Jenyfer Matthews

This week has hardly started and I already feel like I’m falling behind. It’s due in part to my daughter’s new tennis lesson schedule.

I signed her up for tennis lessons last April. She is very athletic and sporty – in her spare time she will invariably pick up a ball to play with. I thought tennis would be a positive way for her to burn off some energy and develop her natural skills while having a little fun.

Little did I know it would soon take over my life.

During a water break in her first tennis lesson, her coach came to me and asked if it was her first time playing. I said yes. He looked at me and repeated his question – he is Egyptian and his English is pretty limited so he wanted to be sure that we understood each other. I told him yes, it was her first lesson. He nodded, though he looked very surprised.

It hasn’t been quite a year and she’s advanced through the beginning and intermediate groups to the advanced group – and we were away from tennis for three months for summer vacation and Christmas break. I am proud of her and not a little stunned by her progress.

I’m also tired.

This new group meets four days a week. I have no doubt that she will get better yet by playing with them, but it is exhausting just keeping up with the schedule! One thing it has forced me to do is to be much more organized in my approach to meal planning. Let’s not forget that my son also takes tennis lessons – but on different nights. There are five evenings a week where I am away from the house at the dinner-prep hours. So far, so good but I wonder how long I can keep it up without just falling back on frozen food or pizza every night?

I never dreamed that I’d have such athletic children when I myself was making every excuse in the book to get out of participating in PE class in school. And before I had children, I swore I’d never be one of those parents who let their children’s schedule take over their life. If this isn’t proof that God has a sense of humor, I don’t know what is…

It occurred to me after my rant last week that my reporting what a pain my son was being lately and then announcing that I was planning to spoil him a bit may not have made sense to everyone. Why reward rotten behavior, after all? Allow me to explain.

I had a little epiphany over the weekend regarding my son’s behavior. It seems he is suffering a bit of post-holiday separation anxiety. Suddenly everything made sense.

He and I were walking home after his tennis lesson and he was demanding to be moved up to the next grouping. He is fantastic, and has progressed enormously in the last few months, however he is too young (and small) to move up to the next group of players. The youngest in that group is eight and he just couldn’t really compete with them at the age of six. I explained that to him and he started in on how he wanted to grow up fast, he wished he were older, etc. I gave him a hug and told him not to be in such a hurry to grow up because mommy would miss him when he grew up and moved away. I said this intending to try and jolly him out of his snit. It didn’t help.

In fact, he started to cry.

He then went on and on about how he didn’t want to move away from me, ever. I told him that no one was going to make him go anywhere. At present he intends to live with me forever and has in fact compromised on his plan to get a dog and said he’d get a cat instead so he could stay at home. Then he told me never to even suggest that he might want to move away one day because it makes him sad.

My poor, sweet boy. He’s often a bit clingy after having had a long holiday at home but after that episode, it was quite clear to me that hugs and reassurance were going to go a lot further than lectures about paying attention in class and being a “big boy” were going to. And I’m quite confident that he will indeed move out one day – but it seems I will have to let it be his idea!!

My daughter on the other hand is moving up to the next tennis grouping. She must be feeling some stress about that change as well because she was sleep walking last night and when I went to guide her back to bed, she started telling me about tennis. More hugs for her too!

Children are a daily challenge. As soon as I think I have it all figured out, they change the rules. If only we could know what we are doing ahead of time so that we weren’t messing with their heads the whole time, they would be a whole lot better off…

My son is six year old and at the moment seems to be going through what mothers the world round would recognize as “a difficult phase” : he’s extra sensitive, clingy, and prone to tantrums over nothing in particular.

I was up at the children’s school earlier in the week to watch a play my daughter was in and ran into my son’s teacher at pick-up time where she told me that my son had been “sub par” recently. I wasn’t surprised to hear that he was being somewhat difficult at school given how he’s been at home the last couple of weeks, but I found her choice of words somewhat strange. Sub par? I gave her the benefit of the doubt because my son was standing right next to me and I thought that perhaps she wanted to communicate with me in a vocabulary that he wouldn’t understand.

But the more I think about it, the madder I get. To give some background, I had a conference with this teacher just before the Christmas holidays. She told me at that time that my son was doing okay, but that one area of weakness was his handwriting and because of that he was having trouble “recording his thoughts.” I wanted to laugh when she said that – recording his thoughts? At six? Instead I told her that I did realize that he found writing challenging (as most boys his age do!) and that one thing we were doing at home was practicing writing his name – with 8 letters and only one repeat there are a good variety of shapes for him to practice. She looked at me, very seriously, and said “you did give him a very long name.”

After the sub par comment, I wrote her a note to ask her to be more specific. As awful as he sometimes behaves at home, he is usually much much better behaved at school. She responded to say he lacks concentration during lessons. O-k-a-y. If that’s the worst of it, then I’m not going to worry too much in the short term.

I am still concerned for the long term though. This particular teacher has made a switch from teaching 10 & 11 year olds to 5 & 6 year olds. Perhaps she’s not totally adjusted her expectations to their level of ability?

More worrying to me is whether or not this is a trend that I’ll have to deal with his entire academic career. I’ve read articles regarding the prejudice against boys in today’s school system – that teachers, instead of appreciating a boys different learning style, natural exuberance and energy level, and lack of maturity (as compared to girls the same age), will tend to punish the boys instead of trying to work with them. I think perhaps that is a part of this problem.

I admit that I’m having a bit of a mother lion reaction here, but I’m not totally blind. He’s been a royal pain of late and I haven’t always dealt with it well either. But this too shall pass. He’s always a bit difficult to get back in the swing of things after a long holiday and he’s getting his six year molars. This weekend I’m going to try and make a point of spoiling him a bit – more cuddles and one on one time. And staying in the pink theme I’ve been in since last week I’ve made him a treat – strawberry sorbet.

Okay, I feel better. Anything you’d like to get off your chest? I’m all ears.

While I’m off spoiling my boy, don’t forget to stop by this weekend when multi-published author N.D. Hansen-Hill is here with her latest Cerridwen release, Gray Beginnings, a horror story. And when I say multi-published I’m not exaggerating – Norah has published more than thirty novels in various genres. I’m totally in awe of her output. Maybe in her next book, a special favor to me, she can kill off an elementary school teacher. It never hurts to ask, right?

I thought when soccer season ended I was done with baking – especially since we’re traveling for the holidays. I should have known better.

This is my children’s last week of school and all of the classes are having Christmas parties. I was asked to make brownies for my son’s class. No biggie – brownies are easy to make and for him to carry to school. However, I am one of three class reps for my daughter’s class and as such, I’m responsible for helping to organize her class’s party.

We’re trying to keep things fairly simple. The children will bring their lunch as usual only we’ll take them outside to have a picnic and play a few games. Duck-duck-goose with a Santa hat should get a giggle out of them. It was also suggested that someone should bring in cupcakes for a special treat. After the mix-up that occurred with my daughter’s soccer team where they ended up with no cupcakes, I felt compelled to volunteer to bring the cupcakes – all three dozen of them.

Sigh.

Oh well – at least they’ll actually have cupcakes. I’m planning to top them with white frosting and stick a peppermint to the top for a little extra holiday fun.

I knew that this weekend would be busy, but I wasn’t expecting how exhausting it would be. It wasn’t as if I was the one doing all the sports!

Wine night on Thursday was so much fun. I put the kids to bed, put my husband on call, and kicked back with my friends. Only three of the ten who said they would come did actually attend but that just meant that there was more wine and food for us. And goodness was there food! One Indian lady who said she would come and then had to cancel due to illness sent her food on anyway – four DOZEN samosas! Between the samosas, the shrimp tray, the sushi, and the pie that another friend brought we had more than enough. I sent everyone home with a box of samosas and was still eating leftover party food all weekend.

My daughter’s weekend was not so good. The antibiotics the doctor prescribed for her were not the correct variety and so her fever persisted. She begged me to play her school tournament on Friday and I almost cracked – I love to watch her play as much as she loves to be out there. I was seriously wavering when a friend gave me a solid reason to say no: dehydration. So I was the mean mom and said no, much to her disappointment – and that of her school team / PE teacher.

Saturday we had to be at the soccer field and ready to play for my son’s tournament at 8AM. He had three rapid fire games, back to back. He played really hard but his team lost the first two games and won their third. They were knocked out of the tournament but ended on a high note (with cupcakes!) so were very happy.

My daughter’s team was scheduled to play at 10AM and I told her she could watch – she wanted to see her coach again and collect her participation trophy and since I had to be there anyway for team mom duties, I said yes. The other team did not show up so their team advanced by forfeit. No quick end as I had hoped. Next game at noon.

We hung around and they played at noon. And as I expected, daughter begged to play. Coach gave us puppy eyes. Other parents pleaded with us. Daughter was medicated and fever free. Hubby and I finally cracked and said she could play, but only defense since that doesn’t require so much running. She did a quarter on defense and we caved in and let her run. She was obviously not tip-top but still managed to score a goal for her team so she was elated.

Her team won that game and had to play another right away, which ended 0-0 and went to penalty kicks and in the end the other team won. Which was a mixed blessing – I would have loved to see them advance because even had they lost the next round they would have been fourth. But at the same time it was already 2PM and I was ready to go home!!

As it turns out, I was right to worry about the cupcakes because the mom I asked to bring them did not. However, because I am a neurotic control freak, I had bags of backup cookies in my bag which the children devoured. Our spread seemed a little paltry compared to some teams I saw who had elaborate cakes decorated with soccer balls. However, I saw many of those cakes being taken away hardly touched while there was very little left at the end of our party.

Daughter collapsed when she came home, fever returned. After a phone consultation with the doctor, her medication has been changed and she seems a bit perkier already. I am doing my best to not only get her well again, but also keep the rest of us healthy. It’s never a good time to get sick but this coming weekend we have an overnight trip scheduled as well as a tennis tournament and the following weekend the children and I fly to the US. I’m popping vitamins like candy.

And I’m oh-so-thankful that soccer season is finished!

I went shopping for coach gifts for my son’s soccer team on Tuesday, thinking that if there were any snags I’d still have time to rethink and do something else. Am I ever glad I did – there were more snags than anything else!

The head coach recently became ill from eating out so a restaurant certificate as an idea, an old standby, was immediately thrown out. Though she is a recent arrival to Egypt I decided against buying her any arts / handicrafts because tastes vary so much with that sort of thing. In the end I decided to get a gift certificate to a local clothing store than sells a nice selection of items made from Egyptian cotton. Everyone agreed it sounded like a great idea.

Only when I got there, they don’t sell gift certificates. In fact, I had to explain what a gift certificate was.

So I made a few phone calls and it was decided that I should go to another shop in the neighborhood, one that sells arts/ handicrafts, and see if I could get a gift certificate there. They not only knew what I was talking about but had pre-printed cards ready. One down, one to go.

After a quick consultation with the assistant coach’s wife, I went to his favorite shop at the mall. They don’t sell gift certificates (Attention Egyptian retailers – you’re really missing the boat on that one!) I then went to a club to which he belongs, planning to get him a restaurant voucher there. Closed.

Keep in mind I was walking everywhere to do this stuff. I was certainly well exercised as I was defeated at every turn.

As it turns out, it seems what he would really like is a case of Corona beer so guess what he’ll be getting? Though he’ll have to pick it up – I’m not schlepping that to the field!

With coach gifts sorted I thought I was home free. Not quite. My daughter, soccer star extraordinaire, child with not one but *two* days of tournaments scheduled this weekend, is sick with a fever and throat infection. There’s something going around our building so I called the doctor at the first signs of illness (He came to us within an hour! Cheaper and easier than an office visit!) Fingers crossed the meds he prescribed will kick in by tomorrow. She’s determined to play for her respective teams. (And I’m more grateful than ever I went out and got the coach presents early!) I hope she recovers quickly because it wouldn’t be nearly so much fun to be out at the field all day Saturday for my team mom duties if my own child wasn’t even well enough to participate!

At present, I’m just determined to remain well enough myself to enjoy wine night tonight!

This week is crazy, as usual. And it’s pretty much a result of poor planning and too much enthusiasm on my part.

Soccer season ends this week and as team mom – for both my children’s teams – I have to coordinate the end of season parties. I’ve written before about the doubt and anxiety I suffer when it’s simply a matter of pitching in and bringing the snack to the weekly game, so imagine what I’m going through now. I was dreaming about who was going to make the cupcakes earlier in the week! Clearly I’m much too involved (or just neurotic). I’m doing my best to delegate jobs to other parents – and I slept much better after I got a volunteer from each team to make cupcakes!

Not only am I worried about providing a suitably festive menu, but I worry about what the children and the other parents on the team will think of what I’ve organized. I tend to be a simple-is-better sort of person when it comes to things like this, so my plan is to have the team party at the field immediately following the last game. Everyone is very busy these days so it seemed to make more sense than trying to regather everyone at a later time. I was confident in that plan until I heard that some other team moms were planning more elaborate dos at Pizza Hut or their country club. What?? Even if I wanted to do something like that, I don’t have the time. So, it’ll be a party at the pitch and if the other parents aren’t impressed they can volunteer next year!

The other thing I volunteered to do was host a party at my house on Thursday night. A good friend of mine had the idea that what we really needed to do was to have a monthly ladies wine night. In theory we would sample different varieties of wine and learn a little something about each one – even if it was just a matter of “I like this one” and “I don’t like that one”. But since the variety of wine one is able to procure in Cairo varies wildly from month to month, mostly we just get together and drink and chat and have a great time. It floats from house to house and this month it’s my turn.

The date was my mistake choice. Can’t actually recall now why I didn’t choose last weekend – there wasn’t so much going on just then.

My friend is a brilliant multitasker and hugely energetic so she’s a great partner to have in such a venture. My job mostly boils down to bundling my children off to tennis lessons and dinner out with my husband and making sure my home is presentable – which some days is no small feat. Having wine night on Thursday could be good timing actually – surely a couple of glasses of good wine and some laughter will help me let go of any remaining soccer party anxiety!

I really dislike Christmas shopping. The time it takes, the pressure, the crowds, the expense, coming up with the ideas. And it’s even trickier in Egypt because even if I come up with some decent ideas, more often than not it’s for items I cannot obtain (easily) here. For all the reasons stated above, I’m happy to say that most of my shopping is already done.

(Don’t hate me – I have a fairly small family!)

Because we are spending Christmas in the US, the availability of items wasn’t such an issue this year. But since I’ll be staying in the north woods of Minnesota and wanted more at my disposal than the local gift shops and the Ben Franklin, I did most of my shopping online (no crowds! free shipping! yeah!) All of my items will be delivered and waiting for me to wrap them when I arrive. The only obstacle left was coming up with the ideas.

My children are full of suggestions of course. My daughter alone gave me a list a mile long that included a new laptop (we may end up getting one, but not for her!!) My problem is picking out the things that I think are actually worth buying. And in my opinion, that doesn’t leave much.

I don’t tend to go overboard at Christmas with the children. Seems to me that the more gifts appear, the worse their attitude gets! Santa fills their stockings and leaves one “wow” present, mommy and daddy give perhaps six more, and the rest are from relatives. All in all they end up with 12-15 presents each which is plenty. Since I’m fairly strict about limiting presents to birthdays and Christmas with few if any gratuitous purchases in between, what might seem like a paltry Christmas to some is an extravaganza to my two.

Much of my daughter’s list included requests for toys and this is where my main conflict (and Grinchiness) appears. I really dislike toy shopping. So few toys are interesting or well made. Most look as if they would hold their interest for all of ten minutes, tops. And having just been through two birthday parties in the last six months at which they received massive numbers of toys from friends, I can pretty much state that it’s true. The toys have not been the items that have had the most staying power. Which is why I find it hard to bring myself to buy them.

Still, it is Christmas and they will expect some “fun” presents. So I tried to buy toys, I really did. I looked at games, at Ben 10 merchandise, at the “hot must-have toy” list at Amazon. My reaction to most of what I saw was “meh” at best. I might have bought a few things anyway, if they hadn’t also cost so much. I’m not going to pay $20 for something I *know* won’t hold their interest long term. So I ended up navigating away from the toy section to the sports section and found what I think will be the hit present of the season – something they will use time and time again but would never have thought to request : pop-up mesh travel soccer goals. Both children are soccer crazy and are always outside using trees or lawn chairs as goal posts. How cool are they going to think these goal nets are? I even found groovy new balls for each of them. That’s Santa sorted. He’s a great guy.

Mommy bought them good stuff too. I got my daughter a new Razor scooter, a board game about the US states (perfect for the ignorant expat kid!), a pile of new Junie B. Jones books plus many others, and a couple of new Gameboy games. Little Man is getting the board game Operation!, a pile of new books, the first two seasons of the original Scooby Doo on DVD, and two new Gameboy games. I am happy with the selection and I think they will be too. (And everything there will be easy to pack and bring home again – bonus points!!!)

I’m sure I can confidently leave the toy buying in the hands of the grandparents. I already know there is at least one remote control car in the mix…

Halloween was a a weekend-long event in my part of the world, kicking off with a Halloween party at the children’s school on Thursday night. Why Thursday? Because Thursday is our “Friday”, the last day of the work/school week, and also because the big American school in our neighborhood did their Halloween extravaganza on Friday night.

The costumes came out really well, if I say so myself. The ninja hood is made from a plain white tshirt with the sleeves stitched behind the head! I got tons of compliments on my pirate costume too. Do you think it was the eye patch or the fact that I actually had on some mascara for a change?!

Halloween itself was pretty quiet – at least in our part of the neighborhood. Apparently there was some trouble around the American school after their Halloween fair. My son’s soccer coach, who lives quite close by the school, told me that there were hundreds of teenagers milling around on her street throwing eggs and tomatoes at cars, buildings, and people – including the policemen that were there! – and that they knocked down a power pole as well! Someone else told me that last year the “revelry” included overturning a car. The Halloween fair at the American school is a closed event – students and family only – and from reports I’ve heard, the troublemakers were mostly Egyptian adolescents who knew that the fair was going on and just came to hang around. One Scottish acquaintance I have said that it happens every year and she thought that the bad behavior / “tricks” was just an “American thing”. I hastily denied that! Sure, there is some mischief that gets done on Halloween, but I’ve never seen or been part of a mob scene like that in America! And I’m sure if anything like that developed, the police would do more than just shield themselves from the egg-throwing.

Saturday afternoon, all the people in my building got together and had a party in our shared garden followed by trick-or-treating after dark. This time my daughter was the ninja warrior – a blue belt, the most dreaded of all! (she claimed the black belt was too small) My son couldn’t be bothered to go and change out of his soccer uniform from his game in the morning so he claimed he was dressed up as a soccer player – which in fact he was!

All in all, I’m happy that October is finished. I’m hoping that November might be a tad less hectic. But if you haven’t had enough of Halloween and have a few hours to kill, check out this Halloween bowling game. Don’t blame me if you don’t get anything else done today…

Now that I have all of the birthdays out of the way, it’s time to turn my attention to the next big event this month – Halloween. Even if I didn’t have children, I would celebrate Halloween. I love the fall decorations, the pumpkins, and have fond memories of the holiday from my own childhood. But I do have children so my job is now to assist them in putting together their chosen costumes.

Both children requested to be mummies this year – they liked the idea of being wrapped up in toilet paper. Since I know that my son would burst out of the toilet paper in about ten seconds (The Mummy meets the Hulk) I have had to come up with some other ideas to design such a costume. I found some white leggings and a long sleeve t-shirt for my daughter and have some flimsy white fabric I can cut into strips. It’ll take some time to wrap it around her and take a stitch here and there to secure it, but I feel confident saying she’s taken care of (I know, I know – famous last words!)

There were no leggings in my son’s size so I have been working on alternate ideas for him. Last year, his class did a unit on Native American Indians for which he had a costume – a top and pants made to look like fringy buckskin. I was hoping he’d decide to wear that costume along with his coonskin cap and be Davy Crockett / an American West hunter. He wasn’t enthusiastic about the idea. As opposed as I am to buying him toy weapons, I thought perhaps a toy rifle or a bow and arrow set might tip the scale in my favor.

Finding a toy gun in the shops in Cairo is not the problem – the problem is finding a simple toy rifle among all the anti-terrorism machine guns (with real red siting laser and sound effects!) I did finally find one simple looking rifle only to discover that it shot real BBs. I gave that one a miss. The only bow and arrows I could find had Spiderman on them. I kept that one in mind as a backup and started brainstorming for other costume ideas.

My daughter has a karate uniform from some lessons she took more than a year ago. So I started looking for a sword – maybe my son would be interested in being a Ninja warrior. You’d *think* a sword would be easy enough but I was having trouble finding anything that didn’t require batteries – because all swords need batteries!!?? Yesterday I got lucky and found a set with a Ninja sword AND a bow and arrow set. Okay, so the bow and arrow isn’t exactly the right period or style for the American West, but neither was the Spiderman set.

I’ll get back to you on what he selects.

I thought that I was out of the woods with costumes for another year when the kids received a birthday party invitation for the coming weekend – a pirate party. My son has a go-to pirate costume but my daughter was in tears over what she was going to wear so I’m back to brainstorming.

The fun just never stops at my house…