b3 b0rn.. c0nf0rm, b3 si|3nt .. di3

We have been slowly trying to convince Abang for the past year or so to forgo wearing diapers. Apart from the economical considerations, there is also the fact that he often gets rashes due to long exposure to wet diapers.

Last Friday, I tried reasoning with him again on how going diaper-less would be better (plus the fact that we ran out of diapers at home & even the neighborhood department stores do not have his size in stock)

I fell asleep earlier than Abang & Kakak after feeding Adik. Apparently, it was then that Abang decided he is not going to need his diapers – Amir said he had a few false alarms but spent the night dry.

I continued keeping things that way on Saturday but had a spare change of clothes when we went out for the Aqiqah in Taman Melor & Kakak’s tae kwon do lessons in Ampang just in case we had accidents.

The rest of the day proved that Abang was good to his word and successfully managed to inform us in time whenever he had to go.

The same happened on Sunday and late evening we decided to fulfill our promise to him to get the final set for his Ben10 bionicle collection when he stopped wearing diapers.

Unfortunately, the toy store & departments in KLCC did not have Chromastone in stock so Abang had to make do w an Ultimate Swampfire figurine.

So here’s to Abang going diaper-less!!

either i am really busy or i just don’t have the energy to compose proper entries anymore.

anyway – we’re mid-way through 2011 and things are moving along as well as it should. work-wise, we have achieved our 2010/11 target (as a whole) which made this year’s target higher than we earlier budgeted for. doesn’t help that there’s only 6 mths ++ left of the year as this year the company is re-adjusting its financial year to run from jan to dec starting fy2012 – if i were one to believe in superstitions, is that jan 2012 is a month to be cautious of (3, scratch that 4, major projects are aiming to go live in that same month, not counting the fy year change). am pretty sure none of us will feel comfortable going on leave at the year-end nor being away to see our kids in the new school year.

enough gloom and doom about work.. on the kids:

1. Kakak
   • Just turned 8 yesterday. We’re not big into birthday parties – so it is as usual, a quite affair within the faramir clan (in years past, sometimes the keramat clan are involved but this year, yaie & nenek are on a roadtrip – we have been requested to keep some cake for when they return)
   • Those who remember the chubby toddler/pre-schooler of yesteryears and haven’t seen her lately would always exclaim how she has grown – vertically and also the fact that she has lost her baby fat. I always responded that she’s been subjected to a regiment of climbing up 3 flights of stairs to reach her school, hence the slimming effect.
   • She has returned to sleeping in her own bedroom (last year, she started to but then somehow ended up crashing her brothers’ room most of the rest of the year) and of course, has become territorial whenever her younger siblings tried to enter her domain
2. Abang
   • Has spent half a year at pre-school.. decided to send him to montessori-based one as was worried whether r.e.a.l.kids would be able to understand abang’s needs. so far he’s adapted to the school – to the point of complaining when i told him last week that there will be no school
   • His speech still continues to be enigma to those who are not used to him – but his sentences are getting better and he is especially proud of recognising the letters in arabic
   • He is still obsessed with Ben10 and has already collected 5 out of 6 of the Lego Ben10 Alien Force collection and I am keeping the last set as my bargaining tool. He is still in his diapers and would go without it on and off. But whenever I request that he goes without a diaper, he’d say that he just wants to wear it but will inform us whenever he needs to go – which only happens like 1-2 times in a month. So I always remind him that if he wants his ChromaStone set, he needs to no longer be in diapers – he’d always laugh it off & agrees with me but we are still to reach  that milestone
3. Adik
   • He is now 18-months old and is alhamdulillah as healthy as a breastfed boy could be. He is still weighing below 10kgs and I worry once in awhile but our family GP says to not worry so long he’s eating his meals 3 times a day & still drinks milk. He is super-hyper (as Baba always remark  - “nakal lagi dari abang” – and his grannies also concur) and is always getting into scrapes and bumps and falls – but boys WILL BE boys. (i have to remind myself this countless times)
   • His vocabulary is also growing – his latest favorite phrase is “Nenek… tolonnnnn!” or “Mama.. tolonn!!” depending on who’s around. He’s also mimicking his older siblings whenever I start prattling off about the mess he is making, he’d go “What? What?”
   • His favorite character is Pooh Bear – though how he developed this, I am clueless as we haven’t watched a Pooh series nor movies apart from what is shown on Playhouse Disney (Tigger & Pooh) – which he does not get to watch that often as there are many remote control grabbers at his grannies. Good thing that I bought quite a lot of Pooh t-shirt back in the days when Kakak was a toddler so he keeps choosing these over whatever I select for him to wear.

So that’s roughly 3.5 mths worth of updates in 3 paragraphs. or what i feel up to writing.

oh by the way, we got us a new toy – and the kids are quite obsessed with playing angry birds on it  - i must take over every few hours and guide them towards the more educational / learning games their dad have downloaded for them.

time for me to intervene now… toodles