Maya the Sleep Queen

After a few miserable weeks, Maya's sleep is finally improving. What a relief!

I made a sticker chart for Maya last week, hoping to exploit her current love affair with stickers, and told her that she could get three stickers in the morning if she went to bed "nicely" -- one on each hand and a third on her chart. Then I dragged Mike out to the huge Alfa market in Maadi and found some stickers, nice shiny ones that I thought would appeal to her. Some of them have horses and unicorns on them, some have dolphins, some are birds, and the others are hearts, stars and soccer balls.

I was honestly a bit worried that at 20 months she was too young for a sticker chart. Meaning I didn't think she got the concept of delayed gratification. Boy was I wrong. She actually wants to "play night night" constantly now so that I can give her a sticker afterward.

We introduced her to the idea with a little role play -- we told her (at a time when it was clearly not bedtime) to lie down in bed and go night-night, and then to stay in bed in order to get a sticker. Then we proceeded to very dramatically tip-toe out of the room. Then when we looked back and saw she was still lying down, we clapped our hands and gave her a sticker. She totally understood the concept.

Since we introduced the idea, she has gone to bed "nicely" every night but one. Plus, we have been able to simply sit in the bean bag next to her bed while she falls asleep on her own -- which is much better than before when she was demanding that both of us lie in bed with her for hours while she resisted sleep.

We even got to move the beanbag a little bit away from the bed, and I very sneakily moved her solid-wood bed rails so that she cannot see us while she goes to sleep. OK, so she is still popping her head up over the bed rail every few minutes at first to "check" if we are still there. But at least she is doing it quietly and then putting her head back down on the pillow to go to sleep.

We are hoping that soon we will be able to actually leave the room while she is awake, but it seems that still needs a little time. But I can hope, can't I?

Water Baby

Maya had a blast playing with buckets of water and cups today on our balcony. It was too hot to actually go outside to the park today -- or to anywhere else for that matter. So we decided to let Maya play in the water at home, as she loves water and is constantly asking us to let her wash her hands.

After the water games, Maya danced shirtless to music in our living room and came pretty close to doing the splits. Here are some pictures.

Bye Bye Crib, Hello Insomnia

Mike finally packed up Maya's crib and stored it in our storage area, as Maya has expressed zero desire to go back to her crib since she demanded to sleep in her big girl bed two weeks ago. Not that it means Maya is sleeping -- as she is most certainly not sleeping well at all. But she is doing that -- ie not sleeping -- in her bed.

While she has transitioned to her bed, we have lost a lot of sleep progress in this transition. She will no longer simply roll over and go to sleep in her bed, as she had done in her crib. Instead, she is demanding we BOTH stay with her while she falls asleep. And once we are there she resists sleep like crazy. Last night she managed to stay awake until 11 p.m.

After our massive struggle to get her to sleep in her crib initially, it's really depressing to be facing these same sleep battles all over again. We've tried adding a nightlight, stuffed animals, and playing calming soft jazz while she goes to sleep. And all of these improvements have helped -- but only temporarily.

I am going to make her a sticker reward chart for sleeping. I know she might be a little young for this, but she is a smart, perceptive little girl, so I think there is a chance she might go for it... And she loves stickers!! I don't know about the delayed gratification bit though.

We Have Tickets!!!!!!!

Grandparents Get Ready!!! After serious drama from our now "ex"-travel agency, we have tickets to the USA. Our travel agency in Cairo, Thomas Cook, told us there was not a single empty economy class seat out of Cairo on ANY airline in early August, and we were seriously sweating as to what to do. The travel agent actually told us that there was nothing we could do but CANCEL our entire vacation. I was seriously having a nervous breakdown!! This is after they stalled for 5 days on even properly searching for tickets, refused to return phone calls, and said their job was done after getting us on a WAIT LIST for a flight. AAAHHHHH!!!!!

Anyway, we ditched them and found tickets immediately on the internet -- like in 5 minutes. So clearly the travel agency was lying when they said they had searched for seats and there was nothing available. We did end up having to pay more for the flights than we would have liked, and we had to be slightly flexible in our dates, but at least we have tickets!

We are arriving on August 2 in New York JFK, going to Seattle on August 13, and coming home to Cairo on August 25. So I hope everybody is ready for a little Maya summer craziness.

OK, I'm attaching a very cool snapshot of Maya caught in the act of feeding her horsey. And another of Maya and daddy looking cool.

Baby Like!!

Maya is starting to tell us what she likes in a very funny way. I have a big picture of Maya as the background on my laptop, and Maya loves to look at the picture, and even kiss it on the mouth. Yesterday, she came up to it and said: "Baby like". I wondered what she meant.

"Baby likes what?" I asked her.

"Baby like!" she said, pointing at the screen.

It seems this is her new way of telling us that she likes the baby on the screen. Then today when we were going downstairs in the elevator, she looked up at me and said: "Daddy like!" Very sweet.

I have also heard: "Lalla like!" and "Donkey like". It is very cute to watch her learn to speak. She is doing another really cute thing with her language. She has started to say "bye bye" in Amharic.

So now when Tiberh leaves at the end of the day, Maya says: "Ciao, ciao".

Another funny language thing she did yesterday after dinner was that she will now switch languages if we do not listen to her in one language. She was sitting at the table asking for water using Arabic, and Mike and I were both busy and not paying that much attention.

She said "Miyah, miyah, miyah, miyah."

But then when that didn't get her an immediate response, she shouted: "WA WA, WA WA".

I said: "Oh, Maya do you want some water?"

"YEEEEESSSSSSS!" she said.

My Cosmopolitan City Baby

Maya seems to have developed some special expertise in some areas from being a Cairo city baby. First of all, she is an expert in all forms of public transport. She can identify buses, cars, boats, planes and taxis. As we are in Egypt, she can also identify horses and donkeys we see on the road as well.

When we see a horse on the road she says: "Neigh, neigh". When we see a donkey she says: "Donkey dey, dey." Naturally, she seems to think that if a horse says "neigh" then a donkey must say "dey".

Now, on her Cairo food preferences. She used to love to eat stuffed grape leaves, but they are now totally passe. Her new fave Cairo food is Hummus, preferably topped with chicken shawerma. Yumm! She also likes mangoes, and lucky for her she can get them in Cairo.

She also has learned a few Arabic words. I don't know how she learned them exactly, as no one is speaking to her in Arabic on a regular basis. But she must have picked up the words from her music and storytelling classes. She says "La", meaning "no". She says "yalla" for "let's go". And she says "bas" for "that's all" and "miyah" for water. She also says "Eh da?" for "what's that?" It is super adorable.

Here is a picture of Maya riding her own horse in our house. She loves this horse. She likes to take her lotion and rub it on his head. She also likes to feed it "milk" and "apples". It is a very lucky horsey.

Maya bouncy video

Here is some more cool Maya video of the fourth of july party.