Hang tuah @ Home

Mak Kau...M Nasir is sooo hot as Hang Tuah!

The hubby was planning to rent The Mad Hatter's costume for his D&D. But just 2 days before it, he told me he thought he'd rather buy himself a new shirt than pay $90 bucks to rent a costume.

So I said,"OK. If the theme is Once Upon a Time, why don't you go as ...Hang Tuah? You can wear your baju melayu, and I can make you a tanjak  (Malay headdress)"

I've made a tanjak before. Well i've made one, once, when I was the wardrobe manager for Causeway II, a play which was written by Alfian Saat and produced by Teater Ekamatra. I had made a tanjak out of blue sequinned material. It was awesome!

I told my hubby I'd do the same for him. I promised him I'd head to spotlight after work the next day and get some material and sew him the tanjak. But a work meeting went on way too long the night before and I ended up not being able to get the material.

Luckily for me, i had some spare material from another project I was working on that I could use!

I also ended up actually having to work on something that Saturday, so I had to get hubby to do most of the work. And he did such a great job with it too!

I loved the star motif so much that I convinced him to also put on my favourite blue star brooch that I had bought from Indianapolis!

The final product! =) 

I was real happy with it and of course, made him do some fake-O silat poses for our photo album! 

Hur! Hur!

Baking with the Twins!

I've learnt that with multiples there are 2 things that are key to keeping my wits about me.

First, routine, routine, routine is my best friend!

Unlike a mom of a singleton, I can't just go with the flow of my child. Because 2 children means 2 different flows...2 different needs...2 different wants...and all at different times. You could go mad. So settling them into a routine is critical! So they nap at the same time, eat at the same time, etc. I can also start planning my day around their schedule, rather than be held hostage by it.

The second lesson I learnt recently is that i have to plan my weekends, which is the when I have large pockets of time with my kids, really well. I need to plan activities to fill up the time between routine activities like meals and naps. 

If there are no structured activities that keep the boys busy and engaged, it's likely that they get bored and then the chances of tantrums being thrown are upped. 

And tantrums, my friends, are a Multiple Mommy's worse enemy!

Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies!

But sometimes I get lazy and I absolutely forget to do any planning. So a couple of Sundays ago, I realised I had nothing up my sleeve to keep the boys occupied. They had been just playing together and had started getting into little tussles. The alarm bells went off..and I knew..I KNEW I had to plan something quick! 

Luckily for me, I had recently asked Corsage for her recipe for Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies. And I knew I had all the ingredients in my kitchen. So I practically yelled at the hubby, telling him to brace himself for an hour of baking!

Since this was unplanned, I found myself quite unorganised. I don't remember why I didn't just use the big plastic sheet we have for the boys activities instead of lining the table with old newspapers. But ah well, it served its purpose!

Daddy's help to supervise the boys was critical to the success of this activity. 

Note to self: Don't attempt to do this without Hubby around to help!

Yeah, well sometimes us moms like to think the kid was 100% involved in the activity, when really the parents were doing most of the work while the kid was like in la la land!  Here, Ihsan is just playing with an IKEA clip while Hubs and I were hard at work!

But they did some work of course!

This little boy has my blood coursing through his vein! He kept dipping his fingers into the batter, saying, "Ihsan want cookie!" Just like his mommy, he loves his cookies and is terribly impatient 

about it!

We had the cookies in the oven while the boys played. And after they had their lunch, they each had 1 cookie each. Yeah right, more like 2 or 3... =)

Irfan ignored me when I asked him whether the cookies were nice! =)

(Note to self: Good to have hubby around for such activities, especially when he does the washing up!)

YUMZ!!!!!

Thanks Corsage for the wonderful recipe! We're definitely going to bake them again!

11 Random Facts- Liebster Blog Award

Singapore Tam Tam has honoured me by awarding this blog the Liebster Blog Award!

Of course, like all proper awards, it comes with strings attached. These are the strings:

1. When you receive the award, you post 11 random facts about yourself and answer 11 questions from the person who nominated you.
2. Pass the award onto 11 other blogs (make sure you tell them you nominated them!) and ask them 11 questions.
3. You are not allowed to nominate the blog who nominated you!
4. Make sure the blogs you chose have 200 or LESS followers


So here goes!

Random Facts
#1: I cannot, for the life of me, stand seeing coins lying around. Coins MUST be placed in a purse, piggy bank or coin holder. It should not EVER be lying around.

#2: When I was 11 I had a crush on a girl in the next level at school. Being from an all girls convent school, I wondered if I was a lesbian, and told my mother. She said its natural to admire someone else of the same gender. She said that we sometimes can confuse admiration for romantic feelings, and said she also experienced something similar when she was a young girl. I love the fact that I could talk to my mum about things like that from a young age!

#3: I used to listen to Malay Sandiwara (drama) on the radio with my late grandfather when I was a very young girl. He also taught me many Malay poems (which i don't remember now) and would get me to recite them to visiting guests. He was the first person to start coaching me on public speaking! I'm not half bad at it today!

#4: I was skinny only once in my life. It was because a guy I really loved broke my heart, and I lost like 10 kilos because I lost the will to eat. 

#5: I am such a procrastinator! I almost always wait till the last minute to get something done.

#6: I LOVE Rugby! I used to train with what became the first Singapore Women's Rugby Team but ended up not following through because I had to focus on my 'A' Levels!

#7: I met someone who asked me to help him with a Foundation to Teach English in Iraq in 2005. I really wanted to do it, but my parents said to earn money and 'pay them back' for their investment in my education. So I stayed in Singapore and got a job in the "gahmen".

#8: I once acted as a Horny Malay Makcik in a Musical that was produced by Teater Ekamatra. It was written and directed by Gene Sharudyn.

#9: I once acted as THE Minah in a play titled 'The Miseducation of the Minah Bukit" written by Alfian Saat and directed by Sani Hussin. I wish I could get my hands on the tapes or the script and recreate that event. I LOVED IT!

#10: I know I wasn't born on 15th August 1947. But because I was born on 15th August, I believe I AM A Midnight's Child (Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie). I was just born too long after 00:00 that my powers are very weak- they are powers of persuasion by the way. =P

#11: In Secondary School I was really close friends with 3 other girls, we called ourselves 'US 4'. Yeah, how original? We always kinda, played pretend depending on what was our latest preoccupation. When we were crazy about U2, we pretended we were a band. When we were crazy about X-Men, we pretended we were superheroes. We would create alter-egos and everything. Us4 Rocked!

Now, answers to 11 questions Singapore Tam Tam posed:
1. What song or performer will make it onto every mix tape or spotify list you'll ever assemble?
Keane- Somewhere Only We Know. Love that song and it has a lot of romantic history for me, with multiple men! lol...

2. What book or article are you still thinking about?
Twilight. I can't believe I read the entire series even though I thought the writing was quite rubbish! Shame on Me!

3. Where on the internet do you waste most time? And where on the internet do you find most interesting/inspiring/influential news and stories?
Erk...online shopping sites! Way too much time on them, and I hardly buy anything! I find most interesting influential stuff on blogs of course!

4. What newspaper/website/twitterfeed do you follow to keep abreast of current events in your geographic area?
Singapore's Straits Times, BBC, CNN and New York Times. Singaporeans think the world is their geographic area!

5. And where will you take me when I come to visit?
My parents home for dinner. My mom is  great cook and my dad is just a chatty person everybody just HAS to meet!

6. How do you meet locals in your neighbourhood?
I kinda like to keep to myself. So it's random meetings in the lift. I also always give something during festive season to the neighbours. That's when we make small talk and try and get to know each other.

7. How would you describe your style?
Eclectic.

8. What's your favourite hobbyhorse to get on? What do you love to hate?
I'm not sure I have a hobby. Is watching lots of tv shows a hobby?  =( I love to hate rude people on public transport!

9. What parenting taboos or practices have you come across in your culture?
Oh my folks tell me that if you have an unruly or mischievious little girl, bathe the young child under the groin of the father. And if it's unruly little boy, bathe the little boy under the groin of the mother. That would set the kid right!

10. What parenting practices do you think should be adopted from elsewhere?
Hmmmm....I'm not sure. I'm kinda a go with the flow kinda mom, so I don't know how to answer the question but to say, just got with your gut?

11. When and what made you change your mind?
Once sometime in 2006?...I was dating a guy I had had a crush on like forever. I seriously thought he would be it, until he told me to be cautious of a group of friends I was growing increasingly close to. He said they had ulterior motives in befriending me. I was like...WTF? Those people have proven their friendship to me when he hadn't even begun to. Dumped him!


My 11 questions:
1- What's the wildest, most unexpected thing that has ever happened to you?
2- What's the last thing you do at night before you go to bed?
3- If you could be reborn as someone else, who would it be and why?
4- What's the first thing you ever learnt to cook?
5- If you could travel anywhere in the world tomorrow, where would it be and why?
6- What's the one thing you look or looked for in a partner/spouse?
7- If you could donate 1 million dollars to a good cause, what cause would it be?
8- iPad/iPhone or Galaxy Note? Why?
9- If i challenged you to a swimming race, what swimming stroke would assure you a win?
10- What's the scariest thing you think you will never be able to bring yourself to do?
11- What's your favourite number and why?

The blogs I nominate:

Lil Snooze

Sophista

A Dallop of Me

Like A Wind

Fern of theForest

Zentrek

Sophiastory

Motherkao

Our Little Smarties

CraigsListDad

Lady J

Looking forward to reading your responses! =)

Snapshots

I've had a busy few weeks. Mostly work taking up a lot of mental bandwidth that all I want to do is sleep or veg out in front of the tv before bed. Didn't help that I've been feeling flu-ey for close to 2 months. I keep falling ill! When i start feeling better, I fall ill again. A horrid bug is being passed around in the workplace.

 So I haven't had much energy to blog about life outside of work and this is kinda catch-up!

Hubby went deep-sea fishing over one Sunday. He does a good job of replenishing our fish supplies. The boys were tickled when he showed them all the fish he was busy cleaning in the bathroom. This big fish looks like our favourite Rainbow Fish book!

We signed up for a parenting seminar organised by the Child Development Network ( a Ministry of Family and Social Development initiative) a couple of weeks ago. We signed up for sessions on Music for Development and Story-telling. It turned out to be a wonderful Saturday morning for us both. Hubby and I have such different interests and early childhood development is one of the few things we both are passionate about! It was like being on date, as we giggled, played music games, etc. It was Sooo much fun!

I unpacked a bunch of toys that my mom-in-law had brought along for the boys. We've kept them for over a year as I didn't think they were developmentally ready for toys like this. But they're out now! It turns out these were the toys that my brother-in-laws had kept for themselves. I think my mom-in-law did some spring-cleaning and just brought it all over for the twins! Their loss is our gain! Hur hur!

The boys have discovered lollipops! Started when my dad used it as bait to get them into the barber shop chair! Since then they keep associating the barber with lollipops. Its such a treat for them cos they hardly get ANY sweets. In fact, when doctors or other people offer them sweets, they just look at the sweets in confusion. They don't know what sweets are and I hope it stays this way!

My team at work got split on 01 November 2012. Some of my staff are now part of another team. It was a sad day for me, cos I love each one of them tremendously! Commemorated it with cards for each, those that are still in my team, and those who aren't. I love these locally produced cards, with phrases like- Without you my life Tombalek, I want to have a Shiok time with you, For one heck of a Chio-Bu, Pao Kah Leow card, Tolong tolong please forgive me...Funny in front, but full of feelings inside... =(

More painting! Ihsan i think has the potential to be an Oscar Winning Make-up Artist. I think his head looks like a gash from the Walking Dead!

Irfan has started to loosen up with paints. Now he likes to paint himself too! Unlike his brother, his face paints have an ethereal quality. He looks like a flower fairy compared to his brother's Zombie look!

Cookie cookie cookie! We spent one Sunday making cookies from scratch at home. The twins made them for their favourite Aunt- Mama Dada's birthday!

Hubs dressed up as Hang Tuah for his Dinner and Dance. I made the tanjak (Royal head-fress for him). I love this pic, cos Ihsan and his seahorse just don't fit into the rugged Malay warrior look.

LOL!

And that's all for now I suppose....see ya soon!