One more month before Adik is 3! [[image:2014-adik35month-20.jpg:Happily eating Nutella:center:0]] That photo was not taken on Adik’s 35-month birthday but it was so cute I had to include it. The makers of Nutella can feel free to contact us if they want to use that photo. Not! Also, if asked, I will categorically deny that I am writing this entry on the first day of 2015. I deny it, I do! 😉 * Mouse over the pictures for captions So let’s quickly do statuses. Reading: check. Boy is literate. Speech: good. Food: OK. He does gravitate towards toast when we are on the road but will eat all kinds of things at home. He will chow down on roti canai, mama’s “spiky” lunch noodles (“spiky” is how he says “spicy” and he hates non-spicy noodles but doesn’t like it to be too spicy either), Pringles, goldfish crackers, and is following […]
Continue readingAuthor Archive: sila
76 Months
76 months of Yaya! [[image:2014-yaya76month-01.jpg:Bloooooooooooood:center:0]] * Mouse over the pictures for captions OK since it is almost January as I sit to write this entry, I feel like I can barely remember what November was like. It was busy. We spent two weeks in Tampa, Florida (including another quick Clearwater Beach getaway), then it was Thanksgiving and we had a houseguest and went to Elkhart, Indiana. So it was a busy busy month. Reading status: no change. Still the same. We are still trying to gently encourage her. She does like it when we read to her. It will come together for her, inshallah. Food status: Yaya tried a few more things in November. This includes:* croissants (she’d tried this before but for breakfast at the Hilton Clearwater Beach, she ate them like crazy, dipped in butter)* fresh juiced orange juice (Becky has a juicer and Yaya helped prepare the […]
Continue readingClearwater Beach – October 2014
We spent a short weekend at Clearwater Beach in mid-October. It was quiet, relaxing and warm. Just the perfect beach vacation. We were here in March for almost a week but I totally did not have time to blog about it. We had lots of fun then though. It is fortunate that my current project is in Tampa so it was only an hour’s drive to Clearwater Beach. [[image:2014_octclearwater_01.jpg:Me and the kids are watching pelicans divebomb for fish at sunset:center:0]] * Mouse over the pictures for captions This entry will mostly be beach photos with few remarks. I miss the warm and the sunshine as I’m sitting here writing this in Ohio (in December!). Ah well. We arrived on Friday evening and went straight to the beach to enjoy the water and the sunset. [[image:2014_octclearwater_02.jpg:Pelican on a pole:center:0]] [[image:2014_octclearwater_18.jpg:Look how clear the water is:center:0]] [[image:2014_octclearwater_19.jpg:Running and playing:center:0]] [[image:2014_octclearwater_20.jpg:Adik embraces the […]
Continue readingHalloween 2014 Spooktacular
So since dressing up in costumes is one of Yaya’s favorite things to do, Halloween is something she has been looking forward to for a while. Despite the non-candy-eating child that she is, she loves to go trick or treating and we often play “trick-or-treat” games at home. So here are our Halloween photos! [[image:2014_halloween_15.jpg:Jack-o-lantern says Boo!:center:0]] * Mouse over the pictures for captions This entry is organized into three sections: 1. Trying out costumes2. Let’s carve a pumpkin!3. Trick or treat! So we begin with trying out costumes. The plan was to have Adik wear Yaya’s old Tiny Pteranodon costume from 2011. Yaya wanted to be a witch. So we are trying the costumes: [[image:2014_halloween_01.jpg:Yaya Witch watches Adik Pteranodon flap his wings:center:0]] [[image:2014_halloween_17.jpg:Yaya Witch complete with broomstick, Adik Pteranodon’s head is starting to fall off:center:0]] [[image:2014_halloween_18.jpg:Happy Yaya while Adik fiddles with his costume:center:0]] So then Adik said enough and […]
Continue readingRafe’s 34 Month Birthday
Two more months until Adik turns 3! He is now at his 34th month! Whee! [[image:2014-adik34month-01.jpg:Adik loves the Nutella jar!:center:0]] * Mouse over the pictures for captions Adik’s reading skills just seem to keep improving. He is retaining words and recognizing them again. He is also able to approximate the sounds of words that he is not familiar with by looking at the letters. We are constantly amazed by the words that he knows. He loves reading the names of the authors and titles of my books, for instance, and so it did amuse me when he read “The Causal Angel” by “Hannu Rajaniemi” with no issues when I pulled it out of the amazon box. Speech-wise, Adik continues to speak in complete sentences and is more and more expressing his own ideas. He now joins in our conversations about the dreams we had at night (sometimes what he says […]
Continue reading75 Months
75 months of the girl! [[image:2014-yaya75month-09.jpg:Yaya smiles in the shadows and light:center:0]] * Mouse over the pictures for captions October has been pretty action packed. We have been back and forth to and from the new gig (Tampa, Florida) twice in October, and everyone is pretty much travel weary by now. But Yaya and the Adik have done well, despite all the carting around. We managed a weekend getaway to the beach (more later), Vin attended a wedding and we saw some friends, and of course there was Halloween. Busy month all around. In the food status section, Yaya has also had an action filled month of trying new foods! She tried: * Superman flavored ice-cream (red / yellow / blue kind of berry or tutti frutti sort of flavor)* Blueberry pie (she liked mostly the filling but was surprisingly not fond of the crust)* Fresh Blueberry (she did not […]
Continue readingRafe’s 33 Month Birthday
We are 3 months away from Adik’s third birthday. 33 months old! 2.75 years old! [[image:2014-adik33month-12.jpg:My beautiful baby boy:center:0]] * Mouse over the pictures for captions Adik just loves to read. He is obsessed with the written word. He knows most of the Arabic letters now and reads English easily at a first grade level I think. He loves to read the names of the authors of the books that Vin and I are reading, and also the titles. He enjoys being read to but he mostly does the reading so really, he’s reading to us. But he likes the company and guidance. His book tastes run from actual simple story books (he does not seem to follow the plots of the novels that Yaya and I are reading, for example, although he does know the names of the characters and some of the scenes) to board books, and flap […]
Continue readingCircus!
So we took the kids to the Ringing Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus at the Nutter Center! [[image:2014_circus20.jpg:Tickets:center:0]] As it turned out it was also Vin’s first time at the circus. I remember when Hisham and I went when we were children – it was an Indian circus I think, and they would camp at that big field that is now a supermarket of some sort. Or perhaps houses. It was close enough that we could even walk there and avoid the hassle of finding parking, etc. from our house. I remember our Tok and Opah Pasir Panjang (paternal grandparents from Pasir Panjang) also went with us. It was the first time I rode an elephant, at the circus back then. Anyways, I absolutely enjoyed it as a child and was very glad to be able to take Yaya and Adik to the circus too! One of the highlights […]
Continue reading74 Months
74 months of Yaya! [[image:2014-yaya74month-07.jpg:Let’s make funny faces!:center:0]] * Mouse over the pictures for captions September had its quiet and un-quiet moments. Vin had to go away for a few days to attend a funeral, leaving me and the kids home alone for the first time. Then we had to go to Tampa, Florida for the new project. All in all, it was a good month, albeit exhausting at the end of the month. In the food status section, Yaya ate a couple of new things:* lime-ade popsicle* sno-cone (blue) at the circus Oh yeah, we took the kids to the circus! It was fun. More on that later. Reading status: still the same. The switch has yet to turn on completely so we just have to keep on keeping on. Yaya still is very into doing artwork and enjoying art in all different media. She still enjoys being read […]
Continue readingRafe’s 32 Month Birthday
32 months old now! Only four months (less than that, given the actual date I’m writing this entry) until the boy is three years old! [[image:2014-adik32month-02.jpg:Love this big smile:center:0]] * Mouse over the pictures for captions As mentioned before, August was a quiet month where I worked from home and finished out a contract. It was a good month in that we got a lot of family togetherness. Adik continues to develop into a beautiful little reader. He asks us what a word is that he sees (in a book, on TV, on a billboard, on the computer) if he doesn’t know it. We help him to read it and he will usually remember it for the next time. He is also showing a lot of interest in the flash cards that Zarin brought for them. So he knows almost all the Arabic letters now, and keeps bringing me the […]
Continue reading73 Months
73 months old now! Please don’t mind the belatedness (and backdated-ness) of the entry. [[image:2014-yaya73month-04.jpg:Happy Yaya!:center:0]] * Mouse over the pictures for captions August was a quiet month again – I worked from home the entire time and there was very little drama, etc. We did have Yaya’s birthday party (10 August) so that was definitely fun. A small affair with neighbors and family. Many of the pictures from this month will be related to the party and the presents that came for Yaya from near and far (what a lucky little girl). Also we went to an Eid gathering which was super fun. Let’s get to the usual monthly roundup. Food status: some more progress: * lemonade (from the farmer’s market)* lemonade (made at home – judged to be inferior to farmer’s market lemonade as I am apparently stingy with the sugar syrup)* 14 slices of carrot in one […]
Continue readingRafe’s 31 Month Birthday
And the boy is 31 months old! [[image:2014-adik31month-11.jpg:Happy boy:center:0]] * Mouse over the pictures for captions Like Yaya’s 6th birthday, we were in Minneapolis for Adik’s 31-month birthday. It has definitely been a busy and social month, despite it being Ramadan and me being in between projects (or unemployed) for almost 3 weeks. Adik is happily reading away, and his recognition of words is just amazing. When we read together, he wants to read to me and not the other way round. He will say “you read it” if he encounters a word that he doesn’t know. Then he will re-read the sentence and say the word again and be very pleased with himself. Chances are, when he comes across this word again later, he will recognize it. I think he is already starting to do what we all do, which is to say, he looks at a word’s beginning […]
Continue reading72 Months (a.k.a the sixth birthday!)
And so the girl is now six years old! 72 months old! Hurrah!! [[image:2014-yaya72month-33.jpg:My big six-year-old:center:0]] * Mouse over the pictures for captions Apparently we are feast or famine type people. After the end of June (and the end of my contract), a month where we did not do anything at all – did not go anywhere or do anything much – July has been very very active and social. I had a 20-day break before the start of my next contract, and since it was Ramadhan and the days were ridiculously long, you would have thought that we would have just holed up and done nothing. Nope, we were not going to waste the beautiful summer days where I didn’t have to work! We had a trip to Elkhart to see Becky and her family, and my next contract dictated that we be in Minneapolis on July 21st. So […]
Continue readingRafe’s 30 Month Birthday
Adik is two and a half! 30 months old! Happy half birthday, little boy! [[image:2014-adik30month-02.jpg:Innocent and a little amused:center:0]] * Mouse over the pictures for captions As stated in Yaya’s 71 month entry, June was a very quiet month where I just worked to finish out my contract. So we didn’t have many adventures outside the house. Adik however is just growing fast. He sight reads so many words now. He can at least approximate the words based on letter sounds but he doesn’t seem to have to work at it. It seems to come naturally to him to see the letters, make sense of it and just read the word. He seems to have stopped asking how to spell words and just going straight to reading them. He just keeps surprising us with all this reading. He recognizes and reads words that seem to not be part of a […]
Continue reading71 Months
71 months! One more month and the girl is six years old! How amazing is that? Where does the time go? [[image:2014-yaya71month-02.jpg:My baby girl:center:0]] * Mouse over the pictures for captions Where May was a very social and filled with travel month, June was quite the opposite. We sat at home while I worked like crazy to finish out my project and deliverables on time (30 June 2014). So I haven’t actually even done any of the extra entries from May and truth be told, am already crazy late for this entry (despite currently being in a period of unemployment for a few weeks in July). It seems I need to have proper deadlines to get anything accomplished. All that is just to say that we didn’t do very much in June, didn’t go anywhere, didn’t see anyone. So the pictures are pretty quiet ones. That said, there has been […]
Continue readingRafe’s 29 Month Birthday
Adik is twenty-nine months old! [[image:2014-adik29month-20.jpg:Sitting in the grass, enjoying the sunshine:center:0]] * Mouse over the pictures for captions What can we say about the boy this month? He seems to just be growing up too quickly! Speech status: Full sentences, singing proper lyrics to songs (more properly than I do), and starting to branch out into other languages. He loves to sing the Alif-ba-ta song that Yaya found on YouTube (super cute video!) and he actually pays attention and gets the names of the letters correct (more so than his sister who glosses over some of the letters in the middle of the song). Adik loves the new flashcards that their Uncle Zarin brought them – flashcards for arabic letters as well as Malay-English / English-Malay vocabulary words. In fact, he started carrying around the letter “mim” and seems to quite like it. So I’m trying to step up […]
Continue reading