Pebbles Auni, originally uploaded by izadd.

am missing her today, coz it’s the first day back at work after the long CNY holiday and she’d usually be the first feet to pitter-patter over to our room and lay her head on my side of the bed, followed by her brother, but today i was out before either of them woke up, so something felt… amiss.

is it too late for new year resolutions? it’s still january, so technically, the year is pretty new and the table calendar in front of me is yet unmarked and crisp as a karipap.

not a firm believer of resolutions that often get forgotten by the, hmm, third month (on average, based on purely observational records), so you know, don’t take me seriously (except #3). so here goes:

1) live a healthy lifestyle – so all those years of scoffing at the gahmen’s calls to lead a healthy lifestyle and snorting down cheeseburgers and fries like there’s no tomorrow, it’s all bitten me – hard – on my (expanded) arse. i won’t be so delusional as to say that i’m OBESE OR ANYTHING OMG, but it’s more like a… ‘relative’ thing, you know? as in, i am now (in delicate terms) ‘meatier’ than i ‘relatively’ was, say, a year ago, or heck, even just six months ago. so how did that happen? how did all those carelessly consumed calories suddenly make its appearance so markedly known? tummy, arms, thighs, hips… oh the atrocity! the treachery!

ok, so i expect many of you at this point would point out, “oh, but nice what, meatier… more to hold, more to love, blablabla”. sure – IF I WERE KFC CHICKEN BREASTS. i wanna be lean ayam kampung, dammit. marinated in kunyit and ketumbar and deep-fried… mmmm… but i digress.

i cite several factors for this hysterics-inducing epiphany:

a) age: = slower metabolic rate

b) birth of children: nature’s way of saying “your body’s done its job of mating and reproducing, that’s enough attracting of the opposite sex now, time for it to go into frumpy-mode and focus on tending to your young.” THANKS NATURE.)

c) end of breastfeeding: the whole year i was on TBF, i was invincible. input means output, producing milk was a workout by itself, which didn’t require any physical exertion other than pulling my shirt up. remember that episode on desperate housewives, where lynette’s female employee broke down when her 5-yr-old stopped wanting to be nursed and she lamented that breastfeeding was the only way she could stay thin? well, yeah, coz it worked for me that way. now, i can’t possibly b/f the kids till they’re of legal age, can i?

d) the office: a deskbound job means you’re sedentary for at least 8 hrs a day, 5 days a week. the few minutes you stand up to walk is to get lunch, or to go to the pantry for snacks. (unless, like me, you hoard snacks in your drawer under your desk, which HEY requires absolutely no standing/walking AT ALL.)

e) spouse: who loves eating. ‘nuff said.

which leads me to The Action Plan.

i) exercise more: yes, the one thing that i dread most (apart from cooking). the one thing i avoided like the plague throughout my years since school. the one thing that makes my muscles quiver in fear. but as Mr Nike once said, “just do it, dammit!” and turned it into a (less objectionable) slogan that many an athlete has lived by, do it i did. it’s been a month since my discovery of the painful pleasure (a masochist talking here) that is ‘working out’. now, like i said, it’s ONLY been a month, so no, i have not exactly jumped in the deep end of the pool that is the GYM (i confess i have a deep-seated fear-mixed-with-embarassment of ‘abang-abang body’ who are omnipresent in there). so for now, it’s easing these rarely-utilised muscles in doable stuff like low-impacts, pilates and yoga which i quite like, surprisingly. i don’t expect to turn into jo/jo sinclair or even half of her well-defined buttock, but at least, you know, i’m in control (a control freak talking here).

ii) eat less: i used to be this bird-pecker of a girl, you know, the kind who eats to live, too shy to actually buy food at the school canteen, too lazy to lunch at work. but eversince (b) and (c) above, it’s become quite a habit, this eating-actual-meals thing. see, i have this theory. you know how animals, like wolves and sharks and vultures, they go on feeding frenzies when they have to compete for food? well it’s kinda like that as a family grows in numbers. whenever there’s food meant for us, ie. mummy and/or daddy, along come the little children, like wolves and sharks and vultures. “WAH!” says the big one. “MAMAM!” says the little one. and together, they form a tag team to steal bits of our food WHILE WE EAT. it is indeed a rare occasion to have our food untouched by either of them, except when the dish is extremely spicy, so what we do, is gobble up as much as we can, as fast as we can… ok so, no connection, this theory. the point is, i’d turned from a bird-pecker to a wolf-shark-vulture mutant. i’ve never been that much of a foodie, unlike (e) above, so it should be pretty easy to cut down on evil stuff like processed meats and carbs. i think.

2) harnessing my Wild Things, a.k.a The Children – i think i may have made too many compromises lately where the lil ones are concerned. the boy since he turned four is becoming a little worrying. it’s SO HARD not to get mad at him everyday over some silly little thing. the girl, well she’s at that extremely-cute age so although i get mad at her over silly little things too, it’s easier to forgive simply for the fact that she’s not two yet and when she says “awi ami” (that’s “sorry mummy” in tod-speak), it makes you chuckle. but the boy… argh! it’s just SO HARD, raising Wild Things.

3) NOT get pregnant again (or evuh) – arising from #2. because, seriously, i am, at this point, highly doubtful of my parenting skills, and bringing forth more Wild Things from my womb unto the earth would be irresponsible, not to mention detrimental to my mental health and personal well-being.

4) read more books – i may actually have listed this in every new year resolution, and i think i did pretty ok last year (hey the Twilight series count). don’t ask me why this is still important in this age of blogs, internet and short-attention-span. i’ll tell you it’s for the purely selfish reason of the tactile experience.

5) write more – coz i need these kind of posts to purge myself of all the toxic build-ups in my brain.

and i could probably go on, but that would not be a good idea because #6 would have been ‘go to bed earlier’, and i’ve already broken that one on 26 counts since the dawn of 2010.

little wolf-shark-vulture Wild Thing: we are SO not sharing this ice-cream with mummy lest all the calories go to her thighs, BOO HOO HOO.

“Even if she’s no beauty, dear God pls give her a good brain.”

who would’ve thought that an off-the-cuff, half-baked thought, in the middle of the night, typed out in the haze of slumber, in the confines of a text bar for 140 characters, would spark such controversy.

the scene: mother nursing her baby girl who was falling asleep in the comfort of a suckled bosom, her lids drooping heavily, drifting away to dreamland, sweet and innocent, right down to her tiny toenails.

looking at her, her big round head and funny-looking hair (what we call “mad scientist hair”, especially when it’s all wiry with sweat), her little button nose (in malay, you’d call it “pesek” or flat) and her perpetually drooling lips, her barely there eyebrows and lashes – the mother swells with nothing short of pride that this little being in her arm is “JUST SO CUTE!” that she repeats it like a broken record every day to her husband for affirmation, and receives it with a nod of agreement and a fatherly grin each time.

coz let’s face it, in every parent’s (very) biased world, their child/ren ARE the cutest.

but rationale being a bitch, they know that to say it out loud often enough to anyone else would appear presumptuous to the point of obnoxious.

and well, we wouldn’t want THAT, would we, now?

so mother downplays it.

yeah, baby doesn’t have curly locks of hair. she doesn’t have fluttery doll-like lashes. her nose isn’t sharp, neither is her chin. she doesn’t have a dimple in her cheek. and so, through absolutely no fault on her part, she has little of the features associated with your quintessential beauty.

which is all well and fine, coz that’s all part of your DNA, baby. god knows mummy herself looked funny as a baby (with pictures to prove).

the thing that really matters, is that she is adorable to me, to no end. couldn’t you guess from the infinite number of photos and anecdotes streamed through our various platforms of communication?

but at this point, and mostly in the future, it is a mother’s utmost wish that this girl will worry little about the superficial, and hone her more worthy God-given faculty of the mind and intelligence, to make the right choices and decisions, to better herself and acquire everything she will ever need in life through that. as PCK would say, though in quite a different context, “use your blain!”

and all that, my friends, was what mother meant to convey, albeit pathetically, in a 140 character tweet. (yes, i over-think things, that’s my dysfunction. annoying as hell, i know.)

but if you even bothered reading between the lines in the first place, if you knew me well enough, as i would expect you, a non-stranger, to – you would never, EVER, for a moment think that i would intentionally ‘insult’ my child through a compressed one-liner to convey my innermost thoughts.

then again, i guess i never should’ve attempted in the first place, coz the fact that you think i’d even do such a thing, is an insult in itself.

ok, so just how do you define a ‘blogshop’, eh?
thoughts please!

i blame my WAGs-wannabe friends (hah! wannabe! wasn’t that a spice girls’ song? zigezig ahh…) for inspiring this.

nevermind the bad press about her, and i don’t really care much about her excessive collection of designer dresses, bags, and shoes (though they are, admittedly, amazing).

what i do like, or at least what’s portrayed in the media, is her clear devotion to her children, while looking RIDICULOUSLY FABULOUS, with nary a hair out of place. i mean, this woman seems to go almost everywhere with her kids, bringing them herself to something as domestic as soccer practice, without a nanny in sight, and appears to manage them admirably well too. sure, there are probably bodyguards hovering around… though, hmm, come to think of it, maybe she pays them to make sure her boys don’t misbehave in public. :p

in any case, she’s quite a force to be reckoned with, methinks. coz it surely can’t be easy handling three boys (that’s another point, i love that she has all boys instead of prissy mini-me versions of her – makes her look even more ‘fierce’, somehow!), while looking like the million dollars that she’s worth, and cameras flashing at their every move.

and in the spirit of the event that's taking place this sunday (*wink wink*), here's something i made up for my WAGs-wannabe friends, who harbour secret crushes on her... lol!

(to sing to the tune of Beyonce’s ‘If I Were A Girl’)

If I were Posh Spice
Even just for a day
I’d roll out of bed in the morning
And throw on my skinniest jeans and go
Eat out with the girls
And chase after kids
I’d shop with who I wanted
And I’d never see those credit card bills
Because my Becks will pay up for me

If I were Posh Spice
I think I could understand
How it feels to love Hermès
My Louboutins and all those brands
I’d wear just high heels
Though I know how it hurts
And I’d have my boobs inflated
A tan that’s never faded
And to-die-for hair that’s perfectly coiffed

It’s a little too late for a Spice Girls comeback
Say it’s just a mistake
To sing in a girl band
If you thought I’d grow frumpy
You thought wrong

But you’re not Posh Spice
You don’t understand (yea you don’t understand)
How it feels to love Hermès
Someday you’ll wish you had a richer man
You don’t like soccer
You don’t care how it’s played
Until you have your boobs inflated
A tan that’s never faded
And to-die-for hair that’s perfectly coiffed…

see you girls on sunday!

when you’re in the confines of an empty car with the radio airplay on repeat mode, your meandering mind tends to come up with some strange observations.

one being, that women these days are, in general, not a very happy lot, particularly with their male counterparts, as the evidence below will show.

1) beyonce declares that if she were a boy, she’d drink beer with the guys, and chase after girls, and kick it with who she wants, which is what her fictitional half does. (coz surely her real-life spouse, jay-z, doesn’t do that… right?)

2) katy perry gripes about how her supposed groom-to-be changes his mind like a girl changes clothes, and PMS like a bitch, drilling her infectious one-moment-hot-one-moment-cold refrain into his brain, and yours.

3) pink who just lost her husband (to divorce, not death), but so what, she’s still a rock star dammit, she’s got her rock moves (and loads of cash) so who needs him?!

4) britney proclaims, in all her usual articulate self, that her fella’s nothin’ but a womanizer, womanizer, oh a womanizer.

it’s a revolution, i tell you – women with the power to diss their men… and getting away with it (with royalties to boot)!

now, the men, on the other hand, are a bunch of lovelorn wussies these days. let’s see:

1) david archuleta whines about a crush. on a *girl*. (yaawn. i’m still rooting for him to lean the clay aiken way, give it time.)

2) neyo pines for bossy, independent babes who pay their own bills. (read: he’s a cheap date.)

3) t.i. offers his shawty whatever she wants. you know, the kinds of things you and me wants – bags, jets, stacks of rubberband banks. (hehe, i is rapping yo.)

4) some sick irish lads who refuse to move from a corner of a street just to wait for some girl. (how will they pee and shave and shower? not a great idea to woo a girl with a bursting bladder, grizzly beard, and B.O, i would say.)

then, to further reinforce how women have evolved into man-eating, power-crazy, power-hungry species, are the increasing emergence of shows such as:

1) sex & the city, or better known as SATC (THE show which probably set the wheels in motion for our generation’s iWoman-hear-me-roar-in-my-jimmychoos revolution.)
2) lipstick jungle (top honchos in the media, publishing, and fashion worlds, juggling demanding careers with neglected children, errant spouses, steamy affairs, etc.)
3) cashmere mafia (ditto above. with better casting.)
4) desperate housewives (which should really be changed to desperate husbands, coz the wives? not so desperate anymore.)

and in our local context, with girls making up the top psle students these days, it won’t be long before mediacorp catches on and comes up with our very own shows featuring high-powered women who’ve scrupulously climbed the corporate ladder or have superior hold over their spouses in the prime bukit timah suburbs. suggestions for show titles:

1) manicured CEOs in merlion city (shortform, MCMC)
2) stiletto singapura
3) kebaya mafia, and
4) don’t call me tai-tai

and to end this fluff entry, i leave you with katy perry’s other famous song, ‘i kissed a girl’, which sends a signal that girls are so self-sufficient and dissatisfied with the other gender these days that they’re eventually replacing men with other women in the equation. uh-oh.

Us girls we are so magical
Soft skin, red lips, so kissable
Hard to resist so touchable
Too good to deny it
Ain’t no big deal, it’s innocent

*disclaimer: the above entry is merely a frivolous jibe at the opposite sex in general, and in no way intends to show disrespect or create ill-will towards our ‘better halves’, whom we need to throw the rubbish, make hot tea, and change the diapers… kidding! :p

as you can probably tell, the lack of updates by hana is a sign of profound malaise. clearly, the switch to non-sahm mode has not been the most joyful of event for her.

which made her question as to who in heck created the work week to stretch for five days and not contain it to just, say, four, or maybe three days?

to which she received a reply from her ever-sensible husband that it was all in the name of a healthy economy and The Big Picture. longer weekends mean longer downtimes, he says. less productivity and lower standards of living. worse still, he came up with the ‘less effective gahmen’ trump card. and in his usual gadget-centric logic, if his handphone is spoilt and requires servicing, a longer weekend would mean a longer time to get it repaired. hmph, the consumerist.

so apparently, long long ago, people, especially in the industrial era, used to work really long hours with really poor working conditions (boo hoo). then in the 1800s, some fella began demanding for shorter work hours, starting some kind of workers’ union, and went around with a catchy phrase, “Eight hours labour, Eight hours recreation, Eight hours rest”. that took quite a while to catch on, but it eventually did for most parts of the world, and May Day or Labour Day had something to do with that, you know, to commemorate the achievement of the labour movement, yadda yadda.

ok, so what’s the point of all this again?

ahh right, i’m *supposed* to be thankful that the work week has been greatly reduced from ancient times when workers were greatly exploited, especially women. but it’s hard to console myself when the fact is that most of the “eight hours of recreation” and “eight hours of rest” is sapped up by the demands of motherhood, leaving little for the self. (yes, i am after all part of Generation Me.)

labour is indeed a great pain for many women – the one experienced in the hospital to expel their offsprings from their wombs, and the one that takes them away from those offsprings eight hours a day, five times a week. the latter being more prolonged and painful for some, like me.

our respite – the forty-eight hours called The Weekend. where family, friends and food are the bonus and remuneration. <3

ok, digressing a little, i cheated (as usual) for the potluck picnic and bought a tray of shepherd’s pie from The Shepherd’s Pie, located at the second floor of Bedok Market Place, just next to our ever-favourite makan haunt, simpang bedok. we could have had it delivered for free, but since we were there for dinner the night before, we dropped by to pick up a frozen tray so we could bake it ourselves on the morning of the picnic.

what can i say, everyone approved, even the husband, the foodie! needless to say, the whole tray was polished off within minutes (as you can see in the picture). definitely tasty, with just the right amount of meat and potatoes. yes, i’m a carb person, i am. i love my potatoes. next time we’ll try the spicier stuff, ok idayana!

the two G.I. janes, aka botak janes. “kakak mia, don’t pull my hair!”

happy 30th! omg we’re old. hurhur.

and that reminds me – aniq’s birthday is coming, AGAIN! ha ha. of course there’s the question of should there or should there not be yet another party this time round.

to which the reply is that it would greatly depend on the economy. namely, the mother and father’s. which means, mummy would have to keep working to sustain that economy, baby. just so you can keep enjoying your birthdays.

crap.

aunty farah, can you save those three candles for him?

maybe i’ll just order a shepherd’s pie and plonk them on it.

despite my initial resistance to all things raya this year, i couldn’t help myself – there’s just something about last minute raya preparations that make my adrenaline pump, lol!

and of course, it helps when your husband is extra generous this year, ha ha.

when you think about it, it’s a little silly how we go into a mad rush to buy new things or do a makeover, for yourself and the house, to meet the ‘deadline’ that is 1st syawal. surely that’s not what it should be about. but you somehow find yourself sucked into the vortex of self-indulgence that is geylang. a spectacular spectacle of mounds and mounds of clothes, carpets, curtains, everything you could possibly think of, and the highlight of it all, the carnage of food, nevermind the people in other parts of the world who have little to eat, coz just we gotta have those dendengs, right?

in any case, i admit i was suckered in. for the search for good deals. for the last-minute things you think you need. and for the keropok lekor, the japanese balls, and what-have-yous. (but hey you can’t deny a nursing mum who’s fasted all day, the food all goes to the hungry baby! :p) all silly, silly things.

anyway, after four separate trips braving the hot and sweaty shop-lusty crowd, jostling for elbow and not forgetting carpark space, i think we’ve been duly geylang-fied. even aniq has added ‘geylang’ and ‘hari raya’ to his ever-expanding internal dictionary. (his daddy’s currently trying to get him to acquire a taste for old p.ramlee classics with vcds bought from, yep, geylang.)

so tomorrow, the eve of raya, there will be yet more tasks to complete before ‘deadline’ (nothing in the house is cleaned yet, coz, err, too busy going to geylang ha ha).

and to add to the list of things to do, is to celebrate Chewren’s Day at aniq’s school in the morning. of all things he has to wear, instead of a nice baju kurung to celebrate the upcoming raya, he has to wear something denim for the photo-taking, coz, erm, that’s the theme, apparently. now how come we didn’t see a baju kurung in denim, i ask you, geylang?

ok, it’s sahur time. (the last for the year!)

selamat hari kanak-kanak, and good luck meeting your deadlines, people!

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

my mum just told me she’s definitely going to perth in august to visit our relative.

which means, she won’t be around to:

a) cook for us
b) entertain aniq in the day
c) ‘guard’ our often-wandering helper
d) call me everyday to update on things i sometimes half-listen to (goings-on in the family, shopping escapades with her also-retired friends, aniq’s latest mischiefs, etc.)

that’s two weeks of no mum. *whine* how am i going to survive??

sooo, i would like you to help me.

no, not cook for me. or babysit aniq in the day. or keep watch over our helper. or call me everyday to gossip (actually, i don’t mind this so much, just make sure it’s juicy and scandalous).

can you help me sway, cajole, coax, persuade, wheedle, plead, beg my BELOVED husband izad (who loves to stay home, grr) to bring ALL of us with her?

and by all of us, i mean me, aniq & auni. no, no, not you.

the wanderlust bug is making me itch so.

ayu, let’s go shopping for ribbons!