Babies and HOT Peppers

One thing I noticed after a little while of being here is that they don't sell too many high chairs. For the reason that if they did their baby would be sitting up way higher than everyone else. People here eat sitting on the couches they have lining their living rooms. They usually holds the small children on their laps or....they just let the kids run around like crazy. :) Whenever we eat with other people, someone always insists on holding our daughter while we eat. I am never comfortable with that situation. You know being the typical mother I worry she is going to spill something or break something. I also worry about what they might feed her. Well, the other night I had a reason to fear!!!! Our friend wanted to hold our daughter at the table. She seemed to like him so we started eating with her eating sitting with him. There was a small bowl of extremely HOT hot sauce on the table. If you have ever been in South America, it was similar to Peruvian Aji.....we are talking about super HOT. This stuff makes the hot sauce at Mexican restaurants seem like ketchup. Sooo...you probably know where I am going with this, our friend had no idea how HOT it was. He took a small piece of bread and scoop up the HOT sauce and popped it right in our daughter's little mouth. I didn't know how to say anything in Arabic at that moment. I screamed "NOOOOOOO!" Everyone at the table was running around trying to get something to wipe it out of her mouth and soothe the burning. She shocked at the new horrible taste in her mouth. I think it was the worst ten minutes of her little life. our friend felt awful. We assured him she was okay. He learned that night babies aren't to fond of hot sauce. As for me, I have learned in my short time being a mom in living in 3 different countries and traveling to many more that I can't shelter my kids. I can't keep them from being right in there with everything the country and the culture have to offer. Obviously it is not always easy for me or for them but I really believe if you want to build relationships with people you have to share your life.

Later that night our daughter was sitting with our friend playing on the floor, forgetting all about her experience at the dinner table.