We've moved!

After a long blogging hiatus I have moved this blog to a new, more private location. The new address for the blog is mylittledramaqueen.wordpress.com. See you there!

First day of school

Maya went off to her first day of preschool today after our long trip back to Cairo from the U.S., and she was a bit jet lagged but she made it. Mike took her to school (because Maya failed to wake me from my jet lagged stupor).

Maya is going to go to school five days a week this year, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., and according to her school director she will have to be a little more serious about school this year because she is now one of the big kids.

Mike told the school director that Maya had started getting a little interested in letters this summer while we were in the U.S., likely due to more exposure from the overwhelming presence of English signs everywhere. He also found out an interesting tidbit about Maya's school behavior.

Apparently last year unbeknownst to us, the director of Maya's preschool had tried to have Maya do lessons and worksheets with the bigger kids. But Maya had often refused to finish and gone off to play in the baby room instead. That sneaky kid!!. Maya was a little young for the lessons and the school is sort of Montessori-ish and they were not keen to force her. So she got away with it -- which is fine with us as we don't want to push to much academic stuff on her in preschool anyway!

But this year she will be with the bigger kids and she is going to do the big kid lessons. And the director of the school (who also is very involved and works especially with the older kids) thinks that since Maya is now going to school five days a week, it will be easier to get her to focus on learning rather than doing play kitchen all day long...

No more baby room for you, kid!

Home leave

We are going on home leave next week for 4-1/2 weeks. We'll be in New York City for the first week, in Seattle for the next two weeks, and then in upstate New York for the last week. Any blog readers/Ethiopia adoptive families want to join us for a Maya playdate? Especially in Seattle?

Latch

We spent the past three years buckling Maya into her carseat using the seatbelt attachment because we believed Toyota had not installed Latch above the seat, which we were annoyed about.

But then the other day Mike "discovered" that Latch actually is in our car if you pry up a cover that is hiding it out of site. So now, three years after we bought our car from a shady dealer in Cairo, Maya's car seat is attached with Latch. Woops!

Bumblebee

Maya had a dance recital at the beginning of the summer for her preschool ballet class. She is very serious about ballet and loves .. I mean really LOVES ... her dance teacher. She is being promoted to the 4/5 class when we get back from our home leave in September. She is good at all things sporty. The girl has some serious coordination!!

The recital was a big deal for Maya. They had it at the British school. Tibby came to watch and brought Maya flowers. And a gaggle of high school girls watched the little kids backstage until it was their turn to perform. They taught Maya how to play 'Duck, Duck, Goose.' She was in heaven.

Hope you like the recital pictures.

Flower girl

Maya's nanny Tibby got married two weeks ago and Maya was the flower girl in the wedding. She was a little nervous when we first got there, and seemed also a bit fearful of losing Tibby to her new husband, E. But she quickly warmed up in time to walk down the aisle. Mike signed the wedding contract as a witness and walked Tibby down the aisle.

Later, Maya found a couple of girls her age and they played, danced, went up on the stage with the bride, and fed each other wedding cake (after watching Tibby and E feed each other). Maya chattered away with the girls in Amharic, although Tibby says she thought they only speak Tigrinya. But Maya didn't have any difficulties communicating with them. I guess they may have known a little, and Maya also may know some Tigrinya words from hearing Tibby talk on the phone. Who knows. Maybe 3-year-olds don't really need a common language to communicate. Anyway, they got along great.

We also had a fantastic buffet with traditional food -- yummy wats and soft drinks in glass bottles.

It was a really great wedding with Tibby and E smiling and whispering to each other on the stage. They are very cute together. Tibby wore a really beautiful white wedding dress. And the whole community was there -- all dressed up. It turned out we knew quite a few of the guests, although it was hard to recognise people in formal dresses with their hair done up. I did a few double takes. Guests were dressed beautifully.

It was also really cool to see Maya interacting with the Ethiopian/Horn of Africa community. They really accept her so completely and draw her into the community. They ALL know her, and they are really nice to her. (Actually I think she gets a bit of special treatment!). It was so nice to see Maya feel totally at home in the community at the wedding, collecting bottle caps strewn on the floor after dinner with the other kids, running up and down the aisle, getting scolded by the women for being rowdy (along with all the other kids), oohing and aahing as the vats of yummy wat and huge plates of injera were carried in to the hall for the buffet.

I posted some pictures. I don't want to post pictures of Tibby or E online, although I would be happy to share pictures with those of you who know her. (No, the pictures with the orange beads were Maya trying on her flower girl dress at home. She had white beads tied back for the wedding -- but the pictures from home are cute so I'm posting them)

Growth spurt!

We just did a wall measurement of Maya and she has grown 3/4 of an inch in one month to 38-3/4 inches! That puts her at 41st percentile for height -- the highest she's ever been on the charts!! Go Maya Go!

She is now fitting into her 4T clothes! Woo Hoo! Guess we'll have to do some shopping in America this summer for 4T clothes! Now her size is coming close to meeting the measurements of her huge feet -- size 11 and growing!