You gotta fight...for your right...to party!

Here is the pink diaper-caterpillar cake. If this doesn't say "I love you," well, I just don't know what does.

Yes, his chin is losing the battle with gravity there. Design flaw. It's chocolate, so we know just how to fix it.

Big hits of the night for Thomas, present-wise, were cars, Pixar's Cars clothing, a Maisy DVD, and the Thomas the Tank Engine bubble blower. He also took two little metal Pixar Wall-E and M-O figures to bed with him. Toy makers take note: if it's from Pixar and has wheels, you've got a winner. At least with our little guy.

He sang "Happy Birfday" over and over again and was SO excited to blow out his candle. Bethy almost let him unwrap all his presents himself.

Thank you to everyone for his birthday wishes that came in by phone, Skype, and computer. Isn't technology wonderful?

Three is a magic number

We've been ridiculously busy, thus the lag in blog posting. My apologies.

Both our cars are dead. Snorkel Car died on the way to Mike's work, out in the desert, and now needs the transmission replaced. This is going to be a seriously pricy maneuver. Would you believe that it will be less expensive to have a rebuilt one shipped to us from the UK than to buy one here? So that's what we're doing. Craziness.

Bird Car, on the other hand, died on the way home from Mike's work, also in the desert. His co-workers were just driving by in the other direction to make a police report on the hail damage to their Jeep from one of the storms ripping though the UAE lately.

They immediately turned over the keys to him so he could come home to us, securing a ride for themselves back to work with a security man they'd called.

They later got another ride with another co-worker out to our house to pick it up, at which point I'd begged a ride from Cathy who then loaned their car to us for a day. This is the way of things among the expats. Unquestioning generosity.

It was imperative that Mike get home that day because our entire family had an appointment that day to turn in paperwork and get fingerprinted and photographed for our UAE identity cards, an appointment that was made 3 months ago.

We HAD to be there on time or be seriously out of luck. A co-worker had a 9 AM appointment that very morning, showed up only 13 minutes before his scheduled time, and was still waiting when we got there 7 1/2 hours later. We were almost surprised to see him. Almost.

There was a ladies waiting area, and another one for gentlemen. I waited on the men's side, though I did not sit down. This garnered me a few looks, but not the reception Mike would have gotten had he tried to wait on the female side.

We were separated into group by gender again when it was time for the fingerprinting (which was the most thorough and technologically impressive one I think one can experience. I think they can make a 3-D model of my hand now), as the technicians would be actually touching us. Mike and Thomas went to the male technician, Bethy and I were escorted to the female one.

The rental car we ended up getting was a total fiasco of paperwork and miscommunication, of course. Such is the way of things. The delivery guys were particularly irritable with us as it was prayer time, and on a Friday, too. We're such heathens. But we got the car, which was all we cared about. Bird car is still out in the desert, of course, but hopefully we'll get those wheels back on the road sooner rather than later...

Today is Thomas' birthday and I need to get going on making him a cake. He wants a pink cake with a particular caterpillar on it. The caterpillar is a yellow one that graces his favorite Pampers. He giggles like mad when he gets to wear one...I consider this request an exciting design challenge.





Bethy, however, is throwing a fit, claiming that as Thomas is a boy he should NOT have a pink cake. I figure, the kid likes trains and cars and climbing and throwing things, he can like pink as much as he wants.

Bethy had Strep throat, which in itself isn't that interesting, but isn't it interesting that here I simply walk into the nearest pharmacy, say " I have a 6-year-old with Strep" and the pharmacy techs obligingly hand over the antibiotics without a prescription?


The antibiotics may or may not have caused Bethy's rash that looked enough like chicken pox (but wasn't) for the school to send her home...

Rani babysat Thomas while I took Bethy to the doctor for her rash. When we got back home Thomas stank and had terrible diaper rash. I didn't say anything. Rani vehemantly protested her innocence, "Madam, I was not near him, he was playing madam he did not tell me, madam."

At this point Thomas tearfully asked for "happy baby" which is what he calls diaper rash lotion. There's a cute picture of a smiling infant on the container, you see. Rani said "He only said this, Madam." She thought he was saying habibi, which is Arabic for "sweetheart", and is an endearment I use around the house.

The birthday boy in his birthday suit

I couldn't have expected Rani to know "happy baby," wasn't perturbed about it, but it was a shock to find out upon further, gentle questioning, she also doesn't know the words potty and diaper. Diapers are of course "nappies" here, and potty she thought was the Tamil word poddi, or something like that, which means small. Why she would think Thomas was speaking Tamil, well, who knows?

With any luck it won't matter as she'll be more on top of checking his diapers. She babysits only once a week as it is, so his little bottom is probably in good shape.

Here's to Thomas and his little bottom turning three today: Hip hip hooray!

Oh yeah...

raindrops dripping off a palm tree

After my moaning about the rains being over, Dubai thrilled us with an abrupt change in weather. From sandstorms, wind blowing the sand across the roads, and heavy, thick air in the morning suddenly we went to spectacular thunder and lightning as Cathy and I ran in Safa Park, (and thank you to the Parks Department for providing the thoughtful rubber running surface.) Then...RAIN.

We'd just finished one good hard lap and decided to not press our luck, perfect timing. Not that we didn't get back out to stand in the pelting downpour for a moment. Other runners went by, one Indian man giggling madly. It is possible there were a few "whoo-HOO!" whoops from our general direction.

Liquid bliss. Cathy and I drove out to the beach to watch the lightning cracking across the sky. The streets flooded, recklessly driven cars slid and crashed, trees toppled. Fantastic!

This morning was more of the same, raining and crashing, delightful. My Scottish neighbor and I gleefully delighted in the "just like home!" aspect, then ducked our heads and went back inside.

Doesn't get better than this.

Everybody here comes from somewhere ...

When we decided to come to the Middle East, one of the things we were most excited about was that Bethy, and possibly Thomas, would get to go to school with kids from all over the world. Truly an international experience for them, and one that cannot help but shape their lives. Bethy's school, Gems World Academy's tagline is "Creating World Citizens." For Mike and me, the greatest hope is that our kids become thoughtful adults someday with an understanding of the need for diplomacy and responsibility. Also that learning about differences can be fun, not scary.




Thinking of the book: All I Ever Needed To Know I Learned in Kindergarten, well, Bethy is going to kindergarten with children named Dhruv and Jae Hyun, Aryzhan and Mohammed, Diego, Tia and Fatima. Of course with the British population there is also a Max, a Lewis, an Alex, and another little Beth, also from the UK, who is her best friend. Two other little girls are from the US as well, 3 out of 20 children in all.

Mrs Potts, Beth and Bethy on Sports Day

Her teacher, Mrs Potts, is British woman who spent many of her young years as an expat kid in the Phillipines. We knew we had a winner when Mrs Potts told the story of going to school in the Philippines and being told that she was spelling words like color (colour) and favorite (favourite) and center (centre) and so forth the wrong way, an upsetting experience for a child. Now she teaches her students that some special words are spelled two ways, and that both are correct.

That's a lesson that can go far in a lot of ways.



Walking into the kindergarten corridor the colorful walls strongly communicate that everyone comes from somewhere, and that each child loves their country and their heritage.



There are posters in pen and crayon that say things like: "I love Iran" and, more formally, "I honor my country and my heritage by preserving traditions"

A recent unit for Bethy's class was all about the beach: types of shells, environmentalism, learning about tides, and a field trip. Each child was supposed to draw a picture of their "Perfect Beach". Here is Bethy's:

It says:

My Beach By Bethy

I am going to the water and it just rained. The sun was shining and now it stopped raining and there is a rainbow. The beach is in Seattle city. My Mom and Dad and brother are on the beach with me.

Someone is also staying true to her roots.

Can you build an emerald city with these grains of sand...

I know I've gone on and on about how it is spring, and I am pretty sure it is to convince myself of such. I think there are many of you back in the states who are feeling the same way, what with the snow you're getting. For us it is the 80 degree temperatures before sunup that are confusing our sense of the year. Some are filled with dread as they anticipate the summer, knowing that the heat will go on and on until November. For me, I miss the green shoots poking up through brown dirt and the blossoming surprises of spring very much. I even miss worms. No worms here, though I often give the slugs a friendly pet whenever we run across one. They are amusingly smooth, not sticky at all.

We were pleased this morning by a sprinking of rain. The kids and I dashed out to savor the last bit of precipitation; soon enough those clouds and blue skies will become a distant memory and the skies over the shimmering sands will stretch away white and empty. We hear on the radio that there may be more showers over the next 24 hours, though they accompany sand storms with high winds.

For us this translates to commutes being more dangerous, and our cars will be completely filthy. We are lucky to live in the Springs: it is green and well protected from a lot of the winds and flying sands. For the workers out in the desert, however, our concerns would seem petty, to say the least. They will wrap their colorful, ever-present scarves around their faces beneath their hard hats, bend into the wind and trust that if conditions get too bad they'll be brought in out of the storm. I know Mike's jobsite doesn't try to do any work with the 100+ cranes onsite when the winds and sand start whipping up and will shut everything down for safety reasons, if needed.

With all this, it hardly seems I can justify complaining that I miss spring flowers, especially with the festive bourgainvilla blooming it's heart out in the garden. (There are no yards, they are called gardens, regardless of landscaping or not. Ah, those Brits...) But I do. I miss the crocus, the daffodils, the tulips, the cherry trees showering their white petals over the lawns.

So it was with a joyful heart that I purchased these today:

They could have charged me pretty much anything for this pot of happiness.

Truly, I know we are lucky to be here in this beautiful place, together with our new friends and with the support of home. It's probably the slipping away of Dubai's incredible winter weather that's making me ache for the mountains and rains of Seattle.

Besides, the garden at Gecko House surely does make for some great photo ops!

*****

Thanks to Sherri for the miniature irises blooming photo and to Jean for the snow in your garden photo, and to Colleen for the American Robin photos...I am grateful for your snapshots of the Pacific NW in spring, little pieces of home...

I wanna be loved by you...

Thomas is deeply in love with Eba the turtle. I don't know if this increases or decreases her chances of survival.



The way he says "Eeeeee-ba" is incredibly cute, in what I think is a conscious imitation of Pixar's Wall-E saying "Eve-ah". (If you haven't seen this film, you really, really should. It's wonderful and thought-provoking and you can watch it with kids!)



Thomas was doing his turtle walk long ago, (one of my favorite games...I can keep up with him when he's a turtle!) but now he has a real turtle to do it with. What could be better?

Captions for that last one, anybody?

Green eggs and ham...

For St Patrick's Day dinner I made green eggs (omlettes) and ham (eek!), and green buttered toast, and green cottage cheese. My hands are all green from the blue and yellow food coloring I used. I let the kids drink cherry 7-UP out of frozen beer steins. The meal looked completely and utterly nauseating. The kids completely and utterly went for it. They were so stuffed they didn't even make it to the mint chocolate chip ice cream.

Mike and I, however, celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary with grilled rib-eye. No equality in our household.

Our new Scottish neighbor noted that Thomas and I were both wearing green, and when I said it was for St Patrick's Day he said "Well, I'll have to go dig me up a Guinness, then."

The Scots are so practical.