May 6, 2008
My goodness, is it really May? Was it Cinco de Mayo yesterday? This academic year has sped by. But we still have about 5 or 6 weeks left. Then school’s out for summer. YAY!
I went for my first trimester special tests. I am in a low risk category, but I figure that since the technology exists for pre-natal (or ante-natal as it is known by the Brit term here) screenings, one should take advantaged. Alhamdulillah, all looked well at the scan. The technition told me he could already see the gender of the fetus but could be wrong by a 15% margin. Did I want to know? At 13 weeks? With an 85% chance of accuracy? Yep, okay. So he told me. I will wait a few more weeks for a more accurate assessment of the gender. I don’t care either way. But it is fun to know. I don’t know how some people these days purposely don’t want to know. I am SOOO impatient and can’t imagine not knowing for 40 long weeks and then SURPRISE! Out comes a …. I read that in the olden days some people didn’t even know they were carrying twins until the day they gave birth. Subhanallah, technology is so advanced nowadays, it takes the suspense away.
I have been cooking “weird” things due to the pregancy. The other day I made quiche. I don’t like eggy foods, so that is why quiche is weird for me. I also made a Tex-Mex taco salad for dinner last night. American faux Mexican taco shells are very expensive here, so I used Mr. Chibs. That’s an Omani brand. Crunchy tortilla chips fresh from the Sultanate with a picture of a guy in a sombrero on the front. They were nakhat al beeza but I didn’t realize that until I got home. Pizza flavored taco salad. It was pretty good though. I had it again for lunch today.
My poor husband today requested that I make “daal chanwal.” I think he is getting sick of my strange experiments.
My mind is preoccupied with thoughts of my summer trip to mi patria de Tejas. I miss home. I have been researching pre-paid cellphones, and also looking into car rental. It’s just gonna be Lady D and I. No husband. It is going to be weird for my daughter, I suppose. Inshallah she will adjust well to a month of being beamed down into a totally different environment. She is more social than before when she was going through a major “stranger danger” clingy stage. She loves baba the best, and I know she is going to miss him.
Funny how she spends most of her time with the nanny or with me, but baba is her favorite-est person in the universe. I think it is because the nanny and me are often doing other things with Lady D around, but baba gets to just come home from work and give her his undecided attention. Since we have a nanny, he doesn’t help in any household tasks. That’s fine by me. Anyway, Lady D is the star of his show and she knows it. When I get home from work, she asks me “baba ka?” which means “baba kahaan hain?” or where is daddy? When he gets home she jumps into his arms. I admit I feel small pangs of jealousy about this, but actually this has benefits for me. Just a few months before, she was extremely clingy with me and when we would go out she would insist I carry her. She refused to go to baba. She was so heavy and would cry if I tried to pass her on or put her down. But now she happily lets baba carry her so my arm and back don’t give out.
I was planning to not let her watch TV until she turned 2. But we have this video of kids songs and I let her watch it nowadays for 10-20 minutes a day. It is just a VCD of kids dancing around to Old MacDonald, etc. She is mesmerized and turns into a little zombie fixated on the TV screen. She demands it whenever she sees the TV. She says “kahtoon! kahtoon!”, which you can guess means cartoon. That’s what she calls it. I can totally see why experts say no TV before 2. But now that I’ve opened a can of worms…anyway. Like I said, I limit the time. What more can I do?
Anyway, that’s all my rambling for now.