Ramadan is here

AlhamdulIllah, Ramadan is here and I think this is the first year S. is properly appreciating and being fully aware of it.
Last year I was not fasting due to feeding H. and his dad was at work mostly during the fasts. However the request for him to refrain from getting us angry has not really had much effect !
He is noticing the older boys and some of the teachers are fasting at his school.

Something that made me smile the other day occurred after we’d had a ‘literacy 10 minutes’ using the magnetic fridge letters. S. can now read regular words using phonics (when he’s in the mood), up to about 6 letters long (he wanted to do longer and longer words, but it gets difficult to think of them). Then we talked about vowels, as he tends to spell things without them e.g. Muhammad ‘MHMD’and they are being problematic due to the irregular variety of sounds they make. Anyway at the end of this he asked me ‘shall I tell you how many bowels are in my name ?'
I couldn’t help but smirk ! ‘b’ and ‘v’ have often been muddled by both S and M !

M. being as independent as usual, but in a more positive way. Now he is realising his early rising is not to my pleasing, so he washed up and poured himself a cup of milk (lidded ‘anywayup’ cup, those lids are hard to put on). Also it is a bit ironic as these are designed for 6 months plus to drink out of !) He also makes himself cornflakes without any mess, I was very impressed.
His Swedish is really coming on (well Skånsk, the local dialect, which is akin to Geordie I think !), He sometimes seems to be talking this more than English, and mixes the two. To make a verb he pus an ‘a’ on the end e.g. put – ‘puta’ (should be sätta), and adds ‘et’on the end of nouns sometimes e.g. hat ‘hattet’ should be ‘mosa’ I think. The latter maybe influenced by his dad’s joking way of speaking Swedish ! He was 'reading' some simple books to himself in Swedish although they are in English, by describing the pictures, and partly remembering what I had read.
We go to the Muslim children’s activities on Saturday morning in Lund, and I was very proud of them as at the end the children stood and gave a quick presentation about Ramadan, and Muhammad tried to speak Swedish in front of everyone.

H. is responding to simple requests quite reliably now, e.g. shut the door, put that in the bin (although not such a good idea maybe as wanted things may end up mistakenly ‘posted’ in there !).
Also he loves to go out now and readily finds his shoes and socks if lying in the vicinity when asked. Now he gets upset when I go out without him, but I think he may be upset over not going out rather than missing me so much now. He did not cry when our builder came over for coffee last night.
He makes ‘brmming’ noises when on his sit-on car, and copies his brothers with gun type noises as well. He did just say something like 'car’ and his first word in Swedish was ‘gurka’ which means cucumber. ‘mama’ is still like ‘baba’, unless ’baba’ is his word for 'parent’ !
He is currently having a conversation on an old mobile phone talking about ‘aahs’ ! while I’m typing this !
He is still wanting to breastfeed a lot, and pulls on my top shouting ‘aah aah aah’ when he wants it. The other two stopped before they could communicate without crying.
He walked down all the stairs to the washing machine room, holding my hand the other day which was no mean feat. Unfortunately his stairs ability makes it harder for me to supervise and keep an eye on S. during swimming school as I am having to look after H. more. Previously there was an area I could contain him in because of the steps !
Winter is fast approaching and I am having a potential mini gloves crisis. Things just seem to get swallowed up by our flat, well specifically in all the mess ! I think I'm just going to buy some more and some stop stressing about it ! I wish the mess could somehow be lost too, but 1 of me against 4 males is usually a losing battle....