Rafe's 29 Month Birthday
Thursday 29 May 2014 at 05:10 am.
Used tags: alya, around_the_house, birthday, rafiq
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Adik is twenty-nine months old!
* 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 the speaking of Malay to both him and Yaya. Maybe giving him multiple languages to learn to read and spell will also keep him occupied and challenged.
Reading status: Basically, he reads a the kindergarten level. In English only, so far. He looked at a list of sight words for kindergarten readers and started yelling out most of the words in rapid succession. He read one of the new books that Uncle Zarin brought him, impressing not only Zarin but his parents as well. We knew he was good, but I guess we did not realize just how well our two year old son could read. He has an amazing memory for words and letters. He is obsessed by it - he wants to draw them, paint them, sing them, play with magnetic letters, whatever. When we were at the beach, I showed him that he could also write on the smooth parts of the sand and he got very excited and started writing words in the sand too. It was a bit difficult for him to manage due to the consistency of the sand and coordinating the application of force with the stick, but he managed it OK. He also liked that it was easy to erase the words and start over. Of course it did devolve into him just playing with sand pretty quickly, but at a beach, what is a 2-year-old to do? 
There will be entry(ies) for our trip (eventually) so I will skip over those stories at this time.
Interestingly enough, Adik hates it when I am reading to Yaya. He does everything he can to disrupt our reading time. He will sing loudly, or play music, or throw himself on us while shrieking like a banshee. It's weird that he doesn't want to sit with us and listen to the story. He's more interested in the act of reading than following along with the narrative of the story. Either that or he resents the attention that Yaya is getting? He does seem to want to climb into my lap when Yaya is comfortably ensconced in it, even if he is busy doing something else. I always end up with two children clambering over me and getting sharp Renstrom elbows in the throat or other sensitive portions of my body. When I read more of The Enchanted Wood to Yaya while we were in the car on our way back from Orange Beach, he was stuck in his carseat and couldn't physically attack me to stop me, but he yelled, screamed and shrieked in order to get his message across. He's OK if I read him a book if he's in the mood, but he wants to read to me rather than the other way around. It's a mystery and makes it difficult for me to have a good time reading to Yaya.
Bathtimes: Adik loves playing in the shower at the hotels. We don't even try giving him a bath. At home, bathtime is fine. He still wants to go in the blue baby tub and will occasionally go into the big bath tub to play with bubbles after his bath.
Musically, Adik loves singing with a microphone. We have a few toy microphones that he uses, but he can also make do - fashion a microphone out of blocks, use anything that is remotely microphone-shaped as one (e.g., tricycle handlebar, water bottle, etc.). He also loves to bang on the piano and has recently started climbing over obstacles to get to Vin's guitar. He really really wants to play the guitar. Also he loves to drum. He will drum using his hands, light up drumsticks, or any other drumstick-shaped objects. His favorite thing is to build a "drum nest" - surround himself with pillows and use that as his drum set. If wishes were fishes, we would have multiple guitars and ukeleles, and drum sets.
Let's get to the pictures of how he spent his 29-month birthday. This month, we did remember to take pictures of the boy on his birthday. We start with art projects in the morning:
After changing out of their jamas:
Some musical fun:
Then some fun mauling Yaya:
And then Vin took the kids outside to play!
A few mosquito bites later, they came back inside.
Then it was bath- and bed-time for little boys. Happy 29-month birthday, baby boy! We love you!!
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