In the Shop

Maya has also been helping her grandpa out in the shop. She's been pounding and painting. With real (kid size) hammers and real nails. She also made a nifty coat rack for her bedroom that we are going to cart back to Egypt with us...

This was also pre-Christmas. I'll post the Christmas Day photos once I upload them from the camera.

Sledding

The snow has now melted, but Maya got in some good pre-Christmas sledding with her dad and grandpa. We made a sled out of the top of her water/sand table that grandma and grandpa got the last time we visited (in the summertime).

You'd think from these pictures that Maya is used to a cold climate, as opposed to living in Cairo. But she doesn't seem to mind the cold that much at all. She loved the snow, and is so sad that it is (mostly) gone.

Decorating the tree

A couple days before Maya's salon visit, we went to a tree farm, picked out a tree, cut it down, and brought it home. Then we decorated it. It was a terrific experience for Maya, although she seemed a bit surprised that the trees at the farm did not already have decorations on it. She seemed to think that her Christmas tree should not just be a regular tree. She wanted it to come decorated.

Salon pics

Here are Maya's post-salon pictures. Aren't they great! I can't believe how long the braids are. Usually when I do these types of braids, the ponytails end up really short. But by blow-drying Maya's hair, it made the braids much longer. I'm not sure whether I really want to start blow-drying her hair at age 3, but it definitely gives her some long braids.

The other thing I realised is that I'm actually not too bad at doing her hair. The braids look great, but really are not so different from when I do them myself. I guess they are a little longer and a little smaller and tighter. But visiting the salon made me realise that I do her hair pretty well myself, too.

At the beach

We went with some friends a week ago for a weekend at the beach at Ain Sokhna, and had a great time (apart from some issues I'll hopefully blog about later).

Maya played with her friends. She buried Mike in sand and got buried in sand herself. She swam in the Red Sea, made some sand castles, destroyed some sand castles, played in the pool, ran around on the grass and generally had a terrific time.

Maya in DC

Isn't this picture of Maya (totally exhausted by the way) lying in the grass the best EVER photo of Maya? It is at the mall in D.C. after visiting the natural history museum and the air and space museum, and riding on the carousel, and eating an ice cream cone! I have made it the background on my laptop...

In Albany, at a farm

We fed chickens some feed. And Maya fed a baby goat a bottle. And, oh yeah, Mike got to take the donkey for a walk!

Why dinosaurs dead, Mommy??

We took Maya to the natural history museum in Washington D.C. on the last day of our trip to the U.S. so she could see the dinosaurs. We also took her to the air and space museum to see the airplanes. But it was the dinosaurs that caught her interest. Now she wants to understand why the dinosaurs died, and she is not satisfied with my explanation... no matter how many different ways I explain it.

She really liked the idea that she was seeing dinosaur bones. And she totaly understands the concept of bones now. She knows that there are bones inside her, just like there are bones in dinosaurs. It is pretty cool to see her grasp that concept.

We tried to explain to her that the dinosaurs died because of climate change -- and that they didn't have air conditioning or heat like we have so they got very uncomfortable when the climate changed and then died. Then she asked why the climate changed ... and we tried to explain the asteroid theory. And then she is back to "But why they died, mommy?".

So I tried to explain the concept of being extremely uncomfortable. Like how she doesn't like to get in the car if it has been sitting in the sun, but that it is OK once daddy turns on the air conditioner. But imagine if we didn't have air conditioning in the car, or heating in our home (well, Maya has not really experienced extreme cold so we just focused on heat). But no matter how many times we tried, we were back to: "Why dinosaurs died?"

We did get her two dinosaur books at the museum, but sadly neither one explains why dinosaurs died... One does show a T-rex attacking and then devouring a triceratops though. Guess mommy's quick perusal of that book was a bit lacking! We had to do some quick editing and page flipping last night at bedtime when I tried to read that book to Maya as a bedtime story. Ooops!

More from New York

We're back in Cairo and severely jet lagged. I was up from 11:30 p.m. to 2 a.m. last night with Maya, who refused to sleep and insisted that it was "wake up time". Mike traded off at 2 a.m., and then my phone woke me up at 10:30 a.m. Mike and Maya are still asleep. I'm not sure what time they finally crashed though.

These pictures are of Maya at the park early in the morning in Brooklyn and at the Manhattan children's museum.

Yet more pictures from day one in NYC

OK, we also took Maya on a carriage ride in central park, and then stopped in FAO Schwartz when it started to rain. She got to play on the big piano and try on a princess costume. Later, we went out for Ethiopian food, but Maya slept through it. After the end of the day, I was so tired I was about to die...

More NYC photos

Later on day one, we took Maya to central park where she had a blast. She rode the carousel with her grandma and then played in a sprinkler playground. And that was just the beginning of a very full and very exhausting day!

Maya's New York Odyssey

Sorry for the posting dry spell. We are on vacation in New York. We spent a couple days in New York City at Maya's Auntie Michelle's place before heading up to Albany to visit her grandparents. On Friday we're going to Washington to see her Uncle Josh and Aunt Avni and go to their baby shower. Here are some photos of the first part of our trip.

Maya was fantastic on the plane. I barely had to dig into my bag of treats for her at all, and she just stayed very well behaved for the whole trip. It helped that she was fascinated by the plane, and the plane bathrooms were a big hit as well. The flight attendants were a bit annoying though, as they kept asking us to close the plane windows so passengers could sleep, or alternatively see the movie screens in the dimmed light of the plane. It was way annoying, considering that we were on a 10 a.m. flight and the flight staff wanted passengers to sleep as if it were a red eye flight. And no way can I get Maya to try to sleep through a whole day. And she wanted to look out the window at the clouds and ocean. I finally told the flight attendants that I thought a screaming child would probably keep passengers awake more than a single open window, and then they left us alone...

The first picture is of Maya listening to music on her earphones. Then we have pictures of her playing at a park in Brooklyn a few blocks from Michelle's house. Every morning in NYC she woke up at 5 a.m. and we were at the park by 7 a.m. to let our jet lagged kiddo run off some steam.