Spontaneity, Imagination and Cuteness

I sometimes just marvel at the imagination and quick/spontaneous responses of very young kids. The other day while we were still in Hyderabad, two of M's cousins A and F , 4 and 3 yrs old were playing house. Now A was "mommy" and F was her baby when suddenly the younger one, F, said "OK now I'll be mommy and you'll be "Daddi Amma" (grand ma ) that was quite funny in its own as she didn't ask the other one to be her baby probably coz she is older but A's spontaneous response was hilarious ... She was quick to point out "Oh I am not THAT old"

On our way back from Hyderabad (on 1st Feb.) M also kept us well entertained she pretended all sorts of things we had My shawl tied to the opposite ends of a bunk to make our house and then M got these empty boxes, one on each hand and declared they were Mittens and 2 days later this wooden trunk in college was her horshiii, the turned up part in front does look like an animals head with an eye ain't it

slide !!!

wow finally M got over her fear and took her first Slide! Yeh I mean real slide she even dared to climb up the monkey bars.... it sounds funny Now But it sure is a big achievment for a 23 months old I Believe
and that sure is the positive influence of her cousins :)
pics will come later!!

Vacations!!! Finally

After two very very hectic weeks finally we are free and at M's grand parents in Hyderabad for vacation and M is having a blast. A new place , full time available parents, grand ma to appreciate and praise each and every utterance, so many cousins of her age (to play and Fight), open out doors, birds, cats, "baby cows", and dogs and sheep and what not!!! WoW ! so M sure is busy and very very happy :)

As for me I am even happier as i got two books that I longed for, the first one is "Letters for Emily " by Camron Wright . I so desperately wanted this so that i can pass it on to M when she grows old ... Ya it sure is that type of a book...only that i am not sure at what age should i give it to her ? well i guess i have plenty of time to decide that. The second one is "Teaching Montessori in the home" by Elizabeth G. Hainstock again I wanted this for M ( that's pretty obvious) I read its review online and it appeared to be a great book on homeschooling basics but the actual book is even better than my expectations.

Sanam, My sister in Law bought these for me on my request as I could never possibly find them here in Pakistan and the shipping charges were much too higher than the original price so i wouldn't ever dare to order them online..... A big Thank you to Sanam... I love you for this :)

First Reading Theme Challenge: The Mitten

The first reading theme challenge of the year gave me the inspiration to make my second home made book for M. I found this simple version online and I am still working on Our book as i didn't want to simply print and bind it, will post about our book once its done so stay tuned.
Meanwhile I introduced the mittens to M by getting her a pair with cute lil bunnies on them. She hated mittens as an infant so we were not sure about her reaction this time... but to our surprise she simply LOVED them. so much so that now our "MetOons" are a constant with her :) also our lil "anomOls" can take shelter in them just like the story!!That gave me the clue to make a memory game !!! I am planning to make 5/6 pouches in form of mittens with an animal's paw's picture pasted in the front.I think it would be fun watching M making a guess about the animal inside. Lets see how long she takes to make a link between an animal and his paw print.The other activity that we created for this theme and put out every day is "match the mitten". I made 4 pairs of mitten M decorated them with her favorite mickey mouse stickers and we are ready to play. Instead of plain sorting into pairs of same color M loves to mix'n' match and count them.

please note that the theme continues till the end of this week so we still have 3 days!!! and that means more Mitten Activities :)

Matching Cards !!!

Wow!! finally i manage to create the matching card activity for M. It was on my agenda for quite some time now. They were supper easy to make I just got two identical wall charts and cut them up into cards and that gave me 15 pairs
You can pick up any theme, I choose "safety measures" firstly because it gave the best opportunity to introduce safety measures (we all die to inject into our lil ones :)) in a very friendly manner. Secondly all the other themes like; shapes, animals, Alphabets etc we already incorporate and stress on in almost all toddler activities that the the theme seemed quite novel to me. then it had cute illustrations that will definitely add her vocabularyThe only problem that I have is that some of the illustrations don't show what they are saying like the one that says "do not play with detergents and medicine" shows the kid that seems very happy playing with the stuff he is not supposed to. Or the one with caption "do not climb trees"First I loved climbing trees as a kid and would never want to stop M from doing so ( of course i would want her to be careful) Secondly it shows a very nasty kid poking a nest which is a different issue all together. so I might skip these.I am planning to introduce these in batches of 4 to 5 sets at a time and our first session will hopefully start this sunday. lets see what happens when we do so. fingers crossed ;)

New Year Gifts

For the new year i planned to make M an eye spy quilt that i haven't manage to start yet :p
So instead we gave her these " lets learn our first colors " and "number farm" by Paragon Publishing.

that is based on the Old MaDonald's farm and has 15 cute animals. I simply fell in love with this cute set as it has so much potential to grow with. Initially when I presented these to her she was not interested as was busy constructing and re-constructing a "Housh" with the pieces of her shape/color puzzle I made for her a couple of months ago.
She simply loved it and now the "An-ni-mOls" are all over our place :)

December Round Up

Now here are a few highlights from Dec. 08 ( after 4the Dec. of course)
that's our response to Toddler theme "BLUE" 5th Dec.
and some more drawings by M can you spot a lion on the top left corner :)
and an Apppp-Lh!!!

then we also tried a hand on water colors on 16th. though it was more fun with color trays and water than with actual coloring
On 21st we had a brief and very disappointing (for us) trip to Lahore Zoo... but as it was M's first visit so she was pretty happy just watching the "So dear" (Deer) and elephant Suzi...
one to one chat with her SOoo Deer :)

Happy New Year

OK so here is the first post of the new year :) so customarily it should be a round up of last month or last year ....but No the first post of new year is dedicated to my beloved friend who left us earlier last month. Though I planned to post at least one entry per day in December but the tragic death of my best friend and cousin Saira on the 7th of Dec. upset every thing..... I don't even have words to express my feelings, and though after a week or so we returned to our routine but still nothing is same.... I miss her every second of my life.Alas I don't have any of her pictures on this PC :(
And despite the fact that I logged on to my blog and kept a follow up of all the blogs that i love to read and learned so so much, still I don't know why I never manage to write a single post.

Now that its the 1st day of New year I just wanted to thank her for all the happiness she brought in our lives, She was a Perfect friend, perfect sister best Khala to M and the Best Girl i have ever known. We calibrated this new year remembering her so do i want to start the blogging year

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERY ONE :)