As seen in the Le Gallerie de’home, Blue Square (left) and Scribble Star (right)

Both pieces are said to represent the artist’s passion for geometry.

My little boy, my handsome little son, is painting. A blue square. With washable paints, with slow, deliberate jabs at the paper, and his little tongue poking out in concentration.

I. Am. So. Proud.

*gets misty eyed*

Khalid’s working with one of his therapists right now. We began his ABA two weeks ago, and we now drive into Dubai four days a week for Khalid to learn things like matching colors, and stacking shapes, and how to talk (InshaAllah, one day) and also, how to paint a blue square.

Iman is home with Ruth, her BFF as well as our full-time Khalid-chaser. Ok, technically, she’s a nurse, but she lives with us and helps me with the kids and the house and takes care of Iman while I take Khalid to therapy and keeps me company as well and compliments my cooking. I am reluctant to call Ruth the ‘help’ or the maid or the nanny, because there’s a negative stigma attached with 1. Being the ‘help’ or 2. Hiring help. But that’s another post for another day InshaAllah. Right now, I’m just going to sit here and beam.

*beam*

1. I have a hard time filling out these ‘Random Things About Me’ lists. Even now I’m very self conscious about what I type here. Half of the time I worry about being shamelessly self-aggrandizing, the other half I worry that being normal may be seen as a deliberate attempt to be ‘lookit me, I’m so righteously humble.’ Apparently,

2. I over analyze. Or perhaps, I’m guilty of exposing myself by the lens through which I fear being seen.

3. I’m worried about being seen as arrogant or fake. One then wonders, is that because I am either

4. Secretly very arrogant or

5. Secretly very fake? I hope that I am neither, but I recognize that my personality harbors elements of both. Compare this to being told that:

6. I channel pre-school teacher. Someone I love told me that once, and I was hurt by that. I wasn’t sure why, I just knew that was an incorrect analysis of what I was, and realizing the incongruence between my inside (Abez Soup) and my outside (Preschool Teacher?) made me feel incredibly artificial.

7. I hate pretending.

8. I’m wondering where I’m going with this, and whether I’m exposing way too much of myself instead of just filling out sixteen silly things like

9. I once met Morgan Freeman and

10. I own silver sneakers.

Pretending is a kid in camo pants. Being is a soldier in camo. My preschool teacher exterior is not the candy coating, it’s the work of years of nafs-beating, lip-biting, hard-earned restraint. 11. I am not pretending to be nicer than I am, I am being nicer than I want to be, given that I am

12. Impatient

13. Self-Righteous and

14. Naturally inclined to vengeance. My façade is not to keep the light of prying eyes out, it’s to keep the darkness restrained within.

I think I’ve lost direction on this. Also, this may be way more than anyone has ever wanted to know about me. (So, did I tell you about my sneakers yet?) I think this meme and the preschool teacher comment just happen to come at the same time, and when I sat down to fill out that one silly list, I came up with this silly one instead.

What’s the moral of this story? You might not want to dismiss “nice people” you meet as being one-dimensionally Good, any more than you should be absolutely certain that patch of leaves isn’t a commando.

15. I talk too much.

16. I rearrange the furniture every time HF goes on a bidness trip. Where’s your sofa now, HA!

HF is en route to Australia for a bidness trip, and we, The Circus, are left to our own devices for this week. Apparently our devices involve rolling around the floor sucking on building blocks. Well, those are Iman’s devices anyway. She’s the reason I’m up cooking instead of down snoring- I woke up at 12:46 to giggling and pulling of the strings on my hoodie, which, in addition to fist-sucking and foot-waving, is Iman’s way of letting me know she’s fully charged and ready to party.

So here we are, it’s a party.

(Wave your feet in the air like you just don’t care?)

Khalid began ABA therapy last week at the autism center in Dubai, Alhamdulillah, and it’s amazing to see him already picking up the things he’s refusing to learn there. :p Khalid will resist instructions to clap his hands until we’ve used up every tissue in the box and he’s blue in the face from crying, but he will go home at the end of the day and furtively clap his hands in a corner. The therapists have told us that they can see he is intelligent, but he has compliance issues. In other words, he will refuse to do something solely because you asked him to. That makes sense, after all, the motto Khalid seems to live by is ‘You and What Army?’

Alhamdulillah, he has made progress though, because he’s starting to realize that no matter how hard he fights, he won’t be released from that crazy place where he’s made to stack blocks against his will. Poor baby.

Iman is learning things too. Just this week, she’s started a precurser to crawling- the commando-wiggle. I’m sure it has a real name, it’s that thing you do under barb-wire on your elbows while pinned down by enemy fire. Whatever it’s called, she used it just now to wiggle under the desk and start pulling my pant leg. Two days ago, she used it to get to my feet and diligently suck my toe, thereby entering the record books for ‘Most Adorable Distraction During Prayer By A Baby Ever.’

Well, Iman is rubbing her eyes and wriggling unhappily, so I think maybe the party is over. Let me whisk her off to bed. Khalid and I have to hit the road at 9:30 am to get to his therapy on time.

Peace & Tarka Grease!
-The Circus