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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the thing with siblings, they can get pretty competitive, and i think even more so if their age gap is close. one of our tricks to make them do something is to turn it into a competition. most times it works.

another thing we like to do is go “who wants to [fill in activity]?” eg. “who wants to eat ice-cream?” (“ME!”) or “who wants to go swimming?” (“ME!”) etc. the daddy thinks sometimes they don’t even hear what he’s suggesting, they simply go “ME!” coz they don’t want to lose out. so he tried an experiment by garbling his words. “who wants to grgmmbfyabbayabbabla?” “ME!!”

for the purpose of this photo exercise, i’d asked “who wants to eat popcorn later?”. guess the answer.

i don’t know how they can be so chipper in the morning. they came back late from a party last night (bad parenting, as usual), yet here they are, all ready to take on the world the next morning… while we adults are cursing away the monday blues.

and i better remember my popcorn promise later in the evening.

now, who’s going to have a great week ahead? ;)

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i didn’t realise the daddy twitpic-ed this. been trying to capture her in this position for some time, without success. i don’t know why, it just tickles my mommy funny-bone, the way she lies on her “stummy” (her brother’s word for stomach+tummy) with her hands squishing her cheeks.

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when we gave him a free rein of the digital camera, he began snapping pictures like there’s no tomorrow!
how, can pass? i think he can continue my already dead APAD post, lol!!

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auni was the first to wake up and bathe today!

Posted via email from izadd’s pemalas posterous

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oh well, if all mummy had WAS a backrub, we wouldn’t have anyone for abang aniq to torment.

and we wouldn’t have anyone else for daddy to dress up like a boy. (yes, this was all his work.)

she’s turning out to be quite a character, and developing quite a sense of humour too. this is the part i like best, where they discover they can purposefully make us laugh, and laugh along with us.

and just as soon as she’s perfected her nodding, she’s gone on to the next phase – head-shaking. which made me laugh the first few times she started doing it, till i realised that encouraging it probably wasn’t the best idea coz now she’ll start to refuse everything we want her to do.

guess the joke’s on me. :p

now, gimme that backrub…

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this happens pretty often at home.

two kids, outside my bathroom, banging down the door, hurrying me to be done with whatever i’m doing already. they can always sniff me out when i’m in there. internal gps, much? but, it’s mummy’s only sanctuary!

and if you can make out the big brother’s silhouette, he’s bending down to relay to his little sister that mummy is not done yet. (he also heard my camera phone in action and asked “why you taking picture?”. i was too busy giggling to explain.)

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… is what she is. unafraid of falls and bumps, just like her brother.

here’s their latest play activity together – the baby sister pushing her big brother on his toy truck all around the house. yet another form of entertainment for us!

let’s see if she can meet her brother’s milestone of walking at ten months too.

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now this is what keeps us entertained these days. :D

*head-butting action included.

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i don’t know how many times i’ve had to change or modify his routines so far throughout his three years. their needs change so much as they grow and they become bored so easily, it becomes a challenge each time to come up with new ways to establish a workable routine, and make them want to stick to it.

as they say, ‘daily routines can mean the difference between a chaotic or a calm house’. i think as young as they are, they do appreciate knowing what to expect every day, and will eventually be cooperative when doing what is asked of them. plus, it’s a great feeling when you see them start doing things on their own after having ‘trained’ them for a period of time!

but hey, who finds strict routines fun? certainly not me. heck, i myself have great difficulty following the clock. (now, who invented the damned snooze button? you are so not helping.)

the first part of the month, i guess with the children transitioning to different classes and me being away in hospital with auni, the boy began to be a little resistant to being sent to school by his oma. ‘i don’t like school,’ he said.

so i decided to tweak his routine.

my mommy instinct guessed that he didn’t like being forced out of bed and dragged into the shower in the morning. (mommy used to be small too, you know.)

ok, no need to shower, i told him. you bathe in school, ok?

ok, he agreed.

i mandi in school, he said.

(which he does lah, it’s part of their routine in childcare, and his sociable nature means he likes doing things with his peers, including showering. yes, conformity is a good thing when it comes to getting them to do something.)

so we’d do his toileting, teeth brushing, face-scrubbing, bed-hair-flattening, uniform-wearing, i’d let him choose a toy or a book, he’d grab his shoes, and out the door we go, both of us kissing and waving the little one goodbye.

i think what he REALLY wanted was for me to do all those things with him, and not his other caregivers. undivided time with mommy to start his day, even if it’s just a few minutes journey in the car, listening to the radio, talking about what to do when i come back, sealing it with a quick a peck on his lips before he waves me goodbye and disappears behind the school door.

and it’s paid off. yesterday he told me, ‘i like school.’

music to my ears.

i may have said it before, but there’s just something about your firstborn, however frustrating he is or whatever mischief he has up his sleeves, that when they are on their best behaviour, all the misgivings just instantaneously melt away and you’re reminded of what a sweet baby he was and still is.

===

our bedtime routine too is special one-on-one time.

he knows the drill. a cuppa warm milk, toileting, teeth brushing, and storybook reading.

a short note about the milk thing. remember the ceremonial milk bottle-throwing on his birthday last month? well, he hasn’t succumbed to the bottle since. (just like the b/feeding and the diaper thing – once it’s out of his system, it’s out.) but it DID take him a while to get used to the idea of drinking milk from a cup. the mommy instinct went to work again, and one night, i made his milk in a bottle, brought in his Ben 10 mug, sat down with him in his room, asked him to unscrew the bottle cap to pour the milk into the mug, and he downed the milk in one go, followed by high-fives and low-fives and a kiss on the lips. again, that was what he really wanted, i guess – a ‘special’ routine.

a few books and a chat about the day, and we say goodnight.

and that’s bedtime for him.

===

as for the little one, thankfully she’s an early sleeper compared to her brother, so that makes it easier to divide the attention between the two.

and her bedtime routine?

plonked in her cot, where she ‘sings’ herself to sleep.

nice or not, her song? lol.

goodnight!

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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!

- The History of Babywearing

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ola!

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 ain’t no snail!

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it ain’t no dior or, err, jimmy choos… ;)

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.

TTFN, xoxo!

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sometimes, i oblige mummy’s request to sit still and take peekture. sigh. susah jadi model.

*dump-truck, train, motorbike, and tiny cars not included.

hmm, not a bad collection, seeing that mummy & daddy didn’t buy a SINGLE one of them for me.

now mum, get off my bed – you’re making a huge dent in it! (i know this was just an excuse for you to lie in it, ok.)

have a good weekend, everibodeeee… remember: don’t drink and drive!

*****

(heh. i *do* get out and head straight to mummy & daddy’s even BIGGER bed when i wake up in the morning before them, and climb in to squeeeeze in between. freedom indeed! :p)

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