despite my initial resistance to all things raya this year, i couldn’t help myself – there’s just something about last minute raya preparations that make my adrenaline pump, lol!
and of course, it helps when your husband is extra generous this year, ha ha.
when you think about it, it’s a little silly how we go into a mad rush to buy new things or do a makeover, for yourself and the house, to meet the ‘deadline’ that is 1st syawal. surely that’s not what it should be about. but you somehow find yourself sucked into the vortex of self-indulgence that is geylang. a spectacular spectacle of mounds and mounds of clothes, carpets, curtains, everything you could possibly think of, and the highlight of it all, the carnage of food, nevermind the people in other parts of the world who have little to eat, coz just we gotta have those dendengs, right?
in any case, i admit i was suckered in. for the search for good deals. for the last-minute things you think you need. and for the keropok lekor, the japanese balls, and what-have-yous. (but hey you can’t deny a nursing mum who’s fasted all day, the food all goes to the hungry baby! :p) all silly, silly things.
anyway, after four separate trips braving the hot and sweaty shop-lusty crowd, jostling for elbow and not forgetting carpark space, i think we’ve been duly geylang-fied. even aniq has added ‘geylang’ and ‘hari raya’ to his ever-expanding internal dictionary. (his daddy’s currently trying to get him to acquire a taste for old p.ramlee classics with vcds bought from, yep, geylang.)
so tomorrow, the eve of raya, there will be yet more tasks to complete before ‘deadline’ (nothing in the house is cleaned yet, coz, err, too busy going to geylang ha ha).
and to add to the list of things to do, is to celebrate Chewren’s Day at aniq’s school in the morning. of all things he has to wear, instead of a nice baju kurung to celebrate the upcoming raya, he has to wear something denim for the photo-taking, coz, erm, that’s the theme, apparently. now how come we didn’t see a baju kurung in denim, i ask you, geylang?
ok, it’s sahur time. (the last for the year!)
selamat hari kanak-kanak, and good luck meeting your deadlines, people!
i realised that i didn’t manage to officially wish ourselves a happy 5th anniversary at the end of last month. oops.
well, we were kinda away during that period, after all.
and along with our anniversary was, of course, the husband’s birthday (which we celebrated at tony roma’s in The Pavillion, KL, as you can see above). as i was keying in his age in the photo captions, making a mental calculation (and re-calculation), i realised that he’s turned 31… which means that – horror of horrors – i’ll be turning 31 in a few months too!
31! THIRTY-FREAKING-ONE!! *hyperventilates*
hookaaay.
so aaanyway, i just suddenly remembered something significant that i blogged about 5 years ago, while we were still engaged and preparing for the whole marriage thing.
and whaddaya know, i managed to dig it up from our archive.
April 07, 2003 vision/delusion?
woke up this morning and looked out the window, it was such a gorgeous day, clear sky, something abt the air, just simply beautiful. and in the cab ride on my way to marine parade cc, it was such a calm, peaceful sunday on the ecp, i felt happy watching the trees go by outside the window. told izad abt it later and he had the same vibe. that’s the one thing abt us that i so love from the beginning, the way we connect at some weird emotional level, like our very own frequency, our personal radio station (even our playlist usually uncannily coincides!).
anyway, we began a journey of discovery today, to prepare ourselves for “the mystical world of marriage”. the obligatory prep course for soon-to-be-wed couples. a lot of the hundred plus participants were on average our age, which was no surprise seeing that ours is a prime age for, ahem, wedded bliss.
guess what… it turned out to be… pretty fun, i have to say. enlightening, informative, hilarious even… (gosh, muis must be feeling real good abt themselves if they hear this). i think they’re doing a good job, despite some criticisms i’ve heard from friends abt how this course was an insult to their intelligence, etc. maybe i’m a marriage goondu idiot savant, but it sure cleared up a number of doubts i’d had. for example, the unsettling question marks i had abt maskawin vs hantaran. now i know (and appreciate) the reasons and rationale behind them.
one of the quirky exercises they made us do was make each of us draw what we felt was the “vision” we had for our marriage, how we see ourselves five years from now. i was a little dumbfounded – i could hardly see beyond 6 mths from now! anyway, all my years of stick figure-drawing skills went poof. i made a hasty attempt nonetheless. for some reason, material things were the only things i could put down on paper. a window of a house with a car sitting outside, a spiky-haired man with his arms around a svelte (hah!) woman, a spiky-haired toddler in between, a sofa (didn’t have time or resources to think of more interesting items, eg. rows of cd racks, shelves of books, playstation…) and a laptop (coz i know izad will still have his gadget obsession). it was only later that i realised – i forgot to put a book in the kid’s hands. i think that is one of the most important things in the world – to nurture the love of reading in a child. yes. must make mental post-its abt that.
and then we exchanged drawings with our partners….
izad on the other hand is an ambitious guy. stick figures of a spiky-haired man, a woman (with a *mole* on the face, can you believe the details!), TWO children (one girl and one boy), TWO cars (one family spacewagon and one beetle for ME), and a condo BY THE BEACH (complete with two starfishes).
er, looks like we’re gonna have some “discussing” to do, apparently, arising from certain disparities in our “vision”….
Posted by nurhana at 01:12 AM
ok, was that weird or what?? LOL!
gosh, if only we knew how close we were back then to realising our so-called 5-year vision. (ok fine, with the exception of MY beetle and the condo BY THE BEACH, dang it.)
i don’t think we were even serious at the time we did that exercise, i think we forgot we ever did it even. but miraculously, things somehow… fell into place, just as we envisioned it 5 years ago, albeit in more or less physical terms.
coz yes, he’s still a spiky-haired man. sure, i may perhaps be less than svelte but the mole is certainly still there ha ha. the two children, one girl and one boy, definitely happened. the boy toddler has his spiky-haired moments. the car, the house, the sofa, the laptop, and heck even the playstation (can you believe a certain spiky-haired gadget-obsessed person just added a ps3 to his collection a few days ago??) exist and have become a reality.
and so, for all that, i am grateful, and blessed, and amazed, and could not ask for more.
(… well… of course, if i *did* have my own car and a place by the beach – with starfishes, no less – well, that *would* be kinda cool… kidding! :p)
we had our first official friendly match of the season at the tampines safra astroturf pitch last night. although we just break fast 2 hours prior to the match, the guys really showed their mettle against a much younger opponents (at least for the first half, hehe)
the team gelled well even though this was the first time that we played. kudos to the team coach, powerdol for his shrewd first half tactics. we were indeed surprised to be 3-1 up by halftime. goals scored by loki and jon in the first half plus a gift goal from the opponent gave us a commanding 2 goals advantage.
but in the second half, it was a different story. the opponent team perhaps shellshocked by footsie, regrouped and came up stronger. maybe its our lack of fitness that let us down. they came up eventual 4-3 winners
credit has to be given to the younger opponents with their never say die attitude, they kept running while we, mostly daddies with buncit tummies, content to just take it easy. but overall it was a commendable performance by footsie fc. i can see the potential of the team. with more matches and training, we can indeed be a force to be reckoned with
ps: thanks to the WAGs that supported us throughout the match.
Baby carriers have been around for centuries. Prior to the 1980s, parents worldwide used long cloths, shawls, scarves and even bedsheets to snuggle up their babies and get the chores done… Mothers had to work incredibly hard and didn’t have time to stop and entertain baby, so baby just came along for the ride. It was common sense for mother to use a baby carrier to make her life a little easier.
… and as you can see, dolling up is incredibly hard work for mothers too, lol! especially when you’re in a hurry and no one else wants to entertain baby. women are, after all, naturally wired with an aptitude for multi-tasking, no? :p
Interestingly, strollers were recently marketed in an African town but met with amusement and dismal failure to sell. The mothers wondered why on earth they would need such contraptions, and what was wrong with white people’s babies that they would need to be in such isolation!
it was a heartwarming iftar + birthday celebration at the orphanage, and i couldn’t help but feel a tinge of sadness despite their smiley faces as they salam each and every one of us, a whole trail of them, earnestly saying their goodbyes to us.
but when i stepped into their dormitory to look for my little one who’d wandered off with his newfound friends, i knew they were safe in the comforts of camaraderie, the big ones looking out for the small ones. in fact, we found one of the older boys carrying my prodigal son out while others swarmed around me, calling out his name, telling me where he was, asking about the baby in my arms, not squeamish to touch her face despite it being sloshed with drool.
back home, i put forth to my little one the idea of how blessed his life is.
me: “you know, the abang-abang just now, they have no mummy, no daddy…”
A: “where mummy? where daddy? the mummy die?” (i suppose two recent deaths in our family has pretty much entered his psyche.)
me: “yes, the mummy die, the daddy die… or the mummy don’t want them, so they put them in that house… kesian tak?”
A: “ohh… kesian…”
me: “see, aniq got mummy, got daddy…”
A: “got baby auni, got oma, got mummy…”
me: “ahh, abang-abang got no PSP, you know, no power ranger…”
A: “no ironman, no PSP…”
me: “yaaa, (here’s where i milk it for what it’s worth) abang-abang got no mummy to bathe them, make them milk, read to them books… so if mummy say ‘aniq! mandi!’ you must say ‘ok, mummy’. can or not?? you must sayang mummy you know!”
A: “mummy tak die?”
me: “err, no lah.”
A: hehahehe! *hugs me but almost crushes me to death me while doing so*
just wanted to drop by again to give you a visual as to how strong i’ve become at four-months-three-weeks old, which i don’t think was conveyed enough in my last entry.
this is me carrying my rocker-chair-thingy.
kidding!
actually, this is how mummy and daddy usually find me after leaving me in that silly rocker-chair-thingy for barely five minutes. see, they were lulled into thinking that i’m this docile little doll who would fall asleep instantly upon being placed in that contraption. they were so cocky about my docility that they never bothered to strap me in it. well of course, i wasn’t having any of that! that whole docile scene is going to be a thing of the past, i tell you! and if there’s anything i learnt from watching tv, is that if michael scofield (who sports the same hairstyle as mine, by the way) can keep escaping from a state penitentiary, well, this rocker-chair-thingy is, literally, child’s play.
so there. one of my many great daily adventures indoors. and all that while doing a major poo-poo in my diapee (a whole adventure by itself, or rather for the victim who falls prey to the diaper-changing task, heh heh).
now, to figure out an effective mode of traction to get myself from this point to that playgym-mat-thingy on the other end of the room…
i’m glad i have my abang aniq (who, by the way, always has a funky smell about him, for some reason) because he keeps me entertained a lot. all he has to do is do a little jig, or kick around a ball, or make a shrill shriek, or laugh like a crazed toddler hyena, and that’d get me all excited like a kitten with a ball of yarn.
i’m also glad to have my abang aniq, coz he helps to convey to mummy that i want her. (you’d think me screaming my head off would communicate that to her well enough, but noooo.)
it’s nice to have a big smelly brother because he doesn’t let mummy scold me, and he makes it his business to be the one requiring most of the scolding. that takes a lot of attention off me, you see, so i get away with my own naughtiness. like, sliding myself out of the rocking chair when no one’s looking (maybe i have a wriggly-worm DNA in me), or insisting on being picked up when everyone is busy (i simply cannot fathom what could possibly be more urgent than picking me up), or wrestling with anyone who tries to put clothes on me after a bath (if only we babies can live in a nudist colony, *grumble*).
anyway, i realise that i haven’t had much limelight here since i’ve arrived, have i? i suppose that’s quite normal, what with being the second child (*roll eyes*) and all. furthermore, abang aniq and i have been keeping mummy quite busy all day, EVERY day, with our constant rigorous demands, so she hardly has time or energy to turn on the computer (“or daddy”, she says, whatever that means), to blog about EVERY single thing i do, like she did when abang aniq was a baby.
so, here’s a brief update of my four-months-three-weeks-but-who’s-counting dossier.
name: auni haniz
dob: 23 apr 08
weight: between 6.4kg – 10kg, who knows for sure at this point (though mum shoves me at dad every possible chance she gets, citing her poor aching arms – i reckon i’m heavy-boned).
likes: drooling, baths, people with high-pitched voices, going for walks (see interesting fact below), newspapers (they make me go craaayyzeee, i tell ya!), balls (i get a great view of this sport in mummy’s arms whenever she and abang aniq kick a ball around the house – related to the above re: aching arms), mummy’s boobies, peekaboos, watching big kids run around, growling, laughing without sound (now, this one kills mum – she wishes my laughs were as loud as my wailings, ho ho).
hates: flipping onto tummy, putting on clothes, being left alone for more than five minutes when awake. oh, and the computer room (it’s soooo boring, i’m surprised i’m in here long enough to blog).
not too crazy about but can tolerate just barely: bottles, baldness, are-you-boy-or-girl questions (wait, these are mum’s pet peeves, actually…)
interesting fact: bears a mole on second toe of left foot. elders suspect this to mean that i will enjoy travelling. well, doncha know it! though mum would very much have preferred it on my upper lip. a mole, that is, not a toe.
skills/abilities: flipping onto tummy, straightening legs to standing position when arms are pulled, tearing shredding newspapers to bits with bare hands AND legs, getting wisps of hair on back of head to tangle into tiny little knots after waking up every morning, pummelling and kicking older brother AND not get pummelled and kicked back by him (hah! sucker).
and as my young attention span dictates, that’s all i can handle for now. gonna let out my super-annoying whine now – i *am* in this awful computer room, after all.
a quick update on what’s been happening on planet hana… well, nothing much, really. other than that great roadtrip and being with the kids almost 24/7.
today, while driving in the car with aniq, i realised that the most conversation i have every day is with him, and he’s practically my boyfriend (in fact, i do ask him everyday if he’s my boyfriend, and he’ll say yes, and put my arm around my neck and smother me with smelly wet kisses. and that’s just how exciting my life is these days – turning my firstborn into a mummy’s boy.)
(on a side note, i met his proclaimed “best friend” in school last week, whose name is naima, a round-faced and round-eyed girl of chinese-malay descent. so, so cute.)
oh, and to add to the insanity, i *did* seek for that extension to continue being with the little ones – for one more month (of which i’m subjecting myself to being sadistically broke).
i figure, if i went back right after hari raya, i’d be a sad miserable hag during the days leading up to the festivities and on hari raya itself. and furthermore, after a month of fasting, my body would probably need to adjust where milk production is concerned.
along with my stock of breastmilk in the freezer, is my now-sluggish brain and my heavy heart… both of which need a little more time to thaw out.
the latest and last installment of our 2 days trip to KL which we all agreed was way too SHORT!
i’m really amazed that the videos really create a lot of buzz in the websphere with each episode hitting more than 500 views EACH! wow! (if one person just pay 10 cent to watch each video, gua kaya, haha!!)
so, its either there are really 500 viewers to the blog or the same people keep viewing the videos 500 times!
anyway, since this is the last of the KL videos, we really like to thank lennyrendra for organising the trip and nazrini for finding such great accomodation. and the rest of the roadtrippers, you guys rawk!! (we should organise more of these type of trips)
btw, the dvd is near completion, and since it seems that the videos are really popular, i’m taking orders of the dvd for the rest of the viewers who wants a copy for a low price of $29.99 with autographs from the roadtrippers and a personalise cd cover! (no lah, joking only)
ok, i don’t want to waste anymore time, since i got an assignment to complete also, enjoy the video and selamat berpuasa!
the continuing episode of our trip to KL. did a few minor tweaks to the video with additional footage from boylydia’s dslr camera.
anyway for the roadtrippers, i will compile a director’s cut edition and burn it on a dvd. footage which did not make the cut will also be included. photos from boylydia’s and hana’s cameras will also be added in the dvd. not to worry, i will burn each family a copy. date of release would be in a week’s time.
for the rest, enjoy the video. same disclaimer:- food scenes may be harmful to those fasting, best view after buka
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