Fourth of July party!

We took Maya to her first Fourth of July bash today, sponsored by the U.S. embassy. Ironically, the party was held at the Maadi British International School. Seriously, have they no shame? Somebody should inform them that the British are the ones we got independence from... We should not be having our independence day party at the British school.

Anyway, we had a great time. They had lots of free food, including hot dogs made from pork -- seriously rare to find that in Cairo. They had cotton candy, balloons, and a big sheet cake with a U.S. flag on it. They had a bingo game, played Simon Says for prizes, and had a dance contest. Admission was by U.S. (or Canadian) passport. Maya had a serious blast.

But the best part of the party for Maya was the blow up bouncy toy. Maya loved it. She jumped around with all the bigger kids. She even wanted to go on the big tall bouncy slide, but we thought that was a little much given that she is only 20 months old. She also really wanted to go on this bungee jump-type toy where you bouncy really high off a trampoline but are in a harness. We said no to that one.

I also did Maya's hair in red, white and blue snaps and beads. It took two hours for me to do and I did it during Maya's nap. I am seriously proud of the outcome!! It was my first time ever putting beads in. The only problem is that I think I put more braids on one side than the other, so the style is a bit lopsided. But i think it's still good.

Maya and her Big Girl Bed

Maya has decided that potty training is just not "cool". Sure, she tells us that she has to go potty after she has already gone, and then wants to sit on the potty for about 10 seconds, pretend she has just gone potty on the toilet, and then tell us she is "done". Oh yeah, and telling us she has to go potty is a terrific way to get us to take off her diaper so she can run around naked...

Anyway, you get the point. Potty training is no longer Maya's cool new fad.

What is "cool", however, is her big girl bed. It is way cool! In fact, the crib is not cool anymore, as of yesterday. The crib is for Dora -- her dollie, the baby. It is not for Maya -- the big girl. No, no no. The crib is no more. As of yesterday, she refuses to get in the crib. In fact, if we try to put her in the crib to go to bed, she arches her back and screams. This is from a girl who for the past few months has easily gone down for the night without a tear or a protest.

Yesterday and today she has insisted on going to sleep at night in her regular big bed. She was pretty clear that she will not be going back in the crib. And she seems to be sleeping pretty soundly in her bed, where she has been taking naps for about six months. I guess we will have to see if it sticks and we can really put away the crib, or if this new trend will go the same way as her initial interest in potty training.

Maya Water Video!!!

I just figured out how to post video! Check out Maya playing in the water at al-Azhar park!

Some more new Maya pictures

A Day at the Park

Maya had a great day at the park today, after a nice breakfast at Lucille's in Maadi. We took her to al-Azhar park, which is in Islamic Cairo on the edge of the desert on top of an old landfill and with a gorgeous view of the Citadel and of Cairo with all its beautiful minarets.

Al-Azhar park was built by the Agha Khan foundation and it is the most well maintained park in Cairo, with manicured lawns and fountains and several great restaurants including one in a caravanserai-style stone building. They have a nice playground, although it is aimed more for older kids and not really great for toddlers. They also have live music.

But the main reason parents bring their kids to al-Azhar park in the summer heat -- maybe even the only reason -- is to let the kids play in the run-through fountain. There is a stone courtyard at the park where the water bubbles and shoots up from tiny holes in the stone. The kids love it. Every time we go to al-Azhar park there are kids playing in the water. It was clearly designed with kids in mind. It's also great because the kids from Islamic Cairo -- one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Cairo -- get a special residency card so they can get into the park for a fraction of the entry fee charged to others. This fountain is probably the closest some of them ever get to a swimming pool.

So today when Maya spotted the fountain, and all the other kids splashing around, she started sprinting toward it. It was all I could do to get her sandals off. She had a great time. She jumped in the water, splashed her feet, sat down in the puddles, splashed her hands, stuck her face in the water to drink it, got her hair wet, jumped up and down. She was having a terrific time.

Then, all of a sudden, the man we will call the "Water Nazi" showed up. He was a security guard at the park and he was determined to prevent the kids from even getting a little toe in the water. He screamed at all the kids to get out of the water, even dragging a few out by their arms (He was smart enough to stay far away from Maya though, picking mainly on the kids from the neighbourhood).

So the kids all backed up to the edge of the fountain, keeping close enough to the water that their feet were still wet but they couldn't have any fun. Then he barked at the kids again to get further back. Mean, mean, mean.

So we all went to sit on the benches to see if "Water Nazi" would go away. He stood there glowering at everyone and guarding his beloved fountain to make sure nobody could enjoy it. Any time a child so much as looked at the water, or ran in for a quick splash before running out again, he would glare at them.

Finally, after about 20 minutes he left, and within seconds all the kids, Maya included, were back in the water having the time of their lives. Maya was having so much fun, but within about 15 minutes "Water Nazi" was back shouting at the kids and pulling their arms to get them out of the water.

Seriously, the high temperatures this week have been between 98 and 104 degrees. Why ruin some poor kids' day at the park. Grrrr. We left and took Maya to run around in the grass before eating dinner at a terrace restaurant in the park called Trianon. When we walked back down to go home after dinner, that evil security guard had actually found orange cones to block off the fountain area so the kids couldn't enjoy it. I could have strangled him. Does he seriously have nothing better to do than prevent some poor kids from playing in a fountain that was built in the middle of a courtyard for the apparent specific intention of having kids run through it.

Lallies

I just wanted to share Maya's new knowledge of plurals. I have noticed recently she has been saying "boats" when she sees boats on the river from our balcony. I wasn't sure if she was really using plurals or had just changed the word "boat" to "boats" for some reason.

This evening, she picked up two of her Lallas (she has three now and likes to carry several around at once). Anyway, she picked up two Lallas, rubbed them on her face and wistfully said: "Ah, Lallies."

On another note, both Maya and I have annoying head colds. I hope we will get better before the weekend.

I'm a hair imposter

I have gotten so many compliments on Maya's fancy hairstyles that I have to come clean: I'm a hair imposter. I'm sorry to say the credit for most of Maya's fancy hairstyles rightfully goes to her nanny Tiberh. I only wish I could claim credit for the fancy cornrows and tiny box braids, but unfortunately I can't.

I do have an excuse though! You see, Maya only gets her hair done while she is asleep as she can't sit still. That generally means at naptime, or when I am at work. Her styles typically stay in for about five days, at least the braids. Well, if I am braiding they only stay in about two or three days. But when Tiberh braids her hair the braids stay in about five days.

Tiberh usually does her hair early in the week, and again at the end of the week. I am happy that she does it, as I love Maya's hair to be so beautiful, but it is hard for me to get any practise.

Anyway, I did her hair this weekend. So you can see my true talent. I think I did a pretty good job with triangle parts and all. But it is not nearly as good as when Tiberh does it. On Thursday I did little triangle puffs and on Friday I turned the puffs into piggyback ponytails. The first three pictures are of Maya having breakfast on Friday morning on our balcony and the later pictures are of Maya at refugee day after I redid her hair during her nap.

Maya's new painting

Here is the painting we got for Maya's room at refugee day. I think it is really cool. It was painted by a Sudanese refugee in Cairo. The colors are actually much darker and bolder, but somehow I think taking a photograph of the painting has made the colors look lighter.

Refugee Day Pictures

Here are some refugee day pictures.

Maya the builder

Here are some pictures of Maya building a lego tower. She was so proud of herself.

Stay tuned for pictures from refugee day tomorrow.

Eritrean Wedding Afterparty

I took Maya last week to a wedding afterparty for Tirhas while Mike was in Qatar. Maya and Mike went to the actual wedding while I was in Sudan.

The party was in the evening at the apartment complex where Tiberh and Tirhas both live in Mohandiseen, across the river from where we are in Zamalek. It was a casual party so I dressed Maya in a pink playdress and sandals and we took a taxi, since Mike had driven the car to the airport for his trip and I am still too freaked out by insane Cairo traffic to drive here.

When we got to the apartment we were among the first to arrive. We hung out for a while with other early arrivers and finally the organisers put on some Ethiopian music, which was a signal that Tirhas and Yohannes were about to arrive. They were paraded in by their bridesmaids and men of honor and seated in two big armchairs that were arranged to look like thrones in the front of the room. They were both wearing long cloaks with gold embroidery on them, and they spent the evening sitting in the chairs while all their friends and family greeted them and congratulated them on their wedding. It was a pretty cool tradition.

They also served traditional Ethiopian food, including Doro Wat, and Injera. They had some homemade honey wine that they were serving from plastic bottles. Maya saw a bottle of the wine and asked for some "juice", but we steered her toward the less harmful orange soda instead.

All of the bridesmaids, including Tiberh, had their hair done in traditional braids that were drop-dead beautiful. They had tiny cornrows down the front and bigger braids on top going back and then their hair was loose in the back. They decorated the braids with white cowrie shells. Tiberh, who normally wears her hair loose and blow-dried straight, said the braids were really tight and extremely painful, and she looked like she was in pain every time she moved her head. She was dying to take the braids out but ended up having to wait a few days because she didn't want to hurt the feelings of the woman who braided her hair.

Anyway, there were lots of children at the party including a very cute 18-month-old Eritrean girl named Nasi who Maya played with while I chatted with her mom as we waited for the party to start. It was really interesting to see Nasi next to Maya, and her mother and I had an interesting conversation about the size of our babies.

Nasi's mom thought Maya was huge and asked us how we managed to get her to be so big and chubby, because she was concerned that Nasi was too small. Nasi was a lot smaller than Maya, although they didn't seem very far apart developmentally as Nasi was running around and talking a little and basically doing most of the same things Maya does. Nasi's mom was really surprised when I told her that Maya was tiny compared to other American babies, because she considered Maya to be very big for her age compared to other Ethiopian children. We compared what we feed our kids and it seems like we feed them the same things. Both the girls are getting whole milk and eating regular food, not in particularly large quantities. It seems like Maya maybe is getting more cheese and yoghurt and that kind of thing, and I wonder if that is making the difference.

I find it interesting that Ethiopian babies adopted by American parents grow to be so big compared to their Ethiopian counterparts. Maya is hardly big by American standards, just 22 pounds at nearly 20 months. But she is big compared to the Ethiopian and Eritrean same-age kids in Cairo, and the Ethiopian kids here are not malnourished nor are they super poor.

On another note, everyone at the party was really interested in Maya and asked me about her a lot. They wanted to know if she was "Habasha", or Ethiopian, and were all very happy when I said she was. Without exception, they told us she was a very lucky girl -- not exactly the message we are trying to send Maya. They would not listen to me at all when I told them I didn't see it as her being lucky. They would just dismiss me by waving their hand or look at me with a puzzled face and say: "Have you been to Ethiopia?"

Hmmmm. Not sure what to do about that exactly. I asked Tiberh about it later and she agreed with them, saying that Maya is lucky and that she thought probably most of the people at the party wished they could be adopted by an American family. She said she thought that once Maya sees the poverty in Ethiopia she will see how lucky she is as well. I told her that I thought Maya had to lose a lot to get to be adopted by us, so I didn't see it as luck really. But I get the feeling this argument is lost on the Ethiopian/Eritrean community in Cairo. We'll have to see how it evolves over time.

Sorry I didn't get any pictures of the party, but I forgot my camera. I'll post some new pictures of Maya building a lego tower soon, though.

Maya and Daddy reunion

Maya's Daddy came home yesterday, making Maya very happy and a little bit hyper. It also seems like Maya has decided it is time to start potty-training. She tells us every time she needs to go to the potty now, before she actually goes. Not that this means she is actually using the potty or anything... We are going with the flow, so to speak, for now.

Here are some pictures of Maya wearing mommy's "gasses", as she calls them, and with daddy.

Wanted: Reader feedback

It's been a month and a half since I started my blog, and I know that every day between 20-40 people read my blog. But what do you want to read about here?

I am interested in feedback. What do you want to read about on this blog. Do you like it the way it is? Do you want more Maya stories, more stuff about Egypt, more stuff about adoption, more on Ethiopia, more pictures?

Maya and the Potty

First of all, I want to note that we have no plans to start potty training Maya until she is at least two years old -- that's at a minimum. But we do have a toddler potty in the house to get her used to the idea that at some stage in the future she should use it. That said...

After eating a huge dinner today, Maya climbed down from her chair, looked up at me and said: "Mommy potty".

Me: "Oh, do you need to go potty?"
Maya: Potty, potty, potty, potty.

Maya runs to the stairs, all the time continuing to jubilantly shout: "Potty, potty". Well, we do keep her potty upstairs so I decided to open up the baby gate. She climbed the stairs, went into the bathroom, found the potty, and started dragging into into the common area upstairs. I asked her is she wanted to try to use the potty, and she said: "Potty, potty." Well, I thought, what could it hurt.

So I took off Maya's pants and she gleefully helped me take off her (clean) diaper. I told her to sit on the potty, and she climbed right on.

But of course Maya got bored with the potty after about five seconds, and decided she wanted to get off the potty. So she did, and squatted next to it on the rug and started grunting. Bad sign! I tried to reason with her to sit on the potty, and I tried to forcibly move her to the potty. But neither worked and she ended up having a little accident on the floor, which she proudly pointed out to me.

I quickly ran to get wet wipes to clean it up, while telling her she should sit on the potty. She completely ignored me although I did get her to move off the rug -- thank God -- while I sprinted into her room to get diapers and wipes. Meanwhile, she had several more "accidents" while i was frantically running around trying to decide whether my priority was to get a diaper on her or clean up the mess so she wouldn't either step on it or try to pick it up -- not likely as she doesn't like anything messy at this stage.

After the initial disaster control, I decided Maya needed a bath, and starting running the water for her. We had a little conversation about where "kaki", as she calls poop, is supposed to go. It went like this:

Me: Maya, you can put kaki in your potty here (pointing to her potty). Or you can put your kaki in the big potty (pointing at the big potty). But you cannot put your kaki on the floor (pointing at the floor and shaking my fingers).
Maya: "No, no, no (pointing at the floor)
Me: "That's right. No, no no"
Maya: "No, no, no"

I hope she gets the message. But in any case, I will not be removing her diaper again until she is at least 18 YEARS old.

In the meantime, here are some nice Maya pictures of her trying to put on my deodorant (and in some very interesting parts of her body).

Mike goes to Qatar

Mike is flying off to Qatar today for a short business trip. He is going to a refugee law conference and will be giving a presentation. He will be back on Tuesday afternoon, so it's not nearly as long a trip as my trip to Sudan was. And after he gets back there will be no more business trips for either of us for a very long time, in shah allah.

We've been trying to tell Maya about when we are going away and when we will be back for both our trips. It's not entirely clear she understands though. We told her last night that daddy was going on a business trip, and she didn't react. this morning when he left, she was busy blowing bubbles with Tiberh. He tried to have a serious chat with her, after which she shouted: "Bubbles".

We'll have to see how she is tonight.

But when Mike gets back I think we'll have a very nice weekend. I am trying to arrange to take Thursday off (since I still have some days owed to me from my Sudan trip), and we will have a 3-day weekend.

Also next weekend is refugee day at the American University in Cairo. It's a big annual event complete with booths and food and it's a big deal in the refugee community. Mike will be manning the AMERA (that's the refugee legal aid group where he works) booth for an hour, with Maya's help of course. After that we will wander. I think it will be a lot of fun for Maya, and there will be lots of Ethiopians and Eritreans there, so I'm sure she will enjoy the limelight.

Get It

Maya is becoming quite a mischievious little chatterbox. Today she took Lalla and went to sit on her special perch on top of the sofa -- the high part of the sofa, not the seat. She threw Lalla on the floor and here is the conversation:

Maya: "Mommy Lalla jump"
Maya: "Get it"
Me: "Mommy get it please?"
Maya: "Peas?"

I go get Lalla, and hand Lalla to Maya, who again throws it.

Maya: "Mommy get it"
Me: "What happened to Lalla?"
Maya: "Lalla walk"
Maya: "Get it, get it"
Me: "Please?"
Maya: "Peas?"

Then she goes to the kitchen, and just stands silently in the dark by the refrigerator door until I come in. When I come in...

Maya: "Aka, aka" (This is from the Amharic word for open)
I open the door
Me: "What do you want, Maya?"
Maya: "Juice"
I poor juice into her sippy cup. She goes back to her perch with Lalla and her sippy cup of juice. She throws Lalla and the juice on the floor.
Maya: "Get it"
Me: "Get what?"
Maya: "Juice"
Me: "Well you threw the juice on the floor, so you should get down and get it"
Maya: "Juice drop. Get it."
I sigh...
Maya: "Peas peas peas"

...Anyway, here are some fresh Maya pictures from today.

Post-head bump Maya pictures

Maya is better today. She has no residual effects from her head bump yesterday, and is back to being her crazy normal self. She dicovered shadows today and was very excited about them. She kept looking at Mike's shadow and saying: "Daddy, daddy". Then she turned to Mike and said: "Hi daddy".

Maya gets a CT scan

Maya had a little accident at dinner today. She was standing on a chair in a restaurant eating noodles when she accidently fell off the chair and hit her head on a hard floor. She was very upset, and Mike took her outside to calm down. The servers at the restaurant rushed after him with a big bag of ice to put on her head. She cried for about 15 minutes, which is a really long time for her, and then started whimpering a lot. When she didn't bounce back into her normal happy self we decided to skip out on finishing dinner and took her home.

At home she was clinging to me, and Mike went upstairs to make her a bath. We thought a bath would make her feel better. But once the bath was ready, Maya decided she didn't want to get in the bath, which is not normal for her as she loves taking baths. So I took her into her bedroom to get changed into her pajamas. Then she vomited, and then seemed to feel better, then vomited again.

We couldn't reach Dr. Sherif, so we called Mike's aunt, who is a pediatric nurse and who always gives us great advice when we are freaking out (Thanks Mary!). We decided to take Maya to the emergency room just so we wouldn't have to worry if she was really hurt or not. We went to As-Salaam Hospital in Maadi -- we went there because we thought it's probably slightly better than the As-Salaam in Mohandiseen where we would normally go. It seemed like she at least had a concussion.

Anyway, as soon as we told them what happened they bumped us to the front of the line and we were seen by a doctor within five minutes. He called a neurologist, Dr. Wael, who came and decided to give Maya a CT scan to make sure there was no bleeding in her brain or any skull fracture. It was impossible to get Maya to go to sleep for the CT scan though, and after two failed attempts at the CT scan, we were sent downstairs with a totally ineffective benadryl-style drug that was supposed to make Maya fall asleep so we could get the scan done. But of course Maya was completely unaffected by the drugs. It was like adrenaline versus watered-down benadryl, and the adrenaline totally won. After about two hours of fruitless efforts to get her to sleep, Mike went and bought some milk from the cafeteria, we filled her bottle, and she was out within 20 minutes. So we went back up to the CT scan room and were finally successful.

In the end, Maya turned out to be the picture of perfect health. The doctor said her brain was completely fine, and her skull was in great shape and there were no signs of trouble at all, and we went home after paying the hospital bill, which was 380 Egyptian pounds or about $67 for everything. Maya is now sleepin upstairs in her crib. I hope she feels better tomorrow.

Grandparents get ready for Maya the fish!

This baby LOVES the water. So I hope the grandparents out there are lining up some swimming opportunities for Maya in August!!!

I took Maya swimming today at the pool at the Marriott in Zamalek, where we have a pool membership. It was our first swimming trip of the summer -- the last time was in Sharm el-Sheikh with Grandma Laura and Grandpa Rick. Wow, what a difference a few months makes.

As soon as we got her swimsuit on in the locker room, Maya was raring to go. We went out to the pool area and it was all I could to do put the towels down before jumping in the shallow end of the pool with Maya. After getting wet we decided to see if Maya would dunk her head under water briefly -- she thought that was fun.

Then I put her up on the edge of the pool and told her to jump to mommy. She jumped right in. She has absolutely no fear, and squealed with delight before shouting 'again'. We did that about 20 times before she noticed there was a waterfall separating the shallow end of the pool from the deep end. She asked me to 'Get dat'. So we went over to the waterfall, where Maya stuck out her tongue to catch the spray before demanding to 'go' under the waterfall.

Afterward, she decided she wanted to swim by herself. She kept trying to push my hands away from her and saying 'mommy go'. Mmmm. I don't think so. We also practised floating on our back and jumping in the air and splashing. After swimming Maya decided she was 'ungry' and demanded 'lunsh', so we went to eat in the Marriott tea garden, where I had a kofta sandwich and Maya had a kid's pizza, most of which is now in our fridge because she only had the appetite for about half a piece . She is now well into the rare third hour of her afternoon nap -- I guess swimming is also tiring.

Sorry no pictures but Mike went to work today so I didn't have the opportunity to take any Maya swim pix, but maybe next time...

Mommy and Maya Reunion

I finally flew home from Khartoum on Thursday night. I got home at 11:30 p.m. and Mike brought Maya to the airport to meet me. She was super excited and happy to see her mommy again, and babbled all the way back to the airport parking lot and all the way home in the car. She "showed" me everything we passed on the way home, pointing out buses and birds and planes in the sky.

We let her sleep with mommy and daddy when we got home and that made her very happy. She slept all the way through the night until 8:30 a.m., which is very unusual for Maya.

On Friday morning we drove to Lucille's in Maadi for brunch -- well we got there too late for breakfast really, so we had lunch. Lucille's is our favorite breakfast place in Cairo. They have mirrors on the ceiling that Maya loves and very American decor including stained-glass lamps hanging over the tables. They also have very good American food. Then we drove home and Maya fell asleep in the car, and after lunch we went to the mall because Mike complained that Maya didn't have enough shorts now that it is getting hot out. So we bought her some shorts and let her race around the mall, and we had dinner at a Mexican restaurant -- it is the first to open in Cairo and it is pretty authentic. Anyway, I got my fix of western food and culture after being totally isolated in Khartoum for two weeks and got to spend lots of time with Maya.

Maya changed her music tastes while I was in Khartoum. Previously, she only wanted to listen to Ethiopian music. But then Mike started playing '80s hits to her, and she has started asking for two songs -- Karma Chameleon and Video Killed the Radio Star. Who would have known she's an '80s music girl. She sings along to these two songs. She still listens to Ethiopian music during he day with Tiberh, who I'm not sure is aware of Maya's new vice.

Today Maya was calmer but wanted lots of mommy cuddles. She likes to tell Mike to "chase" her and then she runs to jump and climb on mommy for "protection" while squealing. We took her to her music class today, where she was alternatively clingy and in hyper-independent "mommy go away" mode. Anyway, I am off work tomorrow and then will go back to work on Monday, but I gained three "due days" that I will take later in the summer to go on a nice family weekend trip somewhere, probably to a resort-type family place in Alexandria.

Anyway, here are some pictures that I took yesterday when Maya was "playing" outside with Mike's plants while he was blissfully asleep, and of her digging through my stuff after I got home.