Kissing 3 people before going to work!

On the 19th of September 2013, my awesome wife gave birth to another baby boy at the Wakaka complex in Universiy Hospital. Welcome, [name to be confirmed] to the world !

Minutes after arrival

It wasn't exactly smooth sailing this time, there were quite a few false alarms, even one of those incidents where we checked in to the hospital, were there for most of the day, only to be told that the baby's far from ready to enter the world proper. To top it off, mainly due to complications creating a concern on the baby's heart rate, the planned natural birth ended up becoming a c-section. But everything turned out fine in the end, for both Raudha and our baby. Alhamdulillah!

Props to family, friends and colleagues who gave us support during that tricky period. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Now I'm trying to relearn all the stuff I did back when Zharif arrived, even stuff like rocking the baby in the right way. The art of wrapping up the baby so that he'll feel comfortable continues to elude me. But heck, I'm trying!

Yes I am :p

One of our major concerns has been preparing big brother for the new arrival, and fortunately, Zharif has been handling the arrival of his baby brother pretty well.

Kissed his brother more times in 11 days than kissing his dad in 3 and a half years. The nerve!

There ARE a few items he's been reluctant to share, but otherwise he's been cool. He does seem to be a bit overprotective of his bro sometimes though, such as not allowing quite a few visitors to hold the baby, to the point of having a tantrum! He does calm down eventually, usually after a meal or milk, but there you go.

I've also taken Zharif out a couple of times during the weekend just to alleviate his restlessness and to give his mum some rest from handling two. My mother-in-law is also doing the same. He's generally been a darling, but his enthusiasm can get a wee bit exhausting for Raudha sometimes.  I even took him to select a sheep for his brother's aqiqah.

Plus a little bit of father-son bonding time with Zharif is always good :)

Having said that, my latest trip didn't exactly delight mummy though :p

Anyway, so there's my excuse for not posting for so long. Hope to get back to more regular posting soon. The disrupted sleeping hours will certainly help once I've gotten used to it.

I AM getting used to kissing 3 people before going to work now :)

Weekend Bites

Back to the real world after the highlands escapade!

Why you shouldn't name your child after a footballer

Sunday night: around 11pm , Raudha asks me what do I want to name my second kid: I say Ahmad Suarez. Naturally my wife gives me the eye rolling answer. I'm like, is that yes or no?

About 1 hour later, during the Liverpool match, the supposedly adult Suarez appears to bite Ivanovic during the football match !

So I guess that's a no.

Political thoughts

Candidates were named on Saturday morning for this year's elections. I won't go deep, there are plenty of other blogs and sites to do that, but one of the most glaring incidents for me was the deputy chairman of Umno Wanita, Kamilia Ibrahim, not being given a parliamentary seat, but only a state seat. This led to her resigning and contesting as an independent

Questions were naturally raised on the relevance of the wing, and the future of women in the current ruling party  particularly since the Chairman herself has declined to contest.

I prefer to look at it in this point of view: Maybe BN are looking to change the wing's leadership. Remember during the Cow scandal (which isn't finished, for the record), Kamilia DID voice her opinion that it might be best for Shahrizat to step down. Rafidah probably loved her to bits for that, but the rest of BN?

Look at it this way, Azalina Othman is contesting a parlimentary seat, isn't she?

On a separate note, if Pas had ended up nominating Muhammad Taib for a seat, I might just have given up on politics altogether!

Flashing neon lights and weddings

I attended my cousin in law's wedding event on the guy's side on Sunday. Now typically the guy's side tends to be less formal in Malay weddings, with all the formality taken care of on the girl's side.

However, this event will stick out in my memory for being the first wedding I've attended to have flashing neon lights for the buffet and desert section ! I don't have the actual photo, but it looked something like this:

I do love these innovations in Malay weddings, it just gets so dreary sometimes. Hoping for more fun weddings to attend! 

Yesterday I managed to get some quality time with Zharif. Cue celebrations!

Let's face it, most of the time when his Mummy's around, I'm pretty much a non-entity.  I can't lie down next to him, I can't give him food, I can't make his milk, I can't bathe him. He'll insist on Mummy doing it, saying stuff like "Daddy taknak. Daddy taknak go down. Daddy tak boleh sit here!" (No to Daddy, Daddy don't come down, daddy don't sit here!). The only time I get mostly is bergasak, bergumpal physical wrestling time.

So yesterday was the first time in a while that Mummy was on call on a Sunday. As much as I felt bad for my wife, I haveta say I had a great time with Zharif. The first indication is while I was sending my wife to work, my mom-in-law wanted to give him a shower, and he told them "tak nak, nak tunggu daddy!" (no, wanna wait for daddy!)

When I came back,  he was busy with his new bike(thanks to his grandparents!) in his pajamas.

We ended up bringing Subway to my wife so I brought him along. Afterwards, gave him a shower, I took him to his playschool (he was very excited to go, he kept saying "Nak pergi Curve, "Nak go Tumbletots!") He enjoyed the activities (although again he refused to participate in the sing-alongs), made a new friend named Eva.

We had Sushi King afterwards as a bit of a reward for him being cheerful and mostly cooperative, and for the first time he had some of the sushi rice. Usually he would have his Udon Mee followed by Yakult + Ice cream. But this time, he tried it and liked it, even when I tinged it with some soy sauce and a wee bit of wasabi. Looks like I can experiment more next time :p

Anticipating wasabi?

We played a bit in the arcade before we went back around 3. He wanted to stay on but it was clear he was already quite tired, and he ended up falling asleep in the car so we went home. I put him on his mattress but he kept adjusting himself to the floor.

Usually I'd go for a jog around 5pm at TTDI but I couldn't as there was no one else around to take of the dude. I actually thought of bringing him along to the park with his bike later but he woke up after 6pm which was a bit too late. When he woke, my mum-in-law took him to Giant followed with a visit to rumah Mak Aza which is just in Kelana Jaya as well.

I ended up walking there around 7pm to do some car management and I got to drive back Mak Kati's nice Merc with Zharif in the passenger seat.

Gave him a shower in the evening, did some jigsaw puzzles, introduced him to cricket (!) and he ended the day watching some barney ABC videos before falling asleep at a bit after 1. Yes, we're still working on normalising his sleep patterns :p I didn't spend the entire evening with him, he allocated his precious time with everyone around in the house. :D

Yes, I know, he keeps falling asleep on the floor, that's a no-no with Mummy around.... :p Of course, I moved him to the bed!

  

All in all, it was pretty mundane when you look back at it, but for me, the time spent was priceless.