we got our first draw of the season, 2-2 against the NIE PE department. playing against a much fitter and well-organised team, we were really made to run especially in the first half. they had more than a dozen chance to bury us in the first half, but with resolute defending by the footsie players and plenty of good luck, we managed to restrict them to just 1 goal.

we started the second half with renewed spirit with our stopper nazfarah who rushed down from work to take over the defensive duties. we got a really fast first goal courtesy of a defensive blunder which nazrini converted easily. we were really on the offensive after the first goal. we had a couple of clear cut chances to take the lead, if not for the acrobatic antics of the goalie, we would be at least 2 goals up.

in the 70th minute, NIE managed to steal a goal back after one of our offside trap didn’t materialise. i say steal because two of their players strayed offside, but according to the referee, they were not interfering with the play. since there were no assistant referees or linesmen for a second opinion, we really got no case. but in the 82th minute, we equalised through a superb freekick by rendra, the ball just sailed towards the top right hand corner. although the keeper managed to get a hand to the ball, nazrini was there to “confirm” the ball crossed the line.

we erupted with joy when the referee blew the finally whistle signalling the end of the match. franking, i was half expecting a thrashing from the NIE trainees, but sometimes we surprised even ourselves, bring on street 51!

Team Footsie with NIE PE Department. Notice the latest footsie signing from Dubai

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so i did finally find time to break out the new food processor, a hand-held one, which is so, erm, nice to hold, long and firm, with strong vibrations and all… err…

anyway, this baby food-making thing is kinda deja vu for me (the entry of oni’s demo still resides at aniq’s old blog), and like the last time, i’m holding out on the heinz/gerber-made purees because… well, i did it for the firstborn, so mommy has to be fair, right? and i still have a week left before relinquishing my sahm status, so i might as well do the homemade stuff like a good supermommy would (yeeaaah right, lol!). and, hmm, two babies on and i’m still a little suspicious of shelf-food (and beverage) for babies. (hey, you’ll never know what’s been melamine-infused! :p)

steamed japanese sweet potato

(i know others create lovely entries on cooking, especially exotic food, but this is as far as hana goes with so-called ‘culinary adventures’, bah.

oh, and let me tell you, i did this in mum’s kitchen, and she took one look at me and went, “you hold the baby, let me do that instead” which made me fume and start nagging at how she ALWAYS did that, from when i was young till now that i’m an adult, and this was why i never learnt anything in the kitchen, bla bla bla, afterwhich she smirked, and continued holding the baby while i daintily scooped out the contents of my lovingly-made mush.)

this time round, inspired by Fiona Miles’ ‘Fresh Milk: The Secret Life of Breasts’ (great read! it even has a breastmilk ice-cream recipe, if anyone’s interested… and stories on lactation p*rn*, ho ho), i did something which i unfortunately didn’t try the last time. and my favourite part of the whole process too, actually!

i bent over, and squirted milk into the bowl, straight from the source. mix, squirt, mix, squirt… until i got the consistency just right.

not gross, very nutritious, confirm no melamine. ha ha.

so far, so good. she’s learnt to open her mouth wider instead of ‘sipping’ from the spoon. but mess is mess, for sure!

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the truth is, being a sahm is great… if you have help.

without help, it can be quite a mountainous challenge, juggling household chores, your young children’s needs and well-being, and your own sanity.

with help, you get to eliminate the irksome and nitty gritty tasks of cleaning/sweeping/washing/ironing, and focus on the whole point of sahm-ing: your kids.

that’s how i see it anyway. of course, not everyone will agree! sahm-ing should come in a package, some say. what’s two kids, after all, right? our mothers and fore-mothers have done it all before, single-handedly, with half a dozen kids around their ankles. sahms should be supermoms! it’s a criteria, for heaven’s sake! and to those sahms who do manage without helpers and still have time to shop in town for the latest gucci garbs, well done!

but the fact is – i absolutely stink at housework. i grew up with a perfectionist mum who preferred doing things her way around the house and so, as a defense mechanism, i blacked out her naggings and got away with minimum lifting of my oh-so-delicate fingers. usually on the pretext that i was, err, reading or studying or something that required little movement on my part. nevermind that i was from an all-girls’ school for ten formative years of my life – i still suck at doing what is seemingly an inborn girl thing: domestic work. blame it on the lack of playing ‘masak-masak’ when i was young, i don’t know.

so, with the recent crisis re: the helper which prompted immediate repatriation, i have been stuck with a week’s worth of laundry waiting to be ironed, bathrooms waiting to be scrubbed, floors waiting to be mopped.

housework’s a bitch, can? LOL!

anyway, minor setback. i just have to, err, minimise our lives (less mess, less cleaning up), and wait for the dust to settle (which it has, literally, probably an inch thick!).

meanwhile, the bulk of the madness is getting everyone bathed and fed in the morning, send the elder one to his full-day c/care (at which he’s settling in effortlessly), afterwhich the little one gets full attention, until she has her next nap, which lasts all of one hour or less (hmph, so much for mademoiselle sleeping beauty – now not so sleepy anymore!), then feeble attempts at multi-tasking and running errands, before it’s five o’clock and the madness begins again, getting everyone bathed and fed for the evening.

SO FUN HOR!

jemput makan

the latest thing added to the daily schedule. yes, as you can see, i’ve had time to drop by the library for some, er, refresher. haven’t had time to break out the new food processor to try out the supposedly easy-peasy job of making baby purees, though. broke out in an allergic rash instead the day after the purchase, which got me a jab of promethazine, which made me totally conked out for the next 24 hours or so. (gawd have i mentioned i HATE drugs!!) maybe the thought of me actually doing something with a food processor caused the allergic reaction, ha ha.

so, her menu has thus far been stuck with jemput-jemput-smelling rice cereal with b/milk and bananas. (and which, while recovering from that lethal dose of promethazine, i ate some banana pancakes mum made – without b/milk, of course – and ended up the whole day doubled over with indigestion. i can’t eat bananas, dammit, when will i ever learn?!)

and speaking of b/milk, that’s the other thing i’ve been busy with. stocking up. :S

DIY tahui!

time check, 04:45am. orang gila ajer masih belum tidur eh.

gonna go pump my jemput-jemput now.

cheers!

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ahh, home studio lagi bagus. :p

she’s started on solids, one week shy of turning six months. so far, very diluted brown rice (which was boring), and mushed up bananas. erm, trying to remember what other stuff we fed aniq the last time, but bananas are like the easiest thing.

as for the boy, he’s totally refused any form of diapers or pull-ups. two years ten months old. just noting it down for posterity. his total ‘self-weaning’ began on the first day of his new school. changed the sheets two nights, after which i sneakily put on his pull-ups while he was asleep, but yesterday i decided to let it go and things are lookin’ dry. gotta buy more underwear for him.

ok go!

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i’d told the boy if he smiled like a good boy, he’d get a sweet. he fake-smiled all the way, even off camera. bah!

and the little one got distracted by fake pooh halfway through.

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it came to me out of the blue (like all solutions do) while i was in the shower – care arrangements for the lil ones when i *finally* return to the grinding mill in a month’s time.

aniq’s been going to a nearby private playgroup for the past sixteen months, where for three hours a day, he goes to “sing” or “draw” or “dance” or “play” with his friends. (of course, more often than not, when i ask him what he did in school, his answer would be “i dunno” – selective amnesia, a useful life-skill to have, if any.)

there’s a certain childcare centre right across the road from our house which i’ve always meant to check out but never gotten around to, and with one more month left to get my act together, i thought, now’s a good time as any. and check it out i did.

i wouldn’t say it’s my first choice of preschool, i mean, it’s no, erm, ju/lia gab/riel or e/ton/house, but it is, let’s say, rather popular with the heartlanders. *chuckles*

but while factors like environment and programme do matter, my main criteria at this point is proximity and convenience, heartlander or not. (if there was a madrasah near enough, i’d send him in a heartbeat, but the one adam goes to at the mosque isn’t close enough for anyone to send aniq to daily once i go back to work.)

the one across the road from our house is definitely convenient enough to drop the boy off in the morning, and definitely close enough for mum or helper to fetch him later in the day or should any cases of emergency occur. just cross the road, no buses or meandering routes, easy-peasy.

and the other important factor is the child/care subsidy, which cuts the cost of fees i’ve been forking out by quite a bit.

anyway, i brought the boy with me and now he’s all excited to go to the “big school”, as he calls it. all the toys and children have got him in a tizzy. he’ll be in the playgroup class till january when he’ll ‘upgrade’ to nursery.

there’s also infant care in the centre but… nahh. i’m hoping that mum can give the baby one-to-one attention, especially with her brother out of the way. (adam and aidin are with their other grandma, and since i’ve been home with my kids for the past five months, mum has been pretty much tai-tai-ing. naik lemak eh, mum? hah! nanti lah you…)

i’m starting him on a trial period next week, and it occurred to me too late on friday that it was the boy’s last day of school at his usual playgroup. he’d brought back a photo they took recently on children’s day, and i didn’t realise till then that he actually knew the names of his friends and teachers (he only ever talks about his girlfriend naima, after all, ha ha) and could point them out to me in the photo.

somehow, although they were his friends and teachers, and he had no idea he wasn’t going to meet most of them again, i ended up feeling a little sad to leave them, on his behalf. like, so sayang to leave when he’d grown attached to them enough to learn their names, and possibly some of their quirks, and they, his.

is that weird? am i being too emo or overdramatic?

guess which one’s his girlfriend?

in any case, he has certainly picked up some good things and skills at the “small school” (among them, unfortunately, nose-picking, as you can see from his friend, lol! which i have managed to rectify though, so don’t worry…), and i hope to sustain his interest in ‘school’ for a looooooong time to come.

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as you can see, we’re letting go of our beloved quinny zapp, which has served us well for some two years or so, when aniq was growing up as a toddler.

but we sorta ‘upsized’ to a quinny speedi, (in last season’s colour, no less – more discount, mah!) coz we wanted something that could be used interchangeably for the baby and the preschooler at the same time. the zapp doesn’t suit our needs at this point.

truth is, we actually had our eyes on phil&ted’s double stroller, which can fit in two kids at the same time. more importantly, two sleeping kids.

but with the price tag, err, mummy would have to sell an organ. or trade in her monogram leather bag. (wuahaha, fat chance!)

and we were even more tempted with oni’s offer for her pre-owned phil&ted’s, what with the fabulous personal demo. (selling at a good price! it may still be available too!)

however, after much rumination, we came to a decision that we’re simply quinny fans.

ok, so back to the point of this entry.

our black zapp comes with a sun canopy, a travel bag, and a maclaren universal organiser (holds two baby bottles and stores baby essentials at the back).

the only thing missing is the adapters for use with a maxi-cosi cabrio infant carrier, which we *think* is buried somewhere in our storeroom, but we dare not look for it else we’ll be buried in there ourselves. you can buy it at baby hypermart for less than 50bux if need to.

the zapp claims to be the smallest folded pushchair in the world, perfectly compact for small car boots, is extremely manoeuvrable, and its fabric cover can be detached for machine wash. it’s pretty darn durable, so it’s got quite a number of years more to go.

if you’re interested, email izadd77@gmail.com!

ok! bidding price will start at $150! you can leave your bids in the comment box. bid closes on friday, 10 oct 2008, noon. winner will self-collect in tampines. thankyewyou!

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there is always something everyday that the boy said or did to make me chuckle, or in this case, crack me up.

as usual, he’d followed his doting uncles and grandfather in their car, and arrived ahead of us at one of the houses we were visiting. as soon as i stepped in, he looked expectantly at me with that impish grin of his and i knew he’d been up to something. spotting some white powdery substance around his lips, i suspected, with my motherly CSI-like instinct, that he’d been consuming some illegal contraband.

CSI mummy: what are you doing? what are you eating?
suspect: huh? i dunno?
CSI mummy: what is that in your mouth? let me see?
suspect: don’t have! *opens mouth* nooo. i dunno.
CSI mummy: are you sure?
suspect: *opens mouth again* see? don’t have! my mouth don’t have sweet…

HAH!

and realisation hit him that he’d just given himself away. his uncle was obviously an accomplice, and not very good at teaching him the art of fibbing. yet.

because i was so amused, i let him have a few more. afterwhich i managed to distract him with a lesser evil – kerepek. gah.

goodies are unavoidable during these festivities, and we encourage him to try out ones that he might like. he’s been quite experimental so far, although most times, he’d scrape off the yummiest bits and leave the rest, err, back in the cookie container. (his aunty nur bears witness to a half-eaten cookie discovered at his oma’s house. bite marks, as any CSI will tell you at one glance, match his.)

uh, yeah. that cookie. (right, nur??)

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it’s the saturday of raya weekend and we’re staying put at home. in fact, the spell of inertia is so great that we ordered for pizza to be delivered at our doorstep for dinner tonight. fact is, we’re simply too lazy to lug around the kids to go visiting – and that’s just TWO kids. our energy and enthusiasm evaporate so rapidly now. i think we’re getting old. :p

i was apprehensive enough before the first day of raya, thinking of how the baby’s naps will be disrupted every so often. the first time we had a kid during raya, he was already a walking toddler, so we’ve never had a baby to carry around during raya, which is actually kinda of a hassle despite the convenience of our own vehicle.

needless to say, my new baju was slobbered with saliva, snot and spit-up within minutes. so much for my valiant attempt to look passably presentable as a mother of two in glittery clothes and high heels. sheesh!

me and my ‘boyfriend’

oma’s fab four

hana sporting the latest fashion in hair extensions – flower arrangements!

boria brudders

feeling single-mingle

“amat ayee aiyer!”

we didn’t last very long this year – by 9pm we all waved the white flag, what with two tired, sticky-bodied babies and four overstimulated, sugar-high kids amongst us, threatening to crash and burn.

nevermind, we’ll make up for it, err, next year. when there will, hopefully, be a refreshing absence of baby saliva, snot and spit-ups.

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what? everyone else has already uploaded their “ayee aiyer” (as my abang aniq says it) pictures??

ok, step on it, mum!

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