You're It!!

thanks to nadia. i wouldnt have seen it too if i hadnt had so much time on my hands & strolled down till the blog entry (hubby & amir are asleep - both with infected tonsil)

Four jobs I have in my life:
1. receptionist at Tourism Malaysia, London (i loved this job!!)
2. accounts officer at a bank in KL (hate it!!)
3. waitress at Kendels, Manchester (saw some really famous footballers :) )
4. TAS associate (it had its moments)

Four Movies I can watch over and over:
1. beyond the promise land (is that a movie - hehehe...living in past glory)
2. the saint
3. bugsy
4. clueless (still have that 'as if' in me...)

Four TV shows I love to watch:
1. CSI las vegas
2. football focus
3. friends
4. pocoyo (amir's favourite at the moment)

Four places I've lived in:
1. Damansara (have lived in many parts of KL but i can only remember damansara)
2. Canterbury, Kent (absolutely loved it there...would love to live there permanently)
3. Sheffield (didnt really like it there...very industrialised)
4. Bukit Jelutong (my home sweet home)

Four places I've been on vacation to:
1. London, England (was my weekend home for 2 years but is still a wonderful place. uncle zuhuri's house was just fantastic)
2. Gold Coast, Australia - honeymoon. first place hubby didnt break a sweat at all ;)
3. Los Angeles part 2- i loved this holiday cos it was just me and my dad (and his entourage, but eh who cares)
4. LA part 1 - first disneyland visit
















Four Places I'd rather Be in:
1. my bed but right now hubby taking half & amir taking the other half
2. Mothercare in The Curve
3. the labour room
4. in the pool, with my water baby

Four of my Favorite food: (this is my favourite subject ever!! they should have a subject on this for SPM, i'd ace it for sure...)
1. salmon sashimi - at Keyaki in Pan Pac on sunday mornings (great brunch)
2. nasi dagang - but the kelantan version
3. roast beef with mustard sandwich from Subway - my labour food
4. thin crust pizza with pepperoni & onion from Domino's

Four Websites I visit daily:
1. yahoogroup & yahoo mail
2. The Sun
3. The Star
4. Man United

Four Victims to Do this tag:
1. nae
2. rina
3. ninuk (tho i think she'd be too busy)
4. first time ever i cant think of a fourth answer....

it was nice to reminisce.

A Change Will Do You Good

i cant seem to be able to do any work over the last couple of months. it used to be really easy for me to do household chores - vacuuming, mopping, wiping, dusting, cooking, laundry-ing. now all i can do is laundry (and that's only 3 times a week) and cooking (never on weekends though). i've been getting really lazy. i was actually wondering how this happened? my conclusion (ie shifting the blame off me) is that amir is just too hyper for me to handle all on my own.

its true though. his naptime had decreased from twice to only once a day. and it has gone shorter too!! i'm lucky if i get an hour to myself in the morning. he refuses to sleep in the afternoon so i have to put aside my work to entertain him. my cooking also has taken a back seat. who would look after him when i cook? i've tried bringing him down to the kitchen with me, but he can only stay put in his high chair for a short while. plus, its boiling hot in the kitchen! so what to do...what to do...

i came up with a brilliant plan today. put him in his playpen and put the playpen behind me while i do my work. now why didnt i think of that before?? the playpen have been sitting quietly in his room for 4 months now. ever since he mastered shuffling, he refused to be kept in the playpen. ok, maybe its because i'm not there, so if i'm around maybe he'll play nicely in there. ok...so here i go. not adviseable to manouvre the darn thing in my condition (a blog about that will be written soon) but hey...i need to get some work done here. so there i was...pushing and pulling with all my might. it moved...halfway through the doorway...three quarters out...a little bit more...and then...thud, thud. uh oh...what's that?? ahhhh great...the wheels cant go through. dognabbit!! so there it is...the hardly-used playpen, stuck in the doorway, with my son it it. hmmm...at least he can see me. lets see how long this can last before he starts screaming (not too long - only managed 2 minutes).


so...brilliant plan #2...i gotta get myself a maid!

Little Angel

how angelic does he look when he sleeps? omigod...so unlike the screamer who was screaming his head off until he threw up last night. so unlike the kickboxer who kicked hubby awake last night. so unlike the little terror who rummages through hubby's drawer and throws all the remote control behind the bedside table and under the bed.

Under the Weather

i noticed amir's left eye was swollen on friday. took a picture of him and emailed to hubby to see his reaction. hubby said it doesnt look too bad but maybe we should go see the doctor later that night. we went to hubby's brother's house last weekend and 2 of his children had sore eyes. our first thought was amir got it from them. after dinner that night, hubby said the swelling's gone down. if it gets bad again, we'll go tomorrow (hubby puts the 'pro' in procrastinating...)

the next day, he went back to his mum's house and i was left alone with amir. seeing my little terror wasnt terrorising anything that day, i thought i'd go with my gut instinct and see the nearby doctor. so off we went. there was a lot of people at the clinic that day, so after giving amir's name, i went to the nearby mamak to get some roti canai.

seeing the doctor brought me good news (it wasnt sore eyes) and bad news (it was infected tonsils instead). apparently if the tonsil is infected, the water from the eyes cannot go down well & they'll pool behind the eyes - hence the swollen eyes. she gave amir paracetamol for his fever and antibiotics for the tonsil. i think he felt fine after taking the medicine and a long nap. he was happily playing in his room. later that night, it got really, really bad. he was screaming the place down and crying non-stop. he would kick and punch when i put some ice pack on his back and forehead. after a bottle full of milk he finally calmed down and only whimpered when felt the ice pack on his skin. the same scenario went on for 3 days. he would be fine during the daytime, yet really, really hot at night. i've been up between 2am till 4am every night since saturday. we brought him to his normal pediatrician to ask why hasnt the fever gone down. dr azizi prescribed a stronger antibiotics, cough syrup and volteron as he was really burning up.



















i dont really like seeing amir this way (what mother would...) but amir hasnt been sick many times. the only other instance was when he had roseola when he was about 11 months old. that was really scary. he would just lie down on his front on the bed and watched the telly. blinking his eyes every now and then, with his 2 fingers in his mouth. he wouldnt acknowledge me or hubby or the ice pack on his back. he would be motionless for hours, crying only when he wants milk. its a torture seeing him like that as he's always been so hyper and so noisy. now my little fussy eater's totally gone off food. he's getting skinnier and skinnier...

i pray to God he would quickly return to his normal self and hope this doesnt occur too many times.

Couch Potato

i grew up with the tv as a friend. i didnt really like playing outdoors. i did play quite a lot when i was younger but once we moved to 'the jungle', i hardly ever left the house. tv kept me company throughout the day. i watched tv when doing work, i watched tv when studying (guess that explains my results), i watched tv when i ate, i watched tv all the time. when i went overseas, i used to buy the weekend tv schedule and circled all the shows i wanted to see during the week. i'd run back from class just to catch the afternoon edition of 'neighbours'. i remember telling the time according to what's on the telly. like if i was watching 'ready, steady cook', then it must be 4.30pm, watching 'match of the day' means it 10pm on a saturday. everyone i know complains about the boring shows on the english tv, but i can sit for hours, watching god-knows-what show after god-knows-what show.

now it seems that i have a 'couch potato jr' on my hands. amir loves the tv. he would push us out of the way if we're standing between him and the telly. he would strain his neck to see the tv if there's something blocking his view. he even know which is the remote control for the tv and which is the control for astro. not only that, he knows exactly where to point the control.

children's tv nowadays is really educational. i've seen the credits for some shows and they really do a lot of research before producing those shows. the messages are very deep too, for a pre-schooler, that is. it teaches them to say thank you, say please, to make friends, to work together, to respect other people, to appreciate everyone in the communicty, to think, to move. there's so many things to learn. sometimes, hubby and i would sit quietly and watch the shows, long after amir has gone to sleep. there are some shows that i really, really like. 'save 'ums' is one of them. amir has been following this show since he was about 3-4 months. he knows the theme song way before he can lift his head. if i were to start singing 'on the land, in the air, under the sea...', he'd give me a big grin. another one that he likes is 'elmo's world'. i think everybody loves this show and as much as you hate to admit it, you too love mr noodle.

however, there are some shows that is really disturbing. last time they had a show called 'house things'...that was really scary. i didnt like it at all. it was so dark and gloomy and the message was quite evil. even the song was scary! another show that i dont really like is 'clifford, the big red dog'. not so much of clifford and how scary it would be if there really was a big red dog, but more of the human characters. there's one girl called jedda, sorta the main rival for clifford's owner. jedda is forever in hot water and forever making up stories and lies and is the wet blanket of the group. she always end up saying sorry in the end, but she'd be back at getting other people in trouble in the next episode. and i hate the way she is always potrayed as the bad girl (at the smallest thing) and the way other people trust her wholeheartedly and take in her word so easily. to me its not jedda that's irritating, its her so-called friends for being so soft and believeable and having no backbone. everytime jedda say something bad about clifford, his owner would go 'no, jedda...clifford's not like that' in her soft, whiny voice. i mean, for god's sake girl...slap her girl up her head for once. why take it lying down?!! i mean, seriously...what kind of message are they trying to send to the children? that we should be soft and whiny and let other people walk all over us? or that we should be bad and evil and if we say sorry, people will forgive us, but we can be bad again the next time. sorry is the no 1 word to get you out of trouble, it doesnt matter if you dont mean it and dont learn from your mistake. if you say sorry, you're safe. i think its ridculous. i'm sure there are more ways to show children good attitude vs bad attitude.

having said that, there's always this argument about babies and toddlers watching too much telly is more likely to have ADD or other behavioural problems. i'm sure the people who write the papers have done thorough research, but i cant help but be thankful for the idiot box. i get to do housework because of it, amir understand songs because of it, he gets a good laugh out of it, he follows football because of it, i have a cousin who learned english just from the telly. too much a good thing, isnt always a good thing i know, but for the moment...thank god for the television.

Picky Eater

taking my cue from ninuk's latest entry... http://ninuknoviati.blogspot.com/

my son is really very easy to take care of. he loves water, so bathing him is not problem. he loves lying down on his changing table, so changhing & dressing him is easy(but i have to put in an extra minute of massaging). he loves his car seat, so taking 3 hour journeys are not a problem. he loves his stroller, so i can bring him out all by my loneself. he sleeps at 9 everynight...and wont wake for anything, so we can easily slip into a late night show with him in tow (he 'watched' his first movie at 9 months). he loves the tv, so i can get some me-time either sleeping or surfing the net. he loves the vacuum cleaner, so i dont need to clean in a hurry. he can fall asleep easily on my lap, so i can hang out with friends and not leave him at home (my friends are amazed at this!!).

but of course, no baby is 'easy'and in amir's case, he is the worst eater ever!! he will not eat or try anything other than his nestum. i first started feeding him a week after he turned 4 months. he was drinking bottles and bottles of milk. he could down 10oz in an hour. he'd wake up 3-4 times a night for feeding. hubby and i decided to give him food, to fill up his tummy since he's never seem to be full with just milk. so we gave him rusk with milk, so that he's familiar with the taste and wont reject the food. it went ok...we managed to get in a few spoonfuls and he actually found our 'omigod, omigod' to be very funny. over time, we moved from rusk to gerber 1st to heinz baby cereal, to gerber 2nd to heinz breakfast muesli, to gerber 3rd and to the much-loved nestum. now his choice of meal is limited to nestum 'wheat and honey' and biskut tiger. occasionally he would be given french fries, much to his pleasure (and against dr azizi's advise).




















its very frustrating. i have tried again and again to feed him home-cooked meal, be it porridge, potato chicken, pasta, pies, cakes, our dinner lauk with rice. u name it, i've tried it. but he just wont eat. his rule to eat any home-made food is "i will eat when you eat". that means he will only eat at dinner time. i seldom take lunch, even if i do its usually a sandwich that i eat in front of the computer.

his weight has moved steadily...unfortunately its moving downwards instead of upwards. when i carry him, i can feel his bones sticking out from his shoulders and his ribs. its not how a baby is supposed to feel. a baby's supposed to be soft and cuddly and huggable, not poky and hard and boney. that's exactly how amir looks. oh man, i cant count the number of 'amir...dont your parents feed you??' statements i've gotten over the last few months. what kind of statement is that anyway? what mother wont feed their children. but i guess, its easy for people to say bad things before they say good things. of course when we try to explain, "nooo...he's very hyper. he eats a lot but he uses all his energy playing." what do we get from that...nothing!! usually we wont even get to finish the "n..."

ah well, they've made up their minds, who cares. no matter what people say about amir's lack of appetite at least he makes it up by being able to sleep in his cot without the f-ing buais, and he doesnt go around with a silly pacifier in his mouth. and he does not make a fuss when put into his car seat and when mummy is in her 'retail theraphy' session.