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We welcome the arrival of Is’s baby girl today at Thomson Medical Centre. She looks like the daddy with the lips from mummy’s

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chilling with snowflake dessert on a hot day, while waiting for mummy to finish her yoga

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Auni always enjoys a trip to the library

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we were messing about with the dry ice that came with their ice-cream, pretending to cast spells into a cauldron, and getting my mystical genres mixed up, i asked them to each come up with three wishes for an imaginary genie to grant.

aniq: “i wish for another abang adam! and i wish for another aidin! and i wish for another auni!”
(my sis-in-law and i both shook our heads in non-approval.)

adam: “i wish for thousands of millions of dollars…. (to be) a professional football player…”
(and i either forgot his last wish or he didn’t manage to come up with one – i tried to extract it from him the next day but he just shrugged. hmph, boys!)

the other evening, aidin (the little fella there who’s auni’s age) was being badgered by the other three kids for three pieces of mentos left in his hand. reluctant to dole them out, he counted them and muttered aloud, “MAMPOS i got no more.” !!! (their oma eventually dug up some sweets in her handbag, like all good grandmas do, so the boy was spared the tragedy of having to distribute his prized mentos.)

on sunday, we were all heading back after a wedding, and the kids were whining to go to their oma’s house to play some more. adam and aidin, of course, had to first seek their dad’s permission, which they REALLY don’t like doing. (their dad can be such a grinch, you know.) aidin, feeling the injustices of the world on his young shoulders, declared, “not faiiir!” and after a bit more of expressed disappointment, we called all four to come into our car to go to oma’s house. aidin, seizing uncle izad’s hand on the way to our car, looked up at him and plaintively uttered, “thank you for saving me all the time.” !!!

SO dramatic, our little ones.

(ps: all four got their wish of playing to their hearts’ content and had a sleepover at their oma’s that night. AND their mummies & daddies had a nice quiet evening catching up on movies in their respective homes heh heh. so… good job, superhero/genie/santa uncle izad!)

well, that’s mummy’s birthday treat to you accomplished, then.

while the bride & groom had a costume change, the little ones were quite busy themselves…

angels…

… demons?

here comes the bride…

… here come the little boy monsters.

(they were actually pinching their noses because they thought the fog from the dry-ice smelled like smoke, only here it looks like they were pinching their noses due to ‘gases’ emitting from under the gown. i could just PINCH their ears for spoiling this otherwise lovely scene of innocent flower girls carrying out the honourable duty of holding the princess bride’s wedding train!) (so sorry, bride.)

angels again, thankfully.

selamat pengantin baru, adib & hafiza…

and just before noon, i got a call from a teary mum, telling me my grandfather was sent to the hospital, and she feared he was no longer with us.

he had indeed passed on. suddenly, easily. he was 88 years of age.

the hospital wanted to do a post-mortem to determine the cause of death, but his body had to be transferred to another hospital because his medical records were there. hospitals being a big web of administrative red tapes, there was inevitably a delay, so it could only be done the next morning.

one of his daughters lives in brisbane; another daughter, the youngest, was on holiday in bandung. each had to find the next flight home.

this morning, there was yet another delay – the body still could not be released because his i/c was missing; it was with his youngest daughter, who’d kept it in her purse for some reason, and brought it along with her to bandung. she had not arrived home yet, so the i/c was reported as lost. no post-mortem was needed.

the moment the last of his daughters tearfully crossed the threshold of the house he lived in, the bus carrying his body too arrived. just in time.

it was as if all the delays were God’s deliberate plan to gather all of his eight children together, to welcome him home, the home he often refers to as “syurga-ku” (“my heaven”).

there was once, in uni, when we had an assignment about migrants, and he became the subject of my interview. he recalled his experiences, venturing out from his village in java, arriving in singapore a boy of 14 years, looking for an honest living. he eventually became a chauffeur for a wealthy dutch family after many jobs. he married my grandmother when she was in her teens. his very words to describe her during that interview were: “ohh, nenek kau dulu, jambu!”. imagine that said with the thickest of jawa accent. it was hilarious.

and i think they – my grandparents on my mum’s side – had a great sense of humour. i discovered this when i was 16 and we’d brought them along for a holiday in brisbane to visit my aunt. theirs were a wry kind of humour. you can wonder who inherited that down the line.

they were married 67 years. that’s double what my age is right now. a few months ago, i listened in amusement when my aunt described how they still slept together facing each other. 67 years.

in their twilight years, they’d sit in silence together every day, probably having run out of things to even talk about. it didn’t help that one was hard of hearing, the other, forgetful.

on the way back from the burial, mum mused about how hard their lives used to be when they were small, having 8 mouths to feed on his paltry earnings. how my grandmother was always crying, especially more on hari raya, because they could not afford new clothes for the children. how grateful she is that they all mostly turned out fine. and i can only marvel at how efficient their siblings’ system is – they have a roster for bringing each parent for check-ups at the hospital, a roster for collecting doctors’ fees, and even today, a roster for reading chapters of the quran as vigil, and a roster for staying with my grandmother for the next few days. a well-oiled machinery, the Jumari family is.

he had a good life at the end. he’s raised them all right.

al-fateha.

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turned seven. i don’t see him as often as i did when he was a baby and i’d drive to mum’s all the way from work during lunchtime just to play with him (those being pre-aniq days). these days, i can’t seem to elicit as much response from him as i did then.

what i do know is, i’d borrowed his Diary of A Wimpy Kid, and haven’t returned it. aunty will, i promise!

how about i get your NOISY cousins to sing for you again in the meantime?

(dies in embarrassment.)

i did not end up dating the said JC boy. you could say… there was no chemistry.
(or maybe he thought i was too dumb HA HA.)

anyway.

i had that flashback of dreaded chem labs and dull moments of dripping liquids into beakers, when the twin nephews had their 10th birthday party the other day. if only science was as fun (and full of candy!) as this then…

so cute, they invited their classmates over to the party, the boys came first, and when the girls arrived, THEY ALL SCREAMED AND RAN TO THE KITCHEN AND CLOSED THE DOOR.

seriously, can you understand boys?!

i guess 10 isn’t the magic age then.

maybe… 17. think JC BOYS. mmm.

let’s give it one more weekend…

aniq & auni, originally uploaded by izadd.

as you can see, they’re like my accessories. :p

so with all the hari raya preps and excitement, i forgot our 8th anniversary (!!) yesterday, which was hari raya itself, BUT i did remember his birthday today.

and i sacrificed one entire nutella roll aka kek tapak kuda to celebrate it. see what a good wife i am??

ok, so i made up for it with a proper dinner at a nice place. i swear, i did! (aptly enough, at aquamarine @ marina mandarin. talk about themes, right?)

oh, by the way, right after daddy’s song was sung, candles blown, and cake eaten, auni had to ask the question on every 3yo’s mind with regard to birthdays: “DADDY! where is your goody bag??”

happy 34th birthday, daddy. enjoy getting your own birthday present at the Comex tomorrow.

and DON’T FORGET YOUR GOODY BAGS, ha ha ha hahaa.

is raya over yet? get ‘em back in the cage, quick!