Amri - Post Surgery

Frankly speaking, I did not think Amri learnt his safety lesson at all, despite the bloody wide gaping hole he had on his forehead. On Saturday, I dropped by at his school for gotong royong perdana and had a quick chat with his class teacher. In the three minutes I spent talking to the teacher, Amri had gone off to practise long jump over school drain, albeit a much smaller one. *sigh* Maybe I should talk to his PJK teacher and see whether he could train Amri for long jump or something similar.

We went to see his doctor afterwards and he said though the stitches were looking fine but, in under no condition it should be exposed to water. Else, they would dissolved. Amri ended up with one week MC. In case of vomiting, fainting or nose bleeding, we were to rush Amri to ER immediately. Okay. No problem there. What seemed to be our problem was to make sure Amri would not dive headfirst into any body of water or peeled out the bandage himself. Also, how would he smell after one week not washing his hair? Ewwww..... Especially that, part of the hair was soaked in blood on the fateful day. I did my best though to wipe his thick hair using wet towel but still....just hold your breath around him.

On Monday, in an attempt to keep him away from any potential danger to the stitches, I brought him along to Seribadan. While I was enjoying step aerobics, Amri managed to get himself stumbled, fell and thrown off treadmill. Result....bloody upper lips and chin. *sigh* I ought to look into increasing his medical insurance to highest possible amount.

Today, I hired an ustazah to teach him Fardu Ain and mengaji at home. So far so good. Perhaps I should hire a private tutor to teach him school syllabus as well. And grounded him for the next 10 years at home. Heh...how's that?

Erm...maybe not. I like it the way it is now and though I whine a lot about the boys, I actually enjoyed the rough sport they play. Suited me just fine.

Thank you for all the well wishes we received before and after surgery. I ten years time, I will ask Amri to go around thanking all of you personally for being there for him mom.

Amri @ OT

It has gone pretty well. We checked in around 2pm, met the surgeon, signed consent letter and was taken to our room. A nurse showed up with a hospital gown for Amri which took us quite some time to coax him into it. Reason was, the gown was pink with flower motif :) The nurse did bring a blue gown but it was too big for Amri. He finally relented when I said I needed to take his photo with the hospital gown soon before my camera battery went flat. That was the easiest part.

Next came a nurse with a wheelchair. Amri totally refused to sit on that. He insisted to walk to Operation Theatre. The nurse was scared by now because she'll get into trouble if her boss see a patient walking himself to OT. At the end we compromised by me sitting on the wheelchair and Amri sat on my lap. And the nurse wheeled us both.

Amri was totaly unnerved by the time we reached OT. He attempted to escape a few times and threw a big tantrum at the entrance. He kicked, screamed and struggled and boy, was he strong. By then, hubby and I was running out of things to bribe and promises to make. Luckily, the kindly anesthetist, Dr Zul showed up and managed to persuade Amri to follow him to 'blow a baloon'. He showed Amri the different baloons used for general anaesthetic, some other stuffs and let him choose one. But still Amri refused to lie down. So the very nice doctor administer the GA with Amri standing up while a nurse and I stood by his side, ready to catch him when he passed out. He did, a few seconds afterward but when we lifted him onto the bed, he woke up and struggled again until the doctor managed to put back the GA mask. Amri was in deep slumber afterwards and I kissed him goodbye before retreating back to our room. The surgeon, Dr Shah would take over fr that point on. I never felt even more worried in my life. Honestly, it was only a cut on the forehead. How come we ended up with full blown surgery and a GA.

But I was famished as I was staying off food for the whole day for Amri's benefit. So we just grabbed coffee and sandwich from the cafe and tried to swallow. Fourty minutes later, the surgery was done and we were summoned to the OT again. When we reached there, Amri was already awake and crying for his ayah. So soon? I thought it would take some time for him to be fully awake, by which time we would be comfortably settled in our room with the tv tuned in to cartoon network. But there he was, refusing to lie down again and crying his heart out. Took more than 15 minutes to calm him down then we were sent back to our room. Since he refused to lie down on the stretcher, the nurse had to use wheelchair. Again with Amri sitting on my lap.

Amri was okay once we were back in our room. He rejected hospital food brought by the nurse and asked for nasi lemak with fried chicken instead. Finished one full serving of it with no sign of vomiting etc.


Amri with his pink hospital gown, waiting to be taken to OT


















Amri post surgery. He was drowsy but for some reason, did not sleep. He spent his time watching all kind of cartoon while waiting the GA effect to wear off.










Amri back on his feet and restless. A few trips to the shop downstairs and all around hospital lobby was not sufficient. Cartoon on TV was no longer entertaining. After waiting out the critical 6 hours post GA, hubby managed to get us discharged some time after 10pm, but with an order for a check up the next morning.

Amri Jatuh Longkang

Amri decided to play spiderman by jumping over and into a big nasty monsoon drain. Ended up with a deep big nasty cut on his forehead. We could even see the bones. So, he is scheduled for surgery at 2pm today. And I'm supposed to keep him off food for 6 hours. Wish me luck

Mum on mumps

I've started working again. Heheh! Offer too good to say no to.

Only thing was, I started my first day by taking MC. Lotsa MC because I somehow I ended up with mumps. Ceh! Very unprofessional.

Anyway, the boss was okay with it. It was not like recruiting a new employee anyway. I was around there for quite sometime before, fiddling with their ERP and making things worse by the minute. So rather than paid a hefty sum to moi to fix it all back again, why not gave moi salary and get moi to do a million other clever stuffs that accountants supposed to know how to do. Only that this accountant was a bit off the regular clever track but they welcomed that. And called me FC. Ahaks!

Hubby carted the boys and I off to Kedah for a short break, to celebrate the mumps.

Seribadan is okay, running by itself. It is time to spread my wing again and try something new and dangerous. Wooooohoooo...

Hubby and The King

Congratulation! You've made it after years of hard work. And to receive the scroll from The King himself....it was an honour. Especially that when The King is young and goodlooking. We are so proud of you. Btw, what's next after MBA?

Thanks a lot but no, thanks

Well, I'd never have thought so but it seemed there were many people out there who get really concerned when I was down with migrain. Honestly people, it was not that bad. Except for the second day (and night). Even the doctor said I had misdiagnosed myself (i'm very clever, remember?) and had firmly told me that all I was having that time was severe headache. She further said that I did not have the usual symptoms of migrain (of which I had totally forgotten, except for nausea) and proceeded to lecture me of the evils and dangers of self diagnose. So there goes my clever self.

Since the doctor said so, I guess I do not need all the health supplements offered to me. But thanks soooo much. I never knew that there are more than 8 person on this earth that read this blog. In fact, I doubted that even my husband read this :). And to actually read and acknowledged that i was not well and offered help.....it was so sweet of you guys. Please do not hate me but I really was indicipline when it comes to supplement taking. I did not even take my pregnancy supplements let alone now. My kitchen cupboards could testify to that...I bought all kind of supplements sold by friends in various MLM but hardly ever take more than a couple of time, no matter what good that the products promised

Anyway, the pretty doctor told me to cut down on coffee (oh no!), get enough sleep and exercise more (are u mad, doc?). That's all. Well, I did not check the doctor's credential but hey, the painkiller she prescribed worked. And fast. I was back on my feet the following day. By that time, I found out my brand new maid had already made herself at home. She figured out herself how to use washing machine, rice cooker, microwave, tv, vcd player and the boys' name. Once I was out and about, she gave me a long list of the missing groceries i needed to buy. Gosh! Not bad for someone who did not go to school at all. I must thank her previous employer then, for training her well. But first and foremost, thank God i now finally had a decent, if not competent, maid.

*gasp*

Ouch!

I'm thirty three today.

note to hubby:
no need for pressy, just preorder HP7 for me :)
there...u got off very easily

Nescafe Kickstart

Somehow I missed out the final. I did not really followed the series from the beginning but became intrigued later when among the chosen were two girls from fitness industry (if you do not mind me generalising 'dancing' as one of fitness categories).

I was rooting for Ninie. Nope, not because she is a Malay. I am no racist okay. But because publishing takes a lot of gut to do. What more publishing a yoga magazine plus a vcd. Not only you have to worry about magazine contents but you need to shoot a movie as well and looks pretty in it. Hell, that was one amazing feat. Granted, she has some celebrity friends to pose for her but, only to that extend. I doubted any of them is able to help much or see Ninie through for the next few issues. Now, contents and shooting aside, Ninie would have to deal with prejudice from public, specifically from the less informed muslim. It was all well in Klang Valley and some other cities, people have been exposed to yoga as another form of exercise for quite some time . Yoga is a very in thing now and almost everybody was into it or at least, plan to. Sadly, the craze and the information that come with it did not really reached every part of malaysia. So, I could almost see the tought bubble that formed : What???? A Malay/Muslim girl doing the sun salutation??? Isn't that ........... you fill in the blank yourself.

Somehow, I feel for her. So I felt it was pretty unfair that the other girl won. For God sake, she was only opening a dance studio. What so hard about it? If a boring accountant with two left feet like me could run a studio, so did everyone else. Anyway, since the winner was partially chosen by SMS vote, it was not really a surprise right? Joo Nee is pretty and oh..how she could sway her hip:)

But still, Ninie should have been the winner. She has great ideas, she works hard and she still has a long rough road to travel. The cash prize will definitely help a lot but I guess, it was not meant for her. Bravo, Ninie!

A muddy kind of day

For all I’ve been writing about aerobics, people must have thought that I have seen and done it all. No! I’ve never been to outdoor mass aerobics. It is where the many participants would be dancing in the open air (like padang bola or community hall) and the instructors (usually more than one) would stand in front stage, facing you.

TTDI Jaya residents had one yesterday morning in conjunction with Syabas launching their new water metre. No offense to those who enjoyed outdoor aerobics but I found it terribly uncomfortable. First, being in public place meant that you would have to dress decently. In my case, complete with tudung and long sleeve t-shirt. After five minutes, I was soaking wet with sweat. Secondly, being resident in now famous TTDI Jaya could only meant that the ground was forever wet with rain. It rained heavily the night before so instead of nice grassy football field, we had a wet mushy muddy ground that not only soaked through my dainty cross trainer but splattered me with mud from head to toe. (After a round of aerobics, netball game and searching for Amri at drawing contest) And I decided to wear white top, shoes and tudung for the occasion…ceh!

Also the presence of men in the group did make me a bit worried, because you know, as what the politicians often preached about, we women should never entice the opposite sex (duh) with any sexy move. And aerobics dance had evolved to be very sexy indeed. We do not want woman exercises to be banned from this country, no?

Well, I should have stayed with studio aerobics. I did not really enjoy being mud splattered from head to toe and sweating like a pig. And I hate not having firm traction on my feet because being a big momma I was, I had a fear of slipping and toppling over the cameraman who for reasons known only to him, kept his videocamera zoomed to me and not even bothering to be subtle about it. Did we know each other?

And this morning when I reached Seribadan, I felt so lucky. I’ve taken this place for granted because I owned it. I actually loved its wood flooring, mirrors, airconditioners, stacks of clean towel, drums of cold water and most of all, the privacy it offered which enable me to dress up in almost anything. It was tiny studio but sufficient.

Anyway, I’ll give it another try sometimes but I’ll check the ground first. Plus, I’ll wear everything black. It should be fun if the ground was not mushy and I didn’t get confused without mirrors.

Lost and found

I am so glad that little Yin was found and returned safely to his parents. It must be a huge torture, knowing your child is somewhere out there but unable to reach to him, hug him close and keep the child safe. And those people who unashamedly said things like the parents were too busy shopping to look after the kids, well....lets just hope the same things will not happened to you when you become a parents. All kids are different. Some are more adventerous than others. Some will stay meekly beside mommy and trail obediently once the mommy moves. But most are not. My boys are not and so are the majority of 5 years olds I know. I am constantly vigilant and I take precautions. Like putting my namecards in the boys pocket. Drilling the boys on what to do if they are lost. Teaching Amri to memorise my handphone number (he asks for a handphone instead). Despite all that, Amri still managed to get lost but fortunately at a familiar ground. He knows enough to get help from the staffs at information counter. I refused to brand myself a bad mommy because of that. But I'll definitely kick myself if it happens again. Or repeated by Adam. Thing happened so that we could learn, right?

I hope Yin's parents will face the future bravely. You know, things like when you want to visit a shopping mall again, well meaning friends and relatives will surely advise againts it. Or you develop a phobia for it. But you can't hide away forever. Lets face it anyway and learn from the past. Like cuffing your kids to the trolley (i'm kidding!) or look for a more child friendly mall. When there is a will, there is a way. Surely when a woman need to shop, she'll be triple creative?

I've never had migrain in my life. So when I had a bad headache on Saturday, I just brushed it off as lack of sleep. Which was true enough. But I didn't expect it to last for more than a couple of hours, let alone days. Usually a nice short nap will take care of it.

But not this time. Nap did not cure it. Neither did Panadol. A good long sleep at night did not even reduce the pain. Anyway, Amri had telematch at his school on Sunday morning. So I dragged myself out of bed, asked Adam to shower himself and drove to school. Luckily the school provided tents and chairs. Adam however, did not appreciated being out of bed so early and in one of his black mood. He refused to walk and demanded to be carried, giving reason that the ground was wet and slippery and he did not want his shoes to be dirty. Oh well...luckily hubby was there to lug his son around.

I survived the telematch and a breakfast afterwards then hit the sofa as soon as I reached home, leaving hubby to manage the boys and the house for another day.

Or so I thought.

By Sunday evening, hubby had his friend sent over a maid. Gosh! I was unprepared for a maid. Maybe I bullied hubby with too much housework that he thought he'd better get a maid:) The maid's room was being used as a laundry room and looked more like rubbish dumping ground. I tried in vain to clear up the mess within an hour that hubby's friend said the time he needed to reach our house. While a maid is a maid, I did not believe in giving a rubbish dump as her room, never mind where she came from, be it a hut without floor or whatever. And also, I wouldn't feel happy unless I feed my guest but I really did not feel like cooking. So I sent Amri to buy goreng pisang...heh!

Well...I now had a new unordered maid. She was someone else maid since January so all I had to do is pay levi and change employer name. Thank God she was not too unfamiliar with housework because I really did not feel like training anyone at the moment. The rest I would dealt with later

Doctor prescribed me with a stronger painkiller that actually worked. Finally, I could move a bit faster without seeing stars. And I could drive to Seribadan, which really cheered me up.

Ooops.....

It rained heavily around 4pm and by 5pm my front neighbour took her car to somewhere higher. I on the other hand, had other problems. First, I had to drive through the rising water to Bukit Jelutong and opened Seribadan for evening session. I also had to fetch Amri and Adam since hubby was going to be extra late.

So by 5.30pm I drove through the water in front of ttdi secondary school (thank God for a 4WD) and reached Seribadan just fine. Although there was some funny sound coming from CRV's engine afterwards. Or was it just my imagination? Got everything nice and ready for weekly hatha yoga class then off to Amri's school. I drove straight to the front gate only to see a closed one. Then vaguely remembered husband telling me something about closed gate and no parents allowed to drive into school compound during his PTA meeting (but why though). I was contemplating the safest way to reverse the car without causing a massive jam or pile up when suddenly the guard opened the gate for me. Cool! Thank you very much. I drove in quickly before he could change his mind.

Azida called me while I was walking towards Amri's classroom. The bell rang. Yakety yak...chat, chat..joke somemore, saw Amri sitting nicely in his classroom waiting for me then walked back to the car with Amri in tow. Gebang gebang with Azida some more. Offered to fetch her daughter as well but she declined, said bye bye then shoved Amri into the car before he could jump into any pool of water.

Made my exit without a hassle. For once, the traffic was orderly. Reached the traffic light at the junction and while waiting for green light, I contemplated the nice and orderly school traffic today. No parents making funny turn or blocking any exit point. No children running around wild. And...Amri and his classmate seemed to be sitting nicely even without a teacher around. They can't be that good, can they?

Then it hit me.

Oh my God......

The school was not over yet. Today is Tuesday. According to new timetable, school finished at 6.40pm on Monday and Tuesday. I fetched Amri during second last period bell, I guess. Alamak!!!

Hehehehe

Hantam sajalah labu.... Will apologize to the teacher tomorrow. Hope the last period teacher didn't think that someone kidnapped Amri and went to make a police report.

Parenting 101 - Variance Analysis

Three months into primary school (Amri, not me) and guess what.... I saved loads of $$$! There was only one off minimal fee in the beginning of the year and that shopping spree with his school stuffs that cost quite a lot because Amri and I got a bit carried away. Plus I didn't really know which one is really needed so I bought them all. And those funky stationaries were kinda cute.

He no longer had high monthly fees as were his kindy years. Amri's pocket money only cost me about RM50 per month. His Qiraati class cost only RM40 per month. Weekly Tae Kwon Do class is RM18 per month. School itself has no monthly fee. No school bus expenses because I ferried him to school, hubby fetched him and he cycles to Qiraati class. No tuition class whatsoever. I doubted there'll be any tuition teacher on earth that could knock some sense into his head. Plus I already figured out how to tutor him. Pretty easy actually. Just turned everything into monetary term. If he couldn't figure out what is 6 + 6, just asked him what is RM6 + RM6. Trust me, he only took a few seconds to answer.

Sometimes I wonder how his brain works.

Well, the findings of the analysis is, primary school is good on the wallet. But not too good on other matters. Junk foods, foul languages, heavy bags and who's idea was it that school uniform needs to be WHITE shirt and WHITE shoes?

Adam the photographer

Found a lot of pictures taken by Adam, either using digital camera or my previous handphone. Some are pretty good, like this one here. Not bad for a three years old. Of course, there were also millions of junk photos

Amri at the backseat of my car. Just fetched him from tae kwon do class. He is the ever willing model for Adam :)

This is me, driving. Adam took this one using my old handphone. He kept asking me to smile, which I found very difficult to do while navigating Malaysian traffic. The best I could do is grimace.

Again....

Sigh

Banjir lagi....

Though not as bad as last year's flood. It only reached our car porch. But still, if the rain went on for a few more hours, I am pretty sure the flood would have reached our living room, if not the whole ground floor. Amri and his friends have a field day though. They were having loads of fun cycling through the flood water and getting drenched from head to toe :)
Adam however, is still at bed, thank goodness. Otherwise he'll be out there with Amri as well and I could just imagine another round of coughing-vomiting-med-doctors bill.

I am stranded at home in the meantime

Rain rain go away...

...and come again a little bit at a time.

So much so for a draughty season forecasted.

11.oopm : front neighbours started removing their cars to a higher ground.
11.20pm : next door neighbour removed their cars
11.23pm : i smsed amy and milly who lived at mayang sutera, asking about water level there
11.29pm : amy replied "alih your car cepattt"
11.43pm : kak azie called to check on me
11.45pm : smsed hubby to come home by boat
11.47pm : a neighbour rang the door to remind me that the water is rising
12 ++ : dozed off then awaken by warning siren, car horn and somebody using a heller to inform people that, really, the river was overflowing again
12.21am : martin rang the bell and checking whether i was aware of the situation.
12.30++ : hubby was home and set to removing our cars to mayang sari
12.47 : azida called to make sure we were okay
1.00am : went back to sleep
2.am++ : rain get heavier and water reached our porch....alamak! started to move a few stuffs upstairs then tried to go back to sleep
3am++ : cheryl called

I was not sure what time the rain stopped but the water stayed there.

Off duty...

I was feeling rather disoriented. First, it was school holiday so Amri was home and did not require my chauffeur service. I was also relieved from my duty as his alarm clock. Second, Adam was home as well, with a bit of temperature but still in his usual sunny self. I took two days off from work which at first, with the plan to tag along to Lumut with hubby and let the boys run wild at his national service camp. But the plan changed when hubby had other things to attend to, Tok Kie was here visiting and Adam was a bit off colour, all in one go.

So here I was, with practically nothing to do and feeling very weird. I used to rush between Seribadan, home, school, factory, daycare then seribadan again and now I had nowhere to go. The boys, as usual whenever grandparents were around, left me totally alone. I cooked, took a nap, surf internet, read one of my new books and it was not even lunch time yet.

I might as well enjoy this :)

Where's everyone?

Pretty quiet around here today. Peaceful. It is SCHOOL HOLIDAY!!

Both Amri and Adam are at daycare. Even next door kids were gone, probably balik kampung.

I feel like celebrating! But I'll start by taking a short nap first.

Books Galore

Other ladies received jewelry from their husband. Not me. I got a fully sponsored and chauffered trip to MPH distributor sale. And what do you expect when this makcik was let loose on a book sale? Hehehehe. Enough to say that I was so relieved when hubby carried my purchases for me. It was a rather heavy bag and quite a long walk!

Somehow, Amri was into books as well. Now and then he'd refused to trail obediently behind me and plopped himself beside a boxful of books. I was worried sick to leave him by himself but thankfully he did not budge at all. Not even one inch. However, he turned up his nose at whatever I picked out for him to read, preferring those Spiderman, Batman whateverman books. He even picked out a couple of Barney books for Adam, whom was contend to wait outside and eat icecream with his ayah.

I got the latest Kinsella's shopaholic series as well - Shophaholic and Baby! I read one of her book a couple of years ago and love it so much that I bought the whole shopaholic series plus her two other books. They were entertaining. Just the right stuff to read after a hard day at work.

I wind down by reading, okay. Preferably with my feet up. But actually, anywhere is fine for me

p/s: I finished the yummy Shopaholic and Baby on the next day, 2am. 10 hours after purchase time. But there were a trip to Kelana Jaya office and burger king Sg Buloh in between

note to hubby: Thank you very, very much. Also the reason I prefer a nearly 3000sqf built up house rather than one with large compound is that, erm.. I need a whole room to store my books (and your books too)

TGIF.... now breath!

Thank God it is Friday. Thank God it will be four days break. I was so exhausted. Adding Amri’s schedule to my already chaotic one was no joke! I think I need a maid, a driver and a personal assistant. We will be out of town from tomorrow to Tuesday. And it would be a nice break from school, seribadan and everything else in between.

Adam however, decided to give me a break after the hiding in bathroom incident. He even packed his own daycare bag, which I had to do spot checks just in case it includes smuggled items (VCD power rangers, my lipstick, icecream). And to answer eiseai question, I didn’t know what actually happened to Adam’s cheek. He came back from his evening ventures with bruised cheek and said his friend bite him. He seemed unconcerned so we just let it be. If it bothers him, we’ll have to hear about it for weeks so if he decided not to kick somebody ass about it, that was fine with us. It was just a tiny bruise, nothing like Amir though.

Amri had one of his tooth extracted a few days ago. It was loose for quite some time but Amri refused to let it go because it will make him look ugly. Well….he does looks ugly now, without one front teeth but fortunately took it pretty well. Most probably because it made brushing teeth and biting easier. He did not ask for handphone anymore as at today but decided to resume his pleading to let him cycle to school. He had been doing that since his second day at school.

The thing was, we made a mistake of saying that (then) he was not that skillful with bicycle. So, he decided to work on it. He practiced everyday, before and after school and all weekends. He was so into it that soon, the neighbours kids followed suit. Even our front neighbour, whom a bit overprotective with his 8 & 9 years old boys, let his boys cycle around with Amri. One week later, both boys chucked out their training wheel. So people, please avoid my street after 5.30pm because it seemed like all TTDI kids with bicycles, big and small, were all there. One good thing was that Amri get so good. I will just shut my eyes whenever he decided to show off his stunts. Duh! That was not the way it supposed to be. Anyway. We still did not allow him to cycle to school. For two reason actually. First, Amri now had pocket money so having a bicycle will enable him cycle to nearby grocery shop after school. I do not want that. Second, he’ll have to pass in front of secondary school. The traffic was terrible. Parents were parking their cars on the pavements meant for the pedestrian and bicycles. And parents who stop the car in the middle of the road once they spot their kids, never mind if there were other cars trailing behind. Also parents who made u-turn as and when needed. Plus those who reversed their car while chatting on mobile phone. So these primary school kids will have to zig zag in between the cars while keeping their eyes open for other possible errant drivers. Talk about teaching road manners to children. Yesterday, I saw a cute silver Swift backing into a girl. The girl fell from her bicycle but not injured. The Swift driver just drove off, uncaring. Didn’t even poke her head out of the window to check. No, I don’t think Amri is that street savvy.

So, sorry Amri. I know you are good but still, you are just 6. We’ll talk about this when you turn 8, okay. In the meantime, just bear with me as your driver.