Virtue of the Month: Gratitude

This month was pretty simple. We read some stories about gratitude and thankfulness and then made a big felt tree on the wall in the making area and cut out lots of colorful maple leaves. Each morning we wrote down something that we were grateful for and stuck our leaf on the tree. It was an easy, nice way to keep the virtue in mind, to build on it and have something beautiful to look at as well. (Mostly beautiful... it would have looked better if Maryam hadn't developed such a fetish with attempting to remove the trunk every time she was in the area.) Now if I could just find a picture...

Halloween

In pictures:

We decorated the dining room and invited some friends over for a bit of Halloween fun. The girls stayed up late the night before to help me make witches fingers for everyone. It turns out this was a wise move on my part. Apparently I stink at making witches fingers. Anisa, on the other hand, is a natural.

She and Ruhi made a batch that even creeped Soheila out.Ruhi drew some ghost-like faces on orange balloons for the guests to take home. I think she did an awesome job.Meanwhile Anisa got busy helping me make some "red back" (I didn't have quite enough gumballs so we did multi-colored instead) spiders for a web we weaved in the back yard.She made a web outside, using enough strings for each guest to have one to follow and tied a spider onto each end.Which, miraculously, survived until party time despite Bangals best efforts to untangle them.We made "swamp juice". The kids loved this. We used all natural lemon-lime sparkling soda, some gummy worms and fish and some tapioca pearls to give it that frothy, swampy, look. It was awesome. I'm thinking the only possible improvement might be a bit of dry ice...next year.We made salad surpriseand goblins grinsThe girls made some ghost pops for their friends to take home.Due to the number of young'uns around most had to leave a little early. Which was sad because they missed the glow in the dark drinks we made with tonic water and pomegranate syrup.The kids quickly sipped their fizzy, Halloween, concoctions while basking in the glow of the creepy jack-o-lantern in the corner and admiring all the surfaces that were transformed as a a result of the black light, before heading off to bed themselves.We then met up with some of the same kids for a bit of Trick-or treating...en masse. Ruhi was a hula dancer, Anisa a princess, Bayan a police officer (who handed out tickets to random individuals) and Maryam...Well, Maryam went as Pooh Bear disguised as a Bumblebee and wound up sleeping through the entire thing. So sweet.Despite a number of houses where trick-or-treaters were discouraged, the kids made quite a haul this year.Especially Anisa, whose candy weighed in at just over a kilo.

Virtue of the Month: Organization

Lord knows I need help with this one.



We are trying to declutter as much as possible this month. Sort through closets and give a lot of things away. Clothes, toys, books (gasp... I know) but there just ins't space and it is so difficult to clean with all the things we have packed into our home. I really want to simplify. I need to be organized. And while we have cleaned out some closets, the pantry, reorganized the kitchen cabinets and part of the shed I don't feel like we have made much progress. I think we'll have to do this virtue again.

Right now

I know I say it a lot but I really can't believe how much and how fast these kids of mine are growing. Can it really be 10 years ago that Ruhi was Maryam's age? Where did that go? I haven't captured the moments enough and that is something that I am making a conscious effort to do as much as possible becuase 10 years from now I want to be able to look back and remember, really remember, what life was like. What we were doing. What we were thinking and how the days were unfolding for us. There are signs that my memory is not what it used to be and I (you may have noticed) want to remember the good, the bad and everything in between.

So right now Ruhi is working hard academically and is making some great progress. I wouldn't actually say that she likes math, but she is finally beginning to get it. She is super helpful and wonderfully kind. She strives to make everyone else happy and I hope that she will make choices that bring her happiness as well. Choices are hard for her, even small ones like should I open my special can of Sprite now or later can present a dilemma that must be analyzed from every angle before a decision can be made. I know someone else who does that too. She always remembers to say prayers before bed and reminds everyone else as well. She loves rice noodles with hoisin sauce, reading in bed, swimming with friends, late night movie dates and riding her bike to the park.

Anisa must repeatedly be reminded, cajoled, prompted and urged to get her work done. Academics are not currently a strong point, but we're working on that. I just need to keep thinking of different ways to make her learning fun. She does not like housework for that matter either, but Bayan sure takes the cake and has more strategies up his sleeve for avoiding work than I care to count. Anisa is, however, an excellent baby sitter, she loves to cook and bake and has a gift for languages. She still remembers her manners only now she only says Thank you in German. She is so much fun. She is completely obsessed with horses and ponies and loves creating with paper.

Bayan has physically grown so much in the last year that he is completely off the charts in terms of height. He is definately a real little boy now and I adore him. His sweet brown eyes still make me melt, especially when they get that squinty sparkle when something special or something chocolate is mentioned. Love that. He is fascinated by robots. Loves machienes and likes to see how things work. He wants to be a robot inventor and a police officer (because they're allowed to have guns... but thats another blog post) when he grows up. He has promised to make me an army of robots that specialize in housework (so I'll be happy and he won't have to do anything). I am really looking forward to his laundry folding robot... 7 loads today. He is no longer satisfied with the name Maryam for his baby sister and has dubbed her Scurvy Boggs, after one of his race cars, instead. He calls her Scurvy for short. Man, I love these kids.

Maryam is trying to walk. She loves to stand, but still won't crawl. She loves the cat. We'll all say prayers for Bangles when she does begin to move. Trust me, he is gonna need them. She is so animated and playful. She loves to wave and play with the kids and is sadly disappointed when she can't join them outside for games...soon enough my love, soon enough. She is beginning to eat, though for health reasons she is only being introduced to fruit and vegetables at this stage and even then only one food at a time. So far she loves strawberries and mandarins. Pear, apple broccoli and carrot are meh and avacados are a no go. She has just learned to wave and she shakes her head at her siblings and copies their moves in a simple game that cracks everyone up and keeps them laughing. I love how good natured she is. Last night she threw up. In my bed. A lot. Twice. For no apparent reason. I picked her up to change, cuddle and clean her and even though she was covered in spew and must not have been feeling all that fabulous the first thing she did was flash that toothy smile. She has 6 teeth and each one is super cute. I love these guys so much and hope I can capture a little more of the here and now because it is just the best place to be. And I love who I get to share it with.

Virtue of the Month: Kindness

This month we have focused on kindness. Speaking in a kindly way and behaving kindly toward others. I was thinking to make paper bricks and put their kind deeds on bricks to make a "wall of kindness" but Anisa had a better idea, so we went with hers and created a castle of kindness instead. They wrote their names on the flags above each tower (and yes - Maryam had help) and we recorded their kindly deeds on the blocks of the castle wall. They were really sweet and did some heart melting things to wind up there on the wall, but the best things were the spontaneous things like Bayan offering Anisa his hand to help her into the car. It looked exactly like something you would have seen in the 1800's with a young man helping a lady into a carriage. So cute. Anisa was pleased as punch. It is certainly a lot more pleasant to be assisted into a vehicle than to have to climb over someone who has rushed into their seat first without considering the difficulty this presents to others. He now waits to make sure that both girls have gotten into the back before he climbs in himself. Love that.

We have read the book "The Value of Kindness The Story of Elizabeth Fry" about the kind and courageous young lady who helped bring the plight of prisoners to public attention and reform the way that prisons worked. We have been working on our own random acts of kindness like making cookies for the neighbours who live across the street, (this woman has left her job and is now caring for her sick mother full - time) and acknowledging the kindness that we see in others.

Moments

Life is made up of them. Strung along they make up the fabric of my day. Maryam may scream and cry when she is desperately tired, but as soon as she is being fed she begins to relax and the moment changes to one where I get to hold her in my arms, snuggle her close and watch as her little eyes begin to close and those gorgeous lashes rest against her face. There are many moments, like when we arrive back home and the kids race off to play in the fig tree together. I love (mostly) how they interact and play together. I love hearing them laugh among the branches and the paper airplanes with secret messages that fly into the kitchen while I am preparing dinner. I love Anisa's creativity and how she will sit for ages at the table so engrossed in what she is making. I love how Bayan's eyes light up when he talks about the robots that he will one day invent. I love curling up in bed with Ruhi and a good book when all the younger kids are sleeping. I love that on Saturday nights we are starting the tradition of watching (part of) a movie together (again, when the younger ones are sleeping) I love that she is getting to an age where we can both enjoy the same film and I love her patience and compassion for the siblings who are not yet included in this.

There are other types of moments too. You know the ones when you are stuck in rush hour traffic with a car full of tired, hungry, grumpy kids who seem to be doing whatever they can to irritate each other be it breathing too loudly, talking to me or, heaven forbid, looking out of someone else's window. These moments happen more than I would care to admit but they make you grateful for the calmer moments that follow (like those in the fig tree) and they can always be worse like when they include a screaming baby or like the time when, stuck in rush hour traffic with the same grumpy children, one of them starts vomiting violently in the back seat and, in addition to the rush hour traffic, there is an accident up ahead so all the vehicles around you are either gridlocked or are moving at a snail's pace and there is no way that you can maneuver to an outer lane to let the vomit happen on the side of the road. Instead you listen to the waves of it hitting the upholstery behind you while desperately searching for something to contain the mess at the same time as trying to offer soothing words to comfort the child whose stomach contents now coat half the car. Moments. They help you appreciate the more mundane aspects of life.

So, last night I got to appreciate how smoothly things have been running around here because, wowzers, it sure hit the fan for a moment. Or two. Mehran invited some of his friends over for dinner and asked me to make Khoresh - e- Sabzi (Persian lamb and herb stew). Right. No problem. Everything is fried up as it should be and placed in the pressure cooker with ample water. The kids are outside playing and I am wearing Maryam. The guests arrive as random vegetables are being passed over the fence by the neighbours kids which my kids are delivering to me. Mehran announces that he is going to take his guests to visit his mom and dad. They will be back in half an hour. Sure. No problem. I start the rice, turn down the stove and head next door with the kids to find out what is up with the veggies. The children were a bit vague on the details. Twenty minutes later we return, or shall I say attempt to return home, as Ruhi went to open the door and having failed to do so, handed me this:

a broken key, by which both doors are locked. It is at this stage that I detect a pungent burning smell. I head around to the laundry room door secretly praying that our Indian neighbours, with the gorgeous cooking aromas that have tortured me during more than one pregnancy, have finally burned something. Here I realize two things. 1). That the freezer is bloking the door and there is no way to enter through the crack that isn't even big enough for Maryam to get through and 2). The Indian neighbours perfect reccord of sumptious, exotic, non burned food is still in tact. The horrific stench permeating the neighbourhood is, in fact, coming from my kitchen... naturally. I canvas the house searching for an open window or another way in. The window in the girls room is open but despite my best efforts the roller shutters and interior screen do not allow me, or anyone- for that matter -to gain entry. I am starting to feel a little desperate because, although there is officially no fire, some nasty smoke is starting to billow out of the kitchen. I borrow the neighbour's phone to call Mehran while waiting fir the piercing wail of the smoke detectors to go off. Within 10 minutes Mehran arrives home with guests in toe. The situation has not improved but at least we are able to get in. Dinner is ruined. The kids are hungry. Mehran is not happy. The guests are politely standing in the driveway because at least they are able to breath from that location. At times like this my policy is pizza. I made a salad. Which I did NOT burn (thank you very much) and Mehran went to pick up dinner. I would love to say that that was the end of the drama for the evening, but alas...twas not. The next "moment" came when Mehran opened a bottle of sparkling grape juice for the guests...lets just say there were multiple showers involved and his friends may think twice about accepting another dinner invitation to our house. I am still finding sticky patches in unusual locations. But I have to say... I love the moments. They are what make life interesting.

10 Bears in the bed & the big one said: "I'm crowded..."

Oh, wait! There were only four. It just felt like 10. This is where I slept last night. Sandwiched in between Bayan who uses me as his personal heater, Maryam who believes that I am running an all-night buffet and Anisa who decided to join us by stretching out along the foot of the bed after Ruhi took over hers. The girls decided to have a sleepover in Anisa's bed and they were so happy and cozy and cute that I didn't voice my sensible objections...school night...Ruhi is, ahem, an active sleeper. That girls got mooves. Needless to say the sleeping part of the sleepover didn't exactly last, at least not for Anisa who joined the scene in the wee hours of the morning. I went from being squished between two bodies (but at least I was able to stretch out length wise) to having to scrunch my legs up and sleep in a diagonally, horizontal, crouching position (which was actually less comfortable than it sounds)...but it gets better because at exactly 3:45 Bangles jumped onto the bed and methodically walked over my head. His subtle hint that I need to let him outside. Now! I will confess that I am not super chipper first thing in the morning, and I won't be winning any mother of the year awards after snapping at Anisa in frustration as I tried to disentangle myself from a web of legs and blankets while trying not to wake Maryam up.

As Bangles took his sweet time debating at the door as to weather or not he would venture out into the night I began to feel really bad for telling Anisa to move out of the way in the frustrated tone that I did. When I came back to the room she was sitting on the floor beside the bed, no doubt feeling very bad. I, in my exhausted stupor, apologized and had the sense to help her back into the foot of the bed, arranging the pillow and blankets so that she would be warm and comfortable before making my way back to my cramped and sandwiched position between Bayan and Maryam. No doubt some will think I am crazy. Why not just send her back to her own bed you ask, or tell her to climb up into Ruhi's bed. Well, the thing is she is still my baby, no matter how big she gets or how many children have come after her she will always be my baby and sometimes she needs to feel that and sometimes I need to remember that. I am her mother and as such it is my role and my privilege to see to it that she is comforted and included even at 3:45, or perhaps especially at 3:45.

I've decided it comes down to perspective. I could be really grouchy and cross about not getting a good night sleep between the kids and the feeds and the cat or I could be really grateful that I got to spend the night having my own sleep-over of sorts with my three youngest babes. It won't be long before they won't want to be squashed up beside me, it won't be long before I won't be feeding them through the night and it won't be long before they won't even consider snuggling into bed with me, so I choose to be happy and grateful that I get to snuggle them while I do, that I get to see their dreamy little faces as I, myself, drift off to sleep and that I get to hear the sweet, soft, sound of their slumber even if someone wets the bed and even if it means that I am physically uncomfortable and wind up crawling out if bed like Quasimodo. In my heart I am happy.

Virtue of the month: Kindness

"There's a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit. But I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit - the ability to put ourselves in someone else's shoes; to see the world through those who are different from us - the child who's hungry, the laid-off steelworker, the immigrant woman cleaning your dorm room. As you go on in life, cultivating this quality of empathy will become harder, not easier. There's no community service requirement in the real world; no one forcing you to care. You'll be free to live in neighborhoods with people who are exactly like yourself, and send your kids to the same schools, and narrow your concerns to what's going in your own little circle. Not only that - we live in a culture that discourages empathy. A culture that too often tells us our principle goal in life is to be rich, thin, young, famous, safe, and entertained. A culture where those in power too often encourage these selfish impulses.They will tell you that the Americans who sleep in the streets and beg for food got there because they're all lazy or weak of spirit. That the inner-city children who are trapped in dilapidated schools can't learn and won't learn and so we should just give up on them entirely. That the innocent people being slaughtered and expelled from their homes half a world away are somebody else's problem to take care of. I hope you don't listen to this. I hope you choose to broaden, and not contract, your ambit of concern." ~ Barak Obama

Indeed. So, this month we have done a lot of activities that hopefully will cultivate empathy. We started with the quote above and talked about what it meant we then played a game that I call In his/ her shoes that I made by taking pictures of footwear from various strata of society around the world. The kids had to think about what it would be like to wear those shoes, what would it feel like, how would they feel inside, how might the owners of these shoes feel and why do they wear the shoes that they do. This would have worked much better using all actual shoes but I didn't have access to many of the styles or conditions. I used images of anything from mainstream style runners, to funky high heels, to snow shoes, to no shoes, to images of Chinese foot binding, to old coke bottles tied with string.

We played a fortune cookie game that I concocted after watching this slide show http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/04/where-children-sleep/ about where children sleep. After watching the same slideshow the kids got to choose a fortune cookie from a bowl and crack it open. They then read out who they were and where they got to live. We talked about fairness and was it right that one person got to sleep in a gorgeous four poster bed surrounded by tiaras and princess paraphernalia while another child slept with his entire family on a single mattress in a field. We talked about the luck of the draw (as they cracked a fortune cookie and about how some kids are born to wealthy parents and some to poor parents and about the different elements of wealth and poverty. We also talked about what we would want to have happen if we were in certain situations and have worked and saved some money to help a family living in poverty. (Oxfam Australia offers animals that can be bought on behalf of families in the third world and can be used by them to make money.)

The kids tested their knowledge of geography, Spanish and random English vocabulary words on the "Free Rice" website and helped earn free rice for those less fortunate. Go to http://www.freerice.com/ to play. It's fun, educational and it makes a difference.

We watched a news segment on the crisis in East Africa and talked about what was happening over there. I decided (though the girls agreed) that we would have an empathy dinner. So one night we had boiled rice for dinner. No trimmings. Just rice. Bayan cried. He really wanted some yogurt to go on top. But I stuck to my guns. I'm mean like that. Anisa explained to him, repeatedly, that 'other people, other children, didn't have any food to eat. They are starving. Dying. We are lucky. We have so much food and tomorrow you can wake up and have whatever you want to eat and those kids will still be starving.' We had a great discussion about what it would be like not to have money or food or to be able to meet your basic needs, we enjoyed our simple dinner knowing that we would get to eat more interesting things tomorrow and knowing that we were making an effort to experience things (in the smallest possible form) from another persons perspective and that we were putting the money that we would have spent on dinner towards helping a family who is currently living in poverty.

The kids collected cans and bottles and took them to a recycling plant. They added the money that they collected to what we had saved with dinner and bought a bunch of chickens for families in Sri Lanka. Most of our activities were centered around people. But not this one. For one week I left this quote on the wall “Thanksgiving dinner's sad and thankless. Christmas dinner's dark and blue. When you stop and try to see it From the turkey's point of view. Sunday dinner isn't sunny. Easter feasts are just bad luck. When you see it from the viewpoint of a chicken or a duck. Oh how I once loved tuna salad, Pork and lobsters, lamb chops too Till I stopped and looked at dinner From the dinner's point of view.” ~ Shel Silverstein. We talked about what that passage meant and we practiced empathy for animals by focusing on vegetarian foods for the week. This was not always easy, as Mehran is on a high protein diet, but here are some of our star dishes for the week: Falafel salad and Mexican bean wraps... yummmm.I made a large grid in the carport (some 70 odd squares) and challenged the children to navigate their way from one end to the other. There was a catch however. Beneath some of the squares fictitious landmines were buried and the children must avoid these, but just like in real life there is no way to be certain exactly where they are. They were instructed to do their best and see what happens. So they traversed the grid, back and forth sometimes managing to avoid the hidden dangers and sometimes not. They had to imagine that they were living in Cambodia (a country notorious for the number of landmines) and that they had to get from one place to another while everyday living with the very real threat of landmines. How would they feel? How would they act? What would they do?

One day the girls each wore a makeshift burqa. Bayan had no interest in trying it out. We talked about being able to see through it and play through it. It certainly presented some challenges when it came to hula hooping and badminton but we talked about its advantages as well. Anonymity, being comfortable that you could see out but that others could not see in, perhaps it gives people a sense of safety and security. We talked about fairness and why only the girls had to wear them. Anisa was most offended. She thought it was highly unjust that she should have to wear one while Bayan did not.

Imagine having poor eyesight. That is Mehran at the moment. He is going to undergo surgery soon. So we did a lesson in empathy for those whose eyes work differently than ours. I stuck layers of tape on the kids' swimming goggles until they had very blurry vision when looking through them and sent them off to play (carefully - I might add) in the back yard. They found that it presented a few challenges but they were still able to do what they wanted they just had to be extra careful about how and where they moved.

Because, after all, it was kinda hard to see. But then that was the whole point of learning to be more empathetic, of being able to put yourself in someone else's shoes and see the world from their perspective.

Space

We have been learning a bit about space around here and as a finale to what we have learned I made a kind of space game show for the kids. There were questions about all the planets as well as the universe in general and they even got to choose a Mars Bar or Milky Way at the end. They were super excited.

We played the three of them against myself. If they got an answer right it went into their pile, if it was incorrect it went into mine. This worked splendidly.

And yes, we even included Pluto. We all realize that it is currently outcast from the planetary bodies and is now merely classed as a trans-Neptunian object. Poor Pluto. But you can't let that get you down, especially when Bayan does this (see below) every time they get a question right.Bayan loved watching their pile get bigger and bigger and I loved the fact that he remembered things like the name of the man who discovered Saturn - Galileo Galilei. There are few things more charming than hearing a five year old say that name with lispy pride. Here was the end tally. I think they won.

The tiger game

When I brought Bayan home from the hospital the girls and I made up a game where I would become a "tiger" and chase them around the kitchen (it is open on two ends with a raised bar around most of it -so we pretty much ran in a circle and I could catch a sneaky view of the kids, but with them being shorter than the wall they didn't have the same advantage...tisk, tisk, a shame that is.) while holding the "baby tiger" (Bayan). The girls loved it. We played it often and then we just kind of stopped. Well, there is a new baby tiger in town. And, while not 100% sure what all the fuss and giggles and screams are about she sure is an excellent spy for the mummy tiger.Who allows the baby tiger to peer around corners (while she pauses to catch her breath, because man those kids have got energy) before resuming the chase. Judging from the squeals when they spot her little face I know weather to break right or left in order to catch them for a good-night hug, because once they are caught it's game over and time for bed. Theoretically anyway. Problem is they are hard to catch. This is normally as close as I get.They are fast, they work together and they are so much taller than they were so I have lost my stealthy advantage. It's just not fair, but it sure is fun. At least I've got my spy... and an adorable spy she is too.

Times Tables & Spelling Words

I've been trying to think of a way to help Anisa learn her times tables that will be more fun or at least more active. We've got the songs and the flashcards and the internet games and the worksheets but she is still struggling with it. A lot. So I thought I'd try making a jumping game. Bean bags also work great for this. I made the times table grid on the back of a large linnen sheet I picked up at a thrift store and she is loving it. I'm glad because it was, simple as it may be, a massive pain in the derriere to make. I stuffed up the numbers twice, miscounted the number of rows I would need and was slightly off with some of my measurements towards the end, either that or the sheet was an irregular shape. On the bright side it is more colorful now and Anisa doesn't seem to mind. In fact she has been getting Bayan to join her so he is learning his times tables too... well, sort of. Kumon requires that you learn up to your 19 timestables. That would have been useful info before I made the sheet, so Ruhi and I made a lilypad game. A lot easier than the sheet and frankly more fun as well. I cut out Lilypad shapes from some leftover green fabric and then made flowers (tracing around a daisy template I got off Yahoo images - it kind of looks lotusy) from various shades of felt. I color coded the centre dots and wrote one set of timestables on each color. That way we only needed 12 lilypads and 12 flowers and we just switch the centre dots when we practice different timestables. The kids have been really enjoying this, especially when it is timed and when I pretend to be a ravenous crocodile just waiting for them to make a mistake. Anisa can jump her 4 times tables in under 20 seconds, even when they are in random order throughout the pond. And the best part is that she is super enthusiastic and keeps saying things like: "I can do better than that." as she attempts to beat her own best time.

One thing he is doing really well with is reading. Bayan and I have been working our way through the "Teach Your child to Read" Book by Sigfried and he has been making amazing progress. I am super proud of him. I love this photo of him. I've given him a spelling word from the book and I love how he is concentrating so fully on what he is writing and how his expression is reflected in the glass. I love how he insisted on writing the pronunciation lines above the ee's in seed and I love that he is loving writing more than he did. I think the special window crayons have helped with that.

The wall

I really wish I had taken a "before" picture. In it you would have seen Anisa's name written numerous times in shiny metallic pen, Bayan's network of highways that he drew for me on occasion, random x's and t's and any army of toe smudges left by little feet as they scampered up the wall helping mischievous eyes peer over the side of the breakfast bar... I really miss it, but am also really enjoying the new wall that I have covered in chalkboard paint (another score from the market). The kids are loving it too.They have been using it for drawing and spelling practice, for math problems and Hidden words and yes - also for hieroglyphs, Egyptian art and cartouches.

It is also great for quotes. But more on that later...