Music Time

Grandpa gave Leila a Fisher Price mini piano for Christmas which she loved; leading to us half dismantling it so that we could fit it into a suitcase and bring it back to Cairo with us!

At first Leila just loved hitting the keys (which light up as well as play a note) and leaning over the 'music stand' to play with the various levers and switches on the top.  Then she found out that Fang could play (!) and would often grab him, bring him to us and get us to hold Fang at the keyboard so that he could plonk away making a racket!

Her latest thing though is 'sitting' at the piano to play.  She has found that the little wooden toy box we bought her in the summer is the perfect height for her to sit on at the moment and so she will pick it up and bring it to the piano to sit on.

'Smile!'

Taxi

We discovered the book, Taxi by Khaled El Khamisi in Adam bookstore in the Grand Mall when we first moved to Cairo and loved it.  Reading it, we felt that we had a little peak at the life of real Egyptians in Cairo and that this was something we definitely wanted to find out more about and be a part of.  It inspired me to start my quest to read translated Arabic fiction, old and new, to gain insight into the culture of this amazing region.

So when a colleague mentioned to Scott on the bus that he was putting on an adaptation of the book we were really excited and didn’t want to miss the opportunity of seeing it.  As luck would have it the performances were on around the time of my birthday, so this made us double our resolve to go.  We booked Ella to come for the evening to babysit Leila and were excited to be going out downtown – something we’ve not done for a very long time (revolution, Leila etc altering our energy levels and social life!)

The staging was very interesting, as it was performed in a venue that is essentially a bar with a stage.  Just over half of the scenes took place on the stage, but actors mingled with the crowd and performed scenes on the bar itself and at the back of the room, so the audience was constantly looking for the next scene and moving around the space.  The piece was performed in short sketches, which is actually as the book was written; short anecdotes being told to taxi drivers, and there were a series of short intervals (to allow us time at the bar!), rather than a single long one.

We felt that some of the scenes ‘worked’ and that others didn’t work so well.  The style of the performance was quite melodramatic which we think was a directing decision to fill the performance space rather than an indication of the newly-formed nature of this theatre company (who was called ‘1000 tongues’ because all of their productions will be staged in both English and Arabic – pretty impressive!)

Overall though we enjoyed the show and were pleased that we got (out! And got) to see it. In a way, Taxi, will have book-ended our time here in Cairo…

Mummy's birthday

I was very lucky to have had lots of birthday treats this year.  The day before my birthday I used a voucher that we had won in a Christmas raffle for a manicure and pedicure, and the day after my birthday we went out to see a play downtown (Taxi).  On the day of my birthday Leila helped me open my cards and presents - it was amazing to see how dexterous she is as she unwrapped everything.

Scott gave me a brilliant homemade version of Monopoly Deal which perfectly captures our favourite places in Cairo (and exhausted him trying to make it by emergency light during the powercuts we kept having this week!)

This week we have been mainly….sitting and sleeping late.

Leila has a new obsession with sitting down at the moment.  She loves finding new things to sit on.  She has discovered that if she turns her wooden activity box upside-down then it is the perfect height to plonk her bottom on!  Her favourite thing is to sit on this at her little piano and then plonk away at that (although this new seating arrangement does allow her to become all ‘Jerry Lee Lewis’ with her playing and put her feet up on the keyboard!).

When we went to Carrefour at the weekend Leila was on the lookout for new places to sit and was very pleased with herself when she sat down on the foot rail of the freezer aisle. 

Leila has been sleeping later in the mornings now and she is generally sleeping past 6am and often past 7am.  She is sleeping through until some time between 4am and 5am; at which point she gets a feed from me and then goes back to sleep.  The later wake up means that her morning nap has been creeping later in the day and her afternoon nap doesn’t always happen.  We decided last week that if she was only going to nap once a day then we needed to try and shift this from the morning to the afternoon so that we can actually get to morning activities and see people (as otherwise she has been sleeping through Music Class, Bounce and Rhyme and BCA Family Group)!  We’ve been on the new routine for five days now and it seems to be working as she’s not too tired during the day, is generally having a decent afternoon nap and is definitely enjoying getting out and about!

Gruffalo!

Ella is really great at taking Leila outside to play. She has found a 'park' that they will go to in the buggy and Leila will spend up to two hours walking, running and exploring there.  It's not really a park....it's a piece of grass in a central reservation on a road near us, but in Cairo this is the next best thing!  The road is quiet and the grass is well maintained by the bowabs there.

The weather can still be quite cool and so Leila wears a warm hoodie and a hat most mornings. She loves her Gruffalo hat and looks pretty cool in it too.

Here are a few pics that Ella took on her phone of Leila being a Gruffalo!

Cairo Kitchen Baby!

I love eating at Cairo Kitchen and fortunately Leila does too, so sometimes we go there for a mid-week lunch as a treat.  I normally order a few things so that we have some carbs, meat and salad and enough for a ‘left-overs lunch’ the following day.

Their roasted chicken is just delicious and while I pick away at all the bones, Leila nibbles on strips of breast meat, and obviously koshary is a hit for us both.  Leila's favourite salad there though is the coriander hummus which is a strong flavour and a striking green colour.  I try to offer it in small amounts to her, but she ends up taking spoonfuls of it into her mouth.  Today was quite exciting though because for the first time she used her bread as a ‘dipper’ (although still managed to get it everywhere!)

This week we have been mainly....cuddling and copying

Leila is really cuddly at the moment and will throw her arms around you when she is picked up for a cuddle.  She will give cuddles on 'demand' ("Leila, can mummy have a cuddle, please?") but is also a fickle thing (by pushing you away if she really doesn't fancy a cuddle).  She is cuddling her toys too and likes to play how-many-soft-toys-can-I-carry-at-once? Her maximum is three; which needs working on if she is going to impress anyone.

Leila is doing more and more copying now which is really cute and great sign of development.  Some of her copying is actions, and some is words/sounds.

Leila's speciality for sounds is animal sounds and a favourite is the elephant (which often involves the action of a long trunk with her arm too!).  She can do lion, monkey (sometimes) and now cat.  It's great fun when Dear Zoo comes on the music box and and she does the action/sounds of her own accord!  This morning she also did the 'send them back' pointing in Dear Zoo and often does the action of lifting her arms up 'high' in the Dance Around song. She will also 'blurgle blurgle' as she picks up the Burglar Bill book for me to read.

She's started to 'read' to herself which is really cute too as she flips through the pages of a book and chatters away.  Funny books to watch her do this with are her Mog book, as she will 'meow' on certain pages and of course say 'aaaat' a lot, and the Lion the Lion book, because she will chatter to herself and then 'eeak!' to make the 'squeak' sound that the book makes.  The great thing about this development is that it means she is happy playing on her own and gives us a little bit of 'down time' during the day.

When we were in the UK we started to teach her to put her hands on her head and say 'Oh no!' when something went wrong (like dropping all her cards on the floor).  We're still playing this game and she will put her hands to her head when we do.  One of the nursery rhymes she likes is Rock-a-bye Baby and when I sing this I often pick up one of her toys to rock like a baby and then drop on the floor.  She will copy the rocking part, but not yet the dropping bit in the song (probably a good thing?!!)

In other news; we have not been having a successful week in terms of 'getting things done' - in fact we've had the opposite! Our internet went down on Sunday afternoon and we've had an engineer out to look at the problem, but it still isn't fixed!  On Sunday too the washing machine decided to start making a terrible noise and not drain properly (water all over the floor etc!) so the landlord called an engineer.  Embarrassingly the engineer managed to fix this in about 10 minutes as he removed a large button from the drain pipe! Ooops!

Music Time with Daddy

Scott has been working really hard recently getting together the music for the school production of Wicked.  It involves hours of listening to the soundtrack, looking through the score, watching the video and then repeating the process again and again!  Fortunately though he has had some help from his favourite little girl.

Sorting the empty water box

Leila's Hat

We've been starting to sort through cupboards, digging out various things we know we want to get rid of.  In the pile was a bit of a naff hat we bought amidst the post-revolution patriotism.  However, Leila took an instant liking to it and has mastered the art of putting it on her head.

Dancing

We've not been back in Cairo for long, but Leila's back in the groove at music time!

Leila and Charlotte

I met Olivia at the CSA a few days before Leila was born, when we were trying to start the baby group there.  Olivia was nearly as heavily pregnant as I was (!) and gave birth to Charlotte in the same hospital as Leila was born in just a few weeks later.  We used to all go the CSA baby group as well as Bounce and Rhyme together and the occasional CSA coffee or Wadi Degla walk.  

We were really sad to hear that Olivia and Charlotte were needing to stay in the UK after the summer because of problems with her husband’s job here in Cairo, and that they would be leaving Cairo permanently in January.  It was really lucky then that we managed to bump into them at Cairo airport when they came back for a short trip to collect their final things from their flat here.  We arranged to have a play date at the BCA a few days later, as this would be a better chance to catch up and for Leila and Charlotte to play.

Leila and Charlotte sort of played together, but this mainly involved toddling around the BCA in generally the same direction, then getting overly tired and hungry just before home time.  We remembered to grab our cameras out to capture their reunion only at the end of the play date, and so managed to get Charlotte’s ‘tired face’ and Leila’s ‘I’m texting face’

Christmas #3 Buxton

After a cold train journey we arrive in rainy Buxton! We think we've got yhe knack of car seats but this new one just doesn't want to go in despite the eind and the rain outside! Scott gets it sorted and Leila soon falls asleep on the way home.

Sleeping takes a turn for the worst here with Leila not settling for an afternoon nap. We decide to plan our day around an afternoon buggy walk for a nap rather than keep trying at home. But it seems that afternoons aren't our only problem as on the first night Leila wakes up around midnight and doesn't fall asleep for over 2 hours! After trying feeding, shushing, teething granules etc we rearrange the room so that there is a bit more distance between the beds and finally she's down!

Leila has got the hang of presents now and loves tearing the wrapping paper off into little bits to give to us. Her presents here have been well spaced out with just a few a dsy yo open and play with.  The lucky girl was treated to lots of brilliant books from her Great Nanny and a Fisher Price baby-grand rrom Grandpa that she just loves!

It's not just presents that keep her entertained here but a bowl of satsumas keep her busy for an hour at the Great Grandparents place as she passes them from one person to another. Her favourite food for snack time turns out to be the crumpet! They are a hit for us too, especially as she can have them with butter now.

We all have a real treat on our last day as the P's come up from London to see us. After doinh the 'charity shop run' we head to the Pavilion Gardens for lunch and soft play. After we've eaten leila becomes captivated by a french horn player in the hot house next door.  She can't help but stare and wiggle!

We have a classic packing experience when we go out to buy extra cereal because we have so much space but then end up cramming everything in! The flight home is tough all round but we survive. Scott is struck down by terrible flu/sinus pains and Leila is stuck to my lap for most of the flight (without wanting an afternoon nap of course).