Alhamdulillah, my new baby girl is a little over a month old now, and when she is first introduced to friends and family members, I am inevitably asked what her name means, and inevitably, I have a hard time trying to give the answer. Here’s why:

Imagine this- a blast has just sounded, tearing through the sky. It is so loud it can be heard throughout the entire world. Every living thing, except as Allah has willed, has dropped dead. The mountains themselves have vanished- reduced to dust and blown away. The seas are gone, the earth has been flattened to one tremendous expanse, and without a doubt, it is the Day of Judgment. Then the blast sounds again, and the dead are coming back to life.

Look around you- there is pandemonium. People are in a state of terror and panic, fleeing wildly in all directions, men from their wives, children from their parents, brothers from their brothers. Some are trying to escape, some are sobbing, others are begging to be destroyed rather than judged. The hell that they’d been writing off as a figment of monotheistic imagination has been stoked and brought near, and amidst the wailing and crying out for destruction, you can hear the inferno drawing in great roaring breaths. It’s alive, and it knows it’s about to be fed.

But wait, what’s this? From within the sea of darkened, tear-stained, dust-covered faces you can see points of light- and they are people shining with happiness. They are unaffected by the fear or misery, and are instead overjoyed, laughing out loud, delighted, and elated that the promise of justice they have been waiting their whole lives for is about to be fulfilled. They are not looking towards the mouth of hell drawing breath in the distance, but rather to the gates of Jannah, as Paradise has been drawn near, and the only thing standing between them and eternal happiness is a meeting with Allah, whose blessed Face they have been yearning, not dreading, to see.

Some faces that Day, will be Musfira- bright. Laughing, rejoicing at good news. Surah ‘Abasa

Some girls are named for beauty, intelligence, or success. Some even for precious gems- Almas means diamond, Lulu means pearl. Others are named for righteous qualities- Saima is one who fasts, Naasira is one who is helpful- but I wanted to name my daughter something that would point her towards the one thing that would mean the most to her in this life and the next- when the world had been destroyed and remade, and the dead had been raised, and every recorded action hung in the scale of balance, I wanted her to be among those shining with joy. I wanted her to be Musfira.

And so she is- baby Musfira.

May Allah guide her and keep her on the path of righteousness.

May she shine with joy in this life and the next.

Ameen.

Look Momma, issa letter double-yoo!

Good girl Iman, you’re right!

Double-yoo is for Spiderman!

O_0

Web?

Yes, and big cookies!

Good job Iman.

(Iman, laying in her bed and protesting the gross injustices that are forcing her to be subjected to an obvious violation of her civil rights – a nap – resorts to bargaining.)

Mommmaaaaa!

— (no response from Momma)

I want coffee!

–

I want milk!

–

I want water!

(I offer her a sippy cup of water, she refuses it)

—

I want masjid!

—

My nose hurts, ow!

—

I want wake up!

–

(Iman falls asleep)

As everything in Dubai must either be the world’s biggest, best, or most deserving of a superlative, here we have the world’s hottest, burningest ant bites. Iman was bit by an ant a few weeks ago- I heard her scream from halfway across the house and ran to find her clawing at her foot as an obviously stepped-on ant tried to make a feeble getaway. Iman kept crying ‘Hot! Momma, ow foot!’ and we spent some time sitting on the edge of the sink and running her foot under cool water. I’ve had one of those ant bites before, they really are intensely, shockingly painful, and they burn for hours.

Shortly after the bite, any ant Iman saw resulted in her running away and calling for reinforcements- “Oh no!! Ant!” And then Momma would come to the rescue with a shoe, and half the time Momma would come to rescue Iman from ant-like pieces of lint, but it was a good system. Iman would sound the alarm and I would send in the cavalry. And when the ant was gone, Iman would earnestly recount the story of what just happened, being sure to include the phrase ‘ant scawy!’ a few times for emphasis.

Fast forward to this evening- Iman came running up the hall with a sippy-cup of milk in her hands and to deliver an important message:

Iman: Momma! Ants inna milk! Livingwoom!

Me: What? Ants? In milk?

(I look around. I don’t see any ants in any milk, and we’re already in the living room.)

Iman (nodding): Ya. Milk. Livingwoom Ants!

Me (I look at her suspiciously): Show Momma.

Iman leads me up the hall to the play room and points to the floor, where I find two ants drowning. On the floor. In tiny puddles of milk.

I look at Iman.
I look at her sippy-cup.

Evidence would suggest that as punishment for previous crimes against Imanity, the ants were sentenced to death by drowning, one drop at a time, from the supposedly spill-proof sippy cup of doom.

Iman looks to me for approval.
I nod at her and she nods back.
A warrior is born.
And henceforth, they called her AntBane.

Oh, and Ramadan Kareem!

So March has come and gone, which is annually insignificant, except that both of my children were born in March. I haven’t celebrated birthdays for years, but when it comes to my kids, the dates are significant to me in ways that have nothing to do with candles and everything to do with crying.

When I first learned that I was expecting, I have to admit- I had no idea what to expect. The magnitude of the situation was completely below sea-level until Khalid was born and the nurses put a tiny, dark-haired bundle on my chest and told me I had a son. He was bluish, and wrinkly, and the most beautiful baby I had ever seen. And then he was always there- it was my duty to keep him happy, warm, clean, alive, loved, fed, rocked, tickled and adorably dressed. He was a gigapet without an off button who refused to take either a bottle or a pacifier and no one else could watch him for me.

And he grew, and eventually he crawled, and thank God, he even learned how to walk at 13 months, but at night he cried. And he learned how to babble, but he never talked, and he sometimes played, but spent a great deal of time just staring at things. And when he was fourteen months old I learned that I was expecting again, and I cried. It is humbling, and personally very shaming to think of now, but they were not happy tears. They were the tears of mother who felt like an utter failure, an utterly overwhelmed failure with a little boy who lived like a shadow in my own shadow.

By the time Khalid was two, he had gone nearly silent. Hours would pass without him making a single squeak, laugh, babble, or request- verbal or nonverbal. He would spend his day staring out of the window or following me from room to room. It was March, and then Iman was born. We spent weeks in a nocturnal daze, handling the growing confusion of Khalid’s development problems and the confusing emergence of Iman’s colic. Like clockwork, Iman would start crying at one am and stop by six am. For five hours she screamed inconsolably, squirmed, kicked, and arched her back, her body tense and trembling, and paused only for breath no matter how much I rocked, walked, soothed, sang, or bounced her. By six am the screaming would stop, she would feed desperately, and then fall asleep. By that point Khalid would be asleep on the floor by my feet. He would have cried himself to sleep too, because he would have woken up when Iman started crying and sobbed himself to sleep at the foot of the rocking chair where he begged to be picked up (and demanded that the little screaming pink thing be put down) until he gave up and fell asleep on the floor.

(No, I didn’t blog about any of this, I try to maintain a ‘No Pointless Negativity’ policy about blogging, and my G-ma taught me that if I can’t say anything nice, then I shouldn’t say anything at all. I cannot think of ANY SINGLE THING even remotely nice about colic or the creeping fear that your child’s brain is abnormal, which is why you won’t find them in previous blog entries.)

We eventually changed our sleeping habits completely. We woke up at 6 pm and started our day, and Khalid’s bed time was at 7 am, when Iman was done with her screaming and I could bathe him and put him to bed somewhere other than the floor. We saw HF for a few hours, after he came home from work and just before he too went to bed, and he woke up countless times in the middle of the night to give me a break- to walk the beaten path in the living room around the coffee table, to the front door, and past the sofa and back again while rocking Iman in his arms. It was a tough time for everyone. And I did a lot of crying.

Then, we got help. We hired a full-time Nanny, who put Iman to sleep while I put Khalid to sleep, and when Iman woke up in the middle of the night, I would go out and take the night shift while Khalid continued to sleep with HF in our bed. Some semblance of normalcy returned. After six weeks, the crying started to taper off. We started to have two, sometimes even three good nights a week. Eventually the screaming stopped, and Iman only woke up for feedings in the middle of the night with a minimal amount of crying.

By the time Iman was six months old, and Khalid two and six months old, we started to put our finger on exactly what the issue with Khalid could be. We were on our second nanny, because the first one became quickly frazzled by our nocturnal screaming schedule and quit after four weeks. We did our homework, had an initial assessment done, and then a full psychological assessment done, and by October of 2008, we knew for sure that Khalid had autism. His mental age was 13 months.

Khalid began ABA therapy in January of 2009, and he would spend the entire three hours crying. After a few weeks, the screaming would be punctuated with bouts of peace, during which I would quickly rush to the window and peek inside to see Khalid putting coins into a piggy bank, or scribbling, or watching one of his therapists blow bubbles. Eventually, he only cried when it was time to go into his sessions, and it would peter out in about ten minutes, and he would emerge from his sessions happy and covered in finger paint.

And life got better. And Khalid learned one word, and then another. And then he asked for a hug, and while the floodgates have not quite opened, they are cracked enough to let a few dozen meaningful words and a hundred or so prompted words through.

And now, Khalid is four and Iman is two. Khalid is learning how to read, even though he has yet to use a full sentence, and Iman decided yesterday that she is a Nice Cat. She gets down on all fours, crawls over to my feet and calls out Nice! Momma! Nice Cat! And I kneel down and pet her and say Oh, what a Nice Cat! And I scratch her behind the ears, and she giggles, and I pet her head, and she crawls away to do something important, like hit Khalid on the head with a building block. But she’ll be back again in a few minutes, calling out Nice Cat! Cereal?

(And if I ignore her, she bites my foot. So I feed Nice Cat a few pieces of cereal, and Nice Cat says thank you and bye bye and meow.)

Khalid and Iman have moved past enmity to tolerance, and from tolerance to coexistence, and from coexistence to inseparability. SubhanAllah, if I have to run an errand that requires one child and not the other, the two will cry out to each other as if they’re being separated for life. Iman! Iman! Khalid will yell and kick the back of the passenger seat from of him. No No! Ka-leed! Momma! No! Ka-leed! Iman will cry back to him from the gate as we drive through it, and the drama will continue for a few more minutes until Khalid wipes his nose and gets back to pointing out numbers on road signs.

When we get home again Iman will greet him by bursting into the room screaming and giggling and yelling out KA-LEEEEEEEEEED! and the two will reunite and celebrate by doing important things like bouncing on my bed and hitting each other over the head with building blocks. Iman is the non-stop talker, Khalid is the silent partner. They tease each other constantly, fight viciously, and hug and play lovingly when and if they’re not busy competing for toys and attention. It might be hard to imagine how Khalid can do all of these things without talking, but when he wants to tease Iman, he will look at her and smile, and maybe pinch her toe. And Iman will consider that an act of war and take swing at him, and he’ll dodge and run and a mad chase will ensue.

Sometimes it’s hard for me to believe that I have it so easy. Thinking back to the downright turmoil that HF and I have been through with the kids, their progress seems unreal. The crying, the colic, the panic that Khalid’s autism put us through- sometimes it seems a million miles away, and those two little babies that the nurses gave me at the hospital, those can’t really be the funny little boy with enormous eyes or my Nice Cat with pigtails. I don’t have babies anymore, I have children, and by the Grace of Allah, this year, they are two and four.

And I don’t need to give them presents for it as if I don’t overstock the toy department all year round, or bake a cake as if cake isn’t happening on a regular basis, but I do have to say Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah. All praise is for Allah, who held me together when I was broken, who kept me on my feet when I was losing my head, and who took some of HF and some of me, and mixed it into the most quirky, energetic, devious, amazing, and inventive little humans I have ever known. And I thank Allah for the colic, and even for the autism, because the fact the He gave it to us means we have the strength to handle it. Without hardship or pain or stress, we would not be forced to become better versions of our previous selves, and we would never be pushed to push through. Allah has made me a better parent and a better person through my children, and I pray that the progress continues for all of us, throughout our lives.

Ameen.

among other things, the reason why there are plastic sharks in my sock drawer.

Khalid: Huh be bees! (Help me please!)

Me: Yes Jaan?

Khalid: (pinching my leg) Huh be bees!

I turn around a look at Khalid, who is standing expectantly by the refrigerator door. I stand up and open the door for him.

Me: What do you want?

Khalid picks up an orange and pokes his finger into it. Juice squirts out and begins dripping down his arm.

Me: Clean up!

I take away the orange. He finds a kiwi and begins peeling off the sticker.

Me: Khalid, what do you want?

Khalid opens the crisper drawer and pulls out an apple.

Khalid: Ah! Abo! (A, apple!)

Me: Good boy.

Iman: (holding a small triangular puzzle-piece) Kak-kak?

(Cookie?)

Khalid: (looking up at her) Twingle.

(Triangle.)

He takes the piece and puts it back into the puzzle. A few seconds pass, they are both scribbling on magnetic doodle-boards.

Iman: (picking up the same piece again) Kak-kak?

(Cookie?)

She tries to put it in her mouth.

Khalid: (Insistently) Twingle!

(Triangle!)

He takes the piece from her and puts it away. They both resume coloring, and all is right with the world.

No!

We got him dressed this morning, and within minutes he came back to me and took my hand and said Off! Shoes! So we took them off. Then he whined and said no no nooo! And so I took the socks off too. And then he was happy.

He wanders around the house calling out Ruuuuuuth! because he’s not sure where she’s gone. Ruth is working with another family, and Cindy, who has been us for two weeks now, is patiently teaching Khalid to say her name instead. (‘Indy!)

Some of Khalid’s vocabulary can be a little difficult to translate though. Kim is milk, buhjo is puzzle, and tay-tow is lay down.

And then there are the words that are clear enough, but adorably confusing. Like SheeEEEep. According to Word World, SheeEEEeep? is what you call out when you are looking for someone. Like your mother. You knock on the bathroom door, and you call out ‘SheeEEep?’ and your momma says ‘Yes Khalid, I’m in here.’ It also works in the kitchen.

SheeEEep? (Yes, Khalid. I’m in the kitchen.)

The best way to get Khalid talking is to entice him with what, in ABA terms, we call a reinforcer. In the real word, we call this bribery. Today, I got Khalid to jump through verbal hoops for some peeta-butta. Yep, the kid loves his peanut butter.

He knows the words blow and blue, but will sometimes confuse them. Last month his therapist asked him to repeat the name of the colored card he was holding. Khalid paused a second, leaned forward, and then blew on it very gently. Blow, blue- same difference, right? And he also blows on his drink because that’s what grownups do. But then he also tried to blow on the surface of the water in the toilet, and I’m pretty sure he’s never seen us do that.

Khalid’s requests are all still one-worded, unless they involve the word No, in which case they can be up to six words, all of them the same and all of them all mashed together- No no no no no no nooooo! But still, Alhamdulillah, these are amazing and exciting times.

Something amazing has happened almost every day this week, and I need to blog about it before I forget and lose the utter beauty and wonder of it all-