Only one week until our family moves again, but Camille decided she didn’t want to wait that long.
Our little girl is now mobile. Thankfully she’s not fast yet, but it’s coming. My sweet spot that occurs when baby can sit independently and play, but can’t move is rapidly disappearing.
It turns out that our girly LOVES lemons. We discovered this one day at a restaurant when she was being particularly screechy and grabbing at everything, including the lemon in my water. I gave up and said, “Fine. You want a lemon? Have at it.”
You would think she would do what normal babies do and make a face and spit it out, but no, she chowed down and came back for more.
Since then, if you’d let her, she’d eat lemons all day, every day. She’ll keep going until her mouth has a red ring around it from the acid and then I feel like a bad mom and try to give her something else instead.
Now we have a foolproof way to keep her quiet when we eat out. As long as the lemons last, we can eat in peace.
Well, as peaceful as dinner can be with 3 other boys at the table . . .
Today qualifies as both so we’re saying inside and keeping warm and dry in front of the fire.
I started packing (again) last night. After looking at the weather for this week (rain, rain and more rain) I realized I’d have no need for short sleeved shirts and lightweight skirts until we get to Oman, so I might as well get them out of my drawers.
9 days. I better start working on my lists . . .
Josh and I wanted to learn to make koshari (Egypt’s national dish) before we left Cairo, but obviously with our abrupt return to the states, that didn’t happen. We didn’t let that stop us though. I found a few recipes online and based on what we knew it should taste like, we put together our own recipe tonight.
Cooked short grain rice, lentils, macaroni, and chickpeas tossed with a little olive oil, salt and pepper. (The oil keeps the rice from sticking together.)
The tomato sauce starts with crushed minced garlic, red pepper flakes and cumin sauteed in a few tablespoons of oil. Then add tomato paste and incorporate the seasoned oil. Add water and salt and simmer until flavors have developed and the sauce is the consistency of pasta sauce.
Serve up a bowl of the pasta/rice/lentil mixture and top with a few spoonfuls of tomato sauce. Top with fried onions. The ones in the can are OK, but Josh was experimenting with frying our own onions and those were even better.
For a vegetable component Josh made a tomato cucumber salad. He added chopped parsley and mint to quartered cucumber and halved baby heirloom tomatoes. To finish, he tossed them with a little white balsamic vinegar and oil and seasoned with salt and pepper.
We can’t go to Egypt, but we brought Egypt to us!
Josh is out with Calvin at youth group . . .
the two boys are upstairs, IN BED, listening to an audio book (another great use for the Kindle) . . .
and the baby?
Shhhh . . . I’m witnessing a miraculous moment. I’m marking the date and time: 9:21 pm, March 18th. I’m WINNING. Take that, Charlie Sheen.
***this is not a picture of her sleeping at this moment, but I figured it was a close enough representation of the actual event.
(And yes, it was such a momentous occasion, I actually did take a picture of her napping yesterday, just to prove to myself that it happened.)