Our wooden anniversary on 25th August 2011

On the 25th of August 2011, we had reached our wooden anniversary, the parable for the fifth. This time, nothing was special except I received a bouquet of yellow roses from Am and in returned, I just cooked my home made spices for the chicken beriani. There was no romantic lunch or dinner since the iftar was quite late.

Never mind though because the most important thing is, the thought is count after all.








I have not got neither special words nor special surprised for this anniversary but I did receive plenty of very nice thought comments from my friends in the FB regarding my anniversary status ...

Today marks the 5th year of our marriage. We have overcome many challenges and obstacles to be at this level. The happiness, the sadness, the overjoys and etc, all blend in one word, the 'mix feelings'. Anyway, my dear hubby happy wooden anniversary..May Allah bless this marriage forever.. this year is a lucky year for us considering that our anniversary falls on 25th Ramadhan and I really hope the Ramadhan blessing to sail through this marriage, InsyaAllah.

And believe me, I am flattered ...Tq for all the warm wishes my friends....

The consequences from scribbling on the sofa..

Ok, he made a real art and craft by scribbling on my sofa, so what? He just 2 years old. He still in the midst of learning and discovering this big world . The actions and the consequences to be exact. 'The papa' asked me to hide all the magic pens but I refused to do so. Furthermore, all the pens are washable just if he made any murals on the wall, but I do hope he won't go that far ;-))

So, after the sofa incident, Am and I went to the toy's shop to buy him this magnetic and black board ( 2 in 1 board ) for him. I was looking for the magic easel drawing but I could not find any so I chose this board instead, though I still hoping to buy the magic easel for him, insyaAllah.



Overexcited or what? You tell me ;-p



While scribbling, he could not refuse from watching the telly , oh mind the mattress behind him.



Great job Haris, hehehhee



Zoom in



When I asked him about the name of the stuffs that he was holding on his hands, he said ' olk n ord' that means chalk and board in his accent..hahahah .

As a mum I realized one thing, the more he is into the activities, the better he will be. Remember about the 'sand pit' that I made for him? He could not help playing with it. He kept playing until he did not want to go for a little lie down at all!

Sand pit

He loved asking about sand after watching 'out and about' . The programmed was about the kids went to the beach and played with the sand.So, after blog hopping then finally I found 'play at home's blog' and was inspired from that blog to make this sand pit for him. Since we have not got enough space to put the sand in a big pool so I opted for this method instead. I bought the sand at the pet shop for a price of Eur 5 per bag and filled it in the baby bath. I used the baby bath to avoid from buying another bucket to play with the sand, so save my budget ;-)).




All I can say is, he played with this for over than an hour.





I do not expect he could love this so much!




Fun + simple= cheap!

Roll up your sleeves, my dear!

Apart from painting and coloring, I have a vivid idea of teaching Haris to bake. Baking a simple recipe will do for a boy as young as him, thus last night I promised to myself of getting him involved in the baking project in the following morning.

I browsed via internet the suitable recipe for Haris to try with. I ended up choosing a recipe from I can cook programmed by BBC for children. I opted for sweet treat which was, chunky banana cake.

1. Preheat the oven at 180 degree Celsius. Please asked an adult to do this because the oven is hot.

2. Ready all the ingredients and measured them. I asked Haris to scoop the flour , sugar etc and I did the measurement.




3.Mashing the banana and adding 3 desserts spoon of sunflower oil and I called this bowl as a wet bowl. The boy just loved the mashing process!



4.Mixed the flour, sugar and baking powder in another bowl (named it as a dry bowl) and poured it to the wet bowl followed by adding an egg.





Kept stirring until the mixture looked fluffy enough.



I was giving him a hand by arranging the paper cups in the cup cake's molds.



5. Carefully poured the mixture into each paper cups. First time of this process, I was the one who held the paper cup but after finished the first cuppy, he insisted to hold it by his own, well fine by me.




Not so neat but it was ok.




While he had been busy with the 'pouring thingy', I snapped this pictures. The cook with the clown's hat!




I was wondering how did the cakes come along. Though I felt relief when the result turned out good!



Ok, till next time..

He had fun!

Today our art class had started a little bit late since Haris was too occupied in watching the BBC programmed, the baby Jack. As he loved the programmed that much, thus I did not want to distract his concentration.

After finished watching the telly, I asked my boy to sit down properly on his chair to start with the coloring activity. I was thinking to introduce him three techniques of coloring with the water color. Firstly, I was giving him a brush to color the horse. I stick the picture neatly on the tray before starting the coloring process.

Stick the picture neatly on the tray

With the brush in hand, he painted all over the picture.

I kept telling him to color within the line even though I knew it was impossible for a toddler at his age, but who cares. At least he understood!

The activity continued by using hand to play with the color. His first impression was, 'erkkk..the color is wet mama'. I taught him another word today, instead of wet which was, sticky. He kept repeating the new vocab of the day but it sounded funny when 'sticky' turned out to sound like 'iki'.

Using hand to make art

the small hand fully covered with the color

Taraaa

The last stage of the coloring technique was, stamping. I carved a potato with the letter H on it. He did not realized the existence of that letter on the potato until he stamped it on the paper and after that he could not help touching the potato, I could tell this was one of his way in learning the sensory skills.

He just could not resist from touching the letter H on the potato

Stamping..stamping and more stamping!

Hi mum!

The coloring activity's lasted for an hour plus. The final results of the day..

The pictures! I am a proud mum to a cheeky boy...

Q-tip?

I was browsing on the internet for a toddler's activities since Haris looked so bored playing alone. My eyes were glued on the computer for quite sometimes until I came across one of the blogs that talked about this painting technique, Q-tip. I was wondering what the Q-tip was so I asked my best friend, Mr. Google and the answered that Mr. Google gave me was, ' only use the tip to apply the paint by using a cotton bud.

Firstly, I laid a mat on the floor, put the bib on Haris, and squeezed some colors on the painting tray so that he could choose any colors that he fancied.







After playing with the colors for about an hour, he said 'mama finish'. Straightaway, I gave him a good washed and this is the result of the Q tip technique by Haris.. Not so 'tip', isn't? Apart from the Q tip technique, I also introduced a stamping technique by using a carved potato for painting, unfortunately, he did not like this technique as much as Q tip.



Sometimes, a standard coloring technique with the coloring book also will do.

I know at two years old, a toddler is able to....

I have not written about Haris development pace for quite sometimes considering that I have been busy with my daily chores. Sounds cliche? Yes I know ;-p

The latest progress of Haris is, he starts singing. When I said, 'singing' I really mean that word.

The situation was like this, I was in the midst of reading my new edition of Marie Clare when I heard he kept saying this rhymes,

' Baby ..bus, waa waa waa, all day long
Horn..bus,beep beep, all day long..
Bell..bus, ring ring ring, all day long...'

He kept repeating those rhymes without baby accents at all. I did not realize it is a song until the certain words bang right on my mind, which were , 'bus and all day long' . To be honest, the rhymes and the lyrics are jumbling up though what to expect, he is just two years old.

The wheels on the bus lyrics continuously flooding through my head and tell you what, we sang the song together, loudly!

Haris also manage to count from one to eleven fluently a week before he was celebrating his second birthday. For the counting lesson , I let him played with the toddlers score game online and after playing the game for a couple of time, resulting in him to able to count. I think the word literacy is not quite there yet to be used in this context unless he knows and learns an arithmetic.

Besides that, his vocabulary is improving from 50 words to more than 200 at this time of my writing. The funny thing is, when Am and I ask Haris to do something which completely impossible, he will say 'No'.

Let me tell you a story, one day we were lying cozily on the sofa, and out of the blue Am said to Haris, 'Haris can you touch the lamp please, (the ceiling lamp)?' I did not expect Haris to respond to this request, but I was wrong! Haris suddenly said, 'No, lamp is high'. Am and I went silent for awhile then we broke into a big laugh. We could not help laughing and giggling with his answered.

The other incident was, when I gave Haris a good bath in the morning. Normally I will use a hot water around 30 degree Celsius but on that day, I did not realize the temperature was around 40 degree Celsius. While bathing, he said to me, 'mama, water is hot', I was like 'err, hot?' and straightaway I turned down the temperature.

Too many stories to share with but too little time to write. In a nutshell, needless to say more because for me this is a tremendous improvement and quite an achievement for a boy at his age and as a mum, I am proud of him. No matter what ;-))

counting

This is the way he learns to count the numbers from one to ten.

1st Ramdhan= 1st August 2011

Ramadhan has left us for12 days. How fast the time flies.