Finally I’ve witnessed it !

Yes Hafsah had managed to turn herself 180 degrees twice in the last few days whilst in her cot. Today I saw how she does it, she pushes and pushes off the sides of the cot, or the mattress with her feet as she bends her neck to what looks like excruciating lengths, and eventually ends up the opposite way round to the way I left her. At first I thought it might have been down to one of her brothers ‘playing’ with her, but nope, she did it herself. Well all that painful kicking in the womb was worth it.
I haven’t been out in a week, it’s still too hot, and I just can’t face it. I feel sweaty indoors, so what will it be like if I go with Hafsah stressing me out as she doesn’t seem to like this heat either? Sweat city I think. She wants to feed every hour and is very unsettled unless I feed her lying on the bed. Now I know why they actually think cloudy weather is ‘beautiful’ in Pakistan….
DH has taken the older two swimming again at ‘simskola’so there’s a bit of peace for a couple of hours a day, Alhamdulillah.
Today started the mammoth task of tidying up the kids' toys. It does only seem worth it when they are kept occupied with rediscovered toys they haven’t played with in months. Still only done half of it as slow progress with heat, and babe to attend to. Lego has been keeping the older two occupied for hours the last two days, managed to persuade S to do a bit of Arabic but wasn’t too keen when he could have been working on his fleet of star wars fighters..

quite a long one..

Procrastination is one of biggest faults, hence the infrequent posts. I don’t know how people (with children anyway) get time to write one every day. Anyhow it would be pretty mundane if I managed to do this, i.e. got up ate breakfast , washed clothes cleaned up general mess (partially) changed nappies etc etc, please wake up…
So maybe my general summaries now and again can be more readable. Anyhow I think I’ll be glad of these to read in future years as I forget things from minute to minute let alone month to month or year to year.
So procrastination, yes, I’ve put off writing about it already in the above few lines, but I’m trying to do away with it, so whenever I think of something that needs doing, I do it. Otherwise it just keeps on bothering me every time I’m reminded of it and these negative thoughts are a complete waste of energy, e.g. that dirty kitchen window with ancient peanut butter finger prints had to go yesterday, despite the fact it’ll probably be replaced with similar marks of a jam nature within a few days (probably hours) One of the biggest excuses that comes in my mind is the fact that most tasks require more than a 5-10 minutes stretch of uninterupted time. So now I have to stop this typing as Hafsah’s whinging is turning into crying….not finishing anything my other failing…
Oh call the NSPCC she’d posseted down her top as was none too happy about that, not v lady-like to have cottage cheese on ones NEXT vest. She’s not liking this heat either (neither am I ) which makes it hard to put her in her car seat as it is so well insulated she gets way too hot. The only other safe place to put her when the kids are around (ie most of the time) is her cot but she gets bored in there if left too long as those symmetrical patterns I’ve put there to look at are quite interesting but not as much as people’s real smiling, talking faces. The other place that is safe is the sling but again that’s too well insulated for this weather, so the only place left is in my arms, which would be great if I didn’t have so much to do….
Anyway back to what this blog is supposed to be about (ie kids achievements not my failings) Hafsah’s smiling and giggling a lot now and likes being played, sung to. She knows when her milks coming and makes enthusiastic sounds and movements. She’s getting v strong in her legs as she manages to push herself down in her car seat (if belt is not on, bad mum) as if she wants to escape and crawl across the floor.
Trying to do the year 2 work with S most of which he finds uninspiring, and instead today he’s trying to reconstruct his X wing fighter with the incomplete instructions and lost pieces but its keeping him occupied and cogs turning in his head. Explaining the concept of auctions as trying to get some lego on ebay yesterday. Found it a bit of an anticlimax as was outbid on an item, so he’s got to save more pocket money.
Trying a bit of speech therapy with M with his ‘s’ ‘th’ sounds. It’s also affecting his Arabic pronunciation. So his ‘s’ is more like ‘th’ and ‘th’ like ‘f’. So tried some auditory discrimination asd recommended by mum and like me as a child ‘f’ and ‘th’ sounded the same to him. Anyway, he’s only 5 well nearly 6. ‘r’ is still like ‘w’ too. I expect he’ll mostly mature naturally and maybe peer pressure and reading will motivate him to change his ‘s’. He can do it, but similarly to what he looks like he doesn’t care how he sounds and it isn’t inhibiting his being understood.
Hafsah’s sleeping pretty well, sleeps around 11 pm, wakes 5 or 6 am, unlike the boys who last night went to sleep 11 pm (after having woke me around 830 that morning, and woke me 3 am having wet the bed and wanting milk subhanAllah the difference between boys and girls. The other day Hafsah had managed to keep her clothes clean for 24 hrs and then a young male managed to get weetabix on them for her in a few minutes. Having said that Hafsah’s behaving a bit more like the boys in the day with frequent feeds and poops but I think it may be due to the heat.
Funny comment from m the other day whilst I was changing Hafsah, ‘do you have to clean her every day?’
‘yes’
‘she’s a pet then?’
‘er no..’

Difficult questions to answer.
S was asking after discussing surah al kafirun
‘why does Allah let them do what he doesn’t like ?’
I answered somewhere along the lines of ‘because they are not guided by Allah’
He replies ‘why should they go to hell fire then?’
Hmm have to think this one through, hard to understand everything myself let alone explain at 8 year old level

Other query as a novice to girl-children, what to call ‘it’ ie boys is a willy. Hishaam spontaneously said it was her ‘not-willy’
All I can remember from childhood is the phrase ‘front bottom’
Sorry but as much of my life is spent around the changing mat, potty etc I’m down to toilet talk...

escapology

5th July 2006-07-05

Today H and M went to nursery but I’ve decided to leave taking them until they are back at their usual nursery. During the summer holidays they put all the children requiring daycare in the area in one nursery as so many are off for the summer. I originally kept them at nursery during the hols as when S and M went like this 2 years ago they seemed to pick up more Swedish (the teacher who usually works the summer hols does not speak English), plus it gives me and S some time to do his year 2 work in a peaceful environment. For some reason M was not at all happy with this nursery’s routine of having a nap after lunch, and for those that can’t sleep (like himself) they listen to a story cd. I don’t know why he was so stressed out about it, but maybe there was a scary story or something, but kids do seem to get anxious over the strangest of things, and don’t want to talk about it. Well apparently M and H hatched a plan today to escape the nursery. M was helping H to open the gate to the pavement outside when H’s arm got stuck in the gaps in the gate, thus giving some pain and this must have alerted the staff to the escape attempt. I had thought that this nursery’s fences are quite low and I’m sure some of the more athletic 5 or 6 year olds could scale them.
Hafsah nearly laughed the other day to my rendition of hickory dickory dock. She did a couple of ‘hah’s so there’s a sense of humour in there! A lot of lipsmacking when hungry, just hope she makes it on the scales to 5 kg next time we go to the clinic. This is the first time I’ve had to worry like this about my baby’s weight. Have postponed the ENT appointment as well. Her breathing is sometimes noisy and other times OK.