Baseball

Over the weekend Roqaya and I went to a tea party/fundraiser in Virginia and had a great time seeing some friends and meeting new people. Meanwhile, Ahmed and Karim went to watch the DC Nationals with some friends. This was their first baseball game so I got Karim a t-ball set to teach him about baseball and I taught him 'take me out to the ball game'. We practiced t-ball for a couple days before the game and it ended up being a really fun toy, for all of us.

Once we got the t-ball part down, we switched to pitching mode

Arablish and other signs of a reader

Karim gets very excited about letters and words and is always pointing and asking "what does that say?". After passing a few stop signs and asking about the letters he has come to memorize the word. The funny part, though, is that he seems to be mixing his Arabic skills in and when spelling he says, "P-O-T-S: Stop". I also noticed that it is not just the stop sign he has memorized, but he has actually figured out the combination of letters and can recognize the word stop in forms other than the stop sign.
Then, the other day, I showed him a flier for the zoo and asked him if he knew what it was. He looked it over and pointed to the word zoo and said, "this says zoo". I'm still not sure how he figured it out, I know he can't actually read, so I'm guessing he's seen the word somewhere else and like stop, has memorized the combination of letters. Either way, these are both good signs that he is understanding and on his way to reading.
Not too far behind him is his sister. She is learning new words every day and I'm constantly surprised because Karim had maybe a handful of words when he was her age. She's even held on to a couple Arabic/Egyptian words like hati (give me) and bah (all gone). Her favorite word is Baba and she says bonk and ouch a lot, especially when playing with her brother. A few days ago she made her first combination of words with two of her favorite things, she said, "baba shoes" while showing me Baba's shoes. Another favorite word/thing  is car. I'm sure this has a lot to do with Karim since his life pretty much revolves around cars/transportation.

Nap Time

It is not very often that I can get the kids to nap at the same time, but when I do, it is fantastic. The problem comes when it's time to prioritize what I'm going to do during this precious time, but I have to be quick about my decision because the clock is ticking and wake-up time is coming. If there are chores-made-difficult-by-toddlers to be done, I do those first--for example, doing the dishes. Roqaya is more into unloading what I put in the dishwasher and running away with it, sometimes I even find silverware back in the drawer with the clean stuff. If there are no chores like that do be done, I try to get in some quiet study time. I have been working through an Arabic grammar book for a while now but I've almost made it half-way so just a few more co-naps or even sleeping in a little in the morning and I'll be able to move on to the next Arabic language book in our library. If I have time after this then I move downstairs and try to get in a mile walk on the treadmill while listening to my audio book. Being that this is near the end of nap time, I usually get interrupted by Karim who hears the treadmill and gets excited and wants to have his turn. He says, 'you can share mama', 'I wanna go fast too'.
I don't have any napping pics of the kids, I've been really bad with the camera lately but here are a few that we took a month-or-so ago

Karim being silly

The kids got new outfits and Karim wanted his picture taken standing up there

Roqaya was really excited about her pants, she really loves them

And I was wearing one of my new hijabs from Egypt

Red Means Stop

So, riding in the car the other day we thought Karim would enjoy a little lesson about traffic lights--red means stop, green means go, and yellow means slow down. Well, we forgot to mention that sometimes it's ok to turn right when the light is red as long as you stop first. Lucky for me I seem to now hit every red light when I need to turn right and Karim doesn't like this at all. He cautions me from the back seat, "red means stop mama" and as I continue through the red light his voice gets louder--"stop mama, stop!". I explain to him every time that sometimes it's ok to go through the red light, but in a 3 year old brain there is no gray area, there is only black and white, or in this case, red and green; stop and go.

School

As I am closing in on my final month of school for my BS I am also coming up on the time to get busy figuring out what to do with Karim in terms of school. Since he turned 3 I have been brain wrestling myself trying to come up with the best option for us. Right now I am weighing the options between pre-K at the public school in our neighborhood, private cooperative preschool, pre-K at the Islamic school in our area, or homeschooling. If I decide on preschool I need to get him enrolled so he can start in the fall. If I home school I don't really need to get into formal teaching until kindergarten. As of now I am leaning more toward either the cooperative preschool and continuing what we're doing at home to get prepared for a kindergarten home school program. I really love the idea of home schooling because there is so much freedom to focus on certain things more than others depending on how his skills develop. I also like the freedom to use different learning styles including lots of hands on learning--there are so many organizations catering to home schoolers like the zoos, museums, aquariums, etc. But, I also like the idea of sending Karim to school for a few hours a day. Not only for my own benefit (selfish perhaps) but for him to learn the social dynamics of being in the classroom. Either way, as my sister keeps telling me, no matter what choice I make, nothing is final and I can experiment with different options until we find the best academic fit for Karim.

There's No Place Like Home

Well, it was an intense trip but we made it home safely, thank God. We left our apartment in Egypt at 1am (6pm EST) and arrived at our door around 11pm EST the next night. Needless to say it was a long trip with little sleep involved, for me anyway. The kids did as well as could be expected. There was some crying and grumpiness but nothing major. Everyone on the plane was very understanding and helpful and no one complained. The trip was a little longer than it needed to be because to get from Alexandria to Cairo we had to take a bus and the only one we could find for the time we needed left at 1:30am and got us to the airport at 4am. Our flight didn't leave til 10am so we spent a couple hours hanging out in the airport before we could check in. Two of my sisters-in-law came though, and that was a big help.

When I was getting on the plane the flight crew manager gave me a hard time about the car seats and said I couldn't bring them. He said it was safer to not have them, I said, "I have a 3 year old son, he knows how to get out of that lap belt and he'll be running all over your plane". He said ok. He walked by later and said, "oh, how right you were, these are much better". Other than that the flight was smooth and we arrived on time. We found Ahmed waiting for us outside customs. It was so great to see his face and the kids were so happy.

We had a great 3 day weekend hanging out together and Ahmed went back to work Tuesday. Since then I've been unpacking and getting the house back in order after 3 months. I took 2 weeks off school and will start my last class Tuesday so I have until then to get all my reorganizing done. The kids are fascinated by all their old toys and clothes and food they were used to. They get so excited when Ahmed comes home from work, even more than they used to before we left.

Mariam joked with me before leaving that I would come home and hug and kiss all the things I left behind. I laughed at her, but really coming home was very humbling. And still, I am finding things about my house that I took for granted before. The first thing I noticed--when I walked in the door and stepped on the carpet I said, wow, this carpet is so soft! I am also very happy to have my coffee maker and my bed, really there is nothing like sleeping in your own bed.

As difficult as the trip was, being away from Ahmed and home, I'm so glad the kids and I were able to do it. We met our wonderful family members and experienced a life that we would have never known otherwise. I am much more aware of what I have and am more grateful for the small things in my life. During our Nile journey when we were traveling from Luxor to Aswan we were put on the worst train of all time, even by Egyptian standards. It was hot, dirty, uncomfortable, no air and people were smoking outside our car. While sitting in my very uncomfortable seat trying to sleep I remember thinking that without the bad we can't appreciate the good. If we had ridden 1st class the whole way it wouldn't be such a big deal, but by riding a leg in that terrible car, the ride back in the sleeper train was that much better and more appreciated. If you're following my analogy, I'm not trying to say that life in Egypt was bad, it wasn't, but it was different than what I'm used to and although I miss it, I'm glad to be home.

Here are some cute pics of the kids lovin' on Baba after we got home

Roqaya playing HadAlBaydah (This is the egg) with Baba

Big Hug





Karim was 'tickling' his face and Roqaya was slapping him out of excitement

Got your nose



Karim got his nose really hard

Journey Along the River Nile

Ahmed came for a 2 week visit and for 5 days we took a series of train rides between Alexandria and Aswan, Egypt. We had a great time and saw a lot of sites, it’s a little too much to write about since I’m still exhausted from the trip and seeing Ahmed off yesterday, not to mention we all caught a cold. So, I will just give the link to our pictures which should tell the story pretty well. http://picasaweb.google.com/ceciliaummkarim