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Trekking birds are filling the air with unusual whistling and singing, typical sounds of the seasons changing.

Yesterday evening it became overcast and the wind changed direction. A hot wind is blowing from the Northeast and the air is quite moist. It might rain the coming days.

That would be excellent for the trees. Last summer’s dust needs to be washed away from their leaves.

I’m astonished how well Zakaria is starting to speak these last few days. He is building sentences and trying to conjugate verbs correctly.

This urge of his to speak well must come from a desire to express his wishes. He regularly commands us what to do, often followed by another command to do the contrary. He must be in one of these phases that he wants to become the dominator in our home. This goes together with a very firm “no” when asked to do something.

In between, he is still this cheeky happy boy, always in for a new encounter. Until now, he hasn’t become shy. I guess he never will be.

His favourite fairytale is “Aladdin” these days. He likes to “read” the book and watch the movie. Doesn’t stop talking about “the flying carpet”, the magician, Jasmine and Abu, Aladdin’s monkey.

He’s probably dreaming about it.

His shoes are becoming too small once again. Every 3 months he needs new shoes. I’ve been reading in forums on the internet about the growth of 2-year olds and what size of shoes they have and compared to Dutch averages, Zakaria is quite a tall boy with big feet. He definitely is compared to Syrian averages.

His potty training, however, is not going well. He understands perfectly what it is about. Sometimes he does everything right and praises himself for it the whole day long, but often he just does it wherever he is standing or sitting. Afterwards he shows me and says he should have done it on his potty. I wonder how long I will keep up with this or when it will improve. We do not have much time left before the carpets come out and by then it will have to have improved considerably or I will take the decision to put Zakaria back in diapers again. It may be too early for him.

Survival mode

While Zakaria is moving around the house in my shoes, I’m trying to concentrate on writing this blog entry.

He’s constantly improving his speech by constantly talking about everything he sees and feels. He does that mainly in Dutch. His Arabic is getting better, but until now he is not exposed to such a varied vocabulary as he is in Dutch. He’s also picking up on French and German.

His mind actually functions as a sponge right now. Anything that he hears, he likes repeating and it seems like he is storing it on a hard disk for later use.

While we were having a heat wave (even hotter than usual), it seemed like a perfect time to start Zakaria’s potty training. He understands perfectly what it is al about, such as his cheeky eyes tell me after I have told him not to pee on the floor, and at times he just does it all perfectly.

The heat was just terrible. It was not possible to do much more than drink and wait until the evening came. And even at night it was just bearable.

Notice this was only a week ago and today white clouds are blocking the sunbeams regularly while the temperature must have fallen by at least 10°C.

30°C seems quite cool now.

Somehow, people here got through the terribly hot days without drinking. It is Ramadan since August 11th. I don’t understand how they do it, although I am observing it at home. Sleeping is the best remedy and pouring cold water over one’s head helps.

Some campers have been arriving in Syria last weeks to drive around the country. They could not have chosen a hotter moment during the year. It is very quite on the tourist front. Summer holidays are over and Ramadan is always quite. In a few weeks it will be back to business again.

It is nice to have a breather after an extremely busy spring and a quite satisfactory summer.