Month: January 2012

a taste of what’s to come

As I sink into the beanbag in front of the TV, getting all cozied up to watch the newest episode of Downton Abbey (Masterpiece Classic, PBS — period piece awesomeness that is not about urban nuns), Girly spies the cappuccino in my hand and runs over for her share. At $4.50 a pop, I really shouldn’t be drinking these as often as I do, but since I’m still in the “oh, it’s all Monopoly money anyway” zone, I happily hand over my multicolored bills without counting the actual cost. And from the look of things, it’s soon going to get a lot more expensive.

She used to be content with spoonfuls of foam off the top. Then she moved on to little sips. Today she took over my cup and finished off the bottom third.

It appears that in addition to a sophisticated palate, baby girl also has good taste in TV. If she’s enjoying Downton Abbey, she might almost be ready for a little Colin Firth. 
Now we just have to figure out how to fund an extra coffee for the next 17 years.

stars

This was one of those days when I kept wishing I had my camera and then at the end I remembered that I have a camera on my phone that I use all the time (good grief), so I  snapped a few shots before the sun went down. Some of the photos are blurry, but they’re better than nothing and simply describing it wouldn’t do this beach justice.

His last day in Oman my dad wanted to go down to the beach and walk along the water at low tide. He and my mom had been a few days earlier and found a bunch of starfish. I was skeptical because I’ve lived here for 9 months and have never seen a starfish, but the beach here is beautiful, so off we went. My dad, ever the gamer, wanted everyone to place bets on how many starfish we’d find. I said, “zero” and my mom optimistically guessed, “15.”


I guess it would be pretty ironic if I found the first starfish, huh? Good thing I love irony.

To say that we found some starfish would be an understatement. Lets just say that I stopped paying attention to the tally after we entered the 40s. I’m sure we were well over 100 by the time the boys quit.

They were all around this size or a little larger and they were all alive — those little hairs on their underside were wiggling away. The boys got to use their starfish joke on Nana and Papa where they ask you to touch the center of of the starfish and then yell, “you just touched its butt!” (They learned that at the Monterey Aquarium.)

I don’t know why I thought Camille would walk along the water like the rest of us. Instead she kept charging into the water. Josh ended up having to bring me a change of clothes for her when he came to meet us for dinner.


Racing down the beach — Camille was left in the dust

Winter weekends at the beach are gorgeous. Omani families all come out and set up their charcoal grills, play soccer on the sand, and picnic all afternoon.

After we had our fill of starfish, we headed to this beachside restaurant for dinner (the site of the unfortunate corn-up-the-nose incident).

ladylike

So my little darling has decided that it’s fun to stick things up her nose and in her ears. I swear the boys never did this. Sure they stuck their fingers up their noses (and still do) and one proudly declared that his boogers were yummy because they tasted salty, but this foreign object thing up the nose is freaking me out.

First was the broken off lead from a colored pencil. She went up to Lucy and pointed at her nose a few times, saying something urgent in her baby gibberish. Then she sneezed and the pointy green tip of a pencil came flying out. Lucy saved it to show me.

Then the other night we were out at a restaurant and she snagged a kernel of corn from the salad and instead of putting it in her mouth, shoved it up one nostril. It was totally classy the way Josh had her in his lap, turned upside down, trying to peer up her nose. He thought maybe I was imagining things because he couldn’t see anything, but I insisted that the corn left her hand and disappeared up her nose. He managed to massage it down and then picked it out with the tines of a fork. Like I said, totally classy.

Yesterday it was a tic-tac. I would have thought that tic-tacs were too yummy to waste on a nose, but she ate one half and shoved the other half up her nose. A two for one, I guess. This time a pocketknife set of tweezers came to the rescue.

Finally, today we were eating lunch and I look over to see her grinning and trying to shove bits of steak up her nose. Why?! She thought it tasted so good that her other orifices would enjoy it too? Or maybe she’s realized that every girl needs a purse and has created one out of those handy little pockets in her face? Whatever the reason, I’m sure it’s going to end up in an all-expense paid trip to Muscat Private hospital one of these days.

Until then I’ve been preparing by googling home remedies for “object stuck up baby’s nose” — supposedly closing off the unaffected nostril, sealing your mouth over baby’s, and blowing hard to force the object out is the way to go. I guess that will have to do until she figures out that treasures come out of the nose, they don’t go in.

walk, walk, walk

The other day while I was lost in the land of Sick, my parents took Camille out to explore the neighborhood. I’m slowly feeling better by the way — I finally caved and got some antibiotics so I’m hoping the drugs will have started to work their magic by morning.

I’d say she’s excited, wouldn’t you? Check out her adorable pink Mary Jane crocs. She needed some new shoes so we went to buy her crocs that would be easy to get on and off. The boys found this pink pair, but trying to go with something a little more gender neutral, I picked out a blue pair. As I was trying to put the blue shoes on her feet, she started kicking her legs trying to keep the horrible blue shoes off of her body. Then she promptly shoved her feet into the pink ones. Okay then.

Back to the walk. Dad wore her in the Ergo and she may have been extra excited because the previous two times he took her out in the Ergo they went to Baskin-Robin’s and she got an ice cream cone. I don’t remember getting all these treats when I was growing up . . . hmm. 
This time mom and dad walked her around until she fell asleep. Then they brought her home, handed her off to Lucy and then went for a run on the beach (which is only about a mile away). I woke up later in the day to find out that life had gone on just fine without me. Who needs mom when there are grandparents and Lucy around?
‘m

sick Robin = no blogging

I have been knocked down, run over, and stomped on by a nasty cold/sinus infection. I blame a rogue amoeba from the wadi water that made a home in my sinuses because I woke up with the beginnings of this plague the very next day.

I’ve been 1/2 functioning all week, but the last 2 days I have completely lost my voice and have had to lie low. Because my brain has been fuzzy I haven’t been capable of putting 2 sentences together on my blog either. Lucy has been feeding me all these herbal remedies — her ginger tea spiked with hot pepper, ginger with salt, and today she brought something that she said was the fermented juice of the cashew fruit, added it to the tea and had me drink it. It tasted like ginger laced vodka and it burned going down. So far pink elephants aren’t flying around the room, but I’m not certain they aren’t going to start.

On the bright side, I found a website that streams a continual loop of old Judge Judy episodes so I’m tucked in bed with the sweet sounds of courtroom drama sending me to dreamland . . .