Lizzie's Seventh Birthday!

Because I have months of blog catch up, these photos are of both Lizzie's birthday party, which was at her gymnastics center, and her birthday. I absolutely love the Little Gym, and am so impressed with the people who run it and who teach. So I was happy to support them by having her birthday party there (although when I booked it, I thought I was going to be packing up my house in December and therefore was looking for an easy option), and they really didn't disappoint. We had such a fun afternoon.

This photo still makes me laugh.  The cake was included in the party package,
and they told me to send a photo of her to put on it.  So I did :)

These photos are of her actual birthday, which was a busy day but still fun. We baked cupcakes for her class. Then, we had pizza for dinner at her request, and I baked her favorite chocolate cake (which is from the Cook's Illustrated cookbook we received for our wedding and which is one of the best gifts I have ever received). Her big excitement was doing the birthday interview this year, because one of the questions is "what has been your biggest accomplishment of the last year?" and OH MY GOSH did Lizzie have a lot of big accomplishments. She learned to properly read, she learned to ride a bicycle and she MOSTLY stopped sucking her thumb. Needless to say, the rest of us are incredibly proud of her.

Autumn Dubai Trip

Over Thanksgiving, we went to Dubai for a long weekend. We had a lovely time and did a lot of relaxing which one of us (ahem, Eli) really needed. The kids are basically so spoiled by Dubai now that staying at the hotel and swimming in the pool is "boring", but we managed to keep away from the waterparks. Don't you feel so badly for the kids? I do not. They had fun and they got ice cream (see below).

Lizzie (with a bit of Tommy)

I have to say that my children are at their best ages ever.  I love them both so much right now and am forever delighted by the things they say to me.  But something about my daughter's age/development is SO fun.  She is working to figure out the world.  Which results in questions such as:

"Dada, which pedal makes the car go, and which one makes it stop?"
"Mom, how does a bullet actually kill you? Like, how does it work?"
"Mama, what does "male" mean?"  Following up:  "And does female mean woman?"
"Mom, what happens when food goes down the wrong pipe?"

L:  "How old is Grandpa?"

Me:  "Which one? Actually, it doesn't matter.  They're the same.  They're 74."

L:  "WHAT? [I braced myself for a comment about how very old that is] They're the same?!? How come Grandpa Ollie is so tall?"

We went to a friend's house recently to confirm Lizzie's cat allergy and she definitely has one.  I think we shall look for a dog when we next move.  She is very sad as she envisioned a kitty...

T:  "I saw somebody ate one of my Hershey's kisses from my secret stash."
Me:  "Well, I don't know where it is, so you know I didn't."
T:  "I know.  Only LIZZIE knows."
L:  half-hearted denials, with a huge smile on her face

While riding in the car:

T:  "I'm the awesomest person in our family."
L:  "No, you're not!"
T:  "Well, who is then?
L:  "Dad!"
[Me:  loudly laughing]
T:  "Actually, Mom is because she takes care of us."
Me:  "You're diplomatic as usual, Tommy.  You'll work in foreign policy."
T:  "Noooo, a career in politics is my worst nightmare, especially now that Trump is elected."


Tommy loses his things at an alarming rate.  Now that he is on swim team he has even more opportunities to shed his belongings as he moves through school.  We talk a lot about strategies for remembering them, and to be fair, he's really trying.  But just before break, he left his goggles at swimming and I asked him to look for them.  After he left for school with Eli, Eli said to Tommy, "What are you going to look for when you get to school?"  Tommy looked confused and punted:  "Swim bag?"  And Lulu said in an exasperated tone, "GOGGLES."

Helloooooooo

Friends.  I'm so sorry.  Two things have happened since my last post.  First, I got an instagram account.  (Actually, it happened over the summer.)  Now, I post photos there and get the same sense of accomplishment for much less effort than a blog post.  Second, I became super busy.  Or wait, was I super busy before?  I don't know.  But the last two weeks of my life have been some of the most crazy EVER.

However.  We are all just fine here.  The kids had their last day of school until the new year on Thursday.  Lizzie turned seven on Wednesday.   She had a fun birthday party in early December (I booked it when I thought we were moving at Christmas).  We went to Dubai over Thanksgiving.  Our dear friends are moving so we've had lots of goodbye parties to attend, as well as holiday parties.  Eli's team put on a big Bollywood dance at their holiday party.  (They were very good.)  Lots of great things are happening, just not blog posts.  I shall catch up very soon, I promise.

Happy Holidays!!! xxx

It's all my fault

So first let me say that I am clearly out of touch with America.  And this is interesting given that all I do all day long is listen to podcasts, mostly news-based and one specifically about politics.  I've walked around all day feeling like the wind has been knocked out of me.  I am truly shocked that for the next four years, we will have a "President Trump" as our leader.  Is this because I live under a rock (or in a desert far away from my country)?  Is this because Trump supporters are cowards and didn't admit that they planned to vote for a racist misogynist?  I don't know.  (What I do know is that I am impressed by how all the NPR politics people managed to not sound depressed on today's podcast.)

This morning, when I cried in front of all my Omani friends in my exercise class (Pennsylvania had turned pink), I had the realization that none of them get to vote for anyone.  (And tomorrow when I have calmed down a bit, I will know that it's better to have an electorate that can and does elect Trump, than not to have democracy.  Today I am unsure.)

Anyway, back to why it's all my fault.  I decided about two weeks ago that I would make a shirt for Lulu to wear today.  It seemed to me that we should celebrate my daughter having a life during which she couldn't meaningfully remember a time when a woman couldn't be the President of the United States.  So, I made her this t-shirt.  I am not a crafty person, so this took a bit of effort on my part, and you can see that the lines aren't really straight.  But I did it.

And in making this t-shirt, I jinxed HRC.  That's why it's all my fault.  I am SO SORRY.

And one more thing: Eli's job has been extended and we are now planning to be in Muscat until the end of the school year! It's your last chance to come visit us.

Halloween

I used to go to the Fruit and Vegetable market weekly, or every ten days.  But it's a challenge to go - parking can be hard and it's not quite as close as Carrefour - so I haven't been since we returned from summer.

However.  When it comes to Halloween, I have to go because orange pumpkins are so expensive here.  So in the midst of working on Fall Festival decorations, I headed over to the market last week.  I hesitated, and actually asked Eli whether he thought the kids would notice.  "I think you should get them" he texted back, and so off I went.

I went up the rows of produce looking for the best pumpkins, and decided that a particular pile looked promising.  A bunch of men were shopping at the same vendor, and took it upon themselves to ensure that I received the best quality produce.  When I pointed at a pumpkin (chosen for shape, of course), it was passed to me and rejected by my friends, which led to me googling "jack-o-lantern" and showing all of them what I was doing with the pumpkin.  They mostly smiled but I'm sure they couldn't believe that I intended use my pumpkin as a decoration.  One of them still helped me carry all my pumpkins to the car, which was nice.

When the kids got home, they were cranky until they spotted the pumpkins on the counter:  "LIZZIE!! SHE GOT THE PUMPKINS!!"  So I felt that the whole trip (which was perfectly pleasant) was really worth it.

They designed their own jack-o-lanterns this year.

The story of my MRI

I told Eli that my blog posts are painfully uninspired and that I suppose if I wrote one daily like I did in the early London days, I'd be better.  Stretching the muscle and all that.  It takes a lot after living in Oman for nearly four years (!) to make me stop and shake my head but I had a head-shaking experience a couple of weeks ago that's worthy of an attempt at a post.

I've been having shoulder pain for the past four months and while I was in the US, it became worse.  I think I injured it upon arrival at baggage claim, and then I ran all summer instead of really using it.  My physical therapist (a lovely British woman) was shocked at how much movement I'd lost since early June.  She proclaimed my impingement issue solved (because I religiously did my exercises over the summer), but said that I was now presented with capsulitis, aka "frozen shoulder".  I've been seeing her twice a week for sessions which are fairly painful as she bends and stretches my shoulder in directions it has no interest in moving.  Some days it feels like things are improving but other days it definitely does not.

Anyway, two weeks ago she suggested that I get an MRI.  Her clinic doesn't have the machine, so she suggested I go to a clinic called Al Afaq, because it's the cheapest shoulder MRI around (95 rial versus 120).  It probably seems stupid to shop for a bargain on an MRI, BUT we are paying our healthcare costs until we meet our deductible. (I would love to explain how our insurance works but I don't understand it despite my best attempt - and once I was so frustrated about this that I actually wept.)

I had a sense that I wouldn't enjoy having an MRI, but on television they don't look so awful.  So I agreed to go but made the appointment a week in the future.  Here, if you need an MRI you call and basically go get an MRI that day or the next.  So this was a delay tactic on my part.

I arrived at the clinic - and I use that term loosely because it was actually a couple of rooms with four people in them:  two Omani ladies, one doctor and one technician.  The receptionists had enough English between them to check me in, until we got to the question about if I'd had surgery before and if I had any metals in my body.  Commence very awkward conversation about IUD.  (Is that metal?!  And, I didn't even think about my dental fillings until I was already in the tomb.)

Following this conversation, they put me into a changing room and handed me a garment that I could not fit over my head.  I kept removing it and looking for the fastener (recognizing that it could not be a zipper or a snap), finally put my clothes back on, went out and told them I couldn't fit the dress over my head.  I was embarrassed, but they didn't seem surprised and went and got me another one, which I mercifully got on with a fairly strong tug.

When I entered the room with the imaging machine, I was relieved because it's what they call an "open" MRI.  Let me just say that this is bullshit.  It appears to be open.  But they made me lay down with my right shoulder (that's not the MRI shoulder) closest to the machine.  I kept saying, "no, it's my left shoulder, shouldn't I lay the other direction?" and they kept nodding at me and telling me to lay down.  At which point it dawned on me that I was going to be deep inside the machine even if it wasn't a tunnel.

So I decided to close my eyes the entire time.

They got me situated, I asked about forty thousand questions ("if I have to push the button and stop, do we have to start from the very beginning?"  "How many sequences will you do?"); they told me not to breath too deeply and they slid me into the machine, and also up toward the top of it so I was snug as a bug.  (It turns out I may present with mild claustrophobia; but then again, would anybody find this enjoyable?)

It was every bit as terrible as I thought it might be -- it is SO loud and the noise is unpredictable and startling at times,  and it lasted forever (I think only 40 minutes in the end).  When he finally came in my ear and said it was over, I allowed myself to open my eyes and found it difficult to wait the five seconds until they slid me out.

After I got dressed (was needlessly worried about getting the dress thing off; I managed to get it over my apparently large head on the first try), I went out to pay and was informed that I needed to use cash.  Sigh.

The good news is that nothing too terrible is wrong with my shoulder and PT should resolve my capsulitis.  And now I have the rest of my life to dread MRIs.