My goodness gracious I am really slacking off. My life has been filled with meetings and more meetings. I missed Ayra’s milestones by a whole week (almost).

What’s been happening? My birthday passed, last week, and our little troop of 3 went for dinner at B.ubba Gump Shrimps to celebrate. Yummy yummy.

Ayra turned 19 months the day after. I was kind of expecting a real growth spurt after the 18th month but I don’t think much has happened hahaha or maybe I was just ignorant.

The little princess at a wedding we attended recently

Ayra now can point to the right people in the large family potrait when asked “Where’s Tok Ayah? Where’s Mummy Tok? Where’s Amir? Where’s Aresya?” And she will try to pronounce their names as well. Amir=Ama, Aresya=Aiiisya, Allia=Aiyaa. But too bad eh for the 2 of you overseas, you know who you are. She doesn’t recognize you two hahaha. That means you have to come back more often!

Big smile for Daddy

She can say “air” for when she wants to drink, “mam” when she wants to eat, still a big part of her vocab is “no” and “nanak”. You all know she knows how to get her own shoes while going out, but the other day she surprised me by saying “shoes” when I carried her without them on out of the house. And all the while I thought she never listened hahahaha. She can also call out for “zeze” as in ’susu’ when she wants it straight from me. Most of all her other words are in Ayra-nese and I have yet to translate them lah. I think she really is a late talker but hey it’s fine with me :)

Clasp hands

She’s getting a whole lot more curious now, wanting to touch and feel and use everything she can get her hands on. The other day she got her hands on her grandma’s make up set and boy did she ruin it all. Powders and eyeshadows everywhere, lipstick spoiled and all over her face and clothes! Tsk tsk. I hate it too when she gets her hands on my lipstick. She knows how to open it, but she twists it both ways so she can’t quite get the lipstick out. So what does she do? She sticks her finger right in and digs in it!!! Ohhhh Goddddd.

Ayra playing peek-a-boo with her dress. With Daddy, his friend and also Nadyne, Ayra's friend :)

She almost always refuses to sit for long in the high chair when we dine out, unless that place provides crayons and paper for her to scribble on and snacks she can munch on. Otherwise she’d want to be let down and walk about. Still ok by me actually coz she hardly ever wanders far and she still keeps us in her sight. Phew! I would say she is naughty to a certain extent when she refuses to comply when you say no and when she screams when she couldn’t get her way, but when she wanna do something bad (like touch a vase) she will do so slowly while looking at us for our reactions. I know some kids will just immediately push the vase down so yeah I’m thankful hahahaha.

Ayra and Nadyne, looking like they're not friends hahahaha

Ayra’s also starting to show a lot more interest in books. Her favourite book by far is one called Mollywitch Does Magic Tricks, a present from Irfan during her birthday. It has pictures that changes colour and pattern when you pull the lever but I must say dah banyak koyak2 la that book. Ayra’s too curious about how the pics change patterns to she went ahead and yanked and tore some of the levers and peeled apart the pages to see inside. Hahahaha. Sayang betul that book. She also loves board books, books with musical activities and flap books, such as this one we got for her recently. She can play ‘ciku-cak’ with her ‘Baba’ ahahhaa. I’m happy she can now (almost always) stay quiet and point at the pictures as I read the stories to her as opposed to flipping the pages, yanking the book away from me and eating them as she used to do before when I tried reading to her hehehehe.

This is Ayra's new friend, Jazyl :)

Ok lah, dunno what else to update. We’re going back to JB and S’pore this weekend, and we’re taking a day off on Friday and I can’t wait though not looking forward to the journey. Been a long time since we went back! Toodles people! And more pics of Lil Miss Ayra

Walking

Innocent face (and REALLY long hair)

Ok I have no idea what she is doing here

Nope, still no idea. Flying perhaps?

At least this one looks normal hahahaha

It’s been a looooonnggg time since I blogged abt me, myself and I. Today, I feel like it. No pics, no Ayra, just me. I’m gonna blog just randomly so bear with me yeah.

I got myself 2 bottles of perfume (for free!) this month. One from hubbs, a Clinique Happy I’ve always loved and finished 2 bottles of it before. Well, no surprise there coz I asked for it myself :D. Ouh, it’s my birthday gift as my birthday is around the corner. Double grin. MIL, surprised me with a bottle of Signature by Versace perfume too from her recent trip to Sg. The smell is a bit too sweet for my liking at first, but after a few hours wear, I kinda like it now. Yeay yeay.

My birthday is coming up. Not happy abt it, though, I’m getting old :(

I’m starting to get that ‘bad’ feeling abt my job. The moment I find it hard to get up in the morning to go to work, I know it’s a bad sign. These days, I have to literally ‘peel’ myself off the bed every morning. But I really wanna make this job work. So I’m staying put. It pays well, it lets me go home early to my family, so what is there to complain about, right? I just need to motivate myself more. Tsk.

Sometimes I have depressing thoughts. But I brush it off, not wanting to go through this and this again. Hearing from a friend about her recent bout of depression also scares me. God keep me away from those evil thoughts, please.

Humans don’t always see what we have right? I mean, look at me. I complain abt my job and my life, but if you really look at it, I have it good man. I have a GREAT life to put it mildly. I have a wonderful husband, I have a great kid, I have good in-laws, I live in a nice house, and my job pays for the food on the table. What is there to complain about.

Recently I’ve developed an addiction to shopping. Wahahaha nothing new there. It’s just been a long time since I’ve shopped for myself since Ayra was born, and by now she has everything she could ever possibly need and clothes to last her till she’s 4 so I started shopping for myself. I am a cheapskate, coz I don’t buy expensive stuff. My addiction now is to shop online on those clothes blogs for nice cheap clothing. I bought a few items of clothing, some make up, shoes, etc etc. And now suddenly, I’m craving for handbags! Hahahaha. I’ve hardly bought handbags for myself because I am blessed with a wonderful MIL who always always gotten me stuff whenever she went overseas. So don’t be fooled by my ‘branded’ handbags and wallets and what-nots. I didn’t buy them myself :P

But now I’m eyeing for this.

Nine West Hip Hip Medium Hobo

It’s just USD 34.99 in the website man!! Anyone got a friend or relative coming back from the US so that I can ask them to buy this for me?? Hahaha or has anyone seen this in Malaysia??? I’m not willing to part with more than RM300 for a handbag. That’s how cheapskate I am :)

Ok I think that’s just about it for my morning ramblings.

The best thing about my current job is that on most days, I get to go home on time. I’m not required to stay till late, just as long as I can get online. So most evenings, I’m home by 6.30. If the weather is good, we would either take Ayra to the playground or just to let her out of the gates for a walk nearby the house. We’d let her watch the birds, cats, dogs and flowers.

I don't know why that day she insists on taking that pencil out with her

That’s how excited she’d be when let out of the house. The moment we open the door she’ll go fetch a pair of shoes or sandals and sit down so we’d put it on her. The moment the gate opens, she’ll run out! Good thing the road in front of the house has a dead end so very limited cars pass through. We can let her run on the road, with very close supervision of course.

pointing at the dogs

These are the next door neighbour’s dogs. She absolutely LOVES dogs. She’s not even afraid of the barking ones. She’d go as close to the gate as we’d allow her and look at them closely while exclaiming “khhhh!! khhh!!”. It’s her version of “woof woof” that we’ve been trying to teach her. I don’t even see the slightest closeness of “woof” with “khhh”. But whatever la kan, as long as she tries hahaha. Daddy’s biggest fear is that Ayra will be bitten when she puts her hands through the gate, so he disallows her to go to close hahaha. Those 2 dogs right there, knows Ayra so well that they don’t even bother to bark when she comes near. They would even obligingly go near the gate just so she can get a better look at them.

mommy cannot go to dog is it?

Budak manja

She loves to walk under our legs, but she’s getting a bit too tall for that la so she’d have to bend down a bit. Oh yeah by the way that’s my new hairstyle hahaha. My hair is now shorter than Ayra’s.

Looking at the flowers on the tree and on the ground, still not letting the pencil go

Big big grin

Grinning at Daddy now, Mommy's turn to hog the camera

Tak habis lagi ke Mommy take pics

This pic is a bit blur, I accidentally focused on the road instead

Outside the gate

The hardest part about taking her out for a walk is to get her back inside. Hahahaha. She doesn’t want to be carried, and refused to walk into the gates by herself. If we do manage to get her in, we’d have to close the gate as fast as we can or else she’ll just run straight back out.

Plucking flowers

Another favourite thing to do is, to pluck Mummy Tok’s flowers and throw them into the pond. Hahahaha. Kesian all the flowers. Ayra, ayra.

This is Daddy’s ‘tiny mini-studio’ in the house. It’s where he uses a cardboard with white or black backgrounds and takes pictures of objects for his stock photo ‘business’. It’s very cute to watch Daddy put everyday stuff on the background and try to get all possible angles of the best shot with it hahaha.

Yeap, that's the object of the day. Uncle Amir's plastic trophy

Lookout, here comes Ayra!

Interframe

Da-da, what’s thisssss???

Nah, give u back

Where is it supposed to go? Here? What's the black thing?

Can this be used for drinking mommy? No?

A long long long time ago (well, about 6 months ago actually), exactly on 20th April 2008 which was Ayra’s 1st birthday, we did a studio shoot. We had wanted to do it for last year’s Raya but as usual la, it became a passing thought so I ‘forced’ hubbs to make the appointment with our dear friend Rambo to do the shoot on Ayra’s birthday. So that we could commemorate the day with a nice picture and stuff.

Ayra wasn’t walking yet then but she sure was standing and walking with our assistance. The shoot was fun, done in Rambo’s studio somewhere in Kajang. We decided to have a ‘relaxed’ one, with no formal clothings, so it was just a few changes of casual clothes, jeans and t shirt. It took about 3 hours, and we had fun posing and laughing and smiling and trying to get the little girl to cooperate. Thank God she was in a good mood that day. Here’s the 2 pics we printed out in A3 size.

Of Lil Miss Ayra

The 3 of us

I LOVE the pics, save for the fact that I don’t really fancy what Ayra had on in her solo pic, but that was the best one out of the 300++ pics we have in total. Of course we packed better clothes, but with those, she was either not looking at the camera, or not smiling, or had saliva dripping down her chin, or some other form of ‘cacat’-ness lah. She looks soooo different, kan? And that was just 6 months ago! I wonder what she will look like another 6 months down the road.

And the family pic?? (See there I showed my face) I think it looked good, except I look bigger than hubbs!!!!!! Grrrrr. Must be the fact that I was sitting straight and he was slouching, and that he had Ayra to cover most of his body. But what was done was done, at least all 3 of us were smiling and looking at the camera instead of gawking away like in many of the pics. Perhaps someday I shall put up more blooper pics of this session just for the fun of it hahaha.

But it felt good, to FINALLY have printed pics of Ayra Hanna and of us as a family hanging on the walls. Maybe we should have an outdoor shoot next. And now, the mission would be to print out her pics and put them in an album. Poor Ayra doesn’t have hardcopy pics.

Ouh, and for those interested, you can contact Rambo here :)