Ramadan Story: Night Prayer with Toddler


Judulnya sih bahasa bule, tapi isinya kali ini pakai Bahasa Indonesia kok. Haha…

Sabtu pertama di bulan Ramadan ini saya kebetulan baca tulisan anaknya bu Elly Risman, mbak Sarra Risman, tentang membawa anak ke masjid (baca di bawah), lalu di sore harinya kami berkesempatan merasakan langsung pengalaman itu dengan seorang balita yang baru genap berusia 13 bulan tiga hari sebelumnya dan sudah bisa jalan sejak 10 bulan (ini penting ditulis agar terbayang seberapa heboh gerakannya sekarang.. wkwk Squinting Face With Tongue). Berhubung kerepotannya sungguh tak disangka sebelumnya dan jadi kepikiran beberapa hal, saya putuskan perlu menuliskannya di sini demi memberi gambaran tentang “begini lho bawa anak (kecil) ke masjid itu” versi keluarga kecil #ea5512. Kami ajak Musa ke masjid dengan tidak bermaksud muluk-muluk semacam menanamkan kecintaan pada rumah Allah sejak dini sih, tapi karena memang tidak ada yang menjaganya di rumah. Haha… Ohya, pengalaman ini terjadi saat kami masih tinggal di Michigan, USA, dalam rangka suami menempuh S2.

Intermezzo dulu, ya…

Sejak memasuki bulan Ramadan, kami sudah niatkan untuk berbuka puasa di masjid setiap weekend dan memang rata-rata masjid hanya mengadakan community dinner atau fundraising dinner di hari-hari itu. Sedikit cerita, berbeda dengan community dinner yang umumnya gratis dan ditujukan untuk ramah-ramah aja, di fundraising dinner kita harus siap berdonasi sesuai kebutuhan penyelenggara atau sponsor. Bukan berarti kita bayar makanan bukanya, tapi dengan berbuka di situ kita dianjurkan menyumbang dengan nominal minimal yang sudah ditentukan, misalnya $25. Penyelenggara iftar adalah masjid, tapi tujuan donasi tidak selalu masjid, tapi bisa juga organisasi Muslim yang sedang butuh dana sehingga merekalah yang akan jadi sponsor hidangan iftar-nya. Fundraising hari itu seringya diadakan lagi setelah usai shalat berjamaah. Suasananya mirip kaya lelang. MC akan menyebut angka-angka seperti $100, $500, dst. untuk mencari donatur yang bersedia memenuhinya. Menarik, ya? Kami juga baru tahu penggalangan dana model begini di Amrik, tapi mereka niat banget mendorong orang untuk berlomba-lomba dalam kebaikan dan bukan hal aneh jika kita melihat ada jemaah yang angkat tangan unuk nilai $1000 (lebih dari 10 juta rupiah). MasyaAllah!

Kembali ke cerita tarawih bersama bocil..

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How 1 Year Old Meal Time Looks Like


#ea5512
Musa’s mealtime look 1 year ++

Keukeuh pake sendok / garpu, mau balik piring, ngunyah kebanyakan (“molo-molo” orang Jawa bilang), buang-buang makanan adalah sebagian potret kekinian Musa saat makan.

It’s almost a month since my last photo for this album. If you see Musa’s meals pics before, you may think he’s an easy baby in eating. Now, Musa has been a toddler, entering period when he’s naturally to be a picky eater. Table foods with salt and sugar (yey, finally!) can’t make he eats more than his baby foods. He still prefers to eat plain fruits or veggies instead of yummy-crunchy-fascinating fried chicken a la KFC.

We have more challenges for sure, but we don’t want to bring down his self-regulate sense that has been built so far. We simply give up the foods to give to him when he doesn’t want to eat.

Posted from Ega Dioni Putri’s Facebook

Ramadan Prep a la Cooking Mama


#ea5512 #fridge and #freezer deep cleaning to welcome our super special guest: #Ramadan2016 – Got three foods cooked (and still counting), several fresh veggies chopped, and some store-brought frozen produces for emergency sahoor (meal before fasting) and iftar (meal after fasting). The freezer has not too much space anymore to store the fresh meat and seafood we just shopped yesterday.. 😅😅 Hope Allah makes easy for us to change sleep cycle a lil bit, fill the day and night with more worships and good deeds, do fasting in heated days, and control our temper or any kind of negativity. Aamiin. #mealpreparation #welcomingramadhan #welcomeholyspirit #helloramadan #sayinshaaallah #deepcleaning #ramadanpreparation #ramadanprep
Posted by Ega Dioni Putri via Facebook

When the Library Made Us Upset..


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My heart was breaking and I felt so sorry to Musa this morning. There was an interesting event in the library we’re used to go that’s only available this summer: Play and Learn for Age 1-3 with experts invited. Musa had found his toy and played with other kids for few minutes before we were told about signing up and not allowed to join them at all because we missed to register T_T. The coordinator said the program has been full for all weeks with no clue how many kids they want to keep and why we can’t ask to be waiting list. There was a participant leaving earlier yet we were not offered to go in -_-.

I was so upset. We are loyal participant of library’s story time every week and I looked forward to join this program since a month ago. Recent weeks I was so busy with trips plus events and didn’t pay attention to event details. However, I always kept in mind that I would have event on June, 3. See my second photo! That is the ONLY publication I know about this event. I put it on my working table and saw it every day, but the information “registration is required” was failed to catch my focus. It’s too little between long text, huh? Some other mommies looked misguide too.

Lesson learned:
– Read information carefully
– Don’t be a procastinator. If you have read an instruction, there’s usually a time limit to follow it, so just do immediately
– I wish I could design better advertisement than this so people don’t miss the important thing to do. Hahahaha

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Posted from Ega Dioni Putri’s Facebook

Twelve Months Review


Finally! I’m writing down (yes, I chose this word because I need to dig up my memory.. it’s 3-weeks late by the way.. haha) this last chapter of Musa’s monthly development. All of previous-months notes is available on my IG / FB. We only missed his 1-month-old note, but we still did posting a picture of the return of Papa’s lunch-box to celebrate. Mama was off from the kitchen during the first month and Papa sometimes prepared his own bento 😀

It’s hard to realize that your baby is not a baby anymore by this time. Dilemma comes more intense such as “I still wanna have a baby, but I don’t wanna be too busy again” and in another way “I wanna him grows up quickly, so we can do many more things together”. Now I know why human keeps having more children even though it makes him / her a worrysome all the time. Hahaha..

Okay, let’s start to review.

Road to be a screen-free toddler

Musa has been set to be screen-free since 10 months and one last month (11 to 12 months) it was quite be successful. Thanks to little hafidz Musa and Mrs. Fauziah for reminding us. Stories of those two persons get about to shock me. I read the bad effect of those “blink-blink” display to baby’s brain beforehand, but sadly I couldn’t do more than cut the duration of his watch. Most of the time, we turned on screen to distract him from crying or from bothering our works. Looked like quote “Housework can wait, but your baby can’t” went wrong. Hahaha.

That's okay to be friends with screen.. as long as it's under your control, baby. Uh yeahhh! :))

That’s okay to be friends with screen.. as long as it’s under your control, baby. Uh yeahhh! :))

Changing this habit was surprisingly very easy because Musa can’t ask to watch video yet :D. I was thinking that I could sort the videos in a playlist (some songs have been removed) that make screen-time a little bit useful, but Musa is only interested to certain videos of nursery rhymes. When sister Maryam shows up in the screen reciting Quran verses, he runs away. LOL. Anyway, in the screen time, I never let him stoned for so long without interaction. Between 9 to 10 months, he has been able to respond (in his language) such as “hmm.. hmm..” if I invite him to discuss the content of  the video, so I think face-to-face communication still play the more important role compared to the screen itself. No matter what we talk about, baby needs to listen to our voice beyond everything, especially the voices with parentese style.

Well, that’s my choice to limit screen for my baby. Nobody can make sure how long this screen-free mission will survive. We still make exception sometimes, like when I needed to cut his hair and made him stayed calm. The videos could save us from ‘disaster’ :)) Screen isn’t always bad. I just want to prevent Musa for getting addicted. I proudly admit that I build vocabulary of kids’ words from nursery videos and teach good habits in daily life with the songs. Thanks for YouTube!

Here is a good guide to use screen wisely. Keep it to myself too!

5 Myths About Young Children and Screen Media Infographic (Source: Zero to Three)

5 Myths About Young Children and Screen Media Infographic (Source: Zero to Three)

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