Entertaining a toddler on a trip

Did you pay attention to the picture at the previous post. It is a work of art (oeuvre d'art) done by my little daughter. She loves painting and plays with gouache and paint-brush.

She paints on canvas because we want to expose them at our house. Moreover, it is cute to observe when she paints on canvas.

Today we will travel to Goiânia at night. Actually, we wants to go earlier, cause, after 4 pm, there is a big traffic jam to leave Brasília. It wasn't always like this. It got worst when it was created a path exclusive to buses without building an extra one. On Fridays, all people go out by car to have lunch and to have happy hour with friends.

Today our niece will travel with us. We are her godfathers. She moved to Brasília at the beginning of the year.

So, we will travel with two children. Our niece is 8 years old and stays most of the time playing with our two years old daughter.

Usually, when we travel with children, we take with us some entertainment objects: toys, portable Dvd players, story books and children's music cd. It is very important to keep them occupied to avoid them to be bored.

When we travel alone, our daughter often sleeps in most of the trip. However, it is important to take with us other alternatives and ludic toys.

At the end, we leaved at 5 pm. We tried a shortcut but it wasn't very successful. A big train stopped us, take a look at the photo. The shortcut goes though a railway. We arrived at my mother in law by 9 pm, after ours niece mother take her. 

30° Mostly Sunny
SMPW Quadra 3, Brasília, DF, Brasil

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How difficult is it to make a Toddler drink some tea

Our daughter has been sick since last night. In half a hour after going to sleep, she threw up.

She is having problems with Pediasure. It is offered in 3 flavors: chocolate, vanilla and strawberry. Chocolate is causing an allergic process in her skin, red dots appear around her mouth; and vanilla makes her throw up.

Yesterday she had vanilla. Once more, she threw up. We spent almost one hour to make her calm and to start sleeping again.

Today she is feverish, and, after breakfast, she threw up again. My mother advised us to prepare some teas to her: "erva-doce" and "capim-cidreira".

My wife offered tea in a squeeze bottle, but she refused. She tried again to offer the tea in a baby bottle, our daughter didn't even tried it. For last, she gave the tea in a tea spoon.

She is sleeping right now.

We have plans to go to Goiânia on next week. My vacation ends up today . So, if she gets better, we will visit my mother at afternoon. Otherwise, we will stay a long period without visiting her.

Despite the facts pointed in my previous posts, our daughter is sweet. She barely cries and most of the time she obeys us. she is learning a lot of new stuffs and is very keen on learning new nice stuffs. However, there are exceptions that deserve a reflection about, just to improve our strategy and way to deal with these little problems.

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Our Toddler's Reactions when Was Suffering Frustation During Our Trip to Caldas Novas and Rio Quente

We left Caldas Novas yesterday at 12:45 am. At 5 pm we arrived at home.

The road that we choose to travel was not the best choice. For those who don't know Brazil, it is quite easy to find holes at Brazilian streets and roads, especially, after the raining period. Brazilian streets are built only with asphalt, it is not used a layer of concrete above it. With asphalt, car's tires have a longer life and the construction of roads is cheaper and faster.

In fact, our itinerary passed by secondary state streets which offer a shorter distance, 301 km. The second path, which passes through Goiânia and through federal roads, would take 400 km. Usually, federal roads are better and safer.

Our daughter had a good time at our vacation. When the messenger of the hotel came to carry our luggage, our daughter started crying. She didn't want to leave. At that moment, my wife talked her that we were leaving, but we could return on the next vacation. At first, the strategy didn't work at all, but she kept up talking until my daughter feels better.

In fact, children don't have future perspective. Therefore, when their present is nice, they are afraid to lose it.

The same behavior pattern repeated all over the trip. At Hot Park, she was afraid to lose the waves and sand of the thermal artificial beach. She delighted with the ups and downs. Actually, we were surprised that she was not afraid of the beach, she wanted to be by herself without no support of us.
At the moment that we took her out, she cried again and said that she didn't want to go out.

For me and my wife, the trip was nice. It is very satisfying to notice our daughter appreciating her new experiences as well.

Avenida Santo Amaro, Caldas Novas, GO, Brasil

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Vacation and Our Method to Persuade Our Little Daughter

We are almost there, but the whole world is coming back home after Easter Holiday.
We can't stand places too crowded. Luckily, Caldas Novas will be empty for the next four days when we will stay there.

In fact, crowded places are not practical to deal with toddlers. The effort necessary to deal with them would be hugely greater in this condition.
Our daughter is very active and, in some moments, she doesn't obey us. When there are other people, it is more difficult to convince her to do the right thing. We have been trying to improve our ability to persuade her.

Sometimes my wife adopts an energetic attitude with her. We never apply physical punishments as an education method. In fact, assertiveness and firmness are working quite good with our daughter.

Once she tried to hit us, but my wife was firm and emphatic with her. Although she is only two years old, we know that she is able to understand
most of our conversation, so it is not a waste of time to talk with her about what is wrong and right.

At 2:40 pm, we made check-in at hotel. Let's have a deserved rest now

22° Scattered Storms
GO-139, Caldas Novas, GO, Brasil

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Toddler's Swimming Classes

At the far end, the last hill is Caldas Novas' Hill. In a few minutes, we will arrive over there.

Caldas Novas is under a thermal groundwater table. There are a lot of thermal resorts and hotels where beautiful water parks are offered to their guests.

My daughter loves pools. At January, we enrolled her in swimming classes. She loves the class style, its routine and her teacher.

We do think that it will be very important to her physical development and wellness.

At the firsts classes, she was afraid to diving, but , after few classes, she got used to it and now she loves diving. Actually, she always asks to repeat more and more.

This is not her first experience with water resorts. When she was 20 months old, we went to Pireneus' Inn Resorts at the inner part of Goiás state of Brazil. She loved playing with most of its attractions.

In Rio Quente, a city near by Caldas Novas, there is a park called Hot Park. It has an artificial beach with thermal waters, sand and waves. We scheduled to go there by tomorrow. It will be amazing.

We are looking forward to arrive there. It will be a pretty good vacation.

22° Scattered Storms
GO-139, Caldas Novas, GO, Brasil

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Good Friday and Toddler classes

Good Friday

We wake up early, had breakfast and went to my mother's house, by bike, just to cut a fish in slices to do a "moqueca" for family lunch.

Before lunch, we put together ours packs and luggage to travel to Goiânia and Caldas Novas.

At lunch time at my mother's house, we met my brothers and their families. It was awesome. For lunch, we had "moqueca" and roasted "Tambaqui", for complement there were "farofa" of carrot and smashed potato and rice.

Children's education was the main issue that we talked about: which school they are enrolled, educational methodologies adopted by their schools and how was their adaptation to scholar routine.

In our case specially, we choose a bilingual Canadian school. So, we emphasized its class routine, our so far perception of school methodology and progress of our daughter's learning. We said that at her age, it is expected to develop social habits and speaking fluency. She is two years old and goes to Toddler classes.

Furthermore, it was nice to say that school staff always say that she is very independent. She wants to do every thing by herself. For instance, before classes start at the beginning of the year, she didn't wear diapers anymore.

At school, she is learning English vocabulary. As a complement, she already does homework. Every week, she chooses a book in English to borrow. We show the pictures and read the story to her. It is very important to improve her vocabulary.

We left my mother's house at 16:15 pm to go to my mother-in-law's apartment at Goiânia.

The journey was not so calm. It was raining during all the time. We made a pause in Jeriva diner to have dinner. I had Jerê of cod and orange juice. We arrived at 7:20 pm.

26° Nearby Thunderstorms
Anápolis, GO, Brasil

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War against Brazilian way of doing politics

It is incredible how politics is conducted in Brazil's public sector. A great part of contracts signed have been manipulated to guarantee a bribe to public employees and politicians. Almost all big deals done by Federal Government are suspicious of overpricing and irregularities at its execution.

At the last years, Brazilian prevention institutions have conducted several actions with the goal to identify corruptions cases, but the biggest one has been conducted since 2014: operation Car Wash. Several irregularities in Petrobras contracts were found out.

The list of irregularities at Petrobras is huge: overpricing at Pasadena/US refinery acquisition and Abreu e Lima refinery at Brazil, and a lot more.

The amount of money involved with all bribes ramp up to billions of dollars. As an example, only one big construction company is accused to have gotten improperly R$ 7 billions. Some public employees have already been condemned and were obliged to give back money found by Brazilian prosecution institutions at offshore bank accounts.

Right now it seems that only a small part of crimes has been unveiled. Every week new special operations are conducted by Federal Police revealing new bribery strategies and new transgressors.

Brazilian citizens hope that it is the beginning of a new era, that Brazil will be a good place to doing business and that public elections will be more fair.

24° Mostly Cloudy