On the precipice

As I write this, we are about an hour away from starting the long journey home in earnest. We will leave for the airport around 7 AM local time, take a 10:40 flight to Miami, do all the things that you do when you land in the US, connect to Chicago at 8:00 PM, and finally arrive at O'Hare sometime near 11:00 PM tonight. If all goes well. Already, we are having a tenuous start. Eli slept better than me or Shelby last night. I always forget that taking migraine pills laced with caffeine before bed can be treacherous. I took two pills at 8PM. My headache went away, as did any ability to sleep for the next eight hours. I will have ample opportunity to sleep on the plane today, as long as Shelby and Eli are OK - but that is a major qualifier.

Since the last entry, we had a few quiet days at the beach. On Thursday, we played around in the water most of the day. Shelby and I made use of our newly purchased body board and Eli spent some time in the pool. I even built him a pathetic sand castle that he barely knocked down. Shelby and I both read our books. One interesting upshot - we learned that by 'double wrapping' Eli at night, we coaxed him into much better sleep than when we only wrapped him once.

Yesterday was our last day in Juquehy. We ate breakfast, brought Eli into the pool, body boarded for a bit, and then got ready to come back to Sao Paulo. Fortunately, we packed pretty lightly for this trip, so getting our gear together didn't take very long. One challenge - Shelby put some of our clothes out in the sun to dry, only to have them get soaked when a sudden rainstorm blew in right before we checked out of the hotel. We were able to dry the clothes in Sao Paulo, but it was still a bit of a wasted effort.

After being blessed with great, if somewhat hot, weather all week, the heavens opened up yesterday afternoon. Torrential rain squalls stretched all the way from Sao Paulo to Juquehy. We appreciated the obvious driving skill of 'Hot Rod' who carefully drove us to Esper's apartment. Upon arrival, we wanted to go to the store to buy chocolate and coffee for gifts, but the rain was too intense. Hopefully we will be able to stop on the way to the airport this morning.

Last night Esper hosted a lovely dinner with Ester (Dawn's host in Sao Paulo), Edecio, and a colleague from the Albert Einstein Hospital. We stayed up very late enjoying nice food and conversation. Though, as I mentioned above, I fear we will be paying for it later!