supposed to sit quietly for long periods of time. If I’d limited her to baby dolls, she would have learned that changing diapers is an important part of care for infants handled exclusively by females. As such, girls aren’t supposed to find poop funny. Human waste management is a serious responsibility and constantly imagining your stuffed animals pooping on your mom’s head is NOT hilarious.

I definitely haven’t bought her enough Barbies. She’s still willing to leave the house with her hair unbrushed. If I hadn’t diluted the effects of the Barbies and princesses by including some super heroes, she’d be obsessed with accessories by now. As it is, she only wants to wear a crown some of the time not all of the time. Since she doesn’t have pierced ears, how are people supposed to know she’s a girl without a tiara and perfectly styled hair?

Allowing all the violent play was another mistake. That battle the Littlest Pets engaged in was brutal and not girly at all. Parenting fail. I bought the swords and shields. My husband and I read her illustrated Greek myths that referenced the Trojan War. We were forcing her to go against her nature when I taught her how to make a fist and my husband recalled his fencing days to teach her to properly thrust and parry. We should have known that having to set the rule “You cannot actually touch anyone when pretending to fight” was an indication our daughter’s development had gone off track.

It doesn’t matter that no scientific evidence has linked war play in kids to aggression in adults. I’m sure that’s only true for boys. A girl playing war is just unnatural. No girl in history has ever wanted to punch something. Girls don’t feel frustration and anger or desire to be powerful and heroic. They only ever want to rock babies, cook dinner, dress dolls, and put someone else’s needs ahead of their own. All girls. All of the time.

As every clothing, toy, and book store here in Vitoria make clear, girls are all the same by nature. So I can only assume my husband and I are to blame for my daughter being different.

I was still reeling from this disturbing revelation when my daughter announced her choice of Halloween costume. She wants to be a knight riding a flying unicorn.

“Like the man and his flying horse,” she said.

“What man?” I said confused. “You mean Bellerophon and Pegasus?!”

“Yes, like Beliphon.”

Great. On top of everything else, we’ve turned her into a nerd.

October 19, 2015
My Daughter’s Bilingual. It’s not a big deal.

My Brazilian-American daughter listening to her anglophone Great-Grandmother read Curious George.

About a month ago, I was invited to be interviewed for a podcast with Marianna Du Bosq at Bilingual Avenue. She asked me to talk about raising my daughter bilingual in Portuguese and English, with English being the minority language. (Jargon alert! In the bilingual community, minority language is any language not spoken by the majority of people in the community.) I was flattered and excited. In preparation, I visited her site and pulled up previous podcasts. As I listened to the PhD experts and trilingual parents, the researchers and published authors, I began to suspect that I would be the least helpful person ever interviewed for Bilingual Avenue.

Well the interview is up, and I’m certain that I’m the least helpful guest ever.

Of all the issues that come with parenting my daughter, raising her bilingual is one of the last I think about. In terms of energy usage, reflecting on her bilingualism comes just after flossing her teeth and ahead of which hand she writes with.

I don’t have a favorite book on bilingualism. I don’t have tips or special strategies to share. I can’t list the names of prominent researchers in the field or site the latest journal article making waves. I don’t have a “biggest fear” or “primary concern”. I’m not visiting online forums and sharing my struggles with other parents.

Before my daughter was born I did buy two books on raising bilingual kids. I read enough to know the common strategies: One Parent One Language (each parent speaks his/her native language to the child) and Minority Language at Home (the child learns the majority language at school/in public and speaks the minority language with both parents at home). Our pre-birth strategy session went something like this:

Me: “Since she’s going to be getting Portuguese at school and with all her friends, we should probably speak English to her at home, right?”

My Husband: “Absolutely.”

And that was that. Marianna asked me during the interview how my Brazilian husband feels about speaking English to his daughter. Not to spoil the interview, but I considered revealing my suspicions that I married a robot. He speaks English fluently and wants his daughter to be fluent in both languages, thus the logical choice was to speak English at home. Period. I realize this story is not helpful for the majority of people who also consider feelings when making decisions. I personally would not be able to say “I love you” in Portuguese and feel it the way I do in English, but my husband didn’t give it a second thought.

It’s possible we would have talked about it more, but then my daughter was born seven weeks early. We spent a month in the NICU. She developed a severe food allergy that caused bloody stools until she was 8 months and left me, the breastfeeding mom, only able to eat fruits and vegetables handpicked by fairies and meat that hadn’t been cooked in anything remotely tasty. Her breastfeeding feeding schedule was every two hours, so I didn’t sleep for almost a year. She has severe separation anxiety which has allowed me one night off in over four years, and that night was such a disaster it will take years for everyone to recover enough to try again. When she started throwing tantrums, they included biting, scratching, spitting, kicking, and screaming until she lost her voice. Two years later, we’ve managed to reduce the tantrums to only screaming and throwing toys at doors instead of people. She refuses to try new foods. Iran is more flexible over nuclear policies than my daughter is on the subject of vegetables. And she has recently decided she is done with both school and sleeping.

Truly my daughter speaking two languages is the least of my concerns.

Her teachers report no problems with communication. She has lots of friends she speaks to in Portuguese. She enjoys speaking in English to my parents via Skype. She might have in total fewer words in English than a monolingual her age but so, what? I’m a native English speaker and still regularly have to look up English words I’ve never seen before. With every piece of writing, I learn new ways to use and manipulate my native language. Learning a language is a lifelong activity, not something you need mastered by 18. My kid can identify an armadillo in both English and Portuguese. I’m not worried.

When I do consider her bilingualism and her place in the world as a bilingual, I remember that the idea a child should only have one native language or risk never being fluent in any has been totally and completely debunked. Linguists estimate 75% of the world’s population speaks more than one language and about 20% of the U.S. population. She’s far from alone in her bilingualism. In fact, compared to the many families passing on three or even four languages, our two-language family is pretty straightforward.

I think about these facts for two minutes and then go back to finding a way to make applying sunscreen less traumatic. Which is why, I’m the absolute last parent to ask about raising a bilingual child.

Because when someone says “You’re raising her bilingual. How’s that going?” I say, “Fine. Hey, do you have any suggestions for getting her to not hate carrots?”

*Here is the link to my interview with Marianna at Bilingual Avenue. Episode 87: Learning Language from our Kids with Brynn Barineau

If you have any questions or doubts about raising multilingual kids, Bilingual Avenue is a great resource!!

September 21, 2015
Six Things I learned About My Daughter While Visiting My Parents
Summer in suburban Atlanta

I just returned to Brazil after spending nearly three weeks in Atlanta, my hometown and where my family still lives. It was the first time my daughter and I traveled just the two of us. She’s four. Our trip involved an all-night, nine-hour flight that was delayed two hours both going and coming. I preemptively deployed both the iPad and M&Ms and I’m happy to say that both my daughter and I are going to see our next birthdays. Although probably with a cavity or two. Sanity above cavities, I say.

I don’t know if it was being on active parent duty 24/7 or my daughter’s leap in communicating her feelings and interests since last Christmas, but I learned a lot about my daughter during these past few weeks visiting my parents. Some insights were good, some frustrating, and some have me already looking for methods other than wine to cope with her teenage years.
1. She thinks all kids speak Portuguese. In her day to day life, the only people who speak English are grown ups, specifically my parents via Facetime, my husband, and me. All of her friends, all the kids at school, her cousins in Rio, every single kid she interacts with speaks Portuguese. Naturally, when she approached kids on playgrounds in Atlanta she said “Qual é seu nome?” Every time. Even after I’d tell her “Kids here talk like Mommy. Use English,” she’d continue using Portuguese. On each playground it took a few minutes of the kids not understanding and my prompting for her to switch over to English. Then we’d stop by a different playground a couple days later and she’d say to some kids “Qual é seu nome?” So as far as my daughter is concerned English is the language of authority and Portuguese is the language of her peers. She’s getting to live her own colonial experience. I’m sure that won’t be a problem later.
2. She will eat boogers but not pancakes. And it’s seriously grossing me out. She can’t get enough boogers but she refuses to open her mouth to taste one bite of fluffy, syrup drenched pancake. It’s not just pancakes she refuses to eat. It’s also hamburgers, ketchup, creamed corn, macaroni and cheese, cereal with milk, and scrambled eggs. But boogers she pops into her mouth without a second thought. I’m beginning to think something is wrong with her.
3. She’s never played outside in the dark. I realized this watching her buzz around the Atlanta Botanical Garden while viewing a nighttime light exhibit. I knelt to point out a firefly and realized she had never seen a firefly. We live in a city in an apartment building next to a very busy street. Nature isn’t even in the same zip code. Our city also has unfortunately high levels of violence and crime making the few parks that are here unsafe at night. Running around outside after dark, playing hide-and-seek, capture the flag, or catching fireflies was a HUGE part of my childhood. But hasn’t been and won’t be for my daughter. It makes me sad.
4. If it’s not chocolate, it doesn’t count as desert. She will eat the chips out of a chocolate chip cookie. She will turn down cookie dough for lack of chocolate. She will refuse to part her lips for pound cake. And she will not deign to look at anything called “pie”. Dessert is by definition chocolate. This almost redeems the booger eating.
5. She is stubborn. I knew this about her but sending her to preschool every weekday from 10-5:30 provided a significant buffer that kept me from really understanding the depths of her resolve. If she does not want to do something, she will refuse and she can keep refusing, crying, & screaming for over an hour. I decided she was old enough to start blowing her own nose. She disagreed & snorted snot out of her nose leaving it all over her face & hanging from her chin for over an hour. I told her she had to try one bite of corn in order to get dessert. She refused and demanded chocolate cake repeatedly until long after we’d finished the meal and arrived back home. I told her it was too late to read two bed time books. She screamed at me to read her chosen books throughout my entire going to bed routine and continued after I’d gotten under the covers.
6. She is a one hell of a control freak! She has rules for everything. What cup the juice is in. What order the books are read in. Who takes her to the bathroom. What underwear, what socks, and heaven help the person who offers to put her hair in a ponytail if she’s not in the mood. Everything matters! Everything! And “playing” with her means standing quietly until you are assigned a toy, which hand to hold the toy in, a place to sit, and what you are going to say. And do not screw up your line! If she tells you to say “Hey, who stole my kitty?” do not say “Hey, someone took my kitty!” No improvising! Give dialogue exactly as assigned! She will grow up to be either an award winning director known for making actors cry or dictator of a small Latin American country.
I’m sure summer vacation in December will be full of new insights, although I’m beginning to think ignorance is bliss.
September 13, 2015
28 Days in a Brazilian NICU: The Mom Milking Room

Day 2 of 28 in the NICU at Vitoria Apart Hospital in Brazil.

My daughter was born seven weeks early due to placental abruption. That was a new term for me, placental abruption. Another one was UTIN. That’s the acronym in Portuguese for Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). It was one of the many Portuguese medical terms I learned after my daughter spent 28 days in a NICU in Brazil. In the moment, each day felt like a lifetime. I was sure every minute of all 28 days had been seared into my memory.

But they weren’t.

My daughter just turned four, and I’m shocked to realize how much of a blur those weeks have become. Most of the exact numbers are gone. How many days was she on a ventilator? When did she get above 2kg? Of the many people who cared for my daughter, all but one of the names has been erased. Now they’re the doctor with red glasses and the physiotherapist who spoke some English. I suspect these details will disappear too.

What has not faded in any detail, much to my dismay, is my memory of the milking room. This was the place they sent the new moms to strip them dignity. It was the room for hand expressing breast milk.

Many preemies are born too small to breastfeed and are fed through a tube and syringe. How do you get these babies breast milk? The obvious answer is pump it, store it, and serve it. Except the NICU did not allow breast pumps of any kind. The hospital said it could not guarantee that an individual mom’s pump would be sterile, so they could not give the milk from from a potentially unsterile source to the baby. The only way for a baby in the NICU at Vitoria Apart Hospital to get breast milk, other than on tap, was to hand express it. This is as awful as it sounds.

At least for me. I am not particularly in touch with my body. I’m more cerebral and would be quite content to be a floating brain in space except for the facts I do like going for walks and eating french fries. I’m aware that my conscious self is housed in an organic Tupperware container that impacts how I feel, think, am, but I don’t dwell on it. At least not until I get a stomach virus. Or until I have to breastfeed a baby.

And I was going to breastfeed. I had done my research. Despite my lack of emotional connection to my mammary glands, I was totally committed to breastfeeding. I did not, however, anticipate having to milk myself like a cow.

That’s what it is. Hand expressing means squeezing out the milk by hand into a container.

Despite that daunting psychological hurdle, I told the nurses I still wanted to breastfeed, so one of them led me out the backdoor of the NICU, down a hall, through an unmarked door, and into an unused storage closet. Based on the size and lack of any comforts except three chairs, I assume storage closet was the original purpose of the room. White walls, tile floor, no windows, and freezing cold. This was the room I shuffled to, fresh from an emergency c-section, so that I could hand squeeze milk from my boobs.

As I stood there shivering in my hospital gown, the nurse quickly went through the officially sanctioned routine that guaranteed milk I expressed in that closet would be more sanitary than what I could get from a pump: wash hands, don hairnet and face mask, remove the plastic cups from the packaging and take the lids off, wash hands again, wash nipples with gauze, squeeze milk into cup and seal the cup immediately when full. Fortunately, she demonstrated the whole process because to this day I don’t know the Portuguese word for gauze or hairnet.

Then she left. No medical professional stayed in that closet with the moms.

Want to guess how many of the moms expressing themselves actually followed that routine when left on their own?

I know because it turned out to be a communal milking closet, and the answer is none that I saw. The next time I went to the closet, two other women were already there happily chatting away, masks down over their chins. I distinctly remember these two women because they were friendly, completely comfortable being half-naked in front of strangers, and filling up cup after cup with milk like a competition at a state fair. I was none of those things. I struggled to fill half a cup when alone. Trying to hand-express milk in a freezer while confronting small talk in Portuguese and the four largest breasts I’ve ever seen in person was literally impossible.

I got almost no milk out during that session or any other. I subjected myself to breastfeeding purgatory every three hours for four days before finally saying “Enough.” I believe breast milk is ideal. I don’t believe it is worth torture. I restarted breastfeeding only after my daughter was big enough to handle it herself. Hand-expressing in that closet was one of the worst experiences of my life. And I sat through the Sponge Bob movie.

If I’d had any reserve of energy I would have been outraged. I was being denied a breast pump on the grounds it wasn’t sterile, but there was nothing sterile about that room. They sent a bunch of not-medically-trained women down the hall with instructions to wash their hands and wear a mask. I don’t believe a single doctor actually thought the milk coming out of that closet was sterile. They know they’re in Brazil where actual laws are treated as suggestions.

But I didn’t have the capacity for outrage then and I don’t care to feel it now. True, an electric pump and a private space would have made a huge difference, but we all survived and someday the sound of someone else’s breastmilk squirting into a plastic cup will fade from memory. In the meantime, I’ll milk it for the entertaining story it is.

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July 13, 2015
Flying with Preschoolers: It can always get worse.

My only parenting standard at airports is “don’t lose her”.

My little family of three took a trip to Rio de Janeiro this weekend. Our nephew recently had a birthday and we needed to put in some face time with my husband’s family. It’s only a 45 minute flight from Vitoria to Rio, but that was long enough to learn a valuable lesson. There is no length of time short enough a three year old can’t turn it into forever.

It’s like in Interstellar. For the pilot and crew who have tasks to complete, 45 minutes is barely enough time to toss bags of crackers at everyone. They’re the lucky ones down on the planet. The parents of small children are the ones stuck in orbit who stumble off the plane with more grey hair and beards, demanding to know what year it is. How long were we up there? Six years? Ten?

For our flight home, boarding was scheduled for 6:50pm. Right at dinner time! But my husband and I were prepared. We had packed sandwiches…which my daughter ultimately refused to eat because we miscalculated the nap.

The ride to the airport was about 30 minutes. When my daughter fell asleep in the taxi, we thought “Oh good, she can take a short nap and be in a better mood.” Only, she didn’t fall into nap-time sleep. She fell into bedtime-for-the-night sleep, and as my grandmother says, “You don’t need to step on a snake to know it’s going to bite you.” The same principle applies. You don’t need to wake a preschooler up from deep sleep to know it’s going to cry.

And cry she did. Through the whole check-in process. While we searched for a place to sit. While I bought water and snacks. Even after we resorted to the emergency M&Ms. Eventually, she calmed down and filled her stomach with 2 tiny bites of sandwich and 5 pão de queijo.

No longer hungry but still exhausted from the weekend, her emotional pendulum swung to the other extreme. We then had a deliriously giddy 3 year old on our hands. While deliriously-giddy child is less emotionally exhausting than inconsolable child, she is more physically exhausting because deliriously-giddy child cannot occupy the same space for more than 3 seconds.

Did I mention that my back locked up this weekend? It happened while checking in at the airport for our flight to Rio. For the first time in my life. I couldn’t bend over, lift anything, or even take a deep breath the entire weekend.

Because I was benched from parenting due to injury, my husband was the one running after her while I kept our place in all the various lines. He was the one who chased her through security, from the gate to the plane, and took her on the bathroom run she needed the moment we stepped on the plane.

Eventually the plane took off and everything was ok. For about half an hour.

With fifteen minutes of flight time left, my daughter decided she could no longer tolerate her seat belt. My husband and I desperately tried to head off the fit we could see coming. She was straining and arching her back against the seat belt. Her face was scrunched and turning red. She stopped speaking in sentences and devolved to “No seat belt!” Very aware of the 150 people trapped on the plane with us, I grabbed a doll and made it sing “Let It Go”. As we got to the chorus, my daughter joined in and shrieked “Let it poopy! Let it poopy!” She dissolved into a fit of laughter and proceeded to sing at the top of her lungs different versions of the song featuring everything from pee pee to smelly socks to farts.

I’m certain if there had been a vote, the other passengers would have unanimously voted us off the plane.

That was the emotional knife edge we balanced on for the remainder of the flight. We teetered between a breakdown over the seat belt and belting out classic Disney songs rewritten to feature bodily functions. “Let it fart! Let it poopy! Let it poopy and faaaaart!” The plane eventually landed three months later, and we made it home where my daughter finally ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and went to bed.

All in all, it was a pretty uneventful trip. It could have been so much worse.

June 22, 2015
Why I Finally Admitted I’m a Writer

For the past seven years I’ve been writing a graphic novel. I only admitted this to a non-family member for the first time two years ago. I admitted it to close colleagues eight months ago, and then only because I had to give some reason for quitting my job. I was forced to tell my boss the embarrassing truth; I wanted to focus on becoming a writer. Specifically, I’m trying to sell a graphic novel.

Admitting this at work was awkward because none of my 40+ year-old colleagues here in Brazil had any idea what that was. “You’re quitting because you want to write comic books? Like Superman?”

“No, a graphic novel is a medium that can tell any story. They’re actually becoming more mainstream. A graphic memoir by a lesbian cartoonist about growing up with her closeted father who ran a funeral home was nominated for a National Book Critics award.” This explanation didn’t clarify anything for them.

As I suspected, once you tell people you are a writer and take the time to explain what it is you’re writing, they are going to ask about it. Every time they see you. This is why I never wanted to say anything. This is why I hoped to keep it secret until I could direct all inquisitors to their local bookstore where they would find my already published and acclaimed debut on the shelf.

I never called myself a writer because in my mind, a writer who has never published is a failed writer. I have a deeply rooted fear of failure, and so far all I have to show for my writing is 57 rejections.

I have only myself to blame. I chose to write a graphic novel, which is a growing but hardly massive market in the U.S. If I had written a romance or Young Adult, I’d be able to query a new agent a day for years. I set my story in Brazil with a poor, Afro-Brazilian protagonist. When I started writing, I had never read a graphic novel and had to google “format for a comic manuscript”. I’ve also never had a creative writing class in my life. And I can’t draw. At all. Not even a straight line with a ruler.

Thinking about it, 57 rejections aren’t so much surprising as inevitable.

When my husband and I conceived the story over dinner seven years ago, I was recently arrived in Brazil, with no job, and a lot of time on my hands. I outlined the story in detail, taught myself how to write a comic, and wrote the first 25 pages. I knew a story set in Rio de Janeiro should be illustrated. The visual contrast of the luxury and poverty of the city needed a visual element, but 25 pages into the story, my research was revealing extreme odds against ever getting published. Not being an illustrator, having no experience in comics or any area of publishing, and living in Brazil unable to attend conferences or network led me to save the project on a hard drive and forget it.

That was in 2008. I came back to it in 2013. I quietly finished a first draft and sent out a ton of bad queries for an unpolished manuscript and got back 55 polite “No, thank yous.” Naturally, I then decided to quit my job and pursue writing full-time.

Why? What made me finish the manuscript? What made me finally decide to not only pursue writing full-time but also publicly admit it? I became a mom.

My parenting philosophy is to model the behavior I want from my daughter. I want her to drink water at meals, so I drink water. I don’t want her to resort to physical violence, so I never use it on her. I want her to consider fruit a dessert, so I wait until she goes to bed to eat my ice cream.

More than anything I want my daughter to find her dream and follow it, so I damn well better follow mine.

I can’t tell her success takes hard work and dedication if I gave up after only 25 pages. I can’t tell her that failure is ok and a learning opportunity, if I abandon writing after 55 rejections on a first attempt at a first novel. I can’t tell her passion is a wonderful thing, if I’m too embarrassed to openly admit my own.

Today I have a polished and edited graphic novel manuscript, a critiqued query letter, 2 fresh rejections, and a strategy to pursue publication. I have a picture book manuscript recently sent off for critique. I have a detailed outline and the first 10,000 words of a young adult trilogy. I have this blog.

And when I do finally publish my first book, it will be dedicated to my daughter. Because if it weren’t for being a mom, I would never have become a writer.

June 15, 2015
Brazil: Children Allowed

Brazil! Where children are always welcome!

As an American, I know that taking a child to any restaurant that doesn’t have it’s menu posted on a wall and ordering her juice while she plays on your phone will get you nasty looks at the least and reported to child services at worst. The US can be a harsh culture in which to go about the day to day activities of parenting. I didn’t know how harsh until I moved to Brazil, and my eyes were opened.

Brazilians are gaga for children!

Women and men, old and young, Brazilians adore kids. Brazil makes the US seem like one giant lawn its crotchety citizens don’t want children stepping on.

I first noticed this difference during a staff lunch at a chic restaurant in Rio. My boss brought her newborn to this very crowded restaurant at peak lunch hour. Exactly one table was available and it was on the opposite of the restaurant. There was a sea of people in expensive clothes and tables covered in glassware between us and that table. When my boss indicated to the staff that we would be claiming that table, I cringed. My stomach clenched at the idea of getting through this fancy crowd with a baby and stroller.

That’s the appropriate response, right? Obviously, a parent should feel ill at the thought of briefly disturbing other people’s lunches on the way to her own table. Ha. How American of me. Two waiters swooped in, all smiles, lifted the stroller up over their heads, and carried that baby like royalty across the entire dining room. Not a single dirty look.

Brazilians have this bizarre assumption that babies and children are a staple part of everyday life. If there are people around, there will be young people and these young people will cry, complain, spill things, talk too loudly, and generally not behave like adults. That’s life. How else is it supposed to continue?

People here also acknowledge kids. They talk to them and include kids as if they were a part of society. Strangers smile and say hello to my daughter on our walks to school. Waiters greet her at restaurants. When she cries in public, people stop and ask her what’s wrong. During a melt down, I’m not worried the stranger approaching is about to helpfully inform me my child is being disruptive or offer some judgement in the form of unsolicited advice. That stranger approaching doesn’t want to talk to me at all. She’s going to console my daughter.

At playgrounds, parents help each others’ kids on and off equipment. They freely offer snacks they’ve brought to every child in earshot. They let other kids run off with their own child’s toy confident it will be returned. Playgrounds in Brazil initially felt to me like loud, sandy communist communes. It was a long time before I stopped apologizing profusely every time my daughter touched another kid’s toy and fearing the wrath of another parent because I offered her child gluten.

If you do bring your baby to Brazil, be prepared. Brazilians love children, and Brazilians are touchy people. I mean literally touchy. They touch other people a lot. A random passersby will want to touch, stroke, kiss, and even hold your baby. One of my daughter’s nurses at the NICU here in Vitoria admitted this was a particular blind spot for Brazilians. Knowledge of germ theory cannot curb their enthusiasm for babies. I dealt with it by reminding myself I’d rather have a request to hold my baby than a request to remove it from the premises.

This habit of baby fawning is not limited to any age, gender, or class. A trainer at my gym once brought his newborn into the weight room and a half dozen of the burliest men were reduced to cooing and clucking incoherently. The school where I taught had preschool through high school, and everyday as the toddlers left the nap room, a crowd of teenagers gathered to squeal and exclaim over the adorably rumpled munchkins.

And of course there are the old ladies. Women over the age 70 must develop a sixth sense to detect babies. I’d be sitting at the cafe, waving a rattle in my daughter’s face, and suddenly an 85 year old woman materialized out of thin air to stroke my daughter’s hair and to tell me my baby is cold.

This is the one sin a parent cannot commit in Brazil. You can leave the TV on 24 hours day. You can feed your kid white rice and french fries at every lunch. But do NOT let your baby get cold!!! If there is a breeze and your baby is not covered with a blanket, every person will stop and tell you your baby is cold. Every. Single. Person. As someone who does not think 65 F requires gloves at any age, I heard it pretty much everyday of my child’s infancy.

The love for and acceptance of children as part of daily life are two of the things I love best about Brazil, and for now, I’m perfectly content to raise my tantrum prone daughter here so as not to disturb my fellow Americans’ lattes.

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May 12, 2015