Happy Halloween!

We had a fun Halloween.  On Thursday night, the kids' school had the annual Fall Festival, which has a bunch of games and trick or treating in the hallways and pizza and a haunted house.  The kids love it so much that we were on our way to the Fall Festival after Lizzie's soccer and she said, "The Fall Festival is definitely the rose of my day!" Anyway, I didn't take any photos there that are worth posting so you don't get to see Tommy as Harry Potter (costume from Aunt Jan and Uncle Vyn) complete with a Snowy Owl (from Aunt Marilyn) as Hedwig.

On Friday (yesterday), we went to Tommy's first soccer game, and then we came home and carved pumpkins before meeting some friends to trick or treat in our complex.  It was really fun and despite the fact that some people gave out weird things (potato chips, a cookie) it felt very similar to trick or treating in the US.  The kids LOVED it.

We went in a group with three Queen Elsas but - again - I didn't get a good photo.  I TOLD Eli we should all four go as Queen Elsa, but he declined.  I think Tommy would have also been a hard sell.

I lied:  here's one of T in his HP robes.  He's with a good friend of his - who is also missing her two front teeth.

Queen Elsa is getting dressed - but check out Eli's pumpkin carving skills.  

The rest of my family carved pumpkins while I finished reading P&P for the fiftieth time.  
To be honest, this scene ended with just Eli at the table, carving. 

While we trick or treated, we ran into friends from Lizzie's class.  Here are two Elsas.

I'm sorry this photo is so horrible -- but here are two Elsas with one toy poodle puppy called Princess.  She is adorbs.

Tofu

On Friday, we had a long day and by the end of it, Lizzie was beat (and, I think, very hungry).  So when Eli announced that we were having tofu tacos for dinner she screamed, "EVERY NIGHT TOFU.  OH MY GOD!"  (To be fair to her, we had tofu twice during the previous week and we usually have it only once.)

It was really rude (and she was really mad and laughing at her when she's mad is almost always a horrible idea), so Eli and I both tried hard not to laugh as we suggested that she could use her manners next time.  We offered her a bowl of peppers and she settled herself on the floor to eat them.  About five minutes later, she knocked the bowl over and SWORE so we yet again had to try not to laugh and convince her to listen to us despite her hunger and exhaustion.

So you know the ending:  after a heated negotiation, she ate five pieces of tofu (but only because Eli cut them smaller than I do) and we were confident that she went to bed with some healthy food in her tummy.

Testing

This year, Tommy is in second grade and so has begun to have tests.  He has biweekly spelling tests, and a math test at the end of each unit.  Apparently, this means he thinks we should all be taking tests, because on Friday he decided to test me on Ninja weapons and carefully wrote this exam.  He promised me that if I studied, I would earn 200% (I chose not to wonder about his math abilities at this point and just have fun).

See the part where I try to get extra credit?

PS:  I know that we both misspelled Samurai.  Embarrassing. 

Soccer (Lulu)

Tommy is not the only one doing soccer this year.  Lizzie is doing a very pricey program through Arsenal.  She is really good at some parts of it, but not really the "playing soccer" parts.  (She excels at running fast and "Japanese" running (which is actually high knees).)

Not sure why she's holding her braids.

Adjusting her ball with her hands.  Sigh.

IPads are better than soccer, did you know?  This little girl is one of her best friends, and the little boys are in her class as well.

Is this photo less cute if you know that Lulu is just trying to maintain her view of the iPad?

Two front teeth

One member of our family is missing two front teeth.  Luckily, he can still talk without a strange s-less accent.  He is thrilled, and now 6 rial richer.

Pumpkins in Muscat

On Monday while I was at our local grocery store, I noticed a nice display of pumpkins.  On my walk home, I decided to take the kids over there after school to pick out jack-o-lantern pumpkins.  Exciting fun for all of us!

I didn't dress them matchy matchy on purpose.

But as you can see above, I bought the most expensive pumpkin in the whole wide world.  Want to know in dollars what I spent on this smallish pumpkin? $15.  And let me tell you this.  One of them in the display was already rotting.  (Not this one.)  A nice British lady told me to go to the fruit and vegetable market - "they won't be orange, they'll be pink, but you'll pay 100 baisa per kilo" (for those curious, there are 1000 baisa in one rial).

I am certain I can talk Lizzie into pink pumpkins.

Coming up in my next  blog post:  how much I pay for sweet potatoes.  (Not really.  But I do pay a lot for sweet potatoes.)

The downside to TED talks

I listen to TED talks quite a lot.  I try to branch out with my podcasts - but mostly, I just love TED talks and best of all I love the TED radio hour (though I also spend as much time as possible listening to This American Life, and now I loooove the new one, Serial).  But do you know what? TED talks often make me feel inadequate and unsuccessful.  I heard one this morning about a doctor who quit his job at UCSF and went to Somalia and then another country in Africa.  He worked mostly on containing and eradicating typhoid and cholera outbreaks.  Then, tired of that, and ready to live somewhere with running water and thermostats, he moved back to the US and decided that gun violence should be treated like an epidemic and has done some impressive work to stop it.

And what am I doing? Compared to that guy, I am doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.  It is more than a bit discouraging.  So then I have little pep talks with myself about raising my kids and feeding them healthy food and how much I love and like my husband and that I am happy in my life.  And, hey, maybe Lizzie (or Tommy) is going to do enough to help people who need help that I don't actually need to.

But did my parents raise me for my output to be two happy and successful people (and I fully recognize that we are nowhere near being able to put my children in the 'happy' and 'successful' columns though at this moment in time they are both)???  No, they most certainly thought I would do something - anything! - in my own right, completely separate from my littles.

Would you call this a midlife crisis?  Or is just this an inability to appreciate and revel in my life as it is here and now?

Another TED talk lady perked me up a bit yesterday when she said that telling people to follow their passion is stupid:  the few people that have identifiable, honest-to-God passions are definitely following them, and the rest of us just feel disappointed that we don't have a passion to pursue, or confused.  She suggests that we all follow our curiosities.  And that, my friends, is most definitely what I do.  Maybe, for now, it's enough. 

How to improve roads in the Sultanate

I think about blogging often, usually while I'm driving, but my time at home this autumn has been relatively scarce.  This is in part because I'm going to some new exercise classes and am room mom for Tommy's class, but is mostly due to my children's schedules.  I drive around Muscat a lot, and on many days a little something extra is thrown in like Tommy having a sore tooth/gum and the resulting trip to the dentist.  (Today at the dentist, Tommy got to see the diamond burrs [drill bits] and explained that he already know how hard tooth enamel is because "sometimes people kill other people by putting them in sulphuric acid, and everything disappears but the teeth."  I bought him the book from which he learned that nice fact.)

Anyway, for the past two days, driving has been especially dangerous and here is what must be done.  It's drastic, but required:  The Sultanate should make illegal all Lexus sedans and Dodge Chargers.  These cars are favored by young men who are normally driving much more like someone playing a video game than driving on roads shared by other living beings.  (Of course I know they will procure other - equally fast - cars.  I'm kidding.  But sort of not.)

I'm sorry about the blog this week.  I have so many things to say but apparently not nearly enough time to say them (those of you who know me -- all of you -- know that's not true as I talk all the time).

Scenes from Fall Break in Muscat

Scenes from the backseat.  Lizzie conks out in the car very quickly and easily, and her brother is usually in the backseat reading (although he normally wears a shirt; I'm not sure what's going on here).

A Queen, by Lulu.  We are doing A LOT of art these days.

We joined a hotel pool and have been having lots of fun there.

Causing a traffic jam while walking to the movie theatre.

Look who learned to spell and write her full name over the break.

On having thick skin

Tommy and I were talking about his first football practice, and he complained that it made him upset when the other team (so half of his own teammates) won the scrimmage.  And I said, "well, honey, you're going to have to get some thicker skin, because those are guys that you want to be good players because they are on your team!" His retort:  "I DO have thick skin!  It's thicker than 15 sheets of paper!!"

Eid Mubarak

On Saturday, the actual Eid holiday, we went to Sifah beach.  Tommy has been asking to go since we returned to Muscat in August, but I have been worried that it is too hot and reluctant to deal with the mess that a beach trip inevitably creates (so. much. sand.).  But on Saturday, Tommy asked to go to Sifah again and Eli and I decided we would go after lunch so we would miss the mid-day heat.

And it was lovely.  I had forgotten how beautiful and amazing it is there.

 We left the beach about 5:30 and as we drove through a couple of villages on the way home, we saw ladies dressed in their finest.  One thing that most people don't know is that traditional Omani dress for women is not the abaya.  They are covered, but their clothes are typically (this is a generalization as it varies regionally) brightly colored.  Eli took some photos for me - but it wasn't totally comfortable feeling as we didn't ask the ladies for permission.

Thoughts on Screens

Tommy has a new friend who has his own iPad (and iPhone) and is allowed to play it whenever he wants, pretty much.  Of course this has led to a difficult parenting situation.  Tommy has been allowed screen time (television, iPad) on weekends only since I quit working in DC when he was two.  (Before I stopped working, he watched Sesame Street while I showered each morning because before we instituted that system, I peeked out of the shower one morning and saw him running past the bathroom door while carrying a lightbulb.  It took me about two seconds to realize I had to jump out and get it from him, and during those seconds, I decided that ten minutes of Sesame Street each day wasn't going to kill him and indeed, it was on Sesame Street that he learned the word 'stumble' which he immediately added to his vocabulary and used appropriately and often.)

And until this summer, when he was introduced to Minecraft by his cousins, we were rolling along just fine with our screen time limits.  He and his sister loved the weekends because they could watch some TV and play some iPad, and I felt virtuous as I watched them play Lego and kitties and babies and do puzzles and art projects all week long (and plenty of time on the weekend as well).

But WOW does my kid love Minecraft.  And his new friend has introduced him to another game that he loves as well, called Terreria.  You guys, I can't even operate these games (remember, I'm not even on Facebook).  All I do is go onto Common Sense Media and read what other parents have to say, and then ask Eli to check out the games (thank God for Eli, yet again).  And the reviews are quite confusing:  one mother wrote that her child built a calculator in Minecraft.  What?  How?  All I hear about are diamond swords and other weapons.  But hey, building a calculator sounds good to me.  Maybe this afternoon when he's having iPad time, I'll casually suggest that he lay off the weapon building (finding? earning?) and create a calculator or a fighter jet.  Will he laugh at me?  (Probably not, because he's sweet.)

So back to my parenting dilemma.  Tommy doesn't understand why his friend lucked out (both with his own iPad, and with parents who are generous with screen time), and I am unwilling to change my views on screen time despite knowing many lovely children including Tommy's new friend for whom fairly unlimited screen time seems to have no ill-effect.  (However, while Eli and I were still working on these rules, I read this article which reinforced my resolve.)  I am perfectly aware that we need to be mindful of the possibility of creating a person who, when he goes away to college, skips all his classes so he can spent all day playing video games.  Some balance seems essential here.  But, Tommy has long days at school (8:30-3:30, but he's not home until 4:30), and on two days, he has ultra-long days - on Wednesdays we don't get home until 7pm after soccer practice.  Frankly, given the fact that he has to read and do homework every night, there's not much time for screens during the week.  And while I suppose I could let them play iPad in the car, they are content to read the books that I rotate in and out of the backseat so why would I replace reading time with iPads??  That just seems crazy, doesn't it?

For the moment, we are allowing iPads in the morning after Tommy has eaten breakfast, packed his backpack, brushed his teeth, dressed himself and cleared his breakfast dishes (and finished his homework the night before).  This equals about 20 minutes of iPad time in the morning, and I think we are all somewhat comfortable with this system, for now.  (Of course, it creates the problem of his sister, who also requires iPad time if Tommy gets it, and who is just four and less able to detach from the iPad when I announce that it is time to get in the car.)  As with every aspect of parenting, I am sure this will evolve.

A couple of days ago, my friend Amy sent this article to me, and it made me feel better.  READ IT if you feel in any way like I do about screen time.  It's comforting.  Good luck, my friends.

Tea Parties

Somebody had to renew her passport - see the photo? It's cute.

So my daughter is desperate to have a tea party.  It was all my idea -- I was trying to get her and her eco-plastic tea set away from my sink during dinner prep time and I threw out the idea.  "Listen, if you can tidy this up now and go read a book, we'll have a proper tea party with your friends one day!"  She looked at me with big eyes, processing the idea, and then enthusiastically agreed.

The next day (yesterday), she came home and demanded to know when the tea party will be taking place.  "We haven't even invited anyone yet, honey" I explained.  "YES I HAVE, Mommy!  I invited Lara and Aberly and Felix and Noah and Gabby!"  So there's that.

The tea party is mostly what you would expect - a tea set with some water in the tea pot and some fake food from her play kitchen.  However, in Lizzie's version, the food is served on a yoga block.  I have given up putting them away because every time a friend comes over, she "needs" them.

***
One more cute Lulu story:  we were driving yesterday and both kids have stuffy noses and Tommy was telling me that he either has "a virus or a bacteria" and Lulu interrupted and said, "what is a virus, Mommy?  Tell me all about it, okay?"