Days of Our Lives

Every morning after Fajr, after dhikr, this is what transpires,

“Ok, N get your mushaf and my glasses.”

At which N would go to get her mushaf from the shelf and my glasses from my room after several more proddings.

These days, I alternate between the other two so N is not necessarily the first one to read her one page to me. Regardless, the above has become my trademark request.

Baby Z, by now, has made it his routine to wake up at Fajr too, regardless of what time he falls asleep at night. Alhamdulillah he has ceased waking up at night to nurse, well, sometimes he still wakes up, but goes back to sleep without nursing.

This morning, as usual, I made my request. And as usual, N got up to get her mushaf from the shelf, and in a few minutes, she returned to me with the rehal and her mushaf. At the same time, I find Baby Z toddling from my room, towards me, and handing me my glasses.

“Thank you!” I exclaimed, making the sign for it to him.

“He got it himself. We didn’t tell him to,” S said.

“Really?”

I thought N had coaxed him to get it for me, as they usually coax him to throw the banana peel in the trash, or ‘give Ummi a kiss’, or hand Ummi his empty bowl and spoon.

“He heard you and he just went to your room to get your glasses!”

Well, I have to say I was pretty astounded. I mean, I know he understands what we say, even what we say to each other, and not necessarily to him, as clearly displayed in an incident;

The kids were on the floor, sitting around their plate, eating lunch or dinner (I don’t remember), and Baby Z had eaten his temporary fill of banana while his main food was being heated up. I just came downstairs and started to say,

“Eh, did you heat up his food? Did he eat yet?”

(Of course, I said this in half Malay and half English)

The kids replied,

“Yeah, his food’s cooling right there in front of the microwave.”

Baby Z at the time was happily minding his own business, apparently not starving mad as he usually is when food is out. When he heard me, he stopped in his tracks, looked at me, turned his gaze to the little bowl sitting in front of the microwave, and began to point to it, saying,

“Uh! Uh!”

And I just spoiled his happy carefree mood by bringing his attention to the fact that his food was ready and waiting for him, when I should have just left well enough alone.

So, the fact that he went and got my glasses for me without me instructing him to directly was really amazing. The fact that he didn’t attempt to play with it or break it is even more surprising. Ok, well maybe not so much because I think I have inadvertently taught him that my glasses are not for playing via some disapproving faces and feigned crying on my part.

So there I have it: my silent helper. I guess we really have to watch what we say in presence of this little guy.

As I was writing up my responses to an email interview on homeschooling, I realized that I need more time to impart the benefits and inside peek of homeschooling in my responses. I have it saved as draft. After feeding Baby Z, I hopped on to the swivel chair and started surfing. Somehow, I came upon this, which interestingly, gave me more fuel and food for thought for my responses, alhamdulillah.

Yesterday, at the bakesale, I experienced a horrible revelation. I was standing by the table, where a group of girls, S’s age were chatting among themselves. I couldn’t help but overhear what they were talking about, and until today, it bothered me that I didn’t do anything to stop what they were doing, for they were doing the equivalent of eating the flesh of their sister, nauzubillah.

I thought to myself,

“Is this the subculture of the public school? Or is is from the culture of the mothers?”

Backbiting. Why more women than men were seen in the hellfire by Rasululllah sallallahu alayhiwasallam on Isra’ Mi’raaj is because of women’s tongue. it is a well known fact that the female is well bestowed with gifts of speech, even from babyhood. It is both a boon and curse for us women. Growing up, I used to hear backbiting, and let me tell you that it’s as normal as the sun rising in the morning every day, astaghfirullah. In fact, when you tell someone to stop backbiting, you would get dagger stares, and laser replies.

I always worry that my girls are quiet around people, but at that instance, I thank Allah that they are quiet. At least at home, we are there to guide them as to the content of their speech, though I have to say my children are not flawless.

It also made me think,

“Ya Allah, I hope I have never backbitten anyone such that that is what my children always hear from me. The reason why some children backbite might be a mixture of both the subculture from school and overhearing the adults around them speak.”

I lay in bed last night worrying over my actions. Subhanallah, being a parent truly does make you reflect a lot, and check yourself a lot, alhamdulillah.

No wonder S refuses to be close to some girls from the masjid. I had always asked her why she didn’t play with some girls. She would always be silent about it, but when I prodded her more, she would reveal to me things that I should probably have well left enough alone.

Ya Allah, please protect us from the evil influence of people, and please place us in the company of good people. Ameen.

I have been nose deep in books, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that I have stacks upon stacks of books in my living room. I’ve been speed reading as well, as time is definitely on my side! It’s not unusual for me to be struck with this reading frenzy, but this one is different; this one is for a cause, not just to satisfy my child-like curiosity about the world.

S unfortunately does not like ‘learning’.

“Oh, that’s learning,” she would say whenever I would bring up some interesting facts.

It troubles me to no end, and I have attributed it to my weaknesses as a teacher. This has been one of my worries and stress source, but only recently was I driven to make a move for a change.

Doing OHVA, well I don’t like it, but I did it because of several reasons:

1. I tried doing homeschooling the traditional way but I ended up having to prepare a lot of stuff myself that I slept at 1 am each night only having to work a full day the next day, every day.
2. I was very apprehensive about homeschooling ‘on my own’ because for one, I wasn’t even brought up here in the United States, English is not my first language, I don’t have teacher credentials, teaching techniques here might very well differ greatly from teaching techniques in Malaysia (heaven yeah, they do!), I’d have to do major research from scratch, as to the scope and sequence should be covered in each grade level. This in itself was intimidating enough to stop me in my tracks.
3. I was also apprehensive about when the time will come when we will eventually have to relocate to Malaysia, and were I to do the traditional homeschooling, I will most probably not have an ‘official’ school record for the kids. What do I do then?

After doing OHVA for almost 5 years now, I have learned a great deal about the techniques of teaching, the scope and sequence, and most importantly, that I don’t want to recreate a classroom at home for the kids.

I have been reading about the different methods of homeschooling; unschooling, unit studies, classical method, Charlotte Mason, Moore Formula, to mention a few.

What I read about education also struck a chord in me. Why do we take our kids out of public school if we only end up recreating a classroom at home? With OHVA, that’s what we have been doing, and with muktiple students such as my case, it’s getting worse and worse. I have grown to really despise it, when homeschooling should be enjoyed and ‘lived’. Learning is a life process, and a child naturally has this drive to learn.

It’s when we treat them like empty vessels and force information down their throats that we kill this natural tendency. The ‘factory model’ is what they call it. A textbook for a whole group of children, regardless of their individuality and personal interests.

A simple example would be to look into my own life experiences. When I graduated with my Bachelor’s, the first thought that ran through my mind was,

“YES! now I can read whatever I want!”

Of course, with three kids under the age of 3 that wasn’t really a reality, whcih I realized later on, but my interest in learning blossomed, having been given this ‘freedom’ from a ‘one for all’ curriculum. From a very young age, I have always been a bookworm, probably because of my lonely childhood, but I also remember sitting in front of the TV, with a notebook, trying to take notes from a kid Science show. I had great ambitions, but school destroyed them.

Ok, now I may sound like I’m just thrashing the whole education system and complaining, but really, think about it, why do we settle with a uniform approach when our children are individuals with varying ambitions, capabilities, interests, and learning styles?

Bogged down with homework, subjects that they have grown to hate, kids may very well develop a negative attitude about school, as is the case with S. School to them is a chore. Learning shouldn’t be a chore, though of course there are some subjects that, whether you like it or not, you have to just pinch your nose, hold your breath, and swallow.

When I ponder upon this, I think of all those college graduates who go the normal routes; find a job, get married, have children, wait for the pension. Do they still have this drive to learn? They all went to school. They’re all educated. They became ‘people’, right? But do they go on learning, or have they stopped because they were too burned out learning in the ‘education system’ and because they are already ‘educated’?

I don’t think I’m doing this issue justice at all, but the one core point I extracted from all of this is; I want my children to love learning for learning’s sake, not because they have to finish elementary school, or go to college, so they could get a job.

My children read for pleasure. Here in the United States, public libraries always have summer reading programs to encourage children to read, bribing them with prizes and gifts, just to get them to read. Alhamdulillah I don’t have that problem with my kids. We have always been surrounded by books. Even Baby Z now (considering that all toys we found at the store were Made in China) plays with books. I hesitated buying any toys for him because of the recalls. Yeah, yeah, not all of them are recalled, but it’s like the case of drugs – a few years down the line, they make a public announcements like these;

“The ________ pill is recalled because research has found that it increases the risk of heart disease. “

Wouldn’t it have been too late by then? I’d rather be safe than sorry.

S has a natural love for animals, and she would read about animals without me telling her to. We even call her our ‘Animal Expert’. Alhamdulillah I invested (without realizing it) in non fiction materials when they were younger, drying up my own savings. Despite hubby’s complaints of

‘What do you do with all these books?”

I stubbornly held on to them, keeping in mind that he’s not a reader. Now, alhamdulillah, he sees the kids picking up ‘these books’ and realizes their worth, or at least I hope so.

What I also realized is that, while a child may not display interest in something you bought for them to use, they may very well pick it up, and explore it with keen interest a few years down the line. So I have learned to not throw these things away, despite a very strong urge to do so when my brain experiences ‘clutter attack’.

So, here we embark on this new journey in our homeschooling adventure, and I have chosen Unit Study as a homeschooling method, as I find that it’s the one the kids and I are most interested in, and it’s also a good method for families with multiple students.

I strongly believe, with the help of Allah, that inshaallah this will be a good change for us, and what brought it on?

Having Baby Z. Remember how I used to fret about how I was going to homeschooli once the baby’s ‘here’? Well, the baby’s here and it ain’t pretty (the homeschooling scene, I mean. Baby Z is very beautiful alhamdulillah thank you very much). And that has pushed me to look for a solution. Four years ago I wasn’t ready to embrace this, but now inshaallah, I am in a different stage of ‘homeschool mom’, and I am ready to take this challenge head on. I have accepted the fact that my lifestyle has changed from when they were all younger, and that they no longer take naps which provided me with some ‘me time’ and ‘workout time’. I am older, and inshaallah *cough* wiser. By the way, hubby turned 31 today, but the kids said,

“Abi’s 31 but Ummi’s still older, but she’s shorter.”

With this change, the kids and I have come up with a name for our homeschool, and it’s HAZENS HOMESCHOOL, created from a jumbled up first few letters of the kids’ names. As for OHVA, well, we’ll complete it -I’m not that much of an idiot to chuck it out completely …yet. As I learned from a friend,

“It’s always good to have back up.”

Troubleshooting:

What if the child persists that she hates her brother?

“I can hear how angry you are at your brother.”
“Something he did really made you mad!”
“You want to tell me about it?”

What if other people make crude remarks about your children, enough to make them hate each other?

“N is the prettiest of all your kids.” This actually was said by someone. My gut reaction was to wince, because S was there.

How do you protect your children from other people’s slip of the tongue?

Well, what is suggested is to say to the child, or in this case, S,

“I’m sure it hurts to hear that. Next time someone says things like that, give me a signal. Then you’ll know that I know how it sucks. It’ll be our own little secret.”

How do you make your child see things from another person’s point of view?

“How would you feel if people use your bike without asking you first?” would be a no no. Instead,
“I’m sure you would know how it feels when people tinker with your stuff without asking you first.”

The child would answer to himself without having to discuss it and that would be enough.

N passed a milestone recently: she can now ride her two wheeler, alhamdulilah. Yes, it all happened after we had Baby Z, such that when I was recovering in post partum, N asked me,

“Ummi, can you teach me to ride the bike?”

In the end, S and H helped her. They pushed her, and pretty soon she was cycling on her own.

I would peek out the window and see the three of them on the sidewalk; N on her bike, H on his, and S pushing N from behind. N also had her big fall where she scraped her knee real bad that she didn’t even show it to me.

“Can I go to the masjid with Abi now?” she asked one time.

S and H had that opportunity, but she never did. Now that she can ride her two wheeler, she is asking for that opportunity.

Maybe I need to write a new story now, as she is no longer Left Behind.

“H, of all the people you meet, who do you like to hang out with?”

“Zk and AR.”

“Sometims AR listens to me more, and Zk if I say I want to play something he doesn’t listen to me.”

“Oh, how old is AR?”

“Ten.”

“How about your other friends, like at soccer and stuff?”

“Oh, them? I don’t really have friends at soccer.”

“But who do you like? What about at the Tuttle Park programs?”

“Not really. They always talk about ham sandwich and stuff. It’s annoying.”

“Oh, they do?”

“Yeah, one time, they gave me one, but I didn’t take it.”

“Then this one boy he said ‘I don’t like ham,” and I said ‘me neither’.”

“So who do you like more, Muslims or non Muslims?”

“Muslims.”

My eldest daughter is asleep with Baby Z in her arms. My big boy H is napping without any lunch after a soccer game in the morning till noon. My middle daughter is upstairs waiting for me while I upload the photos from the camera onto the computer. And I’m gulping down lychee (that’s my lunch).

The past few days hubby and I have been busy with Hayl AlMaghrib stuff and it has been really dragging for days. It isn’t particularly easy trying to get everything by a looming deadline with a crying baby who wakes up every couple o’ hours, incessant phone calls due to Hayl stuff, nursing demands from Baby Z, three other kids who have summer programs at scattered hours throughout the day, hubby’s orders that the kids do Quran, which I have to supervise on top of everything else, my own sleepiness, and like icing on a cake, a neighbor’s house that would have burned our apartment down had we not seen the smoke coming out of our oven.

We were lounging in the living room when we were disrupted by a very intense stench coming from the kitchen. As we had closed the living room window, it was obvious that the smell came from the kitchen window so we closed it. However the stench lingered. It smelled at first like BBQ but each time we went to the kitchen sink the stench grew worse. Just before maghrib, hubby noticed smoke coming from our kitchen. I opened the oven and peeked though I know we didn’t have anything in it because I haven’t been cooking for days. Smoke was coming out. Immediately hubby went out to look at our neighbor’s house. It was filled with smoke!

I was holding Baby Z. Hubby ran next door, pried off their screen and unlocked their door through the window. Apparently and fortunately, no one was in. Smoke billowed out like a pot boiling over. He dashed inside. I stood at our door, still holding Baby Z, not quite knowing what to do. Afraid that hubby would be overwhelmed by the smoke, I grabbed the phone and proceeded to call 911, but thought twice about it.

“What if everything was ok? I would be wasting their time.” I held back.

“J!”

“Sgl!” I called out. A sister was coming by to drop money for the P10, and she apparently saw all the smoke coming out of our neighbor’s house. It probably looked like our apartment was smoking too.

“My husband’s inside!” I yelled to her.

Well, to make a long story short, hubby took off his shirt to silence the smoke alarm while standing on the stair railing. (I know that is a precarious perch, for the railing is very very thin)

“They had a pot on the stove,” he said, later on.

He reeked of smoke when he came in. It was maghrib (what I call hectic time in our house).

Apparently they had left a pot on the stove and it had burned.

Alhamdulillah hubby didn’t go to the masjid yet, or our apartment might have been filled with smoke too, judging from the smoke coming out of our dormant oven!

Well, alhamdulillah all ended well. I was a little worried about hubby and smoke inhalation, but he was too busy with P10, I don’t think he will see a doctor to have it checked.

Yesterday Baby Z spent a day at the ‘beach’ napping!

If only he would nap like that at home, I repeatedly said to myself.

I think it hit 90 degrees yesterday, and I wasn’t too keen on bringing him out for the graduation BBQ held by the Malaysians.

However, hubby was going with the kids anyway, since they wanted to play with the sand, and I thus had a choice of staying home or going with them. My initial plan was to stay home and catch a few winks, but just as I lay in bed next to Baby Z, he woke up and refused to go back to sleep.

“I’m going then. I’m not going to stay home with a crying baby all by myself,” I told hubby.

Sleepy and tired, I was in no state to be with Baby Z all by myself. I would bear the heat and as it was quite late in the afternoon, I figured it was okay as long as we kept him in the shade.

He whimpered a bit in the van. By the time we were at the park, he was fast asleep and continued to do so while the kids played in the sand.

Due to his continuous waking up the day before, I had started writing down the times he started sleeping and the times he woke up to see if he was getting at least 15 hours of sleep. However, as soon as I saw him snoozing at the beach, at the BBQ, and it was very windy too, I said to myself,

“Forget it. He has 15 hours of sleep inshaallah!”

And today, subhanallah, (I hope it’s not temporary), just before I walked in the bathroom, I took a peek at him in the room. He was falling asleep all by himself! He woke up when I came out though but at least that was a good 10 minutes at least that he slept.

And just now, in his bassinet, I lay him on his right, rubbed his back while Saad AlGhamidi recited Yusuf, and before long, he was sound asleep. Before, I had to recite Yusuf to him and rock him to sleep and even then, it wasn’t that easy for him to find a comfortable position and fall asleep.

I really hope this is not temporary. I made the dua yesterday and allahu akbar today it was easy. Now maybe we’re getting somewhere with my trying to figure out how in heaven I am going to homeschool the kids with Baby Z! I dread August.

Week 2, Baby Z attended his first Juma’ah prayer, as his doctor visit happened to be just before the Juma’ah prayer started at a nearby location. While hubby and H prayed, I nursed a hungry Baby Z at far end of the rented gymnasium. His first Juma’ah, he was too busy eating.

Week 3, Baby Z had his first outing as we bruoght my mother downtown for sightseeing. He also sent his Grandma to the airport at the end of this week. Of course he was oblivious to the whole farewell thing. Baby Z also slept through his brother’s soccer game.

Week 4, Baby Z was weighed and had gained 26 oz in 15 days. A whopping 7 lbs 11 oz. Alhamdulillah. I was worried he wasn’t gaining what with all the spitting up. He also attended his first waleemah this week. This was where someone insisted he was small, didn’t look like a one-month old baby and looked fragile as he was mistaken for a girl.

Week 5, mainly because of Baby Z we ditched going to the Malaysian Midwest Games, so hubby went by himself. We spent an interesting weekend by ourselves at home. Baby Z attended his second waleemah. Oh boy, does this mean anything?

Week 6, Baby Z is becoming increasingly hooked and used to having Surah Yusuf recited to him to lull him to sleep.

H has started to call him Chubby.
S is crazy about picking him up all the time.
N kisses him every chance she gets.

S seldom talks to him, just as she resolutely refuses to practice her surah aloud.
When we discussed it over dinner, H said,

“Because she’s embarassed.”

N constantly says,

“Z! Z!”

while H will actually talk to him, though not in Motherese.

H: What happened to you and Chubby?

N: “His faraj looks funny. It hangs. Is there something wrong with it?”

Me: “How come you guys don’t go to the masjid as often as you did when I was pregnant?”

S smiled and replied,

“Because of Z.”

N keeps asking about the ‘next baby’.

N: “How old will Zeyd be when the newborn comes out?”

Me: “What?”

N repeats her question, I still don’t understand, but finally does.

Me: “I don’t know.”

H: “Ask Abi, he knows.”

Me thinking to myself, this boy thinks the world of his father.

When hubby left for Dekalb, Illinois during the Memorial weekend for the Midwest games, H kept asking,

“When will Abi come back?”

“Is he coming back tomorrow?”

“Can I call him?”

After hubby told him over the phone that he was going to home in 45 minutes, H said,

“I wonder how he calculated it.”

I still can’t believe we have 7 years difference between H and Baby Z. I must be very old.