With Liya, at religious classes..

Almost all Sundays we attend religious classes at ISNF(Masjid-Noor), here in Buffalo. Back in Kerala I have seen many people hesitated to take infants to Masjids/religious gatherings because of the 'mess' they would create in such places - hmmm, it is very true that these little champs will not always 'enjoy' the speeches and advices delivered over a 'mike and speaker'...


Luckily, Liya loves going to the place. In fact, she refuses to come back from there.  The main attraction for her is that, she gets to see lots of children there. Most of them are coming for Sunday school, while few are smaller like her, accompanying their parents for classes. These kids make so much of fun, they play varieties of games, they laugh, celebrate, scream, run around, climb up steps, make lot of noise... Liya enjoys walking a bit away from them, carefully watching what they do... When the Imaam delivers speech, she roams around in the hall/looks through the window / counts people sitting over there.. She often runs between the area for men and women... ensuring that both J and I are safe.. :)

She doesn't sit on my lap, she doesn't have the patience to sit down and do something. She generally walks, pushing down things on the floor or rubbing and cleaning the floor or poring water in the floor from her sip-up cup... If she gets nothing to play with, she would take her shoe out from her feet and put it back... and the process continues until she gets bored.

Followed by the speech, we usually attends the Duhar prayer in congregation right in the masjid. She does Namaz and performs dua by lifting her cute small hands, seeking God's help and guidance. She finishes her namaz really fast and roams around the rows while congregation is in progress. She often goes to the library area, carefully pushes the books out from the shelf (mostly the books meant for kids), turn pages and reads in her own language. Once she finishes reading, she places the book back in the shelf and gets engaged with something else. I like the fact that she falls in 'love' with books really fast and I wish she will be the same always..

One day, as I finished with my prayers, I looked around for her, and could not see her anywhere in the hall. A sudden wave of shock passed inside me, could not do anything for a sec. I rushed out of the hall and saw her getting into men's section calling 'pappa, pappa'...

Most of the times, we end up in big fight as she would never want to come back. She runs between the children without allowing me to take her up and buckle in her car seat. She nodes her head refusing to leave them!

Almost all fridays I take her to Masjid for Jumua. She enjoys being there too.