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.