to christmas or not to chritsmas?

One of the hardest things one may face when living abroad, is how to balance between what ur religion asks you to do, and how to indulge into the community ur living in. you'd especially find it difficult when you have a kid at school where they ask you around this time of the year if you would like ur little one to participate in the christmas shows and plays, or if you would rather them not to.
i personally asked them not to let Saif participate which i think wasnt wise from me, and i somehow regret my rushed answer.
they take my son's classmates to practice on the stage on how to do the nativity play, and he sits on a chair just watching them playing.
he must have felt bad about it, although i made sure he understands why he isnt supposed to be up there with them. he knows that Christmas is for Christians and eid is for muslims. but what worries me that he has missed his very first experience in learning public speaking, and how to overcome the fear of facing a crowd, especially that my son is a shy person.
i sometimes think maybe i should have asked them to give him a role that has nothing to do with a religious character, like a star or a bird or whatever, and sometimes i say to myself that im doing the right thing.
the other day, i received a call from the school's secretary telling me that saif is crying because he was not allowed to enter the christmas show with the other kids "upon my request", and if its okay to let him in? it broke my heart that my son felt isolated and deprived, it felt unfair, so i gave them my permission.
Today, the Nativity play is gonna be played at their school's stage and my saif and i are invited to attend. i think i'm gonna go just to sit beside my son and explain to him our version of the play. i dont want him to feel leftout that all the parents are going to be present to see their kids on stage. and maybe, we should go for an icecream right after that to cheer him up :)

what do you think people? im i doing the right thing? share ur experiences if you have any :)

Hello amigos

so can u believe it has been 4 months already since i last posted?


baby boy is no longer a baby, he just entered toddlerhood 1 week ago. he's still a crawler but i expect to see him running very soon inshallah. there were a few attempts from him last night to stand up, got half way there and then falls down again. but thats okay, he'll be there soon. his favorite person in the world is his big brother Saif! they r best friends.. u could only hear him giggling and laughing out when Saif is around, otherwise, he's a very grumpy boy who seeks alot of attention.




once he turned one, i switched his baby milk into cow's. he didnt like it at the beginning, but he's alright now. i also made sure to cut off all the baby cereals and ready meals i used to get him, and replaced them with food from my kitchen. he so far ate kousa ma7shi, fresh fruits with yogurt, any sauce with rice, and egg.
we r well progressing comparing to the past couple of months when he used to vomit everything including mashed food. el7amdellah.
i also stopped giving him bottles at night, which gives me less headaches and more time to sleep without being interrupted.


we r celebrating eid these days, tried my very best to make it feel so, although my husband and Saif didnt take any day off. we went for a nice dinner at Nando's with our friends on the first day, and went for a couple of visits on the second. made sure the first thing my kids see when they wake up ballooons and lots of presents. it drew a smile on their faces and got them excited for the rest of the day. they ofcourse wore their new eid outfits and ate lots of my home made ma3moul.


Saif likes his school sooo much that he wishes there were no weekends! could u believe that?! and he finally got sattled in the arabic school that he goes to on saturdays after giving us hell in the past couple of months. he is already starting to read out 3-letters words. i love how he tries to break up the words he finds hard in order to read them. mashallah he's a very bright boy.
i was so proud of him yesterday when he ran to me after school with a bag of candy asking me if it was halal to eat or not, can u believe how gorgoues he is???
i told him it isnt, so he was a little disappointed. he was quite for some time and then asked me why isnt all food halal? i told him because allah asked us not to eat some food because they would harm us. and if we dont obey what allah asked us for, he'll be upset from us and wont give us all the nice things we ask him for. do u want allah to be upset from you? he said "noway ya mama! ana basma3 kalamek w kalam allah, ma bedi eyakom tez3alo meni, ra7 akebha bel zbaleh when we reach home"!
i LOVE you ya ummy, allah ykamlak be3aglak w ybarekli feek w ye7meeek. and as a reward, i made him some pizza, his all time favorite food!


the weather is getting very chili, it already was 2 degrees a couple of days ago. i hate it because i have to get up at 7:30 am and get the boys ready to drop saif to school. i have to walk and wait until they open the gates for at least 10 minutes under the rain with a baby :( its no fun at all.

is this the longest post or what?
thats it for today :)

who's who 2

Who's who???

guess who's who, and win a bag full of dirty nappies :)

Wall decorations

My new addiction!!

whenever i have some spare time, u just find me brawsing ebay for new wall art decorations!

i got these for Saif's bedroom

and i got these from Hong Kong and sticked them downstairs at the entrance of the living room. im IN LOVE with cherry blossoms!

i got other stickers for my husband's office room, but i dont like how i organised them, so ill give them a make over and come back to post them :)

ghannili

so whenever im in a bad mood, nothing usually makes it better than music. i should mention that ever since i got married and moved to england, i have been disconnected from music and clips in general since i dont have an arab sat. my husband is conservative and would want his kids to be brought up memorizing and reciting quran rather than singing silly songs. he often blames his parents for making him waste his time by listening to such music isntead of sending him over for quran memorizing centers. so for this reason, i strictly minimize the time i hear music, and when i do, i make sure saif is not home.



u have no idea how much passion this boy has for music. well, it must be a big deal and fun for a kid of his age, especially that his nursery plays a good deal of music, slow ones for them as a background. he has passion for all kind of instruments. he has a great musical ear, he drums nicer than i do, i got him a guitar and a fluet about a year ago, and now he's asking for Oud after he saw my brother playing on one.

however, i finally realized why music or love songs are prohibited in islam. they bring back memories that one should not remember. be it, an old love, friendship, good memories or even bad ones. this all makes sense to me, because whenever i hear a song i used to hear back when i was still in Dubai, it takes me to another world, really disconnects me from my present. and i sometimes go even further in my imaginations. like " what if i was still at my parent's?" " would i be a successful working lady if im still in dubai?" " what if i got married to that guy instead of my husband?" etc... and then u wake up on ur little one screaming for attention :S

Speaking of screaming babies, Zaid is becoming too annoying with his whining habbits. he just whines all the time so that we would carry him. i think he got spoiled after his circumission and he carried on his dalal since he's always mrashe7. if he wants to sleep, he keeps whining and fake crying until i get fed up and carry him. the problem is that he's a very good actor since he manages to make good coughs until he throughs up. and i seriously got enough through ups this year, eshy begarref! sheeeeeesh! but u know what, i should work harder on that la2eno im gonna be travelling in a month inshallah, and i dont want headaches on the plane!!

yalla yalla im comingggggggggggg :@

Good Morning @ night

Something to boost ur day :)

Counting my steps

Literally!

I'm volunteering in a research for a friend of mine who's doing a master degree in sports and health. its all about wearing a pedometer that counts every single step u walk during the day. the healthy person should at least be walking 10,000 steps a day. do u think u walk this much?

I've been wearing the pedometer for almost 16 days now, and i have noticed that when i don't go out doors on a day, i barely walk 3000 steps. keeping in mind that my house is two levels :S

and when i go outdoors i walk about 7000 steps. how shameful, isn't it?!

I'm doing my best nowadays to roam in the town center, park my car far away from the entrance of stores, and walk at least half an hr in the garden. i think its seriously helping in losing weight even if it takes sometime to show the results.

I'm planning on getting an exercise bike to work on while watching some tv.
i have 2 months before heading to Jordan and i so want to lose the pregnancy weight. i think i already have lost 5 kg and i still need to lose 10. will i even lose 5 kg b4 leaving to Jordan? let's wait and see.

who cares about girls?!

when u have a helpful boy like abu el soyooof and inshallah later on zizo, i seriously no longer wanna have girls. when i finished hoovering the kitchen, saif wanted to do the living room and when he was done, he asked me to unplug the cable to pull the hoover back to the store, how cool is that?!!
i was watching a movie today for adel imam's son, and i was very impressed to c this huuuuuuge star's son on tv. eno i was thinking how proud adel imam is seeing his son taking over his daddy's job. he was tall and handsome -not really- and my boys were on my mind all the time. eno i cannot wait to c my boys all big and tough and braking hearts.
i came to know an egyptian family here in weston this year, who turned out to have 5 kids. they r not kids actually, smallah they r shabab. 1 girl and 4 boys on the row. i think the eldest guy is 25 and the youngest in 19. mashallah whenever i c them together, my heart just melts! allah ye7mihom ya rab 6ool be 3ard 3ala 7alaweh 3ala deen kamleen mkammaleeen. i so want my boys to be like them. such boys bring joy to the heart and give goosebumps to the skin lol

talking about guys and goosebumps reminds me of Le Trio Joubran. three brothers descending from a family of « Oud » makers and players since four generations.. they play super fine music that u cant but enjoy. listening to them is not the only thing i like about them, but watching them playing and how they move their legs and heads makes me proud. lesh proud ma ba3raf. i just love the fact that they r brothers and very close to each other. i want my boys to have this strong bond between them.

this idea has been haunting me recently, i seriously want more boys, i just love them!

when i was pregnant with Zaid, i used to give my husband a new boy name every single day. one day i wanted Yousef, and then Omar, Adam, Kareem, Tameem, Sanad, Khalid, Yazan.. etc i literely drove him nuts :D

but i still insist, if im ever gonna have twin boys, they must be Kareem and Tameem lol

i think i over dosed my suger intake for today :S

okay i should stop and go to bed la2eno rasi waja3ni menni lol

Where do we stand on today

As far as i could remember, the last time i had a post in my last blog before terminating it was horribly sad. it was about my miscarriage over a year ago. so i thought that THAT blog was wesho na7s and i was totally torn up from inside and wanted to kill somebody and fortunatelly it was the blog.

we moved from Nottingham last year, spent a year and over in a small yet attractive town in the south west of england called Weston Super mare. we'r still living in it but we moved from a tiny 2 bedroom flat into a 3 bedrooms house with a backyard. i lived in weston super mare 3 years ago for over a year as well, so i know every corner in the town which is a bless.




we've joyously welcomed our little new handsome devil Zaid almost 6 months ago. he's such a cheeky monkey with the cutest grin in the world. he has 2 teeth already mashallah, had his first at 4 months and a half smallah which is a record. they say that the sooner the baby has his teeth, the naughtier he will turn out to be, and i can sense how true this satemenet is every passing day.

my little man saif is no longer little. we celebrated his 4th birthday 3 days ago with a bunch of close friends. we had a HUUUUUUUUUUUGE mansaf b4 the party which proves the jordanian roots :D we all had a blast.


my husband is still as busy as he has always been, between theaters, clinics and the master degree. and im still as a whiner as i have always been. raising 2 boys and taking a full responsibility of taking care of them isnt easy at all. but el7amdulellah it has become much more easier now that i have nearby jordanian friends who turned out to be somehow relatives. i met them by chance last year in one of the stores and when they introduced themselves we knew that the man's sister is my cousin's wife. its such a small world, isnt it?
anyway, im so glad i finally have someone to rely on. i eat dawali every week, and home made foul and labaneh with za3tar. im so lucky to have them in my life el7amdellah.


thats it for now, wish my new blog a long life :)

HOOKED again!

Hello Blog!

im sorry i have deleted you a couple of times before, but let's hope eno el talteh tabteh!
Bismellah we start..