Lovin' the glottal stop

Miss Maya has surprised us in the past week by picking up a handful of Arabic words, phrases and sounds, much to our amusement and despite the fact that she has no caregivers who speak to her in Arabic!

Her exposure to Arabic is limited to hearing other parents and nannies talking to their kids at the park or at her music and art classes, even though the classes themselves are in English. She also hears me talking on the phone in Arabic constantly due to my job. I probably get phone calls roughly twice an evening in Arabic and a couple times a day on weekends. As a result, Maya thinks that Arabic is the language of the telephone. And in fact I rarely speak on the phone in any other language, unless relatives call.

So the other day Maya picked up her toy phone and had a conversation on it entirely in Arabic. It was a cross between ordering groceries on the telephone and barking instructions.

It was like this: "Allo, Allo! Fih eh? La'a. La'a. Ummmm. Malesh. Kull Kwayyis!"

That translates to: "Hello Hello. What do you have? No. No. Ummmm. Never mind. It's all good."

I knew she had some Arabic words. But this was practically a full conversation. It was really totally unexpected. Anyway, her most recent Arabic word is La'a, which means "no" and has a glottal stop in it (the apostrophe marks the glottal stop). In Egypt, people emphasize the glottal stop to make the word "no" sound more vehement. And Maya is loving it. In fact she has adopted it in English as well. So now instead of saying just "No" in English, Maya says: "No'o" with a great big glottal stop in the middle. It is hilarious!

Anyway, for those of you who have no idea what a glottal stop sounds like in Arabic, I will try to catch it on video so you can hear. But I can't do it now because she's going to sleep. So it'll have to wait!

Baking Brownies

After our ragingly successful trip to the Ceramic Cafe, we decided to test fate after Maya's nap and do another activity today. We baked brownies (from a box)!

So I have been planning to bake and freeze cookie dough so that Maya and Tiberh can have some cool at-home activities for days when it's too hot to go to the park (or too cold and wet, though we don't have many days like that here). My mom sent me some great freezer recipes where you can make rolls of cookie dough, and then basically slice, decorate and bake when you want to make cookies. And Josh and Avni brought sprinkles when they visited! That seems to be all a 2-year-old can manage. I can't imagine Maya actually sitting through the process of making cookie dough, then rolling, shaping, decorating and baking. So this seemed like a good alternative.

Anyway, so last night we ordered all the ingredients for this freezer cookie dough from the grocery store (home delivery rocks!). And we asked if by chance they had pre-made brownie mix, which they did! So we ordered that too. Of course, I was too lazy to actually make the cookie dough last night, but we did bake the brownies today.

It was great. I laid all the ingredients and utensils out during Maya's nap, and then we made the cookies as soon as she woke up. Took about 5 minutes! Then we put them in the oven. Maya thought it was great. The only kick was that we discovered that she actually doesn't like the taste of brownies!?!?!?!?!?! She took one bite, then spit it out. Oh well. Too bad we don't have a picture of that!

Painting Pottery

We had a pretty cool morning with Maya today. We took her to a cafe we had recently heard about where kids can paint pottery while their parents have a cup of coffee. It's called Ceramic Cafe and it's in the Cairo suburb of Mohandiseen, just across the river from were we live.

We had actually heard about this place a while back and attempted to go there when my parents were visiting. But after frantically searching for the place, we never did find it that day. So I backtracked, got better directions, and today we found it and had a blast!

Maya painted a piece of pottery in the shape of a pizza! She sort of mixed all her colors together, and then ultimately dumped her whole palette of paint on it, so it ended up as a swirly grey with an unpainted white crust. (Note to self: Next time choose colors for Maya that will blend well together, like red and yellow or blue and yellow). I painted a snowman bowl -- ironic in Cairo, don't you think? It was pretty cold today though! My snowman ended up pretty cute, but it does have some speckles of grey on it due to Maya deciding to try to paint my pottery too. And Mike painted a flower vase. He did a pretty serious paint job on his, so maybe it will turn out nice. Maya, of course, also painted her face and the table.

Anyway, we will pick up our glazed pottery next week. I can't wait to do this again. It was pretty fun and I think will get more fun the older Maya gets. It will also be a good summer activity for Cairo when it is too hot to go to the park. I do wish there was a decent indoor play place for kids in this city. It gets really annoying when it's 100 degrees outside for days on end and no good things to do indoors.

Well, I forgot to take pictures, so I'm posting an old one I found of Maya dressing up in an apron and firegirl hat. Tonight we are going to cook brownies from a box!

Campaigning for President

Anyone care to take a guess who Maya wants for president??

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!

More on Corduroy

Tonight, Maya again refused to read Corduroy -- even though she talks about him constantly -- but we figured out why.

Apparently, she doesn't think it is good that Corduroy goes upstairs all alone looking for his button. She thinks that Corduroy is scared, especially when he hides when the night watchman comes. She told us she wanted to tell Corduroy not to go upstairs because she knows he'll be scared. But that he goes upstairs anyway. And that makes her upset because she likes Corduroy and doesn't want him to be scared.

So then we decided together that Corduroy was a story "for daytime", not for bedtime. Hopefully she will agree to read it again. Who would have known this story would be scary to her?

I should mention that we have already had to shelve the Llama, Llama books at night as well because Maya relates a little bit too much to Baby Llama's nighttime fears of being alone without Mama Llama. Little Llama has been banished from the bedroom for this reason. So I guess I shouldn't be too surprised about her being afraid for Corduroy.

Maya loves Corduroy!

OK, first I apologise for going awol for the past week. I went back to work after being off for about two weeks and it's been crazy busy.

Maya is all of a sudden starting to get into storybooks. As in actual stories with real plots. Previously, she was only interested in picture books. She liked books with pictures and catchy text that were about things -- say tugboats or puppies for example -- but wouldn't sit still for an actual book with a storyline.

The other day she pulled Corduroy off the bookshelf and asked me to read it to her. I opened the book up with the full expectation that within two pages she would be wriggling off my lap to find a different and more action-packed picture book. But she didn't! She sat through the whole story and was completely captivated. The next day, she talked about Cordoroy and asked to read Corduroy again that evening. So we read it again! And she was captivated again.

She talked about how Corduroy went upstairs (up the escalator in the story) and downstairs again. And she talked about how he lost his "belly". (She means his button but thinks it should be called a belly, as in a belly button...) But it is clear she is actually following the story!

So I tried some other books -- the Rainbow Fish and A Mother for Choco -- and she sat and listened to those as well. OK, well she didn't like them as much as she liked Corduroy. But still, I am so happy that we can move on from picture books to books with simple stories!

Anyway, we tried again with Corduroy last night and she wasn't interested and claimed to be "scared" of Corduroy. Umm hmmm... But I think she was just trying to delay bedtime, so it doesn't count.