As I lumbered behind Ben and Marti, who were pushing a large cart from Lowe’s:
“We’re the train. Mama’s the freight car.”
After visiting friends that have a dog:
“I don’t have any pets. I want a baby doggie and a baby Maya.”
Archive for » April, 2006 «
15
Apr 2006
Riverbend, a nameless woman in Iraq, writes:
The thing most worrisome about the situation now, is that discrimination based on sect has become so commonplace. For the average educated Iraqi in Baghdad, there is still scorn for all the Sunni/Shia talk. Sadly though, people are being pushed into claiming to be this or that because political parties are promoting it with every speech and every newspaper- the whole ‘us’ / ‘them’. We read constantly about how ‘We Sunnis should unite with our Shia brothers…’ or how ‘We Shia should forgive our Sunni brothers…’ (note how us Sunni and Shia sisters don’t really fit into either equation at this point). Politicians and religious figures seem to forget at the end of the day that we’re all simply Iraqis…Three years after the war, and we’ve managed to move backwards in a visible way, and in a not so visible way. (From “Uncertainty” posted March 28, 2006)
Congratulations to Riverbend for her new book, which is longlisted for the Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction.
14
Apr 2006
Today Ben went to the doctor and had a hearing test, and his hearing was…perfectly fine. He has been taking mega-doses of antiobiotics to fight his chronic ear infection and we didn’t know if his hearing loss would be permanent or not. Today, however, he passed the hearing test and even miraculously passed a sight test with flying colors (Marti and I are both very near-sighted). Marti called me right away with the news and waves of relief washed over me. Ben still has fluid in his ears and will need tubes but his hearing is saved and I can’t describe what a relief this is. Praise God!
13
Apr 2006
Ben has decided that we are all “sauruses”, or dinosaurs. I am the mama-saurus, daddy is the daddy-saurus, Maya is the baby-maya-saurus, Ben is the son-saurus, and a little neon-colored t-rex he got from somewhere is the baby-saurus.
This is serious stuff. The baby-saurus was crying a few nights ago and we all had to sing “rock-a-bye baby” three times, which still didn’t help, so Ben had to sing the baby-saurus his ABC song. It finally worked and the baby-saurus went to sleep (in Ben’s bed).
Later that night we went out to get some dinner, and we were in the restaurant waiting for take-out when Ben realized the baby-saurus was in the car. Full bore panic. What if he was crying? What if he was hungry? What if he was lonely? Clearly Ben is a very attentive parent. Soon he will give parenting classes while humming the ABCs and rocking his neon green and blue baby-saurus to sleep.
We enjoyed the game until Ben refused to answer to anything except son-saurus, and of course we kept forgetting and trying to get his attention using the far inferior name of “Ben,” or even, “Benjamin,” which would send him into a frenzy, shouting, “I’m a son-saurus mama! A SON-SAURUS!” like I was elderly and clearly deaf. He’s not even a teenager yet. Anyway, this quickly ruined the “cute” for us, because after so many minutes cute diminishes into annoying which diminishes into “you need to go to bed now and take the d@!# ‘saurus’ with you.”
Nevertheless I hope against hope that this sort of action will help him to adjust when Maya comes (May 15th, by the way — scheduled c-section) and he’ll do some of these cute things like rock her to sleep, rather than try to stash her in the dryer when I’m not looking. It all seems very positive right now — he even asks if the baby (his baby) will like his toys.
Oh, if you only knew, son-saurus. If you only knew.
