Li'l Dudes Day Out

Papa was off for a seminar so i brought the rugrats out. First we stopped at McD drive thru, then we went to lake gardens and ate in the car. Last on the list was some window shopping at the curve. All in all, a good day. Can't wait for next weekend!

Sonny Spoon

Ever since the boys went to school/day care, all I ever thought they caught was the flu. Although that was expected, I just didn't realise how often it would be.

Anyways, the boys kept taking turns getting sick. First Elixir, then Elijaz, (then Mama somewhere in between), then they got well, then it started all over again.

When Elixir succumbed to the flu again, the second time in the same month, best bring him to the Doc, I thought as he may need antibiotics this time. So, to the Doc's we went, and turned out that Elixir would benefit some healthy snorts of the nebulizer. I was so sure he'd go down screaming as he was the fussy-pot in the family (thus far). But if there is one thing these tots have taught me is, always expect the unexpected. In fact, Elixir was such a gem on the neb. My l'il dude took it down like a man!

So, l'il Elixir was out of action for a few days. But we had a small social gathering looming - Sheila's surprise birthday bash at Sulina's new home. Well, it sure was handy having twins, coz if one couldn't go, I could always take his womb-mate.

Elijaz was starting to sniff again, a bit feverish too, so he wasn't much the social butterfly at the party. In fact, the only thing he took solace in was Sulina's silverware. He kept clutching at the silver spoon throughout his 'ordeal'. We actually had to leave Sulina's with the spoon in his hand, coz everytime I tried to pry it out of his freakishly strong grasp, Elijaz would start bawling.

It didn't help that his fever was getting higher, so I felt I had to bring him straight to the Doc's after the do. As suspected, Elijaz had to go on the neb as well, but unlike bigger bro, Elijaz was kicking and screaming the whole of the 5 minutes! This l'il dude went down crying! And all this while, he clutched the spoon as if his life depended on it.

When we got home, the two kiddos exchanged pleasantries, and next thing I knew, Elijaz passed the spoon to Elixir. When I tucked them into bed later that night, the spoon was still firmly clasped in Elixir's hand. I guess that was Elijaz's way of sharing his experience with Elixir. Wish you were there bro...

Everybody's got their dues in life to pay...

I had an awkward dream last night. I dreamt that Achen and I got caught in the rain without transport, in the middle of Jalan Kuching, and we terribly needed to go back home. So we decided to make a 'dash' for it. With the rain in our faces, and puddles to negotiate, we dashed on. But at one point, I was beginning to loose my steam, but Achen was hauling her long legs on. So, in no time, I was left on my own, one crazy woman huffing and puffing in classic-Malaysian torrential, trying desperately to keep up.

It was then that I woke up. Wasn't too pleased with my performance. It's a dream for goodnesss sake. I could have easily manouvered my thoughts to make me a champion, right? But nope, slow coach was the order of the day. My current interpretation of the dream? I am sorely out of touch with my body (and mind). Most pressingly, I really need to lose some weight and rebuild my stamina.

Flashback to 6 years ago, I wouldn't have had either of these problems. In fact, my family was always amazed at the amount of food I could guzzle without really gaining much. My brother had once said ominously, "Eda, one of these days, this will all come back at you." Ha ha... you don't know how true that is, Abang. Like Sleeping Beauty being awoken from her proverbial slumber, as soon as I turned 30, it all really did come back to me! The inches wouldn't drop, whether from the hips or waist, my face began to balloon - my true self began its unveiling. And it really did happen as soon as I touched 30. Apart from the age factor, I knew that the abuse I gave my body would finally catch up with me. These were the wrongs, in no special order:

1. Lack of water-drinking. I used to never want to drink water plain, it always had to be flavoured. And only 2 glasses a day!
   
2. My fascination with all thing fast food - McD, Burger King, A&W, KFC, you name it. I could eat the same food over and over for a period of days.
3. My career in advertising, especially working on the Celcom account as well as my current stint, had led to no-breakfast-nor-lunches, work work work, and late night dinners at 2am
4. False belief that I'd be skinny forever...
   

So, now here I am, paying for the dues, wanting to undo all this but wondering if there's no turning back. I just celebrated my 35th birthday, and there are a lot of things which I feel I've not fulfilled.

I'll take it as this being just one of the signals that a true revolution in my life is warranted. Well, slowly, I shall fix this. I've already conquered Number 1. 'Air kosong' is my best friend now. The hotter, the better.

Number 2, is something great to fix. I've begun cooking healthily. OK, so cooking on it's own is an achievement for me. Unlike my sister, I've always hated to cook. But thanx to simple recipes we can get off the net and the travel channel, I can do simple meals which are heavy on the wellness scale. Also, since my boys started on solids, I've started the use of most things organic. It's expensive, but nothing's too good for the kids. Am hoping that once we move into our new home, we'll have a well-stocked ulam garden and many healthy quick-fixes for the palate.

Number 3. Hmmm... that should be happening soon. No spoilers on that yet. But something's abrew...

Number 4 ... would like to change the 'false' to 'true', and 'belief' to a 'reality'... Am hoping that I'll have more time in the future to put in more sweat to achieve this. If Luther V could loose the inches, then so can I.

And I'm not doing this for just vanity's sake. My 3 boys (DH and the twins) are my priority now. And I know that unless i find some peace in this turmoiled brain, I can't be 100% there for them.

Well, looks like I've just set a challenge for myself? In the wise words of the good Doc Brown from the BTTF trilogy "If you set your mind to it, Marty, you can achieve anything!"...

Blast From The Past - '80s pop

Don't Cry

I was rendered helpless tonight.

Elixir was on full tantrum mode the moment I got back from a hard day at work, and nothing seemed to soothe him. Bathed him - he cried. Gave him his milk - he pushed it away. Took him for a drive with Pak Wan at the wheel - looked like he was going to calm down for a bit, but he became antsy once we alighted from the car. Sang to him - he started to convulse, unfortunately, in further anger. Even cousins Elise and Eric, bless them, stayed around to make him feel better. Thought that once Papa came back from work, he would cool down a bit? Nope. Elixir even refused to go to him.

All the calm, soothing talk didn't seem to work, so I changed gears and tried being strict instead - left him there crying in the middle of the living room but I firmly invited him to join me in the bedroom. To no avail though, he kept crying, at one point even rolling on the floor. All the commotion obviously brought out Bibik, wanting to pick him up, but I didn't let her. And he kept on crying, even though periodically I'd call out to him to come to me.

Finally, Grandma came down to enquire what was happening and quickly went to the boy. Not soon after, TokTok peered down the stairs as well. Between the two, they managed to calm him down, and brought him out for a drive. He really showed me up tonight, my actions probably painted me negatively to my parents too.

I know my mom was upset with me that I left him crying. I wasn't too comfortable about it either, which made me even more upset. But I really didn't know what else to do. I still don't actually. In fact it's 4am now. I was awaken from sleep, coz Elixir woke up crying again. He's coming into 2 years old now. I should be able to exercise some discipline right? But he didn't bite - either he sensed that I was unsure of my actions, or he was just really really in a foul mood. So anyway, I'm still at a loss when he cries. And until he does, I'm looking out for suggestions on how best to deal.

And all this while, twin bro Elijaz sleeps peacefully in the bedroom...

The Big One (and it's not the Aerosmith album)

This was their first birthday invite to friends. Not sure whether there'll be one this year tho... or the next four years for that matter. Am still paying the bills now! Besides, they have tonnes of toys /prezzies not yet opened!!

P/S...artwork credit to be given to designer extraordinare, Auntie Sit.

Elijaz got bit at school!

Yesterday was quite a difficult day for me. It started in the morning till quite late, coz

1. I had to prepare the kids dinners to pack and bring to school. Long story this - will put up a new post concerning said subject.
2. Inundated by work and was antsy in the office - wasn't able to complete what I had planned out for the day
3. Had to ask my sister's help to pick up the boys, coz I had foreseen it was gonna be a late-nighter
4. Elijaz got bitten at day care!
5. Come 9.00pm, I went on a guilt trip for not being there for my sons when they came back from school - had just read an article about how to cope with a clingy toddler (read as Elixir). Future mental note, keep your promises to your toddler - I said I'd come and pick them up in the evening, and as it turned out, it was Zeus who had come to the rescue and till 9pm, still no sign on Mama!

So, I quickly drove home, and as suspected, Elixir was red-eyed, fighting sleep waiting for me to come home. Elijaz had gone off to sleep, probably trying to forget the nightmare he went through earlier that day!

The bite was quite servere, although the skin didn't break, there was an obvious oblong red mark on his right forearm! My sister swears that you could see the indentation of the teeth marks - you could send it to the CSI lab for identification!

Anyway, all is well. These kinds of accidents are bound to happen at day care. But I made it a point to let the childminders know that should my child be the one to inflict injury on others, I would want to know. Apologies to the parents should be made ...

In the car with boys

DH is away on a job today. So we woke up real early to send him off to KL Sentral. Elixir included. Actually, Elixir was the only one bushy-tailed. Everyone else were pretty much bleary-eyed. We were running late, so thank god DH still made it to catch the flight.

Anyway this meant that I was left on my own devices to care and send the kids to school. Wait a minute, I do that everyday anyway! So what's different this time? Actually, I got dips on the X-trail whilst the mister is away, but I wasn't bothered to import the baby car seats. So, the darling boys that they were, co-operated when I strapped them into the back seats, using the very adult seat belts. So there they sat on the way to school. The boys were bantering away in German, giggling every so often. If only I knew what they were saying. Left them at school early today, as I had tonnes of work to do at the office.

Come end of day, I raced back to school, picked up the boys and strapped them back into the back seat. Whilst they were still very much obedient this time, they were a little bit more animated. Especially after we ran over each bump to the house. Woo-hoooo!

Anyway, the pictures posted here are when we do put them into the car seat, which is 99% of the time. Thank god for this purchase, I'd fully recommend anyone to train their child in the car seat as soon as they are born. They be like little angels strapped in ;)

6.00pm alarm

Lately, I can't help but will the clock to turn faster, so that I can switch off my Mac and leave for home. Actually, it's leave to go pick up the boys. And I have to do it before 6.30pm otherwise, will have to pay overtime, not cheap ok, RM20 per pax! So, if I happen to be late, i could be facing a hefty sum of RM40 to pay to the nursery. Daylight robbery I tell you. So, without fail, my alarm goes off everyday at 6.00pm to make sure I make it there in time.

The good news is, I leave at 6.15pm sharp most days - no more long hours at the office. Bad news is, I've got a lot of backlog to clear.

I'm still finding a way to manage this. I try to bring back work, but I fall asleep very early nowadays. Anyway, gotta find a solution to this soon!

The joy of being sick

In one sense, I actually enjoy being sick because I get to spend time with the boys. And since I have sworn off hired (foreign) help for now, it's the same when the boys get sick. It's automatically quality time for all of us. The only difference is when I'm sick I want to sleep (but they won't let me). But if the boys are sick, I want them to sleep (but they won't let me).

Anyway, I couldn't sleep most of last night because the boys were taking turns coughing and wheezing. And struggling to breathe with a blocked nose to boot. Correction, two blocked noses to boot.

So, this morning, Mama unceremoniously changed both babes' diapers without a formal bath, asked Zeus along for support and company, and packed the boys off to the doctor's. Now, the kiasu that I am, we actually have 2 regular paediatricians. So we were off to the one in the hospital only to find out that today was the doctor's day-off. So, we went for the other one which would normally be packed, and luckily for us, there were only 3 kids before us.

Long story short, today, Elixir got his first experience with the Nebulizer. He was howling all the way. And trying to wiggle himself off my lap. The kakak administering the Neb looked on with much amusement. Elijaz couldn't sit still, and not in an excited kind of way, fearing for his turn.

Rest of the day? Well, I did go to the office for a bit to tie up some loose ends. But went home straight thereafter. Thought the boys could do with some love. No time like the present to play nurse nightingale.

So, here's hoping that the meds work and that all 4 of us can catch some Zs tonight.

Naming the Wondertwins

Well, this blog is with reference to my little dudes, Elixir & Elijaz. For those of you not in the know, the naming process was a real brand project for me. (If you've heard this before, feel free to skip this whole posting.) Anyway, below was my step-by-step process before we narrowed it down to Elixir & Elijaz.

The parameters and objectives
This was the background: we knew we were expecting twin boys so DH wanted the babies to carry a 'Muhammad'; whatever comes after that, he left it up to me. I wanted the boys to have the letter 'E' - after me (although my real name starts with a 'Z' but I didn't want them to be called on last in class etc, coz I went through all that - I was ALWAYS last).

Additionally, the names should be of Arabic origin, and should of course mean something good. Oh, and a unique name would be a plus, not really a must-have, but a good-to-have nevertheless.

The final requirement was, the names that we chose had to suit the soul of each boy. Now that, we could only do once the kids were safely in our arms.

The challenges
So, I thought by narrowing it down to 1 letter, the choices would be simpler to make. I was wrong. To start off, finding an Arabic word that began with the letter 'E' was pretty much impossible, because Arabic doesn't have an 'E' equivalent. I scoured books, the net, but my daily work-to-do list was longer than the names I had collected. Finally, I resolved to looking at words that began with 'I' or 'A', and then play around with the phonetics later. Well this proved to work, because only then did the list began looking like a list.

Linguistic checks
Right, like I actually did a real, full linguistics check! I just stroke off the names which sounded ambiguous to me. For example, the name 'Esif' was one that I really liked, which meant forgiveness, but I wasn't about to have kids call him 'As if...'! Or 'Ebriz' meaning pure gold just beckons his classmates to call him 'sabun breeze'. Here's a sample of the spreadsheet that I worked on...

Englebert or Einstein?
Hmm...both are accomplished men in their own right. Tempting, but the names didn't fit the Arabic criteria. Actually, there were a lot of nice names on my list, but we wanted to find a good pair; i.e. both names had to complement each other.

Meeting of the minds
Let's put it this way. The shortlist of names that we came up with together was indeed a short list, because we could only agree on a handful of them. Furthermore, some of them didn't even pair up nicely. The silver lining was - the list got narrower. Much narrower. In fact, we were down to 2 pairs of names. 2 'E' names and 2 'Z' names. Ha ha, so much for all the research done (but I still have the list, you never know, a name may shout out differently when the boys beckon for more siblings...)

So, it boiled down to the following:

1. Elixir - From Mediaeval Latin elixir, from Arabic الإكسير (al-’iksīr), from Ancient Greek ξήριον (“‘medicinal powder’”), from ξηρός (“‘dry’”), it is a liquid that is believed to cure all ills and give eternal life. The Arabic term came from the works of Geber, aka Abu Musa Jabir ibn Hayyan, who was a prominent Islamic alchemist, pharmacist, philosopher, astronomer, and physicist. He has also been referred to as "the father of Arab chemistry" by Europeans. Jabir emphasised systematic experimentation, and did much to free alchemy from superstition and turn it into a science. It was theorised that by rearranging the qualities of one metal, based on their sulfur/mercury content, a different metal would result. (Burckhardt, p. 29). This theory appears to have originated the search for al-iksir, the elusive elixir that would make this transformation possible - which in European alchemy became known as the philosopher's stone.
2. Eijaz - Variant of the Arabic name E'jaaz which means Miracle, Astonishment, Inimitability, of wondrous nature.
   
3. Zarif - Elegant, Witty,Nice, Graceful, Humourous. We would have made the name a bit more 'sexy' by spelling it as 'Zerryf' or something like that...
4. Zafir - Victorious. If this was the name selected, I wanted to have it spelt as Zephyr, which is Greek for 'West Wind'.

Now happy with our shortlist, all we had to do was wait for the boys to come out...


Post-Natal Naming
The boys were safely born, but we still were undecided as to which names to give, coz we liked both pairs very much. However, after a few days (and nights!) with the boys, it became quite apparent that the selection should lean towards the 'E's. But my DH wasn't convinced with the name 'Eijaz'. He felt that it was too short, and didn't complement 'Elixir' which obviously had the 'x' factor in more ways than one. Also, he didn't want people to think that we were naming the boy after a well-known Malaysian architect. Let the record show that I'm the one who loves the name 'Eijaz'.

Anyway, in addressing my DH's concerns, I used my very basic Form-3-MRSM-Arabic-knowledge, and figured that I could put an 'El' meaning 'the' to precede 'Eijaz', which should mean 'The Miracle' right? Well, regardless, I'm convinced it is anyway, and DH thought it was more balanced now - 'Elixir' and 'Elijaz', with 'Ixir' and 'Eijaz' for short.

So who got 'Elixir' - instantly we knew it would go to T1 (Twin 1 as labelled on their baby tag) coz he was very much the attention seeker, befitting the 'x' factor. And 'Elijaz' suited T2 to a T, coz he was the quite one, almost serene and wondrous-like.

MyKids
Happy with our decision, we then announced to family, friends and sundry - mostly with an SMS text message, that the boys would be called 'Muhammad Elixir' and 'Muhammad Elijaz'.

Though not by design, the both of them collectively actually means our "Miracle Cure", pretty fitting, don'tcha think?

And Papa was now able to go to JPN to register the boys' MyKids...

Thank yous
To Achen, whose books I guiltily still keep - still in good condition, i don't know how it missed the bag of stuff i passed on to you the last time, but I shall return them to you.
To Zaila, for being the sounding board, I tried out a few names with her, and she gave me her RM2,000 opinion worth...

Interruptions a many...

My first blog got cut short, coz one of the wondertwins needed to go poop. Well, that's how things go, nowadays. Everything really does revolve around them, and no matter the best laid plans, if the babe needs his mi-milk, the babe needs his mi-milk.

I can never get work done at home anymore. Unless I wake up in the early morns, even so, Elixir can still manage to wake up and toddle up next to me.

Which is good, in the sense that I should not be bringing work from home. And should keep it that way.

Hope this doesn't become a white elephant.

This is my first ever posting. Not even sure if this will last. Anyway, no time like the present (I'm on MC coz of tonsillitis) to do something I've been meaning to do for quite a while.

I'm calling it my Mom-moirs, as its mostly my observations of my kids. I'm so busy at work and find that I forget things quite easily; meanwhile the kids are growing up super fast. So, I've found the need to immortalise their daily capers coz before I know it, they'll be off to college. And the kids will have something to laugh about when they grow older too (translated as: much tales to tell in your wedding toasts, boys!).

So, hopefully, I'll keep at this. Bonne chance à la Mama!