The bookcase was getting messier and messier. So Ain thought it was time for a bookcase cleaning. I helped, but I also took some photos. All these books below were all over the place. I thought this clean-up would be a good time to put them all together on one shelf. Maybe I’ll call it the Legends shelf. *snerk* Here are more photos of the selection of novels we have on the shelves. Some of these books I bought myself, but more than 60% of these belongs to Sila, which she bought during or just after college. She brought back home loads for me to read. I have yet to read them all. Also, most of her books are back in our home library in Sitiawan and not with me. This is a Vancian book, this is: Also, I found Deborah Teramis Christian’s book buried in the old piles of […]
Continue readingTag Archives: Around the House
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Here are blog posts of things and events that happen at home…
Rafe’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 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 reading68 Months
68 months now! Five and 2/3 years old! Whee! [[image:2014-yaya68month-13.jpg:Chuffed about something!:center:0]] * Mouse over the pictures for captions Food status: nothing new. She is still eating our homemade bread. I am thinking I should talk to her pediatrician and perhaps sneak in some vitamins in powder form (hopefully some kind of no-taste thingy) into the bread. We will see. We were on the road for two weeks out of the past month so while on the road, Yaya subsisted on circle toast (cinnamon raisin english muffins), green chips (Lay’s Sour Cream n Onion potato chips) and milk. Some mornings she ate bagels. Sometimes she ate pizza. But she ate so much circle toast that she did confess to missing Mama’s bread at home. 🙂 Reading status: same as last month. Still progressing. However, my friend Amy posted this article that made me feel much better. Yaya cannot sit still […]
Continue readingRafe’s 26 Month Birthday
And now the boy is twenty-six months old! [[image:2014-adik26month-23.jpg:Happily gnoming on goldfish crackers:center:0]] * Mouse over the pictures for captions Speech status: as with last month, Adik is very verbal and loves to use his words. Here are some of his (and my) favorite phrases this past month* I don’t KNOW!!!* Oh my goodness! He has also been obsessed with Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours” which he sings to (with or without piano accompaniment, youtube or mikes). He listened to this song enough times that he knows most of the words to it (which is more than I can say for myself). He also loves “Hey Soul Sister” by Train. It is very funny when he breaks into song apropo of nothing. The boy loves his youtube music videos. He has also taken a shine to classic rock – AC/DC and Queen. It’s really funny to see him dance and sing […]
Continue reading67 Months
Another month! 67 months old! [[image:2014-yaya67month-06.jpg:Yaya the butterfly (note the antennae):center:0]] * Mouse over the pictures for captions Food status: Yaya has been eating home made bread. Mostly the Cuban Bread (which looks and tastes like her favorite bread from Dorothy Lane Market, the french boule), but she did gobble up the schiacciata, which contained molasses and was brown. So that counts as a new food and she did get a new toy for that (the Peppa Pig ball, see below). Also she had a few licks of vanilla ice cream and an actual spoonful of it. Unfortunately she needed three mouthfuls to qualify for a new game/toy, and she refused to go to 3 mouthfuls, so she did not get anything for that. Now she declares vanilla ice cream her favorite (she had 1 taste of it and refused any more). What can we say? Reading status: same as […]
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Gundam Battle on the Dinner Table
Last week I made some Mobile Suit Gundam paper minis for Irfan to play with using pictures downloaded from the Gundam Wiki. He has deviced a turn-based Gundam battle game based on the minis. I arrayed the Anno Domini universe Gundams for a group photo, as can be seen above. Left to right: 0 Gundam, Gundam Exia, Gundam Dynames, Gundam Kyrios and Gundam Virtue. We played a one-on-one battle. My Build Strike Gundam vs. his Unicorn Gundam in a desert environment with boulders and one crater for cover. The Build Strike Gundam stats as written by Irfan. Only D6s are rolled. Weapon damage depletes hit points. The mobile suit is destroyed when its hit points reaches zero. The two Gundams from different universes face off in the crater. After his beam magnum blows my head off so I can’t use my Vulcan cannons, we engaged for beam sabre duel. Both beam sabre […]
Continue readingRafe’s 25 Month Birthday
The boy is twenty-five months old now! [[image:2014_0129_rafe02.jpg:Happy Adik!:center:0]] * Mouse over the pictures for captions Speech status: it is unbelievable how many words the boy can say. He is also formulating his own sentences and is a master of imitation. For instance, when we need to give Yaya a time out, we tell her to be quiet and to go sit on the sofa (her time-out area). Adik might run behind her, saying “be quiet, Yaya. Sit onna sofa!” and laughing. He is starting to talk back when he is being scolded. If we tell him “no, you can’t do [XYZ]”, he responds with “YES I CAN!!!”. In fact, “Yes I can” is his answer to every negative response that he receives, on some days. No Adik, don’t stand on the chair. Yes I can! No Adik, stop running with that stick in your hand. Yes I can! Adik, […]
Continue reading66 Months
66 months! Five and a half years old! Whee! [[image:2014-yaya66month-02.jpg:My baby girl!:center:0]] * Mouse over the pictures for captions Food status: No real new foods this month. I forgot to report that last month she also tried a candy cane. This month, she took a small finger taste of the frosting on my birthday cake, but she didn’t go back for seconds. And she has tried the frosting before, so it wasn’t completely new. But that was it for new foods. She claims she will eat chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. So we will have to make it sometime. Unfortunately we still have too much birthday cake in the freezer so I’m not really feeling like I need to bake us yet another cake! Reading status: same as last month. Baby steps in getting her confident. I’m trying to just include it in every day life – e.g., if we […]
Continue readingRafe’s 24 Month Birthday (aka Second Birthday)
And so the boy is now two years old! The big T-W-O! Twenty-four months have passed so quickly! [[image:2013_1229_rafe03.jpg:Angel baby:center:0]] * Mouse over the pictures for captions So I was looking at Yaya’s 24 month entry to see what kind of things she was up to, and to see pictures of her as a two-year-old. One thing jumped right out – Yaya only had eleven teeth at age 2. Very different from her little brother who probably has close to his quota of twenty milk teeth! It really is interesting to note the differences between the children, both in physical developments as well as interests. Speech status: Adik is trying to speak in full sentences more and more. For example, he has changed from just saying “Have it?” to ask for something to now saying “Let me have it”. We hear “No, YA-YA!!” all the time and he now thinks […]
Continue readingChristmas 2013
So this year we decided to participate in the Christmas tradition. Yaya is old enough now to enjoy it and in fact, she asked for it. So here we go! Our first family Christmas. Also, since we have had a lot of work travels in recent months, we decided to forgo our usual end of year trip (someplace warm, usually) and stayed home instead. So bring it on! We start with the obligatory photo with Santa: [[image:2013_christmas31.jpg:Yaya was happy but luckily Adik did not cry (he thinks Santa is an evil overlord):center:0]] * Mouse over the pictures for captions We begin with a build up to the big day. Progression of the Christmas tree (artificial as Yaya was sad that if we had a real tree, it would die), decorations, and presents under the tree in the week leading up to Christmas. We pretty much wrapped a few presents every […]
Continue reading65 Months
65 months! Five years and five months have passed. [[image:2013-yaya65month-07.jpg:Beautiful smile:center:0]] * Mouse over pictures for captions Food status: A few new tastes! Yaya tried hot chocolate (during the snow adventures), finger tasted cookie frosting and also ate circle toast with a little nutella (under a generous slather of regular butter). So three new things. Baby steps, I suppose. But we are pleased with her. Sadly, none of the foods was at all healthy, but on the plus side she did not ask for more after she completed the tastes. Hopefully we will have more to report this next month and in the new year. Yaya is becoming a great big sister – always keen to teach Adik stuff, read to him, etc. She is still the second most dangerous thing for him (note Adik’s black eye from last month’s accident), but on the other hand, Adik is the single […]
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Dinner with Tsing and Michelle
Tsing, Michelle and their kids visited us for dinner last night. Having us as one of their regular stops during their vacation never fails to warm my heart. The last time they were back there were two children in two. This time there’s three! Unfortunately I did not take a photo of baby Ezra because he was busy playing the keyboard, then sleeping.
Continue readingRafe’s 23 Month Birthday
One more month before the big T-W-O! Whee! [[image:2013_1129_rafe23.jpg:Slightly amused at all the fuss:center:0]] * Mouse over the pictures for captions I don’t know how we got here, but here we are a month before Adik’s second birthday. The child is growing like a little weed! He has continued his obsession with the alphabet, and these days he not only wants to read them but he wants to write them. He loves to (attempt to) write letters using crayons and pens, and he loves the alphabet tracing app on the big thing. He seems to want to read right to left (time to introduce arabic letters?) but other than that, his progress is amazing. And to those out there yelling out the tiger mom-ness of it all, this is all Adik-fueled. He wants to do it and forces us to help him achieve his goals. So there! 🙂 Speech status: […]
Continue reading64 Months
So we are now at 64 months! [[image:2013-yaya64month-04.jpg:Love this shot!:center:0]] * Mouse over the pictures for captions Food status: Yaya tried one new food this month! Honey. She finger tasted it. I have hopefully convinced her that she should try eating pancakes with honey when I next make it. Let’s see if that actually happens (she has refused maple syrup on many occasions). She did attempt to eat carrots. The first bite went down well. The second bite, well, it came back up and so did everything else. ‘Nuff said. This time it was not on purpose, but it was still disappointing. So no new game or toy for her for the carrot attempt. We had a 2-week (almost) work trip in November, so it was quite a busy (and exhausting) time for us. Also Thanksgiving which fell on Adik’s 23 month birthday. But all in all a good month. […]
Continue readingHalloween Shenanigans
All Hallow’s Eve, an event that was eagerly awaited in the Renstrom household – at least by one little girl in particular. And this year, Papa said we could get a pumpkin and carve it (after some begging on the part of the particular little girl). [[image:2013_halloween_12.jpg:Happy Halloween!:center:0]] Let us begin with the process of carving a jack-o-lantern. I confess, I have never actually done this or watched this done (other than on television) so I was quite interested in the proceedings. So here’s how it went: [[image:2013_halloween_01.jpg:After you cut a hole in the top, you scoop out the insides:center:0]] [[image:2013_halloween_02.jpg:Adik wants to help too:center:0]] [[image:2013_halloween_03.jpg:Adik inspects the now emptied out pumpkin:center:0]] [[image:2013_halloween_04.jpg:A gratuitous smiling baby picture thrown in just for fun:center:0]] [[image:2013_halloween_05.jpg:Next, Yaya draws a face on the pumpkin:center:0]] [[image:2013_halloween_06.jpg:Adik wants to play with the pumpkin’s innards:center:0]] [[image:2013_halloween_07.jpg:Here’s Yaya’s masterpiece:center:0]] [[image:2013_halloween_08.jpg:Which was too complicated to execute so Vin had […]
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