another family member joins the blogosphere!

my brother's blog will probably be sarcastically amusing most of the time, but i'm sure we will also catch plenty of cute issa anecdotes (hint hint). and even though he tries not to act like it, he's even more of a nerd than koonj and i so it will surely be stimulating! (what an awful word).
oh! and i'm going to tell everyone why it's called The Jag!!! not to be confused with that stupid TV show. it's because hassan's nickname growing up was JUGNOO - HAHAHAHAHAHAHA - and a lot of our friends called him that because there was another hassan in the community who didn't have a nickname, so when he got older he tried to make it cooler. HAHAHAHAHA!!! well, at least he didn't call it by his AIM handle (which is hukkaking).

will it jinx the situation if i say that i've gotten musa to sleep two nights in a row now without nursing? and he's only woken up three times each night? and he just ate a full breakfast with no trouble at all (except for the trader joe's o's i had to pick up from the truly-in-need-of-vacuuming-and-maybe-steam-cleaning carpet afterwards)? i know babies have their good and bad days, but i want so bad to believe that the tide is turning AT LEAST for the sleeping and eating problems!

inshallah inshallah.

anything else to blog about? emmmm... don't think so. well i haven't read anything else yet so maybe i'll be back...

legalizing the world's oldest profession... in syria?

I
LOVE
SNOW!!!!!
it is so gorgeous. i can't wait till musa realizes how much fun it is :)

anyway on to the topic at hand. in light of all the discussions on chastity in the muslim world at various blogs i mentioned a couple of posts ago, i was very interested to read this editorial on sexual repression in syria at washingtonpost.com, in which the author notes that prostitution was once legalized in syria and argues that it should be again, in order to better control it. i was especially intrigued to see some of the comments echoing what we have been discussing - that in the arab (or muslim) world what needs to change is the attitude toward female chastity AND male lack thereof.

some of what this man says:
"For years, many in the Arab World have been sexually deprived... Some would argue that Islam is the reason for sexual deprivation, but I stand against such an argument. True, Islam limits interaction between sexes and calls for modesty in dress and conduct, but so does Christianity and Judaism. The other factors -- mainly seclusion, lack of education education, and poverty -- lead to a permanent psychological disorder. In many cases, people become obsessed with sex in its most primitive form.
...
One case that comes to mind is a taxi driver in Damascus who I rode with many years ago as a young child. Every single unveiled woman he saw on the street, he would describe as a prostitute... The problem is that with the absence of proper gender interaction, such a mentality will not only flourish but will also distort the balance of normal and healthy sexual activity.
...
Moral prudes and Islamists might argue against what I just wrote, but it is like trying to brush a problem under the rug instead of exposing it in a civilized manner, with the intention of resolving and humanizing it. Legalizing prostitution will certainly not lessen it, but rather, only make it controllable."


well, i don't know if i qualify as a moral prude or islamist, but something about legalization just doesn't sit right with me. i'm going to think out "loud" for a minute. if a government takes the stance that moral standards are part of the personal realm, and cannot be regulated by the government, then it can't criminalize any kind of interaction between "consenting adults" (which is the phrase of choice here in america) except by the people's choice, which i'm assuming is why most of the U.S. states criminalize prostitution.
but ASIDE from the huge, heinous and growing problem of human trafficking, prostitution to my understanding is a profession that functions by demand. poor women tossed around by other social cruelties need to make money to support themselves, kids born out of wedlock, etc., and there are always - have always been - men who will pay for it. (i knowwww there are exceptions to the rule, and women who do this b/c they want to, yada yada)
i think that if you limit the supply, the customer will go elsewhere and find it (hence the argument to legalize, so that where the customer goes is not to some underage albanian captive). BUT, if you limit the demand, then the supply will necessary dwindle, because those women will have to look elsewhere for ways to make money.

i know that is not an economically sound argument at all. but i think legalization is a band-aid solution - it's saying, we can't ever stop people from doing this, so let's at least bring it out into the open so we know how it's being done and can reduce the number of people hurt by it. but even with legalization, how will you EVER stop a black market trade in slaves? it's not going to disappear just because federal agents can walk into your house of ill repute. it's going to go deeper underground, where sick b******s will pay more for illegal, younger girls. i agree with the commenters on the article who said that legalizing will only keep poor women and girls in that awful status.

i say target the men. and i say, once again, that we raise moral standards for men instead of lowering them for women. tackle the economic factors, too - when my hubby came back from studying in syria, he mentioned surprise that so many of the men there married so late - 30 or after - because they were expected to have a certain amount of assets before even offering to marry a girl. how many guys do you know that can wait until 30?? and until the state and social norms makes it easier for women to get an education and develop the ability to support themselves, there will always be women with nowhere else to turn.

i guess i am concluding that maybe prostitution is a symptom of a sick society, not an illness in itself that can be "controlled". i'd like to know others' thoughts on this.

and if you haven't seen the lifetime movie human trafficking with mira sorvino, robert carlyle and donald sutherland, go find a way to see it!!! it will stay with you forever.

today i accomplished...

1) took a bath
2) partially cleaned bedroom
3) changed musa X times, including washing his squirmy stinky butt over a sink
4) went out to blockbuster, returned three movies and got "water" - will blog when i watch it
5) went to target and bought toilet paper and baby wipes, among other things!
6) fed musa pancakes and fruit in the morning, pizza and yogurt for lunch, a bit of fruity baby cereal in between, and cereal in chicken broth, baby carrots, pieces of chicken and trader joes os for dinner. VERY MINUTE amounts of the solid stuff, but, he ate! thats three meals!!
7) put the trash out
8) cleaned the kitchen, including running the dishwasher
9) and this is only the third time i have gotten online today!! (not including when i checked the weather just before going out)

it is almost 10 so i am going to try to wear musa out so i can put him to bed... last night we tried for about 20 minutes to get him to go to sleep without nursing - even in bed with us, he screamed like he was being abandoned or tortured.
anyone know whether it is possible to get a baby to sleep without nursing if you have a family bed?

firefox is not letting me type apostrophes or slashes, so i canNOT hyperlink or abbreviate my words!

the science of virginity

i apologize in advance for the graphic (but scientific) nature of what i'm about to cut and paste... especially if my dad sees this!! :O but i think it's important because there really seem to be a LOT of people out there with misconceptions about being able to "identify" virginity.
i've been reading many posts on various blogs, including suroor's, peaceful muslimah's and aliya's on the subject of the virginity of muslim women, vs the non-issue of male virginity, etc etc, and why is it culturally so focused on the women when the qur'an is abundantly clear in its emphasis on chastity for both men and women, and spells out clearly all the outlets and responsibilities that each have with regard to this issue.

so i just wanted to post some information from wikipedia - not linking coz they have some pictures that might shock those of delicate sensibilities :) - about the hymen and why enough blood to stain the sheets your first time is NOT an indication of having been a virgin ten minutes ago (emphases are added by me):

"The hymen... is a fold of mucous membrane which surrounds or partially covers the external vaginal opening. It forms part of the vulva, or external genitalia. [3][4] Some girls are born without a hymen. [5] [6]... A woman's hymen is destroyed when she gives birth; she may be left with remnants called carunculae mytriformes or the hymen may be completely absent.[8]
...The hymen is not normally damaged by playing sports, using tampons, pelvic examinations or even straddle injuries.[21] Once a girl reaches puberty, the hymen tends to become quite elastic. It is not possible to determine whether a woman uses tampons or not by examining her hymen: only 43% of women report bleeding the first time they had sex; which means that in the other 57% of women the hymen likely stretched enough that it didn't tear. "


i still remember from a class on human sexuality in middle school the different illustrations of various possible formations of the hymen. it was THEN that i learned that depending on the shape, opening width and natural elasticity of the hymen, it will not necessarily "break" or tear or bleed with first penetration.
but how do you educate millions of people, men AND women, about this, against the power of centuries of cultural obsession?
it seems so strange to me that this one tiny, low piece of flesh can determine the course - or the end - of a girl's entire life, even if it hasn't been touched! watched an indian movie, pinjar, at a dear friend's house the other night. in a nutshell, a girl who is about to get married (in 1946 india) is kidnapped for one night by a family who just wants to ruin her family. nothing is done to her, but the fact that she has spent one night out of her family's home, in the home of a strange man, even though she was kidnapped, means she can NEVER go home again, NEVER get married to anyone else, and her family's honor is ruined. and of course although it doesn't get into such gritty details, it's all because of that piece of flesh that has become synonymous with honor!

when in truth, today, having that flesh in place means nothing with regards to one's chastity - a different word entirely, that to me encompasses your entire approach to dealing with the opposite sex, not just never having had sex before. and on both levels, it is a quality that is meant to apply to both men and women. who was more chaste than the beloved prophet? do we say his wives were chaste but not him? and if men want to emulate the prophet, why do they not emphasize his chastity as one of the qualities they want to emulate?

i feel like i'm beating a dead horse... now that i have written all this i feel like i don't want to get sucked into a whirlwind around this one tiny issue... but the issue becomes so huge when ignorance ignites it into a method of oppression and discrimination. if we want to make a change in the muslim world with regard to how women are treated - as the bastions of "honor" for their men, with all the attached UNISLAMIC woes like FGM and honor killings, while the men have no "honor" themselves with no attached social consequences - then we need to approach it from within islam itself. and men themselves - male scholars? - need to take up that mission as well. but, i don't see that happening... (i know that some male scholars, last year i think? put out a fatwa about FGM, but i'm not sure how much power it had, especially because it comes after such prodding from the west...) can't we come to our senses about these things ourselves???

blog plugs

not that i have a readership of legions or anything, but more people should read samra's blog... she has many moving insights that are well worth sharing and i'm glad she's blogging!

also, my dad has added more posts about his recent amazing trip to england, india and pakistan, during which he visited his birthplace and childhood home (in sagar) after more than 60 years, and traveled to these three countries by himself at the age of 73 despite his hearing problems, and then came home and started BLOGGING about it! think about it - to blog, you have to know 1) how to type, 2) how to use a computer in general, 3) how to use windows, 4) how to browse the internet, 5) and all the other technical thingies... he has taught himself all of this pretty much post-retirement (well, i taught him some of it). to me it is an incredible blessing to be sharing the internet with my father :) and to have his stories available to read online like this. please visit when you get a chance!

today is a hohum cold day. musa had yogurt for breakfast (he almost never says no to yogurt and i didn't feel like fighting a battle this morning - yesterday he had no solid food at all other than yogurt and a couple of bites of this and that). i mean yobaby by the way.

i have this fantasy - i don't know why it excites me so! - of taking musa to the beach this summer. i don't know, maybe it will make me really feel like a parent, or make us feel like a real family of our own - taking the kids to the beach. but i can't WAIT for the summer inshallah to do that! i have this picture in my head of my son - by that time walking inshallah - sitting in the sand wearing only shorts, with his hair wet, playing or making faces or something. it will be so much fun! he is subhanallah the greatest blessing in my life, more than i could have ever imagined. i have small dreams where he is concerned - no great ambitions for his future, although of course i hope he will love learning and do well out of his own desire. just this happy-family picture - just happiness, safety and health, and good character - constant awareness of his Lord. better than me inshallah. ameen.

paradise now

watched this film last night. my first reaction was how delightful it was to watch a movie about muslims, by muslims, even in arabic, so that there was no fakeness to their method of prayer or the islamic words dropped into their speech - and islam is NOT the subject of the movie. i was amazed to think this is actually my first such movie... there have got to be others out there!

at the end i thought maybe "paradise now" wasn't the best title for the movie, because it really wasn't about would-be suicide bombers wanting to go to heaven... but a short discussion with my fellow viewers made me see it more as these two young men wanting to get out of the hell they endured each day. and that is a nuance those who accuse the militants of hankering after immortal virgins would do well to understand...

i remember, back in my days as an islamonline reporter, a panel discussion in the national press club on suicide bombing, pre-9/11 (i don't think such a panel would have worked afterwards!). actually, i wrote an article about it, lemme see if i can find it... found it! okay, it's not a very good article as articles go, and it's sort of editorializing, but oh well. this movie echoed the points of one of the panelists there, who said that that trying to understand suicide bombing in terms of anything other than its "human dimension" is to completely misunderstand it. that is what "paradise now" provides, a human dimension to this side of the conflict.

a friend of mine once told me how she thought it was difficult for non-muslims to understand what it means to die for the sake of Allah - look, she said, at the eagerness of the companions of the Prophet to go into battle next to him, and to risk their very lives for His sake. it's part of our tradition - indeed, i remember it well from all those islamic books i read growing up, stories of the companions, young men who led armies at an age when most of us are high school whiners.
and i agree with her - i could only hope for the kind of iman, the level of desire for closeness to Him, that would allow me to meet death freely if it was for His sake. (now i am going to get a visit from some Men in Black!!! FBI man (or woman), please read on before you get all excited.) and certainly a willingness to die for one's beliefs is not an islamic tradition alone - give me liberty or give me death? BUT. what i cannot wrap my head around is for someone to decide that fate THEMSELVES. doesn't that sort of take the glory out of it? like, hey Allah, i want to die for You, so, i'm going to do it, whether you want me to or not... it just can't be right. and yes, i'm sensitive to the human dimension and the lack of alternatives to palestinians fighting the illegal occupation. but - aside from the fact that it does perpetuate the violence, aside from the fact that targeting innocent civilians with such acts only makes it even more heinous - in itself, i don't see how strapping a bomb to yourself to blow up some other people can be put in the same category as fighting in a battle for the sake of Allah and being killed by somebody else. it's not martyrdom... just suicide and murder.

so the film tackles some of these points, though - with two of the main characters being the son of an executed "collaborator" and the daughter of a famous "martyr" - it focuses less on the islamic legitimacy of suicide bombing and more on the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of this method in stopping the occupation. it is a moving story, well acted, well paced, suspenseful. and one of the best aspects - there is no violence in it!!! well, meaning, you don't see any. hope i haven't spoiled it for you.

baby is fussy. he will not eat his mashed peas and not-mashed rice. i know he wants to nurse but i want him to eat something solid...

oh, totally off-topic, i did some online shopping at old navy for him earlier today... so exciting for me because i never do shopping - and i got all this stuff to last him the next couple of months of winter coz it was allll on sale, like half off!! i am more excited to see him in new clothes than to see myself in new clothes...

finger wagging

yes, i am a finger-wagger. not to say "no", although i'm starting to do that with musa sometimes, and then immediately feel like a child playing old-fashioned adult, but i mean during namaaz - holding it up only to recite the shahada - then start wagging again.
i never did this growing up, but i went through a slightly hardcore phase while in edinburgh, (not that this is a hardcore thing to do), and i recall learning during a halaqa over "the prophet's prayer explained" that he would sometimes do this. so, not that it is required, but i got into the habit.

however, when you are praying in the same room as a crawling, exploring baby, there is very little more enticing to said baby than a wagging finger within crawling reach. so i will be in the second raka'ah and he comes dashing toward me and grabs my wagging finger and tries to wag it himself, occasionally to eat it. it's so sad when i have to stand up again and push him away! and sometimes difficult to control the laughter :)

it is so irritating

that the washington post and new york times travel section articles almost always feature accomodations and trips that are waaaaaaaaaay way way way WAAAAAAAAY out of the budgets of anyone i know. and i'm not homeless or anything. alhamdulillah.

but i love reading these sections to find out about places to visit, and then i come to the end and it's like - the dinner here is $50 per person, or you can get two nights at $200 each. hello, if i want to spend that much money, i'll spend it on a plane ticket!! i'm not looking for youth hostel prices (though i'll take them if i find them!) but come on - isn't there any place out there that like, normal people can afford? at least if you're talking about a certain location, fine, mention the $200 B&Bs, but also mention there are some holiday inns or la quintas nearby or something.

or am i mistaken in assuming that i am normal? (no comments from hassan please)

playing ball!

musa gets sooooo excited when i sit down on the floor with him to roll a little basketball to him and try to get him to roll it back.
well, he loses interest after about three minutes but while it lasts he has fun! the funny thing is, i never actually got a ball... some visiting kids accidentally left it here and we've just been playing with it. terrible, terrible...
but he is so funny with it! at first, when i rolled the ball to him, then would hold out my hands to tell him to roll it back, he thought it meant for HIM to come to me, so he would put the ball aside and start crawling to me. then, when he got around to playing with it he thought my rolling it to him meant for him to pick it up and start trying to eat it. but a few times he has sort of swatted it in my general direction.

so much fun!! but, must go give him a bath...

it's snowing!!!

musa's first snow!!!! isn't the first snowfall of the season so thrilling?? not sure how much he can enjoy it, but, at least he can look :)

funerals

two weeks ago i attended a funeral at which i saw my friend N's family, her mother and father, though N, who was visiting from out of town, had already left. the funeral was for one of my hubby's friends with whom he had first really started learning about islam; the guy's father had been one of the founding members of the masjid where the funeral was held. the young man was only 28, and killed in a single-car accident.
then sister mariam funches passed not a week later - i didn't know her, but one of her sons was a good friend of my hubby's. hubby said this was the first time in his life he had been to two funerals in one week.

then just last night i heard that N's father had suddenly passed away. so out of the blue! his janazah was held this morning at the same masjid where he had prayed for the soul of my hubby's friend just two weeks ago.
i have so much sorrow for my friend - her family is large and tight knit and her father was the loving patriarch, with sons and daughters and grandchildren galore all around him.

so please, please make duaa for these three, and all others who remind us that our time on this earth is set, that we can plan but Allah may have a different Plan for us, that we should always be aware of our mortality and therefore understand how precious a gift this life is. may Allah grant all of them peace and closeness to Him without reckoning in their new life...

mind control?

did anyone read this article from the post's sunday magazine? absolutely fascinating, and i give kudos to weinberger and the post for actually covering this issue seriously - the issue being the fact that there are people who firmly believe that the government has been beaming voices into their head or otherwise targeting them. this discussion is equally fascinating. i am not convinced of the TIs' beliefs, though i am convinced of their experiences. but i do not believe they are all "crazy" by any means, particularly because the reporter indicates in her article that government bodies have in fact done research on such technologies. to those who are so sure it is all a crock - doesn't this fact, coupled with our government's proven ability to lie to its people administration after administration, at least make it possible?
well, at least it makes one think... i do believe it is possible, but i can't imagine the why - why target random innocent people?

stitches and wars

we had our first trip to the emergency room with musa a few nights ago! alhamdulillah he is fine now. but he tried to eat a piece of broken crockery (yes, i was stupid enough to leave it in a place where he could get at it) and had to get a couple of stitches in his lip. thank God it wasn't a swallowable piece. please make duaa for my baby!!!

i promised to write more about why we fight, which hubby and i watched a couple of nights ago. this is about american involvement in military actions pretty much from eisenhower on... one interesting tidbit is that it was eisenhower who created the term "military-industrial complex" in his farewell speech, only in his first draft he had called it the "military-industrial-congressional complex", but edited that out in order to avoid ruffling too many feathers. his speech was remarkably prescient - don't so many past presidents' words seem so these days? - and this film does a great job of contextualizing today's conflicts, with footage from eisenhower and interviews with his son and granddaughter, as well as interviews with everyone from richard perle and william kristol to pilots who flew in the march 19 2003 bombings of baghdad to a vietnam vet cop who lost his son in 9/11 and later became disillusioned by bush's lies... the film is paced by segmenting it with footage from and interviews about the invasion of iraq, but there's plenty of history in between. it also discusses the project for the new american century... basically you get the sense that our government has involved us in conflicts over the last 50 years for quite its own reasons, which generally center on establishing american dominance worldwide, and the people of this country have pretty much bought every lie and keep falling for it again and again... it sounds like such a conspiracy theory, but the proof is right in front of us, if we only open our eyes! why is it so hard for us as a nation to do so?

oh and another interesting bit... one of the interviewees posited another take on eisenhower's term - calling it the "military-industrial-congressional-think tank complex". well, maybe he didn't actually call it that, but he said that think tanks were sort of a fourth party to this complex that determines our military involvement. and this is a scary thought - that some or even much of our foreign policy decision-making is determined by private parties not at all accountable to voters. and then it seems like congress rolls over to whoever's decisions are influenced by them and voila - you have presidents declaring war instead of congress...

i remember in a media theory class i took back in, oh, must have been 2001 or 2, one issue we looked at was the effect of mass media - television in particular - on the way people think and receive and process information. i don't recall any specific theories, but one general idea i remember is that people get used to receiving quick information, simplified and reduced into bytes, and it basically comes and goes, in one ear and out the other so to speak... the speed and the instantaneous nature of information make it easy to forget and move on to the next byte, and people seem to lose a sense of history and context (hence when saddam invades kuwait it's easy to demonize him, and forget that just a few years earlier we were supporting him against the evil shi'a regime next door). and that's only a matter of a couple of years... not even the decades it took to forget vietnam.
actually i don't know if this is a theory we read or just a thought that i had had in the class :) but oh well!! still. this is just one of many reasons i feel like too much TV is a problem, especially TV news. if you stay away from it for a month or two, getting what you need from the internet, then watch an hour of CNN - guaranteed you'll be brimming with scorn :)

musa is fussy fussy so must go... but do rent this film. oh God he has pooped AGAIN!!! it's like every diaper change! it's like a newborn again! only it's stinky watery diarrhea instead of nice thick yellow breastmilk poop.
is it possible to have an intestinal virus or something that would not make him sick per se (no fever or vomiting or even crankiness) but would give him diarrhea? the doctor told me it was just because his congestion was causing him to turn away from solids and favor liquids (water and nursing) so the excess liquid intake was causing diarrhea. but i'm not so sure now...

a meme because i am bored :)

something to do while i am waiting to find out where my hubby is...

1. Elaborate on your default icon.
it is a picture of a staircase from the ruined inchcolm abbey, on a wee island in the middle of the firth of forth, from a visit i took in the summer of 1998 while i was living in edinburgh.

2. What's your current relationship status?
Married for about 3.5 years

3. Ever have a near-death experience?
can't say i have

4. Name an obvious quality you have.
easy to get along with

5. What's the name of the song that's stuck in your head right now?
amazingly, for once, i dont' have one, but musa is playing right now with his little "elmo's world" phone and it keeps singing, "lalalala, lalalala, elmo's world, hahahahaha!" and now that is going to be in my head

6. Name a celebrity you would marry.
eh, i don't think i would marry a celebrity. if the question were simpler, like, name a celebrity you think is hot, that would be easier... :)

7. Who will cut and paste this first?
i don't know, i don't really know who reads this blog

8. Has anyone ever said you look like a celebrity?
no, but i have been told COUNTLESS times that i look like someone somebody knows. once at someone's house these girls actually asked if they could take a picture of me because i looked exactly like their cousin in canada. another time at a stranger's house (i was visiting with a friend) these girls said i looked just like their friend who was in the other room, so they took me to meet her, and she DID look like me. weird!! but no celebrities.

9. Do you wear a watch? What kind?
used to all the time - the big black gadgety kind - but now i rely on my cell phone for the time.

10. Do you have anything pierced?
ears since i was like 5 (just one each) and my nose since sophomore year of college.

11. Do you have any tattoos?
nope! but i loooooooooove doing mehndi (which i never thought of as tattooing until it got big in the west and people started calling it "temporary henna tattoos")

12. Do you like pain?
uhh. no. and i always thought i was a wimp when it came to handling it, too, but then i made it through an unmedicated labor and delivery and i plan on trying it again inshallah.

13. Do you like to shop?
I
HATE
SHOPPING
at least in the way it's usually done by shoppers... like my hubby! go to one place, then another, then another, not a good deal here, try somewhere else, walk forever, blah blah blah. if i need something, i go find it and buy it and go home!
the only exception is, of course, a bookstore... oh, and grocery shopping!!! and one clothing exception - new york and company. more than half my wardrobe is from there. but my favorite place to go shopping is trader joe's.

14. What was the last thing you paid for with cash?
lunch at franklin's restaurant for a review i was writing for my newspaper.

15. What was the last thing you paid for with your credit card?
i don't have one... but i use my hubby's occasionally... can't remember what last for.

16. Who was the last person you spoke to on the phone?
my mother-in-law called because she missed musa!

17. What is on your desktop background?
musa!

18. What is the background on your cell phone?
musa!

19. What was the last movie you watched?
last night watched the documentary why we fight. more on this in a later blog post. it was riveting, fascinating, i HIGHLY recommend it!

20. What was the last book you read?
emmmm... well, reading LOTR right now. last one i read from the library? i think it was orson scott card's "lost boys" (too lazy to link)

babysitting

my own and my brother's! there were some bad moments but otherwise it was fun! i still don't see how people with twins do it. and with what cousin koonj is saying about the daycare situation with six or seven toddlers/infants to one teacher, i am flabbermagasted. couldn't do it! can barely handle two, can't even manage my life properly with one. ah well...

first words? and other baby stuff

i always thought these "firsts" were clear cut milestones - you know, i'd be able to tell musa in five or six years - your first word was "X" and you first sat up on "X" day and took your first steps on "X" day. but it's all so much more "sort of" than i thought. i've picked some arbitrary days - i took a photo with my cellphone on oct 14 when i first saw him really sitting up straight with no hand support, but he had been sort of almost doing it for a few days before that. and he started crawling within the next three days or so. so i say oct. 17.

so two evenings ago - that would be jan . 8!!! - my hubby was playing one of musa's favorite games with him - holding him on his lap standing and letting him bounce, but helping him turn them into great big jumps, and saying "jumpy jumpy jumpy!!" musa loves this. so he was going on with his bayyoo bayyoo babble, when all of a sudden he says, "jumpy!" we both heard it, i am not making this up. but it might have been a fluke. so hubby keeps playing the game, and tries to get him to say it again.
and he does! like three more times!
but, he hasn't said it again since then. he has, however, been saying mamamama, but it's only sometimes, not every time he wants me.

so, is musa's first word, "jumpy"? or is he saying mama?? i would think it's way too early for a word like jumpy. maybe he just sort of accidentally repeated it, like the sound and our reaction, did it a few more times, then forgot how. but he did say it... i can't tell you how cute that sounded...mashallah!!!

poor baby has another sniffle. it wouldn't be so bad if cleaning out his nose wasn't such a battle of screams. butu alhamdulillah.
i am looking for winter clothes for him - now that it's actually getting cold - well, i have warm clothes but i need outerwear, a bunting or snowsuit, coat, booties - and i am monstrously irritated to discover that they are coming out with spring clothes already and if i can't find the right clothing in the right size on the clearance rack, i'm not going to find it at all. i want something that has built in mittens because otherwise there's no way i'm keeping his hands covered. any suggestions?

in other news, i haven't been able to make it to the library again yet, so i'm rereading LOTR again. love it love it love it!!
this time, i have been focusing on the descriptions of middle-earth's lands and regions, and i am awed again at how meticulously tolkien imagined this entire world - did he close his eyes and see the hidden topographies of the Old Forest, the distance between the anduin and the rolling grasslands of rohan as covered by the "three hunters," the magnificent approach to minas tirith? could he stand on any spot in middle eart and look north, east, west, south, and tell what he saw there under the growing Shadow? such a yearning place, the realm of faerie...

life...

...is what happens in between sessions of trying to feed the baby in the highchair.

update: i swear, if all i accomplish in one day is feeding musa two full meals, i can honestly say i've had a full, busy, productive day. well, it's almost 5:30 and he's had one meal. sort of.

unplanned post

i wasn't going to post, but, i was logged in updating my links so i said what the heck. my good friend and writer NWS just joined the craziness with her own blog. mother of two as of eight weeks or so ago mashallah!
what else. musa pulled his first leaf off a houseplant a few minutes ago (it's a good thing i record all these things in the blog, because i certainly haven't written them in a journal or carefully penned them in his baby book). (i'm not sure "first leaf" will make it in anywhere else, to be honest).
have been thinking about doing a little baby update, though i wanted to do it in my journal. a digression here about journaling... i started when i was 11, and have written ever since - have a lovely collection of "blank books" of various sizes and patterns, filled with my musings and rants and streams of consciousness over 18 years (wow! never realized it was that long), but after i got married somehow it all went down the drain, and the journal which i started writing in on my honeymoon, is still barely halfway full (at least i remembered to pack it in my suitcase for the hospital before i went into labor).
but, it's easier to blog (unless you're doing it left-handed, single handed, while nursing, holding baby with your right arm, while he is kicking your typing arm with his right foot, like musa is now)... so, musa is nine months, mashallah, doubled his existence as i say. he is developing quite a temper, for having been such a chill baby in the early months. and he can still be by turns calmly curious, observant, playful, loving, silly. but by God, don't hold him down to clean his nose out, or change his diaper when he'd rather be climbing the dresser, or try to feed him when he's not interested. he's already actually throwing things (from the high chair at least) and making fists, sometimes even turning red in the face. soooo funny now, but i can see myself not laughing a year from now! mashallah. he is babbling voraciously, but the last few days he's picked one consonant - ba - and is making all sorts of variations on it, chiefly "bujoo bujoo" or "bayou bayou" - imagine a "shadda" on the middle consonant - and just keeps repeating it. often he sounds like he's saying "baby". we're trying to get him to say "mama", since the doctor said he's supposed to be saying mama and dada discriminately now, but i'm not so sure about this doctor anymore to be honest. he didn't even look at the new teeth, and thinks musa's waking at night is all down to hunger (just feed him more during the day, and feed him before nursing, he said,) and looked at me in shock when i said i was making all the baby food myself. i'm just not comfortable with any of that - and i KNOW musa's waking is not down to hunger. i would really like someone with a more holistic approach... he hasn't really told me anything that i haven't already read myself.

anyway. i had promised myself i would try to get some cleaning done today (oh, what a joyful promise!), so i am going to try to eat while musa is awake so i can clean when he goes down for a nap...

torture?

in this article in the post today, scott adams says he's "tortured by doubt" as to the effectiveness of torture.

"If torture doesn't work better than the alternatives, not ever, then you don't need to discuss morality or world opinion because torture doesn't even pass the first filter. I'm not saying that morality and world opinion aren't important -- you just don't need to worry about them unless torture at least produces good results."

much of the article seems almost tongue in cheek, but i don't know mr. adams, and i don't know what his attitude toward torture really is or has been in the past. but something really bugs me about morality coming second to effectiveness.
i agree when he says that if torture does work sometimes in some occasions, it's going to be used. that doesn't mean it should be used. if something is inherently wrong (a moral issue), it's going to be wrong in any circumstances.

so if i could save my child's life by torturing someone, would i?

what a stupid question. not rhetorical. just stupid.

maps!

got this idea from abu sinan's blog. it's at world66.com. had to try it. it's sort of disappointing, actually. i need to get OUT more...



create your own visited country map
or check our Venice travel guide

and this (just fixed this...)



create your own personalized map of the USA
or check out ourCalifornia travel guide

i have tried...

...to instill in myself a new sense of purpose. i determined that i do have a Calling, and know generally what i need to do to follow it, and i have a loving, patient husband and beautiful, happy, healthy son whom i love so much it breaks my heart. and still i cannot stave off this loneliness... not boredom, not even sadness, but loneliness...