The lil’ dude and his family…

Irfan had his 3-week break early August but I sent him for  the “Summer Programme” for one week and the week after that he was with me as my parents were abroad. Life with Irfan is getting a bit simpler on one hand, but on the other hand, it’s getting a tad complicated. As he is very much independent these days, he tends to have his own mind and ways regarding certain things. Clothes that I’ve laid out for him for the past 3 years plus or so may not be as “happening” as he wants them to be. So he’d spend an additional 10 minutes staring at his clothes and choosing what he wants to wear. Nevermind that sometimes he looks like a clown. :P Weekday mornings prove to be even crazier than before because on top of choosing what he wants to wear, he chooses what he wants to eat as well and it just drives me nuts at times because it delays our schedule even more!

His diet is also starting to change. Things that he used to like, he just doesn’t want them anymore these days. However, rice is still his main staple. He tends to eat lesser during dinner and although it used to worry (and stress!) me, I just let him eat whatever he wants. Don’t get me wrong - he still eats. Just that it’s not that big of a portion like how it used to be. But he still eats plenty during lunch. Probably because he works hard in school? Heh.

Speaking of his school, as of last week he has been promoted to the upper class with the older boys and girls. And so far, he has been ok in that class but he tells me that he misses his teacher from his previous class as he was very attached to her. And ever since being in the class with the older kids, he told his teacher that he doesn’t want to drink milk in school anymore as he’s a big boy now and will only drink his milk at home. Malu ka? Hahahahaha!

His latest craze is the iPod touch where he learns how to spell simple words and writes ABC and 123 on the screen but I was told by Dr. Sharmila (his paed at Prince Court) that when it comes to these things, one should always go back to basics. Well, he gets his basics from school (he holds the pencil real well anyway) so he gets to use all the techy stuff with uslah. At least it keeps him still while we’re out dining and such. :)

Got him his flu jab last Saturday as we’ll be in Europe in December and with the H1N1 and everything else around, I didn’t want to take any chances. He needs to get the second jab next month and I think we’ll get ours too. A family friend of the inlaws who was in Frankfurt got the H1N1 and slipped into a coma for 39 days and passed on. Sigh. Quite scary, innit? Hopefully we’ll be okay then. Dahlah winter. Ish! One can only pray and doa. InsyaAllah.

p/s: No pictures of Irfan as I haven’t touched my camera in more than a month! Eeeeep!

On one of the days during the long weekend, Aaron and family, Danny + Kathey and our family made a trip to Lentang Waterfall off the Karak highway. We left our place at about 8.40 a.m. and traffic wasn’t that bad until we arrived at the Karak toll - that’s where the backlog started - but the journey was smooth after the toll plazas.

It wasn’t difficult finding the place and since it was still quite early - 10-ish a.m. - there weren’t that many people around and we managed to secure a nice spot. We didn’t go all the way up but we didn’t stay at the bottom of the stream (yuck!) either. After taking out the stuff from the car, we ate the nasi lemak that Irwan bought first because everyone was starving. Heh. Afterwards, the boys and girls (sans Nadia and Danny) went into the water and had some splashing fun time.  The water was just too c.o.l.d laaaaaaa and besides, I had more fun playing with Aaron’s 85mm f1.2 and 135mm f2 than being in the water. Haha!

Irfan and Naomi had their share of playing and fighting with each other. One minute they were arguing like couples do and the next minute they were on their best-est behaviour. Irfan also satu hal lah, always like to irritate the h*ll out of Naomi. Sigh.

Aaaaaanyways, the lil’ dude is down with HFMD (again!) but it’s really really really mild. Even milder than the mild one he had when he was 1+ years old. I don’t know where he contracted it from but his principal called me around noon yesterday saying that Irfan complained of being tired and lethargic and his body was quite warm. I brought him to SJMC (or Sime Darby) later in the evening and last night, his temperature shot up to 39 degrees. I inserted the suppository given to me by the paed and he was okay throughout the night.

This morning, while I was changing him, I noticed a spot on his thigh and alarm bells started ringing. I immediately called up SJMC and made an appointment to see his paed. 5 seconds later, I changed my mind because I knew it’d be a l.o.n.g wait at SJMC and called up Prince Court to see a paed there instead. Since it was our first time there, I chose a Dr. Sharmila and she proved to be a good choice I made. :) At the hospital, we detected a few more spots on his palm, but thank god his mouth is clear of ulcers. I remember that the last time he had HFMD, the ulcers were driving him nuts. So for now, he’s off school for one week and hopefully the spots will disappear soon. He’s his normal self - running about and jumping around - so I guess that’s good.

I voiced my concerns to the paed regarding Irfan playing out actions with his cars and even conversing with them or sometimes scold the cars like how I scold the other cars on the road (eep!) and she says that that’s normal - his right brain doing the work - and since school these days are so left brain oriented that I should just let him be. And I should also stop saying “no” to everything that he wants to do (which I think is harmful etc etc) because it’s like snipping the flower off when it wants to grow. Instead, I should work my way around the situation. Sigh. This parenting business is quite tricky, innit? :P

Anyhow, he’s 37 months old already and I taught him to repeat with me the Al-Fatihah the other day and he was doing good. Maybe I should teach him mengaji soon? Alif-ba-ta-…. ;) We’d also like to send him for Mandarin classes, so we’ll see. Don’t want him to feel overwhelmed with all the activities and I’d really want him to enjoy his childhood with lots of playing and learning and playing. Heh.

Less than a month to go and this budak really amazes me. He’s learnt so much in school that he’s independent these days. He picks what he wants to wear. He tells you what he wants to eat, how he wants his food done, etc etc. He speaks like a real adult and strings his sentences very well, so yeah, I’m glad that school is doing well for him. :)

His latest craze is to play with the paper and glue. I guess he has been learning how to use them in school and the amount of artwork he brings home.. holy schmoly..! Tons of them! Coloured ones, painted ones, mosaic ones - you name it, he has it. Haha. I now have a special place where I store his artwork and when we make that trip to Ikea (yet again!), I’ll probably get us some nice frames to hang his artwork on the wall. I’ve got some ideas running in the head, but we’ll see. Got inspired by some of these walls below. :)

Dear budak-yang-tak-begitu-kenit-dah,

You are now 34 months old. Wheeeee.. 2 more months and we’ll see if we’ll throw a birthday bash for you. Heh.

You are enjoying every minute of your time in school - which is good news - but please play with your friends too, rather than just conversing with the adults. I know that you’ve not had any kid(s) around while growing up, but it’s really fun to play with kids your age. You should try it! :)

On another note, I’d like to thank you for agreeing to sleep on your own bed now, although you do make a fuss sometimes because you want to sleep with us, but you’ve been really good and have been sleeping on your own for the past 2 weeks or so. So yaaayyy! We’ll work on moving the bed to your own room next, ok? ;)

Anyhow, do enjoy your early birthday gift from your papa, yeah? Hopefully we can have more fun this coming (long) weekend!

x, Mama

he’ll be starting his first day of kindy tomorrow! I am both excited and nervous for the both of us. Haha. I just hope that things will be okay and that he’ll enjoy his days kat situ. We were there last Saturday for the kindy’s open day and Irfan had such fun playing with all the assorted toys, cutting the (toy) vegetables and fruits and mingling around. I heard that some of the parents were moving their kids there from another famous kindy in Bangsar because of the fees hike, but hey, even this one dah naik by a hundred bucks, ok? Gila madness! I think I’m going to have to agree with Irwan on this one - the fees we are paying definitely can pay off somebody’s Diploma course locally!

So yeah, the kid’s happy, the parents are a nervous wreck, but hey, that’s what this is about, right? Right! And poor Irwan wouldn’t be able to see his firstborn off to kindy as it’s only his 7th day tomorrow kat the new office and speaking of the new workplace, sigh, since he’s holding quite an important position, I (or rather we) hardly see him on weeknights. :( And the guys there even work on weekends and Irwan feels bad that he isn’t. W.h.a.t??!!!!! :P I dontch like the blackberry that the company has given him. Maybe I should turn it off on weekends. Haha!

By the way, do kids tend to get sick more often when they are in kindies? That really is my main concern because Irfan just got better from flu, fever, cough - the whole works! - and I really don’t want him to get sick againlah. Dahlah his wheezing got so bad that day that he had to be on the puffs (inhalers) after the nebulizer. Ish! Ikut mak bapak dia jugaklaaaaa…

At 32 months, he can already:

• wear his own pants, socks and shoes
• sing til the cows come home
• hold a pencil real well and likes to write (gibberish) or draw doodles
• eat on his own
• ask me questions til I go mad
• eat everything under the sky minus kayu, batu, pasir et al
• tell his wants and don’ts - and be very firm about his choice
• watch a movie - thank god! - and his favourite being wall.e
• swim, jump, dunk, kick, turn, flip and whatever else in the pool - must get him off the floaties soon as we’ve been giving him less air in the floats
• pee on his own - but still not 100% toilet trained yet
• scream and whine when his demands are not met - madness!
• help me fold his clothes - albeit a bit messy, but who cares? :P
• snap (some rather ok) photos via the pns

and many more I can’t remember. Haha. It’s a crazy month, this December is. Hopefully I can breathe better next month! :)

To my dear husband - I love you then as I love you today and thank you for being the greatest husband a wife could ask for! Here’s to us growing old together and watching our child(ren) blossom into good people. Amin.

Irfan’s turned 31 months (I counted correctly, kan?) two days ago. He’s a handful these days and yaps non-stop. The questions don’t stop either. He’s always so banyak tanya that I get letihlah and sometimes when I’m tired, his persistence annoys me. But he’s a kid, right? I guess I just have to handle my annoyance in a positive way. (How do you do that anyways?)

He’s started singing too. From 1-2 buckle my shoe to twinkle twinkle lil’ star to this old man to half-here-half-there of Apologize by One Republic (favourite song!) to the ABC song (at the top of his lungs!) and asks me “next time won’t you sing with me?”. Haha. Whatever makes his daylah. :)

We’ve scouted around for his school and found one that I think would be suitable for him but let’s just see when we do swing by next week for a visit and chat with the teacher/principal. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this would be it because penatlah cari school banyak-banyak. Heh.

The past few weekends, we’ve had Aaron and family joining us for some fun time at the pool and pigging out time at the ayam golek stall, durian stall, Raju’s banana leaf rice and a few others that seem to have slipped my mind. Haha. The kids really had fun at the pool and Irfan was the blackiest of the lot last weekend as he stayed out ’til 1230 pm!

The plan was to enjoy Manly Beach with the sunny weather and the Jazz shows but it rained from the night before til late evening. :( Nevertheless, Zehan still brought us to Manly and we managed to watch a few Jazz shows here and there.

We had fresh seafood for lunch, but unfortunately Irfan didn’t have any as he fell asleep right after we left Zehan’s place and only woke up when we were having hot chocolates for tea. Heh. The rain finally stopped by then but it was so lecak everywhere and Irfan had fun jumping in the puddle and see his Mama turn beet red! :P

After watching this really great saxophonist and his band, we made our way back to Zehan’s place to get ready to have dinner at Cafe Sydney - a gorgeous dining place overlooking the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge. Since it was really really cold that night, they had the place all closed up. Damn, what a waste! But dinner was great (and pricey!) but we didn’t really get to enjoy the whole ambiance because Irfan was tired and cranky and although the waitress offered him a dvd player (which we politely refused), we thought that it’d be best if we went home and not disturb the other diners. There was this one old lady who was giving me the killer looks. Macam dia tak pernah ada anak like that. Geez.

So anyway, there we were, walking in the cold (brrrrrr!) and Irfan suddenly thought that he’s not that sleepy anymore and was running, jumping and tergolek-ing everywhere. Ish! His new hobby was to press the pedestrian button and whenever we let him press, he’d be ever so happy. Kids. What simple minds they have. :)

I couldn’t tahan the cold and the furious wind (although I was wearing Zehan’s jacket) and hurriedly got to the car. Stopped at a souvenir shop to get some stuff and off we went.

Stayed up that night to pack as I didn’t want to do all the packing last minute, but the next day, I did keluar masuk barang for god knows how many times and since it rained on that day too, we didn’t go to the beach. Cooked some breakfast, got all ready and left for Aryan’s place for a Raya open house. Again, Irfan slept in the car and when we arrived at Aryan’s, we left him in her room and had some really good nasi lemak (go all the way to Sydney to have nasi lemak! haha!) and ketupat and satay and cakes. Yum!

Daylight savings started on the day we were to depart, so I was quite kancheong because I didn’t want us to miss our flight to GC. If we did, hoo-boy, we’d be stranded in Sydney for quite a bit and we don’t want that to happen, do we? So we left Aryan’s place not long after and when we arrived at Sydney Domestic Airport, there were just so many humans queuing! I checked ourselves in at the kiosk and got our boarding passes, but we still needed to queue to check-in our luggages. The queue was moving at snail’s speed because some people just didn’t bother to have themselves checked in at the kiosk so that delayed a lot of people. By 530pm (our flight was at 605pm), we were still nowhere close and an announcement was made asking us to go to the “last minute” counter so that we can settle our stuff in a jiffy and board the plane.

Once we boarded, it took quite a while for the plane to take-off. And I was still a bit worried because I wasn’t sure whether we’d arrive in time to collect our luggages, go through immigration and check-in again at the AAX counter. I got all panicky for all the wrong reasonslah. We had so much time and got bored waiting at the GC airport. Haha. Our flight to KL was at 935pm and we arrived at LCCT at 4am. Took forever to get ‘em luggages and decided to try the Skybus (since we were too early) and the ride was just hor.ren.dous. Well, that’s another story for another day. Suffice to say, the CEO of Skybus called me the day after I wrote in a complaint at their website and apologized profusely.

So, that’s that and now we’re saving for our next trip puyak (Irfan’s slang). ;)

Pictures from Aryan’s place - taken with her camera. :)

Bondi has been in the itinerary for as long as I can remember because of the *eherm* reason. Aaanyway, as soon as we got to Bondi Junction via the train, Irfan was already sleepy and wanted to sleep. It was a hassle to pick him up, fold the stroller and masuk the bus that was jam packed like a can of sardine as it was a sunny Friday and everyone wanted to head to the beach. What did we do? Go round Westfield we did. While I was going through stores after stores after stores, Irwan went to Borders to read some books. That was a good move because otherwise he’d nag at me non-stop for going shopping in Bondi! Abih tu, dah anak tido? :P

Fast forward t.h.r.e.e hours later and Irfan was still asleep. So we decided to have lunch and wait for the lil’ master to wake up before deciding on our next course of action. I can’t remember what time he got up, but it was pretty late and so we fed him his lunch - prawn spaghetti - that I prepared earlier on. Looking at the time, it wasn’t a good move if we head down to the beach (45 minutes walk) since Zehan said that we’ll be watching some fireworks at Darling Harbour at 8 p.m. We walked around the area and found the Centennial Park, but it was way.too.heeyuge for us to explore. And I was already tired from walking everywhere. Heh.

We took the train back home and Irwan thought that he’d take Irfan to a playground near the train station at Zehan’s place and I had to lug (literally!) the stroller, the bags, the loot and everything else that we had with us. Climbed up the hill and was thinking that I might just die half way (that’s how unfit I am!). Arrived in one piece at the apartment and I had 3 floors to climb (it’s a walk-up apartment). Just thinking about it now makes me go woozy. :P Had to leave the stroller and some stuff downstairs first while I sent up the loot and by the time I was done, my legs felt really really wobbly. Teruk kes!

Zehan called me after about 20 minutes and said that her earlier plans got cancelled and I was to pick her up with the car at a nearby restaurant. We caught a glimpse of the fireworks while crossing the bridge and that was that. Like so short. Ish! It was tough to find a proper parking and I ended parking us 15 minutes walk away from the Latin Fiesta at Darling Harbour.

Music was too loud and it was too smoky to remain outdoor, so we went inside to have some yummy kebabs. It wasn’t as good as what Irwan had for lunch at Bondi, but can dolah. And my son being my son, decided to do his big business right after dinner. Aiyo. Since it was quite a distance to go to the car and get his bag and come back again and also the fact that it has started drizzling (like dammit!), I told Zehan that we’d go back to the apartment instead, and to call me if she needs me to pick her up later. That’s how our Friday night ended. Not very happening, ey? :P

This one was edited by Aaron: