Pages

Friday, March 19, 2010

I’m a soap

Yesterday I did a lot of walking around carrying children and groceries. While walking home from the grocery store with Miriam strapped to my front and a bag of groceries on either shoulder I remarked to Andrew, “My shoulders are burning.”

At dinner this evening, Rachel brought that little phrase out. I can’t remember why. She was just being silly, I guess, or looking for excuses not to eat.

“My shoulder hurts!” she said, pulling her shirt to the side, “Look how it’s burning!”

Andrew and I looked at each other, confused, but then I remembered that I had said that yesterday.

“Rachel’s a sponge!” Andrew exclaimed.

“No, I’m not!” she said, “I’m a soap!”

We both started laughing and Rachel, thinking she was being so funny, continued to chant, “I’m a soap, I’m a soap, I’m a soap!”

Other things that Rachel says that I find hilarious are:

“Almost” comes out like “omst,” so sometimes she sounds like a human beat box, especially when she reduplicates herself.

“I omst-omst fell down!”

I’ve tried to get her to say “omst-ticka-omst” but she won’t do it.

She replaces her k/q/c with f. Ducks say “fwack, fwack,” for example, and we do things “fwickly” and “fwietly.” So many words that she says sound hilariously foreign.

We had carrot pancakes for dinner tonight, which, as you might guess, Rachel pronounces “farrot” cake. Andrew thought it was one of my weird let’s-try-to-be-healthy meals and made fun of the idea at first. My friend Jill spoke at the preparedness fireside last week about being physically prepared and called Andrew out in front of the whole branch for being anti-vegetable. I’ve been hiding vegetables in his food for years, but he still thinks I’m weird for doing in and bugged me about making carrot pancakes all evening.

Then he tasted them.

He’s since decided that carrot pancakes are fabulous.

I used a recipe I found online and then whipped up some sour cream frosting (a couple tablespoons of butter, a third of a cup of sour cream, maple flavoring, and enough icing sugar to get the consistency I wanted). He was sold.

I don’t think it was any less healthy than regular pancakes, plus we were eating carrots, so that’s a plus, right?

4 comments:

  1. i make carrot "tacos" for my kids.....make pancakes and add 1-2 jars of baby mashed carrots...serve with cream cheese.....yum!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dear Ms. Heiss,

    I stumbled across ur blog when I was searching for the address of La Sombra and have been an avid reader ever since. It is really interesting for me to read what "foreigners" living in Cairo think about the city and its people. (In the name of all Cairenes (have no idea how it is spelled)I apologize for all the uncomfortable encounters u had with not so nice Egyptians.)
    Btw: Although by now I know ur daughter hates it but I would nonetheless try to kiss her :p . Both ur daughters are really very adorable. God bless them.

    ahmed

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you, Ahmed. For every uncomfortable encounter with Egyptians there have been hundreds of good experiences. I feel homesick for Cairo already and we haven't even left yet...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Wow, how nice of you Ahmed. I am Nancy's mother, and I think that Cairo has been a wonderful home for her family the past couple of years.

    ReplyDelete