“sayang… sayang… kiss!”
(smothers victim and slobbers it with saliva)

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if there’s one thing we won’t have to worry about, is him being bullied by bigger kids. coz… he thinks he’s as big as them!

sure they’re a little taller than him, but that doesn’t bother him. he thinks they’re quite fascinating creatures, and why not? older kids can run and jump and do other wondrous things, unlike babies, who don’t impress him much coz all they do is flail around helplessly and cry. been there, done that, bo-ring!

his cousins on both sides of the families are mostly BOYS, and they’re generally a rowdy, gregarious bunch, mini tornadoes of their own.

beng gangsta #1: “you! cannot come in!”
beng gangsta #1 & #2: “kua si mi??”

haznsham’s twins seem to enjoy monkeying around with aniq even though they have two other little siblings to play with. maybe coz he doesn’t mind their roughhousing one bit. the feeling was mutual. :D

mat gangsta: “hiyaaak! lu jangan nak step sama gua!”

mat gangsta: “gua SIDESTEP lu ah!”

a few times when we bring him downstairs, we’d let him loose and he’d waddle in double time over to where the big kids are congregated, even primary/secondary school-aged ones, and peer over where they’re seated to see what they’re doing, or stand amidst the thick of action to watch them whiz by precariously around him. and when we call out to him or threaten to leave him behind with “bye aniq!” on repeat mode, he’d refuse to budge.

his daddy said to him, “ingat eh, you tinggal tingkat dua, lengkali turun naik sendiri. nanti kita pekik dari tingkap suruh balik, ok?”

in the meantime, he’s got his bigger cousins to teach him the fine art of terrorising others. like using firearms, for example, lol!

eh no no, violence is bad! mummy said so!

prithee, disarm! ceasefire!

damsels sufi and maryam answer the call of distress, but the rescuee is in actual fact enjoying himself, heh.

we really need more girls in the family, you know, to balance out the yin & yang (too much yin!). all our other cousins just gave birth/will give birth to boys, every one of them.

oh well. they can form their own WWFs, i guess.

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raya visits have been a great way for the little one to dispense his energy. when we visit a house, he’d make a beeline for the area with the most activity, especially the toy section, should the house be inhabited by a child or a few children.

we ourselves are in awe at the collection of toys in every household with kids that we go to. we feel like we’ve been short-changing the little one, coz we, well, ermm… tend to stinge on buying him toys. :S

in any case, his attention span on all things gaudy is short, but he can spend long minutes fiddling with the dullest of remote controls, or the fruit-punch ladle he found in the kitchen drawer, or even his daddy’s wallet.

he DOES, however, like this particular toy he discovered at his abang ilya’s house very much…

he immediately sat down on the stool and proceeded to bang away with great abandon. ouhhh, do we have the makings of a rock star??

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaO1Dpb47BQ]

adoi! MUSIC to my ears indeed!

his daddy’s always wanted to get him a drumkit, and now that we’ve tested it out on him, we’re waiting for his, AHEM, birthday to get it.

what’s that? you sure you don’t mind all that racket?

nahh. i’ve always had a thing for musicians, you know. ;p

ps: ummi naufal, we hope naufal will cause great mayhem with the pressie we got him… LOL!

* * * * * *

speaking of birthdays and rock stars, i got myself an early birthday present, more than a month in advance ha ha.

yah yah, mummy stinges on you, but splurges on herself. bad, bad mummy.

i’m still not over my crush on bono, unfortunately. sigh~

if anything, the book reinforces my long-standing adulation of him. aiyoh, so teenager hor?

his immense loyalty to his wife of over two decades, despite the rock & roll pitfalls of supermodels and other adoring female species falling at his feet, makes him UBER-sexay, if you ask me. being married (and in love) that long to his childhood sweetheart and raising four children together despite world tours and world-debt meetings, is a rare thing in the superstar stratosphere, doncha think?

ok, enough ogling at (rich, successful, gorgeous, musically-inclined) married men, hana. 8)

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i’m afraid we’ve become parents of a performing seal.

“aniq, where’re the lights/mana lampu?” (this one bilingual seal mah.)
“where’s the fan?”
(points upwards accordingly)

“shake! shake!”
(jiggles item in hand)

“joget! joget! dance!”
(bends knees and jiggies wit it)

“car/motorbike bunyi macam mana?”
(guttural grunts)

“cat? how does a cat sound?”
(high-pitched mew)

“tengok bawah! tengok bawah!”
(lies on tummy and looks under table/chair)

“baring! baring! lie down! sleep!”
(plops head on pillow or heck, even the ground will do)

“where’s the ball? go get the ball.”
(looks round for the nearest ball available)

“where’s the clock?”
(points to wall)

“where’s aunty’s house?”
(points to mum’s chinese neighbour’s house where he LOVES to go to for some reason)

“bird, where’s the bird?”
(points outside)

“comb hair?”
(rubs comb against head)

most of the above accompanied with lots of ba-ba-bas and ma-ma-mas.

and yes, i am officially “ma!” while the hasbern is decidedly “ba!” (exclamation marks included.)

i know it’s natural that he will understand our language and exhibit comprehension of our instructions bit by bit, like a scaffold or building blocks, with each passing day.

but it never ceases to amaze me nonetheless, being able to communicate through the complexity of language with this little person, who once upon a time not too long ago, knew nothing of our world and of the sounds that come out of our mouths.

“duduk, duduk, sit down lah!”

i remember when dadam was less than a year old, when asked where’s the “wind”, he’d put his hands up to feel the wind blowing. wind! something so intangible, yet he understood the concept.

amazing.

*******

ps: a birthday wish @ the bambino blog for aniq’s brudder! :)

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it’s not easy to get him to sit still for more than five seconds.

we all don’t know where his limitless reserve of energy comes from. it’s kinda scary you know, i mean, where do you draw the line and tell whether a child is normal-healthy kind of active or not-so-normal kind of hyperactive?

even when he’s trying to fall asleep he can’t seem to keep still, tossing and turning and tonggang-terbalik-ing all over the place, wreaking havoc among the soft toys in his cot and causing a thousand wrinkles on the bedsheet!

his waking moments are spent tirelessly with his hands and feet in constant motion, exploring everything, fearless of new experiences and faces, with nary a whine each time he falls onto the floor or bumps into the wall, totally unfazed by anything, this tiny, toddling tornado.

i’d hold him down and tell him to slow down or “REST LAH! REST! kejap ajer, ONE minute!”, but it won’t be five seconds before he’s wriggled his way out of my arms and he’s off like a rocket to the next thing that catches his attention. :O

i manage to get him to do the darned stacking rings though, usually at night when he’s not so wound up. well… up to three rings or four, then he’s off, flinging them right left and centre, heh. well, that surely is way more exciting than boring ol’ stacking, eh?

the relatives have forewarned me many times how active his daddy was as a child, executing numerous stunts with almost devastating outcomes. but look what’s become of him now – the capital of Slack. sometimes he moves even slower than a 100-year-old snail. there’s a permanent dent in the sofa that has his butt’s name on it.

i can’t remember, but perhaps i too was something of a tornado myself. there was one time when i was small, i was running round and round and round the coffee table in the hall, when my dad must have snapped and ROARED at me to stop running around and sit down like a proper girl. i think that must have been the point when i stopped running, period. i’m not sure why that’s etched in my mind, but it probably had some bearing to my total lack of activeness, my constant dread of sports and god-forbid, PE! my couch-potato-ness, my slacker-ness (yes, i AM the missus capital of Slack). the only physical activity that is anywhere near marathon-like and i don’t mind exerting on now is, of course, shopping.

so at what point will this wound-up energizer bunny slow down and sit still long enough to focus on something constructive (as opposed to being the epitome of destruction that he is now)?

teenagehood?

*imagines teenage aniq in dimmed room full of posters, wearing black, with iPod stuck to ears, eyes glued to computer game screen, mtv blaring in the background, while i scream at him – “THROW RUBBISH!”*

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so dadam’s mummy got him an elmo cake. with eggs. and chocolate to boot, hurhur.

i asked him if he had some. “makan, SIKIIIT (with great emphasis) ajeer! tak makan manyak-manyak!”

adoi. cuteness to the maximus si mak nenek berbual. i cannot tahan. i want to makan him manyak-manyak. you wouldn’t think he’d talk like that by looking at that fair-skinned, sepet, made-in-china exterior.

he went “present!” (tau pulak benda tu present) and promptly proceeded to peel off the wrapping bit by bit, with great and utter care.

his cousin, si mat kepo kenit also tried to join in, happily trodding on the wrapper and plastic and everything else he could trample on like the potential Toddler Giant that he will be (watch out, ajab!). but not before PLONKING his entire grubby hand on a piece of stray chocolate cake left on the table. he was so intrigued by the squishiness of the cake in his hand that his daddy managed to quickly wipe it off before he could incur more damage (eg. by eating it).

his royal keponess also shared one leg (tumpang sekaki) and fiddled with the wooden knob puzzle i got for the birthday tot. it managed to capture dadam’s attention for all of three, maybe four minutes, (“G is for… LION!” hehe – ok, the giraffe underneath the letter G did look dubiously lion-like) before he got distracted by the more pressing demands of playing with a balloon.

he made me huff and puff into the balloon (“aunty nana, blowkan!”), and being the adoring superaunty that i am, obliged the nephie-poo, at the same time tried to eat and ward off si kepo kenit from the said balloon and cake.

hey just WHAT IS IT about Bob the Builder that has captured the hearts of many a male two-year-old, i ask you? well, i suppose it IS more, erm, macho than that *cough*gay*cough purple dinosaur we all love to hate.

so do all little boys aspire to be construction workers when they grow up? are they more interesting than white-collar professionals? why isn’t there a Derek the Doctor cartoon? or Larry the Lawyer? or Cedric the CEO? or… (ok, i could go on and on here, you get the point.)

he hasn’t gotten into thomas the train yet, which i suppose is another, erm, macho symbol (achtung! phallic alert!) of some sort.

ok. i seriously gotta stop thinking too much. (NOT.)

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mum called me up yesterday in the late afternoon.

“eh, anak kau tengok tv ada siti nurhaliza nyanyi pakai kebaya hitam, dia tunjuk-tunjuk dengan jari dia abis dia nangis! dia ingat tu kau! mummy, mummy… ha haha hahaa!”

i don’t know if i should be flattered… or worried.

on one hand, my son thinks i look and sound as FABULOUS as the famous datin. woohoo!

on the other hand, he can’t tell the difference between his croaky-voiced, craggy-faced mummy from a silky-voiced, smooth-skinned stranger?? uh-oh.

nevermind lah. at least he thinks of (and misses me?), amidst his jam-packed, activity-filled, ever-so-busy life at home. (eg. watching TV! hmph.)

and it’s a vast improvement from the days when i used to be mistaken for – get ready for this – ziana zain! and i’m talking of the period when she (and i) looked uber kental, way in the 90′s era. i used to have a friend whose little nephew would point at ziana’s picture on a magazine, look at me and go “aunty nana!”. so yeah, me and ziana. must have been the evil-looking eyebrows, i don’t know. bizarre.

my last boyfriend (ie. the Husbern), he had a thing for sheila majid back then. short and petite, just like hmmm, who ah?? unfortunately, the sheila majid he found and married cannot sing to save her lagenda.

on another note, hey hey, it’s dadam’s second birthday today, and i’m the ever-excitable aunty! i’d been looking for an eggless elmo cake (coz he’s allergic to egg white and he likes elmo, duh), but was unsuccessful in my search. bah. eggless cake. what’s the point of cakes without eggs, i ask you?

anyway, i’ve lovingly wrapped his pressies last night, and hope to see him rip it open later. seeing what an intellectual boy he’s turned out to be (he recognises alphabets and would open up newspapers to read them – or rather, point and say out the big alphabets in the headlines… that’s reading too, ok! and he has a thing for tucking a book under his armpit when he goes out, like a security blanket), i got him a big wooden knob puzzle with alphabets, and three dr seuss books for early readers.

we were at borders late on monday night and i was so taken by the silly, snappy word play and quirky storyline and illustrations in those dr seuss books, i swear.

UP PUP. pup is up!
CUP PUP. pup in cup!

alamak, damn catchy, i tell you.

ok, that reminds me… there’s another birthday coming up (more lovingly-wrapped pressies!), you knnow, aniq’s brudder who’s turning one. which means… aniq will also be turning one soon. which means… preparations for a party should commence. mak macam nak buat kerje kawin, you!

and don’t worry, i’ll make sure the cake has eggs.

BAKE CAKE. bake a cake!
EGG CAKE. egg in cake!

amacam, you think dr seuss would approve? :)

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