Brazil part 1

This time last week, I was boarding the plane in Sao Paulo, crying geniune tears at having to say goodbye to my in-laws for at least another year, and praying that our trip home would be uneventful.  We arrived 18 hours later at my house, exhausted, a little dirty and battered from our 3-week trip, but alive and healthy.

Since then our transition to being back home and in our regular routine has been kind of rough.  We both got sick from being on the plane and the drastic climate change of winter to tropical summer back to winter.  Livia is teething and has been wanting to be held every second of the day, because in Brazil there were lots of people around to hold her and play with her.  Just now, a week later, we are starting to get back to normal.  Just a small price of international travel, and well worth it.  

I'm so glad I was able to take Livia to meet her grandma and other family members while she is still a baby.  It was the start of her relationship with that part of her family, and was a special gift I could give them.  Livia is a very 'easy,' adaptable and friendly baby, so she tolerated all of our adventures very well.  Looking back, it was a wonderful trip--that being said, I don't want to travel anywhere alone with her for awhile, because is was really tiring for me to be the only caregiver and to have to be "on" every second of every day.

I did not have reliable internet access during our trip, and of course my cell phone didn't work there, so it was a true technology detox.  I took small notes each day so I could remember different things that happened.  Some of my notes make NO sense now, but I could write for hours and hours and still not describe everything.  Feel free to not read this as it will pretty much be a travel diary. 

FEB 19th

Ready for our big trip!

The trip there was long.  I do feel really awesome that I successfully flew with a baby all alone and had no issues, it really is not as hard as I was thinking and as everyone makes it out to be.  We had a connecting flight in Houston on the way there.  My carryon set off the security system and they wanted to do additional screening, until a manager came over to look at the x-ray and said 'Oh, those are just Fig Newtons."  Turns out they have the same density/look similar to some kind of explosives.  The most tiring parts were just how many times I had to take Livia out of her carseat, take down the stroller, put her in the baby carrier, take her out, deal with the bags, etc.  If someone else had been traveling with me all of that would have been much easier.  I am glad I had the stroller with me in the airport even though I ended up putting her in the sling most of the time.  The flight to Sao Paulo was totally full so we didn't get a bassinet or an empty seat next to us.  We sat next to a nice Brazilian man who was polite but not overly enthusiastic about sitting next to a baby (don't blame him--I was just hoping for a nice grandma or another mom who would maybe offer to hold her so I could drink a cup of coffee or something).  Livia slept most of the flight so that was a relief, however I did not sleep at all, it was too cramped and I had to make sure I didn't drop her. I also couldn't put my tray table down so I didn't get to eat dinner or breakfast.   I watched some movies and counted down the hours with the flight map.  The sun was rising as we flew over the Amazon and it was so gorgeous. I also read the only e-book I had purchased for the trip, Anne Lamott's "Help, Thanks, Wow."  I have recently discovered her writings and love her!  I will try to write a different post about that book, it was really good. 

dawn over the amazon rainforest (and only 3 more hours of flight time!)

FEB 20th
 After we landed, I had to go through immigration (easy) and customs (hard)--you have to get all of your checked baggage and carry it through customs, so I had to manage all of that alone.  I had Livia in her carseat hooked to the stroller snap-and-go. She hates the bucket seat carseat but I took that one because she is almost too big for it and so if it got lost or ruined it wouldn't matter.  She was fussing a little but had to stay in the seat because I had to get our checked luggage. I had a regular backpack and small duffel that were carryon bags, that I managed to shove in the stroller storage space.  Then I had a HUGE rolling duffel suitcase, which held up very well and was a great bag to take.  I also had a large hiking backpack stuffed full.  So I pushed the stroller, pulled the big suitcase, and had the pack on my back.  It was a lot of work. One nice lady did help me pull my bags off the conveyor belt because I essentially had to leave Livia alone for a second to get the bags.  Also, Brazil is a tropical country and it is the middle of summer, so as soon as I stepped off the plane I started sweating and never really felt cool again until we arrived back in the U.S.  I was kind of a mess, tired, sweaty, and a little disoriented after the long flight.  Once we cleared customs I stepped out into the airport, the busy, chaotic part, and luckily the first person I saw was my mother-in-law!  Such a relief!

I stayed awake for 36 hours that first day and it was kind of overwhelming.  But great.  That's kind of how the whole trip was.  That's kind of how Latin America is--a little chaotic, a little exciting bordering on dangerous, but so beautiful and open and fun too.  It was my first time traveling abroad as a mother, and things that might have felt exotic and exciting when I was younger felt a little more dangerous or exhausting now.  All of the cultural differences really forced me to look at myself as a mother and pushed all of the limits of what I thought I knew.  It was a lot to take in that first day.  But we were with family, people who care about us and it felt good to let them take control.  Livia was a little celebrity.  Everyone in the extended family had her picture as their cell phone background and computer screen saver, neighbors came to visit to see the American grand-daughter, and she loved all of the attention.

meeting her grandma!  They formed a special bond

acai with granola and bananas

As soon as we put our luggage away, my brother-in-law took us to an Acai bar.  Acai (Ah-sigh-ee) is from the region where my husband is from and I don't particularly like it, it's very bitter.  But freshly made with bananas and granola was pretty delicious.  And thus started the long list of new foods that Livia tried for the first time.  Her solid food intake was sped up by a few months, and she ate/tried lots of things I probably wouldn't have given her for a long time, but in the end it was ok and she came back loving solids and completely feeding herself. 

When I first got there every single thing that happened I would think 'could I live here permanently?"  I was viewing everything with an American perspective which will always get you in trouble when you are abroad.  As the trip went on I learned to just take in each experience for what it was, and not worry so much about how our lives would/might be if we lived there, because we do not know what the future holds.