Author: Robin Chartier

Yo Dinner!

Caleb loves sushi. He started eating it in Monterey when Josh and I would order it (we never ate sushi in 29 Palms — I didn’t trust the idea of raw fish in the middle of the desert) and always wanted me to buy the jumbo sushi platters from Trader Joe’s. Throw in his love of gouda and brie cheese and the kid has quite a unique palate. He discovered a new dimension to his sushi love when we went to Dubai and he saw Yo Sushi! a sushi-go-round restaurant where you pull the items you want off the conveyer belt. Ever since he found out there is one here in Bahrain, he has wanted to go. 

The different kinds of sushi are on different colored plates depending on price. Calvin is studying the menu’s pictures to see if he can identify the different rolls floating by. My favorite was probably the spicy tuna roll, followed by an inside out salmon roll, and an udon noodle soup. What I thought might be BBQ eel turned out to be deep fried salmon skin. It wasn’t my favorite. 

At the end of the meal, they tally up the different colored plates to determine the cost of our dinner. The rest of the kids will eat sushi, but they don’t get as excited about it as Caleb. Carter lives for miso soup and simple vegetarian rolls. Calvin skips the soup and goes for any roll as long as there isn’t fish on the outside — he doesn’t like the texture. Camille ate a bit of everything, including wasabi, and kept trying to push the button for the waitress (it was built into the counter in front of her). 

Sorting by color to figure out our total

A few last sips of miso soup

The end of last week (Wed/Thurs) Camille was still sick


(crashed in my lap)

So I ended up taking her to the doctor. Look at those sad, red rimmed eyes. 

Of course while we were waiting for the doctor, she perked right up and started playing with my phone. It always happens that way. 

Same kid as above, 30 minutes later. Right before the doctor came into the room. I’m the one with the tired eyes. Thankfully the doctor could hear she had crud in her chest and sinuses and since she’d already been sick for a week, gave me some antibiotics. 

3 days later (Sunday) she is begging for her bubble gum flavored medicine and happily plays with her dollhouse.

She’s trying to give Nana doll a bath

She still has a cruddy sounding cough, but is doing much better. 

What’s good for the goose is good for the gosling . . .

My adventures in animals and pharmaceuticals has continued this past week. Micah has been on an old-style antidepressant (TCA) that is approved for use in dogs, but isn’t used as often in people anymore (the newer SSRIs tend to be safer, more effective, less side effects, etc). He was doing much better on it, but was still a little twitchier than I’d like. For example, he would go in the crate and be be quiet while we were gone (HUGE improvement), but he wouldn’t eat any treats and when we’d let him out he’d go crazy with howling and vocalizing and just acting oddly in general.

From reading (God bless the internet) I found that many vets do prescribe and even recommend SSRIs over TCAs for dogs even though they haven’t been officially “approved” for use in dogs yet. (Prozac was recently relabeled for dogs and I’m sure the rest will follow eventually.) Since I’ve had great success with Zoloft, I decided to see if I could get some Zoloft for Micah. 
When we first put him on anxiety medication, we went round and round with the vet/pharmacy about a prescription. The vet ran out of the meds and was happy to write a prescription, but the US pharmacy required a prescription from a US vet. The base vet was happy to write a prescription, which I mailed in, only to have them tell me that because the vet photocopied it before adding her stamp, they wouldn’t accept it. Good grief. I just want some medicine for my crazy dog, please. When we lived in Egypt, you didn’t need a prescription for anything and could walk into any pharmacy and ask for what you wanted. The purpose of going to the doctor was so they could pull out their magic book and tell you what to ask for, since the names of the drugs over here are different. As a last ditch effort, I sent Josh to the pharmacy to see if we could get the medication without a prescription here. You might think I sent him because he speaks Arabic and can communicate with the pharmacist. That’s only partially true. Odds are the people working at the pharmacy are from India or the Philippines so while they speak English, Josh does much better with accent interpretation than I do. Combine their accent with my less than stellar hearing and they might as well be speaking Arabic. 
He came home with the drugs we needed, no prescription necessary. Happy day! When I switched Micah over, I had dreams of a perfectly relaxed dog, but for the first week it was like we took 10 steps backward. I think the one drug was leaving his system faster than the new drug was building up so it was like he was new to our house all over again. Every five seconds he was trying to chew up Camille’s toys, the boys’ shoes, Josh’s baseball glove (sorry, I didn’t tell you about that one yet — maybe we can get it fixed at the shoe repair place?), rolls of toilet paper . . . pretty much everything that didn’t belong to him. It was like he literally lost his mind (and was quickly causing me to lose mine!) But 10 days into the switch and I’m seeing good things: less freaking out when we get home, no more chewing of human toys and clothes, he’s not panicking every time we get in the car (pushing past us and refusing to get out of the back seat), and he seems generally at peace and about where he was on the old medicine. Since it usually takes 4-6 weeks for Zoloft to take full effect, I’m hoping he only gets better from here. Inshalla. 
PS: I did get sick and felt completely wrung out last night (wearing my green puffy jacket and 3 blankets when no one else in the house was cold was a big clue), but I think I’m past the worst of it. I should be better in time for another baseball double header tomorrow. Oh joy! 

wild kingdom

I have been bobbing and weaving, ducking and running, but I fear the plague that has struck our house this week is about to catch up with me. 7 days of children coughing in my face and snuggling their fevered bodies next to mine is my version of Russian roulette and I’m sensing that my luck has run out. So I’m hitting “publish” while the Motrin is still working and crossing my fingers that I wake up in the morning with an immune system that is ready to fight another day.  

The boys had a day off of school for The Prophet’s birthday (Mohammed) on Thursday so Josh took the day off and we went to the wildlife park. Our kids, attending the American school, don’t get Martin Luther King Jr or President’s Day or Memorial Day as holidays, but they get Eid al Adha, Ashoura, and National Day (the king’s birthday). It sounds rather unAmerican, until you realize that the school runs via local employees (bus drivers, janitors, cafeteria staff and other support staff) so they are required to give Bahraini/Muslim holidays. The school year would run year round if they also took American holidays so the result is that Josh and the kids never have the same days off.

Anyway, Josh took a day off so we could all do something together (Calvin was off at church camp so he’s not in any of the photos).

 
We realized after we arrived that it was the perfect day to go. Because of the holiday there were tons of families to watch which may have been even more interesting than the animals. 
 
Carter is pointing out how enormous the stone lion’s balls are. Seriously. It was quite a day for sex education (as you shall see). 

There are 2 parts to the park: The smaller pens that are on the main grounds and the bus tour that drives around a loop and passes by the animals in their “natural habitat.” They are fenced in, but in larger areas. We arrived just in time to catch the bus. 

I had more fun watching her than looking at the animals — she was so excited.

After we drove around for 20 minutes they let us out to explore the bird area.
 

Ducks! 
 



A little help!

Heading back to the bus.

After the bus portion of our visit, we headed around the park loop to check out the animals close up. 
A very pregnant camel. Not only was she bulging on both sides, but we could see the baby moving under her skin. I can’t imagine that being kicked by camel hooves would feel very good. 
 
When I saw these goats, I was really glad that I don’t have to carry around huge udders that drag almost to the ground (this goat at least had a little more clearance than some of the others). Carter thought these goats had even bigger balls than the stone lion until I pointed out that he was looking at nipples, not nuts.  
I wouldn’t call that wall much of a barrier between those sharp quills and a curious kid’s hand. I wonder how many people get quilled each year? 
There isn’t much for safety anywhere — either for the people or the animals. Some of the locals brought bags of bread and other scraps to feed the goats and I saw plenty of kids poking goats in the face. But to be real, it’s nice to enjoy something without the threat of a lawsuit sucking all the fun out of things. In an inshalla culture, you live at your own risk (at the privilege of Allah).
It looks like this woman is about to start reading to this curious guy
The goats had freaky alien eyes with rectangular pupils. When I first saw them I was afraid they were all inbred and genetically mutated. 
At least they had the cheetah behind glass, proving that someone is making decisions about safety


More sex ed — of the turtle kind.

Thankfully these ducks were fighters, not lovers (at least that’s what I think they were doing!)

Altogether, a really fun day. Animal sex and all.

the pants won

They were calling my name. I did the finishing (weaving in loose ends, making the ties, sewing down the pockets, etc) as I was uploading zoo videos to YouTube though, so I’m that much closer to getting the zoo post completed. (I added elastic to the waistband after this photo was taken). 

Since she’s sick, she was not a good model. She kept running away and wouldn’t hold still long enough to get them in focus. She likes them though. 

Even though she was sick, we had a really good day (or maybe our day was great because she was sick). We had to cancel our normal plans so we stayed home and snuggled under covers and watched our favorite shows on our respective screens. She multi tasked with her dolls while I multi tasked with my knitting and blog while Josie cleaned the house and did all the laundry. The best kind of sick day. 

This was last week’s project. It’s Camille sized too. 

I don’t have any new projects on the needles yet so I need to start browsing patterns and going through my yarn stash — after I post about the zoo. 

sidetracked

I have a blog post that I’ve been meaning to finish/put up for a few days now about our trip to the zoo, but every time I have a spare minute I’ve been working on these:


Yes, knit pants for Camille — with pockets.

Between knitting and 3 sick kids (although we might be adding #4 to the list since Caleb woke up with a runny nose this morning. We’ll see if the fever and horrible cough develop in the next 24 hours) I haven’t had time to go through my zoo photos and upload the videos I want to put with it. Maybe today. Camille woke up with round two of fever, but everyone else is back in school today so I should have plenty of time. Which means I also have time to finish her pants . . .

BTW, potty training is going very well. She is tic tac-ing her way out of diapers, a few drops of urine at a time. Any time she wants a candy (which is always as soon as she finishes the one in her mouth) she goes to her potty, wills out a microscopic bit, and collects her reward. I’m saving money on diapers, but I think I’m breaking even when I factor in the cost of tic tacs.