It's amazing what children can do with the right tools. I gave the boys cupcakes, frosting, food coloring, sprinkles, candy, and a website printout with pictures of cupcakes, and here's their result! Amazing! They are so proud they don't want to eat...

It’s one of those rare moments: the boys are out of the house for a play date, and Abraham just went down for his afternoon nap. I have – give or take – 45 minutes just all to myself! It’s so rare, and so sudden, that of course I don’t know...

This weekend, two friends of ours here in Cairo had babies. They both gave birth at Al Nada, which is where I had Karl-Abraham, and they both had girls. I’ve only heard about the one birth, the birth of baby Miriam al-Noor, which was awful as far as...

August came to find me this morning as I was getting dressed and doing my morning toilette. “Mama, the air conditioner sounds really funny. In fact, ALL the air conditioners sound funny!” I listened. He was right; there was a kind of tapping coming...

In an attempt to Swedenize my patriotically and linguistically detached children, I’m integrating a special deliverance of Swedish history into our otherwise fairly standard curriculum. The amount of books I’ve managed to find on the history of...