Double Digit

he's ten!! happy birthday to my first born, engku amir iskandar. i tell you, he's been waiting for this day and counting down for the longest time. i guess turning ten is a big deal to a child. i think it was a big deal to me thirty years ago as i remember i had a huge party at home. i remember pulut kuning and err…that's all i remember actually hah!

anyway, despite the counting down that he did, there wasn't a big hoohaa for him this year. school was pushed back another week due to the flood so he wasn't in school and no friends wished him happy birthday other than virtually via his instagram account. hubby was busy at work after taking a 3-week leave so we only managed to squeeze in a quick dinner for him.

takpe lah amir, let's not get used to having big celebrations, small and intimate dinners with family is more than enough. insyaAllah, i'll probably have a one-shot, all-in-one, combo-four party one of these years (years so that i have a longer deadline).

back to the birthday boy, he's changed so much. he was very difficult the past few years particularly back in 2012 - 2013. i remember those times clearly. it was as though he was fighting with the world, not listening, lazy, rebelling at every thing, picking fights with his brothers, showing his displeasure at everything. i used to distance myself from him because i couldn't take his nasty attitude at that time and he used to get massive scolding from hubby for fighting back.

alhamdulillah, he's gotten more mature, more easy going, more easy to reason with after that period. he's back on form in school - performing in some subjects, slightly below par in some, he's pushed himself with his football - he's been called to practice with the under-12 team, he's starting to eat more and putting on a bit of weight - though he has a long way to go if he wants to continue to play with the under-12 team, he's focused on his interest and have set his sights on what he wants to be when he grows up, he's been really helpful around the house and he's been good preparing his clothes, uniform and school bags (i highly emphasise on this as a starting point of being organised).

he is very into three things at the moment - football, photography and planes.

he still has his bad side. one i can't stand the most is how rough he can be with his brothers. he's very loving on one side, which is wonderful, but he can also be very rough. he kicks and punches his brothers and if he does that with ariff, you can bet both would come out with bumps and bruises - they actually use furniture to hit each other. he is moody and pouts like nobody's business when he's being veto-ed, usually when it comes to the clothes he chose and the hairstyle he wants. sorry, daddy & mummy still decide those things for you.

amir is my sparring partner. gets me irked with his requests, showing his displeasure when i turn him down but quickly overcoming it and coming up to apologise and would repeat 'ok lah, kita dengar cakap mummy'. he's the one i look for when i need to talk to somebody, maybe because he's much more compassionate and can find the words to appease me.

abang long, thank you. because of you, i am open to a whole new world, i read more things, i do research on so many subjects. you take me on a never-ending road of learning and i am grateful for that.

all sorts of amir in the past decade…

and on the day he turns ten, alhamdulillah

Health Check Up

out of the four boys, i worry about asyraf and akmal's health more. alhamdulillah, amir and ariff's been quite ok when it comes to health, only getting the usual fever, flu, cough, stomach flu. of course there's the occasional urti that requires the nebuliser and the age that requires the drip and that once-off roseola amir had but nothing too alarming and nothing that carries on for a long period.

asyraf and akmal, however, is more susceptible to getting sick. akmal, of course with his small nasal airways, his allergy to everything under the sun, comes up tops. asyraf used to fall sick often when he was younger (those bi-monthly hospital admissions that made me end each year with negative leave balances) is thankfully spared once he grew older. but now, he's starting to see the doctor more often. not our saviour, dr azizi, now he's seeing the pediatric dermatologist, dr mardziah. i still cringe seeing her name, as she was the one who asked to akmal to be admitted to the nicu when his oxygen level fell to 50% when he was only a month old - but that's another story.

asyraf's visited dr mardziah a couple of times back in 2013, for the molluscum contagiousum that she used dried ice as treatment.

this time it was for the stuff on his face. everywhere we went and everyone we met said it was 'panau' or more commonly (uhuh…) known as pityriasis versicolor. after almost two months of seeing it wasn't going anywhere, and being in our holiday pictures, we took him to see dr mardziah - only because hubby had an appointment with his doctor at dsh.

dr mardziah concluded that it was eczema, not surprising as asyraf always had a love-hate relationship with his skin. good thing its not triggered by food since asyraf loves to eat and i'm not up to going through his food intake. its more likely because of his dry skin so he was prescribed with bath gel-ish soap, cream for his dry skin and hydrocortisone to put on the affected area.

from dr. greene…
doctors call on of these pityriasis alba, which is latin for white, scaly patches. children with this extremely common condition develop uneven, round or oval patches after sun exposure. the pathces are dry with very fine scales. varying from 1 to 2 inches in diameter, the are most common on the face (cheeks), neck, upper trunk and upper arms of children 3 to 16 years old.

these are completely benign, similar to a mild form of eczema. they are most common in children with dry skin. the involved patches don't darken with sun exposure the way the surrounding skin does. treatment involves daily lubrication with a good moisturizer, especially whenever the skin gets wet.

she also mentioned about parents with asthma, so ok, that's me.

per mr wikipedia…
kids who get eczema often have family members with hay fever, asthma or other allergies. some experts think these kids may be genetically predisposed to get eczema, which means characteristics have been passed on from parents through genes that make a child more likely to get it. about half of the kids who get eczema will also develop hay fever or asthma themselves.

so that would require a visit to dr azizi in the future...

Winding Down

the year's coming to a close. this year's been a mix of a year - with the boys' performances in school not up to mark, akmal showing great potential in school, massive holiday planning - for the 10th anniversary & the taking a chance trip, hubby's new job and big change in his weekly and sometimes, weekend, schedules, a cat becoming our new family member, new kittens born and a week later, died. full of ups and downs and new things, this year.

i doubt next year will be a quiet year what with amir now in morning session and akmal in his final year in kindy. and ariff in year 2, with no excuses about not being able to read or write, no more excuses about just starting school. asyraf too need to buck up, both in school and personally. he's been such a let down this year and he needs a good nagging to improve and be better.

of course, the highlight of this year was our california holiday. especially since its so fresh in our mind and well, withdrawal symptoms are currently attacking full force.

we came back with cough and flu and fever (for me at least) and with muscle aches and pains (for hubby and me, we're old). we managed to fight off jet lag despite being up since 4am on the day we returned. the boys pushed themselves to still go for their weekend football training. i pushed myself to unpack and do laundry and sort out our clothes. we all pushed and held on strong and went to bed with the rest of the country. ok…maybe earlier than the rest but we did it, we fought off jet lag both over there and when we came home.

there's so many things i want to turn around next year. yes, i know, i don't need to wait for new year to turn over new (in my case many, many) leaves but since my leaves revolve hugely around the schooling tree, it makes it easier and more sense (my sense) to use the new year (and the new schooling year) as a starting point.

anyway, i am grateful for all i've been through and learned during the year. despite its downs, the ups have been extremely wonderful and fulfilling. the downs can be overcome and, insyaAllah, i'm hoping it will turn, or slowly start to turn, towards up.

anyway…the jist of our year, in pictures. we started the year with a bang, with ariff entering primary school, and ended on an extremely high note, with our holiday in sunny california, which i have written a few entries on, on our travelog - link is at the side and here.

Let's Go

our travelog is back online…

Year End School Holiday 2014

or in this case, preparation for back to school 2015. i have a love-hate relationship with back to school preparations. i love doing the list, i hate the ticking off process; i love buying uniforms, i hate getting the name tags sewn and getting the shirts ironed; i love looking at new text books, i hate wrapping them.

many ask me why i start my preparation early, many give me virtual salute in fact. but honestly, starting early means you have a longer time getting it done. and i do need that long, long time because once the big items are sorted (i.e. the books and the uniform) i start to procrastinate and end up taking forever to finish what i've started. plus its better to spread out the things you do so that you don't start to hate doing it as you'll be doing it for years and years to come!

the boys got their text books quite early this year, about 2-3 weeks before the school holidays started. i got them wrapped over a weekend when hubby was not around, i.e. a 'we won't be going out' weekend. with my start-stop attitude, it took over a day to wrap almost 40 books.

i moved on to the next big item, the school uniforms. i went to a nearby aeon while the boys were in agama school but they did not have uniforms stocked up yet so i went to 1utama after i picked them up from agama school. a quick 30 minutes in-and-pay-and-out with 2 huge plastic bags of uniforms. i got new shirts for the boys but their pants were recycled.

then came the bit i hate most, taking off the name tags and school badges from the old uniforms. i seriously hate doing that so i spread them over a week so i wouldn't go mental. got them all tucked in the pocket of the new shirts and brought them to tailor to get them sewn. and then ironing 24 sets of uniforms over the space of 3 days.

once the school holidays started, i took the boys to get their stationeries and then their shoes.

i was kind of on the fence with buying school books. usually when i go, there's a long line of parents at the book shop that it totally turns you off. but this year, i drove by the school after lunch and there were practically no cars parked outside. we went to the book shop and there was only about 1-2 parents getting the books, so we joined the queue and got the boys' books on the first day the bookshop opened.

i'm actually surprised that currently i have settled 90% of the list, just pending school bags, amir's shoes and a few books that were not yet available at the book shop. other than that, its pretty much sorted, alhamdulillah. so now, we can enjoy the rest of the year-end school holidays.