Little bit of this, little bit of that

It's been a while since I've posted on some of the generally funny and amusing things the kids do and say. Mostly it's been hard to keep posting because the awesome Jo'burg lightning fried our modem so internet access has been limited... what's new?! But now that I am connected again I just have to share some of the priceless moments we've had over the past few days. I am of course well aware that it may just be a case of 'you had to be there to find it funny', but hey, it's my blog right :)

So anyway the first and most recent thing that comes to mind happened just this afternoon. I had to make a quick trip to the shop and had Sumayah in the car. I don't know if I've mentioned 'The Dummy' yet, but it's safe to say that this is Sumayah's favourite possession. A while back when she lost her dummy for the third time and it was late at night, Yaasier popped off to the 24 hour pharmacy and came back with an old school honey dummy. Sumayah loves her honey dummy and has it hanging on a pink ribbon around her neck, making her look a tad like Maggie from the Simpsons. So anyways there we were driving to the shop, and Sumayah starts asking for her dummy as she usually does and as usual I tell her, "it's hanging around your neck!". But when I look back I see that the ribbon is leading behind her and under her arm, with the dummy just sticking out of the front of her armpit. Now you need to picture Sumayah sitting there strapped up in her car seat, dummy stuck under her armpit not able to stretch any closer to her mouth and she's looking at me with big brown eyes as if to say, 'how now?' The next thing I know she tilts her head forward and starts to suck the dummy right there in her armpit! I started laughing so much at the sight of her trying to look up at me while trying keep the dummy in her mouth at the same time! Like I said you had to be there!

Sumayah amuses us everyday, especially now that she's becoming more verbal. She has discovered the 'magic' word so when she really wants something and I've said no, she starts begging, "mommy pleeease!" and then of course proceeds to throw a tantrum. One thing we definately don't have to worry about is her standing up for herself. Bilaal tends to tease her continuously and she will start off shouting at him, eventually hitting him and when he still doesn't stop she uses her foot!

But she's also so incredibly cute. Every evening when her daddy gets home she makes him sit on the couch and shouts "tea! tea!", then I know I have to open her bag with her tea set so she can make her daddy some tea. Its so cute how she lays everything out on the coffee table then 'makes the tea' and serves it to him :)

Then there's Bilaal... a real chatterbox! From the moment I pick him up at school, all the way to the car, in the car, in the shop till finally we get into the house, Bilaal is talking NON-STOP! Even if I walk ahead of him into the house and he's still in the garage, he doesn't stop to wait till he's in hearing distance, he just keeps talking whether I can hear him or not! Yep talking he does well, listening... not so much. As with all little boys in this age group, they hear but do not listen. The other day I asked him to fetch me a peg outside, so he marched off and came back almost 5 minutes later with nothing in his hands. So I asked him, "where's the peg?" to which he replied, "Oh! you asked for a peg?!"
I looked at him in dismay and asked him what had he been looking for outside all this time, didn't he then know where the pegs were? And you'll never believe what he replied, "I thought you said 'pig' not 'peg' so I was looking for a pig." Yaasier just burst out laughing, and I just stood there speechless. He was seriously looking for a pig?!

Verbal Upgrade

One of the joys of parenting is that you get to experience first hand the wonder of human development. It never ceases to amaze me how you can one day be overjoyed at the outcome of pee on a stick and the next thing you know you have this little person running around becoming more and more independent and growing into their very own distinct personality! It seems now that Sumayah has got the walking down she has turned her attention to talking. For a long time now she has been saying 'mama', 'dada', 'baba', 'ta' and 'up'. But then suddenly this week she decided to do a verbal upgrade. 'Dada' has now become 'da-ddi?' (yes always with an inflection at the end), she has said 'B-lal' a few times, and calls Abegail (her nanny) 'Abi'.

Tonight we were also astounded by how much she actually understands. After supper Yaasier said to Sumayah, 'go fetch the ball for dada' and just as I was getting up to show her where the ball was she walked over to the toy box, picked up the ball and brought it to Yaasier. Yaasier and I just looked at each other in proud amazement. She also tends to say 'up' whenever she wants to go out and will often lead us by the hand to the outside gate and say 'up, up'. But the thing that amazes me most is her level of problem solving. Whenever the sliding door to the garden is closed she would stand on her toes trying to reach up to the key hole with the housekeys. I simply put this down to role-modelling. But one day I witnessed with my own eyes how she pushed one of Bilaal's plastic Jolly chairs to the sliding door, house key in hand and proceeded to climb onto the chair so she could reach the key hole! I stood watching her, too dumbfounded to remove her from this clearly dangerous stunt for a 12 month old. Of course she fell off the chair and cried, but was soon trying to get back up again. We now leave the plastic chair outside... not that that stops her from climbing on the coffee table!

The tummy creep

Sumayah is now 6 months old. I can't believe it! Bilaal doesn't understand this whole month age thing so he insists she is 0 years old. Now I can tell him she is actually half a year old. But chronological age aside, she is also developing at such an alarming rate. A few weeks ago she started moving forward on her tummy, slowly but surely she will get to where she wants to be. She may look like an injured soldier, but it gets the job done. The tummy creep every now and again turns into an all-fours position, but when she tries to crawl she falls flat on her tummy again. She also has a tooth coming. Well i say coming, but the ridge of the tooth has been showing very slightly for almost 3 weeks now and no sign of any upward movement yet! And then there's the continous babble. What started as spitting sounds as seen in my video post has now progressed to real babble. Now i know it's too early for words, but I swear she says 'mamma'. Well I'm just taking it as this anyway, it makes the night waking more bearable when I am rewarded with 'mamma, mamma'.

Last night while she was sleeping in my arms, just before I put her in her cot, I gave her a warm hug and kiss and told her that I love her. And I really, really do!