The Week Before The New Year

cooking
since i dont cook on weekdays, i find great pleasure in slaving over the stove on my days off. it doesnt have to be a great big 9-course meal, as long as my boys enjoy whatever dish i conjure up.

on saturday, i made rice with kobis masak lemak and bbq chicken - hubby is not a fan of chicken but he declared this 'yummy', he even named it 'mummy's chicken' for amir's benefit. sunday was rice with udang goreng kunyit, fried egg with soya sauce and sup sawi. tired of rice, i made deep fried chicken with chips on monday. goes wonderfully with bbq sauce.

i planned to make butter rice...wonder what happened to that plan. well, there's always this thursday.

gardening
hubby is spending more and more time in our sorry excuse for a garden. a couple of months ago, tssc gave us some 'pokok menjalar' - i seriously dont know what its called - thingies that climb over fences. we wanted to cover the ugly wall in our garden. despite our stone-filled land, the thingies have managed to grow nicely.

daddy's little helper cant help but menyibuk along as hubby went round the garden.



















wedding
we had 2 wedding invitations during the weekend. the first was the reception of the daughter of the big boss, while on sunday was our resident photographer and my good friend and colleague, apis.

laundry
i took advantage of the sunny days to clear all the dirty clothes. i did laundry practically everyday and our laundry basket is never full. i even mae a list of what to wash on which day...hah!!

















shopping
we went to 1utama last friday. hubby left me there for hours when he went off for friday prayers. he was with me only for a while, enough time for me to get large storage boxes and magazine boxes and other stuff i need for my year-end cleaning. after he left i walked from the old wing to the new wing, stopping at FOS to get a few things from the 2 for $18 rack. bought 2 items for each eai (even eai#4)

as amir will be starting kindy next week, we bought him a larger bag to fit his work books and clothes. he asked for a CARS bag but we couldnt find any, so we bought him a mickey bag. we also got him new tumblers.

















cleaning
i initially planned to do the year-end cleaning today and tomorrow (literally year-end) but i got too excited coming back with the boxes from 1utama, that i could only wait until asyraf & ariff fell asleep on friday before attacking the book shelves. i managed to box up everything un-box-ed and filed all loose papers. i'm happy all files - mine, hubby's, the house's, the cars', monthly bills - are all up to date going into the new year. i went to sleep past midnight, sneezing my nose off.

i also went a bit overboard with the boys' toys. i'm not a collector of toys - i dont buy them and i hardly keep them. there's some i truly love, especially those given on the boys' birthdays, but i usually give away general (and repetitive) toys to the boys' school. i think the school would have better use for them than we do. plus the boys are slowly outgrowing a few toys, so there's no point in keeping them. right now, everyone's into thomas. everyone includes the father.

















hubby's transforming into tim "the tool man" taylor over the past few days. he's going around doing all kinds of handyman work from changing the door knob to changing the bidet in the bathroom to changing light bulbs and repairing the boys' toilet bowl (amir said bj and babybob jumped into the bowl uhuh...)

the baby
after being on the move for 4 days, the baby's movement slowed down on monday and the contraction started acting up again. i know my gynae told me to take it easy but there's just no 'taking it easy' in my dictionary. i just have things to do, i cant help it. the contraction is scaring me a bit so i'm using these couple of days (initially planned for house cleaning) to do the baby's laundry - note i'm still not resting, sheesh.

i took out the baby's clothes from the storage box and got the shock of my life. we have almost 70 pairs of newborn to 6 months outfit. that alone would take 4 loads. i re-packed the 6 - 12 months clothes, i'll tackle that bunch later.



















the boys
my boys had a great time staying at home over the long weekend. they ate, watched tv, slept, played outside...ummm nothing different than what they do at school, i think hah! the boys had a great time...the parents were pulling their hair and screaming non-stop.





















they're growing up right before our eyes. amir vocabulary is astonishing, he's also the translator for asyraf who speaks in baby language (pelat). amir talks and talks and this rubs off on asyraf who know is talking non-stop.

if amir is the leader in talking, asyraf is the leader in action. amir on his own is quite subdued and would not run around. only when he's with asyraf - who doesnt know the meaning of the word fear - he would step up 3 gears.

ariff...well, he follows both. if both abangs run, he would run after them. if both abangs jump, he would jump after them. if both abangs scream, he would scream along. ariff sort of passed the older baby stage and jumps straight into the toddler phase. he doesnt eat baby food, he doesnt play with baby toys. he jumps right on abang's bicycle at the age of 14months, no baby bikes for ariff, thank you very much.

hubby and me
we havent sat down and made our plans for next year. we've done a few rounds of budget, which i hope we can stick to. we're still hoping for the holiday that we planned with tiza in september and still waiting for the last piece from hubby's bonus to materialise - apparently it should be ours next week. i hope so...insyaallah.

i cant wait for the arrival of baby eai#4. hubby and i have discussed ways and measures to take to make it not as difficult to handle 4, especially during the first 6 months. that's another entry...