From City Boy to Country Urchin

You know your kid's dirty when:

• his tears leave clean streaks down his cheeks
• people don't want to pick him up
• you don't want to pick him up
• bath time fun is replaced by serious scrubbing
• his clothes no longer come out clean in the wash
• you stop worrying about whether he'll catch something from his filthy favourite stuffed animal, who he takes everywhere

Learning to Let Go

This would never have happened, had he been in my care!

Sitting on the table, honey dripping down his chin and onto his bare knees, his arms almost shaking from the sugar coursing through his veins -- his first "sugar coma," as they say in Turkish -- a horrifying sight!

But when he dipped an olive into the honey and proudly offered it to me, I realized he doesn't get enough opportunities to be crazy and I bit my tongue; no comments about sugar before nap time or sugar in general, for that matter; no comments about instilling table manners.

I braced myself and swallowed that sticky oily olive and smiled.

What followed, on the other hand, was all my doing: