Maya at the monasteries

While I was working the weekend shift today, Maya and Mike and Mike's parents went off on a tour of the Coptic monasteries of Wadi Natroun. They had a blast and Maya seems to have enjoyed having lots of open space to explore.

'Grilled' cheese sandwich

Question: What happens when you promise your 2-year-old that grandma will make her a 'grilled' cheese sandwich for lunch after a trip to the park, but then grandma heads to the kitchen instead of outside on the balcony to the grill?

Answer: Temper tantrum!

The other day at the park, it was time for lunch. Maya had some requests. Request number one was McDonald's (which conveniently has a branch visible from the far reaches of the park playground). Request number two was pizza. Both were vetoed and Maya was promised a grilled cheese sandwich made by her Grandma Laura, who is visiting. That was enough to lure her from the park.

When we got home, Maya made a beeline for the sliding glass door to the balcony while Grandma Laura headed for the kitchen (you know, where the oven is). Maya demanded that the sliding glass door be opened so she could go out to the grill (you know, where naturally a 'grilled' cheese sandwich should be made).

When she realized her grilled cheese sandwich was not going to be made over open flames on the grill, she was NOT a happy camper. I guess I can understand her. It WOULD be pretty exciting to see a cheese sandwich made on a fiery grill, the flames lapping at the edges and all. We had to take Maya into the kitchen and gently explain to her that while it was called a 'grilled' cheese sandwich, it is actually made in the oven. Poor baby!

Baking cookies

Here are more pictures, this time of cooking cookies (and one more from fagnoon because I couldn't resist).

Fagnoon again

We took Maya and her grandparents to Fagnoon out by the pyramids again to do some painting. This time, we didn't get lost, and we discovered that Fagnoon is really only about 20 minutes from our house (not three hours!). Maya had a blast!

Maya does hair!

Here are some cool pictures last week of Maya doing her aunt Avni's hair after Maya had her own hair done. She had blast!

The park

We took a break from tourism yesterday to go to the park. We were going to take Josh and Avni to Sakkara to see the step pyramid. But the day before, we had gone to Coptic Cairo to see the Hanging church and the Ben Ezra synagogue.The whole time we were there, Maya would look up longingly at us and say: "Playground?!?!?".

So yesterday we gave in to her wishes and had a day just for Maya. We spent the morning at the club, where we ran into her pal S. Maya and S. commandeered a ride-on car and spent the morning pushing each other around the park and fending off other kids who sought to take over their stolen vehicle. I don't know where the owners were. S's dad commented that the two of them were like Bonnie and Clyde. And I have to agree. They like to make trouble together.

After the park, Maya came home and took a nap, and Josh and Avni went off shopping at the Khan el-Khalili bazaar. Then the adults had a nice night out together. On the downside, Maya appears to have caught a cold.

Anyway, these pictures are not from yesterday. I don't have any from yesterday. But to get you in the spirit, here are some pictures of Maya at the park last week, eating a banana on the slide.

A Day at the Pyramids

Mike's brother Josh and his wife Avni are visitng. So we took them to the pyramids to see Egypt's most famous attraction. Since Maya was with us, we basically zoomed through the plateau at lightning speed. Think a 5-minute walk by of the great pyramid, another 10 minutes in the solar boat museum, and then a quick walk to the Sphinx, and then back to the car.

We did, however spend quite some time looking at the "neigh neighs", camels and donkeys at the pyramids. So hopefully while Maya was watching the animals Josh and Avni got at least a little time to see the pyramids.

Maya liked the pyramids, and now knows how to make a pyramid sign with her hands by putting the tips of her fingers together. She also understands that pyramids are NOT mountains, or at least I hope she understands that.

She was not impressed by the Sphinx. I think daddy set up unduly high expectations when he told her we were going to see a lion. The whole time we were at the Sphinx, Maya was saying: "Daddy, I want lion". She was not impressed when he kept telling her to look up at the Sphinx to see the lion. Poor Maya.

Benefits of Grandpa!

The grandparents have now gone off for a few days to see Petra in Jordan. I think they will have a great time there, and Petra is seriously cool. And now I am back at work for three days so my Muslim colleagues can take some time off for the Eid al-Adha holiday here. But the grandparents will be back in time for Christmas, and I will take some more time off when they get back.

But I wanted to write a note about the benefits of having my dad around. I sent him an e-mail before he came about all the problems in our apartment. And, one by one, he is fixing them for me. He has already fixed the drawer to Maya's dresser, which broke over a year ago when it was shipped to Cairo and which we never had time to fix.

He has also installed new metal slides in the drawers of an Arabsesque cabinet we bought here that had been essentially useless to us because the wooden slides it came with broke the first or second time we used the drawers. It is so nice to be able to use our furniture.

Next on his list is our bed. Maya likes to play this game of "Let's throw Lalla behind the headboard and make mommy or daddy get it". And to get Lalla, we would have to push the bed away from the wall, get the little bunny, and then push the bed back. That seriously weakened the bed joints, and one day the bed collapsed. Mike fixed it, but I have always been slightly wary of the bed since then for fear of collapse. So I am quite happy that my dad is here to fix things for me.

My mom has been quite helpful too. In addition to baking cookies with Maya, she has also volunteered to sew Dora the Explorer's head back on...

Crazy Art

We have been scouring our brains for interesting new things to do with Maya in Cairo, where it seems there is a dearth of good, stimulating activities for the under-four set. Going to the Gezira club every day and music/art toddler classes once or twice a week has been getting too tediously predictable recently. So in advance of the granparents' visit, I was actively searching for new things to do with Maya. My parents have already done the whole Egypt tourist thing, and really this visit is all about family. But I knew they would get pretty tired of just going to the park.

So we heard about a place near the pyramids called Fagnoon (Crazy Art) that was supposed to be really fun for kids. We weren't sure if Maya would be too young to appreciate it, but we decided to give it a try anyway. And we drove out there today.

First, we got completely lost. We basically drove all around Giza for 3 hours (not kidding here), but we were determined to find it. Once we finally arrived -- after multiplephone calls for directions, taking the wrong turn like 3 million times, and then getting stuck twice behind the world's most slow moving piece of machinery -- it was well past Maya's naptime. But we decided to just stop for a quick visit to stretch our legs and get a sense of the place.

It was AWESOME! Can I just repeat myself -- awesome! Maya had a terrific time painting. She painted the walls, floor, table, benches, cardboard and best of all, herself. It is a really laid back place where they basically encourage kids to be as creative as they want to be and to decide themselves how they want to do art. When Maya was literally pouring the paint out on the floor, the staff were encouraging her to experiment with it, touch it, smear it, etc.

They also have goats that you can feed, and a donkey that you can ride -- though Maya was too scared of the animals to get that close. But she did like to look. We will definitely be going back to this place again. And it looked like there are lots farm-style Egyptian restaurants nearby that serve country-style food in an open-air atmosphere. We didn't have time to try them today, but maybe next time. Hope you like the pictures.

Getting Ready for Christmas

Here are some photos of Maya getting ready for Christmas. She had a big day yesterday. We went to the park with grandma and grandpa, then came home and decorated the Christmas tree, then made Christmas cookies.

Maya loved making Christmas cookies. We gave her her own piece of dough, which she rolled, cut, smeared, licked and tasted. Fun! Meanwhile Grandma Jan and I actually made the cookies. Maya got to decorate them later with some frosting we had found at the grocery store.

Speaking of decorations, we had a terrible time finding stuff to decorate the cookies with. We called the local grocery to see if they could deliver us some decorations. We asked if they had either sprinkles or food coloring so we could make some colored sugar. They said they had white sprinkles and coloring for food. So we said, OK great, please deliver. What actually came to our door was white asparagus (the white "sprinkles") and turmeric powder (the "coloring for food").

Meanwhile, I had gone to the big grocery store by myself. I couldn't find any sprinkles or food coloring. But I did find some frosting in a tube. So that's what we used to decorate the cookies.