Take a break

Adam was feeling a bit under the weather so I let him sat behind me while I was making thorough check on my notebook which was just back from ICU. You know...the annual event whereby, come February, a notebook would die on me one week before whatever dateline I had at the time. Spooky.

Adam must have feeling groggy from all the multicoloured medicine he had downed after breakfast. He was muttering something behind my back. Suddenly the toy he was cluthing fell down to the floor. I turned and found him peacefully asleep :) Poor little boy.

School Registration

For Amri, that is. He'll be in Year 1 primary school next year. So...end of our days of going for holiday or balik kampung as and when we felt like it. Not yet anyway.We still have this year to go places off peak period.

I dropped by at the nearest primary cchool and filled in the registration form. That was after waiting about 15 minutes for the person in charge to come back to the office from whereever she was. Then another few minutes for her scurried around looking for registration form. I thought I came equipped with everything they need, but obviously, I did not bring a self addressed envelope.

For the benefit of other first timer, here are the list of the documents you need to bring.
1. Original birth cert & a copy of it
2. Original water/telephone bill (non-returnable)
3. Self addressed envelope (with stamp, of course)

Well...I had no problem to drop by again and bring the envelope. Served me right too for not bothering to stop and read the banner that the school hanged at the T-junction. (Honestly...can't they hang at the place where I can park my car?)

What really bothered me was the fact that the administration office of that school had about half a dozen staff around at the time I was there. None bothered to help while waiting for the person in charge came in. What was so difficult anyway to get a piece of registration form and hand them to me. All of them (except the registration lady) were glued to the tv. One of them had her fingers on her computer keyboard but her head was obviously facing the tv.

When I finished filling in the form, the registration lady was nowhere to be seen. I called the half dozen ladies in front of the tv, saying that I was done. No one budged from her place. None even turned towards me, though one of them mumbled something that sound like 'tunggu sebentar' without even taking her eyes off the tv. Duh. What was so interesting anyway with the tv? Wonder what would happen if these lot were to be SAHM. I didn't even want to start imagine :)

Al-Fatihah

Al-Fatihah to a fellow blogger's mom on her return to her Creator. From Allah we come, to Allah we return.

To Lollies, you've been a great daughter to your mom. Not many are willing to do what you did and much less being given the opportunity to serve their mom the way you were.

Takziah from our family.

Work it out

After all those eating binge at Kuantan, I'd better eat something bland for these few days. Perhaps no nasi lemak for breakfast till Friday. Definitely no nasi beriani lunch/dinner this whole week :)

By the way, the night at Kuantan, Adik & Faizul brought us all to seafood place near a beach. Unfortunately, the seaside was banked up....perhaps to reduce the effect of tsunami like things to the fisherman village along its beach. Too bad....I would sure love to have wide open seaview while stuffing my face. And breathing in the cool night seabreeze.

No matter......the lack of seaview/seabreeze certainly had no effect whatsoever to our appetite. We chose Warung Kak Ana, apparently very popular and selected our seafood. The dinner was fabulous. A big ikan bakar, large squid and huge prawns plus a big bowl of plain rice, accompanied by mixed vegi (for the babies)....and guess how much all that cost? RM75. Not bad for 4 adults (one was preggy, thus constantly ravenous), 1 kid who ate more that the adult, one tot and one baby (who made more mess than eating). The fish was grilled with petai and chilli....which turned out very nice indeed. I've never had petai with fish before. To say we overeat was an understatement.

Maybe I'll just put in extra hours at the gym today.

A pit stop at Kemaman

Finally, I managed to persuade hubby to make a detour to Intan/Arip's house @ Kemaman. I just loved their place. It was a warm and chaotic , with loads of toys & educational stuff for their three kids. Too bad we could not stay long. But it was long enough for us to catch up with each other. The bread pudding was great too :)

Opssss....I forgot to attend Xanna's kenduri cukur jambul for her second child. Sowwiii.......

Out of town

Just to Kuantan visiting Adik & her family. Also to give ourselves a bit of fresh air after battling with flood, ruined cars and sick kids. Adik was doing pretty well, despite in her 4th month of pregnancy and chasing after 8 months old Haziq. Even managed to prepare big serving of chicken rice for our lunch. Thanks dear.

Haziq however, has developed a case of tongue-tie (ankyloglossia). Adik already noticed it during the first few days after Haziq was born but, since he did not have any trouble breastfeeding, decided to do nothing and just wait for it to correct itself. However, more and more people kept on commenting on that and suggesting to Adik & Faizul to bring him for corrective surgery. Well...they finally decided to go see a pead this coming Monday for fear that Haziq may end up with speech problem if left untreated.

Here is a summary of what a tongue-tie is about.

The term actually refers to a condition where the tongue remains more anchored to the bottom of the mouth than it should be, restricting movement. Babies and children with this condition have a short lingual frenulum (the piece of skin that joins the tongue to the floor of the mouth) and it may or may not cause problems with breastfeeding and speech.

A tongue-tie is not always apparent and may not be picked up until your baby has feeding difficulties (see below) or speech problems at the age of two or three.

The good news is that lots of babies with tongue-tie experience no problems at all, either with feeding or speech. However, some babies will have problems with breastfeeding because they won't be able to use their tongue to massage their mother's nipple and areola. If they can't stick their tongue out beyond their lower gum they won't get enough milk. Any of the following can be symptoms of tongue-tie:

• Failure to latch on
• Slipping off the breast while feeding
• Sore nipples, mastitis and/or blocked ducts
• Continuous feeding
• Colic
• Slow weight gain.

A baby with tongue-tie may not have all of the above symptoms and some babies will have these symptoms, but not have a tongue-tie.

How is it treated? This is highly controversial — prevailing medical opinion says do nothing and it will usually right itself by the end of the first year of life. If the baby still has a problem after this period, a paediatric surgeon may consider surgery to divide the frenulum from the base of the mouth (a procedure called a frenulotomy). Others will only perform surgery much later if the child has had speech problems and has not responded to speech therapy. But, in some areas, doctors are prepared to divide the frenulum much earlier if the baby either has problems with breastfeeding or has a sibling with speech problems due to a tongue-tie.

What does the surgery involve? Again, it varies. Some do the division with a general anaesthetic requiring a hospital stay, while in others it is done without anaesthetic on a day-case basis. The procedure itself involves simply snipping the skin to divide the frenulum from the bottom of the mouth and takes a matter of seconds.

Excerpted from Babycentre.com

Another thing to do

Guess what?????

I learnt belly dancing! And loved it to bits. Good at it too....hehehe.

One of those days

I had a weird day, if not what you call one of my bad day (I've had worse, believe me!). First, very early in the morning, I was locked out from my own room after I went downstairs for a few seconds to see to Amri's breakfast. Hubby was in bathroom so I had to search around for the keys. After frantically looking on my table, suddenly it hit me that the bunch of keys were downstairs because we were using them to open sliding door. Gosh! I was already five minutes late sending Amri to his kindy. When I started the car engine, I heard a funny sound. Then Adam pointed out to the back wiper which were wiping nonexisting water merrily. Tried as I might, I couldn't make it stop. So, I just switched off the engine, dragged the two boys out and shoved them inside the crv instead.

Once back from the kindy, I looked for aveo's manual and after trying this and that...managed to switch off the stubborn wiper.

Took Adam to his pead, somehow escaping a nasty episode of nebuliser and were back at home by ten something. The autogate remote was not functioning so had to ring the doorbell. Bibik opened both of the gate, which knocked Adam to his back and narrowly escaped being thrown into a drain. Duh!

Adam took his three medicine then promptly went to sleep. I tried to get some work done and failed miserably. The person at Guthrie I was looking for was as elusive as ever. I was told that today, Mr Elusive has gone to malacca. My paperworks still couldn't proceed without proper address.

I needed to courier out some urgent paperworks so I decided to go to Giant's post office. The kids wanted to tag along, so I readily obliged. The front passanger seat was lowered down previously because I used my aveo to transport rolled up carpet that I collected from laundry. Please don't ask me why I didn't use crv instead.....I honestly didn't know.
I pulled at the seat lever to make it normal again but it just refused to budge. Hmph! Amri was getting panicked. He thought he would be required to lie down at the front seat all the way....hehehe. I pulled again but still it stucked. Must be the side effect after all those flood water. Okay....so I stepped out from the car, told Amri to step aside, used both hand and pulled. Really hard. Gosh!!!!!!!! It moved! But the seat swung so violently it hit my head and three of my fingers were stucked in between the lever and the seat. For a while I was numbed, then everything within my view started to turned orangy for a few seconds and finally the pain hit me. Amri, blessed the little boy, helped to unstucked my fingers and give me a hug. Adam has gone completely quiet. Oh boy..........

In true blue Nae's style, when faced with bad tidings, the first thing I did was to send a nasty sms to hubby. Then I'd fell a lot better. So I did. And made dear hubby worried. So he transfered some money with strict instruction to go pamper myself with facial, massage or something. Oh dear...... Thank you sooooo much but sitting down with a facial was the last thing I should do now. I'd be too nervy and trying to relax would seemed an impossible feat.

I however, did the best thing that worked for me to destress....I went to aerobic. But this time, armed with extra money from hubby and no time restriction, I head off to Bukit Jelutong aerobic centre. Well....if I were to have business premise and possibly a future home there, I might as well join the community now.

My God! I should have joined earlier. For the first time in my life, I had an aerobic instructor who did not make me feel that I might need to quit eating altogether and fire my maid. She had enough meat on her to assure me that she is indeed, human. And the members.....were they friendly lot. Sure, half of them were beautiful datinistas but they all are warmhearted ladies who upon hearing that I came fromTTDI Jaya, asked the right question "How's your car, dear?" I sure loved to shock people with horror stories of our cars.....like some kind of heroics tales of noble battle . Oh...the aerobic centre come well equipped and worth every cent of the fees. They even have morning sessions.

When in stress, sweat it out!

Points to ponder

Had one little chat with a brilliant early childhood educator quite some time ago. A really nice, friendly lady. In fact, she had done most of the talking while I listened aptly, for there were too many great tips going to be missed out it I were to interfere with my little mundane talk.

So, in summary, here are some of the things, aka tips, that we talked about :

1. Your firstborn better be a girl.
2. Failing which, your firstborn should be born within the first half of the year, i.e January to June. The earlier,the better.
3. Failing both, as in my case, you'd better geared yourself up for some out of ordinary coaching towards your child if you have the teeniest bit of intention of sending your child to government primary school.
4. The first alphabet your child should be thought to write is 'c', followed by the rest of alphabet that has the same keystroke as 'c', such as a,d, e, g......
5. Writing capital letter should only be introduced after the child has mastered small letters.
6. Teach the child Malay Language phonetic first, starting with the sound of alphabet.
7. Followed by alphabet recognition, i.e his ABC
8. Followed by English Language phonetic.
9. Preferably no live in maid.

She even recommended some books for kindergartener, which I had to google the net first to get the full correct name of title and publisher. If anybody interested, email me personally.

Well.....seemed that I had everything wrong from no.1 to 9...hihihihi. No wonder Amri struggled for almost three months before he could made sense with his Malay reading materials. He was lucky though that he has superb teacher, who noticed that not only he's been born on the wrong side of the calendar, he was also being thought English phonetics first. The teacher was quick to alert me and I was lucky enough to have half my foot in education line, thus many sources to consult with. I was glad to notice that today Amri breezed through his Malay readers effortlessly, though occasionally pronounced ''i' as in 'i am' instead of 'itu'. He was mightily confused three months ago.

Point no. 1 & 2 would be too late for me and most of my friends,but..............to the newlywed Amin & Suria.....take note you guys :)

Sorry, Amin.

I was feeling guilty as hell. Today was Amin's wedding and apparently we couldn't make it for many reason. One was, Mie & Aboh were coming over to visit their grandchildren. Second, hubby had a presentation to make. Duh!

Sorry Amin. Really, really sorry. Hope you had a grand wedding. I was really looking forward to it. I hate to break my promise like this. Once you come back to Shah Alam, please come for dinner/lunch/tea and collect your wedding present, okay. I really wanted to meet the bride. Don't forget to email me the pics. I'll post it up here and at externalzone.

Once Mie & Aboh arrived from Kuantan, Amri was ecstatic. He's been waiting for his Tok Kie for about a week. Kept on asking us whether it was Saturday yet. Once his TokKie set foot inside our house, Amri immediately turned into Tok kie's shadow, permanently attaching himself to his grandpa. And later bullying Tok Kie to buy him the set of baloons he so wanted.

My car is back

Finally!

My poor little car was ready to be collected. Burnt a hole of 2.9k in my already shallow pocket (or rather....credit card). But still.....it felt good to have your own car back. Like a long anticipated freedom. Oh....all the places I could go by myself now......

But...first thing first. A necessary stop at nearest petrol pump.And guess what!!!! It now cost RM78 for a full tank. Bummer! I'll just walk to all the places I so desperately need to go. Surely Amri wouldn't mind walking to his kindy. If only he could walk faster and not make a u-turn to the playground....

A birthday party and a reunion

I was invited to a reunion disguised as birthday party, or maybe the other way round. Doesn't matter. What matters were...I get to meet my long lost bestest friends from my years at Jenan. Once a group of giggly and not so innocent young girls were now suddenly blossomed into corporate superwomen with kids in tow. At least, I was. The kids part, I meant. The rest, save for Sitot, wisely kept their kids and husband at home. I would too had I known that it was more a reunion than birthday party. Unfortunately.....while grappling with crash harddisk, flood and submerged cars....I was at near loss with the information exchange that was done primarily via email. So I came with my usual entourage.

Lucky for me, I had a darling of a husband who kindly waited for hours for me, despite the apparent fact that the wife had completely, except in size, turned into a foolish 16 year old again and whom had conveniently forgotten that she had a couple of kids wrecking the host immaculate kitchen and terrorising the host's daughter. For that, thank you sooooo much. I promise, once I get my car back, I'll drive myself everywhere.

Ladies,
It sure great to see you all again. Thanks Chem for hosting the party/reunion. Thanks Che Lin, Fit and Sue for organising. Ajie....you still didn't tell me what happened to your blistered hand.

Annoyed second time round

I was at home, nursing an oncoming cold, diarrhea and funny period pain. Hubby was away thus I was left without a car. Which was fine with me, the boys and I were so sick we could hardly walk 10 paces without doubling back to toilet or throwing up on the floor, what more to drive around. Then a friend called saying she was on the way to my house. Well......fine....we did have a gaggle of visitors lately. Afterall, we were the famous flood victims. Very nice of her too....coming all the way from KL. I was kinda happy with the thought of meeting her, since the last time I met her was when I gave birth to Amri.

But surprise......surprise! She was not here to offer her sympathy, much less helping out with the usual aftermath of flood. She brought an MLM lady who immediately launched into sales pitch at the first chance she had. Sheesh. They were here to recruit me as downline, seeing that I now had all the time in the world with my new status of SAHM. As if!!! I should have known better. If she wasn't interested in my life all this years, never attended any of my open houses, not an email/sms and never appeared at any externalzone reunions, obviously she was on to something. It upsetted me a great deal as I was looking forward to an afternoon of catching up with the lost years as well as a friend to comisserate with the state of my house post flood and maybe the irrigation problem at ttdi jaya. See....we people at ttdi jaya sure love to blow any problem out of propotion. But i guess, the whole nation knew about it.

There i was, listening the MLM lady droning on and on about a miracle product that could cure all sickness in the world. If she had her way, we need not forked out the scholarship for our top students to study medicine. The fund could be channelled out to, say, building flood retention ponds at every available land at ttdi jaya. I was sick, my kids were sick, my house was in great mess, my hubby will have to foot a 40k++ worth of car repair bills, my maid was too tired to cook dinner and all these fine ladies could think of was to get my IC pronto for registration so that they could meet their target. How low could people possibly stoop....

Ironically....this was not the first time I ended up with MLM people as guest. I was once received a call from our old neighbour, saying that she was coming over with her families. I was thrilled. I love having guest. I quickly whipped up bubur kacang and cucur jagung and what not for the guests. Turned out, they brought over a saleslady selling a multi purpose vacuum (that could also cure all sickness as well) who went right to product demo the moment she set foot in my house. Needless to say, my old neighbour quickly downed their drinks, declined the bubur kacang and made their exit so fast I didn't have a chance to salam with any of them. Pathetic.

I did not hate MLM people,especially if they are my friends. I did have a few of them in my phonebook and i ordered quite a number of stuff from them. However, people must learn how to distinguish between business call and personal call. If you have something to sell, simply say so. Believe me, I could tune in my brain in a jiffy. I simply did not appreciate being invaded during my personal time and especially not during hard time.

Beware of long lost friend!!!!!!!!!!!

Restoration Day

I was done with cleaning up. Today was for putting them all back together. Curtains, tablecloth, cushion covers etc. The toys, which amount seemed to reduce substantially were back into their toy chests with more room to breath. Dried sofa bases were hauled back inside again. Thank God it did not rain these past few days. Tv cabinet was still a wee bit smelly but otherwise passable. Its three drawers had no trouble fitting in but its sliding doors had to go. All shoes were back into the shoe cabinet. The fridge and washing machine had also miracalously survived the flood. Phew!!!

Well, I still had blocked kitchen sink and my front door couldn't properly closed. My plants too, still had mud caked to the leaves and looked sick. My wooden platform was thoroughly caked in mud as well and the porch tiles were dirty. But all these could wait.

Salina dropped by to visit us, bringing foods, drinks and, I couldn't believe it, toy train for the kids. Oh my God.....thanks soooo much. Amri still couldn't get over the fact that I had to throw away half of his toys and stationaries. The new toy immediately cheered him up. Thanks again Salina, and Amir as well. That was very thoughtful of you.

Cleaning Up - Day 3

Today was Wednesday, the day Amri was required to be dressed in sport attire instead of his normal sunny yellow uniform. He dressed himself up, gobbled down breakfast and was already at front door five minutes later. I grabbed his sport shoes and only then noticed that his shoes was sodden and covered with mud. Well...not only Amri's sport shoes but almost all of our shoes except the ones on the top three shelves. Duh! I've completely forgotten about the shoe cabinet and its contents. I sent Amri to kindy wearing sandal, though admittedly, it didn't bother him at all.

So today was shoes cleaning day. As well as a few other small things that escaped us earlier like the old junks at our backyard and Amri's bicycle (okay...it was not small.) One good thing about this flood, though very inconvenient, somehow managed to make me accomplished the one thing that I had been procrastinating for ages, that is to clean up the backyard. The thing was, I couldn't just put those paint canister, old cabinets, broken electrical appliances and what nots out in my trash can and expected MBSA garbagemen to haul it all up because they would not. And I would also had this guilty conscience that I didn't do enough to save the planet by properly disposing or recycling electrical items. But this whole week, Alam Flora and all kind of recycling collectors would be making many rounds and I could dispose off as many junks as I wanted to.

Somehow, looking at my mini mountain of junks piling up waiting to be collected by Alam Flora, I felt relieved. Like a mission accomplished. Even more relieved when hubby's old CRV arrived.
Phew!!!! Welcome back, old friend. Less things to worry about. At least now, I was mobile.

Next things I did was, rolled up the hideous smelling carpets and stuffed them inside the crv (oh...the joy of having huge space) and sent them to laundry shop. Then...i took a leisure drive around TTDI Jaya and couldn't help but felt really sorry for what others had to endure, especially those at single storey area. Wonder how much all those school text book that I saw drying up would cost them. Funnily, spotted a few pretty ladies in high heels and extravagant tudungs making their rounds visiting the affected houses. Helping? I doubted that. Too dolled up to be much of help. Well...could be distributing donation,who knows.

When I reached home, Ba'e and his wife were there, visiting. Thanks guys.

Adam started vomiting and Amri, sniffling.