a bug’s life

oh puh-leeeese.

did they seriously think they could scare me with THESE?? sheeshkebab!

i mean, i could have them for breakfast!

i think i’ll keep them as pets for now. there, there, be good, now, my new friends.

i’ll let you loose on monday… on abang dadam!

MUAAHAHAA!

incy wincy and company

some time back, mum asked me to find for her some fake spiders and other creepy-crawly insects.

no, not for halloween decorations, or for a strange fetish.

she wanted something to ’scare’ the little ones into submission.

her grandsons – well okayyy, particularly one aniq izhan, is fearless of almost everything, and while some may see this as an advantage or a trait that should be encouraged, it also means that it’s harder for his caregivers to prevent him from doing something mischievous, or worse, hazardous. because granny’s scoldings are among the things that don’t faze him. (it also doesn’t help that a while after committing the crime, he’d push his face into hers and put on his most earnest “mmmaaa!”, subsequently liquifying her into mush.)

he bulldozes his way around recklessly despite prior warnings of impending danger.

“aniq!! jangan main dengan pintu tuuu, nanti tersepit kaki kauu!”
“aniq!! keluar dari bawah katil omaa, terhantuk kepala nanti!”
“aniq!! berapa kali oma cakap, kau gedebang-gedebung cermin tu, nanti benda tu jatuh pecah kan!”
etc.

he even knows when he’s doing something undesirable, purposely looking at us while waiting for admonishment for his misconduct. testing the waters, seeking attention, or just plain being a child, call it what you may, but it drives mum up the wall having a double dose of them in the house! (dadam being a whole other set of “pe’el”, heheee.)

so she feels that a temporary solution would be to scare the kids with those toy creepy-crawlies.

this is not to say that it’ll be a foolproof plan.

for dadam, there’s a chance, coz he’s the “penggeli” sort.

as for naniq, sure, he’d go “eeee!”, shake his head, and press his chest with his hands when we mention ants or spiders or ladybugs. (mum would occassionally capture live specimen for the boys, so you can say she’s kind of their science teacher, lol! but live ones don’t live long, and they scuttle off upon release.) he’d do the same when he sees them in picture books.

but curiosity would get the better of him and he’d inch closer to the scene (like that line of marching ants), observe in awe, point and look at me, then try to prod it. if given a chance, he’d even do a ‘nunu’, who was recently known to pick a dead roach with her bare hands to show her mum. (heck, he’d probably try to taste it too, lol!)

i think i may soon enough transfer my paranoia of lizards to him though, coz everytime i see one scampering away, i’d give my almighty scream and jump up and down like a hysterical baboon, much to his fascination. so he may just do the same some day, not for actual fear or ‘geli-ness’, but from mimicry. who knows?

meanwhile, we finally found a bag of fake ’scary creatures’ (i swear it says that on the label) at one of those neighbourhood shops this evening for a bargained price of $2.30.

i’m not sure if i should allow this ‘fear factor’ tactic to take place. what if he REALLY gets scared of cockroaches and spiders and lizards and millipedes and bugs? he IS a boy after all, these are naturally creatures he SHOULD embrace and befriend!

and besides… if he becomes scared of them… who’s going to catch and kill them for mummy in her defence should she cross path with any of these offending creatures??

(by the way, let me tell you about my mum’s ophidiaphobia – yes, SNAKES! she’s so terrified of them, just the mention of the word will send shivers up her spine and turn her off her meal completely. i swear! i tried delving into her psyche and personal history, but she can’t seem to provide an answer to the root of her trauma. and no, desensitising never worked on her, coz the more we showed her pictures or shows on snakes, the worse it got.

BUT! she is a terror when it comes to lizards! so… my theory is, she kills lizards, and i’m scared of them. maybe her mum killed snakes, that’s why she’s scared of them.

ok. i’m doing it again, over-analysing, aren’t i? boo.)

“let’s gang up on oma and give her the heebie-jeebies, what say you?”
“ok… but first, get your hands off my spiffy elmo garb, yo.”

!!

!!

did you read in the local news about the seven-year-old child who recently passed ‘o’ level chemistry?

gosh. i barely passed mine at sixteen. even if i lived to be a hundred, i still wouldn’t know what to do with a freaking pipette. (and this coming from one who unwittingly did pure chem in sec school and failed miserably at every test, till ‘o’ levels when i *did* finally get a pathetic ‘C’, which incidentally was what the seven-year-old scored too, so you can say my understanding of chemistry is that of a genius seven-year-old’s… hah!)

according to his dad’s blog, the boy started crawling at four months (!), and started walking at six months (!), and started talking and reading earlier in general than his peers. and he does stuff like doodle atoms. (while i doodled stars – damn i should’ve taken up astronomy.)

his youngest brother (aniq’s age) is apparently a “genius” too because he can do stunts like climb up the stairs backwards, started speaking at eight months, etc.

!!

try as we might not to compare our kids with others, or use their achievements and developments as yardsticks or benchmarks, there’s something inherently competitive in our nature as human beings to do just that – compare.

we KNOW it’s unhealthy (for us and our kids), and we KNOW it’s unfair (coz every child is different), but we do it anyway, even if it’s somewhere at the back of our minds.

“their kid can do that, why can’t mine?”

it’s harrowing enough that we have to check against the developmental milestones charted in their health book every few months to see if they have the appropriate skills at the appropriate age. but measuring up to these proclaimed child geniuses/prodigies… hmm… you can’t help but wonder…

and as our parental pride deflates, we swallow the humble pie, and be thankful that our child is simply healthy, happy… and undeniably average.

he may not be a “genius” or a “prodigy”, but the future before him brims with hope and possibilities of being Someone Special or doing Something Good, in one way or another. we can only pray, and do our best to guide him…

meanwhile, the boy is way too busy in his own world to bother with “the rat race”.

busy with what?

“THWOWWWWW! THWOWWW BAWLL!”

his current favourite phrase (and action – then again, he throws everything, not just balls), complete with exclamation marks at the end. do you notice how kids have a thing for exclamations? it’s like they have this incredible abundance of energy, not just in their perpetually propelling limbs, but also bursting from their lungs.

“NAKK!”
“STARHH!”
“STOPPPP!!”
“TEHHNNNN!!”
*SHRIEEEEK!!!*

aiyoh, what next, “ROCK NEVA DIEEE!!!”?

if you can’t beat ‘em…

i’d never been particularly good with lego and… building stuff, and i never really had the interest in it. i hear it’s good for your left-brain. that’s to do with being good in math, isn’t it? well that figures. i suck at math. and other kinds of, er, logical thinking. :p

but seeing the strewn pieces of mega bloks on the floor today, i thought i should give it a go once and for all. well, it beats clearing up the damn things. i might as well get some fun out of it.

all 100+ pieces of it. twasn’t so tough. tough is rubik’s cubes. (which i remember i used to cheat by peeling off the stickers…)

erm, i guess it’s too late to be an architect or a construction worker or a mathemation mathematician now huh?

phew~

the playground is my oyster

CHAK!

i alarmed my Nanny when she released me at the playground the other day. she’d never seen me go down the slides or run across the rickety bridge all by myself before. huh, serves her right for not bringing me to the playground more often.

but i guess that’s coz most of the day she’s not my Nanny. by the time she comes home in the evening from her other job to be my Nanny, it’s too dark to go to the playground.

there! the playground’s THERE, i say! now stop taking pictures and take us there, you lousy nanny you…

ruby ruby ruby rubaaay!

dear Husband,

(readers, please note that i will intermittently address the Husband directly via blog entries because, err, sometimes i forget what i wanted to talk to him about, so i’m typing it out for him to read later. very lame? nevermind, continue…)

if it isn’t exciting enough that robert smith et al ie. the cure are purportedly coming to town come august, you have informed me through your dubious grapevines that snow patrol and kaiser chiefs too may wash up on our tiny shores in september.

YOU SURE OR NOT??

hmm baru semalam kita nyanyi dengan penuh semangat “ruby ruby ruby rubaaay!” kat dalam kereta eh. si kecik tu pun ter-snigger-snigger kat kita (“heh heh… heh heh…”) after every line in the chorus. dalam fikiran dia, “apa mak bapak aku ni, sot agaknye”. mana lah budak tu tak jadi macam anak met rock.

anyway i’m still miffed we missed pakcik bono down-under last year. pfft. and too bad we didn’t have any babysitter for si kecik when matt bellamy and co. were here. and i think if we’d gone to fallout boy, we’d be like the most freaking oldest and makcikpakcik-looking couple there. erm. but i don’t mind if panic! came tau. macam sedap gitu lagu dorang.

ouhhh! i hear my favourite cornflake girl will be releasing her new album in may. any hope she’ll come too?

hehe. BF-ing a piglet ten years ago. wonder how the piglet’s grown since…

ok, that’s all for now, Husband. thank you for your not-so-reliable updates. at least it gave me something to blog about. by the way, i can already hear whispers of ‘dah tua tak sedar diri, pergilah syarahan ke, ceramah ke’…

hurhur.

to end off, here’s something irreverent for your entertainment. they came in an email with the subject “why daddies shouldn’t buy baby clothes”. ho ho, i’ll say…

maybe we should really get into the baby t-shirt business, hor?

ok dah. see you later!

ps: i’m not having dinner tonight. dah makan free lunch kat carousel tadi, ber-round-round sampai lagi sikit nak jadi bullimic. i think i gained 5kg in one sitting. tapi best. next time i bring you ok?

yours,
Wife.

the pursuit of happyness

we like bringing him for jabs… coz it means we get to skive off work for a day (shhh!). well, ok, we apply for leave through the proper channels and all, but still, it feels like a whole day of gallivanting.

but try as we might to make it on time for our morning appointments, we’d more often than not end up late, and then we’d wait around at the clinic some more till half the day is gone, just like that *poof*.

the boy is still just past the 10kg mark, and everything points to him being at a very average 50th percentile. a quick run-down of the assessment checklist too seemed about right.

like your typical first-time – and might i add, sinjaporean – parent, i’d been a bit paranoid that he’d ‘fail’ some of the ‘tests’ in the checklist, or that he’d fall way, way below the percentile thing. and it didn’t help that he’d had a bit of a fall in the toilet the night before (no thanks to our incredibly negligent selves, who left the bathroom door open, despite knowing his penchance for playing with water), and i swore i thought the loud thud i heard was his skull knocking against the slippery floor (the Husband assured me it wasn’t), and that the incident might in some way affect his performance and subsequent development. :S

anyway, after the two jabs on each of his thigh (which he forgot all about as soon as it was over), we deposited him at mum’s for his nap, and proceeded to do what we’d been dying to do for a loooong time….

GO DATING!

haiyah, no hot and steamy scenes were involved hokay. all we wanted was a decent, undisturbed meal together (with no messy and impatient toddler at the side), a bit of a leisurely stroll and unhurried shopping around the mall (an impossible task when you’re running after a two-legged tornado), and a no-brainer movie to top it off (urm, can’t remember the last time we huddled in the love-seat of a cold cinema together).

then, it’s back to reality.

not to say that the ground we fall back on is any less than great – it definitely IS great. having him around is like having our very own personal entertainer most of the time. and having your child kiss you everyday without being asked is like, The Best Thing In The World. then, of course, boys being boys, there’s also the wrestling. (did i tell you about our nightly wrestling matches? he’d pin me down again and again, and slobber all over my face into submission, despite my wretched cries of “NO!! DADDY HELLLP!”. the highlight of my day indeed. and no, daddy never helps, heh.)

even though we’d planned this date some time back, that morning itself we both felt guilty and had last-minute thoughts about bringing him along.

“macam kesian gitu eh, nak tinggalkan dia…”
“ah ah, kesian…”

but left him we did. coz this whole ‘dating’ thing, well, it’s just… important, you now? there’s so little ‘us’ time, we usually forget that there is an ‘us’.

so anyway, we couldn’t get enough, and had another day of it.

this time with nothing planned, just a little aimless drive around…

… and no, no hot and steamy scenes of fogged up windows either hokay! will you people stop it already?! :p

now let’s see… when’s the next jab…?

ggg-TAH!

do you spy with your eye a boy with three chords and the truth?

come up the bus with us!

(and the real message, for the record, is here.)

*************

oh, i should also mention the craaaazy thing we did afterwards.

attempt to buy groceries at the Giant across the road!

it was a Gigantic mistake, to say the least.

the crowd was Gigantically impossible, but the worst thing wasn’t that.

it was the sight of sinjaporeans FEASTING on the fruits and other perishable goods that were in the open, making the whole place a freaking buffet line! they swarmed around the 49cts/100gm roasted chestnuts and blatantly stood there, peeling off the chestnuts and had a heck of a Gigantic time eating them! a few steps ahead, another group swarmed around the oranges, peeling off the skin and munching away!

i stood with my jaws open and stared at the sight of these vultures.

why stop there? go ahead, bite into the apples! dig into the ice-cream! open up a few cans of coke while you’re at it!

needless to say, we left feeling rather disgusted (yet somewhat bemused).

… and headed to parkway’s Giant where the air was fresher and the people more civilised.

tsk.

Back to School Sale! (SOLD)

Selling on behalf of my brother. A brand new XBOX (First Generation) console, never opened before with an additional original controller. Also included, not 1, not 2, not 3 but 5 brand new, sealed original games! Take note, all items on sale here are brand new, never been used before!!

The XBOX Back To School Set consists of

• The Xbox Console Set
• Additional Original XBOX controller
• Forza Motorsport
• Conker Live & Reloaded
• Splinter Cell, Chaos Theory
• Gun
• Tecmo Classic Arcade

So what’s the price? Bidding starts at $160. If you really die die want to buy, I might be able to close the auction early if the price is right

So, to bid, just comment on the post. Don’t forget to include your email address!! Happy bidding!

The auction is closed! Sold to a nice lady! Thanks for the support!

being smålish

i’ll be at ikea on sunday afternoon, if anyone asks.

maybe i’ll try to get into that hot ‘club’ called Småland where there’s always a loooong line of cool kids waiting to get in. but dang, i hear the age limit is 4.

maybe i’ll pretend to be part of a band playing a gig in the club! of course, i’ll have to put on something more spiffy than my pajamas here.

i could do with an entourage, and maybe a few groupies.

coz i hear something’s happening outside of ikea that day. not sure what, really, but mummy says i’ve got to be on my best behaviour as there’ll be a guest-of-hawner present.

hah! best behaviour indeed. as if rock star wannabes like me subscribe to that ethos, sheesh.

well, if things get too boring (and i don’t get into that Småcrap – age limit, bah!), there’s always that new big-a** Giant hypermart next door! no age limit there…

see ya, homies! (eh, ni dah jadi ghetto rapper pulak.)