Brief milestones update

I can't remember Abdullah's milestones when he was 9 months, but KC seems to be ahead of him as far as social skills and behind in physical prowess. She now imitates Abdullah (who is imitating her most of the time) and "speaks" in gibberish sentences with inflection. I had thought she might be an early walker since she's been standing for months, but it seems her advanced status has kind of plateaued as she is still cruising. She has stared letting go of things in an attempt to stand. Good thing she doesn't mind falling.

At this age, Abdullah was cruising while drinking from his bottle. KC still hasn't gotten the hang of bottle holding although I wonder if perhaps she's using her frailty as an excuse to make sure that she gets as much undivided attention as she can.

Her favorite pastime is making stuff louder than it needs to be. Most of the time, she can make enough noise on her own to satisfy this new noise craving. When that's not enough, she enjoys banging her hands and toys against things as hard as she can.

At 2 and a half, Abdullah can do anything you can do better. I know this because when he's offered assistance, he responds with "mouh bahk!" Usually, half way through this statement he remembers that there are people much bigger than him in the world who will take away his knife and banana and who have no qualms about leaving him in tears so he adds a gentle "pleeease" at the end.

We've added a few more activities to his repertoire. He made his first sandwich and his first batch of playdough. I made a few more activities for his cabinet including a color sorting box. He did sort the colors one time, but he finished it off by throwing in a few mismatches. He told me they were hot so all I can guess is that he wanted the red paper to burn the others and end the torture of boredom that he was being subjected to. He's also been big into making pretend food lately, so he may have just been "cooking" the whole time. Since this attempt, he's shown no interest in color sorting.

Abdullah is also becoming calmer in using the computer. He seems to have finally put together that the mouse and the cursor are related and that the more he sits still, the more stuff he gets to touch. While I learned about the power of the Internet in middle school, Abdullah already understands that the world is at his fingertips when he has the mouse in his hands. His favorite things to ask for at the computer are ducks and babies. I don't know how long he'll look at pictures of ducks and babies on the Internet since I'm usually the one who has to stop the activity.

Activity Time

Last week, GS sent us a book on Montessori  in the home for young toddlers. It was a very interesting read. Although options like moving the outlets to counter height weren't that practical, it did spark some ideas for activities with to do with the kiddos.

There were a few take aways from the book that I felt were practical for me and beneficial for Abdullah were. One of the main ideas for me was that toddlers need stuff to do. You can choose the stuff or they will choose the stuff and it probably wont be stuff that you want them to do.

1) The shelf: Since there was only space on the changing table (i.e. the everything table) in their room, that's been converted into a two tier shelf with his clothes on the top and 3 play options on the bottom. Right now, he's only got his toys and two box objects.

2) The blanket mat: Put blanket out. Show kid how to use toy. Enjoy a hour of not being bothered intellectual stimulation for your budding genius. I had stopped doing blanket time with Abdullah, but this works well since he really likes order. Too, the focus on letting your kid work without too much feedback was good since Abdullah can be very attention seeking. He's quickly coming to simply enjoy the satisfaction of getting a puzzle piece in a hole or scribbling on a paper. What he doesn't like, braiding. The braiding frame turned into more of a shake the string frame. I think we'll wait a few months on that one.

3) Activity turn over: We don't have much space for toys and many of the toys Abdullah has aren't really ones that can occupy his attention for long periods of time. In the world of toddler activities,

This week, in addition to his toys, I made some box objects for the independent play shelf.

The first is an object permanence box, which was meant for KC. Ball goes in the hole. Ball comes out. The second was an extension on that. I call it the Go Get the Mail box. Fold up the papers, put them in the slot, they don't come out, you go get them. There's a small opening in the bottom so you have to reach pretty far to get the things out. 

Abdullah rather enjoyed pushing, pulling, and fishing. Part of me keeps waiting for him to be like, really mom? But so far so entertained.

After about 20 minutes he decided his box was too slow and commandeered KC's which has a ramp for the ball and proceeded to experiment with seeing how balls, tops, and other random things he could find would come down the ramp. During his 2nd play time, he decided he needed "in." I don't know what's with him and going in places, but I'll be sure to make his box objects big enough to get in or small enough that he wont think to go in them (although he enjoys standing in shoe boxes).

4) Life Skills: To be honest, Abdullah has been all about life skills activities since they involve moving. Since these kinds of things were mentioned in the book, I thought I'd mention them here. Recently, we put hooks in since Abdullah frantically looks around after showers and trips to try to find where he should put his things since he can't reach up in the closets.

5) Arts and Crafts: I'm laughing to myself writing this because somewhere someone is putting out the idea that toddlers can do arts and crafts in the sense that we think of school aged kids doing arts and crafts. I've been perusing some pins lately and am confident that 99% of toddler arts and crafts basically consist of adults making an object and then letting a toddler ruin it decorate it with love.

This is Abdullah's first creation. I call it "Thank You for Letting Me Play with Scissors." Abdullah's face on realizing that he was actually cutting things with scissors was nothing short of joy. He must have been watching and plotting for awhile because I didn't even think he'd know what they were. He immediately picked them up and proceeded to stab the paper with them making his confused face since things weren't immediately turning to shreds. Btw, Abdullah failed this assignment. As you can see, he definitely failed to place the correct number of objects in each column. He also doesn't seem to understand that you leave the glued pieces on, hence debris look. It's post modern.

This was a good attention span activity since Abdullah worked on this for about a half an hour and didn't want to stop using the scissors. He only got up twice.

After reading toddler activity blogs, I've also come to the conclusion that I'm going to have to start collecting more trash. Kareem threw out a perfectly good egg carton that I had my eye on. Sad day. Maashaa Allaah.

Whole Wheat Pitas and Spinach Fritters

Sounds like some toddler torture device, but Abdullah loved them.

Pitas were a basic recipe, but the one I used specifically came from Emeril. Oddly enough, I could only find spinach fritters by Rachael Ray. I feel so commercial.

Abdullah couldn't figure out what the fritters were so he kept swapping out cookies and bread while he sat asking for them repeatedly as I was frying them. Who am I to correct him?