Mosquito bites and cash register

What does mosquito bites and a cash register has to do together I hear you ask, well nothing, just that they both were given generously to Mona on the same day!

Neither her father, nor myself have any allergies whatsoever, so we both thought that Mona was safe from allergies, well we were wrong!!
Mona has develop an allergy to mosquitoes bites! Yes I know it's totally absurd, but it's real.
Each time she gets bitten, the area when the bite is gets all swollen it's terrifying!!

The poor girl, she got bitten last week on both arms and one hand, and they were so swollen i was really worried about it. Then just when it started to get better, she got bitten on her cute little face and legs!!
Here are some pictures of her with the bites on her face (forehead and chin) when the swollen had almost gone!

And here is a picture of Mona's brand new cash register. I'm so happy about the christmas sales going on right now, because i got to buy Mona this toy for really cheap!! lol...
She loves playing shopping and pretend to pay money etc when we play. Now she is the 'lady' from the shop and is so happy to have a cash register and keeps scanning all the food items in her little shopping basket. And the bonus is that she is also starting to learn how to count with this new toy!!

And here are some more funny pictures of Mona who was making funny faces for the camera:
(I think you can see the bites a bit better on those pics)

Showtime...

Last Thursday we were at one of hubby's aunt's house with the whole family and Mona had lots of fun playing with her cousin Negin. They were most of the time upstairs playing 'dress-up'.
After dinner, tea and ice-cream (and lots and lots of lollies), Mona decided it was time for her show!
She literally made a show for all of us adults. She stood in the middle of the lounge room and would start to tell stories, sing and dance at the same time. And each time someone would talk, she would stop her show, walk up or run up to the person and tell them to 'be quiet' or 'noooooo, stop talking'. All eyes had to be on her for her show. And of course she took a bow each time and waited for the applause! A real show girl!!



Here are some funny pictures of Mona wearing the glasses of cousin Ruha while they were playing dress-up (same kind of glasses that the rapper Kanye West wears in the video clip 'Stronger'):

Playing with Mona...

Mona sits on her pink chair and holds her little pink diary book in her hands and says:
"we need to look at the list of things to do today!"

Then she starts reading and telling me all about her list. She counts each to do thing on her fingers and the list goes like this:

"First I need to go to the meeting (i.e a Baha'i Meeting),
then I need to go to the shopping,
then I need to go to my friend,
then I need to go to the zoo,
then I come back to your house!"

My almost 3 year old daughter is a very very busy girl, and if you do ask her, how is or how was your day, she will either tell you: "I had a busy day today!" with a very tired sigh at the end of her sentence, or she will tell you: "It's my holiday today!"
lol...
Her imagination and creativity always amazes me!!
She sure is one funny girl...

Books update...

Mona just absolutely positively LOVED the books!!
(what a surprise!) lol.
She is walking around with half of the little books from the 'Angelina Ballerina' series. She takes them with her everywhere and carry them in her little pink 'Dora the Explorer' purse!

In the book 'Love You Forever' there is this little song that the mother sings to her son every night till he grows up. And when the mama becomes old, the son in turn sings the song back to her and later on sings it to his own baby daughter.

The song goes like this:
"I'll Love you Forever,
I'll Like you for Always,
As I long as I'm living,
My Baby will be!"

Mona has already memorized how to sing the little song from the book 'Love You Forever' and sings it back to me at night after reading the book or randomly sings it during the day!

The first time I read her the story for bedtime, she sang it back to me and gave me a kiss and a hug, and you cannot imagine how much she melted my heart when she did that!!

I love you Mona, Forever.... and as long as I'm living, my baby you'll be!

Books, books and more books...

It's been a while since I bought Mona some new books. (well not really, we did buy some books last month, but anyway, one can never have too much books right, no matter what the age!! Even though Mona's library is getting way much bigger than mine now... anywho!!).

You see there is this book "I'll Love You Forever" by Robert Munsch, which I really really really wanted to get for Mona's bedtime stories a long long long time ago, but each time i took her to the bookshop, she would choose a different book, which of course had to be way more expensive than our allocated book budget, so I could never get the book I truly wanted for her, right!

But today, I did. (Well Mona was not with me when I went shopping, that's why!)
So I finally got the book I have been wanting to get her for so long!! Finally!! Yeah!!

Then I saw this cute little book about 'Angelina'. You know, Angelina, the mouse ballerina!
Two weeks ago when we went to the library, Mona choose to borrow an 'Angelina Ballerina' book, and she loved it so much that we read it most night for bedtime, just after reading 'Spot's baby sister'. So I decided to get that book too for her and it came with a small Angelina Library book, which consisted of 6 little board books of Angelina!
I can't wait till Mona gets home to find her new books!! Ohhh boy is she gonna be excited!!
Oh did I mentioned that I went to the bookshop to buy myself a book and instead came out with 3 books for Mona and none for me!! (mind you, it's not the first time this happens either!!)
Oh well... next time i guess... right?

Here is a picture of Mona with her book 'Spot's Baby Sister' under her arm:
This is a picture of 'Jemima', Mona's new favourite doll. She takes her EVERYWHERE she goes! And her Jemina is wearing a ballerina outfit (see how the ballerina theme is being repeated here!!):
Jemima is a character from 'PlaySchool', a tv show for preschoolers, which we both love watching together everyday. We sing along and dance with the presenters, we learn new stuff everyday and there's even a storytime section! We love this show!! (No seriously, we do learn new things everyday, specially me!!)
And each time the show comes on, Mona runs to get her Jemima, and the three of us sits together on the couch or on the floor and watch 'Playschool'.

1 more pic

Forgot to add this picture of Mona with her crown on to the Tender Seedlings post (see below).

Wear that crown

"Say: O God, my God!
Attire mine head with the crown of justice,
and my temple with the ornament of equity.
Thou, verily, art the Possessor of all gifts and bounties."

~ Baha'u'llah

Yesterday at Tender Seedlings, (yes yesterday, we changed the days from Saturdays to Mondays now), it was all about crowns. Not the ones that princesses and princes wear, not the ones full of precious stones and sparkles, no, not those types of crowns... but the kinds of crowns that shine on your head like a ray of light, and that can be seen even before you enter a room because that light shines so brightly.
Yes, i am talking about the crown of love, the crown of kindness, and the crown of justice.

The little tots really loved the animated story about the little shepherdess, which we named 'Milly'. You see Milly is a little simple girl who cares for her sheep on the hill (in our story she had pigs, chickens, cows, and horses too). Milly was thinly dressed and her feet were bare, but sometimes Milly wished she could be a princess for a day and wear beautiful silk dress and silver shoes and of course a beautiful princess crown. One day she was sitting on top of the hill looking very sad, when her grandfather, whom we named 'Grandpa McDonald', came to talk to her. Grandpa McDonald told her that she did had a beautiful crown on her head, and that her crown was even more beautiful that the princesses crown, because her crown didn't shine because of the all the shinny and sparkle jewels on it, but because her crown shines with all the good things she does everyday, and he told her that that kind of crown was much much better than wearing a princess crown. The crown is made of good things like being kind and being wise and telling the truth and loving others. Like seeing the sheep and other animals are warm in winter and have enough grass to eat and are well looked after. Every good thing that you do is like a beautiful jewel to put on your crown. And the best part was that you didn't have to be a princess to wear a crown like that, everyone could have one!
So little Milly sat on the hill and looked at the wispy white clouds and the high-flying birds and the sun shining gold in the sky, and nobody saw that her dress was thin and her feet were bare, for on her head there shone a crown of light and love and truth and happiness...

So of course after the story we made some beautiful 'virtue' crowns with the tots and here are the pictures...
Of course after the class, Mona wanted more stories about 'Milly and her crown' and yours truly had to invent some more.... then she wanted me to buy her a new story book about 'Milly'... lol.
I guess I should look into writing some story books for children....

Changes...

Did you noticed them????

Well, my blog header (picture) has changed!
As well as my blog title. My new blog title is "Mona - A Portrait of L.O.V.E"

I've been meaning to change my blog header and title for a long long time now, but i was never satisfied with the blog header i created and couldn't find a title worth it, but today i did it!!
My creative flow is coming back i guess...

So tell me, how do you like my blog's new look?

Never too early...

I love this picture of Mona, that's why i focused on her only....
We were at Harbour Town, having lunch and watching the airplanes take off and land. When I took this picture Mona was gazing unto the wide open area, waiting for some planes to land or maybe just dreaming about taking a plane to go to Mauritius or Haifa. She thinks that planes only goes to Mauritius and Haifa!! lol...
Doesn't she look much older in this picture? (she will be 3 in 4months).

The Love of God

Today was all about 'The Love of God' in our Tender Seedlings class.
I had missed my little angels and now that the classes are back on, I am feeling so happy and joyful.

In brief, today we learned that God is One and that He sent us His Messengers (Noah, Abraham, Moses, Buddha, Krishna, Jesus Christ, Mohammad, The Bab and Baha'u'llah) to tell us that He created us because He loves us very much!
And because of His love for us, He made sure we have everything we need and gave us a lot of wonderful gifts, like our families, food, water, plants, all the animals and everything that is in the world.
We also learned that we need to make sure that we thank God for those wonderful gifts He gives us daily by being a good boy and girl and listening and obeying what He asks us to do, and also that we need to make sure that God knows that we love Him too, by saying our prayers every morning and evening.
We also learned a new prayer that we say everyday to let God know that we love Him very much too.
Then we made some beautiful 'Prayer Hands' in crafts time, taken from the book 'Baha'i Crafts for Children', which was so generously sent to me by my dear friend, Amelia, from Canada (Thank you again so much Amelia Joon!).


So for the 'Prayer Hands', we traced and cut out each child's hands on a folded construction paper, making sure that the hands are attached. We then wrote two prayers on the palms side of the hands, and then let the children decorate the fingers and nails and the outside of the hands.

The children loved the idea and so did we!!
Here are some pics of 'Tender Seedlings' during crafts time.

41 Baha'i Regional Conferences

Over a period of 4 months there will be 41 regional Baha'i Conferences around the world.
So far, 3 conferences have already taken place, and my parents attended the one in Johannesburg, in South Africa, last weekend.
I am so excited just by reading the reports, looking at the pictures, and watching the videos from the conferences.
I can't wait for the one in Australasia, which would be held in Sydney in January 2009.
I so want to be part of if and pray and hope i that i can save up enough money to attend the conference.

Check out Papijo's (my dad) blog for pictures, videos and reports from the conference in Johannesburg, South Africa at: http://papijo-quotidianus.blogspot.com/

Armed with the Power of Thy Name... (Music Video)

Have you seen the new music video by Baha'i Artist, Devon Gundry?
It's called 'Armed' and is a prayer from Baha'u'llah.
The music video is a brilliantly moving and profoundly touching, very powerful and very intense and I think is the first one in it's kind.
We definitely need more Baha'i Music videos like this one!

Here is the video

Devon Gundry - "Armed" from Justin Baldoni on Vimeo.

or go watch it in full force on Vimeo

P.S: The video also features the Baha'i actress Eva La Rue.