Aliya Xmas Play 2010

Aliya's Flute Concert

Busy busy busy! We had a flute concert today - this is Aliya's 3rd flute concert.  She plays Mary Had a Little Lamb with a little flutey friend.  Unfortunately Aran started bawling "Roa-Ry de Racing CAR! ROARY THE RACING CAR!" during her later solo - and had to be unceremoniously carted out (therefore no video of a solo this time).

 Here's a youtube video of the duet: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rS-6tz9cP0g

This is dedicated to best cousin Nicky who turned 5 yesterday. Happy birthday Nicky!

Malaysia trip 2010

We've all just returned from our Malaysian trip and had a lovely time! Aliya and Aran had loads of fun and learnt and saw loads of new things.  Here's a sampling of all the sights to be seen in Malaysia:

Most prominent were the abundance of these strange furry purple/pink creatures everywhere. Apparently originating from China, they seem to have populated Malaysia in their hundreds! I'm not very sure what they're called....but the kids loved them!

Here are some furless local creatures who inhabited a local shopping centre  and pretty much spend their entire lives going round in circles (similar to what I was told Scottish haggis do when I first set foot in Scotland)!

We also met some very strange fish! Instead of going out for a meal, we went to a fish 'restaurant' where the fish eat humans for dinner!! These are the garra rufa 'doctor fish' from Turkey, who apparently nibble away the top layers of your skin, leaving you with baby soft feet -- Luverly! (Aliya wasn't so sure.)

Just to get our own back, we did have some fishy meals - here's a 'flying' fish:

And of course, mummy's favorite ... sushi! (Actually sashimi).

Aran met another variety of fish which he enjoyed...

Aliya hanging out at the local fish tank (actually our jacuzzi in our hotel room at PD, heheh) :

With the abundance of fish around, there were also plenty of cats - to keep the eco-system in balance, I guess! Here's the most popular of Kow Foo's 3 cats (and also Aran/Aliya's favorite) - the long suffering Souseki (see that pained look in his eyes?):  

Of course, we spent lots of time with Por Por and Kung Kung:

And also met a million uncles and aunties, like Aunty Henny & cousin Marcus:

And even had time to peek over at our neighbours (the King !) who seemed to be doing some minor renovation work...

Aliya met Paddington Bear, who has migrated from London and is now enjoying KL sunshine!

And Aran met Thomas the Tank engine, who also seems to have migrated! Who would have known that all these British have retired to Msia!

We also learnt new skills, most notably swimming:

Aran learnt some survival skills ... here seen running away from daddy pretending to be a shark:

Aliya learnt to walk on water!!

... and was very smug about it!

                             

And Daddy learnt to drive a Porsche...ahem!

And mummy learnt to pig out!

Well - all good things come to an end. Three weeks were over very quickly and then it was back to life in sunny England (it is in fact quite sunny these days)!  More to come soon...but for now, I leave you with a Malaysian sunset:

Aliya's first Piano Concert

Aliya has now taken up her second instrument, the piano. She has had intensive Suzuki training (all of 3 lessons!) and this weekend, she performed in her first piano concert...tadaaaa!

(This is also our first Youtube video - bear with us - will try to improve the quality of the picture later!)

Aliya's Suzuki Piano Concert

Aliya's is 4 years old!

Doesn't time fly - I can't believe Aliya is 4 years old!

On her birthday, we woke up to find that mother duck (who intermittently comes to nest in our very neglected garden) had hatched 10 little ducklings! Awwww...

Then, we had Aliya's birthday party for her 4 year old princess friends...

...not to mention a few select handsome princes...er ... or pirates?

Here's Liya and her fellow princesses strutting their stuff...

... being put through the hoops...(literally!)...

...learning to curtsey with grace...

...and ... learning to play dead to snag a handsome prince (I think?)... (one can only guess what they were doing...!)

Unfortunately, the handsome princes/pirates had better things to do than kiss pretty princesses...they found a much more desirable treasure (FOOD, of course)!

With the sheer choice of beautiful princesses at the party, poor old Aran had one too many dancing partners and decided that he needed a break from all the boogying...

Well, all good things must come to an end.  The little princesses and princes had to go home as the party ended, but naturally like all good fairytales, they lived happily ever after...

Aran's growing vocabulary

Aliya had exhaustive speech coaching, with mummy and daddy hanging on carefully to every little word/sound that came out of her mouth, but Aran has been more or less left to his own devices. Nevertheless, his speech is starting to flourish all on its own and while some words are not quite what we would have chosen to teach him, we're not complaining!

Here are Aran's favorite words:

• I schtuck! = I'm stuck!
• Daddee! = Daddy (and can also mean mummy)
• Miaow miaow = cat (and also Mel, his childminder)
• Iya! = Aliya
  
• Ora! = Dora (the Explorer)
• Pirate piggy = pirate piggy (from Dora the Explorer)
• Mickee! = Mickey Mouse
• Minnee! = Minnie Mouse
• Mahnee = Handy Manny
• Tools = Tools (from Handy Manny cartoon)
• Hama = Hammer (from Handy Manny cartoon)
• A Poo = Winnie the Pooh (as opposed to poopoo = poopoo)
  

hmmn...can you see a pattern emerging? WE didn't teach Aran to speak, Disney Channel did!

he does have some non Disney words though...:

• tootootwain = Choo choo train
• wo wo = Row row row your boat
• wahkwahkwahk = what a duck says
  
• Wewowewo peekaboo! = (to the tune of 'We will, we will rock you!') (this one's courtesy of Nicky and Daniel)
• Ohno! Waddooweedo? = I think this means 'Oh no! what do we do?' Is it possible for a 1 year old to string all these words together? He seems to say it in the right context all the time!
• And of course the usual 'mummum' = food and 'nannan' = milk

And i think that's about it!!! (or that's all I can think of right now..)

Flutey!!

So, some of you may have heard that we've all gone a bit berserk over flutes and all things woodwind in general... (probably precipitated by very talented cousin Ammarah and encouraged by equally talented Aunty Henny).

Well, Aliya just started flutey lessons (Suzuki method) and this week (after only 3 lessons) she's finally managed to make a sound on the flute! We are all very excited! Here's a flutey video:

In celebration of Aliya's newfound flute sound, here's a special guest star (not many guest stars on the Aliyaran blog!) - here's Greg Patillo (one of our flutey heros) - we managed to meet him at a beatboxing flute masterclass in London:

Check out Greg's original videos on youtube.com - and his group Project! What's the link? Well, they do a mean version of 'The Moon over the Ruined Castle' a Japanese folksong that's featured in Suzuki book 1 of almost every instrument. (Yeah, yeah, tenuous link, I know, I just needed to share his video!)

Anyway, Aran was not to be left out - this is Aran on the Irish pennywhistle - yes, Aran has fluting genes too! (Link between pennywhistle and flute? James Galway of course!)