Goodbye Dubai!

March 25, 2013 2 Comments

Goodbye Dubai

It’s been grand. Really it has.

When I left Berlin, post babies, in the middle of  winter (which I hear is still going on despite it being Spring now) and bout after bout of sickness – I was feeling low. I blamed it on motherhood. I blamed it on hormones. I blamed it on the weather. I blamed it on Berlin. I blamed it on whoever was in my line of vision at the time of blame attribution.Lunch at our favorite LebaneseTwo months of sun, help with the babies and friendly locals have done wonders. This morning I was speaking to someone about opening a shop with adorable baby clothing handmade in Burma.  A  little while later I sent an email off to a friend about travel plans. Anything seems possible, again.

I don’t know who those guys are by the way.  They simply walked up to us and asked to be photographed with the twins.

This is what the Middle East does so well.  Friendliness.  Hospitality.  Fun.  Irreverence.  Lots of silliness. The Lime Tree CafeIt’s why they can have places like Scoozi, a restaurant that serves Italian and Sushi.  Neither are particularly good-by the way but sometimes food is just food.  I eat the avocado maki and complain that the tempura is all uncooked carrots and onions until my husband tells me to pipe down because I am giving him indigestion.  He’s right sometimes it’s about having a good time, somewhere close to home, where the twins can sqwuak and flap like baby birds and liter the floor with breadsticks.Arabic breakfast at The Lime Tree Cafe Read more of this post

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The Food Hall, Selfridges, London

September 20, 2012 4 Comments

Nothing opens the appetite like exhaustion.  A combination of physical and emotional fatigue seem to work best.  Today I ate a bagel with cream cheese and salmon, 2 hours after I had eaten breakfast and my stomach felt like all I had done was chew a couple of sticks of gum.  If anything it had made me hungrier. I moved on to the free cookie I had received when I had collected 10 loyalty stamps from the ice cream shop.  Nothing.  I polished off a packet of nuts and raisins. And it went on.

I have a lot of guilt every time I eat.  Not because of my weight (producing milk for two babies means you can eat anything and not gain so much as a gram of fat) but because of my teeth.

I went to see my dentist, whom I love.  He sat me down on his green chair, put the paper bib on, took a deep breath and asked me to give it to him straight.

“What have you been eating?” There’s an edge to his voice.

“I’ve been snacking.” I confess, sharp intake of breath but he remains calm.

“Go on.”

“I’ve been eating sweets.” I continue.

“Haribo?” He almost whispers it.  My dentist equates eating Haribo to crack cocaine.

“God no!” I exclaim.  “No, shortbread biscuits, cakes things like that.”

He relaxes and has a look.  He tells me it’s not that bad but that he is prescribing me Duraphat 5000 ppm as a prophylactic.  It’s got 5x the amount of fluoride of regular toothpaste and should tide me through this turbulent period.

My obstetrician is similarly concerned about prophylactics.  What am I using for ‘protection’ he asks without a hint of irony at my 6-week check up before giving me a prescription for the pill.  Which let’s face it, is like giving a Bedouin a life boat in case the desert floods. Read more of this post

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Primrose Bakery, Cupcakes, Primrose Hill

August 23, 2012 3 Comments

NOTE: I am in London until the beginning of October, for Berlin Posts, please visit my Berlin, Favourites page or Places I’ve Eaten In 

Even though I thought I was being careful, I’d managed to turn Layla into a little Suri Cruise. (Minus the helicopter rides and trying to rent all of Disney World but close enough.)  Ironically, I always prided myself on a job well done with her, I had a well-rounded, exceptionally behaved three and a half-year old.  I won’t say I had rules but I had guidelines.  One cartoon per day of her choice at her time, for example.  No more, yesterday I forgot her in front of CBeebies for 4 hours.  Another day, she skipped lunch (because I didn’t make her any) and I only realised when I caught myself thinking she was looking unusually gaunt.  To assuage my guilt at the sudden chaos I have introduced into her life, I take her for frequent trips to Primrose Bakery.  I bundle Layla into our Smart car where she knows the two seat format will give her (and me) some respite from her sisters and we zoom down the hill, music blaring and windows rolled down.

(People laugh that I insist on keeping our Smart car with 3 children but my theory is; with only room for one more, you can focus on the child you’ve taken and avoid the wild-eyed-crazy-mom-on-the-edge-been-stuck-in-traffic-with-3-children.  Now I just need to find someone to leave the other two with…any takers out there?  I make cute children.)I am still not a fan of cupcakes (see post on Cupcake Berlin here) but in London, accompanied by a recently dethroned princess, I find myself being grateful for their abundance.  I am never far from one; Lola’s, Hummingbird Bakery and one that I like (???) at Westfield Shopping Mall called Buttercup Cake Shop. Read more of this post

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Yasmine & Zoey

August 16, 2012 29 Comments

I’ve gone from being a mother of 1 to being a mother of 3.

Inconceivable.

No words.

(Ok, well maybe a few)

On Monday the 30th of July two gorgeous and tiny baby girls were handed to me .  (Yup, it’s that easy, you go to the baby shop, find two you like and 4 days later you go home, powder your nose, sell exclusive picture rights to Hello and People magazine, then whiz off to get a tattoo of their birth co-ordinates on your arm. Then a few short months later, you don an  itsy bitsy teenie weenie white bikini and text the nanny  nannies ‘Back in 2 days, how are the twins?’.  EASY!) Read more of this post

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