Self-assessment

Sometimes what I think about myself isn’t very accurate. Sometimes I think I’m not bothered by things when I really am. Like all the calls I’ve been getting from Creepy Guy. I mean, I knew it was bothering me, I just didn’t realize how much until I was sitting by the landline phone yesterday and jumped when it rang. And then I refused to pick it up…even though I was sitting right there.

Rachel’s 2-year check-up

We finally took Rachel into the doctor today. It’s been quite a while since she’s had a check-up, considering her last check-up was on July 21, 2008. We just hadn’t been satisfied with the pediatricians we’ve met here.

Baby Pool

With only 28 days until our baby is due, I thought it would be a good time to open up a baby pool. Not that we have any cool prizes or anything, but maybe* we’ll pick something  up (ie: random piece of tourist hud) for the winner at the Khan.

Feel free to leave a guess about Miriam’s arrival in a comment:

• Date
• Time
• Length
• Weight

Our estimated due date is October 27th.**

I’m looking forward to seeing Andrew’s guess. When Rachel was born he made up the birth announcement in advance and his filler text was almost spot on. Seriously. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with this time!

* We reserve the right to renege on a prize if we forget, which is likely.
**Also, anyone who guesses too far into November will be shunned for an indeterminate amount of time.

It's all your fault I screen my phone calls

I just input the first number, of many, I'm sure, to the "screen list" on my phone. And in the last two minutes I've had two missed calls from this number. Make that four.

This is definitely a feature I like.

To make a long story short (because I think we've had enough long stories recently)...

Cairo Zoo

“What are we going to do today, Mommy?” Rachel asked while climbing onto our bed. “Where are we going?”

“I don’t know,” I answered.

It’s not like we do something thrilling everyday. Sometimes we don’t even leave the house. I don’t know what she was expecting, really.

“Why don’t we go to the Z-O-O today?” Andrew spelled.

“I guess we could do that,” I said, “We’ve been meaning to take her for a while. She’d probably like that. And you know that when you spell Z-O-O it doesn’t do much to disguise the word. I don’t think she even knows what a zoo is, anyway.”

“Yeah! I do! Zoos has lions and ‘nakes!” Rachel said defensively.

Andrew reminded me that there is a 5-minute zoo show on her Little People DVD. I forgot. Oops.

And that is how we decided to go to the zoo.

Hairy fruit, hairy Daddy, hairy birds

Someone needs to follow this girl around with a tape recorder. Seriously. She's a hoot.

We had pancakes for dinner to celebrate National Pancake Day, complete with real maple syrup, whipped cream, and fruit. If Andrew was in your family, you'd celebrate the holiday, too. He even has Rachel trained--she was jumping up and down with joy when we told her it was Pancake Day.

Andrew made the pancakes and put me in charge of the fruit. While I was preparing the fruit Rachel was hovering, which is not at all unusual. She's usually hovering around me. Ideally (at least by her ideals) she'd be physically touching me every minute of every day.

I was peeling kiwi fruit, a rare treat for us since it is usually too expensive to buy but was super on sale at Seoudi Market today, and Rachel was especially curious about it.

Nothin’

Last week Rachel had to use the potty during sacrament meeting, so I took her out and into the little bathroom in the hallway. The first thing she did was pull a chin-up on the sink so she could check out the soap.

“Nothin’ purple soap here!” she exclaimed, “Just ‘reen soap. I don’t like ‘reen soap.”

I told her how cool green soap was and after that failed I tried the mean-mom method and said that it didn’t matter if she didn’t like it because I wasn’t going to take her upstairs to use the purple soap.

Flashback Friday: There was a great big moose

Rachel and I were reading Colours the other day, a Canadian book showing colourful Canadian things, like a red Mountie jacket, for example. For the colour yellow, the author/illustrator, Marc Tetro, chose to draw a moose with yellow antlers, even though moose don’t really have yellow antlers. I guess he gets artistic license.

When I asked Rachel what the picture was she told me it was a deer. I told her that it wasn’t a deer—it was a moose. She asked me what a moose was, so I told her it was kind of a like a deer, only bigger, and its antlers were special because they were all filled in, like a spork instead of a fork. Then she asked me if I had ever seen a moose.

I was able to tell her that I have, and on more than one occasion.

In which Rachel invents the sleepover

Yesterday Rachel found a toy that has been buried at the bottom of the toy box for a while. It’s technically a door-hanging, I think, and she got it from Grandma—it’s a little pink pillow with a fluffy handle that came with the movie Sleeping Beauty. Rachel uses it as both a pillow and a purse. It’s precious to her.

When she found it she started making big plans for a celebratory event.

“I want to go to have a party!” she declared, “Everyone eats cake, plays with my toys, goes outsides, and brings a pillow!”

“What are you going to do with the pillows?” I asked.

“Sleep with them! It’s a sleep-party. We all bring pillows and sleep!”

Not good for bearing sons

Our landlord was supposed to come by last night at around 8:00 PM  to fix our satellite, again. We haven’t had television for a while now; I can’t remember when it stopped working, exactly, and we haven’t bothered to get it fixed because we don’t watch all that much TV.

Still, it’s nice to have it working, so we mentioned it to Hatim when he stopped by the night before to pick up our rent money.

He was surprised that Rachel was still awake; she’s usually already in bed when he stops by. That’s because he has this habit of stopping by really, really late at night.