Up the Walls

I have been eyeing the kitchen walls for a long time. Three pairs of grubby little hands have made their marks and I keep telling myself,

"I need to get that scrubbed soon," but of course I never did.

I frequently scrub down the fridge, washer, dryer, stove hood, and oven door but not the walls. To see something smudgy turn clean is truly therapeutic, so today I thought I would save myself some therapeutic exercise and pass it down to those grubby little hands.

"S, why don't you guys use that dish rag and scrub down the walls. You see here, where there are smudges and compare that to the area that is clean? I want it to be all like that. Can you guys do that? I'm going to take a nap."

S started, then H followed.

"Wow! Masyaallah! Look at that! It's clean! It's like before and after! Isn't it nice to see it turn clean?" I exclaimed, partly a natural surprised reaction and partly as an encouragement for them to keep doing it.

I shouldn't have worried for pretty soon after, all three of those pairs of grubby hands were scrubbing down the walls, heater, windows in the house! At one point they were actually fighting over who would scrub the windows.

Ahhh.....good little workers who have finished their school early today. What a reward for finishing school early.

Maybe by the time I wake up from my nap, the house will look like new.

"Ummi, can we do the beds?"

Well, they might be taking this a little too far. I hope they don't scrub me down while I'm napping.

Changes needed

It was a battle between mother and daughter, that's for sure. She had to change some stuff because the colors were not in great contrast such as it would impede reading. Here is the final product:



I have to admit. I think her green is more appealing than my white.

N's Seats of Scholars Flyer

N finally got the chance to do a flyer for Seats of Scholars. So far H has been hogging the flyer-making, so now it's her turn.

We've been moving along quite nicely with regards to OHVA alhamdulillah. I expect us to finish by March insyaallah.

H and N now read half a page of the mushaf in 5 minutes and the recitation is much much smoother, Masyaallah.

I had posted this post when N and S came back from the masjid with their Abi.

"Your flyer, N. Do you think it looks nice?" I asked her.

She shook her head.

"No, I don't like the red," she replied.

I never expected a negative response. Well she is one tough cookie to deal with when it comes to art. She has to have her way. Reminds me of someone else I know only too well. So I told her,

"Ok, just change the colors, don't move anything or change the size. I spent a long time fixing it."

She fiddled with it.

"How's that green, Ummi?" she asked me, after changing the Seats of Scholars font color to dark green.

"No,"I said.

She fiddled once more. Finally she's done. This is what she came up with. Looks like she managed to assert her green in there despite my protests. Oh, well I did tell myself I'd let her do the flyer this time. Quell that urge to fix it! Quell it!

A Piece of Cake!

S attended a cake decorating class every Tuesday for 6 weeks. For the last week, the teacher said she was supposed to bring a frosted cake to class and that they were going to decorate it with a Valentine theme.
S had told me, "We can make the cake on Sunday."

"Good idea," said hubby.

However, that weekend, she forgot to remind me and as for me, of course I don't remember. So came Tuesday, we had to do it last minute as I was busy trying to finish off the lessons for the day. When we did start baking, it was too late. She baked the cake herself mostly. The frosting didn't turn out good either. I made two batches and both ended up in the trash. It was a frustrating and tiring day for me and poor S, I finally told her,

"You're not going to the class since your cake is not even done yet."

She complied with no complaints. However, it was probably due to my snappy nature that day.

As I got over the frustration, I thought,

The wisdom behind it is, they were going to decorate the cake with a Valentine theme anyway.

When S told me they were going to do that, we knew what she was supposed to do: decorate it anyway she liked, but not with a Valentine theme. One thing I notice about S is, despite her being so quiet around other people, when it comes to the deen, she does speak up. Alhamdulillah. In her writing class, the teacher said that everyone will do something with a Christmas theme. S went up to the teacher and told her she doesn't celebrate Christmas. This coming from a girl who wouldn't speak otherwise.

So she didn't go to the class and it was the last class too. Nevertheless, I told her that the next day she and her siblings can decorate the cake on their own. That they did, and what a great job they did too, masyaallah! I was actually surprised how well S wrote with frosting (because from experience I know it takes quite a while to master) and even N and H wrote their own names on the cake. For first timers, they did pretty good, even better than some adults in fact. Alhamdulilah.

So, have a slice o' cake, will you?

A snapshot of the Days of Our Lives

Fajr:

• Wake S up for Fajr.
• S most times do Quran/memorization with hubby
  
• Breakfast
• 8:30 : school starts
• juggle between 3 kids - some major juggling here
  
• 12:30: lunch (if no food cooked, major pain - my menu planning has gone down the drain)
  

Zuhr

• S & N pray, not H.
• sometimes Quran with N, sometimes H too
• continue with school

Asr

• SNH pray.
• sometimes Quran with H, and a session on Luqman
• sometimes continue school
• sometimes rushing for the extrcurricular classes
• sometimes or most times have to cook

Maghrib

• SNH pray
• sometimes rush to masjid for their Quran classes
• H gets ready to go to masjid with hubby for Isya if there are no Quran classes after maghrib

Isya

• S&H pray
• come home from masjid
• sometimes if didn't have time to eat dinner before Maghrib, eat dinner after Isya
• sometimes do surah for N
• get ready for bed
• clean room

In my haste to finish their syllabus as soon as we can, I am no longer picking up the phone during the day(which I shouldn't be doing in the first place anyway). My whole day is spent sitting in front of the computer. It's hectic, hectic, hectic but insyaallah worth it. It gets especially hard because the days are short. It gets harder for me too as time progresses. The hardest part is the Quran, because one kid takes up so much time and patience that I'm usually drained of those by the time I have to move on to the other kid. For now, I am focusing on H. I have to do something about N. S alhamdulillah is with her father after Fajr. How will I cope post-baby?

Laa yukallifullahi nafsan illaa wus'ahaa.

May Allah make it easy. Ameen. Inna maal usri yusra. Inna maal usri yusra.

Improvements

Alhamdulillah I see improvements in the kids' Quran reading/recitation. When we first started out it took a painful half to one hour for N or H to finish reading half a page of the normal mushaf. It was really painful, especially with N's very soft voice. It was as if she was hoarding gold in there.

Her voice is still soft but at least her reading is a lot faster and smoother. Now it takes her about 10 minutes to read half a page, and H 5 minutes to read half a page.

As for her voice, I am forcing both her and S to recite louder, even to the point of tears, because mumbling really doesn't help. H on the other hand, has been transformed by AM. Hubby said AM has probably given up telling the girls to read louder. So it seems I have to take matters into my own hands if I want the girls' tarteel to improve. They need to recite louder. Here is where I can be a mean teacher.

Everyday, Surah Luqman is on H's To Do list. SOmetimes I only do review and sometimes I help him memorize a new ayat. That takes painfully long to do too; from half an hour to 45 minutes for one short ayah. Today, he is reduced to crying. I made sure he got it before letting him go, despite the crying, so he could feel a sense of accomplishment, rather than being let go when he couldn't do it, which in itself could send a wrong message or plant the wrong conditioning.

"You have one a half more page to finish the surah, H," I said to him.

I still remember him reciting a part of the ayah he was having trouble with in his sleep when he was (I think) doing Mutaffifeen. He was on the couch, working on it when he fell asleep. We were stil in the living room, going about our business when all of a sudden he recited the ayah he was having trouble with, but his eyes were still closed. It stopped me right in my tracks and for a while I thought he was awake, but he went on sleeping after that short recitation.

Now, he keeps reciting, "Inna shirka la zulmun adheem," as part of his daily self chatter.

What a character. Who would have thought this baby of mine whom we had dubbed 'German-speaking' due to his unintelligible babyish babble would recite the Quran so nicely now, even when he couldn't pronounce the American R. Alhamdulillah. I guess I don't care if he cannot ever pronounce the American R as long as he can recite Quran well.

May Allah preserve His Kalaam in this boy's heart. Ameen.

May both hubby and I be clothed with clothes of Jannah for raising a son/daughter/s hafidh. Ameen.

Washington

Washington

He played by the river when he was young.
He raced with rabbits along the hills,
He fished for minnows, and climbed and swung,
And hooted back at the whippoorwills.
Stronger and slender, and tall he grew--
And then, one morning, the bugles blew.

Over the hills the summons came,
Over the rivers shining rim.
He said that the bugle called his name,
He knew his country needed him,
And he answered, Coming! and marched away
For many a night and many a day.

Perhaps when the marches were hot and long
He'd think of the river flowing by
Or, camping under the winter sky,
Would hear the whippoorwills far-off song.
Working or playing, in peace or strife,
He loved America all his life!

Nancy Byrd Turner

This is the poem H had to read today for Language Arts. As usual, we did a little comprehension session after he finished reading it.

In his usual chattering mode, he answered my questions with a lot of gibberish in between the answers.

So when I asked him,

"What does the line Washington said about the bugles calling his name mean?"

He replied almost immediately with an exaggerated expression and a chipmunk-like voice,

"Washingtonnn! Washingtonnn!"

and then just as immediately as he responded with that little bit of entertainment for my listening pleasure, his eyes widened and a look of "Aha!" dawned on his face.

"Oh yeah! Calling him to war!"

I didn't expect him to come up with the answer, and was rather anticipating having to explain it to him, but the transition between him making it into a joke and actually arriving at the correct answer tickled me. I burst out laughing. It was contagious indeed and we both ended up laughing.

The jolly mood continued on as I asked more questions.

"How do you think the poet feels about Washington?"

"She likes him," he replied.

"What in the poem shows how the poet feels about Washington?"

He paused for a while. Then a glint of mischief crept into his eyes and I could see it coming from behind those dirty lenses of his glasses.

"She wrote a poem about him!" he exclaimed, proud to have come up with his own sassy response.

I couldn't help but burst out laughing again.

This Big Shake is truly something to contend with. With his blue overall, blue shirt and blue-rimmed glasses, he is anything but a carrier of the blues today, as he turns seven.

The Big Shake

Hubby has a meeting at the masjid once a week almost every week. Since H tags along, he's always running into the uncles. He came home one night and said to me,

"I calls me Big Sheikh, but because he's American he says Big Shake."

That truly cracked me up.

Then tonight, H and I had dinner, just the two of us, because the girls and hubby went to the masjid. We have started sending the girls to AM at the masjid for their tarteeel. We stopped dugsi because we didn't see any improvements in their tarteel, and like a big flashing neon sign, AM one night grabbed hubby and told him that he's starting a girls' Quran program next month (February). Hubby and I have been discussing about this and that just made our decision making easier alhamdulillah.

I am still impressed with how AM is able to give one-on-one attention to his students and correct their recitation. One living proof is H. I am still blown away by the improvement in his recitation.

Anyway, tonight, H told me, as we were eating,

"I now says sheikh, not shake anymore."

A chuckle escaped me.

"I told Sg about it," I said.

"She told him?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"When?"

"I don't know," I replied.

It tickles me how H seems to be enjoying his masjid trips with hubby. Alhamdulillah. When hubby has the meeting, hubby would be sure to have H bring a book to read.

One night I spied the book Blind Mountain turned upside down, page open on the couch.

"Who was reading this?" I asked.

"H," said hubby.

"He understands?" I asked, and unbelieving, I began to read the book.

The character is 12 years old and it is a story for middle graders.

The next day, I asked him if he liked the book.

"Yeah," he replied.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because he made his dad blind from that branch."

It appears that the Big Shake understood the overall plot, but not the complete details.

Another Flyer Assignment

Another assignment for a flyer. Done by H, but not without my meddling, to the point that he said to me,

"If you want to change it, why don't you make it yourself?"

"If you change it then it's not mine anymore!"

"R's picky!" he said when I told him that the previous photo he put in there looked like a church according to R, who was the one who assigned him to the do the flyer in the first place.

I had to explain to him that when he is doing something for someone else, he has to accept criticism. Only then did I realize the differences between him and S, who was ready to accept any criticism from F when she did the Leadership Conference flyer.

H finally understood, or at least I think he did.

To compromise, when I moved things here and there and added stuff, I kept asking him,

"H, is this okay?"

"Where do you think I should put it?"

"How about this color?"

"What do you think?"

He managed to insist that the flags have poles, and that they should be placed where they are in the flyer. I complied. In the end, I have to admit, it does look really good. All this is helping me battle my own perfectionism, or is it?