Jenyfer Matthews

October is a busy birthday month for me, and this week is a doozy. Monday was my husband’s birthday, Thursday is my son’s party, and the following Monday is my son’s actual birthday.

Shopping for men is just a pain. By the time they get to be my husband’s age, they can already buy whatever it is they want for themselves. I’ve gone with art for many years – something he likes but won’t buy for himself – but I was tremendously pleased this year when he said he wanted a new watch and preferred to get it for himself. I knew the children would be outraged if there were NO presents for him to open though, so I went out shopping on Sunday to get a couple of presents that the children could give to him.

My plan was simple enough: go to some of the local upscale clothing shops and get him a couple of nice cotton or linen shirts for work. It seemed simple at least – cotton and linen are two fabrics Egypt specializes in. I must have gone into six different shops and came out with nothing. Everything was either too conservative or they didn’t have his size. Seriously, you’d think they were hand stitching the clothes themselves for how few items they have on hand to sell. And what is up with all the women’s clothes in what looks like a men’s shop on the outside? I guess they know who is doing the shopping!

On the way home I stopped in at a discount shop in desperation since I happened to be passing and found two nice shirts for about 1/4 of what one of shirt would have cost me in the boutiques, plus two new tops for me. Win-win.

We tried a new Chinese restaurant in the neighborhood for dinner (fabulous) and had blond brownies with ice cream for dessert. A good birthday.

My son’s birthday isn’t until Monday, but I thought I better get out and shop sooner than later so I could come up with a Plan B if my first idea didn’t work out. I had heard that the Toys R Us in a mall downtown by the Nile had bikes, for a price. I’ve got some fairly particular ideas about what I want in a kid’s bike but I decided it was worth a trip to see if they had what I wanted.

The mall where Toys R Us is located is not that far away in distance, but it took us no less than an hour in stop-and-go traffic to get there. Add in the heat and the exhaust fumes and you can imagine how awful I felt when I finally arrived. I went directly to Toys R Us to see if the trip had been worth it. Success!

They had exactly the size Huffy I wanted and I know my son will love the color combination. Yes, it cost more than it would have in the US – but it is here and it wasn’t so very much more than either shipping a bike from the US or buying a locally made bike with hand brakes so I am a very happy mom. It was worth the two hour commute and the migraine headache to think how happy the boy will be when he finally sees it.

(Don’t hate me but I also stocked up on friend birthday presents and got a little Christmas shopping done while I was there!)

I still have to survive the boy birthday party now, however I negotiated down from a full blown birthday party with twenty guests to a 3 friend sleepover on Thursday night. I even borrowed a tent to pitch in our living room to turn up the fun factor. I’m taking it as a compliment that though we are eating dinner at our club, my son has requested I make him a cake rather than ordering dessert there. Cake, popcorn, a tent, and RETURN OF THE JEDI – what more could an 8 year old boy want?

My son’s party is the first of three from his class this weekend (there are two more next weekend!) In fact, one of our guests is having a party at noon the next day. Think I can get them to settle down by 10PM? Going to give it my best shot!

Back when I was in high school, I was a champion avoider of team sports. The private Catholic school where I’d gone to middle school did not have PE class, so the two years of mandatory PE I had to endure in high school was torture. On the whole, I didn’t mind the solo-activities like aerobics so much and I enjoyed the unit on bowling we did, but I loathed the team sports because I didn’t know the rules and was not confident in my ability to perform. I’ve got a competitive streak a mile wide, but I did not want to be the weak link that would let my whole team down.

In my effort to avoid responsibility to the team, I’d usually happily volunteer to play outfield in kickball or softball games. At the time, I thought that the further back I was, the better. No pressure. Of course, what I wasn’t thinking about was that if anyone did manage to hit / kick a ball way out to the clover patch where I’d parked myself, it was my job to get that ball back into play not only as quickly as possible but also to the correct base. Let’s just say I was never carried around on the shoulders of my teammates.

At present, my whole family is the thick of soccer season. If I thought it was hard being the team mom and organizing the snack list / coach presents, that was nothing compared to the frustration of being a back-up coach. Nothing makes you appreciate your own children like working with other people’s children.

For the most part, the children are very enthusiastic about the game and also very confident in their own abilities (real or imaginary), however, they are not at all interested in being part of a team. They want to play what position they want to play and they if they don’t get their wish, at best they pout. At worst, they stomp their foot and just refuse to cooperate. If we let them have their way, we’d have eight strikers on the field and a goalie and no other defense at all. Since my daughter’s team lost last week 8-3, you can guess how that works out. When my husband attempted to point out to the children that in fact defense was very important and used the score as an example, many of the kids either denied that was the correct score or just argued that it was his fault (referring to the goalie) and they want to score, not block, goals.

My desire to avoid responsibility by hiding in the outfield also leads some of the kids to choose to be goalie – as if not having to run means that it’s not a vitally important position. There are very few places to hide on a soccer field.

One girl actually quit because she was bored playing defense and wanted to play striker. This is a girl who has never played soccer before, is afraid of the ball, and can’t kick. What on earth gave her the idea that she was entitled to play striker simply because she wanted to? I’d really like to be a fly on the wall in the homes of these children to hear what sort of constant loop of positive-reinforcement-crap they are being brainwashed with. On second thought, it would probably just make me sick. As much as I’d like to knock the heads of some of the children together, it’s really the parents I should go after for creating such egomaniacs in the first place.

It’s a community league and it’s supposed to be more about fun and exercise than competition, but why does anyone join a team when in fact they just want to play solo? Go play tennis or golf if you want all the glory to yourself. I’ve heard several stories recently about coaches who have been relieved of their posts due to bad behavior. I can sympathize with what frustrations they might have been suffering. I’d love to be able to kick some of these kids off the team for the same reason.

My daughter was on a team last season that was not only undefeated but also won first in their age division tournament. Her current team plays the team of her former coach this week. No doubt we will get slaughtered, but hey – it will be the goalie’s fault, right?

It’s only Monday and I’m already exhausted.

In part, my lack of energy has to do with having had a busy weekend. Two children, two sports activities each = much running to and fro. Honestly, sometimes I don’t know how they do it. They are, however, considerably younger than I am and almost solid muscle.

I happily sent them back to school yesterday morning and got busy with my own to-do list. After changing all the sheets and getting a few loads of laundry going, I went out to do my grocery shopping for the week. Good news was that I had a frequent shopper discount card to use at the store for 10% off my bill. Bad news was that the ATM on my way was out of cash (not an unusual phenomenon).

I tend to rely more on my credit cards when I am in the US, but in Egypt I prefer cash. Not only because Egypt is the land of fraud and my credit card companies tend to put holds on my cards when I use them here, but also because of foreign transaction fees. I only use my credit cards here sparingly. I had a bit more money than I typically need for a weekly shop so I went on my way.

Miscalculation. In addition to groceries, I bought next week’s soccer snacks, plus a few other “fancy” treats for the children’s lunches. In the end I spent nearly all the cash I had, even with the discount, and I had not yet done my produce shopping.

I didn’t let that stop me however. I have never yet taken advantage of it, but I know that my vegetable seller will give credit. I could in fact just pay up once a month if I wanted. I decided in this case that I would try another ATM on my way home and pay him when he delivered my things. When I asked him if this was okay, he not only agreed immediately but he offered to give me a loan so I could do my grocery shopping. How’s that for service?

The second ATM had money and I was able to pay them at delivery. Somehow it doesn’t bother me to pay my credit cards off once a month, but I don’t like the thought of owing the vegetable man money!

I spent the rest of my day in the kitchen washing fruit, doing dinner prep, and planning school lunches for the week – after having cleaned all of the bedrooms and floors upstairs. After the children returned home we did snacks, homework, and headed out for tennis lessons.

Readers have asked me how I come up with new story ideas. The problem is not the ideas – the problem is finding the time to write anything.

My weekend will be spent keeping the children moving in different directions and tired enough that when they are in one place, they’ll be too tired to fight.

Hope you have a great weekend!

It’s a new school year and I’ve made a resolution to take a step back from my children’s homework assignments. It’s not as easy as it sounds.

All in all, they don’t have as much homework on a daily basis as I recall having. My son typically has one worksheet a day, the subject varying by day of the week, plus a short reading book. My daughter’s assignment pattern is similar, only now that she’s a bit older the assignments are more complex and are given at the beginning of the week. It’s up to her to get them done and back when they are due.

My son still requires a fair amount of prodding and encouragement to get things done. But instead of nagging, threatening, or bribing him as I did last year, I’m backing off. If he wants help, I’ll help him. If he doesn’t want to do it, I don’t push – but I remind him that he will have to explain to his teacher and the head teacher (principal) why he didn’t get it done. He procrastinates, but has yet to shirk it all together.

The school issued my daughter a laptop this year, the idea being that they could use it in school and out to complete their assignments. In addition, she has a weekly planner. When I think what I could have accomplished in high school with a laptop and internet access! But I digress. She’s only ten – so far her favorite thing to do with her laptop is to use the webcam to make silly videos of herself and her brother.

I’m trying to stay out of her homework as well, but I haven’t been totally successful on that front. One assignment was to make an oragami crane. The instructions might as well have been written in Japanese as far as she was concerned. She colored the paper and I made the crane. Another assignment involved her finding a news article that discussed “antisocial behavior”. That topic covers a lot of ground so I admit I hovered nearby and provided guidance so that she wouldn’t run across anything too shocking or disgusting. In the end we found an article about a teenager who was arrested for shoplifting 17 tubes of toothpaste.

(Toothpaste?? I suppose he had his reasons. Makes me wonder if there is some ingredient in toothpaste that can be boiled down to crack or something)

When I was ten, my parents both worked full time so I had a key to the house to let myself in after school. I had an older sister who was usually around doing her own thing, but I remember getting my own snacks and doing my homework myself right away because I couldn’t go out to play until it was finished. No one looked over my shoulders or checked up on me but I always got all my work done (never mind the fact that I nearly failed math in third grade) It’s very hard for me to imagine my own children being so self-sufficient, however, they have recently started making their own snacks. Here’s hoping by the end of the year, they’ll both be a bit more independent. Maybe they’ll even have mastered the toaster by then!

This weekend kicks off soccer season – our first game(s) are Saturday morning. My husband volunteered me to organize snacks for my son’s first game, which I suppose is only fair since I volunteered him to be the assistant coach!

Since this is my fourth soccer season, you’d think I wouldn’t stress myself out about what to bring. Nope. I still worry myself over which way to go – healthy snacks that parents will approve of, or sugary snacks that will be popular with the kids. The only improvement this time around is that I didn’t worry about it for as long. I got two varieties of granola bars (sugar with a bit of fiber thrown in), oranges to be cut into wedges, and drink boxes. I refuse to bake because I can’t stand to see a child take a bite of something I’ve taken the time to make and then throw it away. I take it much less personally if they reject my granola bars and oranges.

The worry that I used to waste on soccer snacks has however bled into my children’s school lunches. Their school does not have a cafeteria, everyone has to bring their lunch. Generally speaking, I like that situation because at least I can send them something worthwhile. It does present some challenges on a practical level though because my son has two snack periods and my daughter, who has a longer day, has three. They are both very good eaters so I end up having to pack what amounts to a picnic for each child each and every school day.

Believe it or not, I’m not always at my best at 6am when I have to pack these lunches and I’ve gotten into a rut with packing the same cheese / PB&J sandwiches, a piece of fruit / sliced veggies, and a muffin / granola bar / cookie every day. Even children, who tend to like to eat the same things all the time, get tired of things after a couple of years of the same old things. So I’ve been trying to mix it up a bit.

I bought some small cheese pizzas from a local bakery to take the place of a sandwich, and also bought some “fancy” sandwich rolls. The cheese might be the same, but a change of bread shape adds a little pizazz, as does a slice of tomato. Last week I got some croissants and sent them to school stuffed with smoked salmon. Hummus topped with pomegranate seeds was a hit and I’m planning to make a pasta salad this week for a change of pace. Once a week or so I give them a real thrill and toss in a bag of chips or a candy bar.

It’s only the first month of school though. We’ll see how long I can keep this up.

Overall, I don’t think they have anything to complain about. I was lucky to get cheese and crackers and maybe a Little Debbie snack cake. My son prefers spreadable goat cheese with jam. How long before he starts demanding a small carafe of wine instead of his usual juice box?

As I expected, it’s been an adjustment getting used to the time change and getting up while it’s still dark outside. I’ve had to really pull myself out of bed every morning this week by sheer force of will and responsibility. If I don’t get up, the kids miss school – incentive enough to get up and going.

This morning my son woke me up at 4am – he’d sneezed out a loose tooth and felt the need to tell me about it IMMEDIATELY. I suppose that’s a good thing as I was able to help him arrange things so that the Fairy could make a last minute stop before dawn. However, while he was able to get back to sleep, I was not. Sigh.

When I was a child and had a loose tooth, I would wiggle and worry that tooth until I got it out. It sometimes required liberal applications of Now & Later candies (a sort of taffy), biting down firmly and then pulling up fast, but I was determined to get that tooth out and cash in. My own children are strangely reluctant to pull their teeth – which in turn leads to some really odd and often inconvenient retrieval situations.

My daughter’s first loose tooth was hanging by mere strings but she refused to pull it. She ended up knocking it out with the straw of her drink during a movie – which in turn meant that I was on the floor of the theater looking for it under her seat with the flashlight on my cell phone amongst all the spilled popcorn kernels. I found it and we put it under her pillow that night – which just happened to be the same night that we were going on our summer vacation and also moving away from the United Arab Emirates forever, so it’s not at if I didn’t have other things on my mind. The Tooth Fairy paid her $1US which she was determined to spend in the Dubai airport if possible (she ended up having to wait).

Her brother helped with the removal of her second tooth, while they were playing in the bathtub. He was sticking his finger in her mouth and she was trying to bite him. She got him just as he pulled back. Ouch.

Another of her teeth fell out in the middle of the night while she was at a sleepover. The only two that didn’t actually fall out because of gravity were pulled by a dentist because they were in the way and she was too passive to pull them herself. That cost so much money that I told her that I didn’t think the Tooth Fairy paid for dentist assisted extractions! She got the next couple out on her own.

My son was much more proactive about his first tooth – he was so determined to get it out that he gave it a mighty twist and just ripped it out. The blood and pain put him off of that plan for the subsequent teeth. He is on #5 now and his new strategy is to amuse his friends by twisting the loose tooth backwards and smiling. Once he’s done that trick a few times, the tooth usually falls out. Eventually.

Between them, we’ve got a whole lot of teeth to go. I wonder how long it is until one of those teeth just goes missing entirely? Or until one of them wakes up and catches the Fairy?

How much did you get for your teeth from the Tooth Fairy? I got about $0.25 and my children get $1 or 10LE (Egyptian) but a friend recently told me that her kids get $10. I hope that my children and her children never get to talking or there is going to be trouble!!

Just in case you thought I am only taking pictures of foxes and other wildlife, allow me a moment to brag on my daughter. She played her very first tennis tournament last week and won the girls under 12s category.

I admit that I was on pins and needles much of the time. Since it was her first tournament, I wanted so much for her to play well and have a good experience. She lost to a girl she should have defeated in her first match in the under 14s category and was very upset about it, so it was doubly thrilling to see her come back so strong in her second match in the under 12s category.

Putting it in perspective, there was only one other girl in her category she had to beat, but they were both very good players. They had to play the best 2 of 3 sets. My daughter won the first set in a tie breaker and took the second set easily.

Considering that it was her first tournament, she was playing on a hard court (rather than clay, which is her usual surface) in front of an audience, and she came back after a defeat, I was tremendously proud of her for doing so well even if she did only have to play one opponent. She won a $20 gift certificate to a local store for her achievement.

Her first prize money

This is what happens when mommy is too sick and tired to play with the children on a holiday weekend and allows them to play with her digital camera instead of taking them out.

They take pictures of the television.

They also took pictures of each other, but frankly, most of these were better.

See what I mean?

I’m going to need a reprieve on the new-recipe-a-month resolution thing. Pain and illness are both excellent appetite suppressants and no inspiration for cooking for others. I’ll try to do TWO in June as soon as I’m up to speed again. We’ll see how that works out…

My son is only seven, in grade two in the British system. Every year since he’s started school his teachers have expressed concern about his handwriting and his ability to “express his thoughts” in writing. When I tried once to respond to this concern by saying I thought it was quite common for little boys to have poor handwriting and that we were practicing writing his name at home, his teacher at the time gave me a serious look and said “you did give him a really long name.” As if handwriting should have been on my mind when I chose his name!

Of course, things have only progressed as he’s moved up through the grades. His handwriting hasn’t improved much, nor has his spelling, and asking him to sit down and write a couple of sentences for homework is pure torture – for both of us. This week’s assignment: Imagine a new planet where (pick a scenario) time runs backward, there is no day or night, people are tiny, etc and then explain how life is from when you wake up in the morning to when you go to sleep at night. What things are easier? What things are more difficult?

I know adults who would have trouble coming up with a decent response to such an assignment let alone a seven year old boy who’d rather be doing just about anything else but sitting still and writing an essay after a long day spent at school sitting still and doing work.

What makes it all worse is that I know my son could do it if he wanted to. He has the fine motor skills to trace detailed pictures and to color elaborate illustrations inside the lines. There are even times when he will sit down with a notebook and write himself a story out of his head, complete with illustrations. What’s the difference? Motivation. He wants to do his thing, not theirs. I get that – I can’t write someone else’s story ideas either. I, however, was always a good student and did my assignments well to please my teacher if nothing else. Hard to know how to instill that desire in my own children.

Every year I tell myself that I’ll work with the children during the summer to improve the subject they are having the most difficulty with: math for my daughter and writing for my son. Then by the end of the school year I’m so tired and fed up with fighting with them both to get through the required school work that I let it slide… for the whole summer. When will *I* learn?

As we come up to the last month of school and the end of the year, I’m dreading the next parent teacher conference where I’ll have to sit and nod while the teachers tell me about my son’s failure to perform up to their (in my opinion, ridiculous) standards in writing and how my daughter knows the math but doesn’t test well. Blah blah blah. Both of these things are well documented already. Surprise me and tell me something new, please.

Five weeks of school left and counting…