When it rains...

... it pours. This is one of the Anglo (what should I say, English, American? I don't know if it's either or both or whatever) expressions that I can't translate into Portuguese, and it always comes to mind even when I'm speaking Portuguese (another one is "not out of the woods yet" -- I said it yesterday to Klebert, my husband, meaning that my sore-throat problems weren't over, and he didn't even know this expression!)

Anyway... this week has been pretty hard. Well, for starters, I had a sore throat for a couple of days and now I'm hoarse and coughing a bit (I'll skip the more nasty details) -- meanwhile, Linton is teething, and nights have been not very restful, with him nursing all the time. Besides teething, he has a runny nose, which bothers him a bit (funny, but he ALWAYS has a runny nose coincinding with teething... and I know that's not supposed to be one of the symptoms). On top of that, last night I forgot to check on his diaper for a while (American diapers tend to be super absorbent, and if they're not soiled, they last several ours, as everyone knows, and I tend to simply forget, sometimes until they leak) and when I did - oh-oh! - there was a monster diaper rash waiting for me, and an almost dried out soiled diaper. Klebert says the rash has been developing for days, but I guiltily think it was all my fault. In conclusion, since he's been nursing a lot, and perhaps because of the drool of teething, or maybe something he ate, whatever... he soiled his diaper 3 more times after we found the diaper rash, and he cried piteously every time I changed him (more guilt)...

Kelvin, meanwhile, gets super clingy every time his brother's not well, and I go almost crazy, of course. I know all this shall pass, and, there are better things to think about such as Spring, beautiful Spring!! (I'll post about that later) And this weekend we're going to my brother and sister-in-law's house. They moved 3 weeks ago to Maryland - hurray! - they lived in Michigan before, and now that we're pretty close (under 3 hours away), we want to visit each other at least once a month. That should be fun! Their baby, Derek, is only 4 months younger than Linton, and it'll be great to see them grow together.

Last but not least, I do want to post some photos, let's see if I can do it soon...

Contextualizing "mommy wars"

Here I want to post some links to other "mama blogs" that I read some time ago and that taught me about "mommy wars".

I had never heard of the term until less than two months ago when I came across first these posts (on "mommy wars" and "Mommy drive-bys") in the midlife mama blog, which in turn led me to the Chez Miscarriage Blog, where I was amazed by the viciousness of mothers against other mothers in the guest bloggers' "testimonials" here.

These are all more or less related to Judith Warner's book Perfect Madness. Of course, I haven't read the book, just an Elle Magazine (sounds strange, right?) article about it I found a link to in the Expat Mama blog.

OK, enough links. Now that I've proven to myself that even not knowing any html I can still get some links going, I can continue...

I found it extremely interesting to learn about all this. My previous exposure to some aspects of this discussion had started with Naomi Wolf's book Misconceptions : Truth, Lies, and the Unexpected on the Journey to Motherhood which I read and re-read in my second pregnancy (03-04). I had no idea about the changes that had taken place within the context of giving birth in this country in the past 20 years, and I felt privileged that my experiences were wonderful, very unlike those of Wolf's. I have also read/ heard some of the criticisms Wolf's book received, but I enjoyed it very much.

(on a side note, this whole thing with seemingly controversial books that elicit lots of responses, then the interest dies down, or moves on to other books, seems very "American" to me. In a country like Brasil, not many people read books, and there's not a lot of meaningful "bookish" discussion among people)

Anyway... I continue being an outsider, yes, definitely "the other" I studied about in literary theory. Nevertheless, I understand what goes on, but do not feel very affected. These "mommy wars" do not bother me much because I live a life "out of context" in a sense. Even if I go back to Brasil now, my life will still be "out of context" there as well. Yes, I'm a "SAHM" (stay at home mom), and supposedly a student. And maybe someday I will be working and mothering as well, but right now I'm happy. I mean, I'm an expatriate, yes, but have never ever felt any limitations in terms of language and culture. Of course right now I feel sad that my son does not know English yet, but that will come with time - I'm giving him the "gift" of Portuguese, his parents', grandparents', aunts', uncles', etc, language.

But I digress, of course I do... Having done so, I will finish with two more links. I recently found out there's a new book out, The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars, and the author is from here, Philadelphia, this is her blog. Well, I'll see if I can check out Warner's and Peskowitz' books from a library, unfortunately, I have no money to buy books right now :( (only Catherine Newman's, I'm that big of a fan :)

No “Mommy Wars” in Brazil

In Brazil there are no mommy wars, generally speaking.

(Disclaimer: I know this is a very blunt statement, and the analysis below perhaps a bit superficial. This is a beginning, though, and I’m hoping to talk to other Brazilian mothers and get back to this topic here. And, last but not least – why should I worry? This is just a blog, anyway, not an academic paper!)

In Brazil, everybody has a “maid” (yes, I will use the PI term, I’m talking about Brazil, not the US), even stay at home moms. It is common for families to have a live-in-maid/nanny/cook (the rich ones do have all these different positions, of course). Of course I’m talking about middle class people, but even the “domestic helpers” themselves (OK, sometimes I can’t resist the PC terms because I think they sound so weird and funny to my foreign ears) – if they have children – have to rely on childcare of some sort, and some of them do have “maids”! Brazil has very deep social inequality, and informal labor, which is quite cheap, is widely available – besides having been relied upon for years and years by the “less poor” and the elite until it became a pressing need.

Some other key-differences that have to do with mothering/parenting: not many mothers breastfeed in Brazil, the percentage is tiny. It’s getting better with many public awareness campaigns and policy making (e.g. formula cans, bottles, pacifiers come with a printed warning saying that breastfeeding is best and is recommended at least until the child is 2, and I’m not totally sure about this one, but I think these items cannot be advertised in magazines geared towards parents – wow!), but I’d say for now that it’s mostly the poorer moms who breastfeed, and in the more affluent families, breastfeeding is usually given up before the baby’s one, or much earlier (regardless of whether the mother stays at home or not – even though I should note that there are no good breast pumps available for the working moms). Well, backtracking a bit, Brazil is the country with record rates of Cesarean sections (90% in some private clinics/ hospitals)! In Brazil, home schooling is extremely rare, almost outlawed, and anybody who can sends their kids to private schools, starting in kindergarten or earlier, because public schools have very poor quality (conversely, with a few exceptions, the public universities, which are FREE – yes! – are excellent and private higher education institutions tend to be much worse).

I’m sure there are several things I’ve forgotten to mention and may even post about in the future, but the bottom line is that many of the issues that worry so many of the mothers here in the US are not even discussed or questioned there. That’s one of the reasons I usually have a hard time relating to how some of my friends there live and parent in Brazil. Even before I had kids, when I went there I found funny that one of the main topics of conversation among my married female friends would involve concerns with their hired domestic helpers, and I would feel completely left out of the conversation. Of course I grew up with people helping in my parents’ household, but in our case, they were mostly student girls, who lived in our house, helped out, and my parents helped to pay their studies, and since I got married, I’ve never had any help (excluding my mom and dad when the boys were born). Well, I did live only a year and a half in Brazil after we were married, and have lived here ever since (we’ve been married for 10 years), so it’s only natural I have a hard time identifying with my friends’ “domestic lives” in Brazil. Oh, yes, and I’ve never “mothered” there either, except for the past 2 months.

Like I said in the “disclaimer”, I do want to go into this further, but I feel that even though I haven’t mothered yet while living Brazil I am still very much a Brazilian, and can think and write about these things. Another thing, I wouldn’t say that being a Brazilian makes me completely immune to the mommy wars being waged around me (at least the way I experience it second-hand in blogosphere, the internet and the media, since I’d say we live fairly isolated lives, having almost no friends, except Brazilian expatriates, etc…), but I do feel very “free” to mother, being a foreign, and having many other life perspectives. Maybe I do have something to contribute, let’s see!

In love with my babies... or baby & big boy?

These past few days I've been sooooo infatuated by my cute, cute, cute 10 month-old! Not that I haven't been crazy about him all along, but there's something about these babies who can crawl to you when you call them, and climb on your legs/knees/lap, and smile their most delighted grin (with spaced teeth on top) that makes them super endearing.

If you've ever had a wedding, you'll remember how tired your lips and mouth felt after smiling non-stop for hours at all those people, cameras, etc (not that you weren't happy, mind you). That's how my own smiling mouth felt yesterday at the playground, when Linton went on the swing for the first time. What an irresistible grin on his face, what giggles! I couldn't help but smile until I was tired, but couldn't stop myself from smiling, cooing and giggling right with him!

Problem is -- this unbearable cuteness makes me want to have another baby, and another one after that... Nothing against large families, the more the merrier, but we most probably cannot aford one, and we've always planned having only two kids. Oh, and on top of that crazy desire is the whole thing with girls. Let me explain, my husband has 3 brothers. My in-laws kept trying to have a girl and ended up with 4 boys. So far they have 3 grandSONS, so everyone wants a girl. Besides, I've always wanted one myself, even though I'm happy with my two boys, and I keep thinking, what if we did have a girl? No, I'll take no chances and end up with 3, or 4 boys like my mother-in-law.

Meanwhile, my 3-year-old is becoming a big boy, even though, small as he is, he still looks very much a baby (we think that his brother probably will be as tall as him in a year or two, and they're 2 years 3 months apart). I like of the way Catherine Newman describes this growing up of the oldest child,
here , and in her book (p. 31): "Babyhood is falling away from Ben in huge chunks. He's like a molting snake, shedding first his diapers and now, it seems, his trusty afternoon nap."

Kelvin is partly potty trained now (pees OK in toiled, but asks for a diaper for pooping), and last Tuesday I moved his toddler bed into his own room. He had already been sleeping there for over a week, in the futon we have for guests, and I thought it'd be a good idea to move his bed from our bedside, and he even helped me do it. I'm surprised at how easy it was, I wish weaning was easier too (he still nurses once, sometimes twice a day). Oh, yes, and most days he's not napping either, and has not even been too cranky at the end of the day (I'll admit, sometimes he is - the funny thing is that today he was crankier than most days because he had a nap - it always happens with me when I sleep in the afternoon, I understand).

Anyway, both of them will grow in no time, and, like my friend's husband says - it's no use having another baby to replace the one that's growing, in the end they all grow up... and it'll be a long time before we can become grandparents (oops! isn't it too early to be thinking about that at 33? But there are thirty-somethings who are grandparents. In Brazil there's this soccer player [Casagrande] who had a daughter when he was 15, and she had a baby when she was 15!).

Well, those have been some of my thoughts lately...

Writing and rewriting

I just edited the post below... it's good to get things going here in my blog by posting directly online, but I can't help but want to correct the mistakes and make the language better (e.g. I had mispelled at least one word and the last paragraph had the word "back" four times - ugly!).

This is one of my problems with writing - I really hate rewriting, reviewing, correcting (not grammar, but structure). I'm lazy. So I keep wondering how in the world I am going to finish writing my dissertation. Someday. Well, this "journal" is good practice because I have to at least make some sort of sense, and that leads me to the very thing I loathe - reviewing and rewriting - and here I do it happily, since it's not the same as rewriting an academic paper.

On a side note I should say I was quite upset 2 weeks ago (I was still in Brazil) when I learned that a paper I had submitted for publication in the scholarly journal Children's Literature (a special issue on Louisa May Alcott) was rejected. The reviewers' comments were very good, but I just don't feel motivated to rewrite everything based on their detailed criticisms and suggestions - it took so much effort just to try to get the paper ready for publication...

Lately I have felt keenly that I don't belong in academia at all, I just don't fit in. The fact that I got my undergraduate degree in Brazil doesn't help much, because I was not trained to write the way academics write here in the US. 6 years of graduate school helped, of course, but you know what helped most of all? Grading papers and teaching (or trying to teach) my students to write good papers.

Well, if practice makes perfect then I still need tons of it. So I should post everyday, right?

Back "home"

We've been back home for over a week now (we flew back on March 30). Back to our house/home, but still away from home (country)... I've leramed to live with it by now.

I've started several posts, but haven't finished any of them yet. If I don't post directly here in Blogger, I take forever to write. Months ago I started a post about the funny things my 3 year-old says , and never finished, but I should get that here that pretty soon. Another post is about "mommy wars" and Brasil - hopefully that one will be interesting.

I'm glad that 3 people (thanks Raehan, Janet and Heidi!) visited the blog and commented, thanks to a comment of mine at Catherine Newman's "Bringing up Ben and Birdy" column. I went to her reading here in Philly last Thursday, and it was great to see her in person. I hope her book takes off.

I LOOOOVE spring, and I'm so glad that I've been welcomed back with wonderfully warm and sunny days. It's good not having to face the wintry weather after being in warm Brasil - but that's one of the reasons I stayed there for almost two months and came back only now.

Well, I'll get this going, and I'll come back later. Promise.

In Brasil... and the tale of me between two countries

So I've been in Brasil (in this post I insist in using the Portuguese spelling for my country, as perhaps I should always do) for many weeks now. And I've felt at home. Let me explain, I SHOULD always feel at home in my home country, but the last time I came (Dec 03- Jan 04) that was not so clearly the case, I felt almost the opposite.

Let me backtrack a bit. I have lived in the U.S. for almost 9 years. We never intended to stay that long. In the first few years, I would arrogantly answer to any Brazilian acquaintances or friends that asked whether I like living in the States that no, I didn't like the U.S., that I loved Brazil, and would definitely go back. That was in part a reaction to the prevalent attitude of Brazilians: they are genrerally fascinated by the U.S., they all want to come live in the U.S. and when they do come, they criticize Brazil a lot. I've always hated that, and I wanted to shock everyone by going the other way. And love Brazil I did, with all my heart. Year in year out I tried to keep the flame alive, listening to Brazilian music, coming to Brazil every year or so...
But slowly but surely, life in the U.S. started to seep into our lives, and we got used to it. The language had never been a problem to me, and my husband's English got better and better. We would sometimes have loooooong conversations in English, and mix both languages constantly.
(see - I wrote Brazil with a z -- I said I wouldn't but I did)

But everytime I came to Brasil, my heart would warm up. The very first time we came back, 1 year and a half after we had left, I cried and cried as the plane flew over São Paulo and landed.
I saw my friends (yes, I never had the same kind of friends in the U.S. and I missed them terribly), family, ate the food, saw the green -- everything is so GREEN here, especially when we travel in the winter -- and felt I would readily come back. Except that last year I didn't feel that way. It seemed that something precious had broken, that I no longer felt completely at home here, but felt at home in the U.S.

I was curious to find out how I would react this time... and I feel I could come back all right. But I'll never be the same. I've spent way too much time abroad. Happily, I do feel comfortable in the U.S., but I still don't have those friends... they're here, and they all have children now, and I'm missing all the conversations we could have had about our children, and seeing them play and grow together.

I feel divided again, as I hadn't felt for a while. But I think I will never be whole. Oh yeah, that's pretty much a certainty, I'm divided... torn between two countries.

Will my boys be divided like that too? Is it cruel to have my 3 year old be monolingual (he speaks only Portuguese so far...) and living in the U.S.?

I don't know, I wish I did...

Progress!! I added links!

Finally, FINALLY I was able to change this blog's template a bit to add links to the blogs I read, and 2 websites. Hopefully soon I can do more things, like doing decent links in the text.

Of course the most basic thing is still lacking - some readership and dialogue via comments.

Perhaps that'll happen someday as well...

I had dreamed on posting about this time I am spending in Brazil -- yes, I've been here for almost two months -- but got a bit discouraged by my inability to get this blog going, and never posted.

Well, I'll get this one to cyberspace and perhaps add some more... to make up for the time I wasted.

Just to get started. I was fascinated to read the Elle article adapted from Judith Warner's book Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety that expatmama (see my links, I'm still working on linking in the posts) linked to on her blog.

Everyone's talking about Warner's book in these mother blogs, and I'm itching to go read it -- but first I have to go back to the US to do so. We travel on the 29th... Good, I miss my husband and home too much already...

Part of a trend?

I just found out (obviously from another mother blog) that I am part of a "trend" of mama (or, to be more politically correct) parent bloggers:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/fashion/30moms.html?oref=login

Interesting. Not that I didn't know that, but I did feel the need, just like the other moms... stay at home or not. Too bad this is still a useless blog. My famous blogger friend Marco (http://www.verbeat.com.br/blogs/eporaqui/) - note: he blogs in Portuguese - says it's because nobody can post. Not my fault - I have checked my settings at blogger so that anyone can post buy, alas, it doesn't seem to work... I'll try again.

Meanwhile I just read other blogs and hardly ever post here, since it's so useless...

PS. Indirectly, I'm there in the NY Times piece too, because I'm one of the 500 mommy blogs linked in the DotMoms site. Not THAT bad, uh? (I did submit my blog to DotMoms editor in Mom in the Mirror :)

Reacting

I DO read several other blogs, you know... I just haven't figured out a way to list/link to them in my Blog with this template - ignorant that I am in HTML. So today I did get to read a few things that I wanted to react to.

Lots of people are writing about this New York Times writer's take on mothering and career (David Brooks:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/15/opinion/15brooks.html)

One of the reactions has a direct connection to my experience with mothering and graduate school:

"First, he gives that lame lipservice to "rather than her spouse", but in the context of the whole piece, you know he doesn't really mean it that men could/should take this option. Second, you don't have to take 10 years off to have 2 kids, and if you did, you wouldn't then need to "select a flexible graduate program specifically for parents." As it happens, graduate programs are quite flexible as it is (at least compared to 9-5 jobs), and we don't need to create "mommy track" grad programs. "
(http://thurgood.blogspot.com - Sat. Jan 15, 2005)

Yes, exactly... like I've said before, the flexibility of being a grad student and a teaching assistant allowed me to have my first son and still work for 2 more years (of course it also helped that my husband was also a grad student with a flexible schedule).

I hope to be able to post more on these issues later...

New Year? (a bit late)

Yes, a new year, but it was so anticlimatic this time, with the Tsunami tragedy and all...

But our holidays were not that bad. It was only the four of us and, yes, we didn't have a proper Christmas eve dinner, just the Christmas day potluck with our Brazilian friends, but it was still fun to open the presents with the boys. On New Year Eve I at least did cook a special dinner.

I should be posting pretty soon about the things my oldest son says. Sometimes it's really funny to live with a 2 year-old.

I never post in this blog, by the way, because nobody reads it... for now, it's just a waste of time, and I don't have too much time to waste :)

Saudade.../ Holiday blues...

It's hard to be here and have most of the family down in sunny and warm Brazil, eating tons of delicious fruit, enjoying the beach, and, most importantly, each other's company.

After spending 3 consecutive Christmases with family (01 and 02 with my in-laws and last year with both sets of grandparents in my mom's house in Brazil) this year it's just the four of us - oh, and it's the first Christmas we're a foursome.

It's a little sad, but considering that we saw most of our family members several times this year (we had graduations, a wedding, two births - all here in the U.S.), we're better off than many Brazilian expatriates we know. We're having a potluck Christmas dinner with a group of Brazilian friends, and that should be fun!

The tree's decorated, most presents are wrapped, the food shopping is done, all that remains now is this nostalgia. The right word is untranslatable: saudade. This word is said to be unique to the Portuguese language. It means homesickness, a deep longing, feeling blue, nostalgic. All of that and more. I'm sure people who speak other languages feel it too, they just don't have the "right" word to describe it.

Well, even with lots of saudade I hope we have a good holiday season, and that next year, we can be together with our WHOLE family again!

so what?/ a que vim?

I started a blog, but I’m not even writing on it. Partly because of the awareness that it's almost useless - nobody reads it yet. I have no idea whether anybody will ever read it, but just the fact of having it gives me a certain comfort... I don't really belong to this cyber community yet, only unilaterally (I do read other blogs), but MAYBE someday I will belong, I will be read, heard, feel truly connected. I have yet to figure out how to add links to other blogs I read, sites I recommend and the like. I know nothing of HTML and that makes things a little bit harder…

The second reason why I haven’t written any more is that my son (the 6 month old) has been teething (first tooth is out, yeay!), and our sleep has been extremely compromised because of that in the past few weeks. We also traveled on Thanksgiving, had friends over the next weekend, and traveled again last weekend.

The third reason is that I feel a bit intimidated about writing something “public.” Even though English is not my “mother tongue”, as an academic, particularly in literature, I’m supposed to write at least tolerably, and that makes me think twice before posting. I’m not too confident in my abilities as a writer, I wish I could write only half as well as, for example, Catharine Newman (I’m the BIGGEST fan of her online weekly journal, Bringing up Ben and Birdy: http://parentcenter.babycenter.com/general/preschooler/72519.html) Today, however, I decided to just go for it, it may be worth it… and if I don’t even try, nothing will ever come of it.

Let's see...

As an Introduction.../ À Guisa de Introdução...

My first question was: do I write a blog in English or in Portuguese?

In spite of having English as my main "writing" and "thinking" (academically) language in the past 8 years, I speak Portuguese at home with my husband and sons. I even write most of my journal entries (when I have time) in Portuguese. As a matter of fact, my 2 year and 8 months old son does not speak nor understand English - I can't even recount his witty and funny sayings here without translating and probably adulterating their meaning. Hence the mama in translation. More precisely, mamãe in translation since that's what I am, my son doesn't call me mama or mommy.

Some facts:
I am an ABD (all but dissertation) comparative literature doctoral student. My husband just got his Ph.D. in physics and is now working as a postdoc. We are foreign students from Brazil who just moved from MA to Philadelphia, PA.

For most of our graduate student careers, in addition to our respective TA and RA "jobs", we had a sponsorship from a private college in Brazil - that helped (meaning, we didn't starve, we were able to save some money, we even got a small townhouse) - but we owe a lot (healthcare, a few raises) to the strong graduate student union at our former university. Because of our flexible schedules as TA (me) and RA (husband), and my retired parents who came from Brazil to help, we never needed childcare for my oldest son (that's why he only speaks Portuguese), and I never stopped teaching (even in the summer) until I had my 2nd son last May.

I have no idea how I'm going to write my dissertation, now that my parents are back in Brazil. They spent 6 months here to help us in the crazy processes of caring for a toddler, having a baby, moving to a different city (selling one house, buying another), while my husband finished and defended his dissertation.

I'm currently a stay-at-home mom (lucky me! yes, I mean it... I feel sorry for those who need to have childcare for their precious children, e.g. http://motheringintheivorytower.blogspot.com/), in a new city, with very few friends, very little money, and the need to be endlessly creative to entertain a toddler, and keep an infant from screaming all day long. Of course I'm ready to scream myself!

That's why I started a blog.

PS1 on the "translation theme", should I mention that my dissertation is about translation?
OK, I just did, so, to be more precise, it's on Brazilians in English translation.

PS2 I want to "thank" my former teacher John Milton for starting a blog - I enjoyed it, and it motivated me to start one as well: http://foundintranslationjmilton.blogspot.com/

a picture is worth...

Well, as my obsession with photographs would have it, the first thing I posted to my blog was a picture. I was trying to figure out how hello works so I could add a picture to my profile and then - click! - I added a photo as my first post. I hope it IS worth a thousand words, since I can't describe what my youngest son Linton means to me. Not even in a thousand words.

Mamãe & Linton