Salma's New Game; Worrying About the Kid

In the past, whenever we got home from a big shopping trip, one of us would have to care for Salma while the other put the groceries away. Not anymore. We have discovered that all we have to do is put Salma down on the floor with a bag of (non-breakable) groceries and she will happily spend an hour stacking the items on top of each other, knocking them down, and sorting and re-sorting them. Sometimes she gets stacks of three!


I worry about her a lot. Most of the time she is energetic, playful, happy and talkative. But she seems to get sick a lot. Little things like colds, fever, mysterious rashes that come and go... For the last two days she's been very irritable, not sleeping well and wanting to be held all the time. Today we noticed a rash on her chest and back. It could be insect bites and frankly I hope that's the case, because that's easy to fix. Put some ointment on her, air out her mattress and bedding and make sure there are no bugs around.


I've found that being a parent means worrying a lot. I worry that she'll fall down, eat the wrong thing, become ill, get stung, or simply be unhappy.

When Salma is irritable and weepy like she has been lately, we have a standard set of distractions that we employ to keep her occupied and entertained. We take her to the Centro Commercial - the main store in town. She knows all the employees, the store has two cats and several pigeons living in the store or the storeroom in back, and they have a small tricycle that Salma likes to sit on.

Then we go down the street to the open air market. Again, Salma knows the vendors there and often there are children or babies for her to look at and interact with. I enjoy walking through the aisles and browsing the crafts, though I rarely buy anything except perhaps some fruits or vegetables.

Back at home we try reading books to Salma, walking around the house with her, or even letting her play with things that are normally forbidden, like my cell phone.

If none of this works and Salma is still grouchy, there is a last resort: the TV.

Well, what are you gonna do? Idealism is fine, but when you've got a crying kid, believe me, you're glad for Sesame Street. No matter how bad Salma's mood is, if I sit her down in my lap and put Big Bird and Elmo on, she gets a big smile on her face and settles down to watch peacefully and happily.

By the way, we don't curl Salma's hair. That's 100% natural.

Trip to the Doctor for Salma

Salma has experienced several bouts of diarrhea and night-time vomiting over the last few weeks. Monday night she began vomiting around 2am and continued every few hours. She couldn't hold anything down. We called Dr. Medrano, Salma's pediatrician, and make an appointment to see him that same day. That's him with Salma in the photo above. You can see that she's not in a good mood.

Dr. Medrano speaks fluent English, and despite the photo above he's good with children and Salma is generally quite comfortable with him. He's a good doctor.

By the time we saw him in the afternoon Salma seemed to be doing better. She had not vomited since 8am or so and she was able to keep her drink and food down. Dr. Medrano says that there are some viruses going around, and if the problem reoccurs we'll get a stool sample and analyze it, but for now just keep her hydrated.

Today she's much better. It's hard to know what the problem is exactly. Our house is clean - we have a full time maid - but we're going to have to start keeping the floors pristine, because Salma will eat anything she finds on the floor, including cat food, insect parts or gecko droppings. Lovely, I know.

Also, I believe that Ani, Salma's nanny, is a very clean person, but just in case we'll have a talk with her about the importance of thorough hand-washing after changing Salma's diapers or going to the bathroom.

We also went to the Riba Smith grocery store for things we can't get here in El Valle, like tofu, diet root beer, almonds, cauliflower, and nice cheeses. We got back from the city late, and Salma went straight to bed. Here she is this morning doing one of her favorite things:


Now, before we get any lectures, we only let her watch a little TV each day, and she normally sits in her mama's lap a good distance from the TV. But if we let her up she heads straight for the TV, holds on to the edge of the cabinet as you see here, and dances to the Sesame Street songs by bobbing up and down and shaking her rump from side to side. It's very funny to see. We'll have to make a video.