We've moved!

After a long blogging hiatus I have moved this blog to a new, more private location. The new address for the blog is mylittledramaqueen.wordpress.com. See you there!

First day of school

Maya went off to her first day of preschool today after our long trip back to Cairo from the U.S., and she was a bit jet lagged but she made it. Mike took her to school (because Maya failed to wake me from my jet lagged stupor).

Maya is going to go to school five days a week this year, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., and according to her school director she will have to be a little more serious about school this year because she is now one of the big kids.

Mike told the school director that Maya had started getting a little interested in letters this summer while we were in the U.S., likely due to more exposure from the overwhelming presence of English signs everywhere. He also found out an interesting tidbit about Maya's school behavior.

Apparently last year unbeknownst to us, the director of Maya's preschool had tried to have Maya do lessons and worksheets with the bigger kids. But Maya had often refused to finish and gone off to play in the baby room instead. That sneaky kid!!. Maya was a little young for the lessons and the school is sort of Montessori-ish and they were not keen to force her. So she got away with it -- which is fine with us as we don't want to push to much academic stuff on her in preschool anyway!

But this year she will be with the bigger kids and she is going to do the big kid lessons. And the director of the school (who also is very involved and works especially with the older kids) thinks that since Maya is now going to school five days a week, it will be easier to get her to focus on learning rather than doing play kitchen all day long...

No more baby room for you, kid!

Home leave

We are going on home leave next week for 4-1/2 weeks. We'll be in New York City for the first week, in Seattle for the next two weeks, and then in upstate New York for the last week. Any blog readers/Ethiopia adoptive families want to join us for a Maya playdate? Especially in Seattle?

Latch

We spent the past three years buckling Maya into her carseat using the seatbelt attachment because we believed Toyota had not installed Latch above the seat, which we were annoyed about.

But then the other day Mike "discovered" that Latch actually is in our car if you pry up a cover that is hiding it out of site. So now, three years after we bought our car from a shady dealer in Cairo, Maya's car seat is attached with Latch. Woops!

Bumblebee

Maya had a dance recital at the beginning of the summer for her preschool ballet class. She is very serious about ballet and loves .. I mean really LOVES ... her dance teacher. She is being promoted to the 4/5 class when we get back from our home leave in September. She is good at all things sporty. The girl has some serious coordination!!

The recital was a big deal for Maya. They had it at the British school. Tibby came to watch and brought Maya flowers. And a gaggle of high school girls watched the little kids backstage until it was their turn to perform. They taught Maya how to play 'Duck, Duck, Goose.' She was in heaven.

Hope you like the recital pictures.

Flower girl

Maya's nanny Tibby got married two weeks ago and Maya was the flower girl in the wedding. She was a little nervous when we first got there, and seemed also a bit fearful of losing Tibby to her new husband, E. But she quickly warmed up in time to walk down the aisle. Mike signed the wedding contract as a witness and walked Tibby down the aisle.

Later, Maya found a couple of girls her age and they played, danced, went up on the stage with the bride, and fed each other wedding cake (after watching Tibby and E feed each other). Maya chattered away with the girls in Amharic, although Tibby says she thought they only speak Tigrinya. But Maya didn't have any difficulties communicating with them. I guess they may have known a little, and Maya also may know some Tigrinya words from hearing Tibby talk on the phone. Who knows. Maybe 3-year-olds don't really need a common language to communicate. Anyway, they got along great.

We also had a fantastic buffet with traditional food -- yummy wats and soft drinks in glass bottles.

It was a really great wedding with Tibby and E smiling and whispering to each other on the stage. They are very cute together. Tibby wore a really beautiful white wedding dress. And the whole community was there -- all dressed up. It turned out we knew quite a few of the guests, although it was hard to recognise people in formal dresses with their hair done up. I did a few double takes. Guests were dressed beautifully.

It was also really cool to see Maya interacting with the Ethiopian/Horn of Africa community. They really accept her so completely and draw her into the community. They ALL know her, and they are really nice to her. (Actually I think she gets a bit of special treatment!). It was so nice to see Maya feel totally at home in the community at the wedding, collecting bottle caps strewn on the floor after dinner with the other kids, running up and down the aisle, getting scolded by the women for being rowdy (along with all the other kids), oohing and aahing as the vats of yummy wat and huge plates of injera were carried in to the hall for the buffet.

I posted some pictures. I don't want to post pictures of Tibby or E online, although I would be happy to share pictures with those of you who know her. (No, the pictures with the orange beads were Maya trying on her flower girl dress at home. She had white beads tied back for the wedding -- but the pictures from home are cute so I'm posting them)

Growth spurt!

We just did a wall measurement of Maya and she has grown 3/4 of an inch in one month to 38-3/4 inches! That puts her at 41st percentile for height -- the highest she's ever been on the charts!! Go Maya Go!

She is now fitting into her 4T clothes! Woo Hoo! Guess we'll have to do some shopping in America this summer for 4T clothes! Now her size is coming close to meeting the measurements of her huge feet -- size 11 and growing!

Going to the Dentist

Maya had her first visit to the dentist today. We have a very good dentist on the ground floor of our building where lots of wealthy Egyptians and expats go. How lucky is that! And right next door is a good pediatrician as well. So convenient that we don't have to leave our building for dental and medical care!

Anyway, I had gone to the dentist last week and the dentist wanted to seal one of my teeth. So I made an appointment for Maya as well, thinking she could watch me get my tooth sealed and then have the dentist check out her mouth as well. The dentist, Dr. Hossam, said he would just look in her mouth to check it out but wouldn't actually do a cleaning or fix any problems because he just wanted her to be comfortable with him at first. Sounded like a good idea to me.

As luck would have it, I got some sort of bug and was feeling really bad this morning after spending the past week psyching Maya up to go to the dentist. So Mike decided to go and take my appointment slot and then have Maya go after him.

While Mike was getting his teeth cleaned and checked out, Maya went out to the waiting room. By the time Mike was done with his appointment, Maya had already visited the dentist herself voluntarily and got her teeth checked out unbeknownst to Mike.

She has all 20 teeth and her teeth are in good shape. No cavities. She told the dentist that she brushes her teeth twice a week. WHAT?!?!?!? I'm not sure where she got that idea, but that is what she told him. He told her to brush her teeth twice a day.

Maya also got a goodie bag that included a bunch of balloons, a toothbrush, and glow-in-the-dark stars to put on the ceiling.

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In other news, Maya now has descriptions for her parents. She tells people she has a "jokey daddy" and a "sweetie pie" mommy. How nice is that!

Tamiflu

With swine flu on the loose in the American community in Egypt, everyone we know has been stocking up on Tamiflu just in case. Everyone except us, that is...

Basically, if you are unlucky enough to get swine flu (now renamed H1N1) in Egypt, you get the pleasure of being quarantined in the Fever Hospital. That is apparently the only place authorised to hand out Tamiflu. And if this virus gets out of hand in Egypt, I'm not sure there's any guarantee we would get any.

Not that we hadn't been trying to get our hands on some anyway. We thought maybe the embassy could help us. But they said they will not be giving drugs to the community. I called and emailed my health insurance company, and they were beyond unhelpful.

But slowly, we noticed all of our friends -- both foreign and Egyptian -- had their own personal stocks of Tamiflu. And we started to get a little nervous. H1N1 turned up in a nursery school several of Maya's friends go to. And in the building where someone I know works. Many of those who have been diagnosed with the virus recently returned from the US, and it is "home leave" season right now, so...

We started calling pharmacies. They told us they didn't have any. Every pharmacy we called. But somehow our friends were still managing to get some. They were all going in person. Strange, I know. But then yesterday we decided to try it out. And guess what. It worked at the first pharmacy we went to. We now have three adult doses and have put a deposit down for a child dose that we should get in a couple days.

Our plan now if we get flu symptoms: Call a doctor outside of Egypt by phone, and then medicate if needed.

Sporty

Sorry for being MIA. A lot going on recently and been crazy busy at work and needed a break from blogging.

Maya has recently been emerging as a little sports fiend, and we have been indulging her sports desires through a bit of overprogramming.

She has been pining away for gymnastics since we lived in Zamalek, where there was a huge gymnastics program at the Gazeera Club, which we are no longer members of. I hadn't been able to find any equivalent classes here that would take a child only three years old. But with her dance classes ending for the season, I knew she needed another activity to keep her busy this summer.

I heard that there was an Olympic training center near our neighborhood where some expats use the pool. So I found their phone number and called them, and they said they had "gumbaz" classes for kids age 4-6. Gumbaz is more like tumbling classes, or so I found out after I looked it up in the dictionary, since I had no idea what they were talking about on the phone.

On Friday, we went with a friend to check out the classes. I was worried they wouldn't let Maya in since she's only 3, but they never even asked me how old she was. The center has a full gymnastic training gym and then a huge padded tumbling room for the class for little kids. The class was two hours long, and had about 35 kids and two instructors.

Basically, the kids run around for the first hour doing various types of warmups. Jumping like a frog, crawling races, skipping, hopping and so on. Then they split off by gender and do the fun stuff -- learning somersaults and cartwheels and handstands. The class is all in Arabic. But Maya doesn't seem to notice the language difference at all.

Maya really loved the class. The only downside is the center administrators kept trying to kick all the parents out of the room during the class, which was really annoying and made Maya a bit nervous. Hopefully she will be OK next week.

On top of that, we signed Maya up for tennis lessons, which she started today. She also loves tennis, and she can already hit the ball. How she can do this at age 3, I really don't understand. She's just sporty. Plus today in her swimming lessons (right after her hour-long tennis lesson), she swam the entire LENGTH of the pool without stopping. How does she do it?

Honestly, just thinking about her activity level makes me feel exhausted.

Yesterday we had: Gymnastics class (2 hours). Then lunch, where she barely ate anything. Then dance recital. Then several hours of play on the playground. Then an outdoor kids movie at our club. But of course Maya decided to keep playing rather than watch.

Today we had: Birthday party with bouncy castle for a friend, followed by swimming in the pool for two hours, followed by a snack, followed by 45 minutes of playground time, followed by an hour tennis lesson, followed by an hour swim lesson. Then she played on the playground for another hour and had half a kids' hamburger and then complained when we said it was time to go home.

Is this level of activity normal for a 3-year-old?????

The rear-view mirror...

...has been glued back on. Yeah! Let's hope it stays that way.

At the club

Car troubles

So about a year ago we had the windshield on our car replaced. The car mafia uses the windshield wipers to mark which cars need dusting. A car with the wipers up needs dusting. Then when the car is dusted, the mafia slams down the wipers. Well, the rubber wore off our wipers, leaving an exposed metal blade. And repeated slamming cracked our windshield. Lame, I know.

So we sent our car to the Toyota service center in Egypt to replace the windshield, and our windshield was replaced.

Fast forward to this weekend. We were driving to the beach in Ain Sokhna. We crossed a railroad track about 5 minutes from our hotel. It was bumpy. As we bumped over the tracks, the rear-view mirror simply fell off the windshield and into Mike's lap. We picked it up and looked at it. The Toyota service people had simply glued it to the windshield.

Now I am not really sure how these things are supposed to be attached. But I'm pretty sure that it was not done the proper way. I mean, who ever heard of a rear-view mirror falling off before?? Our next task, glueing it back on...

Cooking with grandma

Maya has had a great time with her grandparents, although her own temperament has been a bit hit-or-miss and she keeps flitting back and forth between what she wants to do one minute and then wanting another thing 10 seconds later. Aaah. Three-year-olds!!

Caught in the kitchen

I had all the ingredients ready to make banana bread out on the counter when Maya and Mike came home from playground the other day. I was in the living room and Mike was somewhere else as well. Maya got into the kitchen, took out the cookie cutters, unwrapped the butter, and began trying to "make cookies". Fun! Mike caught her in the act.

The grimace is when Maya tried to drink the vanilla. You know, it smells good. But it doesn't taste very good...

Maya's new school

Here are a couple of shots of Maya in her new school, or rather same school with new facilities. Most of the pictures have other kids in them, so I can't post a lot. But the new school building is a huge improvement over the old school. There is so much more room indoors, and a lot more outside space for the kids to play. I hope the extra space means they will get to do a lot more interesting projects!

On another note, you might have noticed that Maya is completely dressing herself these days. In these pictures, her outfit is a purple striped dress over a yellow skirt over striped pink pajama pants, with bright yellow socks and new sneakers her grandparents brought from the USA.

Today, she wanted to wear a green T-shirt and pink tights. She was NOT happy with our insistence that she had to put something, anything really, on over the tights.

New Laptop

I have a new laptop as of yesterday! So maybe soon I will be able to upload some pictures to the blog again. My old laptop actually had a frame that was held together by superglue -- no, I'm not joking. My new laptop is beautiful.

Also, in other news, Maya's imaginary friend Callumina got locked in the bathroom this morning along with her sisters Callumaja and California. The bathroom was actually, aparently, the door of my closet. It was too cute. This trio seems to be making regular appearances in our house.

Sicky Maya

Poor Maya is sick today, as in she has a fever that is ranging from 100-102. Not fun. I can't even remember thelast time she had a fever like this. Maybe never. The girl is perpetually healthy with the exception of being prone to skin ailments.

We went to one of her closest friend's birthday parties today, and Maya spent practically the whole time lying in the yard watching to other kids play. She said she wasn't feeling great but wanted to stay until the birthday cake was served. At birthday cake time, she felt hot. She said she wanted to go home and have a rest.

When we got her home, her temperature was about 100. We gave her baby Tylenol. A couple hours later her fever was 102. We gave more tylenol. She slept all afternoon in my arms. She was totally miserable. Wouldn't eat. A friend (who is also a nurse) suggested motrin or ibuprofin to alternate with the tylenol.

In the evening, we woke her up (still hot and miserable) and gave her motrin. We tried and failed to persuade her to take a bath, compromised with a wet washcloth on her head and put her to bed. About half an hour later though she got up out of bed completely wired, her fever gone, wanting to eat and play. Wow! That motrin really worked.

Shoe frustration

So I was trying to order sneakers online for Mike's parents to bring to Maya for her to grow into. I already ordered a pair of kind of expensive athletic, waterproof, durable sandals for the summer, which was justified because she will probably wear them every day for 6-9 months as I got them slightly big so they should last a long time.

I wanted some inexpensive, durable closed-top sneakers that were either slip-ons or velcro, preferably not in white or pink. I just want to say that it is HARD to find sneakers that are not lace-ups in Maya's size (10.5). And I just want to ask, why? Seriously, are most parents of 3-year-olds honestly buying their kids lace-up sneakers? Because I for one do not want to have to tie Maya's shoes 5 million times a day. And I don't think my independent-minded daughter really wants to have to have her mommy/nanny/teacher tie her shoes. So who ARE these people buying lace-up shoes for 3-year-olds? Are their 3-year-olds honestly able to tie their shoes??

Also, what is with the white shoes? Even if they are cute to begin with, they are going to get dirty so fast. I didn't want pink either since I let Maya pick the color of her sandals and she chose purply pink. But seriously, white and pink are almost all that is on offer.

Eventually, I found a pair of white/grey/blue adidas with a velcro top, after like 2 days of searching the web. And for $18 with free 2-day shipping. I'm very proud of myself!

Fire! Fire! no Fire!

This morning at about 11 a.m., our landlord called Mike to tell him that the bowab (aka the doorman) smelled smoke coming under the door of our apartment. Nobody in the building had a key to our flat, so nobody could get in to check on the apartment. Yikes!

Since our work is normally 30 minutes away from our house, and it was at a time when the traffic would make the drive longer, we were panicked. Our house was potentially on fire and we could not get there to open the door to get the fire out.

We tried to call Tibby to get her to go to the house, because she lives pretty close by. (Maya was in school). But we couldn't reach her. Both Mike and the landlord tried to call the bowab back to find out exactly what was happening and ask him to cut the power to the apartment. But we couldn't reach him either.

Mike finally reached Tibby, who set off immediately for the house, but said it would take her 15 minutes. Meanwhile, images of our apartment burning and us losing everything flickered through my head. Mike took a cab back to the apartment.

Tibby finally arrived at the apartment. She went inside. No smoke. No fire. Nothing amiss at all. And no sign of the bowab so far this evening.

Mommy Maya Meetings

When Mike is working late teaching evening classes -- which is two nights a week minimum this semester (groan) -- Maya and I get to have a special night together on those nights when I am on the early shift and get off work early. She has dubbed these evenings 'Mommy Maya Meetings'.

During Mommy Maya Meetings, all the normal rules about dinner and bedtime go out the window. It is special time for us, so we don't have to follow the rules. We order dinner from a restaurant that delivers and eat it while watching kid videos on TV, and sometimes Maya falls asleep on the sofa and I carry her to bed. She thinks it's super special, and sometimes we do special activities too. During one Mommy Maya meeting, we made playdough. During another, we made banana bread with pink sprinkles on top. But normally, we just hang out together and Maya gets to pick what we order for dinner.

Last semester Mike only worked one evening a week and evening classes were cancelled for the entire month of Ramadan, and of course occasionally I had to work late, so we didn't have too many special nights. And last semester Maya was allowed to choose McDonald's delivery for pretty much every Maya Mommy Meeting. But this semester, with Mike working a minimum of two nights a week, that is totally not possible. No way am I going to feed Maya that much McDonalds. Yet is has been very hard to persuade her to choose something different. I mean, she is even turning down pizza saying she wants McDonalds instead. I guess I can't blame her since happy meals come with a toy.

Tonight, however, I was finally successful in persuading her to choose something else for her Mommy Maya meeting. We had chinese food -- tofu with vegetables, sweet and sour chicken, and spring rolls -- on the sofa while watching Sesame Street DVDs. Maya, however, chose to forsake the tofu and chicken in favor of steamed rice and a spring roll. It was a nice evening ... until she decided to force herself to stay awake until her daddy got home...

Furry friend

We had a little visitor in our apartment the other day. I won't say what kind to avoid freaking out anyone coming to visit us soon. Let's just say it was not a welcome visitor and appeared to have come into the house from the roof when the balcony door was left open for a long period of time.

The furry friend made its way into the living room and then scampered into Maya's toy area, where it settled in her block drawer, and we could hear it moving around and knocking the blocks. Yikes!! We put Maya to bed and came back out and it was still making noises in the drawer. Yikes again!

I got Maya's orange plastic baseball bat and Mike got a plastic hanger from the bedroom. After a quick strategy session, we re-opened the balcony door and Mike jiggled the block drawer. The furry friend ran out into the open living room floor toward me. Mike yelled at me to get it. I yelled back. Then the furry friend changed directions and scrambled back out the balcony door, which we promptly shut tight. Thank God.

Mike emptied the block drawer, sprayed the blocks with disinfectant, and scrubbed out the drawer. Our furry friend has not returned. And he better stay away!!!

Flu

So I think I actually had the flu -- for the first time in my life that I am aware of. And maybe a chest infection or something on top of it. It has been like 10 days since I first got sick and I am still pretty weak. I am doing better though and have been back at work for three days. The first day was rough but now I am better. I just can't wait until I'm 100 percent again.

For a while I was actually looking up the human symptoms of bird flu -- since it is endemic now in Egypt and all. I definitely don't have bird flu. But I can't believe I was sick enough to consider it!

Maya's preschool is moving!

That's right! Maya's preschool is getting some new digs. They are moving from a crowded garden apartment to a small villa across the street. We just got a note about it today. I am really happy about it, as the space the school is in now is so small, and the kids will have a lot more space after the move. I can't wait to see the new place!

I'm also happy now that we decided to keep her at Small World. The main concern I had about the school was that the facilities were a bit cramped, especially compared to several other trendy preschools that have their own buildings. The other preschools are nice, but their classes are arranged by age, so Maya would have been up to a full year older than other kids in her class based on when her birthday is, which wouldn't have been much fun for her. Or we could have bumped her up to the older class, but then she would have had the opposite problem and been the youngest in her class.

I know I have raved about Maya's school before, but it is just so nice that she can play with kids of lots of different ages and doesn't have to be grouped with only her same-age peers, and also that she is in a school that focuses on learning through play. I think almost all of the kids Maya plays with regularly are a bit older than her. But she also gets to learn how to be nice and play gentle with the younger kids. So it is a really good social experience for her. And now it is going to be in better facilities too!

Veg Box

A while back, some readers asked me to post pictures of the Veg Box, which we get every week. I am still really happy with it. We pay 125 pounds (about $20) for a huge crate of assorted fruits and veggies, which works out to way less than what we would pay for the same amount of veggies at our local expat supermarket, and it saves us a lot of shopping time. We can sort of customize the box, and we always get certain staples like bananas, tomatoes, lettuce and potatoes. But there are usually a few surprises each week too.

For some reason, the Veg Box guy brings us a lot of cauliflower and broccoli. I think Mike might have asked for it one week and now we just get it all the time. That used to happen with cabbage too until we finally had to tell them to stop bringing cabbage, because we're really not big cabbage fans. But sometimes we also get fresh shelled peas, and fresh spinach, which is really nice. Lately we have been getting fresh strawberries.

The Veg Box guy will also deliver fresh meat, and it is really good quality. So far, we have gotten chicken breasts, beef cubes, and ground beef from him. And it is way better than what we can get in the grocery store. We heard he will also deliver fresh juice, so we are going to try that too.

Health update

I'm still sick today, but feeling way better than yesterday. I think the antibiotics are kicking in. I actually was able to sleep all night long. From 9 p.m. to 5 a.m., and then again until 6:30 a.m. when I took my next dose of meds. I still barely have the energy to walk around the house, but now I can at least breathe through my mouth without sparking a huge coughing fit. And I am starting to be able to breathe through my nose again a little. I doubt I will be going to work tomorrow still, but maybe on Tuesday. I am dying for some human contact.

Maya has been very nice and cuddly with me since I have been sick. She fell asleep in my arms last night watching Happy Feet. (Mike bought her Happy Feet at Carrefour and a set of cheap plastic bowling pins over the weekend, which made me raise my eyebrows a little -- until he told me he was just trying to divert her attention from the Barbie doll she asked for... Yikes!)

SOS

Did I mention that the telephone at my parents' house has an SOS button?? That means a button that calls 911 automatically when pressed. Did I mention that nobody knew about this button until we were visiting??

That's because Maya picked up the phone and started playing with it. She managed to call 911 twice before we realized she was talking to another human being. We took the phone away. Then a few seconds later we got a call back. From 911. Saying we had called 911 twice. My brother assured them it was just a 3-year-old playing with the phone and apologized profusely. Within 5 minutes, a sheriff's deputy arrived at the house and rang the doorbell to make sure everyone was ok. Maya was a bit freaked out by the experience. So were we.

Then we put the phone WAYYYYY out of reach. OK. That's my confession for the day.

Family get-together

When we were getting to know Baby G, we also got to meet up with a couple other relatives. Cousin Jess and Auntie Michelle. Here are some pics.

Meeting her baby cousin

Maya, who had managed to steal the spotlight for three long years as the first grandchild on both sides of the family, got to meet her new baby cousin while we were on home leave. And she couldn't be more excited to have a new baby in the family!! We had to remind her several times that the baby was in fact not her baby sister and we could not take her home with us.

Hope you enjoy the pictures of Maya and her new cousin Baby G.

Better late than never Christmas pictures

Here are my better late than never Christmas morning pictures. As you can see, Maya changed her clothes about a million times. Her favorite gift by far was the electric mixer.

Sick and self-medicating

Aaah! I have been sick, sick, sick over the past few days. Actually, everyone in the family has been sick with colds, but everyone else recovered. I started feeling down last Friday but then I thought I was getting better. (Maya and Mike both got better). But then on Tuesday I started feeling bad again, and I stayed home from work on Wednesday and Thursday. I was barely conscious all day those days, and totally drugged up on pseudoepinephrine and tylenol.

Then yesterday I still felt bad. Well, my brain felt like I could think clearly again but I was still really sick. And this morning I still felt really, really bad. So we tried to make an appointment with the doctor's office, thinking that I either have a sinus infection or bronchitis or pneumonia. Only for some reason he wasn't answering the phone.

So I decided to just self-medicate. Mainly because the last time I tried to go to a random Egyptian doctor (I was desperate because I was due to fly to Sudan the next day), I told him what I thought I had (a sinus infection), what drug I needed, and he just gave it to me without any real examination or anything. So I'm a bit reluctant to drag myself out of bed for that again. So now I am on antibiotics (amoxiclav) and hopefully I will get better. I took the first dose this morning. I think I feel a slight bit of energy coming back. It could be a placebo effect. But heck, I'll take that over nothing. And it's very convenient to just be able to call up a pharmacy and have antibiotics delivered to your door within the hour...

Writers block

Sorry for my hiatus from blogging. Life has been insane. Work has been insane. Work managed to intrude on my vacation and then has been intruding on my personal life since then. Then we all caught a bad cold that I am still recovering from. And Mike went to South Africa for a conference, so it was just me and Maya for a while. But now everyone is home and we are getting back to normal in Cairo.

I do have some pictures I still need to post from our vacation. But my slow internet connection is not encouraging me to do that, as I have to add one picture at a time, and it just goes so slowly.

Maya has been enjoying herself lately. While Mike was gone we made banana bread for the first time. She really enjoyed it. The bread was a little burned on the sides, but otherwise yummy. It's hard to translate 350 degrees to an Egyptian gas oven. We were supposed to cook it for 60-65 minutes, but it was burned at 40 minutes. Whoops! It'll be better next time.

And yesterday when Mike was teaching his class at the university in the evening (why do they insist on evening classes??), Maya and I made pink playdough. Maya actually thought it would be red, because we used red food coloring. She was very surprised when it turned out pink, and has been telling everyone who will listen about how she dyed her playdough with red coloring but that produced pink playdough. Now Maya wants to make green playdough. But I'm not really sure I want multiple colors floating around, especially ones that don't mix well.