I have<\/em> been busy.\u00a0 My husband and I have rededicated ourselves to making our house more Islamic.\u00a0 That\u2019s such a generic word, but what does it mean?\u00a0 Well, we\u2019ve always worked on the kids to teach them adab<\/em>, manners.\u00a0 They know to say please and thank you, to say \u201cBismillah\u201d before they eat or drink, and alhamdulillah when they sneeze (very cute when a two year old does it).\u00a0 But in addition, we wanted to work with them on all the \u201cbookish\u201d aspects of Islam.\u00a0 So now they are getting short (half hour) sit downs with me or my husband to learn about the prayer, Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, and the Qur\u2019an.\u00a0 My oldest, Abdel Hamid, teaches his brothers as well.\u00a0 We are not just doing something new for Ramadan.\u00a0 We are, inshaAllah (God willing) creating a new routine that will carry on througout the year.<\/p>\n That\u2019s what Ramadan is about.\u00a0 It is a time to reset and refocus, a time of thinking about where you are falling short and how you plan to fix it.\u00a0 With all that is going on around in the world, there is no excuse for us not preparing our kids to meet the challenges they\u2019ll be facing later in life.\u00a0 And by later, I could mean next week, like for instance if they meet a bully on the bus or someone says an unkind word about my hijab when they\u2019re around.\u00a0 We have to teach early and often, and of course we have to be good role models. You can\u2019t tell your kid to go pray while you\u2019re sitting on the sofa watching Dr. Phil chew out some lady for abandoning her kids to run off and fulfill her dream of being a nude barista.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t have too much profound to say at the moment.\u00a0 Sometimes life isn\u2019t terribly profound.\u00a0\u00a0 A lot of life is trivia.\u00a0 That wonderful trivia of waking up at o-dark-thirty to force yourself to eat a couple of dates and a bowl of cornflakes while you nervously eye the clock.\u00a0 The trivia of trying to find your scarf so you can pray and go back to bed.\u00a0 The trivia of helping your children learn the proper words and motions for prayer, the trivia of kissing boo-boos and refereeing squabbles over toys.\u00a0 Making dinner.\u00a0 Stepping on Legos.\u00a0 Letting the cat fluff your lap.\u00a0 Tossing in a load of laundry.\u00a0 Doing it all over again.\u00a0 Yes, it\u2019s trivia, but it\u2019s certainly not trivial.\u00a0 It\u2019s life.\u00a0 It\u2019s not always blog-worthy, but sometimes I\u2019ll blog about it evenso.\u00a0 And yes, I will sometimes post pictures of squirrels with lightsabers.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/67\/2012\/08\/squirrel.jpeg\" "\\"squirrel\\"")
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