How to Keep Fit la?

So the government's trying to ban fast food advertisements. I'd wager a guess that they're trying to get Malaysians to eat healthily and therefore be more healthy. I shouldn't be so sure about winning the bet - this IS the government we're talking about - but that line of reasoning may have just crossed their minds.

Personally, I think it would be easier to encourage people to do some exercise and focus on 'everything in moderation' rather than do a blanket ban. After all, so-called fast food isn't the only unhealthy food in town, so why punish them?

Education is key - and for those who would like some tips on keeping fit by incorporating some simple exercises into their daily routine, read on. There's nothing like being a full time or stay-at-home mom to keep you on your toes.

1. Playground Sprints

This can be done at the playground or your own garden if you have one. It's quite simple. Just let your 3-year old child push your 1-year old baby in the latter's stroller. Make sure you are far enough away, so that when the stroller is, let's say, pushed faster than you (or the baby) would like, you can sprint really fast towards them and prevent any mishaps.

A variation to this could be to let your older son pull your younger son who is sitting on the bicycle straight into the banana trees. That should get you running real quick and the heart pumping just that little bit faster.

Alternatively, just run up and down the garden with your cats. If you can climb the tree to continue chasing your cats, great, otherwise no penalty if you stop at the bottom of the tree to catch your breath.

2. Use Your Baby as Weights

Now, I'm not suggesting you hold your newborn baby by the scruff of the neck and do 1-2-lift, 1-2-lift. No, no, no... I just remember when Abang was a baby, about 5 or 6 months old, he started to get mobile. He couldn't really crawl per se, but he could move commando style on his tummy and get from A to B. That posed a slight problem for me, that I couldn't just leave him playing downstairs by himself if I needed to, say, run upstairs for a bit.

So everytime I had to go somewhere he wasn't, I had to carry him with me. By that time, I think he was about 8kg maybe?

"It's going to rain. Better close the windows upstairs." And off we'd both go, me carrying Abang on my hips up the stairs, then close all the windows then back down again.

"Dang. Left my handphone upstairs." Repeat.

See? As a regular occurrence, going up and down the stairs, carrying 8kg of baby fat, you really do start to get pretty fit. Forget buying a stairmaster - after awhile, I became the stair-master!

3. Go for Gold

When the said-baby has become a pre-schooler and weighs almost twice as much, take him (preferably "him" since they are usually more active) to buy bulky household items and don't bring the stroller.

This is based on very recent, very real experience. I had to go and buy a new kitchen tap and a new water heater because our plumber diagnosed both of them as "sudah rosak wor". Abang was very tired and clearly in need of a nap, and unfortunately for me, these days the only way I can get a 'touchdown' is when he's strapped in to his booster seat in the car. In the haste to go, I forgot to bring his stroller. By the time we were done, Abang was very, very tired and I had to carry him with my right arm and lug a water heater and kitchen tap on the left hand. (It used to be that we only worked one arm's muscle - the one used to carry the baby. Today I worked both arms! My personal trainer, if I had one, would be so proud.)

To make matters worse, on the way to the car there was an announcement over the PA system. Something about a fire drill "anytime after this". Aiiieeee!! Must ... leave ... now...! I certainly did not want to get stuck in the department store going through a fire drill.

So I - we - sprinted back to the car. Or I tried to, anyway, with a 15kg boy on one arm and my purchases on another.

Now where are those fries...?

Going on a Guilt Trip

I had initially not intended to blog our holiday but a couple of friends asked about our trip Down Under so I thought why not. Daddy and I were on a trip this past week, a guilt trip. We had a holiday together without the boys and the guilt started even before the holiday started. Calling the boys every night helped to ease the guilt, but also made it worse whenever Abang asked, "When are you coming back to my house?"

It turns out there were lots of things happening in Sydney while we were there. First, the cruise ship Queen Mary 2 docked at the harbour (or, in Aussie speak, "haa-buh") early in the week. The night I arrived, I took the train to the Circular Quay station at the haa-buh and it seemed like the whole population of Sydney was there too. They were there to see the fireworks display in conjunction with the cruise ship leaving.

In the meantime, the other cruise ship Queen Elizabeth 2 also docked at the haa-buh. It's not as big as the Queen Mary 2, but still very large and impressive.

The second day we were there we took one of those touristy harbour cruises with commentary explaining historical significance and various other interesting information. Unfortunately, we hardly heard any of the commentary. That's because we were swarmed by tourists from a nearby country (no names mentioned) and were so noisy and so annoying that it just spoilt the cruise.

I told my friend about this incident and she said, "Ah yes. Did you know there are 50 million tourists from that country travelling?"

"Ya, and all of them were on our boat that day," I replied. It really did feel like it.

Annoying tourists aside, there was another interesting event. The US Vice President, Mr Dick I-Shot-My-Hunting-Friend Cheney arrived in Sydney for 4 days. As you can imagine, security was very tight, roads were closed, helicopters hovered about. In fact, when Dick Nobody-Wants-To-Go-Hunting-With-Me-Anymore Cheney was whisked from the airport to his hotel, we could hear from our hotel room the sounds of very long (and obviously annoyed) car honking, a result of closed roads to allow his motorcade to go through.

The next morning, Dick Maybe-I-Should-Choose-A-Different-Hobby Cheney addressed a group of Americans and Australians at his hotel and even that posed a major logistics headache. We wanted to go around on the bus, but were told not to bother with the buses because of the expected traffic congestion. I guess it's like what happens in KL when we host NAM and OIC meetings.

Lest you think we didn't enjoy ourselves, we did. The weather was great (as you can see in the pictures) and even though the food portions there are generally big, we walked most of it off around the haa-buh, aquarium, opera house and near the hotel area. In fact, Daddy reckons he's dropped a few pounds from this holiday!

The best part of the trip was meeting up with old friends. We met up with a school friend of mine and her hubby, an ex-colleague and his family who migrated there about 10 years ago and another ex-colleague and his family. Always good to see old friends. (Not friends who are old, but longtime friends.)

When we came home, we realised there were a couple more friends in Sydney whom we forgot to get in touch with.

Never mind. Next time!

This 'Tagging' Thing

I got tagged by Tracy last week, and I asked her "What's this 'tagging' thing anyway?" I'd had read about it on other blogs, but never really knew what it meant. Apparently it's like being "it" and since she got tagged and blogged about the reasons why she blogs, I figured better to toe the line.

Initially, I blogged to practise writing. And writing about my children (with sprinklings about Daddy) certainly seemed like the easiest thing to write about. It gets the writing juices flowing.

After awhile, I realised this is an excellent way to document the boys growing up. Years from now - assuming blogs are still around - we can read these old posts and say, "Oh ya! Adik used to do that!" and "Aww, remember when Abang used to say blah blah blah?"

Of course, the best reason must be to make fun of my kids. There's a lot of material in this blog that's just right for that Let's-embarrass-our-son-when-he-brings-home-his-girlfriend-to-meet-us moment. I can just see it now...

"Why hello dear, it's so nice to meet you," I'll say as I start searching for THE MOST embarrassing photos to show her.

"And here you have Adik, using the batu lesung, when he was just one and a half years old ... oh, oh, there he is in his sagging diaper ... look at this! Trying to feed himself, so cute!"

When it's Abang's turn, "Oh, Abang was such a fussy baby. Stressed us out to no end! But he looked so cute at his kindergarten concert - see? And he always tried to teach Adik things like how to put shoes on, how to brush teeth, how to pee - such a good Abang."

Hey, I got to get SOME laughs out of all this, right?

... Right?

Now it's my turn to 'tag' someone - I tag Michele!

Gong Xi Fa Cai

Happy Lunar New Year! It's the Year of the Boar - my year, which means I turn 36 this year and I'm looking forward to it.

Last Sunday, we visited my mom's uncle in OUG just off Old Klang Road. It's a tradition that dates back to when I was in primary school. Back then, before the time of handphones, we would arrange to meet somewhere at a certain time and then after everyone (siblings, cousins, aunties and uncles) has arrived, we would go to this house for a CNY visit.

Of course, if somebody was late, too bad for everyone else, we just waited. Whether it was under a tree, or by the road...

This year, there were fewer visitors. My brother and his wife are away on holiday this week. My cousin is (was) in hospital and his wife in confinement. My uncle and his family have balik kampung. So it was just our family, my parents and my sister and her family. Even my mom's uncle, whose home we were visiting, seemed empty. There were only a few of their family members there when we went visiting.

Still, it was - and always is - nice to see them after a whole year of not meeting them. There's usually some talk about "Yes, we should get together sometime. Let's not just meet once a year." But everyone is so busy and before you know it another year rolls around, and we meet here again!

I tried getting a good picture of Abang in his CNY outfit but he's been quite camera shy lately, can't imagine what that's about. Adik looks good, albeit in Abang's old CNY outfit.

Think next year both boys will get new outfits.

NEWSFLASH: Dead Rat Found in Office Car Park

Kuala Lumpur, Fri. - Office workers were shocked when they found a dead rat in the basement car park of an office block in Plaza Damansara today.

Apparently, the dead rat was situated next to one of the cars that is regularly parked there. Authorities traced the owner of the car to a man in his '30s who works there.

The owner, who only wanted to be identified as "Daddy", told us, "Unfortunately, yes, I put it there. There really wasn't any other place I could have put it."

It turns out that the man's cat - codename "Harun" - had put the dead rodent in his shoe the previous night. And this was one day when Daddy decided to drive wearing his slippers and bring his shoes to the office. So he hadn't checked if there was anything unusual in his shoe.

A source, who only wanted to be identified as "Mummy", told us, "He never drives to work wearing his slippers. He always puts his shoes on at home and then drives to work. Poor thing (him, not the rat)."

"I should have realised something was afoot (pun intended?). Usually when I come home from work I put my socks in the shoes. This morning, one of the socks was outside the shoe," Daddy explained to this correspondent.

"So it was only when I parked the car and started to put on my shoes that I realised there was something grey and fuzzy and quite dead in my shoe," he continued.

Your correspondent had to excuse herself to gag. Investigations continue.

Tired Kittens

The boys and I had another long day today. (So what else is new?) Together with my parents, we headed to Kuala Pilah, Negeri Sembilan, to fetch my auntie. She'd been there the past few weeks attending to some major roof repairs.

On the way there, we stopped by Sg Ujong Club in Seremban. It's a very nice quaint old club where we've been members for as long as I can remember. This stopover at the club has long been a tradition of ours whenever we balik kampung. It was nice to have both boys run around there for a bit. Abang has been there before, but this is Adik's first time.

When we got to the kampung house, my auntie was all ready for the trip home. How nice for her then, when we pulled up and Abang yelled, "Wan! Wan! I miss you, Wan!" He then proceeded to give her a big ole bear hug. When I took Adik out of his car seat and he saw her he immediately stretched his arms out for her to carry him. She was so pleased!

On the way home, both the boys passed out. Besides them obviously needing their rest, it was also nice for my parents and I to have a "real" conversation without the constant "MOM!" interruption. When we arrived home, it was 3:30pm and both of them woke up feeling quite refreshed although somewhat hungry as they were just too excited to eat anything.

By 3:45pm Abang and I were out the door again, headed to Tumbletots 1Utama where he has his Gymbobs class. He was so revved up, it made me even more tired just watching him! After class we went to look for some new pyjamas for him and by the time we left 1Utama it was 6pm. Peak hour traffic plus heavy rain. Just great.


An hour later we were finally home. After awhile it seemed like both boys were revving up again - a clear sign that they're overtired from today's adventures. Before I could bring Adik upstairs to wind down and sleep, he got shoved by Abang, fell and smacked his forehead on the dining table leg. Benjol terus. Poor thing screamed his lungs out and so did Abang after he realised what he'd done. (Just before bedtime Abang apologised to Adik for that incident - we made them "hug".)

So now all the kittens are asleep... and it's Mummy's turn now.

Baby, Oh Baby!

Adik’s vocabulary is expanding by leaps and bounds. One day it’s a blank stare when I ask him if he’s doing a poop-job in his diaper, the next day he says clearly, “No?”

He’s also started labelling every picture of a girl/ lady/ old woman as “Kakak” (must be very flattering for the old woman). Once we were in the car on the way home and he said, “Kakak. Kakak.” We’re zooming along the LDP, and I was wondering where this mysterious “kakak” could be. (Actually, it made my hair stand on ends when I thought maybe he was seeing, um, “things” – worse still, “things” in my car!)

“Where’s kakak?” I asked him.

“There..?” he pointed to the billboard on the LDP. Phew!

He’s also quite insistent now when he wants to watch his new Little Einsteins DVD, repeating “tee-dee” for “CD” many – MANY – times. Then there are his regular words like “nana” for “banana” – as in Bananas in Pyjamas, not the kind you eat, “noh-ner” for “Donald” – one of the characters in Thomas and Friends, “ko-kok” for “keropok” – his favourite snack and “aa-woon” for “Harun”.

Interestingly, he has picked up that other cats are just “cat” whereas Harun is “aa-woon”. He’s still a little confused, though, that Thomas is what we call our other cat, yet that’s also the name of the train!

Lately, I have managed to differentiate between his calling our maid and saying ‘baby’. Now at this point I should tell you that our maid is called Bibik. So he’s learnt to say, “Bi-bi? Bi-bi?” And he also knows that very small people are called ‘baby’. Except that he has trouble saying bay-bee.

Instead, he says, “Bah-bee. Bah-bee.”

“No, no, Adik, it’s bayyy-bee. Say bayyy-bee.”

“Bah-bee. Bah-bee!” He’s so pleased with himself.

“Adik, that’s something else. And not a very polite thing to call someone, either. Come one, say bayyyy-bee. You can do it.” I’m not sure if I was encouraging him or discouraging him.

“Bah-bee!” he says with a grin on his face. He's probably just messing with my mind.

So far these conversations have gone on at home, which is ok. I just hope he doesn’t start pointing to cute little babies at the mall, or at restaurants, and calling them Porky.

Weekend News

It was a pretty busy weekend for us. Bright and early on Saturday morning we headed to our regular car spray painting workshop. When we got there we explained what happened and asked to get the car done up.

“Oh ini, boleh punye. No problem. Saya ketuk sikit, yang tercabut saya taruk gam lepas tu skru balik. Nanti kasi cat. Boleh, boleh.” Don’t worry, I’ll just wave my magic wand and it’ll be good as new!

I love their optimism.

Then we asked him how much it would cost. You know it’s never a good thing when you ask, “Berapa?” and the guy breaks out into a huge grin. I mean HUGE, ok. His smile stretched from one ear to the other.

He starts using his pretend calculator on his hand and comes up with “RM350”. Let’s all cringe again. We got it down to RM300, handed over the car keys and left.

From there we headed to Tawakal Hospital in KL to pick up some medication for Daddy, then back home for lunch. Abang had an enormous nasi lemak lunch. So much, he even burped 3 times!

After lunch we thought we’d break the monotony of staying at home and packed everyone up to go to Nenek’s house. It seems everyone else in town had the same idea because it took us an hour to get there! Never mind, Daddy and I managed to outsource the boys to Nenek, Ant J and our maid and we went off running some more errands, including picking up the MPV.

We got field reports from Ant J who took Abang out on her errands with her at Ikano and then for an early dinner at IKEA. Abang snacking away in the supermarket trolley, Abang reading a book at the bookstore and then asking to buy one for Adik, Abang eating three quarters of his spaghetti and then whacking Ant J’s fries.

Adik was happily playing at Nenek’s house, including using the batu lesung. It’s nice that both the boys like to play masak-masak, but this is the first time either of them is using it to crush some lemongrass. We think he looks pretty cute!

Then this morning, lo and behold, the MPV wouldn’t start. It sounded like a weak battery and then I realised one of the interior lights was on (probably accidentally switched on at the workshop) and that must have drained the battery overnight.

There’s a small, very small, silver lining in this story. After I paid the AAM mechanic for the battery, he took an interest in the radio. It’s one of those in-dash CD/ DVD players and I told him that’s a new one, because the original that came with the car was all in Japanese and we couldn’t quite figure it out.

He asked to take a look at it and I got it out from our store room, in the box, and after some discussion he gave us RM50 for it! Hooray.

I wonder what else I can find in the store room that that can be sold … Could help to pay for my hospital bill, bodywork on the car AND the new car battery.

Battered and Bruised

This week's match: MPV Vs. Giant Kelana Jaya Car Park
MPV (0) Giant Kelana Jaya Car Park (1)

To state the obvious, I scratched our MPV earlier this week. Basically, I misjudged the space I had to park and as I drove the car nose in I suddenly heard a heart-wrenching, metal-grinding "ccCCRRUNNCHHhhhh". Even the ladies walking back to their car which was parked in front of mine cringed when it happened. I could almost hear their, "Aaaiieee!" which pretty much mirrored mine, except that mine also had expletives sprinkled all over the place, none of which shall be repeated on this blog.

That put me in a real foul mood for the next 10 minutes on the road, repeating said expletives to any other vehicle that dared to honk at me!

As if that wasn't enough, the next day we had yet another match, this time at home.

Bathroom Wall Vs. Little Toe on the Left Foot
Bathroom Wall (1) def. Little Toe on the Left Foot (0)

Ok this one is downright silly. I was just walking out of the bathroom after giving Adik a bath when my left foot suddenly had a mind of its own and headed off towards the wall while the rest of my body made it out ok. I guess I must have been walking pretty fast ("Gotta get out of this bathroom, now, now, NOW!") because it was excrutiatingly painful and I had to limp after that.

Over the next few hours, my toe became swollen, bruises on it started to form and the base of the toe, at the top of the foot, had started to change to a paler shade of green. By night time all those things got worse so I figured better to get it checked out.

This morning, my friendly neighbourhood doctor looked at it and suspected a fracture. So off I limped to Sunway Hospital for an x-ray and a chance to say "hi" to the orthopaedic surgeon.

Now, Sunway Hospital has always been our choice hospital. They're friendly, competent, they have great facilities and there's always ample parking. But I guess I was just crankypants today having to explain (more than once) to various nurses and doctor's assistants why I was limping.

"Oh no! What happened?" they were genuinely concerned.

"I stubbed my toe." I was genuinely not in the mood to talk about it. Actually, I think the ego was bruised more than the foot.

"Did you fall down?"

"Uh, no, I just kind of *cough*cough* walked into a *ahem* wall," I replied, while thinking really hard how to change the subject.

"Did you trip?"

Sigh. Stop making excuses for me, dammit! I was a clumsy idiot for that split second and now I'm at the hospital answering silly questions.

"No, no ... um, no."

"Oh." Realisation sets in - ting! The lightbulb has come ON. "Never mind, it's ok, these things happen. Come, take a seat first, we'll call you in a little while."

Translation: Oh, so you were a clumsy idiot for a split second and now you're at the hospital.

20 minutes and RM195 later, I limped back to the car with a bandage on my foot and drove home. Good thing it was my left foot and I could still drive. How ironic that I am in the midst of doing some research on "Safety Tips at Home". I'm wondering if I should add the following:

"Pay attention when you walk out of the bathroom so you don't stub and fracture your toe."

Thank goodness this week is almost over!

And So it Begins

Abang was given homework yesterday. Yesirree, my not-quite-4-year old son very excitedly told me, when I went to fetch him from kindergarten yesterday, that he "got homework".

"Mummy!" he called to me while putting his shoes on, "I got homework today, Mummy!" I just smiled from outside his kindergarten gate because I knew he didn't realise what he was in for. I guess he felt like a big boy, being given this lovely thing called 'homework' just like his older cousins and other schoolmates.

(How dare they exclude him from homework? It's always other people getting all the fun!)

When we got home, he hurriedly came inside and opened his bag and took out his school book and proudly showed me the 2 pages stamped "HOMEWORK". One page was writing out lower-case "k"; I counted them, it was 9 rows by 6 columns making it 54 lower-case "k"s that he had to write out. The other page was colouring the corresponding kangaroo.

When I explained to him what he was supposed to do, his tone changed immediately from excited to total disappointment.

"Mummy do for me," he tried to tai-chi. But Mummy is the master of deflecting the tai-chi that's been tai-chi'ed to her!

"Ha? Mummy do for you? That's your homework," I told him flat out.

"No, I don't want. Mummy do la," and he tried to shove the pencil in my hand.

"Hey, no way. It's your homework, you have to do it. When Mummy has homework for Mummy's boss, I can't ask Daddy to do it, right? I have to do it myself. So you have to do your homework yourself," I replied. Mummy knows how to tai-chi too.

He reluctantly took the pencil and wrote 1 lower-case "k".

"Dah." And he put the pencil down and went running off.

After that, it took me a total of 3 hours for him to do half the page. (He hadn't even started on the kangaroo yet.) Mummy's Bag of Bribery products was almost depleted. After 1 row, he got a little jelly treat. After the next 2 rows, he got back-to-back screening of Adik's new Little Einsteins DVD. After the 4th row, it was break time and he got to do some sand art with Mummy. I finally, finally, managed to get him to do another half a row (making it half the page) before I promised him that we were done until Daddy got home.

He very reluctantly did those 3 more "k"s. You could see the relief on his face! And all that took 3 hours, at the end of which his "k"s had started to look worse and worse. So it's probably better that we stopped then.

The next morning, Daddy managed to get him to do a row and a half and that was it. I decided not to push it, considering this is the first time ever getting homework. I figured that sitting and doing three-quarters of a page was a very good effort on his part.

Today I asked him if he showed his teacher his homework. He said yes.

"What did she say?" I was curious.

"She said good," he replied, "but next time kangaroo must be brown only." You see, he had voluntarily coloured the kangaroo without any pushing or nagging from me. So I really didn't want to press my luck by stopping him from colouring the stomach blue, its face pink, its body brown and the feet left uncoloured.

And so the homework stress begins ... for Abang too!

Good News Day

Good news #1: Daddy's home, hooray! He'd been away on a course the past week and both boys had been asking for Daddy, even Adik.

"Dad-deee? Mum-mee, Dad-dee? Dad-dee?" And I'm not sure if it was a coincidence, but yesterday I decided to take the boys out for a drive in Daddy's car to get the engine running and fill up the tank, and Adik said, "Dad-dee car. Dad-dee car." I choose to believe that it's not a coincidence!

Good news #2: Thomas is much better. He lost some weight, so he's not as fat (or "pear-shaped" as Ant J puts it) as before, but to say he's "svelte" is probably taking it a bit too far. I've managed to get him to take his medication and he's eating like normal again. I guess he won't be not-so-svelte for much longer.

Good news #3: Abang is well again too! In fact, I know he's definitely over his illness because his appetite is back with a vengeance. He's been eating just pasta the past few days, but, OMG it's a LOT of pasta. And yogurt. And biscuits. And raisins. And cheese. Plus, he was well enough to show Harun how to play his new game on his Leapster.


Good news #4 is related to Good News #1 and Good News #3. As a surprise for Daddy's homecoming, Abang and I painted our front gate. It was quite an experience for me, starting with the trip to the hardware shop. I suppose going to the hardware shop to buy painting supplies without Daddy would be like Daddy going to the cosmetics counter to buy me, say, lipstick.


"Can I help you, sir?" the counter lady would ask.


"Yes. I'd like to buy my wife some lipstick," he'd answer.


"Certainly, sir. What colour would you like to get?" would be the next logical question.


"Red." And we all know there are a thousand shades of "red".

After what seemed like an eternity, Abang and I got what we wanted and left. When we got home, Abang helped me with the painting. Now, when a 4-year old says he wants to help, it could be either help or "help".


I define help as contribution that actually makes it easier for me to do the task at hand. "Help", on the other hand, means giving me even more work than if I had done it myself. In this case, he really did help because there were parts of the gate that he painted which didn't require me to undo anything, plus he didn't spill any paint.

Considering the fact that the gate has been painted by a 4-year old and his mom, I think we did an ok job. Not fantastic, but then, there's a reason why I'm not a professional gate painter. And I don't intend to be one for awhile.

I'm not quitting my day job just yet. Welcome home, Daddy!

Early to Bed, Early to Rise ...

... Makes Mummy So Damn Sleepy!

Daddy and I have always been early birds. Even before the children came along, we'd be up and about on weekends by around 7, or 7:30am at the latest. Nobody told us that our children would beat us to it.

When Abang was a baby, he was quite the fusspot. On more than one occasion, he even woke up at some ungodly hour like 5am, all bright-eyed and ready to tackle the day, only to go back down for a nap at 7am and then up for the day by 8am. I remember thinking, "Eh? How come other people's children can wake up at 'normal' times like 8:30am or 9am?" In fact, a friend of ours used to complain that their son would be up "so early" at 8:30am (obviously his parents are not morning people!). What we wouldn't do to get that!

I think for all of his less-than-4-years of life, Abang has woken up as late as 7:45am probably twice. Nowadays it can vary wildly between 5am and 6:45am. Adik seems to be following in his footsteps. Adik used to be a bit better, waking up fairly regularly at around 7am. Then slowly but surely, his internal alarm clock started going off earlier and earlier. The past few weeks he's been waking up between 5:45am and 6:15am.

Even though it's nice to get woken up to the sound of, "Mum-meee? Mum-meee?" it would be even nicer if that sound came an hour later. Just one hour.

(Having said that, my sister and her husband are both not morning people but their children are VERY morning people. AJ has been known to tiptoe into his parents' room in the wee hours of the morning and then yell out, "COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO! COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!")

Anyway, take today, for example. Adik was up at 5:45am and then Abang 15 minutes later, saying he needed to "do a big one". So by the time it was 8am, they have, literally, been up for hours. And they still want/ need to do normal stuff like go to the playground. Mummy managed to drag herself there, thinking it's better than watching some mind-numbing TV, and even Harun followed us!

Luckily for me, Ant Ja had offered to take Abang out for lunch and then a trip to the park in Taman Tun. On their way to lunch at 11:15am he fell asleep in her car! That's how tired he was, but if he were at home he'd fight sleep like the devil itself and there's no way he'd go down for a nap.

This evening, in another attempt to get the boys to not watch TV, we made some makeshift slides with the sofa cushions. I'm not sure if that tired them out more, or me.


I vote me.