(a little note: about the part on the rattlesnake, coincidentally, an episode of The Pink Panther was shown after we’d read this a few times together, where the panther accidentally stole a basket containing a baby instead of food during a picnic scene and in an effort to pacify the said baby, now crying, he’d removed the end of the rattlesnake’s tail to give to the baby as a rattle, and i guess this left such an impression with the kids that they associate it with this particular rattlesnake every time.)

(also, another note: they will inevitably ask the same question in every story with illustrations – “where’s the daddy/mummy/baby?” not sure why but there’s always a concern for the whereabouts of a missing family member in the story.)

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was discussing insurance for the girl the other day (her brother’s was done when he was two too), and our financial advisor estimated we’d need a cool $85k in 16 years time if she were to go for a local tertiary education – i mean, IF we’re fortunate enough for her to want to pursue it, that is. (well, a mom’s gotta hope.)

made me wonder how much my parent forked out for mine, coz i have NO idea. they’d split costs – mom paid for my brother’s overseas education, dad paid for my local one. and i was fortunate enough to not have to repay any student loans whatsoever either. (dear dad, thank you for giving me my education. and while i’m at it, thank you too for paying for my driving lessons. and basically, for everything you spent on me. as my brother would constantly remind me, i was a spoilt princess – still am, yeah i know. :S)

so anyway, we’d settled on a whole life and term policy thing, same as her brother’s. i don’t know, i’m generally not very good with money (seeing how i’ve not been made to handle much of it in my life growing up), and just hope that things will work out for them in the future…

meanwhile, in the present, was updated of the girl’s progress in child care (she’s in a half-day programme for now). all good things so far. she especially likes the home corner and dress up corner (oh the gurly gurl she is turning out to be), storytelling and art, conversing with friends and teachers, discovering things, always the one to help distribute others’ water bottles… and i’ll spare you of the superlative adjectives her enthusiastic teachers had for her. :p

one thing the teacher DID ask me to work on with her was fine motor skill, in particular threading work, which she, for some reason, did not like doing. i’m guessing she doesn’t have the patience yet for it, but since it seemed like another activity we could do together at home, what the heck…

and the last thing we talked about was toilet training, which we all agreed she was pretty ready for. the past few weeks, she’d cooperated on the potty before bedtime, and the previous weekend she’d woken up, walked straight to our bed and asked to pee in the toilet, so i think all that reading of Princess Polly’s Potty came to fruition after all. well, that and the fact she has her older brother to model upon, and me, whom she follows to the toilet all the time to observe. (yes, that open-door policy still stands here at izadnhana’s abode, sigh.)

and so, am happy to report that this was her third day in preschool undiapered, and doing pretty okay (minor mishaps, ie. half-accidents, notwithstanding).

so yey to less diaper wastage! (and to mother earth, sorry we didn’t get started sooner).

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no! i most certainly did NOT teach her how to apply cosmetics! i swear! it is all mimicry!

in any case, she seems to have a knack at lipglossing sans mirror, just like me. won’t be long before she too can do it WHILE driving.

it’s, err, genetic.

*no alien figurines were harmed during the filming of this video.

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aniq at 2.5 years…

auni at 2 years…

whether they’ll eventually inherit their mommy’s dyscalculia is yet to be seen.

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Once upon a time, not so long ago (two years, to be exact), a bald-ish baby girl was born. She lived in a forest of (tam)pines, along with her father, mother and brother. She began to grow into a fiesty, fearless and, quite frankly, funny-looking little girl.

One day, she was told to send a basket of food to her Grandmother living on the other side of the forest.

“Remember, keep to the path and do not – i repeat – DO NOT talk to any strangers along the way!” the mother reminded her little girl. “Yes, mother,” promised the little girl as she donned her favourite red hoodie.

Along the way, she inevitably meandered away from the path, lured by shrieks of excitement from the playground nearby her intended destination, promptly forgetting her mother’s reminder.

“Why, hello there, delicious little girl. And what are you up to on this fine day?” a hairy creature slurred suddenly from behind the slippery see-saw. “Oh, just, ya know, chillaxing…” the girl in red replied, more interested in the swings and slides than the hairy creature who, unfortunately, looked nothing like Jacob Black in The Twilight Saga: New Moon…

*press pause*

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the little girl’s many ‘aunties’ have been asking what she wants for her birthday.

what do you think?

clearly, she has waaaay too many boys’ toys at her disposal. from power rangers to ben 10 merchandise to cars to trucks to dinosaurs to (i’m ashamed to say this) guns (none of which i’m responsible for, i stress) – she’s been sharing them all with her brother.

which is not such a bad thing, actually. i think it’s kinda cute. (this is her favourite set of pajamas, by the way. i kid you not. “eh-men! i want eh-men!”) ha ha.

sure, there’s a cooking stove, which both of them congregate at every day to concoct imaginary dishes/drinks for me or the daddy. there’s a little pram with a freaky blonde doll, which they both take turns to chase each other around the house with. there’s a shopping trolley, which they equally find pleasure in scattering its contents all over the floor with.

i’ve not discussed with her yet about princesses (except that one book about a Princess Polly and her potty, and even that, it’s just a girl with a crown wearing panties, not your standard Disney-type womanly princesses with coiffed hair and frilly gowns who go around kissing frogs or supposedly rich, handsome, young, single, charming men), but somehow, either from the incessant advertisements on tv or from observations of older girls and peers, a kind of, hmm, ‘social osmosis’ happened, and she can identify with the concept.

“(pr)een-cess!”, she’d exclaim, her head tilting, her voice extra high-pitched and in such a sing-song manner that you can practically hear glitters and pink sparkles coming out of her. O-o

“princess?”, i’d ask, giving her a sceptical grimace. “dowan lah.”

as you can see, i’m still trying my best to resist the idea of over-gender-conditioning and hyper-femininity. i’m fighting against creating a ‘gu niang’ girl. just as i’d lost the battle with the boy and his penchant for toy guns, i may be losing it with the colour pink.

and, admittedly, mummy isn’t being a great example herself, what with her girly makeup and lipglosses and dresses and high heels, eh? LOL.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.]

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

(yes, airport again.)

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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. :)

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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

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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. :)

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