Misery

I am miserable.

I've been spending intimate moments (line stolen from my second brother) with Johnson Suisse since 2.50am this morning. Things have come out from both ends. I am not pregnant.

I woke up in the wee hours of the morning thinking I could catch the Brazil-Chile match. But 20 minutes into the game, my stomach was having some kind of Jabulani party. And the sounds of the vuvuzelas that accompanied it..

I'm so weak and miserable now. TheHusband took the morning off to settle the kids but he couldn't take the entire day off. Farah's diaper is as dry as a bone. This is a good time to wean her off but I could barely carry her, what more deal with her violent protests should I try to stuff the milk bottle in her mouth.

Go away, upset tummy.

Bare

Dear Husband@work,

I was washing the dishes. I turned around and this greeted me.

Please take note of the metres of cling wrap and aluminium foil pulled out. Please also note the Ziploc sandwich bags scattered behind her.

I scolded her, shooed her away from the kitchen and went about putting things right.

Coming out of the kitchen, I saw this:

-

Wake-ah

WARNING: This is dreadfully dull but it's here anyway so that my dear dear children will know what they were up to when they read this blog a few years down the road.

Socceroo
I am a sometime soccer fan. I don't follow the local league; neither do I follow the European leagues but once every 4 years, I'll savour every little story about the World Cup I can get. (They can be very blistering at times but written with such wry humour - one player from France was described as "loitering without intent on the right". You just gotta read such brilliantly written stories again and again.) And it's not just the stories I read. I also stay up to catch the matches. To the detriment of my sleep. The last match of the day kicks off at 2.30am. Lest you think I paid the telcos $90+ for such a privilege, I watch it free over the internet. The wonders of technology!

Anyway. I can't sleep now not because I'm staying up for the 2.30am Denmark-Cameroon match - I've decided that I absolutely must have more than 4 hours of sleep today - but because I'm so disheartened by Australia's draw. They fought so valiantly but things were not meant to be.


Wake-ah Wake-ah. This Time For Snoozing
So, my sleeplessness means I'll be writing about my kids here.

I've decided that June is the month when I'll start attempting to wean Farah off breastmilk. I have been thinking about it for months now but something I read somewhere strenghtened my resolve. It says that you should stop when you are not enjoying it. I wasn't enjoying it anymore because this little girl could wake up up to 6 times a night for milk. Actually, it's not that she woke up for milk. She woke up for various reasons but each time, she woke up with a loud loud loud and prolonged cry. And the only way to silence her was to feed her.

Starting from the end of May, I tried to replace the middle-of-the-night feeds with plain water, fresh milk and formula milk. I tried. She threw the bottle with such vehemence when I shoved the bottle into her crying mouth. I refused to give in and let her cry. And cry. And CRY. And thrash about violently. And kick anyone who tried to come near. And arch her back so that she seemed to be in danger of snapping her neck. It was such a terrible period. She could cry (and do all of the above) for 2 hours (remember that this is in the middle of the night and I live in a quiet neighbourhood), sleep from the exhaustion for about 30 minutes and then continue crying again for about 1 hour. By 4am, I would give in and give her some milk. This went on for many many nights.

It was such a trying time.

Now, some 3 weeks after I started this, she still wakes up at 11pm/12mn. But, she will cry for about 10 minutes and then go back to sleep. Around 2am, she  will cry again for about 10 minutes and then go back to sleep when she realises that she's not getting anything. Around 4am, she'll cry again and that's when she'll get some breastmilk.

Obviously, this is not weaning her off and introducing formula. But, if this is going to be her pattern for the next few months, I will find breastfeeding enjoyable again. I will have no problems continuing breastfeeding til September/October when I absolutely must start introducing the bottle to her in preparation for my return to the workforce in January next year.


Facebook
I don't like how multiply is looking more and more like a marketplace but I am stuck here because I don't like having to migrate everything in here to another location. Of course I could very well leave everything here and start afresh on a brand new location but I am very ngeow and OCD so I like everything to be together and not scattered everywhere.


Okay. I'm stopping here. I really really want to upload pictures taken recently. Maybe the next blog entry will be a pictorial entry. It's 1.25am now which means I'll get a luxurious 5-hour sleep if F does not wake up til tomorrow morning. Bye.

Super Dino

1. The title is Super Dino because Huda's book is beside the laptop and 'Super Dino' is part of its title. This entry has nothing to do with the jurassic era but I am not one who can come up with relevant titles so I get completely irrelevant ones.

2. Farah is now almost 16 months old and she has begun to hate eating. Her weight is sliding off the charts and she is exactly on the 3rd percentile now. She's dangerously close to falling off the charts but she no longer wants to eat now!! BOOOOHOOOOOHOOOOOOO! As with Huda, I've been cooking all sorts of potions and concoctions (I have at least 4 baby cookbooks) but nothing's working. The one thing that worked recently was nasi lemak. Just plain nasi lemak.

3. She went to the doctor's for a check-up recently and was sent for a whole lot of blood tests. One for thalassaemia, iron count, liver and kidney functions and something else. They had to take 5ml of blood from her vein and she was screaming violently while the blood was drawn from her. Results of the tests would be available at the next appointment but as for now, she's a confirmed anaemic case. Being anaemic, I want to feed her beef at least twice a week but - as expected - she rejected it even before the spoon touches her mouth. And if I manage to push the food inside her mouth, she'll spray everything out. My neighbour told me to make a drink for her using a teaspoon of wolfberries (qi zi), 2 red dates and some dried longans to help with the anaemia. I'm trying that as soon as I get the wolfberries.

4. Farah is also walking. Hooray! She started doing so from around her 15th month. Now, I no longer have to cringe in pain when I see black-ish spots around her knees. When she was actively crawling, I dressed her in long pants so that her knees are protected against rough surfaces. But, despite mopping the house daily, she has a way of showing me that my mopping is no good because by the end of each day, where the pants cover her knees, it will be grey. It got to the point where I decided that maybe I should make her wear mittens and she can do the mopping for me.

5. It's now 12.56am and I can't sleep because of my overactive brains. While I was lying in bed and waiting for sleep to take me, my brains were busy translating sentences from English to Malay. I then realised that my Malay is really not up to scratch. It is good enough to communicate with a 4-year-old and a 1-year-old but beyond that, I need to do some serious work. So, since I couldn't sleep, I decided to get up and write here.

6. We were supposed to go to Bangkok from 9-14 June. But who wants to go Bangkok when Central World (the place with the ultra ultra nice and clean toilets - I bet Farah's knees won't even turn a shade darker had she crawled in the toilet) is gone? Well, it's not just about Central World, of course.
So where are we going instead? Kuala Lumpur. We were there last December (when we had to change our destination from Langkawi) and again in February (that was planned a loong time ago). I won't say I'm sick of the place but because I've been there much too often in recent times, it has somewhat lost the charm it used to have over me.

7. Huda. One day, we went out for dinner. She was so stuffed, she couldn't have one more bite. On the way back, she saw some junk food (I think it was Kinder Bueno) and wanted us to buy it for her. Me, being the junk food police ("only one junk food a day") refused to buy it for her and soon she started whining about how hungry she was. All the way home, in the bus, on the way back from the bus stop to our home, the whining went on and on. Of course from excessive hunger, it escalated to extreme exhaustion. By the time we reached our door, she said she needed to pee. Run to the toilet and take off your pants in there, we instructed. But by this time, our little drama queen was beyond exhausted and was in danger of fainting from her parents-induced hunger, she started crawling, dragging her poor almost-lifeless body to the toilet.

8. My parents were expecting guests, one of whom is a Mr Green who used to teach  TheHusband when he was in secondary school. So we were at my parents'. The first few guests came and as I was putting Farah to sleep (and falling asleep myself), I wasn't part of the welcome party. Huda came into the room and I asked her if Mr Green was there. TheHusband came in at the same time and he said that Mr Green wasn't there yet. Huda immediately rebutted, "Dah! Dia dah datang. Dia yang pakai baju green dengan tudung green." (Yes. The person's here. The person is wearing a green blouse and a green tudung.)
(Dia = third-person pronoun for both males and females, no distinction between genders;
Tudung = a headscarf worn by Muslim women)

Huda is my Malay-speaking daughter who has no idea that 'Mr' is a salutation for men or that people can actually have colours as names.

9. I'm not sleepy but it's 1.24am and I must force myself to sleep because my kids have no respect for public holidays. Then again, they respect public holidays so much that they will wake up at 6am to greet the arrival of one.

So, goodbye for now. Til the next time when I try to translate English to Urdu or something.

Tissue Box

I have not uploaded pictures for so long and so here's some now. Why is this album called tissue box? Because that's what I saw when I looked away from the computer to think of a title for this album.

The cousins feature prominently here but the 2 latest additons are not in here. Next round of uploads, the 2 little boys will definitely make an appearance!

Charm

I love to complain.

Each time 911 is late, I'll complain. Sometimes to my husband, sometimes to my sister, sometimes I'll just call the SMRT hotline. How can I not complain? LTA says that 80% of buses come every 10 minutes (or some statistics like that). But a feeder bus service like 911? It's just not right that I have to wait 40 minutes for the bus! 911E comes instead. 911E that terminates at the interchange. I need that 911 to fetch my daughter, okay? So I end up taking a taxi sometimes. I get real agitated when the bus that I want doesn't come within 15 minutes.

But that is what life is like in Singapore, isn't it? Things function like clockwork. Or almost like one. We are so used to things happening when it's supposed to happen that we get all riled up when it doesn't. We are just not used to waiting - perhaps for a short while, it's okay; even then, during our short wait, we'll be fiddling with the gadgets that we surround ourselves with. 

My friend Suraya lives in India. She's there because her husband works there. I've always thought that she's making the mother of all sacrifices by leaving Singapore. I sound so jingoistic. But reading a recent blog entry from her made me see why people don't necessarily want to uproot themselves from India. And it is also no wonder that there are so many great writers that hail from India.

Yes, she had to wait more than, a whole lot more than my 40 minutes to get her train. But there's something about the long wait, the uncertain arrival time and the train journey that is so lyrical and poetic. It's charming. And the experiences that her boys go through are things that no born-and-bred-in-Singapore-kid can ever get. Charming.

Oil

1. Once again, I missed a meet-up with friends.

It's becoming too much of a habit.

For weeks, I look forward to the day of the meeting. Then, the little one will fall ill. Not just a little cough or a bit of the sniffles. No, oh no. A full-blown something, it has to be.

Today, I'm supposed to have some dear, dear friends over.

Three days ago, Farah developed a fever. No problem, I hoped. Saturday would be the third day and she would be okay by then. Maybe it was just a low-grade fever related to her teething. But of course that wasn't the case.

On Friday night, her temperature soared to 40.9 degrees. We gave her the suppository medicine and her temperature went down to 38.5.

In the morning, it shot up to 40.1 and we packed her off to the clinic. At the clinic, we were referred to the hospital. After blood and urine tests were conducted at the hospital, she was allowed to go back.

The reason for her fever? Possibly viral fever.

She's been having fever almost every month and she does not even go to school (where she can easily pick up all these bugs). The doctors said that although it is rather frequent, it is not a cause for alarm. As it is, she's seeing a doctor at KK for regular check-ups after her bout of bronchiolitis.

The blood tests done today and another one done last month (when she had fever) showed that the haemoglobin levels in her blood is rather low. Her red blood cells look paler and there are more ovalocytes. (I think that's what the doctors said. I'm really quite lousy in all these science things. Ask me about cation and anion if you don't believe me.) Anyway those things point to two possibilities: thalassaemia or iron deficiency. If it's thalassaaemia, I hope it's just the minor one and no further treatment needed. If it's iron deficiency, then, there are supplements to help her. I just hope that there's a cure to her monthly fever.

Aaaaaanyway, coming back to the main point, last month, I was supposed to meet another group of friends. You know how difficult it is to plan meet-ups when you get to this age and everyone is busy with their own lives. So, when a window of possibility opens, you grab at it and make yourself available. I was sooooo looking forward to seeing my friends from uni days but Farah was sick and as one of my friends had given birth to a preemie (29-weeker!), I would not want my kids going anywhere near that girl and sharing all their germs with her.

Two months ago, it was a gathering of my friends from primary school that I had to miss. See the pattern?

TheHusband told me not to talk about future meetings and gatherings in front of the kids. We will just whisper to each other and we won't even write it down on the calendar at home lest the kids look at it and decide to fall ill on that very day.

Random picture of a girl at a hospital today. Picture inserted to give your eyes a break from all the text.

2. Since I'm talking about my dearest Farah, I will continue talking about her.

She is now 1 year and 2 months old.

I am quite sure I have done more than my share of worrying during Huda's era so now with Farah, I am a lot more relaxed.

At 1 year 2 months, Farah is just learning how to walk. She would take two or three steps before tumbling down. Sometimes, I think she just enjoys crawling around. That way, she can inspect every square inch of the floor for dust and bugs and other strange stuff found on my floor and eat them up. She thinks she's a vacuum cleaner.

And only now, at the grand old age of 14 months, her teeth made their appearance. 4 of them decided to pop out of her gums at the same time. She's been a toothless baby for the past 14 months. No complaints there because I'm still breastfeeding her and a toothless baby is much easier on the, erm, on the, erm, on the body parts which it involves. :p

Speech? Hur hur. She can call out for me. She does not seem to have a name for Ayah although sometimes she seems to call out Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa for Huda. Besides that, bird is buh. Cat is buh. Bus is buh. Tree is buh. MRT is buh.

But, I'm not worried. Huda was a late developer too but she is all fine now. So, take your time, Farah.

3. Huda is 4 years old now and she has an insatiable curiosity for everything. The Whys are coming very very frequently. Why does it rain, Mak? Initially, I would tell her the story of the water cycle but it's much too boring for her and she didn't understand my explanation so she'll ask again and again. I've since learnt to tell her that it rains so that the trees can drink water.

She's into pretend play now and she often pretends to be a teacher to her roomful of students. Sometimes it's a cashier. She's going to visit a farm next week with her classmates so I bet she's gonna be a farmer next.

She has finally, finally (!!!) started sleeping through the night and her toilet training is complete. She's off diapers for good.

4. I've signed the girls up for Kids Run at the end of May PROVIDED none of them falls ill on that day. (Sigh. Why do I have a bad feeling about this?) Anyway, to prepare for the 800 kmm race, we have been doing some practice rounds ourselves. We are very sure that Huda can cover the 800m but I'm not all that confident about me. I am just lousy at PE. I confess that throughout my entire life from primary school to junior college, I have never run the entire distance of 2.4 km. I am one of those people who always always stop to walk. And worse, when I was in JC2, each time we had to do practice runs for the 2.4 km event, I will fake all sorts of illnesses and so the only time I covered the distance was during the actual test date. (Funny how I ended up conducting PE classes.) So, you see, fitness is never my thing. And that is not how I want my girls to be. That's why I signed them up for Kids Run, hoping that they'll have an early start to a healthy lifestyle.

5. This entry has taken me a long time to write. I've been here since 8.30pm and now it's 10pm. Goodness.

Gonna stop now and hopefully, the next time I update won't be such a long time from now.

When allowed to make her own choices, she'll end up wearing a red T-shirt with an orange skirt and turquoise pants.

Quick Quick One

This is supposed to be a super quick entry. I'll type everything that's on my mind now and then post it at the end of the session. Hopefully before Farah wakes up from her morning nap.

1. Farah caught HFMD and Huda got it a week later. It was terrible for F who had about 10 ulcers in her mouth. H had 2 ulcers only (one on each side of the inner cheek - and even then, the left side appeared after the right side disappeared) but she being a drama queen, her reaction to the ulcers were, well, dramatic. F didnt want to drink milk or eat and her diapers were dry. It was as traumatic for me as it was for her. But, thankfully, now both girls have completely recovered and I hope they will never get it again.

2. During this episode, my parents were not in Singapore! Boohooohoooo!! I am not a very efficient SAHM, you see. I always escape to my parents' when the girls are not feeling well. *guilty giggle* This time round, I had to do everything on my own. What a grown-up I felt like.. :P

3. Talking about growing up, years ago, my sister told me that when she turned 30, she would change all her skincare products to SK2. She was using Clinique then. Apparently, 30 is the age when your skin starts ageing. At that point, I figured that I would start taking care of my skin when I turn 30. Prior to that, I was using my sister's Clinique product (when we were still living as singletons in my parents' household) and after I got married, I washed my face with my husband's Kao Biore for Men. I know that I am extremely hopeless. Now, some 2 years plus plus plus after turning 30, I'm still using my husband's face wash.

I had been lucky because the skin on my face is very hardy and can tolerate all the nonsense I do to it (and what I don't do to it) without leaving much of a blemish or a scar. But, not anymore. Some kind of cosmic revenge, TheHusband calls it, but I've been having pimples appearing very, very frequently in the past 2 to 3 months. And they don't disappear, Thankfully they are small ones but they are still there.

So, it's time to start some kind of proper routine.

(If you are doing multi-level marketing and want to promote your products to me, please don't call me for an appointment. Just tell me about it via email and I will decide. Don't hound me, please. Thank you.)

4. More about ageing. My tastebuds are changing. Which could be the reason for the pimples. I've always liked plain water at room temperature and I had no interest in any form of sweetened drinks. Lately, however, I've developed a liking for orange juice, bandung, copious amounts of tea with milk. Aiyoooo. It's frightening.

As it is, I'm hardly exercising so all these sugary stuff isn't good at all.

5. About exercising - I need to build up my stamina. I was, shamefully, breathless after a short sprint for the bus.

6. But now, let's talk about food. Heh. My parents brought back the most succulent and tender leg of lamb from New Zealand and my mother cooked it last Sunday. I know I sound terribly deprived but that was the best ever member-of-the-sheep-family I had ever eaten. I didn't even need much to satiate myself. It was so tender, so sweet, so rich, so so so sooooooo nice. And it was probably be the only occasion in my life when I would ever eat that but it was enough. (I had heartburn for 2 days after that but it was worth it)

7. And now, for the main reason why I wrote this: 14 & 15!!

My parents' 14th and 15th grandchildren made their debut on the 3rd of March! They are not twins. 14 and 15 are children of my younger brothers. #14 was born in the morning of the 3rd of March and that same evening, mother of #15 was admitted to the hospital for an emergency C-section due to a low level of amniotic fluid. Alhamdulillah, both mothers and both children are fine.

When you are not the one who's just had the C-section, those babies look really attractive and I just want to cuddle each one and bring them home. But when you are still suffering from the post-C-section pains, all I want to do is just lie down and sleep. This paragraph is mostly a reminder to me to not get too excited about the babies because (a) they are not mine so I can't bring them home and (b) if I do have #3, the pains will be worse because it would be the 3rd c-section.

8. Now, I have pictures aplenty to upload. But, as always, they will all have to wait. (Wait for what? I also dunno.)

I want to sleep, Farah!

I am so sleep-deprived.

For a few months, this Farah slept through the night.

Then, she decided that it was fun waking up at 3am.

Now, she has made the decision to wake up at 10pm, 12mn, 1am, 3am, 4am and 5am.

If I ignore her, she will start wailing. And then, Huda will wake up whining, "Mak, Farah bising." Mak, Farah is noisy. If I choose to ignore Farah, Huda will start sobbing, "Mak, Farah nangis. Dia nak susu." Farah is crying. She wants milk.

But, no, she doesn't want milk. Because, when I pick her up and cuddle her and rock her gently, she goes back to sleep.

Two nights ago, I was terribly exhausted and wanted to just ignore her crying. She managed to stay awake from midnight to 4am, alternating between little sobs to full-blast wails. It ended at 4am only because TheHusband couldn't take it anymore and so he rocked her gently to sleep.

In the daytime, she refuses to nap on her own. She will breastfeed to sleep and will remain asleep as long as she's in my arms. The moment I put her down, it's as if I put her down on a bed of nails.

I am exhausted. Should I go to the zoo and beg the zookeepers for a tranqulizer dart?

Help!


Update: 26 February 2010 - She had a very stubborn fever last night. Temperature shot up to 40.1 degrees despite the 4-hourly Panadol. This morning, when she cried, I peered into her mouth when she cried and saw many, many ulcers on the roof of her mouth and at the back of her throat. Doctor confirmed that it's HFMD. This justifies her waking up twice every hour last night.

Famili

I have another post waiting to be published but that one requires some nip and tuck. This is what's foremost on my mind now.

My grandmother has Alzheimer's disease, of which dementia is a symptom.

She has three children - my mother and my two uncles in Kuala Lumpur. She has her own kampong in Malacca but because she can't remember if she has eaten or not (among many other things that she has forgotten), her children take turns taking care of her. In between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, the caregiver will send her to Malacca first where a good neighbour will take care of her for a few days before one of her children picks her up.

It is challenging taking care of people with dementia. They can't remember where they are, who we are, who her children are. Sometimes they can't even remember which stage of their lives they are. And so, at a ripe old age of 80, they are still calling out for their mothers.

I admire my mother's strength.

Many many years ago, my grandfather - my father's father, gradually lost his strength. He was lucid but he was weak. My mother took care of him, bathed him and fed him. We helped my mother to bathe and feed our grandfather and clipped his toenails too. But my mother was the primary caregiver.

Now, I see my mother once again playing the role of the dutiful daughter and take care of my grandmother even though it's emotionally taxing.

I wonder about me.

Will I have the same patience and strength as my mother?

I wonder about my children.

Will they have the same patience and strength as their grandmother?

I pray and I pray that all of us have infinite strength and patience and love to see all of us through our darkest days.