i know everyone says auni looks like her daddy but seriously, look at that little girl on her daddy’s lap. (yes, that was me, maybe less than a year old.)

SURELY THE RESEMBLANCE IS BLINDING.

that’s me again, probably just a little over a year old, with an aunt. c’mon, admit it.

and this is totally embarrassing but for the sake of proving a point… (i wasn’t kidding when i said i wasn’t a pretty baby.)

so, there. next time you see her, tell me she looks more like ME (fine, so maaaybe she’s a little bit cuter), ok?

we’re not sure where she picks up her seemingly sudden jump in vocabulary each day – we suspect it could be from her brother, whom she interacts with (and mimics) everyday, or from her teachers in school. i’d bet more on the former.

last night our conversations went something like this:

M: auni, which colour do you like? (playing with stacking rings)
A: i yike geen. (“i like green”)
M: eh? (amused but bewildered – i’d only mentioned ‘green’ in passing the day before when we played with another set of stacking rings at home, but didn’t think she internalised it or anything, gee i gotta be more careful what i say around her or whaaat…)

M: sayang mummy tak?
A: yes. i yike ami… i yike daddy… i yike babang… i yike ama… i yike bibik… i yike, err… babang…
M: O-o

M: is it nice? sedap?
A: (sipping on an iced drink) nice! dap!
M: (affecting a grimace to show feigned disgust) no lah! NOT NICE! yuks!
A: NICE!!
M: nooo, not niiiiiceeee.
A: NIIIICE! I YIKE!!

she is turning into – *gasp* – her brother.

but i do think the second child tends to develop speech at a generally faster rate, thanks to the elder sibling as model.

as for the other behaviours, i’m still, errm, crossing my fingers.

M: auni, tadi makan apa? (what did you eat today?)
A: asi! (nasi = rice)
M: lagi? (some more?)
A: eeken! (chicken, obviously, duh) ayam! (she has, as at last check, on 3 feb 2000hrs, decided to answer this instead of ‘eeken’.)
M: lagi?
A: opok! (keropok = fish cracker)
M: eh? sedap? (nice?)
A: dap!
M: pandai! (clever)

and when asked the various body parts in malay, she will obligingly twitch or point accordingly. yesterday, she saw her oma half-undressed and went, “eh, tak alu!” (no shame!).

ah. there is hope yet for you, my young padawan.

=========

M: aniq, ‘fish’ dalam melayu apa? (what is ‘fish’ in malay?)
A: …
M: (prompting with first syllable of ‘ikan’) eeee…?
A: eeee… er san!
M: O-O <--- (talk about culture shock.)

=========

in any case, they're both smitten by upin & ipin, you know, identical twin pre-schoolers who are the cutest cartoon characters, like EVUH, hailing from a fictional kampung in malaysia. (well, there was Lat the Kampung Boy back in the days - remember him? - but upin & ipin are so... arrrgh, DEM CUTE, and there are two of 'em!) the husband and i totally approve of the series, more so since the dialogue's so chuckle-worthy and in malay, and, i mean, WHO NEEDS TO LEARN SPANISH LAH, RIGHT?

so smitten by the characters and their antics, that even the little one has taken to mimicking the dialogue. a particular one that stuck to her was where the token effeminate youth in the kampung insists that his name's not Salleh but Sally, and attempts to spell it out: "S-I-L-L-Y", dismissing his misspelling with a flick of his limp wrist, "apa jer lah, tak kuasa aku." ("whatever!" - another thing about the beauty of localised humour - the english version simply does not translate sufficiently. right? betul betul betul?)

maybe i should send them to a kampung in malaysia, if anything, to brush up on their malay.

speaking of kampungs, the other night, in one of my meandering discussions with the little boy after an episode of upin & ipin, i described to him how in kampungs, they have no toilets with a flushing system, and potty business had to be done in an outhouse or behind bushes in the forest. (AS IF i know anything about rural life, hah! but mothers being mothers, must sound convincing and knowledgeable lah, right? betul betul betul?)

M: ingat tak, citer upin ipin, kawan cucu tok dalang sakit perut, nak pegi toilet tapi dia takut pasal dah malam abih tempat dia jauh? ahhh.
A: why??
M: ye laaah. kat kampung takde toilet.
A: why??
M: ye laaah. macam gitu. abih ingat tak, kawan cucu tok dalang nak berak, dia sembunyi belakang semak-samun? (at this point, even i can’t believe i just said ’semak-samun’, an almost archaic word for thicket/undergrowth.)
A: why??
M: ye lah. pasal takde toilet!!

you can imagine how this conversation went on – endlessly.

like this bridge we trekked last weekend, in our attempt to bring the children close to nature.

well, as close as we could get to the semak-semak, anyway. no potty business going on here, though. it’s as sterile as everything typically singaporean is.

and mummy – again, ever-convincing and knowledgeable – explained away the many whys. sometimes with more than a “ye laah”.

yes. trees and branches may fall. take care.

berhati-hati di semak-samun, kenak-kanak.

for so long, i’ve been sending abang aniq to school skool, and every time, i keep trying to get past the door to play with his friends and all those TOYS. sometimes i do manage to weasel my way through, but someone always catches me and tows me away before i could so much as say “DORA BUSHUK!”. it’s SO unfair. why does he get to do all the FUN stuff?? *pouts*

so aaanyway, if you don’t already know, it’s a new year and abang aniq is going to K1. that’s Kindergarten 1 to those of you who’ve never been to school skool. and since i’m turning two this year, mummy said i can go too. like, duh, finally! there initially wasn’t space for me in the toddler class, but i pushed a girl off the swing at the playground the other day and she got scared and told her mummy she was never going to school skool coz of mean girls like me, so then i got to take over her place, yey! [mummy's edit: no she absatively (absolutely+positively) did NOT push any girl off the swing, pls pardon little missy's over-imaginative mind from watching too much high school shows.]

and since boys are such, ugh, BOYS, i had to help abang aniq pack his bag…

make breakfast…

coz mummy was, of course, too busy putting on her boring work clothes and her going-out face. (have you SEEN her wake-up-from-bed face? pretty much worse than abang aniq here, WHO DIDN’T BATHE YUKKKS. but it’s ok coz he insists on bathing in school skool with his friends and he’s a BOY, they get away with their hair sticking out all over the place when they leave the house. thank gawd he brushes his teeth at the very least. boys are yukkks, ok?)

so then i walk him to school skool…

send him off to his new class… (ouuh, scary-looking aunty. K1 must be tough, like being in a concentration camp. a lot of concentrating going on there you know, spelling and counting and stuff.)

and wave bye-bye at his window…

sigh. he’s growing up so fast, my abang aniq. tsk.

just across his classroom is the toddler class, where i’m headed for. not that i’m TODDLING anymore, mind. i kinda… scuttle around. really fast. but i guess scuttler class doesn’t sound so fancy. so aaanyway, my teacher asked me to take off my shoes and put them in the shoe rack. mummy made me kiss her and daddy, and they said bye-bye.

i remember abang aniq always had a special place to keep his bag, and heyyy, so do i now. a cubby hole, i believe. so cute. just nice for my dora doll. and my bag of pull-ups.

there were SO many things going on in the next few hours, i kinda forgot about mummy until hmm, i think it was lunch time and i called for her coz *sheepish* i didn’t like people feeding me, BUT! i do like chicken, so i ate some of that, then just as i was asking for “shushuu!” (that’s milk for you non-toddler-speaking people), someone came to fetch me. saved by the bell! (well, ok, not literally, coz this isn’t like high school skool and they don’t have bells ringing and… well you know what i mean.)

and by the way, i may not know how to spell correctly right now, but… why do i keep getting these squiggly red lines under the word SKOOL?? ok, just wondering. bye-bye.

[mummy's edit: dropped by after work to ask how auni did in skool school and was given a thumbs up. discussed the programme, curriculum, familiar languages, food preferences, fetching arrangements. and guess i'll pack her "shushuu" tomorrow too. hell, i'm just thankful she's not a fusspot and for allowing her oma more time to herself in the day. here's to your growing independence, my babies.]

auni as E.T. the Extra-tak-boleh-diam Toddler.

(yes, airport again.)

with the passing of two men in the paternal family and the eldest matriarch away from SG to be with her children in KL for the very first time in all our raya history, we decided to make mum’s house the meeting point this year, seeing that she’s technically the next ‘eldest’ in status. so it was a small gathering, a new tradition, with two widows’ potluck of rendang, sambal goreng, ayam masak merah, lodeh, ketupat, lontong – the works.

i must say, i’m really not into the whole family politicking that’s been silently happening and am subtly ignoring on the paternal side, but am more than happy to have ‘fewer’ houses to go to in any case. not that i don’t appreciate the whole “visiting the elders as a form of respect” thing, of course, but well, respect is a slippery slope in some cases, and well, we all know where our loyalties stand. plus, with small kids in tow, their convenience and comfort take precedence, so… yeah.

little A was not in her best of moods due to a temperature that’s been playing peek-a-boo with her over the past two days. and the older A, well, he goes slightly berserk when in the company of his many uncles and small cousins. so the only sunshine we had was the one in the sky and making us swelter in our kebayas. smiles were ill-gotten with this one… LOL!

not so happy – “what’s there to smile about, grumble grumble…”

even more unhappy – “WHY YOU MAKIN’ ME WEAR THESE SHOEEES, WHYYYY?!?!”

slightly happy – “oouh, lollipop. heh heh.”

not happy again – “GREAT, I’M STANDING NEXT TO A WALKING CURTAIN.”

purple is in or whaaaat. heh.

AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST!

ok, so admittedly little A was tricked into a grimace that passed off as a smile so yeay, the izadnhana family portrait 2009: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

selamat hari raya aidilfitri, maaf zahir dan batin to one and all.

know why i’m miffed at my nose-picking brother?

while i get to wear wimpy tees with girly things like cupcakes…

he gets to wear COOL stuff with things like spiders. i love spiders! i mean, i pretend i’m scared of it by patting my chest when mummy sings that ‘little miss muffet’ song or the ‘itsy bitsy spider’. i’m not really scared, of course. just that she gets a kick out of seeing me do things like that, so i do it for her sake. i’ve never even seen a real spider. bet i could crush it like a cockroach. which i’ve never really seen either, actuallly… but that’s besides the point.

the point is, *i* should be the one wearing a spiderman-inspired outfit. coz if anything, climbing is like my FAVOURITE thing, like EVUH. can’t you tell? i could climb everything and anything! if only those pesky adults won’t stop me all the time. party-poopers.

disclaimer: *no children were harmed nor any children’s heads stuck between bed railings.
pajamas from: Cotton On Kids

so many things i wish i could capture here about her.

the precious wet kisses she plants on our lips. her sweet-sourish scent, a mix of sweat and saliva. the blinding glow that emanates from her and bounces off you with every grin she flashes.

but words will never fully capture her true essence.

***

it’s a rare thing when mummy gets to leave both children behind with their daddy for a night out. (sad and unbelievable, but strangely true.) so when i do, it better be for something good.

like good food, good laughs, good company. that kinda stuff.

yeah, mummy’s deprived like that.

but no complaints, huns. you lil ones are good company too – just a lot messier. and i have yours every night.

P1040597, originally uploaded by izadd.

“Tsk, kids these days…”

so you may have known that i was convicted of a crime recently and sent to a correctional institution. yes, i did time again at east shore state penitentiary, my friends.

i was deep in slumberland one night when big momma came into my room to give me some milk. (with no cookies, so why bother, i ask you?) she told big daddy that i was, as paris hilton would say, ‘hot’, and they brought me to see The Doc (code word for Drug Dealer) in the morning.

it was there where i was busted! framed! incriminated! kena pluck!

they said i had been harbouring a dangerous fugitive called UTI. i wonder if it was previously hiding at Yew Tee MRT, along with mas se/lam/at.

behind bars, i was only given some hardtack for sustenance, barely enough to keep me alert for the long hours i needed to study the blueprints of the floorplan i smuggled for my prison break.

to pass the time, i chilled with my cell mate (see calloused, un-pedicured foot in picture) and hung around, rattling the cages and jeering at the prison wardens.

which was a bad idea, because they then performed daily acts of persecution upon me that made me howl a hundred howls, involving an excruciatingly large needle poked into my thigh.

one of the prison wardens there was a crooked old fella who cruelly and inhumanely tortured me with a cavity search for contraband (he found some all right – in my butt crack, hah!), and if that wasn’t enough, a complete strip search. oh, the indignity!

i was bailed out eventually, after two hard nights in cold confinement, and appeared in court the next day to hear the verdict.

the judge ruled: i was out of danger.

====

ok, that was auni’s version, of course.

to summarise, i went into her room at 1am to feed her, something i don’t normally do after she’s gone to sleep, and found her body warm, although she just slept through with nary a whimper. brought her to the paedi the next morning when it didn’t subside, and discovered she had high fever of 38.5. since there were no other symptoms and the fever came unexplained, a urine test was done, by attaching a sterile plastic bag thingy to her girly-bits, and we had breakfast while waiting for her to fill it up. a urine dip test was done, and a purple stain showed traces of possible urinary tract infection. and off we were, warded once more, like the time she had jaundice.

and so it was deja vu, rushing home to pack our things for the 3-day-stay, which was necessary as we had to collect another urine sample, which then had to go for a culture, which took 48-72 hours, and her fever had to be monitored, and antibiotics to be administered by injection.

i was kinda bummed at having to stay at the hospital again, this time with an active baby who’s awake most of the day, with little space to play and explore (what to do? what to do??), but looking back, it was nice, a little bonding time, just chilling on the cot bed, going on short strolls around the (boring) hospital premises, finding out things about her i didn’t know she could do.

the third day, we asked to be discharged since she wasn’t having anymore fever, and after the urine culture result came back, the doc told us that it was an external infection, ie. just the skin. it could’ve been worse, like in her kidneys or bladder. that would’ve caused permanent scarring and lead to long-term medication. so, syukur alhamdulillah, we hope there won’t be a recurrence.

so what actually caused UTI in babies? who knows. possible factors are hygiene, dehydration, or genetic, i guess. it’s different with adult UTI, which i hear is painful. i asked the nurse and she said it’s not so with babies. from the way the little one looked, it sure didn’t look like she was in a lot of pain. either that or she’s got that pain threshold i was talking about.

it’s more common in girls, so be careful, mommies out there with baby girls. i can’t say that we practice bad hygiene at home, because we all, including her daytime caregivers, do wash her girly-bits with water and baby soap whenever we change her diaper. maybe we should change it more often. maybe we should offer her more water to drink. maybe maybe maybe… but as some tell me, well, these things *just happen*. :S