It goes something like this:

Hack, Hack, Cough, HACK

Then the chorus from upstairs

WAAAAIIIILLLLLL!! WAIL!!!! CRY!! Cough

Back downstairs

Sigh, Shudder, Hack, Hack, Cough

Back upstairs

WAIL!!!!!!!!!!! Cough, Cough, Cough

Downstairs
(whispered) please go to sleep little girl
(booming & reverberating) Hack, Hack, COUGH!

Upstairs

AAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!


And I'm actually thankful for this pattern, dear reader, because it was preceded by three good strong rounds of vomit. From the girl. Right after tylenol and trimenic strip. Remember those good ol' days of "spit up." They are long gone.

I can only be grateful that the child had the forethought to refuse to eat any of her dinner earlier in the evening. I'm not sure I'd have ever been able to face kiwi fruit again.

I am tired. I am so, so tired.

Feel sorry for me?

just this one thing

okay, i had to post this.

I am (mostly) alive

Well another fun filled trip to iowa. This one included nasty, nasty stomach-virus that not only did I catch but shared with Joe as well. Lucky, lucky her. She was also hung-over. That meant that my parents, my brother, his wife and my sister all ran around after our two not-sick (hamdillah) very active one year olds. Joe and I remained passed out on the couch for most of Monday. Sunday was spent heaving or on the couch. We can't even talk about saturday.

So don't expect much from me this week.

Here comes the "over-share" so you don't miss me over the next couple days.
Joe: I'm nauseous, I'm vomiting , I'm hung-over, I have a sore throat, I'm sore from heaving, I have a yeast infection and I've got my period.
Me: Well, I'm 5 for 7.

I'll leave it to you to deduce which.

At least my hang-ups smell good

What is my deal with Khubz and the food she eats?

It starts with one small seed pod. But it doesn't end there.

I want her sense of home to be cardamom, cinnamon, cumin, lemons and pistachios. I want her to stay home from school with the flu bug and ask for fideo. I want her to go away to college and tell me that she misses black beans tostadas. I want her to look lovingly at her partner when in the grocery store and replace the minute rice with brown basmati rice. I hope when she turns on the news to find out about the next u.s. occupation of the middle east and sees men sipping qahwa and think, "oohhh. . . I need make some right now."

I expect she will want twinkies and gift cards to unmentionable places in care packages when she is studying abroad. (Likely because, despite my better self, I want twinkies and those same poisonous gift cards.) That's fine. But I hope she'll pull out the envelope of cardamom pods, cook up some rice and then take the softened seeds to roll them around in her mouth.

I know there is no way and no reason to try and dictate what her future will be like. It's not that. It's more that I think we draft the landscape of "home" every day. This is what my home tastes like (along with pizza, sugar cookies, banana bread.)

At first I said "I don't want most of her food to be white people food." But that sort of fictionalizes my own history. I did grow up eating meatloaf and goulash and spaghetti and that kind of weird but yummy green bean casserole with cream of mushroom soup and those crispy onion thingies. But I also had mint tea and afghani meatball soup and lamb and okra and spinach/feta pies and dried chickpea candies and baklawa made with rosewater.

I fix goulash. It takes 10 minutes, is pretty cheap and totally easy. So I'm not saying the girlchild will have no exposure to american food. But having the daycare provide her 2/3rds of her meals mean that they draft the landscape. Not us. And the only place she's likely to eat kabsa or roasted eggplant with yogurt or foul is with us. And I don't want us to be up against the majority at our own dinner table. And somehow all that olive oil and tahana and burgl and parsley seems more precious and worth safeguarding.

In truth I doubt I'll keep it up (packing lunch for my toddler who is provided with perfectly nutritious meals at daycare.) But it seemed worthwhile yesterday. And it did again today. Tomorrow. . . ? Stay tuned.

Ouch!

So I found Ouch! via that fabulous goldfish. Ouch is a British disability site with a hillarious podcast, great postings and all kinds of goodies like this wallpaper:

or this

Check it out. I'm listening right now and can't wait for their promised trivia game: vegetable, vegetable or vegetable.

In fact, Day 3 is harder

So Day 1 at new daycare was pretty good and they said, "usually day 2 is harder"

Day 2 was whining, some crying, plenty of clingy-ness.

Day 3 is shrieking. Like, as Scully was leaving she could hear Khubz's wailing all through the building. It started as soon as Scully put her down. There were toys all around. Friendly people. Oh no. Khubz knows this trick and it's not working anymore.

The child clawed at her mama. Tears streaming down her face. Red puffy eyes and the high pitched scream that is both "how dare you leave me!" and "why would you leave me?"

I am such a coward. I am so relieved I don't do drop off.

Sorry, Scully.

My fngG. How hideous.

I'm restricting myself to one call a day and she's been there less than an hour so I'm going to wait. Maybe I can call at 9?

More discoveries

Khubz started her new daycare and all is good. . . or will be sometime soon. . . surely.

Of course any change leads to more discoveries for both Khubz and the mommies.

• It's easier to be left in a new place by the mommies if that new place has tons of kids, a giant mirror and tons of brand new toys
• Eating a fist full of sand will make you spit up
• There are lots of people in the world who are able to care for Khubz while the mommies are at work
• Being left at daycare is easier on day one than it is on day two. At last report (10 minutes ago) she was a bit fussy but was, overall, fine
• Daycare two blocks away from our front door does make for a better morning.
• I was shamelessly thrilled when I walked into daycare to pick Khubz up yesterday and (though she'd been happily hanging-out before she saw me) she burst into tears as soon as she saw me. I know, I know. This will soon turn into tears that she doesn't want to go home with me since daycare clearly meets all of her needs so much better.
• I have serious hang-ups about the food Khubz eats
• Those hang-ups about food are connected to my control issues, ethnic guilt and endless angst about identity politics
• If "old-fashioned family values" weren't saturated with homophobia, racism, sexism, transphobia, judeo-christian legalism, nationalism and a bizzaro love of capitalism, I would actually consider myself pretty OFFV. For example, I was just about to put a bullet lamenting the eroding influence that the family has in this culture.

Hmm. The start of this list claimed that I would be listing discoveries for Khubz and the mommies. It seems this has degraded into yet another list about myself. Let me end with one more discovery--not even discovered at daycare--that Khubz is thrilled about: Her vulva.

• So that's what the diaper covers up! And is it ever fun!