Baby's Birthday Bash

Last year I found a cool idea to celebrate a birthday. A countdown calendar! I downloaded the instructions and then took some creative license and made my own. Instead of creating a birthday scene with what is inside each day's pocket, I bought stickers and created a scene above for the stickers to go. My kids love stickers. This year I made a garden scene for the baby with princess, flower and butterflies stickers.

Before

After

The baby's school has a no parents policy. Even for birthdays. So the tradition is that parents send in a cake, drinks and goodie bags along with a camera so everyone can enjoy the day. Last year Serena tried desperately to go to her daughter's birthday party without any luck. I just gave in and sent a birthday in a bag.

I bought some silly FUN Services type toys downtown and put together bags for the kids (including a slide whistle, a flashing necklace and a slinky. I got a foam puzzle, finger paint, crayons and a sketch book to make it more than just annoying for the other moms. This all went together in a "tnt" bag with a cute label. I think I did well, especially since the bags didn't tie with the big sketch book in it.

The baby ADORES chocolate so what else would I make for her than a chocolate, chocolate brigadeiro cupcake? This is from a Brazilian cake mix so I wasn't sure if the outcome would be anything like the Betty Crocker cakes of my dreams. I followed the recipe exactly (measuring in mL instead of cups) and the cupcakes ended up more like brownies, not so fluffy like Betty's. That's ok, the baby like brownies, too. I made brigadiero frosting and put about at thick a layer of frosting as cake. I'm sure the kids at school were very sticky. Mmm.


We have a cool bakery/restaurant supply store nearby with all kinds of neat packaging. I got this neat box and put 16 cupcakes in for the 10 kids in the class. This way I have cupcake security without the risk of losing my cupcake tins (they don't do them here) to the pre-school abyss.

I even had extra gift bag toppers that I taped to the side of the cool box. There is no way that this party in a bag would be given to the wrong class.

What I didn't do was send my camera. I was just not that trusting. The teacher did say that she took cell phone pictures, but I never saw them. Oh well.

What I did do as soon as they all left for school was make a cake for the family party. This time Betty Crocker helped me out. I did it in a bundt pan and after I put it in the oven and was reading the cooking time, I realized that I forgot to flour the greased pan. Luckily, the cake came out of the pan anyway.

Again, we had brigadiero to put on the top. The cool part about using a bundt cake for this is that the extra brigadiero pools up in the middle and flows out when it is cut giving it a nice effect and extra frosting. And what is a brigadiero without sprinkles? I tried pouring the sprinkles down the sides, but it all just pooled on the plate so I asked Penha how this sprinkling process was done. She took a handful of sprinkles and threw it at the cake.

Sprinkles everywhere!

I was reluctant to do this because of the mess it made, but she said that there was no other way and, hello!! I didn't have to clean it up. I had her blessing to make a mess! Too cool.

I figured that since I was making a mess anyway, I would get the girls in on it, too. We put the cake on the floor and threw sprinkles at it. The girls giggled and laughed the whole time. The boy giggled and took pictures and video. Eventually we got a thoroughly covered cake.

Here is our final product with both the mess and the cake.

The girls were appalled at how many sprinkles remained on the floor and wanted to help clean it up. The baby went to get the broom and the girl went to work with her tongue. Once again, because of my Penha I knew the floor was clean enough to eat off of. I'll have to break her of that when I am the boss of cleaning again...

The licking got old fast and we moved to more efficient methods of cleaning, eventually enlisting the help of my Penha on the left of the picture (she runs out of the room when the camera comes out).


Additional Penha side note- her shoes say "kiss me" and I asked her if she knew what it meant. She said that she liked the colors and knew that it must be cool because it was "Americano."

Here is my attempt at professional photography of stuff (usually food) up close. That will be another post someday when I am hungry. Notice all the extra sprinkles and frosting on the edges. Just imagine what kind of delicious feast is waiting inside this volcano of a cake!

Baby was excited all afternoon about her cake. We had to hide it to prevent fingerprints in the sides. When daddy got home, we got presents together and, along with some friends had a little party. When we went to look for birthday candles they were nowhere to be found. She doesn't need candles, right? No way, not this fire fiend! I got out some tea candles from our emergency supply and she had "biggest candles ever!!!" on her cake.

You can just see the happiness in her eyes from having such special candles on her cake.
The current movie obsession of the baby is Barbie Diamond Castle. We just had to have all the fixins: hats, cups, plates and napkins. We also had the soundtrack playing in the background.

We did a pretty good job demolishing this cake along with the ice cream daddy had made.

Here are some of our guests enjoying the party.

Then came the presents. She opened every present very carefully.

Grandma and grandpa sent some pony puzzles.
Our friends brought a face-making game. She now thinks that whenever that friend comes he will bring a present for her.

Grandma and grand-daddy-daddy sent a hair kit with glitter paint and elastics. The sweet baby had glitter everywhere but in her hair for at least a week. It took four washings to get it all the way out of the girl's scalp.

We had a gift bag left over from school (apparently there were only nine kids) so we had something fun for our little friend to take home. The slide whistle was a huge success.

To burn off some of the brigadiero energy, the girls danced. Our other little friend (a year and a half younger) is a super dancer.

The evening ended with a sandwich hug between her fun friends. Notice the slide whistle.

I think everything turned out fantastic. The girl is a year older. We had yummy cake. We had fun friends. Mommy survived without stressing.

Caged Animals

Today is the first official holiday of Carnival. The girls have today and tomorrow off and the boy is off all week. I decided that we can't sit at home all week so I was excited when we were invited to go to the zoo with friends. These friends are two families whose older children are at youth camp, leaving the 9-year-olds home alone with the dads. My poor sweetie came down with a sore throat and chills last night so he was out of commission for the day. I debated weather to go with the three kids or call to cancel. I made some sandwiches, packed some juice boxes and water and set out for the zoo.

The baby was very excited to hear that we were going to the zoo. She said she wanted to see the giraffes. And get licked. What? Giraffes have long necks and tongues. The boy said that he didn't want to get near the giraffes because he didn't want to get eaten. We had a discussion about meat eaters and plant eaters. He still didn't want to get eaten. Not by the snakes either.




We happened to be there with tons of our closest friends, all the Brazilians who didn't leave town for the long weekend. It was packed, but everyone was polite and the people traffic flowed well.

Elise and Matthew were our tour guides, with Matthew showing us the way and Elise helping the girls see every exhibit. By the way, Elise's dad, Mike, totally looks like my older brother. And he says I look a lot like his younger sister. Spooky!

And I got to break out my beloved double stroller. I love this thing. And the girls were glad to have a seat when they got tired. And I was glad to have two other dads to help push when we were going up hill with two girls in the seats.

Amazingly enough, there are penguins in the Sao Paulo Zoo. Did I mention that it was 90 degrees today? And they were some of the few animals who were out to put on a show. Most were in their caves or under the trees. These penguins are from the Southern coast of Argentina. The boy was pretty excited to see them.

Then we were amazed that there were turtles in the same pond as the alligators.

We are the mighty, mighty buffs! I don't think I've ever seen a buffalo in a zoo before.

And just to give fair screen time to both my schools, here is a cougar.

The boy liked the green parrots in the cage and all the noise they made.

We also liked that the turtles were playing leap frog without leaping. Kinda like the cars on the car carriers.

The girls both thought the maps were fun to look at. The girl wanted to see where we were at every turn. When the baby saw the picture of the giraffes she was so excited and kept asking if they were next.

I just love that specific animals are fans of different types of recycling.

Here is my standard view while babysitting the stroller. I was so glad to have such helpful people with us on our adventures.

This is as close as we got to the elephants, since they were popular and out in the open. Later he started walking away and flapping his ears and the baby said that he was going to fly away.

This is the famous red rhino that Matthew was talking about through the whole trip so far. And he (the rhino) was nice enough to come out of his corner so we could get a good look.

Here is the baby and her friendly neighborhood giraffes. Unfortunately (?) she didn't get licked. It was probably because she could not even stay still enough for a good picture. I like it anyway.

The kids all got a kick out of the giraffe in front licking the pole. They thought the color of their tongues was gross and the baby was glad she didn't get licked.

My favorite animals in the zoo!



Our last stop was the hippopotamuses. We were all tired by this time and were rather glad that the wind and thunder picked up so we had a cool walk back to the car. We got in just as the rain began to fall.

On the way home, we got out of the parking lot first by pure luck and without a map or the GPS made it home quickly despite the rain. On the way, the boy observed that the zoo smelled like animal soul. Soul? I asked if animal soul smelled like animal poop. He said it was worse. So is it like poop and sweat? He said worse, pee and puke, too. Yikes! I hope my soul doesn't smell that bad.

I am very proud to say that it seems (final results not in yet) that no one got sunburned and that we had a very nice day with very well behaved kids and excellent company (not to mention the animals).

The Second First Day of School

The girl had her second first day of school the same time as the baby, but being the forgotten middle child, she gets a separate posting just for her.

She graduated from Maternal last November at a fun program and ceremony at a the Monica theme park. "Turma da Monica" is a very popular cartoon in Brazil (it reminds me of Family Circus) and has their own mini theme park inside a local mall.

The owner and administrators of the school talked about the success of the year. Below are the owner (can't remember her name), assistant principal - Simone, and principal Carla (also daughter of the owner). The school has classes up to the equivalent of Kindergarten.

Then each class did a few dance performances. The girl is all the way to the right in this picture and although she looks less than enthusiastic, she did much better than the last time she was supposed to dance (festa junina, another post for another day) because she didn't cry, actually moved and looked up every once in a while. Her teacher, Adriana (Tia Dri), is on the left.

Here is the girl actually dancing...

At the end, everyone got on stage and sang Christmas songs.

Then there was a stage show with the characters from Monica. It was quite entertaining.

We were served lunch and the kids were treated to a visit from Santa and a gift.

Then came the fun of the amusement park. Oh, side note on the shirt... it is another children's show "Castelo Ra-Tim-Bum" the latter part which is pronounced "Hah-cheen-boon" and is totally cute when the girl asks if she can wear her "ha-chee-boo" shirt.

The kids really enjoyed the construction site with hard hats and foam bricks

This is a arm powered bicycle ride that she totally loved. Part of the requested costume was lots of colored hair thingies. Instead of lots of little piggy tails she suggested we use all her colored barrettes. I think it turned out great.

So, with last year all done, the girl was counting down the days until she could go back to school again. She actually asked if she could go to school many times during her vacation. But when the day came, she was a little less than energetic.

Her favorite school uniform accessories are her "Moranguinho" socks and black boots. Everyone makes a statement in their own way.

She did a great job posing for the obligatory front door shot.

Not so sure what happened when she got on the bus, but she is certainly entertaining.

And a really good faker. She was happy to return to school. And even found a few friends in her class again from last year. She is one happy little go back to school girl.