How to entertain baby in Sampa
I was recently watching a sketch by the British comedian Micky Flanagan about the delights of child rearing. They wake up at 6.30am (if you’re lucky) and by about 7.30am you’re running out of ideas about what to do with them. Yes pretty accurate. Living in São Paulo is a funny place when it comes to entertaining baby. On the one hand, people are generally very child friendly. Shops, banks and many other institutions have preferential queues for mums and babies and whenever we’re out and about waiting at the traffic lights or queuing somewhere everyone talks to my 10-month old daughter (fair enough, she is cuter than me). Yet on the other hand, mum and baby groups – important for both mine and my daughter’s sanity – or play groups don’t really exist here. Or certainly not in the way that they do back in the UK. I guess I knew it would have been like this. Having come from Buenos Aires, which was pretty similar, the culture is more family-oriented and about who you know so there is...