a (short) tale of two siblings . . .

This was us last weekend along Gurney Drive, Penang. Guess who was more keen to stay in the hotel room than take a night stroll. Guess whose patience was tested as a result of said first person. ;-)

Earlier that day, in the hotel room, this pair of siblings were enjoying each other's company. Well, one more than the other. See how the lil one shows her big brother she's not to be fussed and dolled over! Hehehe ...

a confession ...

:: photo courtesy of apartmenttherapy.com ::

This florist. This road. Those cute red minivans. The matured buildings framing the picture.

A florist on Westbourne Grove, London.

Oh, I miss you (London) so!

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One of the things I enjoyed most back when I was in London was buying fresh flowers from such florists. It'll either be on a weekday, on my way back home from college/uni, making a stop at the Hammersmith's station (District Line exit) resident florist or my stop's (Stamford Brook) florist, OR it'll be on a Sunday morning stroll, getting my supply of fresh flowers from the florist set up at the corner of Stamford Brook road, a mere 3 minute stroll away from my front door. Sigh ... such bliss from life's simplest pleasures. Yet I miss it terribly and long to go back there again ... and again ... and again (with or without stops at florists), just so I can take in all that London has to offer me. Silly, simple me! :-)

Zayaan doing her thing ...

There's also this lil girl's happy chatty self keeping us happy at home. It's all pretty happy with plenty of smiles until she had about enough of watching the Mummy record her, that is. Apologies for the dark image - I obviously didn't consider lighting at the time of recording the video.

"let me read this book now, Mummy ..."

This book. He picked it up, sat next to me and started reading. He managed most of the words correctly on his own. It got me teary-eyed. My son is reading already. I am a happy mom now, just because. :-)

slowly but surely ...

Couple nights back, while watching the TV, I decided to test Zarif's reading. Using his Thomas etch-a-sketch toy, I wrote simple words such as sun, run, hot, hop, ball, tall, fun, train, the, book, look. After these few words and him able to read them, he decided to test me. "OK Mummy. My turn now. I write, you do the reading". His words were friends, taste, tracks. I was amazed! He could spell these words and well, knew what they were too. Yey!

After I tested him with more words, he took his turn and wrote the amazing, info, menu. At this point, I was channel-hopping and checking on the programmes. The blue box came on the TV screen. If you guessed The Amazing Race was on at the time, yes, you're absolutely right! He had gotten them words from the blue info box. ;-)

He can read, a bit, yes. But the instant amazing appeared on the etch-a-sketch, it was a notch too advanced for me to believe. Hehe ...