Ilyasak's reading journey

Ilyasak has ventured into quite a bit of Roald Dahl's books. I am so glad that he could now read thicker books with many words on a page. Although, he still needs someone to guide him along every page just to ensure that he has the correct pronunciation as well as to understand the meaning of certain words which were difficult for him to comprehend. He has yet to master the art of reading without putting a bookmark on every line so as to reduce his tendency to skip a line. It can be quite tiring for me to actually to give my fullest attention (checking on every single word) at each reading session but nevertheless I am very happy to do that.
To date, he had completed, 'The enormous crocodile', The minpins'( he hated this book actually), 'The giraffe, the pelly and me' ( it's boring in his opinion), 'The twits' ( he adores this book), 'Esio trot' ( another book which he really adores) and 'The fantastic Mr Fox ( a 'so-so' book to him).
These are all books with pages less than 130 pages so they are actually short novels with quite a fair bit of pictures to aid young readers like him along.
His current read is 'James and the giant peach'. He is into the 5th chapter and I must say that this book will the toughest of what he has read so far because there are now fewer pictures and about 141 pages. Thankfully, the plot of the story is interesting unlike 'The minpins' and 'The giraffe, the pelly and me'.
Though I foresee that this journey (rowing 'James and the giant peach') will be quite difficult but we will still strive to ride through the book and complete it and insya Allah we will get there.

A dish whipped out in 30 minutes

I did this simple dish sometime last month which is a fairly simple all-in-one dish- stir fry bee hoon.
We ( Balqis and I) rushed home after our library trip during Ilyasak's time in school. I was lucky because the time was extended to 1 pm instead of the usual 12 pm because he had a field trip to the science centre which warrant us an extra hour.
Nevertheless, we got back at 12.30 pm and immediately headed to the kitchen to fry the noodles. All the stir frying took me less than 30 minutes. Fine! I cheated a bit, I boiled the beef strips and soften the bee hoon before we left for the library.
Well, it was still an achievement to me considering that I usually spend quite a lot of time in the kitchen- yeah, I worked like a tortoise when it comes to cooking and cleaning. 

Past the 3km mark

Yeay!! Made it past the 3 km mark and finally stopped at 3.2km at 26 minutes. I know it's not a big deal to some but it definitely is to me. I used to think that I will faint or collapse on the threadmill if I ever exceeded 2km. So here is to many more future runs on the threadmill. Certainly making full use of the 'bomb' I spend on it.

Keeping fit + an impulsive buy

I started exercising quite regularly after Balqis turned a year and a half. Suddenly, it dawned upon me that I should do something about my health since I hit the big 30 and also constantly reading or hearing about people in their early 30s getting 'stroke'. That is enough to scare me. I start watching my diet and in checking what goes into my mouth. I stopped indulging in my prata, thosai and 'nasi campur' fixes and anything in the name of unhealthy food. I reduced my habit of dining out during breakfast on a weekend. I stopped scooping biryani onto my plate during weddings and functions. The maximum biryani which goes into my mouth will just be 2 spoonfuls.
With all these reasons, I made an impulsive buy a week before ramadhan. I bought a threadmill! It took me quite a while to get over the fact that I made an impulsive buy over something which cost me above $1500 and its not even a Gucci bag which u dreamt if day and night. I must be out of my mind... but the hubby coaxed me that its my health investment considering that its quite difficult for me to find the time to go jogging outdoors since the free time that I have usually is at 4 pm daily when the kids are napping. That would be the time when 'mr sun' will be shining ever blazingly and I can't be leaving them unattended while I go jog.
Therefore now, with my threadmill position right in the master bedroom, I can jog anytime I want. All I need is a mere 25 minutes and I am done. I don't need to get properly dressed and all. No excuses for not exercising.
To date, I have not treated it like a 'white elephant' and has been making good use of it. So here is to many more runs on the threadmill and targeting to hit 3 km.

Picking Arabic again

Recently, I made the decision to pick up Arabic again. After much research on some centres which offer the language, I picked one which charged reasonable monthly fees. Coincidentally, this centre was recommended by my ex-collegue and and my bestfriend. It was also the centre which my mom took her Arabic many years back. Such a coincidence isn't it? My mom was motivated to pick it up again when I told her that I had already signed up for the course and my bestfriend signed up with me for the course as well. Hopefully, I have the 'istiqamah' to stay on long in this class.
I had 4 classes so far and it had went on well, and am motivated to even revise the stuff which was taught. I even taught Ilyasak and Balqis what I learned so they pick up some basic Arabic too. I planned to research some Arabic learning materials suitable for kids also. I really hope the 'fire' to learn and teach my kids stay on for long till we achieve a certain level insya Allah.

Botanic Gardens

Ever since, I took both Ilyasak and Balqis to Botanic Gardens recently, Balqis has taken a special love for this place. All because, she was surrounded by some 30 ducks which fascinated her to bits. Probably, because its a rare chance to come up close and personal to those duckies in an urban country like Singapore where children grow up in concrete buildings instead of 'kampong' houses.
She spend most of her time interacting with the duckies instead of scooting on her scooter like her brother. We saw a few children feeding the duckies despite the signage of 'no feeding of the animals'.
Anyhow, we plan to visit Botanic Gardens again on another weekday hopefully to fight the weekend crowd.

Balqis scoot!

My girl can finally scoot on the 2 wheeler skate scooter. Yeay! At 3 years 5 months, I must say that its an achievement worthy of an applaud. It's true when experts said that early exposure to a certain skill can do wonders. All I did was just gave her ilyasak's old two wheeler for her to play but that was when she was 2 and a half years. She ended up pushing it around and was not very keen to scoot.
A few weeks back, she asked to be given the skate scooter to play (ilyasak 's old scooter -the 3 wheeler was long gone and so she borrowed his current scooter). I did and she scooted a bit but again more of her pushing the scooter around.
Just four days ago, we decided to scoot at Botanic Gardens but made a trip to Vivocity instead since Balqis had no scooter. We scouted for a reasonable priced scooter hoping to find one reasonably priced. It was a gleaming red sleek scooter just like the brothers only with the wheels a tad smaller at a steal. It was only $29.90- how great is that! She was happy and so was I.
Both of them scooted in the open area just outside Vivocity and also ventured at Sentosa's board walk (although no scooting is allowed). They had so much fun scooting around and we even contemplate to enter Sentosa if not for the blazing sun.
Balqis had been scooting since then.

The lack of Ilyasak's pictures was simply because that it is almost impossible to get a good shot of him nowadays. He moved so fast that we had a difficult time capturing pictures of him.