Quick Updates: Trip, Housing, etc.

*I'm having a "spacing situation" with blogger right now, so I apologize for the many updates and republications of this and probably any subsequent posts *

The Trip...

... is going well so far. The academic meeting I participated in was good in spite of the torrential rain and cold weather (it's winter down here) and the absence of around 50% of the scheduled presenters due to the fact that the airport where last week's accident took place was closed. Everything went wrong technology wise during my presentation - computer and video projector problems, but fortunately two people in the 4 people panel were absent and there was enough time for me to finish the presentation after the problems were fixed. It was nice to reunite with the boys. Kelvin met me at the bus station and his face lit up when he saw me and he jumped in my lap. Linton was sleeping in the car and didn't react in any remarkable way. I think he actually looked the other way when he saw me at his side, but I know it's because he was sleeping.

Housing Situation...

... remember that I was looking at houses (townhomes) on the day I was supposed to travel? Then, two days later my husband went to look at single family home I had looked at from the outside but not gone in and he loved it -- it was a nice, large but cozy, and well kept fixer upper with four bedrooms, a garage, and a nice yard (with a clothesline!). He uploaded photos, went there again to take some films with the camera, uploaded those and we had pretty much decided that we were going to make an offer. It turns out that the siding of the house is made of asbestos -- which is said to be very costly to remove and a health hazard, so we were disappointed with the house. Two days later we found out that our prospective tenants had decided not to rent our home after all... so, we're going to have to put it on the market and hope it sells and we can only buy another house contingent to the sale of the old one. I know... so complicated. I'm kind of glad that things worked out this way because it would be very hard for my husband to vacate the house on his own and for us to have to postpone our trip back. As for his visa, we're still waiting for the petition to be sent... (oh, and just yesterday, two days after out prospective tenant in the U.S. bailed out, the tenant of our house here in Brazil also decided to leave!).

Potty Training...

... The arrival in Brazil prompted some serious accidents that had never before happened (not that I thought we'd be lucky and they wouldn't happen). Linton continued with his super-human efforts to withold his stools and he ended up pooping twice in his underwear -- the first time at a play area of a shopping mall (very tough situation for my poor mom) and the second at my aunt's house. Today I was finally able, and patient enough, to have him use the toilet. The trick was reading books to him there and on Wednesday night. Luckily I'd just bought this awesome picture book (image on the left) by Mariana Massarani (she has two great blogs in Portuguese where she publishes lots of her great illustrations) titled Banho! (Bath!) in which one of the characters pees and then stays seated on the toiled reading a book while his three siblings take a bath and go eat dinner. I read the book to him several times and then I brought a box of old stuff to be sorted out to the bathroom and I just stayed there with him. Remember I told you at the end of this post that I didn't have patience to potty train him? I guess that's slowly changing!


I have so many other things to share, but I guess they'll have to wait until I don't know when. Tomorrow we're going to São Paulo again where I'm going to see some more friends and on Sunday I travel to Rio de Janeiro, where my second congress will be. I'll be back whenever I can.