Taking Care of Younger Ones

Out here in the villages you often see younger children and babies in the care of their older siblings. It isn't something you see so much in the city, especially with middle and upper class families who might have staff working for them to take care of the kids. But I remember being the oldest of four and essentially being responsible for my younger siblings when my mother had something else to do. I guess it's a bit of a lost art some places now.

Are You My Mother?

 A mother crow was feeding her baby on top of the hay pile. Mom had to go find more food and the baby decided to ask a passerby for a meal. She's lucky that she found Buffy who is a sucker for any kind of baby.

Not Fisher Price

My housekeeper's son is figuring out walking but he wants to move faster than he can reasonably do so on his own. One of the villagers took some old nails and scrap wood and made this tricycle walker for him that he pushes around the garden. He still falls over but it's sort of slow motion.

Exploring Water With a Friend

We were doing some watering today using a diesel pump attached to the well and a used firehose. I think "flooding" is really the right word. The resident infant was playing on the grass and one of my larger dogs walked in front of him and stood there looking noble for a couple of minutes after which I realised that the toddler I'd been watching was nowhere to be seen. I walked around the aviary to find him happily sitting in a flowing stream of well water while another one of the dogs supervised his explorations. This is a lucky kid. Not that many have this much  clean water to play in.

Supervising the Workman

Time for a cute overload.  Nadim, my housekeeper's son, has learned how to crawl and is working on walking, which has its hazards in a house with stone floors, so we dump him in the garden at every opportunity to take his tumbles on sand and soft grass. Yesterday he discovered a shovel left behind by the men who are plastering the upper floors of the house and was determined to pick it up, much like he does with a broom in the house. Needless to say, more work is needed. I'm sure he will be much less eager to wield a shovel when he gets older. One of the Danes and our Pit cross decided to lie on the sandpile to supervise...and, in the case of the Pit, to apply frequent licks to clean sand off his face.

Attacked!

My sincere apologies for not posting for a while but my MacBook got attacked by a Trojan that was hijacking programs on my computer and using up all my internet allowance. I've had to have technicians clean it out and we are now trying to reconstruct my data which was saved but I worry might be infected. Bear with me.

Meanwhile, yesterday was the birth date of young Khaled Alaa Abdel Fattah, whose parents are Alaa and Manal, two of the first Egyptian bloggers that I found when I started my own blog. Most of their work is in Arabic and they are second or third generation activists who have been working to improve life in Egypt most of their lives. Alaa was arrested by the military on charges that are so obviously false it hurts to even think about it. He is still in detention and missed the birth of his first son, just as his father missed the birth of Alaa's sister Mona, another activist here. So everyone wish Khaled a happy birth day and a speedy reunion with his father.