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“What?” - said in response to just about everything these days. Mitchell has developed his father’s selective hearing.

“Whassat?” - said with a wonderfully high pitch and look of shock on his face, whenever he hears a sudden noise such as a revving motorbike, a car horn or a siren (ie every five minutes in Beirut).

“Fina! Yoke, pease!” - called out at the end of dinner each night, when Mitchell wants some yoghurt for dessert. He very quickly learned that Fina is at his beck and call…

“Bag, off!” followed by “Dress!” - said way too early on Saturday and Sunday mornings when Mitchell wants to be let out of his sleeping bag and then wants his father to get dressed, get out of bed and join him for breakfast. Tragically he is less concerned about being accompanied by his mother, who therefore has the luxury of sleeping in every day of the week.

“Why?” - oh dear, we’re just discovering this one. Said after about eight sessions of “what?” and another stalling tactic to avoid doing something unpleasant.

“Don’t want to” - said when stalling tactics have failed and he’s being forced to eat something or do something that’s invariably good for him but rarely pleasant to experience.

“No try” - alas, see “don’t want to” above. Even more frustrating because it’s usually in response to efforts to get him to taste something that we know he’ll enjoy, but he’s just decided not to.

The backgammon boys hard at work on the Corniche

Nothing beats the Prophet’s birthday holiday immediately followed by the Easter weekend extravaganza. The sun is out, the weather’s warm (too warm in fact - 31 degrees today), and there’s no work until Tuesday.

Yesterday morning Fina managed Mitchell while Sheridan and I had a lovely quiet sleep in. Then in the afternoon we took a drive up to Byblos (founded in 5000 BC and possibly the world’s longest continually inhabited city) and beyond. Then today we did our weekend usual and visited the malls for a yummy breakfast of pancakes (at City Mall) followed by an equally delectable salad lunch at Waterlemon (ABC Mall).  This evening featured several episodes of West Wing, although we still haven’t undecided whether we’re getting into it or not.  Might have to head back to my DVD guy in Haret Hriek to buy the next series of Entourage.

And then tomorrow after the festival of the egg and bunny we’re having a roast lunch at Greg and Kris’ house, where Mitchell I’m sure will tease and poke and pinch Pepper, their boisterous yet thankfully patient blue heeler dog.

Who knows what we’ll get up to on Monday?

I snapped this just after sunset from the Pont du Bir-Hakeim. The evening looks kind of rosy and balmy, when in fact it was about three degrees celsius and I had icicles forming on the end of my nose.

Pentax *ist DL2 20mm f/5.6 1/2sec

Daddy has just returned from four days in Paris. The visit was work-related, but I managed to squeeze in a bit of shopping and the odd Parisienne delectable (food that is).

On returning home I carted all the goodies that I’d acquired into the lift and piled everything up in our landing outside the front door, then rang the doorbell. As I’ve mentioned before, Mitchie has been known to get pretty excited when Daddy comes home from work, so I was looking forward to his reaction after I’d been away for four days.

I rang the doorbell, then squatted down to little man level so we’d be looking eye to eye when he opened the door. At Mummy’s urging Mitchell slowly opened the door. He looked at me, squatting there, then looked over my shoulder at all the goodies and brushed straight past me to get to his new treasures.

So much for a triumphant return home. Our child has already learned that material goods are the most important thing in the world

Guess I can’t blame him when sitting there was a big box containing one of these, brought from Galeries Lafayette.

Tempestuous Mediterranean seas along the Beirut Corniche

Okay, so this probably won’t be as exciting for you as it is for us.

For the past few weeks we’ve been sitting Mitchell on the toilet before he has his bath as a tentative first step with toilet training. The idea is to get him comfortable with sitting on the loo and helping him to understand what it means when he needs to go.

So far it’s been a bit of fun, but not really achieving anything.

Tonight for the first time the little guy did a small wee while he was sitting on the dunny. We clapped and cheered and told him he was a clever boy, so he promptly squeezed out a more manly stream. He was so excited at our response that he wanted to get back on the toilet after his bath to have another go.

Now don’t get me wrong - I’d much prefer to teach him to pee standing up as anything else is, frankly, emasculating.

But I guess I’ve got to be realistic. So for now we’re quite chuffed that our little guy’s taken a small step towards being able to stow the flow without the benefit of pampers, huggies, snugglers or any other nappies.

In addition to Beirut, there are three other main coastal cities in Lebanon: Tripoli, Sidon and Tyre.  Each of these have a wealth of history and were previously capital cities for the Phoenecian empire, as well as major cities for the ancient Greeks, Romans and others.

Tyre is in the southern end of Lebanon and only about 20km from Israel. These days it is almost exclusively Shiite and is the main city in the UN mandated buffer zone established between Israel and Hizballah after the 2006 summer war.

Politics aside, Tyre is a rather quaint city with extraordinary history on display.  The security situation has all but killed the tourism trade, such that the only visitors to the area are international peacekeepers assigned to UNIFIL.  This is a shame as there’s plenty of Roman, Greek, Byzantine, Phoenecian and Crusader ruins worthy of exploration, and it has the cleanest beaches and water in Lebanon.

While visiting Tyre for work yesterday I had a bit of spare time, so I took the opportunity to explore some of the ruins at the ancient port.  The weather was absolutely glorious - the sun was glinting off the crystal waters of the Med and there was none of Beirut’s dirtiness in the air.   I took a work contact out for lunch and I must say that it was pretty hard sitting in an open air cafe eating decent pizza, drinking Al Mazza beer and enjoying the view over the Med…

The Beirut tea man