Sunday, April 24, 2011

Our Little Helper

Hubby and I try our best to get Rayyan involved around the house...helping us with the clothes pegs when we are doing the laundry, helping us to carry things around, helping us to carry groceries, etc...

This is very good for him because not only is he more aware of his surroundings, he is also working on his motor skills and life skills too :)







Thank you for helping us darling!! :D

Animals :)

Another video (you can see Rayyan's face here.. hehe) taken in the car. And in this video, Rayyan tries his best to make the sounds of the different animals :)


Hectic

My mom has been hospitalised for more than a week now and our schedule has become really hectic. During the weekdays, we go to the hospital every evening after I finish my work. During the weekends, we go twice a day, trying our best to squeeze some activities for Rayyan in between. I am so glad that Rayyan has been very, very cooperative. He doesn't throw tantrums at the hospital and diligently follows us there... And he has also been eating food at the hospital without complaining! Thank you darling for not making things more difficult for Mummy!

We don't have time to do much learning now that we have to shuttle to and from the hospital regularly. We do whatever we can in the car or the hospital.

Want to hear Rayyan recite the ABCs? He can now recite A-Z when we ask him to without any prompts. But a couple of the alphabets sound the same because he has not mastered the sounds yet. But we know he knows the alphabets, just that he doesn't have the capacity to make the sounds.

For example..
c, d, e, g, p, t, v, z - all sounds like 'e'

There are some others which sound similar and do try to hear the 'w'!! He can't do the 'w' properly but kudos to him for trying so hard!!!

Btw, sorry you can't see Rayyan's face in this video. I took the video the wrong way! lol


Sunday, April 3, 2011

Hiatus

It has been almost a month since I updated this blog and gosh, so much has happened in a month!! Work is crazy, I am inundated with projects after projects, not to mention the piles of markings that seem to get higher and higher!

To add to that, we have also let go of our maid. It wasn't a last-minute decision, we have been thinking about it since Hubby stopped working. Apart from the usual housework, she didn't have anything else to do as Hubby was handling Rayyan full-time. The fact that she kept many things hidden from us and did things that she wasn't supposed to hastened the decision to let her go.

It has been about three weeks since she left and it wasn't easy at first. Apart from work and daily duties, we have to do the household chores. Hubby and I also take turns to do the cooking. But we feel that we have made the right decision. No doubt we are totally exhausted at the end of each day, the house is a little bit messy at times and the saddest part is that we have to forgo our late night dates :( But you know what, it is so much more satisfying now that we are doing everything on our own. And the fact that we don't have to rely on strangers anymore... well, that's totally PRICELESS! And oh yeah, I must add that we are now members of VideoEzy... hahaha.. So how do I destress apart from watching those in-house movies? By surfing the net and FBing while I do the laundry, or while I wait for the soup to boil or.... yes, I am now a master of multi-tasking! hehe

OK, enough of my ramblings... let me give you updates on my precious little one. Dear Rayyan is slowly improving in his speech. He now tries to follow the words we say (but still in vowels).. He can now say, 'Mummy'... yay!!! He can also call his Daddy (he pronounced it as 'ae-ii')!! He can also say, 'I want more'... His speech is kind of robotic though and he breaks words to syllables... For example, he will say, 'Ai..u-wa..m-ore'! You have to be close to him to understand what he says. And yes, he can say, 'Help me' (ep-mii) too! Just the other day, he pulled my hand to a table and say, 'Ep-mi!'.. I looked under the table and saw a ball, out of his reach. He wanted me to help him get the ball!! I was sooooo happy! Like I said, slowly but surely!!

These days, I have been using the erasable board to get him to read and verbalise the words. You can see this in the video below. This exercise also convinces me all the more that Rayyan can read. If he is merely memorising the words, well, I must say that he has memorised quite a lot of words!!! But well, like I said, the most important thing now is that he tries to verbalise the words, especially the easy ones.

Go Rayyan gooo!!! Mummy and Daddy are so proud of you!!!



And yes, the last part of the video, you will notice that I taught him the word 'penis'. Well, I think that it is very important to teach these kids their private body parts :)