Disregard the fact that my puntuation is nonexistent

Last night i couldn't sleep. Not only was it damn hot, i just couldnt sleep. I went to bed at 0130. at 0300 i gave up and read some email, then went back to bed. At 0410- still awake. finally i got to sleep then something woke me up at around 0730 and guess what ? i have been up ever since. Sheesh. I think when Jennah wakes up i am gonna take them for a walk up to the store to get some lipliner and a can of tiny shrimp. I am going to make Shrimp Louie for dinner.
Could this post be any more boring? I guess I could talk about my period or something. Naaah. Jennah said thank you to me yesterday. Today I am signing up Ayman for general education preschool to go with the special education preschool he also goes to. He is off this week but next week he starts going 4 days a week. I am still trying to decide if i want him evaluated for autism. I am scared of him being labeled for the rest of his life. The special education teachers are not even sure if what is going on with him is autism either- they always talk about "splintered skill sets" he knows all of his abc' colors, numbers, can cross a line at midline, but then some basic things he doesn't do. Or the fact that he repeats things ALOT. 3 1/2 year olds do repeat. I dunno, I guess i am in a mild state of denial. It is just that i have seen so much improvement in the time that he has been in preschool- 6 months that i am at a "wait and see" phase right now. He was only gong 2 days a week. Let's see what the 4 days, and then 5 days starting in August, coupled with the general ed preschool will do for him. I guess. hmmmmph.
ranting, ranting. I have started a multi faceted approach to thinning my fat ass down- eat less, eat more fruit and veggies, less crap, no regular soda, more water and exersise, then if needed dabble in bulimia. I think it will work.
so there you have it rants of a sleep deprived mother of 2....
thanks for taking the time.
ps oh, that kid. he just smoked past me and went into is room, and closed the door. that means poop time. if that kid doesn't turd i am bulking up his gatorade with benefiber.

Test results not related to Anna Nicole Smith.....

I got a 98% on my first test in Anatomy and Physiology. Third in the class. Woo frickin' hoo!
They also just told us that the top two of the class can do clinicals at UC Davis, which would look very sweet on a resume, I think. It would be a long drive, but it is a huge teaching hospital, I think it would be worth it. I have to keep my grades up though, because my first round of clinicals isn't until January, which gives me a long time to screw up my good start. I am really just looking to finish the course and pass my boards, without having killed anyone in the process (that doesn't look sweet on a resume. But hey, eventually i will kill someone, so i guess i ought to get it out of the way early...hahaha just kidding, kinda.) At least I can sleep tonight. After I study.
Oh yeah, enjoy some totally sweet pictures of my monkeys. Ayman was in a picture mood today, so I went for it. Thank goodness I vacuumed today.














kissy kissy my sissy.













these two are so sweet.

Alright already...

Here are some pics from Jennahs birthday. In this pic, I had just finished her adorable pigtails. She hated the process, but she is going to have to learn about "suffer for beauty" sometime...













Look, I'm her older, fatter twin....















Mean Auntie Cindy picked her out this adorable hat, and she really worked it.















She shared some cake with Great-Uncle Jim, or "Jungle Jim" as my younger cousins used to call him.














Mmmmmmm....cake.

Back at Home, Ilhamdulillah salama.

We got back home and it is so great to be here. My mom met us at the airport, along with my Dad. It was so great to see the both of them. Then as an added bonus, my brother Alex, and sis in law Renee were here at our house to see us as well with- Tada, mexican food from a local joint, Don Luis. So good to be home.
Also, did I neglect to mention (yes.) That my baby girl turned One year old yesterday? Such a big girl, and she is walking, people. She look like she has had a few shots of Jager, but she walks . Right now both are still sleeping, but i am going to be sorting some laundry, starting a load up, YAY! I have a dryer again, and then waking the angels up. Jennah has her 1st birthday party this weekend at a Alex and Renees and I need to start planning the shindig.
So I am back. Much love to my baby bro who hooked me up with a brand spanking new wireless router yesterday before i came home. Now i can still use my new laptop to blog and stuff, in the manner i have become accustomed. Love ya , Bro. And Oh crap, thank you to my Dad for picking us up and to my mom- who should have gotten hazardous duty pay while cleaning my kitchen, and organizing it for me.... Apparently, I have some Fear Factor-style hissing cockroaches in my kitchen. (not any more, Thanks Mom.) She also spruced up the rest of the pad which was so nice to come back to.
I love you guys.

By request....

A semi-retarded tour of our apartment, starting from the stairwell. Ayman gives a few shout outs at the end....

Good Times Go Bad 2007

OK, so this is Ayman and Jennah playing on the floor. It starts off with "Where's Jennah", then we go on to "Where's Ayman", then as some added Mean Mommy fun I have her daddy say "No, Jennah, no, Sissy!" and she bursts into tears, which are fake by the way. She does get a little butt hurt, but mostly the tears are for show. It is so cute. If you listen close you can hear Amr tell her "no."

And real quick, I want to take this time to thank everyone for their comments, I love them, and encourage them. I don't care if I have met you or not--(this means you, Katy from VPPS) just comment away. I am not always agreeable (Me? nawww.) But hey, the choice is always yours. So keep it up people, I am so glad someone is reading this.

First pictures from Egypt....(totally not exciting)

Aymans first bath at the apartment. He went outside with his daddy, and in classic ayman fashion, not watching where he was going and walking anyway, tripped over a planter and fell in mudd and pretty much biffed it on his face. When they came back in he had to be stripped and bathed so here it is. The hot water lasted for about 30 seconds. The water heater is only slightly bigger than a microwave, so i am not surprised.














Jennah totally passed out on her cousin Nada so they put her in bed. Amr Maged and I were shopping for some provisions at the time. She woke up starving. I mean her stomach growled and Amr heard it from across the room. poor baby. We fed her, and now i will give her her bath and cold medicine then it is bedtime for all.

Late Holiday Pics

Sorry! I am having trouble with the font sizes on this post. I think I confused Blogger.

Here is my sweetie Jennah with her pretty Grandma Cindy. This was taken at my Aunt Cindy and Uncle James house, where we had Xmas celebrations on the 17th. A great time was had by all. The food was good, We had a talent show that was just awesome, (in fact i think i will post some pics of that too...) and Santa came to visit. ( as witnessed below by the picture of my horrified son.) Jennah was sleeping during the present opening, so she didn't get to cry at Santa like her brother did.















SANTA CAN BE SCARY.

As demonstrated by my dear boy. I hope he gets over this next Xmas. Probably though, what will happen, is by the time he stops being scared he won't believe in Santa anymore. I guess we can say that my holidays were awesome. I look forward to all of it again next year, and hope it doesn't take that long to get every one together again.


And, since I am me, and this is my blog, and I can write whatever I want, here is my catty comment on Xmas.

*********Holiday Gripe***********

My cousin stopped coming to family things. I am sure because of the falling out that we had. If you don't know what I am talking about, you can read all about it here (and the rebuttal here, to be fair). Anyhoo, she had told some of our family that her daughter would go to family things, which I think is nice because, how petty do you have to be to get your child involved in a grown up issue? Well, a couple of weeks before Xmas (after I had purchased presents for the children, mind you) we were all made aware, that not only would my cousin not be attending, (no surprise there) but neither would her daughter. The reason for this is unknown to me, but maybe if I am lucky she will let me in on that one in the form of a post to this humble outlet of my joys and frustrations. I have kept her Xmas present at my house, and if Kayla would ever like to have it, I would love to have her come over and get it. Several of my relatives including myself did not bring her a present. (I did buy one, had I known she wouldn't be there, I would not have bothered) Others had a present and left it at my aunts house because they didn't know what to do with it. Still others re gifted the child's present. I myself will hold on to it until I go shopping for stuff for Egypt then I will spend it (a gift card to a boutique) on myself. I think it is a damn shame that you can't put aside your bullshit for one day, and just go and be with your family. I am sure there are excuses for everything. I mean that is why they have that saying. You know, the one that likens them to assholes. I will keep my opinions of her alleged disability to myself, since I will just be accused of being insensitive.
There you have it, my holiday gripe.

A couple of firsts.....

Jennah is feeding herself theses days. this is her first time in the high chair. It is a crappy high chair, it is one of those prtable ones, so I bought a new one today that is real. It is pretty nice. Best of all it doesn't make me as nervous as the one that is pictured did.

Here is Ayman, his first time riding the bus home from preschool. When I went out to meet him and he saw me, his bottom lip started quivering, like he was going to cry. He didn't though, and tomorrow, he will ride the bus home from school again. I know it has been a long time since I blogged so I cant really remember if I mentioned that Ayman is going to school, but he does, two days a week on Thursday and Friday. I was taking him and dropping him off. However, with Jennah, it is kind of hard, and they offer door to door service over here. Right now we are in the process of getting him used to the bus, so he only rides it home. Next Thursday, he will going on the bus round trip. Woo Hoo!
So, as I mentioned before, we are going to go to Egypt next month. We got the leave approved, we bought the airline tickets, (holy crap! all told, it cost 3600!) I bought a refurbished laptop to keep in touch with everyone, and we are almost ready to go. The next steps are all really prep and purchasing. We buy the nieces ans nephews clothes, and of course, I wash the gray out of my hair and put some caramel in it. Then, there is packing and all that crap. I am too excited. Hopefully, while I am there I will be able to post on the blog if the connection to the internet doesn't make me completely lose my patience. The new computer has a DVD so I can bring some Diego, and Blues Clues to keep the kiddies happy. Good deal.
Well, I will keep everyone up to date....Sorry it took me so long to get back up and running.

ho, ho ho, is almost here here here

Well, the holiday season is here again, and i have been too busy to blog. Sorry folks, I will be really bad about blogging until the end of the year. But here is a nice picture of Jennah for now.

Wooo Frickin' HOOOOO!!!!

I am so stoked. I cannot believe the democrats have the power, again, finally. Nancy Pelosi will be speaker of the house.. Now that isn't just a Democrat. She is a San Fransisco liberal Democrat. So awesome. SUCK IT BUSH. Enjoy the next two years, lame duck. And Rumsfeld, hardee-fricking-har jerkoff, your out of a job, write that one down. And on that note i give you adorable pictures, recently snapped, of my monkeys, enjoy.



















Here we have Ayman wearing a stuffed frog easter basket from 2005 on his head while playing a saxophone toy. Totally awesome. Creative too. He has a real sense of style for an almost 3 year old. You really have to appreciate it.















Here are both monkeys. Ayman was playing the never boring game i like to call "Careful, Sissy!" He made it up not me. It goes like this:

me: hey hey hey hey-careful, sissy!

Ayman: Carefool sissy!

Jennah: hehehehe, snort grunt giggle

me, nervous: seriously, Ayman be careful of your sissy, she isn't your pillow! you'll hurt her!

Ayman: Sissy!

Jennah: hehehehehehe snort fart grunt giggle

me, resigned: heyheyhey! look over here at mommy! *click*

Halloween '06

Well, I think I can declare this years Halloween a success. After working on Ayman for the last week or so about trick or treating and having him watch a Dora the Explorer Halloween episode a gillion times, we went trick or treating. Last Wednesday I tried his Elmo costume on him and he had a ridiculous hissy. So being a nice mommy, I made him a Dracula costume. He looked awesome. He really worked the door to door as well. We went trick or treating in my Aunt and Uncles neighborhood in Manteca, not too far away. Ayman had to keep up with his candy crazy cousin Adam. After the first three houses, Ayman was going up to the doors without me, like a pro. I waited out on the side walk with the princess and we watched Ayman collect his booty. (I went through it when I got home. I don't ever remember geting so much stuff. It could have been the cute factor.) So here is what I did in the interest of my sons teeth,and his daddy's sanity-- I got all the good chocolate candy out of the mess and left the crap. We will dole it out to him over the course of who knows how long, but momma has her hook up of Almond Joy, Butterfinger, Snickers and Whoppers. I love Halloween. Yes, Ayman, that is right. when you get big enough to read this you can call me to task for horking your candy, but until then you are none the wiser. I love you, boy. Anyhoo, he was soooooo good and careful and did what I told him to all night- until we got home. Can you say OVERSTIMULATED? Well he was. He got a bath and went to bed. end of story, sort of.


This was Jennah, she slept for most of the trick or treating. she was a good girl. Her Sweet Pea outfit didn't work out so well so we just stuck with her Halloween themed clothing I got her from Target. It was all good. We didn't hear hardly a peep from her all night.
Thanks Uncle Jim and Aunt Cindy for having us over to your neighborhood, and thank you Adam for being so patient with your little cousin on his first real Halloween.

Wednesday at home

Jennah was kicking it on the the floor with the Boppy last night. She is getting so curious. I notice more and more that she will really reach for the toys out of her range, and get them. Soon enough she will be crawling and then it will be on. He brother will have no where to hide. It is kind of fun to imagine what she will do when she is mobile, but not so fun to think of how many gates i am going to have to set up. I think i need like three more than i have now, which is used to keep Ayman in his room at nap time. In this first picture she is examining the juggling ball that came in her brothers Wendy's kids meal.



















In this second picture, she is just being her sweet baby self, hanging out with one of her giraffes. She has a couple of different ones now, and I just thought of one more she might like to play with. Now that I think of it, she also has clothes with giraffes on them. Totally not on purpose. How weird. I didn't even mean to do that. Too bad I got her Halloween costume already or she would be a giraffe. Maybe that is a blessing.
















This last picture, of course is of the boy. He has made a great transition to the big boy bed but still sleeps all crazy in it. He starts out normal, but when I check on him during the course of the night he has inevitably done a 180 in there. Right now, he is either catching another darn cold or he has allergies. I hope it is allergies to all the crap in the air, but I think it is another cold. How can this be? He just got over a cold. This sucks. In this pic he is snot-nosed and has runny eyes too. My poor boy. Hopefully he will be over it come Halloween.

Crazy cute girl.

So as I wrote on Wednesday, Jennah turned seven months old. As my mom pointed out, I posted a picture of the angel on the day she was born, but not a current picture. So here they are. I let Jennah have a taste of chocolate cake. As you can see, a little goes a long way.



Is my kid cute or what?
Totally not biased.

Jennah is 7 months and other milestones.

Here is my girl, about 15 minutes after she was born. Today she is 7 months old. My mom and I took her for some shots and some medical rotovirus. She is soo good that she only cried for like 3 seconds, or about the amount of time it took to pull up her little pants and pick her up. She is really mellow. Right now she just started making like she is chewing her food and it is so cute. She really smacks those little gums together to chew the mooshy food i give her. She gets lots of bananas, yogurt, cereal, avocado and breastmilk. Sunday she got to try her daddys favorite-Koshary. I ground it up in the babyfood processor and she was all over it. She doesn't have any teeth yet, but judging by the amount of drool she is putting out, she should be cutting some anytime now. She makes all kinds of noises and her brother is the apple of her eye. Ayman calls her "sissy" and gives her kisses all the time. one of his favorite things to do is take toys away from her then give them back, aboiut 30 seconds later. Whenever Daddy comes home from work, she can't wait for him to pick her up. If he goes past her with out doing so, she has a baby freakout. We love you Sissy.

I took this picture of my boy this past weekend. He hadn't sat in this chair for a while as it was on "time out" in the garage. It was getting to be the end of the day and he got a babydoll (also from the garage) and just kind of sat in front of the house. Like he was just enjoying the peace at the end of a grueling day of playing at the park, eating sandwiches and Doritos, drinking juice and having fun. I guess even at 34 months you have to take the time to smell the roses. It was adorable.

And finaly we have this picture. I took this because it is Aymans first night in his big boy bed. (that he has had for over a year now) He did so good. I can't believe he even slept under the covers. Today I put all of the little girl stuff on his crib, and someday I hope to have Jennah sleep in it. Right now she is perfectly happy sleeping right between mommy and daddy, close to the milk supply. Ayman only had one incident last night with crying, and he got over it quick. Lets hope tonight goes off with out a hitch. Now, if we could only teach him how to use the potty....

Bathtime for babies

Amr gave the kids a bath tonight and I got to take some pictures of the action. Ayman likes to pour water over Jennahs head. She doesn't seem to mind. Now, pour water over his head, and he has a mini hissy. I guess she is just cool like that. We are slowly getting over all the sickness here, but I swear, I was getting sick all over again last night. But, that could have been due to the fact that i only got to sleep for two hours after I got off of work yesterday. Being a mom on 2 hours sleep sucks big time. I miss my mommy. She lets me come to her house on Mondays and she will watch the kids while I catch a nap. It totally helps. She is in Cabo this week so I was out of luck. Yesterday, I even had the kids sleeping at the same time, but when I went to sleep I was so nervous that Jennah was going to wake up, that I couldn't sleep. How stupid is that? Oh and you know what else sucks? After a 16 month reprieve, Aunt Flo has finally come to visit again. That depresses me. I feel like if I was just breastfeeding a little more, she wouldn't have come back yet. And of course she couldn't come visit on one of the two nights I called in sick for work, no no no no. She had to come when I was at work and caught completely unawares. we can say she came unannounced, I mean like, seriously unannounced. I mean, I used to kind of feel her coming. Not this time. Oh well. What can ya do? It had to happen some time. It was good run.

Sweet Ride, Baby

I hooked Jennah up with her brothers super-sweet tryke today.

I think she likes it.

The Many Faces of Jennah

Jennah and her little baby expressions.

happy

surprised

almost upset

shocked

chubby
New style pigtails by the way, how cute is that?

Sweet Pea

This is a happy baby. I hope she stays this way forever. (happy I mean) She rolls over now, and is starting to try to laugh at me. She will sleep all night long when I am at work, but not when I am home. She gave us quite a surprise last week when ( I cant believe I am going to write this, but it is my blog and she will read it one day) she fell off the couch. Yes, I left my 3.75 month old infant unsupervised on the couch. With a huge ottoman in front of her. She was sleeping with her back facing out kind of angled down ward. anyhoo, long story short, I came back in from potting a mini rose bush, and Amr was holding her. I asked him if she was crying and he said "she fell off the couch." I was stunned, to say the least, because to get off the couch she had to do a 180 and then a couple of complete rolls from there, but I guess she did. I asked Amr if she was face down or up on the floor, and his answer was, "I have no idea, I heard crying, I came in, I didn't see her, I picked her up. It happened very fast" Oh well. I busted out my little wedgie things for her to lay between now that she is mobile. Ayman didn't roll over until after he was crawling so Jennah is charting new territory with us. Her brains seemed unscrambled and she was able to focus, so we declared her good to go. She also fell on to a soft surface (softer than a hardwood floor that is to say) Long story short, I feel like Brittany Spears. Just not pregnant, rich, and white trash. Lets see what else can my little pixie do these days beside explode her diapers off of her body? She is holding her head up great, and trying to lift her upper body up when I cradle her. She only wants the boob, and is giving Amr a hard time when he feeds her on the weekend, but I am working on remedying that situation. Now we are trying to give her a set bedtime, and get used to being laid down for the night. It is going good so far, and I will keep my fingers crossed. In Ayman news, he got a Hep A vaccination (I think it was hep a.) He didn't even really notice the girl gave him a shot, which was way cool. Today I had him sit on the toilet for about twenty minutes after I found him grunting away by the computer, but that didn't pan out. I guess we will have to just keep on keepin' on with that one. That is it though. Oh and if anyone wants a myspace friend as boring as me, you can find me under cassnasr.

Look at the ears.

Today I had to take Jennah to the doctors office for her 2 month immunizations. Well, she had to get FOUR shots! I guess I forgot about that sadistic crap from Ayman. Anyway, I thought since I was going to be dosing her with Tylenol every four hours, I might as well make it worth it. We went right on over to the mall and got her ears pierced too. She had a very bad day. Actually though, she is doing good. She has slept a lot, blessedly. It looks so precious! I felt apprehensive about it at first, but then I just decided to nut up and do it. I think she will thank me later. (or hold it against me, who knows.)