Ah, finally!

September 2010.
Huda now looks so different. She has lost the baby fat she had in her cheeks. She's grown taller and eats like a horse but I'm hoping that the high metabolic rate she has will continue til she's really old so she never has to worry about weight issues. (Well, if I can't make my daughter fat, I might as well accept that she'll be thin forever.)

Farah now has more hair so a bit of fringe can cover that wide expanse of forehead she inherited from both her parents. :p

I am suddenly inspired to upload photos from a long time ago to this barren place called Multiply. :p

These are photos from September 2010 to mid-June 2011.

Now!

I am forcing myself to update this blog. This is getting very trying, isn't it? I'm abandoning my previously half-written entry and will just write and write and write about the kiddies (and me. and also everything else that crosses my mind.)

1. First topic. Me.
I'm going back to work at the end of June and I'm feeling a little bit of trepidation. I haven't worked for 2 years and 3 months. I'm not sure if my weak heart can take it. I know that I do not mind the the actual teaching and classroom interaction. But, it's all the extras that's making me feel this sense of dread. I hope I will not become a weaker mother as a result of going back to work. I'm afraid of being too tired for the kids. And too tired to discipline them. We'll see how things go. This is not necessarily a permanent thing. If I can't take it, maybe I'll leave.

2. Accessories
This week, there are lots of cheap hair accessories available on gmarket. Heh. I started off buying for my girls but after a few clicks, I threw caution to the wind and bought a lot of hair accessories for myself, my nieces, my neighbours (or so I'd like to think. I might be greedy enough and hoard everything for myself)


3. Farah: Speech
Farah can speak very, very well. I can't help but compare Farah with Huda at this age. Huda took a long time to utter her first words but to me, the beginning point does not really matter. Some children can walk at 8 months while others only start walking when they are almost 2. But in the end, as adults, I don't think whether you're an early developer or otherwise matters much. All it means is, as parents, it might be simply be a case of convenience if your child can speak earlier (you know exactly what she wants) or sprouts her first tooth later (you don't have to start brushing her teeth til much later).

(Lest anyone thinks that I'm trying to say that a child is a genius because she can speak earlier, that - as you can see - is never my intention.)

Now, back to Farah.

She mimics what we say quite well. She can now say all the /k/ and /r/ sounds. She used to call her sister Tatak Tuta instead of Kakak Huda. Whenever she says Tatak, I'll correct her and tell her how to say it properly. Unfortunately, on the day she discovered that she could say the /k/ sound, all /t/ sounds were replaced with /k/. So, tangan (arm) became kangan, towel became kowel and so on. I have successfully corrected most of the /t/-/k/ switch but she still insists that tangan is kangan. As you wish, Farah.

She likes to talk and sometimes she just talks for the sake of talking. For example, she can repeat her one story about her encounter with Barney 2 million times a day. "Farah nampak Barney. Farah takut. Farah tanak ambik gambar. Farah sembunyi."
(I saw Barney. I was afraid. I didn't want to take a picture (with Barney). I hid."

Another of her favourite stories that she would repeat to me another 5 million times just for the sake of making conversation: "Mak tahu tak? Farah naik kapal terbang tau. Farah pergi Japan. Farah sejuk. Farah pakai coat, pakai gloves pink, pakai topi pink."
(Mak, do you know? [She learnt this "Do you know?" from her dear sister who talks non-stop also. My poor ears.] I took the aeroplane. I went to Japan. I was cold. I put on a coat, pink gloves and a pink hat.)


4. Farah: Eating

She now likes eating plain rice and plain noodles. With absolutely nothing added. Not even the humble kicap (soya sauce). :rolls eyes until eyes do somersault:


5. Farah: Making a Mess and (Not) Cleaning Up

This is an area that she is very, very good at. She has a box full of hair accessories (yet I'm buying more!). There's nothing that she loves to do more than opening the box and tipping out its contents. The clean-up process, however, is a long drawn-out process involving simple requests which almost always escalate into the appearance of an extremely upset, screaming monster of a mother.

This daughter likes to exaggerate the effort needed to pick up one tiny item. She will crawl to the tiny little rubber band, push it slowly with a hand that refuses to grip the rubber band and when the rubber band finally reaches the box, she will make it seem like the energy needed to pick up the rubber band and put it inside the box is equivalent to the energy produced when an atom is split.

Once, after throwing colour pencils onto the floor (and of course, she was forced to clean up the mess) she crawled very, very slowly to each offending piece of colour pencil and used her mouth to pick up each pencil.

How can I keep my cool?

Huda has been most helpful in this area. While she is also naturally averse to cleaning up, she knows better than to wait for me to turn into a volcano. So, if she can't wait for Farah to be done with her theatrics, she'll just do the cleaning herself. This, unfortunately, is not what I want. I desperately want Farah to clean up her own mess but sometimes, it's just so frustrating!


5. I need to stop for a while now but I know if I save this for later without publishing, I'll end up just ignoring this. So, I'll post this one first, warts and all. Chances are, I'm not going to make any edits (even if I promised to) so all the warts, the spelling errors, grammatical mistakes et al will still be here when you visit this page again. Let's pray for a continuation of this before the next General Election.

Wait, wait

Sorry.

I'm still in General Election mood.

I'll finish off one blog entry I started last month when I'm done reading a couple of books, blogs, watch some more videos, discover more things to read and so on. I will come back to this and talk about H & F.

Wait for it, the 3 of you who read this religiously (2 of whom are my sisters).

Japan

We arrived at Haneda Airport almost midnight on 10 March. It was our first time ever setting foot in Japan and we were so looking forward to our time there. We have bothered enough people in the run-up to our trip, asking them questions after question about everything, from weather to places to visit to food and well food and more food.

We were not too sure about the ease of getting halal food in Japan so besides doing a disproportionately huge amount of research on food alone, we also brought cup noodles, breakfast spread, cereal, canned soups, among other things. I don't know if I'll get to this deeper in this entry (since I'm writing this without doing any planning whatsoever), but just in case I end up not writing more about food, I should state here that it's not that difficult getting halal food in Tokyo AND a number of sushi places do not use mirin to make their sushi rice. (Hooray!)

We got there late at night. Huda did not sleep a wink in the 6-hour flight to Tokyo because she was busy with the in-flight entertainment. Deprived of TV at home, she chose not to waste a single minute of her time on the plane by watching one cartoon show after another. I wish Farah did the same. But no, she was busy ensuring that I do not get to watch anything.

TheHusband had booked seats on a bus that took us from the airport to our hotel (Shinjuku Washington Hotel) with a couple of stops in between. Apparently, if you decide to take a taxi from the airport to your hotel, it can cost up to SGD200 per person, so a Singaporean we met a couple of days later told us. (Hmm. That figure could be more. The figure the man quoted was in Yen and I did some mental calculations and it came close to SGD800. But I cannot recall if that was for 2 persons or 4. I'm sure somebody who has been to Japan will enlighten me.)

Our first drama happened just as we were about to board that bus at Haneda airport. Our long-suffering Combi stroller committed some kind of kamikaze and decided that it was better off with three wheels. One of the front wheels simply broke away from the main body of the stroller. It must have been planning this death since it heard that we were going to its motherland. But we perked up almost instantaneously cos we knew that we were in Combi-land and we can buy another Combi stroller (maybe the dark purple Miracle Turn Combi stroller that we've been hankering after but never bought because we-don't-really-need-another-stroller-do-we). So we naively thought.

The ride to the hotel was uneventful. I have yet to feel how cold the night was as the airport and the bus was heated quite well. Too well, in fact. When I looked out of the window, I saw people stuffing their hands into their pockets, faces hidden behind masks hurriedly walking back to their homes. There was quite a bit of construction going on. Had it not been for the road signs, the roads are no different than Singapore's. However, if you look closer, you will notice that the construction workers are not foreigners. To my untrained eyes, they look and sound local (which I found amazing - that their construction industry is staffed by locals).

When we reached the hotel, I thought it was quite strange that the front desk was not on the ground floor. It was on the third floor. Later on, I learnt of a few more hotels whose front desks are not situated on the ground floor. I'm not too sure if it was just a coincidence or if all hotels in Japan are like that.

We booked a room with three beds. We have seen pictures of the hotel rooms online and we expected a teeny-eeny-weeny little room with barely any space to move around. So it was a pleasant surprise when we noticed that there is a little nook at the corner of the room - just enough space for the kids to play. We finally settled the kids into bed at close to 3 in the morning. (All 4 of us could sleep comfortably on 2 of the supersingle beds pushed together.) That meant we could forget about the itinerary we've planned for 11 March. There was no way we could get the kids (and us) out of the room by 9am.

The next day. 11 March. Hur hur hur. Little did we know what was in store for us. It was a Friday and TheHusband has to do his Friday prayers. He could skip this one as he was in a foreign land but skipping it doesn't feel right to us, especially because we have exact directions on how to get to the mosque. Initially, I was thinking of getting him to go there on his own and we'll meet him back at the hotel but he vetoed the idea. And thank goodness he did!

(I wrote that last week and saved it on a file in the computer because Multiply was behaving badly. Today, before my memory deteriorates further, I'll try to write more and post whatever I can.)

We eventually left our hotel room at about 11am. In mosques in Singapore, Friday prayers start promptly at Zuhur although it can be performed anytime between that and the next prayer time which was around 3.30pm in Tokyo. Zuhur was around 11.50am in Tokyo and so we were in a bit of a rush. Our hotel was a 10-minute brisk walk from Shinjuku station and we were aware what a busy station Shinjuku is.

To get to the mosque, what we needed to do first was to get to enter the Shinjuku station from the Odakyu Line entrance. We passed by so many entrances but we couldn't find the Odakyu Line entrance! Looking at maps and asking people left us more bewildered than ever. Eventually, an elderly woman who described Huda as kawaii (one of the few Japanese words I know) led us to the entrance and after asking more questions, we managed to get to the right train that would take us to Yoyogi-Uehara. By then, it was past noon. But Allah had plans for us.

Just as we were exiting the train station, we heard Malay words being spoken and well, what do you know! There was an elderly Malay couple with 2 sons, one of whom is a student in a Japanese university. They were heading for the same mosque and so, we chatted along the way and found out that they live not too far from my grandmother's village in Malacca! We also found out that we needn't have rushed as the Friday prayers are delayed slightly so that Muslims can go to the mosque during their lunch hour.

We waited for more than an hour before the prayers began. The sermon was delivered in 4 languages - Turkish, Arabic, English and Japanese. According to TheHusband the congregation numbered more than a 100 of people of various ethnicities, inclusive of local Japanese.

After the prayers ended, our newfound Malaysian friends took us to an Indian restaurant 2 train stations away. It was a buffet of rice, naan, chicken and mutton curries. Halal restaurants generally do not serve beef as there's no halal beef in Japan, owing to the absence of imports of beef into Japan. It was a late lunch and we had our fill. We even thought that we wouldn't need dinner after such a heavy lunch.

As our lunch was coming to an end, Huda moved to her father. She pushed her chair back and walked to the other side of the table. It was just a few steps but I could feel the wooden floor shaking slightly. I was about to chide her for walking like an elephant when I noticed that the shaking had not stopped.

I looked through the glass walls and saw a group of teenage girls looking panicky and running in and out of a shop before holding on to each other and a road sign. "Earthquake," I whispered to TheHusband. The Japanese couple beside us stood up, grabbed their jackets, made payment for their meals and ran out of the 2-storey building we were in. Being the ignorant tourists that we were, we stayed put and I even managed to record a 1 min 14 second footage of the tremors.

"Astaghfirullah. Astaghfirullah," the restaurant owner shouted repeatedly. Somebody (it was either the restaurant owner or a member of our party) led the rest of us in reciting of prayers and that was what we were doing til the tremors stopped.

At that point in time, I thought tremors like that were a common occurrence to these Tokyo folks and that it wouldn't even make it to the papers. Just in case it did, I sent a quick text to my father to inform him that we experienced our first earthquake and that we were safe. Now that we are older and have kids ourselves, we know that the last thing we want to do is make our parents worry about us. (But, now that we are older and have kids ourselves, we know that it is humanly impossible for parents not to worry about us.)

The next few lines will be shamelessly copied from my facebook status update:

• Alhamdulillah. We were at a restaurant - together with some newfound Malaysian friends - having a late lunch after a visit to a Tokyo mosque for Friday prayers. Huda got up to walk to the other side of the table and I could feel some tremors. I thought it was her. Then the tremors got stronger. People outside the restaurant stood still and held on to whatever they could hold on to.

• The restaurant was rattling badly, much like an old KTM train making a sharp turn at too high a speed. One of the locals said that they couldn't remember the last time they had an earthquake that strong. We're so grateful to Allah for keepingg us safe. The day did not start the way we had initially planned but that's only because Allah has much better plans which involve keeping us safe in His keep.

• And the person of the day is Huda. Train services were suspended because of the earthquake so we took a series of buses before we ended up in Shibuya. In Shibuya, there was a loooooooooooong line of people waiting for the bus. Our hotel is in Shinjuku. So we decided to walk (together with our Malaysian friends and a gajimillion other locals). A 3-hour walk it turned out to be and Huda did not complain at all despite the biting wind that blew hard into our faces. She did not even ask to be carried. We are so immensely proud of her.

• Thank you my dear family and friends for your concern. We are touched by your concern. I'm sorry because I cannot reply to all the SMS-es that were sent because mobile connections are still a bit iffy now.

• Oooh. Just had another aftershock. We had quite a few on our trek back to Shinjuku. But this time, we're in a tall building so, umm, we'll continue praying for our safety. Amin.

• Thank you very very much, everyone. We appreciate all the concern and do'a. :)

• We are in Shinjuku and people are quite calm and orderly. This is Japan, after all. Even in Shibuya where we saw a super-long line of people waiting for buses, they were queuing in the most civilised way. At all bus stops that we passed by, the queues were long but people were calm.Many, many people are staying the night at lobbies of various buildings (including our hotel's) because they can't get home. At the 24-hour convenience stores around our hotel, basic foood supplies like instant noodles, bread, drinks have been snapped up. There are long lines for public phones everywhere because mobile connections are unavailable. So, if you haven't heard from your colleague, let's hope that he's safe. Having said that however, I think quite a few people must have been hurt by shattered glass and other debris if they were outdoors when the quake happened. During our long walk back to our hotel, we saw a lot of cordoned off areas where they are cleaning up glass and concrete bits.

• Correction: It wasn't a 3-hour journey. It was 4 hours. We started walking around 4.30pm (Japanese time) and we got back at around 8.30pm. What a trooper my little Huda is!

After we've eaten a few more rounds of rice and naan, we left the restaurant. On the way back to the train station, I checked my phone and realised that the message sent to my father couldn't be sent. After a couple more tries, it was finally sent. Reaching the train station, I saw lots of people just standing around. We were still not aware of the magnitude of the earthquake and the level of devastation caused. The station master reiterated what all the locals said, that they had never experienced anything like this before and they could not guarantee that the trains will be moving anytime soon.

So we the clueless tourists whipped out our maps and thought of walking. As we were discussing our options (in Malay) and considering the distance between this station and Shinjuku a Japanese man piped up, "Jauuuuuuuuuuh." (Way tooooooooooo far)

A Malay-speaking Japanese?! Oh yes, he was. The kind man (who learnt his Malay through books) told us to take a bus instead, walking us to the bus stop and ensuring that we got on the right bus.

2 buses later (and may I add that it was the first time we took a public bus in a foreign country), we found ourselves in somewhere near Shibuya where there was a super duper very very loooong line of people. And so, we decided to walk.

It was only during our long trek back that we became aware of the scale of the devastation. We passed by shops with television screens and people were crowding around the screens. When we managed to catch a glimpse of the images, it was completely horrifying. That explained the flurry of text messages I received from those who knew we were in Japan.

It was a long long walk back. At some points, the wind was very strong and biting. Thankfully, we were prepared for all weather and had brought along the kids' gloves*, scarves and beanies when we left our room earlier. And I want to say it again - that Huda made us so very, very proud with her resilience! (Farah will always say, after we talk about Huda: "Abeh, Farah?" (How about Farah?) Farah, you were so helpful by sleeping for most of the journey.)
(* Note to all parents - If you have more than one kid, forget the gloves, just get them to wear mittens. They are much easier to put on!)

Back in the hotel room, we turned on the TV and watched the footage of the tsunami. That was when Huda's earlier bravery crumbled somewhat. The images she saw spooked her and so we decided to only switch on the TV when the children are asleep. Unfortunately, in the coming days, wherever we went, the only thing we saw was more of the same frightening images. Poor Huda took a couple of days to overcome her fear.

---

The days that followed were a mix of apprehension and a muted travellers'-excitement. Despite all the bad news that was coming from Japan to the media all over the world, we were still out and about trying to do whatever that we can do given the intermittent train service, early closure of stores and the generally gloomy atmosphere. Of course, there was the fear of being exposed to radiation. I told a friend that should that happen, I will not have a third child and my children will most probably not have any children. And then, there are fears of strange illnesses developing as a result of the exposure to radiation, among many other worries.

There were two other occasions when we felt close enough to danger. One night in the hotel room, the kids have fallen asleep while TheHusband and I were sorting our freshly-laundered clothes. The room started swaying. We had been feeling gentle tremors all the while so another tremor no longer frightened us. But, this time, the room swayed a lot more and the creaking went on longer than usual. The moment I sensed that this was no ordinary tremor, I was ready to push the sleeping kids into the "safe zone" which is a space between two beds. I got TheHusband to pass some bottles of water to me; should the building collapse and should we survive the collapse, at least, we can have sips of water while patiently waiting for rescue (assuming the bottles of water also survive the collapse). All these we did in seconds. I was all ready to push the kids off the bed and into the safe zone but the swaying got gentler and while the creaking took some time to stop, it eventually did.

Immediately, we turned on the television and computer and found out that an earthquake with a magnitude of 6 just occurred not too far from Tokyo. This time round, I decided not to send a message to my parents as they were worried enough. But, it made me realise how death can happen anytime.

The next occasion was our ride back. I was feeling somewhat relieved to be on the way back home. The pilots were making the usual announcements and I wasn't particularly attentive. Suddenly, TheHusband turned to me and said, "We are in an A380." Oh man. Of all planes? I made a little prayer for us to be safe and went through the safety procedures with Huda. We went through the safety information card and I pointed to her the exits, told her what to do if the breathing device (what's that called?) were to be released, how to brace, that she needed to crawl to the nearest exit if there's smoke in the cabin etc. The flight back was stomach-churning. It was a bumpy ride with lots of turbulence and the pilots had to tell the flight crew to buckle-up a few times. (It wasn't such a bad thing, then, not getting to visit Disneyland. We got a roller-coaster ride on the way back home.) But, Alhamdulillah, we got back safely.

---

When you go on a holiday, you will have many memories that you bring home with you. For me, most of the time, the cherished memories are the fun moments I had with my travelling companions, the food ore the interesting places we visited.

For the first time ever, the most cherished memory of this trip is of the people. I am awed and humbled by the grace they exude under the most tenacious of circumstances. When we were walking back, we were completely unaware of the traffic, focusing our energies on getting back to our hotel. After some 2 hours and still nowhere near Shinjuku, we thought of taking a taxi, whatever the cost. But when we turned our attention to the road, we realised that it was a barely moving bumper-to-bumper traffic. Yet, we did not hear a single honking (and that's how we were not aware of the traffic).

When train services were resumed, it was intermittent. There was a long wait for trains at the platforms. Here and elsewhere all over the world, people would have jostled through the crowd to be right in front of the train doors. Possibly pushing one or a few people off the platform in the process. (I hope I'm just exaggerating)

In Japan, nothing like that happened.

Neat lines formed across the entire platform where the train doors would be. We (coming from the unruly and uncivilised part of the world), were amazed by what we saw. The passengers did not even show signs of restlessness and frustration at having to wait.How amazing is that? (I would have been jabbing my stubby fingers on my phone screen, castigating SMRT about their inefficiency on a public forum or straight to SMRT themselves but SMRT has stopped answering my phonecalls so, ummm...)

Had we not experienced the earthquake, we would still be in awe of the Japanese although it wouldn't be to such a degree. We are amazed (this word will be so overused by the end of the post) by how clean their streets are although we don't see any cleaners working. The country's cleanliness is due to its own people and not because they have a team of hardworking cleaners working round the clock.

And the people who work in the service industry... In this part of the world we live in, we are so used to people in the service industry who gives you a feeling that they are entitled to something a lot better than measuring your feet for your shoe size. This gets translated into a poor work attitude and their general unwillingness to do anything that is beyond their core duty. But the Japanese... I'm blown away by their service industry. Even the waitress who serves you iced water makes you feel like they are truly honoured to serve you. In fact, so much that they seem too subservient. And when they are like that, how can the customer ever be mean to them?

The level of consideration that the Japanese display is mind-blowing. They don't even pick up phone calls when they are in the train because they do not want to disturb other passengers.

So full of impact this trip has been, that our biggest takeaway is to behave more like a Japanese and be a better person in the process.

---

We are touched by the love and concern shown to us by everyone who's near and dear who prayed constantly for our safety. We can never repay the kindness shown to us by everyone (family, friends & strangers both here and in Japan) so we hope to pay it forward as we strive to be better people.

I'm going to post this entry now. It's not a complete picture of our time in Japan. I foresee 2 other Japan-related entries. One will be a blog post of random anecdotes from our short time in Japan (I can't bring myself to write about happy, frivolous stuff after talking about a tragedy that cost so many lives) and one will be pictures (forgive the quality because I am a point-and-shoot person) in the photo section accompanied by lengthy explanations. But I don't know when these will come because I am ambitious in the planning stage only. I also have not proofread this entry so if you happen to read this immediately after I post this, it might be quite different from the finished product (let's hope I'll do some editing so that there will be a finished product.)

17 April: Err, 2 weeks after posting this, I obviously have not done much editing. I just want to add that I have recently realised that people are curious about our experience in Japan but I tend to gloss it over when asked about it. I am not so comfortable talking at length about our experience because most of the time, when I meet up with friends, time is so limited and I don't want to waste it talking about this. But, more than that, I find that what I have experienced is absolutely nothing compared to what the Japanese are going through now and it is not right to talk at length of my fears then when the Japanese are being battered daily by strong aftershocks and an unfolding nuclear disaster with frightening long-term consequences. (I hope I don't sound like I'm being too cocky or anything. Gasp! That's never my intention! However, had I experienced something like this, I will most probably, be deserving of 2 hours of your time telling you stories of my exciting travel.)

34X

I'm supposed to write about our holiday-of-a-lifetime. But, I haven't quite sorted out my Japan thoughts yet so that will wait til the next entry.

I want to write about our new place! (Which is not ours - and no one knows when it will ever be.)

But I'd like to think positive and if I think of it as ours, it will soon be, right?

I don't know how long we've been searching for a new place. Others started their search much, much later than we did and they have long moved into their new place. We (well, me, mainly) are extremely fussy and in the entire of Singapore, there are only 2-3 units that we consider ideal. One of them (we call it The Most Ideal) was available quite sometime ago but the seller pulled out from the market. We have since lost the house-hunting stamina. Previously, we will go view any 5-room flats in the area which is available but now, if it's obviously something we won't buy (low floor, wrong block, block facing the wrong way), we won't go.

Imagine our delight when the home-owner of the one flat we've been coveting, ie The Most Ideal, tapped TheHusband's shoulder at an MRT station one day and asked him if he was still interested in his flat. OF COURSE! 

TheHusband quickly looked up HDB's website to see if we're eligible. Unfortunately not. It's the racial quota thing. Can we change TheHusband's ethnicity to that of his maternal great-grandmother so that we can get that flat?

We've got a few months to wait. The seller wants to sell his flat only in August/September because his new house will only be ready then. I hope we can buy the flat before then. I would have started working and we may not get a CPF loan. Hmm. But, I won't be too concerned about that. I hope some Malay family in the block will sell the flat to a Chinese family. Once that happens, we should be able to buy that flat! In the meantime, it's back to waiting.

Diligence

I must, I must, I must be more diligent in documenting my girls' growing years!

Let's start with the Little Miss F.

1. F is VERY loud and VERY chatty. She speaks clearly enough for me to understand and she tries really hard to make me understand when I don't. (When I say "enough for me to understand", it means that only I understand what she's talking about. Eh, no. Huda understands her too. But generally, I need to interpret what she's saying for other people.

(Completely unrelated: I hate that word 'interpret'. It always looks incomplete to me. Like it's missing an 'e' at the back.)

This afternoon, she held up her toy ladle and said, "Mak, Ni ah-lish" (Mak, this is ah-lish.)

Me: Errrr. Ah-lish?

F: Ah-lish!

After a few more similar exchange, she said, "Ah-lish. Purple."

Ooooooooooh. Finally this thick mother understood. Ah-lish = orange. Which was the colour of the ladle. The poor girl must have been so vexed because I couldn't understand a concept as simple as colours. :p

2. She likes to copy the phrases that H uses. Sometimes, wait, not sometimes. Many times, they fight over various things and H will say, "Huda dah amik dulu!" (I took it first.)

F, who has no clue what that means, uses the same phrase to stake claim on whatever her sister is holding. She can be in the next room when H starts playing with her Lego. But the moment she sees H doing something (and to Farah, the grass is *always* greener on her sister's side), she immediately exclaims, "Falah dah amik dulu!" (She calls herself Falah nowadays instead of Lalah.)

3. Her speech is getting clearer by the day. I feel somewhat nostalgic to say goodbye to her baby speech but these are things which are better for her in the long run. F used to call all pillows Papa. Cute or what. Pillow is bantal in Malay. When I first tried to get her to say it a long time ago, she could only say Papa and it stuck. Now she can say bantal clearly so as much as I find it endearing that she calls pillows Papa, I must allow and encourage her to use the right term. Sigh.

4. She is doing less and less of that wailing/rolling-on-the-floor-while-arching-her-back routine whenever she's upset. In fact, my poor short-term memory cannot recall her doing that in recent times. Instead, when she's upset, she'll just stare at whoever made her upset and throws whatever which is in front of her onto the floor. I prefer this new brand of tantrum because it's a lot less noisy and I get to smack her hands after she throws things on the floor. If this happens when we're having dinner, TheHusband and I will just clear the area in front of her before she can start throwing things.

5. Her eating is erratic. There are good days and bad days. But, like I've said at least five hundred times, I've done too much worrying about food with H and she seems to be okay (I hope) so I'm not gonna fret too much about this. I prepare well-balanced (hopefully) meals for her and if she eats them, good. If she doesn't, I'll just hope that tomorrow will be a better food day.

6. Night time awakenings: Last night, she woke up only twice. Hopefully, today will be similar. (Is it too much to hope that she will sleep through the night?)


Big Sister H

1. I forgot to say something about her check-up at KK the other day. At her 3rd/4th year (can't remember which one) check-up, I told the doctor that she snored at night. The doctor checked her nose and found that something inside her nose was a bit swollen and she prescribed some medication (sprays and nose drops etc) and more check-ups. Her snoring stopped and further checks showed that the swelling had subsided somewhat.

Last year she had an ear infection. While her ear no longer hurts, her ear wax is a bit too watery and as I use this check-up to highlight all non-urgent medical concerns - such as "mysterious" stomach ailments that seem to happen only before she goes to school :rolls eyes:) - I brought this up to the doctor. The doctor, being the clever woman that she is, also notices that H has this habit of opening her mouth, stretching it and scrunching up her nose at the same time. I noticed this strange quirk developing in the past two months and I thought it was just a bad habit that I will be able to stop in time. But the clever doctor made the connection between her watery ear wax, the slight swelling in the nose (sternum, I think, the swollen part is called) and her mouth-stretching exercises. The doctor says that it's possible that she does that mouth-stretching thing to block off some nose juices (my own coinage, not the doctor's. the doctor is much too smart to use kiddish terms like that) from her throat.

It's so interesting the medical conditions these kids have. Thankfully, this is just a small problem and I'm sure the ENT doctors can fix this issue.

2. H is beginning to read a lot more. This, I must give credit to the school. I've been doing sight words, Baby Can Read, and a whole lot of reading etc with her but she's can be the most unwilling participant in reading. Suddenly, in the past month, she developed a desire to read everything she sees. Hmm. That is quite a bit of an exaggeration. Not everything lah. But enough to make me sit up and realise that when people say that children develop at their own schedule, this is what it means.

I'm aware that her school has a structured reading programme in place for K1 children and I think that must have spurred her interest.

So, I'm capitalising on the interest she has now to get her to read, read and read.

However, comprehension may be a bit lacking at times but that one will require a bit more maturity. And when she's ready, she's ready.

3. H is strangely averse to toothpaste. Her cousins love to eat their toothpaste so much so that children's toothpaste is practically a contraband item for them. My daughter? Nightly toothbrushing session can be such a chore (to the parents) because it involves tears and threats. Sigh.

4. I remember writing about this one before: That before kids, I had this image of myself being a completely calm and rational mother who does not use threats to get the children to do anything. Yes, go ahead and laugh like hyenas.

I've done everything that I never dreamt I would.

Materialism: "If you don't go to school, you will not get a huge salary when you go to work and you won't have any money to buy salmon and cod."

Bogeyman (and friends): "If you don't use toothpaste to brush your teeth, tonight the germs will eat up your teeth and tomorrow, all your teeth will be gone."

Vanity: "If you don't apply this cream on that scar on your face, you'll have an ugly black mark on that spot for the rest of your life."

5. H has always been a very shy child. For a looooong time, whenever we see our neighbours, I'll tell her, "Say hello to Mr Lee/Aunty Irene/Aunty Catherine/Uncle/Aunty/Atok/Nenek." I used to get, at the most, a whispered, "Hello (insert person's name)" which only the collar of her shirt could hear.

Suddenly, this year, she started greeting the neighbours really loudly. It was so loud that I was quite taken aback. Now, I don't even have to prompt her as she will greet them on her own.

6. It is really nice having children around H's age. They are independent enough to do many things on their own but not so independent that they don't need you anymore. It's a nice balance that gives the parents a bit of a breathing space after the hectic toddler years.

Okay. That is all for now.

PS: Wahleow. Typo errors. Grammatical errors. So many errors in this entry. That's what you get when you never proofread. I'll do the correction another day, okay? Or maybe never.

Fatigue

Blogging fatigue has hit me. For the past few weeks, I just don't feel like writing much or even visiting other people's blogs, which is a kepo habit I have ever since homepages came into existence. (Should my kids read this in the future, they will wonder what homepages are, pretty much similar to the way I wonder what 'darning a sock' means.)
(Now, I'm curious and I'm gonna google 'darn sock' so that I will finally know what it is.)
(I've done my googling and now I wonder why people in this modern made-in-China-cheap-cheap-cheap world would darn a sock.)

And so I've digressed. I'm forcing myself to write this and I will just post whatever that I have written so that I get into the blogging groove again. (I have this tendency to post a few entries in quick succession followed by a long period of silence.)

Huda

Huda had her 5th year check-up at the hospital just now. She goes for yearly check-ups at KK because of her prematurity. I'm pretty sure that her being premature and having had very low birth weight are no longer issues that affect her development. She was a late developer in some areas but is now on par with her peers. Alhamdulillah. But we still have to go for check-ups and KK will only discharge the preemies when they are 8 provided there are no lingering health issues related to the prematurity. I don't mind going for the check-ups because it's an avenue for me to ask her doctor any questions at all.

Today's check-up made me a bit jittery because she is scheduled for an "assessment" in September. Oh no. I scared.

(I can't imagine what it will be like when Huda goes to school and have to sit for tests and exams. Let's not even talk about PSLE here.)

Farah

1. Farah is getting highly entertaining (and vexing too). You tell her to do things which are good for her, such as put away her toys, and the answer you'll get is, "I dowaaaaan." (ie, I don't want.)

AARRRRGGHHHHHHHH!!!!

She is so good at making a huge mess and she does it in double quick time. When it comes to cleaning up, I have to expend so much energy to make her clean up.

2. These days, she likes to pretend to be other people. She'll point to herself and say, "Ni Atok." (This is Grandfather.) Then she'll assign different roles to different people and so her grandmother becomes her aunt, her sister becomes her grandmother etc. It was all just part of her daily nonsense until she pointed to herself and said, "Ni kambing." (This is a goat.)

3. I'm trying to wean her off breastmilk for good. I'm doing it in stages. For now, I want to completely cut out the night breastfeeding. But she's not too happy about it, of course. So she pays me back by waking up 4 times at night and each time, I'm supposed to present her with a bottle of milk. I'm humouring her for now but I will soon cut down on her night milk feeds because it is completely not fun having to change heavy diapers at 2 am in the morning.

Okay. That's all I'm writing for now because I gotta start sleeping early in preparation for my return to the workforce at the end of June. Boo!

Kids

1. Huda is now almost 5 while Farah is almost 2. When both are asleep, I'll always tell TheHusband that our children are just too cute. Sometimes we even take pictures of them when they are asleep so that when they are awake, we'll have proof that they can actually be cute.



2. Food

Farah is at a food-refusal stage. She had a terrible bout of stomach flu and barely ate anything during the episode. All she had was breastmilk and Pediasure. Prior to that, she was on a soft-food diet. That was by choice. For whatever strange reasons, she started rejecting rice and wanted to eat porridge. So, for a couple of weeks, I cooked porridge for her.

Now, she doesn't want any food at all unless we are talking keropok and chocolate. I've resorted to force-feeding and will be satisfied if I manage to stuff 4 spoonfuls of rice into her mouth.

Some mothers tell me that I shouldn't force-feed. The kids will eat when they are hungry. But no, sorry. I must force-feed because if I don't, she'll open the kitchen cabinet doors and help herself to my secret junk food collection (which must now find a new home because it's no longer a secret). And in case you are wondering why she can open the kitchen cabinet doors, that's because she has learnt to work the child-lock that we installed. Grrrrrr. Besides, I have skinny kids. They are underweight (I'm talking 3rd percentile here, not even 25th percentile) and when they fall ill, the weight just slides off so quickly, leaving them with only skin and bones. So, once they are better, I'll try my very best (ie, force-feed, at times) to make them gain back the weight they've lost.

Huda, however, has long outgrown her picky-eater stage. She now eats very well and always insists on vegetables to go with her rice. Yay! (She's still skinny, though. But at least, she's a skinny girl who eats well.)

Huda, Farah and their small cousins (Farouq [on the right] not included in the small category; I've divided all the cousins into 2 groups - the waifish ones and the normal-sized ones)
(From left to right, their age in 2011: 8, 2, 5, 5, 10, 3)

3. Sleep

Huda now prefers to wake up later in the morning. In the past, she would wake up outrageously early but she has now passed that baton to Farah. Farah wakes up very early, poos immediately after she wakes up and has a shower.

Bored to tears because her sidekick is still asleep, she'll join her sister back in bed. But, not to sleep. To disturb, to annoy and to wake her sister up.

Fresh out of the shower and off to perform her morning mission

4. Speech

i.   I don't worry about Farah's speech development the way I used to with Huda. She's doing just fine, talking and talking and talking non-stop and she makes sense most of the times. She can string a sentence involving up to 5 words.

ii.   She has one annoying quirk, though.

She sees a picture in the newspaper and asks, "Mak, apa ni, Mak?" (Mak, what's this, Mak?)

"Ini gambar banjir kat Australia." (This is a picture of a flooded area in Australia.)

"Ah?"

"Banjir." (Flood)

"Ah?"

"Banjir."

"Ah?"

"Banjir."

A thousand of the exact same exchange later, I'll be exasperated and I'll ask her, "Farah, ni apa." (Farah, what's this?)

Nonchalantly, she'll reply, "Jir."

iii.   She tends to only say the last syllable of every word. I told her to say "Tumpang lalu" (excuse me) when she needs to squeeze her way through people. What comes out of her mouth is "Pah lu." But, the gangster way she says "Pah lu", I might as well have taught her to say "Siam! Siam!"

iv.   Oh, there's another quirk of this girl. She has successfully copied my "You, ah." If you are not a Singlish speaker, there is no way I can explain how "You, ah" is used. But I shall try anyway: you must say it in a nasal way and it is used to affectionately reproach someone.

Now, this Farah is using "You, ah" for anybody and in any situation. She wakes up at 2am in the morning, cries for milk. I asked her to ask her father to make her milk. The father goes to the kitchen to heat up water. She follows. And suddenly she smiles and says, "You, ah!"

It doesn't make sense but at least she's not crying.

v.   She no longer calls herself Nunumeh Tan. She knows that her name is Lalah.


5. Clothes

Farah is beginning to make her own choices when it comes to clothes. This is a bit problematic sometimes because she makes strange choices.


For a trip to the library, she insisted on putting on swimming cap and no pants.

Completely unrelated, this is Huda and Cousin Nabilah. They performed at their school's graduation concert.



That will be all for now. I'm gonna get ready for driving lessons with my (younger) sister. Yesterday was my first day on the road and I am just sooooooooooooooooo very slow. And I'm not very sure how I'm gonna park at carparks given that the lines showing the lots are faded. Aiyoooooooohhhhhh.. But I'm going to try and try and try til I am confident of driving alone. (And my sister would have lost her patience with me for the nth time)

Paiseh

I am:

a. shy in person (seriously I am. if you don't think so, that's because you've known me for a long time. but, given a new situation and new people, i enjoy being the wallflower rather than being in the thick of things)
b. in possession of a poor memory
c. sometimes absolutely clueless about people and things
d. not aware how people can remember me when I can barely place them in my life, not because they are insignificant or not important but because of (a), (b) and (c) mentioned above
e. curious (to put it bluntly, kay poh to the max)

This post came about because for the nth time, I met someone who went, "You are Nadirah, right?"

"Errrrr... yeah. And you are?"

"I'm AAA from BBB. Do you remember me?"

By this time, I'll be hard-pressed to recall something, anything about this person but because of (a), (b), (c) and (d) mentioned above, I drew a blank.

So, with this person I just met, we chatted for a while and I asked her more questions about herself and being ever so humble, she replied vaguely. The kay poh in me was not satisfied and I pressed on with my interrogation (oh how I prayed she didn't perceive it as such!) and I still received vague answers.

Today while the kids slept, I decided to google her and ~ oh my goodness ~ we have so many mutual friends between us and I was so clueless about what she has been up to. She has a PhD now and is a professor at a local institute of higher learning. She's also in Berita Harian's list of 50 people to watch. Can I please not embarrass myself like this again in the future? Just stop interrogating people I barely remember and keep the conversation on neutral grounds.

Another time it was a well-known local playwright. When she introduced herself, I thought her name sounded familiar but couldn't quite place it. And as usual, I did my kay poh interrogation; she must have thought that I've had my head buried in the sand all this while. *shakes head*

I'm gonna add a new point to my list of resolutions: Don't ask people I don't know well enough too many questions.

(PS: There's so much I want to write about the kids but the more I delay, the more time I'll need to write and in the end, I just get distracted and not write about them. Must write!)

Anxiety Attack

My driving test is tomorrow and the butterflies are already doing somersaults in my stomach. Urgh. This feeling of extreme nervousness will be my downfall if I do not keep it in check. But, how?? How do I get rid of it?

Last Friday, I waited for my instructor at the driving centre. When I saw all the testers moving to the cars, my stomach just lurched! And it wasn't even me doing the test! Gaaah!

--

When my firstborn, Huda, was just a few months old, I took her to a park where there was a slide no more than 2 metres high. I remember how I felt afraid of going down that slide despite having gone down slides a gazillion times without any fear when I was a kid. I attributed that feeling to old age.

Now that I'm old, little things that never bothered me in the past make me jittery now - looking down from the 20th story of an apartment, going down slides, taking roller coaster rides etc. I guess this is also why my grandmother (who is most of the time lost in her own world thanks to dementia) will wake up from her stupor and rush to my daughter the moment she climbs up the dining chair. Growing older makes you a worrier and you think of all the worst possibilities in any situation. You lose the recklessness and bravado of youth - which would have given you a degree of (over)confidence which in turn will help when taking a driving test.

(Note to my daughters: Once you girls turn 18, I'll herd you off to a driving centre to pick up driving. Don't wait til you become a senior citizen.)

--

So, back to the driving test.

I've been going for lessons daily this past week and I have to admit that I've been driving pretty well. I didn't climb kerbs or even touch them. I parked the car nice and straight. But what does that matter when shaky hands and a muddled head rule the day? Sigh.

I'm hoping for divine intervention. (However, sometimes, when we ask Allah for help, He can always say no because He knows what's better for us - a chauffeur, perhaps?)

I've been performing solat hajat, asking Allah to soothe my nerves, help me pass the test and after passing, make me a good and safe driver who does not cause any harm to people or things. My friend who just passed her test a few months ago told me that she performed the prayer for more than a month prior to her test. She also shared with me a verse from Surah Al-Kahfi that she recited continuously throughout to calm her nerves. She's the same age and she agrees that age is a factor that affects our performance during the test. It's those old nerves at work, I tell you.

Sigh. I am already getting cold feet (and hands) thinking about the test tomorrow. Pray loads for me, everybody!

-

Jan 10

I passed! I did okay at the circuit but after making a boo-boo on the road, I proceeded to make more silly mistakes which prompted the tester to say, "You must improve, ah."

By then I thought I was a goner. I just hunched my shoulders and hung my head low thinking that I will have to repeat this entire saga again in 2 months.

So, imagine my surprise when I passed. :D

Alhamdulillah.