Bowling, Burger King and Exhaustion

Peapod

July 2008 - September 2008

"We hardly knew ye"

My son has officially been labelled a tent murderer. Vic carefully made the repairs to the tent last week only to have Sawyer rip another hole in it a day and a half later. I know that this is very frustrating to Vic, but I guess that Sawyer hated being confined to the point of breaking out. He is now sleeping (or not, as the case is) in a toddler bed we purchased from some friends moving to Vancouver. I believe Sawyer may now be regretting this decision to ruin the tent as he has not really slept since. I think he just doesn't understand how to deal with freedom. He can move, so he does...even when it is after 9:00 at night or he is exhausted and in need of a nap. In his current state, he simply stumbles around deliriously and tells us that he is being deprived of milk and Dora. It has not been fun.

This lack of sleep does mean that we now have a series of photographs of Sawyer sleeping in random places. It seems that TV is hypnotic as most of the time, he falls asleep in front of it. We are trying to make a game of it: "Who can guess when Sawyer will nod off?" The locations usually remains unchanged, but the time is often very different. Yesterday it was 3:00 in the afternoon, the day before, it was 6:00 in the evening. He also will usually wind up asleep any time he is in the car. He also has a different idea about sleeping under the sheets as I discovered last night at 9:30.

Sawyer's freedom in his room has also revealed more needs for child proofing that we hadn't even considered when Ansley was this age. For some reason, Sawyer has decided clothes do not belong in a dresser, they obviously belong on the floor. All of the clothes except for his bathing suit, which has replaced his blanket as a sleeping device (?). I spent yesterday morning going through the room adding childproof locks and other devices to remove distractions and get him bored enough to sleep. This morning, I discovered my work was in vain, as clothes will fit through very small cracks and child beds can be moved surprisingly long distances. At least he is persistent, a trait that will come in handy later in life.

The week was not completely consumed with a tired boy, yesterday we decided to go bowling. There is a really nice bowling alley at the top of Barra Shopping that doesn't smell like cigarette smoke and caters to kids. They were shocked we didn't want to let Sawyer bowl his own game. I believe that Ansley may have found an activity to rival ballet and gymnastics in fun levels. The alley had automatic bumpers that came up when it was Ansley's turn. Have I ever told you that I have bowled a 200 before? I have...but it was a long time ago, and it appears that Vic and I have forgotten the fine art in the mean time. The scores yesterday were Chet - 86, Vic - 73, Ansley/Sawyer - 57. Sawyer really likes bowling as well, he just believes that he should bowl every frame. I'm trying to add video of the kids bowling this week, so I hope you enjoy it.

After bowling, we had a hankering for some American food, so we went downstairs in the mall to try the Burger King that just opened up here (first in Rio). The food was spot on, but the service had been Brazilianized. For starters, they hand you a menu when you get in line. They then have a waitress half way to the cashier that takes your order and hands you a number. Which you take to the cashier. The one that made us laugh was the drink station. They needed two people to get drinks for customers, but they still managed to screw up our orders (to be fair, the fault was probably our understanding of Portuguese). The drink station is in the background of the picture of Ansley. Note the lady on the left looking at me like I was a crazy tourist...she was mostly right. The bottom line is that between the servers and the chefs, there were probably 25-30 people working to get us our food. Very Brazilian.

Some final notes, the winner of the name the Venus Fly Plant contest was Ellie thanks to the fact that she was the only one that participated. The beast will from this point on be dubbed "Bupky". Sadly. we also lost both cars this week to corroded electrical cables. The Peugeot has been returned, but the Scenic is back in the shop now. Of everything in Brazil, the cars are our single greatest frustration here. Oh well, we're off to the beach. Hope everyone else is doing well.