I Yelled At Her

Busy busy Monday I had yesterday doing absolutely everything.

Anyways.

Asha is now taking English lessons from the kewl Teacher Claire, together with Adani. I swapped Asha over to English from Mental Arithmetic as she needs to firm up on her spelling pretty soon. Aliya is still doing her Mental Arithmetic by choice. I picked them up on Saturday and had a long chat with Teacher Claire.

Adani is assessed by Teacher Claire a self-starter, eager stduent and with appropriate attention span which makes it easy for her to concentrate and progress. Ayisha on the other hand, has short attention span and is very easily distracted. It's not that she doesn't know the stuff, she just finds OTHER stuff more interesting to look at. And I had to agree with her, and kicked myself in the backside for not realising this sooner. I suspected Ayisha of everything, worse things but this, though very obvious, just whooshed by me.

This explains why in exams she's pretty much exceeds her normal home and class work cos she has to concentrate under strict supervision but when she's asked to do something, unless you're centimeters away from her, it doesn't get done or it does in a long time and shabbily sometimes. And this also explains why she's having a bit of trouble progressing in her Kum0n in that she knows them at the required time, but wastes time being distracted.

I really like and trust this Teacher Claire as she seems genuinely interested in the girls' progress and she takes special regard of Ayisha, even putting her on her lap for Asha to focus on the task at hand. And Adani & Asha adore Teacher Claire. So, pardon my bulging eyeballs when she told me that the whole of December she's not gonna around and a replacement teacher is coming in her place. Sigh!

Anyways.

Intervention with Ayisha. TV in the house is turned off between 9 and 10 at night, every night, well, probably with the exception of the Kum0n nights. And everybody ages 4 and up will READ through this hour. Anyone below, depending on moods and temperamental will do as he pleases, though reading normally takes his fancy.

The hour begins with kum0n for 15 minutes, then the reading begins.

But it all did not go so smoothly every night. The night before, I sat with Ayisha yelling at her for 20 minutes while she does her English exercises. I think I yelled myself hoarse and felt really really bad that night. She cried a bit but impatience and sheer lack of control on my side, egged me to yell some more. If I had been a bit more apathetic and see that she was trying, I wouldn've been a better teacher and a better mother. I yelled at my own daughter! Preposterous. I should be shot and I still call myself a mother.

Yesterday's drive to the office, I thought about this and it hurt that I did that again and again and again, no matter how much I vowed never to do it again. MrGart has accused me of being so MrsGoodyTwoShoes in my blogs that I never published things that are demeaning to me. I did not retort back cos he wins anyway. There's not much that I can do except to again and again not to lose my patience. But it's a hard thing to do when you're being smothered with every other requests in the house when all you wanna do is to help the one who needs it most. Women they say are great multi-taskers, but we do it at the expense of our sanity and that sanity often hangs by a thread before it snaps.

There are 2 things that MrGart says that hurts me the most. One is that he thinks that I'm a fake for not telling ppl that I am a mean mother to my kids and the other is the way he describes to everybody how easy it was for me to give birth to everybody and that I don't deserve the attention I do because I was on epidural. It's bad enough that I have to fend myself from ppl who think that I'm such a woos for taking epidurals, to have myself described as such by a person closest to me is almost cruel.

Anyways.

I suddenly feel sad and gloomy which I think a trip to MidV's Metr0's Preview Sale will cure soon. Hmm.

Bye Bye Birdie

Remember I blogged about the moment of insanity MrGart suffered and in that instant agreed with the kids to get a bird?

It was an English budgie and I'm still not sure whether it was a he or a she. I never really had a chance to snap a pic of that bird that set us back RM300, that did not include the fanciful cage and the paraphernalia the girls got that little Birdie.

Birdie's wings were clipped, cruelly, I suspect so that it would be able to fly very high and very far either. I knew this AFTER the purchase, lest I'd throw one of my thou-shalt-not-hurt-God's-creatures sermons.

Anyway, wings clipped, Birdie was supposed to be tame and to make it even tamer, we're supposed to take it out of its cage daily, caress it, talk to it and generally shower it with love. Theoretically, that it. The truth is that, ALL the girls are afraid of any animals or creatures. Aliya would crouch her shoulders and in constant position to scramble should the bird attacks her. Adani would stand away from the bird and just instructs MrGart what she would like to have done on the bird. Ayisha is yet another bird-lover from afar.

Ariz is excluded in this picture cos we don't want him NEAR the bird. As much as he likes it, he's fearless too and if Birdie just walks around, he'd tailgate it and tries to hold it. I've had images of a crushed Birdie, neck twisted in a sordid manner, mangled by my schweet little prince. *shudder*

Anyway, this is a long way of telling you that it was a mistake. I hate pets. I don't have a fondness over animals, which I did have when I was child. I guess when you switch roles from a cared-for to the one that cares for, another liability is what you're trying to avoid. Birds are smelly, and I have a soft heart. I don't like the fact that Birdie lives in a cage. I feel it's so cruel. And I don't like to be the one feeding it when it's hungry and having to think of it everytime. But for the kids, I gave in. That, and also they wanted either a hamster, dog or a cat. So, a bird is a HUGE compromise.

Well, my parents and sisters dropped over at my house and suddenly we realised that Birdie's gone. It's highly unlikely that the bird opened his own cage from OUTSIDE, so someone did it for him. That someone has not been smoked out yet, maybe ever.

Well, MrGart and others for a search and rescue. But how the heck do you find a bird? 2 hours later, MrGart spotted it high up on a branch of a tall tree's 30 meters from the house. He called to her lovingly, which I laughed it off. Soon, it flew to another tree and since it was getting dark and us, being clueless on how you entice a bird to get back into its own cage, we caved in. If it's meant to be, Birdie will come right back to our lawn.

It's been 5 days and the cage's quiet and Birdie is hopefully happier on a branch of a tree somewhere. He's an imported British budgie, so I guess he'd better learn the local dialect fast, eh?

Me? I'm mourning the loss of Birdie deeply. Sadly. I'll miss him/her.







YAYYYYY!

Road Blocks Aplenty

In the past few weeks, I've seen far too many road blocks around KL. Intensified yesterday and today, and I bet will culminate during the weekend in support of the planned much publicised rally on Sunday.

Reducing the 4 lanes of the Federal Highway to just 2 lanes on a Friday morning rush is just cruel and frustrating. Guess their mission to thwart and dampen the eager rally-goers' spirit and enthusiasm is partly achieved.

Anyway, road blocks on massive highways are one thing, but road blocks on deserted lanes in front of neighbourhoodly shops are another. Last week, we headed out to Ar-Rafi in Sec. 13, Shah A1am for dinner and amidst the turnings of the small, lanes there were 4 whopping roadblocks. I purposely did not include the sighting of a policeman hiding behind a TeeeNBee feeder pillar with a notebook and a walkie-talkie. Now, I'm not sure whether it's reassuring or it's unnerving.

Heavy police presence is sometimes welcomed and some to a certain extent induce a false sense of security and subsequently complacency in the community. But it also means that there's a bountiful of criminals living amidst ourselves and it's chillingly scary. Especially when the dailies' frontpages splash murders of innocent children, hapless mothers, fathers, suicides and even our celebrated MrSecondSpaceman was not spared the brutality of our so-called civil society.

I quiver and I shudder at the future my children are facing. Sigh!

End of My Golfing Days

True. True. True.

The end of my glorious golfing days ended today. A total of 1 month and 2 days of actually holding a golf club.

3 years back, at the height of MrGart's fascination in golf, I was intrigued. I've always shared interests with him, sports-wise.

When he was hooked on snooker, I was there on the snooker table, aiming for the cue ball using the spider cue. We went for countless snooker sessions at Peterborough downtown, sometimes until the wee hours of the morning. We watched Jimmy White and whoever-that-redhead guy was. Now, he's off snooker, I think since I don't think he knows where his prized cue is at this point in time and I think the belly's making his target more difficult these days..

When he was into football, well he was never off it, ever. I followed him to countless matches, Manchester United matches and even in Europe, during our Inter-Railing backpacking trip, we walked all over Milan for Juventus' home ground.

So, naturally I thought I'd be great at golf. Bought the set. Practised at the local driving range. Missed more than I actually hit. By a yard. Went to our neighbourhood's pitch and putt for a session. Failed miserably. Thought a bigger course would do me justice. So we were at uUPeeM course, full of mosquitoes and I was a disaster.

Thought I'd give it another round but was abruptly cut short when I found out I was preggy with Ariz. There!

So, a week ago, I listed the golf set on eeBay and oh my! It was a hit. In the end I had 6 people actively outbidding each other 52 times to get their hands on it. I asked for RM300 and ended up with RM557.50. Yay!

Anyway, today casa1238's friend came to pick up the set he bought for his wife and he's very kind too, even inviting me to his home in Miri, if I happen to be by.

Well, I hope casa1238's wife will be happy with the golf set. I hope she can put it to a better use than I was ever. As for me, no more thinking of golf. I'm into baking now. Something the gals at my office appreciate better than golf.

Just One Measly Hour

One teeny-weeny measly hour of no TV in the house last night bought me :

1. 2 repeatedly read books with Ariz & Adani.

2. Completed and checked kumon worksheets.

3. Discussion on what Ayisha name means and Aliya regaling us of Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w)'s marriages, the ages of the wives and all.

4. Sirah revision for Aliya's KAFA's exam today.

5. Sleeping kids by 10:00pm

6. Nursing & sleeping Ariz by 9:45pm and Mummy's explore into troposphere, about Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit & whathisname Celcius. In case you're wondering I'm still on my Bill Bryson's A Small History of Everything. Exactly my type of reading pleasures.

6. 2 hours of Internet time for Mummy.

This is soo gonna get permanent.

psstt even when the curfew's lifted, I was too engrossed and missed House at 11pm. Cehs!

Adani In Concert

As promised, here are 3 pictures of Adani, courtesy of Ninuk a.k.a Uqbah's Mak. Our pictures are so glap that if I post them, sungguh kurang berkesan.

Adani, in her typical pose. In the dressing room before the performance.


Uqbah the elephant & Adani the dancer. BTW there's only 7 girls and 15 boys in her class, so I guess she's entitled to 2 boys at any given time. Heh!



Stretching before her Madagascar.


My baby's a big girl. *wipes eyes*

Last Day of School

This morning Asha's being rather difficult. She told us last night that Teacher Sharmila said that there's no school today. I nicely told her, I did not think so, to a furrowed brows.

So, I called up MissKLSentral to confirm. Yup, I was right.

So, this morning, dressed and ready, MrGart suggested she bring a smaller bag to school and that triggered a "that's my bag" and "mummy.!".

Well, I left MrGart's to his device and left the scene with Adani in tow. MrGart called me later and said that she was bawling her eyes out in the car and that they went and saw mainly bigger kids at school and he sent her home. Heh!

Well. Adani still has 3 more days of school next week and there's a letter about a party and pot luck. Hmmp! Nak masak apa ye? Adani was talking about a BIG butterfly cake. Uh-uh!

Aliya's been feeling under the weather lately. She has cold and was sniffing last night and slept early. She was a little warm. She woke up about 11pm and promptly went downstairs, almost sleep-walking-ly and sat on the sofa in the darkness, in tears. We followed her and directed her to the kitchen for her nurofen & promethazine.

Aliya has a habit of that actually. Especially when she falls asleeps not in her own bed and when we wake her up for her to move into her own bed. She'll mumble and walks elsewhere and we haveto physically take her to her bed.

Teringat kat Najwa, roti's daughter. Is she still sleep-walking ?

Ayisha's Birthday Cupcakes

I've not gone crazy over cupcakes, but I have children who are born in the months of October, December, January and February and also a husband born in February, so expect more pictures of amateurish cakes and such.

Anyways.

Ayisha's birthday will be on the 1st December 2007. She'll turn 7. Yes she will. Only 7. The sad part about born that time of the year is that school's out. So, Mummy will always have to bring forward the celebration.

So, since this is the last week of the school year, I decided last week that today'll be the day. Cupcakes are still the easiest for me, so taking the cue from Adani's success. More cuppies today. A significant different though. I used buttercream icing, instead of the sugar icing. I prayed that it'd work and alhamdulillah it did. BTW, I got the recipe from CookingforEngineers website. Great great website!

All 52 of them cuppies for Asha to bring for her classmates.


Adani, Aliya, Ariz & Daddy's Cupcakes.


For Spinah, MoshTino, Hazel, Haiza, Ley & yts who all gobbled these up even before I could blink.


What's left of the icing.

Ayisha beamed this morning.

I'm just happy for her.

The cupcakes' are also therapy for me when I saw that she's number 31/39 in her class and 261 out of 313 children in the Standard 1. Aku sungguh sedih. Feel like a failure. I need help.

Facebook .. A Revelation

Seems like everybody and I mean everybody is in Facebook these days.

It's almost a hype already.

Last week I was fighting zombies, slayers and vampires till I got sick of blood and started to crave for sago gula melaka instead and took a break. And today, I figured out I was promoted to a Level 2 slayer. Hmpfft! In my absence, people have been killing off my slayer again and again. The only explanation why my points kept increasing.

Anyhow.

The best part about it is that I get to get acquainted (from afar, silently) with friends I knew in the olden days and have forgotten them until I see them in friends' friends' friends. There!

So, this friend of mine. Sani. More like my junior at UMIST. He looks exactly how he used to any uni and that's like 12 years ago. Time flew but he looked the same. Except that he has a daughter on his lap. Guess 12 years did go by then. Sani was so innocent when I first knew him from Omot. And his friends were oh sungguh baik and bersopan-santun. Felt so inadequate. But they turned out to be a lot of fun too.

We all grow up, we all grow old. We all got wiser too, in the process, I suspect, though some slower than others. But it's always always very amusing to see them all again. Reminisce over the memories. Flashes of snippets of memories of lunches in the cafeteria, of the graduation ceremony, or the trips in the blustery wintry night across England. The smells of the past, the tingling and the butterflie in the stomach.

Friends are catalysts to all this mixed emotion. And I get to see what Abas has grown up into. Hmmmpphh.

p/s Entry ini sangat tidak berfaedah kerana saya ngantuk tadi baru makan nasi minyak, sago gula melaka, wantan soup at the offfice Raya do.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

*looks out the window*

Hujan!

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Syawal Telah Pergi ..

Yup. Raya month is over. Phew! I now have a shot at reducing my weight now! Kalau pegi open houses tu makan tak ingat dunia .. no self-restraint at all. Sekarang, rasakan panahan asmara gmoks! Ha ha ha!

Anyways.

First of all, I should congratulate Gina on getting herself hitched and married on Saturday. I'm oh so happy for you. Truly I am and I'm still kicking myself for not being able to attend the glorious wedding at Ipoh. Sorry babe, will make it up to you later, kay! Dengan ucapan .. ehem ehem .. Selamat Pengantin Baru, semoga panjang umur dan bahagia selalu. Dah halal ni, sila kan la! Ish!

Well, next stop. We were at 4 open houses over the weekend. Meen's, Ita's, MrGart's older colleague who lives in BJ and who's youngest son sits next to Aliya in school and MrGart's friend's second wifey's house. There! I should tell you that Aliya was hiding behind my back the whole time we were at her boyfriend's house. Malu tak kira. That Farhan pun bukan main terliat sana terliat sini. BTW, if Aliya reads this, I can tell you she'll flip.

And the second wifey's house was gorgeous. With fish pond and all. They did a doa selamat & marhaban to celebrate the birth of their child and the aqiqah kambing .. giler punya sedap. Nak amik lebih sikit, malu!

Then yesterday was a BIG day for Adani. Her first ever stage concert was held at Kelab Darul Ehsan and her Titanic (Ninuk's still baffled why the school named a class over a sunk ship!) class went up second. ANd Adani was FLAWLESS!

She smiled. She twirled. She hooked hands with her cutesy boy partner and perfectly went into circles together. No flips, no accidental bumps. Just perfect twirling. And she's smiling all the time. She posed for pictures and she waved at the crowd when her turn's over. She's a real angel! I'll upload the pictures soon. It was such a great feeling seeing your baby on stage, performing a dance. Oh so proud a parent I was yesterday and always.

By the way, since this is beginning to be a rojak entry, I should mention that I've been pretty snappy for the past few months with the kids. But yesterday, at the concert, we were behind this much older couple whose daughter is in Std 2 and they looked like perfect parents. Nurturing, smiles all around and I made a resolution that I will not become the nagging, erratic, short-fused, perpetually angry, snappy, unstable parent that I am. I'm changing. Insyallah! I pray for your guidance, Ya Allah!

Opps .. to all the CBN'ers oldies, I met Mrs Manuel yesterday. She's the principal at CBN throughout the five years I was there. She was also the principal who bit my head off for leaving the school for Ser1 Puteri and who bit the rest of my head off when 9 days later, we (my twin & I) crawled back to CBN. He he he! What to do? I love the school too much and did I tell you, we had to sleep in dorms? With other people? Oh sungguh tragis! Wasn't that actually. We wanted to go to eMRSeM Beseri which my father veto-ed, so in retaliation, we bowed to his demand and got our wishes days later. Anak-anak yang sungguh mencabar minda mak bapak! Psst .. to parents of twins, b every wary, twins are cute, but they are wayyy too shrewd!

Well, I hope this Rojak has enough perisa. Signing off now to make my coffee.

Girly Cuppies For the Girls

Sleepy!

Was up last night till about midnight baking 5 batches of the cupcakes. Then had to wake up this morning about 5am to ice these lil' cuties.

So, by 7 this morning, Adani's taking 34 cuppies, Asha's taking 9 cuppies and Ariz & Aliya can share the remaining 4. Should've taken the pictures while these were not wrapped in clingfilm. Heh! But I was running late and just remembered to snap some pictures to make certain colleagues at work drool. Sungguh kejam!

So, I hope Adani and her 22 classmates would have a grand time celebrating her birthday (a month late) and the Children's Day today. I also hope that Ayisha's is sitting smugly in her class right now, beaming from her 9 gorgeous cupcakes that her Mummy made especially for her and her 8 other friends. I told her that next week I'll make at least 50 cuppies for her friends to celebrate her birthday (she's born on the 1st December, so we'll have to bring it forward), but she insisted to bring some today. So, I hope no girlfriends of hers would be in tears today.And I also hope that Aliya & Ariz would've dived through the cupcakes and not smear them on the sofa. Hehehe!

*zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz*

Anak Jantan Ku Seorang

Ariz Zuhayr !!

Arghhhhhhhhhh!

Blog Block .. Burp !

To all my six ardent fans, I apologise for not updating this blog for a rather long while. Not really sure why though. Here's a list of possible causes.

1. Too much blogging in the head i.e. talking to self.
2. Too much planning and not much doing. Refer to Number 1.
3. Too much food intake.
4. Too many open houses invitation and not much do-conme-to-my-house. Burp!
5. Momentum sudah lari.

Excuses mexcuses, Elisa would scoff if she reads this.

Anyway, I'm back and I'll make sure I'll post an entry at least daily.

So, hang in there you, you, you, you, you and you.

I love you all!

p/s perasan giler !

Helleweeen Night At BJ

Disclaimer: I don't subscribe to the Halloween's idealogy, ever.

A bunch of kids swarmed my house last night in costumes. Terkejut badak makcik. Nasib baik I was properly dressed. Trick-or-treating around the neighbourhood apparently. Behind them the chaperones appeared, MissShell in afro wig and MissNiceHouse in err normal garb.

So, I scrambled for candies of which I have none. Luckily I remembered a couple of boxes of chocolates from the Raya hampers and they attacked those. My kids were ecstatic and upon invitation by their friends, all four promptly tagged along, dragging me too.

There were about 17 kids of all ages from at least 4 houses and they all knew each other. Even Adani has her friends from school. Ariz came equipped with his horse stick (for want of a better word) and his cowboy hat. He gallopped around to the delight of the other kids.

We went to 3 other houses, strangers I thought, except that the kids were saying "This is Dini Sofea's house" and all. We, chaperones got to peer inside ppl's houses while the kids devoured their candies. One house even have a pool, wahhh! Ariz dah teruja dah. The kids even got some duit Raya from a house who ran out of sweets.

Once we ran out of houses of friends, we called it a night around 10-ish. Aliya, Asha and Adani had those satisfied, fun look on their faces and Ariz err was on my hips, along with his horse stick cos one of the bigger boys spooked him with their scary masks.

I thought this unplanned night walk went extremely well, maybe because of its unplan-ness too and I'm just thankful that I live in such a great neighbourhood and my kids have friends all around them.

Well, the girls are making plans for next year. Gulp!