Nusayba's on her way to reading!

nusayba read her first 3 words on thursday, march 26th! it was so exciting--for me of course:) we've been playing with letters and words for a while, but to see her grasp the concept and try to pronounce was so beautiful:)

the words were "blue", "red", and "green". since then she's been trying to pronounce words like cat, hat, hot, etc... but what's really amazing is that when she sees any words (on the diaper box, street signs, even the word "toyota" on our van) she now realizes that the letters makeup a word and the word can be read so she stops and takes a shot at it.


'Alaa is now on my case that i should be teaching her Arabic, but i have a feeling that once she really grasps the concept it'll be much easier to teach her to read in Arabic. It's not like English..like, why would there be a "k" in the word nife? :)

Wheat Grass

A little project the girls have been working on thanks to Maha:)

First we soaked the wheat grass for about 12 hours

Then we planted...

A layer of sand to absorb any extra water

then the dirt...

and finally the wheat seeds


we water the seeds twice everyday. once in the morning and once at night and placed them in a dark/shady area covered with plastic wrap until they sprouted


this is what they look like in about two days. we then removed the covering and placed them on the windowsill and continued watering twice daily

I find the roots amazing!

they grew very fast and the girls could notice the difference every day


say cheese:)

look at those roots! they've extended all the way to the bottom of the sand...subhana Allah, amazing!

we gave the grass its first haircut and...

made a delicious green smoothy with it!

We used the wheat grass, avocado, banana and apple juice...no, we didn't put any of the vaseline in there:)



Unfortunately Nusayba didn't get to drink from this batch because she didn't finish her lunch, but we made another batch and she drank two cup-fulls--i just don't have proof:)

Asmaa started off with a full cup and a straw and ended up like this:)

Random Videos

These videos are a few weeks old--i uploaded them onto youtube a while ago, but never got a chance to embed them here. enjoy!

Nusayba's Stop Sign



Nusayba had fun with this for a while. We added a green "GO" sign on the other side and played red light-green light. Oh, and it's always a treat for Nusayba to speak in English!


Abdurrahman on the sofa




Fridge magnets
nusayba's really having fun with letters alhamdulillah

Nooo....mama!

I have so many pictures and videos to post and hopefully I'll get around to them this week, but I just took this video a few hours ago and couldn't wait to upload it!

Just for you Nana...we really miss you!

So here's the scoop...
one of the times i went out and left the girls with khala asmaa (nana), asmaa had a really stinky diaper. so of course khala asmaa wanted to change her diaper, but asmaa refused and it became our little joke:)