65 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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Rafe’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: […]

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64 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. […]

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Rafe’s 22 Month Birthday

Only two months until the big second birthday for the boy! 🙂 [[image:2013_1029_rafe18.jpg:Happy Adik!:center:0]] * Mouse over the pictures for captions So another month has passed, and in two short months, the boy will turn two. It is just amazing how quickly time has flown and how busy (and exhausted) we always seem to be! Where does the time go? As always, we are thankful for backdated entries. Alphabets are still big with Adik. He knows all his letters still of course, and is very happy to yell them out when he sees them, sing his songs and whatnot. But he doesn’t seem to be quite as obsessed – meaning he doesn’t play his alphabet songs all day long, just half of the day. He still loves to come into the office to sit in the piles of books that he has repeatedly pulled off the shelves such that Vin […]

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63 Months

Sixty-three months now! [[image:2013-yaya63month-03.jpg:Trying on her Bollywood Princess costume:center:0]] * Mouse over the pictures for captions So this month, Yaya had some adventures in trying new foods! First, there was the disastrous attempt at eating an apple. Yaya suggested it herself and then welched out of it, and after two hours of holding on to the apple, we placed it in her mouth and she purposely threw up to get away from it. [[image:2013-yaya63month-02.jpg:Crying because she doesn’t want to eat the apple nor does she want to let us take it away from her:center:0]] But after that debacle, she felt really really badly (it was her own idea to begin with, after all). So she made up for it by eating miniscule slices of strawberry for two days in a row. And then she also ate a tiny bit of the white part of a hard boiled egg (which she […]

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Rafe’s 21 Month Birthday

And the boy is now 21 months old! 3 more months and he’s two! Wheee! [[image:2013_0929_rafe17.jpg:Giggle giggle:center:0]] * Mouse over the pictures for captions Again, I am so very late writing this entry. No need to make excuses, you all know how it is, right? And Adik seems to have come a long way in a month. Our little hero now knows all the letters of the alphabet! A-Z, in capital letters and small letters! We can’t believe it. In fact, he’s obsessed! He can’t get enough of it. He is yelling out all the letters that he sees, and singing the ABC song (including the techno-rap youtube stuff that he loves) and all around just totally immersing himself in the written language. He’s even saying the alphabets in his sleep, poor lamb. 🙂  And the truth is, I only remember teaching him O and S. He just picked up […]

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62 Months

Sixty-two months since the girl was born! [[image:2013-yaya62month-02.jpg:Artsy Yaya in her tent-fort:center:0]] The hat was a gift from Pak Yope and Wan Yong way back in 2010. 🙂 * Mouse over the pictures for captions As I mentioned in the sixty-one month entry, I’m continuing with Yaya’s monthly posts but minimizing the chatter. We have pretty much been maintaining the status quo. No new foods were eaten, steady progress on reading, writing and arithmetic. Lot of artwork done in the house. All good things. Yaya now travels with an entourage of “imaginary friends”, all of whom are cartoon characters from her favorite tv shows. New ones keep popping up. She even made paper teddy bears for imaginary Peep, Chirp and Quack to sleep with and some of her imaginary friends sleep with real stuffed animals. Yaya is a good big sister and plays with her brother all the time. She […]

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Roll for melee combat

Irfan’s Eleven

Irfan’s eleven now! It started when we thought about inviting Emma’s forthcoming family-in-law for dinner. It just so happened that it was on Irfan’s weekend’s birthday! So unlike other years, Irfan had more people over for his birthday than before, including the aforementioned forthcoming family-in-law of Farid’s, Irfan’s cousin Aiman and Zara, and his schoolmate Fikri our neighbour from the next tower (but the same arcology – so to speak). Irfan sliced up his cake using his melee weapons skill. I got a photo of Ain with Irfan. But because everyone was busy with guests, no photo of me was taken. Irfan taught Aiman and Fikri to play Small World! If they had more time, Irfan would have also taught them Ascension and Star Wars The Card Game. In the meantime, Zara was practising her piano skills. Irfan got a cool totebag for his books from Cik Su and an […]

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Rafe’s 20 Month Birthday

Our intrepid hero is now 20 months old! Whee! [[image:2013_0829_rafe16.jpg:Cheeeeeeese!:center:0]] * Mouse over the pictures for captions Where to start? I have left this entry to be written so late that I have to be sure that I am not documenting things that happened in the 21st month (yes, I am that late!). Perhaps I should just keep it brief and let the pictures shine. A few things I am sure of: * Adik has at least 14 teeth now * Food status: Adik loves his peanut butter and toast. Or peanut butter straight up. But he’s game to try what’s on your plate, if he’s in the mood. Lately he’s eaten a lot of peanut butter on a toasted bagel * Speech status: There is nothing that this child cannot say! If he wants to say it, that is. His vocabulary seems to be growing in leaps and bounds. […]

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61 Months

And so the girl is now sixty one months old! 🙂 [[image:2013-yaya61month-04.jpg:Let’s ride the scooter!:center:0]] * Mouse over the pictures for captions I debated whether or not to stop the girl’s monthly blog entries, given that she is now five (and 1 month!) and every month isn’t particularly different anymore. As it turns out, I am not quite ready to give it up yet. I admit it: I enjoy putting down a few words every month to commemorate the day that Yaya was born. And now, looking back, I am very glad that I’ve done this, and that I’m also doing this for Adik. However, I thought that it is time to kind of do a bit less, given that Yaya is no longer a newborn and that every month no longer brings a lot of changes. So while I will be posting an entry every month, I want to […]

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The One with the Actual Birthday and then the Party

So on Yaya’s fifth birthday, we went to the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery in Dayton as her birthday treat. We had originally thought about going to the zoo but the fact that it was a cold and rainy day (seriously? This has never happened in July to have a spring-like rainy day) forced a change of plans. However, it turned out to be an awesome experience, and since we are now members of the museum, we look forward to repeat trips there. [[image:2013_yaya5th_25.jpg:Yaya is all dressed up to go out on her birthday:center:0]] I love the above photo as you see how happy Adik is for his sister. Also contained in this entry are a few photos taken a week or so later when we had Yaya’s birthday party. Vin and I were so busy running around on that day that we took maybe 5-6 photos in total. For the […]

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Fun Yaya and Adik pictures from July

So it seems we took way too many photos in July and there were a few with the kids together that I couldn’t fit into either of the “usual” blog entries, and they were too cute to not post. So here it is. No stories, no information. Just some gratuitous pictures of the kids (and I snuck in some photos taken during Vin’s birthday as well). [[image:2013jul-yanda-03.jpg:Happilly spinning on the office chair:center:0]] [[image:2013jul-yanda-01.jpg:On Papa’s napping chair:center:0]] [[image:2013jul-yanda-02.jpg:No sign of a nap though:center:0]] [[image:2013jul-yanda-04.jpg:Yaya could not wait for Papa’s cake ceremony, Adik blew a candle out:center:0]] [[image:2013jul-yanda-05.jpg:Papa blows out the remaining candle:center:0]] [[image:2013jul-yanda-06.jpg:Let’s all blow (/spit?) on the cake!:center:0]] [[image:2013jul-yanda-07.jpg:Sitting by the rocks:center:0]] [[image:2013jul-yanda-08.jpg:Fun in the pillow fort on our bed:center:0]] [[image:2013jul-yanda-09.jpg:More fun on the bed:center:0]] [[image:2013jul-yanda-10.jpg:Plotting something together?:center:0]] [[image:2013jul-yanda-11.jpg:Sayang Adik! Love Adik!:center:0]] [[image:2013jul-yanda-12.jpg:What did naughty Adik do to Yaya?:center:0]] [[image:2013jul-yanda-13.jpg:Awww, all is forgiven:center:0]] That’s it. Thanks for watching! 🙂

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Rafe’s 19 Month Birthday

During the whirlwind that was Ramadan, where Yaya and Papa both had (real) birthdays, Adik sneaked in to being 19 months old! [[image:2013_0729_rafe15.jpg:Deer in headlights?:center:0]] * Mouse over the pictures for captions I was going through the archives and looking at Yaya’s 19 month entry, and according to it, she had four teeth and two more were cutting through. They say that “every child is different”, and they were not wrong. In contrast, Adik has at least twelve teeth with more sprouting! Not that I am comparing the two children, necessarily. I was just thinking about the fact that I was cooking a lot of foods for Yaya at this age, processing all the hard things (meats, hard veggies) so that she would eat a balanced diet – and I am not doing very much of that for Adik. This is because he is eating table foods now. We are […]

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60 Months (a.k.a. the Fifth Birthday)

The girl is five years old now! A whole half decade! 60 months! 1826 days! Wheee! Happy birthday, beautiful! [[image:2013-yaya60month-03.jpg:Peek-a-boo! Like the humongous bow in my hair?:center:0]] * Mouse over the pictures for captions It’s been another whirlwind month! We went to Elkhart for the 4th of July weekend, and got to see a bunch of family. No work trips, luckily, but somehow every day goes by so quickly. Before we realize it it is 11 PM, the kids are asleep and Vin and I are exhausted. We also of course had two birthdays this month (happy birthday to Yaya and her Papa!) so there were activities surrounding the birthday. Food status: despite turning five and agreeing that at five she would start trying new foods as she was a big girl now, Yaya is backpedalling. At her 5 year checkup, her pediatrician had a serious talk with her about […]

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Rafe’s 18 Month Birthday

Here we are at Adik’s 18 month entry! The boy is now 1 and a half years old! [[image:2013_0629_rafe22.jpg:Short break in the action:center:0]] * Mouse over the picture for captions Adik is now fully mobile – walking, running, and climbing. He can now manage to walk down the stage steps face first without falling over (after some practising of course), while carrying something in his hands. He was determined to not be the only one backing down those steps I suppose. He climbs up the stairs when we go up to bed, but we do not allow him to come down the stairs yet as he thinks he is too big to go backwards, feet first. But overall, his coordination is pretty good. He can throw objects with pretty good speed and accuracy, and loves to bounce a ball off the wall and chase after it. He loves to run […]

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59 Months

One more month till Yaya hits the half decade mark! Woohooo! [[image:2013-yaya59month-01.jpg:Poster child for barrettes?:center:0]] Note: Mouse over the pictures for captions It has been a busy month of June. We started off at the end of May going to Maryland to visit the family, and then working in New Jersey and Pennsylvania before returning home at the end of the first week of June. I think we are all still recovering from that long and crazy ride! But everyone did well, and we made it home and back to our usual routine. Food status: No change. What can I say? The child is strong willed. We were never able to get her to do anything she wasn’t ready to do (e.g., talking, potty training) and we just have to keep being patient I guess. One day, she will snap out of this and start eating normally again, inshallah. Yaya […]

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