Best Accessory Ever!

And by that I mean my child.  Probably not a healthy characterization.

But being here with a baby is a vastly different experience from being here without one.  In a good way.  For one thing, this is a super baby-friendly society.  As in, virtually everyone is happy to see me out and about with my baby.  Well, really they're mostly happy to see my baby.  Complete strangers - adults, teenagers, and kids - will stop in the street to say hi to him, touch his cheek, or kiss him.  Once a small boy, maybe six, stopped what he was doing to study Salim for a minute and then came over to pat his head.  He patted his head!

Because everyone is so kind to babies (and to people with babies) I worry a lot less about baby behavior than I would in the U.S.  If we're in the supermarket or on a bus and Salim starts getting chatty, even noisily so, it's not a big deal.  That takes a lot of pressure off of going out!

I also worry less (both for better and worse, I suppose) about how I present myself.  No one harasses a woman with a baby, so I'm much more relaxed when I go out.  Maybe most of all, I feel a fair amount of license to do whatever I need to do.  For example, once we were out running errands with E, and I had Salim in the carrier.  E had an appointment to get his hair cut, and Salim fell asleep in the carrier as we were arriving at the (men's) salon.  I really wanted Salim to take a good nap and didn't want to risk waking him up prematurely by wandering around outside in the traffic.  So I sat down in a big armchair in the salon and watched E get his hair cut.  That doesn't sound like much, but I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that I may have been the first woman ever to walk into that salon, much less to hang out there for half an hour.  Salons here are generally men-only or women-only, but baby trumps all!