Raya.

It just dawned on me that for raya this year we don't only need to budget for duit raya,
We need to think about Hilwa's baju raya as well.
God.
I really should stop buying clothes & start saving money for all this.
But you can't blame me, all the designers & fv are going apeshit over raya collections that it's just so temptinggg..
But the problem is I buy now then I gotta wear now then for raya I'd wanna buy more.
Urgh I just can't win.
But yeah..
The thought of being able to splurge a little on Hilwa's bajus is really getting me excited.
H&m has got really cute & reasonably priced dresses & stuff.
Imma go apeshit on that!
Speaking of raya,
I've been toying with the idea of bringing Hilwa to the mosque with me for sembahyang raya that morning.
I think it was 2 rayas ago that the imam in his khutbah mentioned that sembahyang raya is one occasion where all the women & kids are actually encouraged to go to the mosque.
If your child is too small to be left alone while you pray, then just sit at the back & make sure you don't disturb the congregation while they pray.
Come early to takbir together, stay for the khutbah, meet people & most importantly celebrate raya.
It was one of the most beautiful things I heard, & last year my sister brought both layla & ilhan along.
There were so many other kids too, one girl was still in her jammies & hair all tousled from sleep.
So cute.
So yeah.. I've been toying with the idea.
Which brings me to, of course, the topic of fashion.
Should I buy Hilwa a baju kurung for raya?
I don't think she would already be able to walk in 2 months' time (but hey, whaddo I know).
Oh well I guess I'll leave that for the annual ramadhan pkns shopping trip I have with mama & see where she's at outfit-wise & abilities-wise.
Oh & of course this raya is supposed to be celebrated in Kelantan unless my grandmother-in-law decides to come down here instead like everyone's been pujuking her to.
Fingers crossed!

Need (to spend).

I've been going pure mental on clothes this month.
I have 1 jubah & 2 baju kurungs at the tailor,
I bought 2 more jubahs that need altering,
Then my mum bought me another jubah,
& today I bought 2 tops,
All of which is currently in the laundry basket awaiting to be washed before I could wear them.
That's a lot of clothes.
Like it's not funny what is wrong with me?
& I still feel like I need more.
Just cause I can't wear all of them right now.
But why would I want to wear them right now,
It's almost 11pm I need to sleep!
Is this what housewifehood is about?
Shopping, just cause you're bored?
Next in the list I need a new closet.

Epa is married!

Every time I go to a wedding,
Especially that of a close friend,
I always fail to take pictures using my own camera.
It's not that I don't remember,
Usually I'm just not able to reach into my handbag for my phone,
& really it's just too much hassle, what with the photographer already laden with other people's phones & such.
& I love arriving at weddings late.
You'll never see me before 2 pm (if it's a non-formal lunch wedding.
Because that's when the crowd is just nuts.
& the pengantin would have just arrived,
& they'll be busy with the makan beradab, bersanding & taking pics with their families.
So I'd rather pass all of that & catch the pengantin after everything has toned down & maybe steal a chat.
We stole a chat alright, during Epa's wedding just now.
We stayed quite long & it was almost 4pm so I think there's only mostly family left.
(We were waiting for Sya who was so lost I can't even -_-")
The groom went to solat so we had the bride all to ourselves,
Languishing on her pelamin as if we were back in our dorm rooms instead of in public,
& worse still she's the bride!
But it was good.
These are the people who made Perak bearable for me.
Epa herself used to hand feed me dinner because I was too lazy,
& play with my hair coz I liked it & I felt like it.
She spoilt me rotten.
I could have snapped a picture but it was too much of a hassle.
My handbag was with Ikhwan & Hilwa was cranky,
But really, it was so much more fun to just gossip around with the girls rather than pose & such.
But it would've been nice to be able to put a picture up here.
Urgh I'm so torn.

Geek phones.

Well, phones in general.
My nexus 4 just died out on me.
I was sure battery was above 60%,
Hilwa wasn't playing with it, so it wasn't dropped or being drooled on.
In fact I was just using it like 5 minutes before.
It just died out on me.
Screen went completely blank like it was off,
& the power on button did nothing.
I tried calling it from another phone, it was ringing,
But the phone itself was dead.
No lights, no sound, not vibrating.
My first instinct was to ask my brother.
But he wasn't replying.
Then it crossed my mind to just Google the problem.
I was halfway through typing 'nexus 4 suddenly died' when Google suggested 'sudden death'.
Oh shit.
Known problem.
Sounds bad.
Apparently not.
There were a few solved threads & I was only on step one of the suggested solution when it came back to life.
Thank god.
I always end up buying/owning unpopular phones,
Mainly cause my brother has made me into a nexus fan.
I complain about the most brainless things,
Like the fact I can never get cute casings for my phone.
& sometimes it does bother me that parts are harder to get compared to a Samsung for example.
(My battery bloated up after the KitKat update & the only reason I got a replacement for it was because there was a dead nexus 4 at the shop I went to which still had a good battery so the technician was able to swap it. If it wasn't for that I'm not sure how long I'd have to wait or how much it's gonna cost).
But at least I know if there are any problems with this phone,
I can just geek out online & find a solution.
& that's why I always go nexus.
But a word of advise,
& this I only accidentally did when I logged into G+ to delete my old pictures,
Always back up your pictures!
Especially now that I snap so many random things of Hilwa on a daily basis.
It's good to know G+ is always running in the background backing up stuff.
That is one major reason why I could still calmly whatsapp why brother when my phone died.
Teehee

The word 'complaints' has absolutely nothing to do with bring complacent.

Hilwa finally, FINALLY settled down after 2 hours, 2 stinky diapers & god knows how many feeds.
Now that she's mobile,
(Pfft crawling is so last week. She has also mastered standing up in her cot while holding the railing, so confident that now she has begun to jump up & down for god knows what reason. & don't let me even begin on her reaching up to random furnitures downstairs & trying to stand).
Anyways, now that she's mobile,
When she refuses to sleep it means I'm constantly on alert lest she falls off the side of the bed.
& boy she's fast.
& adamant.
& strong, when she's adamant.
Every night the moment she goes down I am just drained.
I'd fall asleep in minutes.
Which means I'll be a dead log next to husband dearest.
Which brings me to the topic that's been bugging me since it was first brought to my attention by my attending nurse.
Birth control.
That silly 3-monthly jab is wrecking havoc in my life,
Or more specifically my menses cycle.
& with ramadhan coming up, I'm very unhappy about it.
I have talked to Ikhwan's cousin who's a doctor & she was supportive of me stopping that method.
There's plenty of other methods I can go for,
& right now it's actually totally redundant that I'm even talking about contraceptives when I'm celibate.
Lol.
I just need to pick up the courage to ring my nurse & tell her abstinence is the way to go.
No really, I should talk to her soon.
Sigh.
I don't even know why I'm so tired these days.
I wake up late,
(But to be fair I sleep late as well),
Which means I have less daylight to do things.
& what things do I do?
The occasional shipment, which has decreased significantly compared to those crazy days earlier this year.
& laundry.
That's all I'm officially in charged of at home.
Hell I don't even cook.
I can't even find the time to bloody cook for my husband, what kind of a shitty housewife am I?
The thing is, even bathing & feeding myself is such a chore.
With Hilwa now throwing a tantrum & crying til she's choking on her sobs & red in the face sweating bullets & all,
Just because I took a quick toilet break.
It's not funny.
& what's even shittier is when I can't even find the time during the day to feed her,
So I always push it til way past a normal person's dinner time.
Which shouldn't be normal, she's a growing child why am I prioritizing feeding her her solids last?
I just can't face feeding her when I'm alone sometimes.
Too. Much. Stress.
I keep telling myself it'll get easier as she grows bigger.
I'll just keep telling myself that til she goes to college.
Til then, I'll allow myself these rants every once in a while.
That is all.

Detoxifying.

I finally looked into getting rid of all of my jahiliyyah photos in this blog.
Thank god for Google+, all I had to do was just delete them from the album.
Now the tough part would be fb.
I've procrastinated long enough.
I did start.
I privatised all of my old albums & profile pictures.
But there's still my wedding albums,
& worse still, tagged photos.
I'm going to need to untag them one by one.
& probably beg on a status so people would delete them, or at least set it to private,
Which I hope they would.
Like I said, I've put it off for a long time.
Not because it's such a daunting task.
But because these are memories I'd like to keep & it's convenient to have these pictures at a click of my finger.
Who knows I might need it someday, I kept telling my conscience.
Who knows I might miss that moment & would like to have a look back at it.
Then Allah whispered into me,
Go make other memories then.
& here I am.
It's a start.

Mushy.

I feel like talking about my brother tonight.
I've been blogging about my daughter & my daughter & my husband & my daughter & practically no one else,
So tonight let's talk about my brother.
We go way back.
Knew him since 88.
Lol.
But seriously.
When I say we go way back,
I mean this is the guy I used to bathe with,
We'd plug the hole in mama's bathtub & let the shower run til the reserve tank dried out.
We skated in the house by pouring half a bottle of talc on the floor & putting socks on to reduce friction (physics babies pfft).
He taught me how to swim,
Or to be more precise, to be confident in the water even though I didn't know how to swim.
We snuck off to hop in to eat maggi cup when we were supposed to be at swimming lessons.
We weren't supposed to be eating maggi back then.
He didn't mind me tagging along when he started hanging out at ou with his friends.
His friends, since he was in primary school, has always ended up becoming my friends.
That carried on to university,
When he would call his friends up to give me a ride home on weekends.
& check up on me in my room when I fell sick.
He would listen to me rant on the phone about how much I hated the place,
All the while I was sure I had total control over my voice so that he didn't know I was crying,
Then he would casually announce to kak gayah 'nangis' right after we hung up.
He shared music with me.
His secret of being a smoker when no one back home knew.
& I was the first introduced to his then-girlfriend-now-wife.
Or any girlfriends before that, for that matter.
& when my husband & I finally broke the news that we were pregnant,
Instead of taunting me with the fact that I got unplannedly knocked up just like I said I wouldn't be,
He discreetly asked my husband 'lya ok tak?'.
Because he, of all people, knew I wasn't.
It was ridiculous that he even asked.
But we did have our fair share of fights.
I was flying-kicked once.
I literally flew against a chair.
& I remember him calling me 'menyusahkan' when I feel off my bike & scraped my knee & just sat at the curb crying til he passed by.
But despite that he got off his bike,
Told me to get up & walked me home.
To the guy, who I once accidentally referred to as 'not family',
Simply because he's also a best friend.
Because I feel like it tonight.

Capture.

If I wasn't concerned with aurat,
I would so instagram this scene of baby drinking from me with her fingers splayed across my chest.
Make that a video, with sounds of the rain & the fan in the background.
But do you ever notice how what our eyes see can never be perfectly captured by the camera.
Or maybe I'm just that bad at photography.

Clingy.

Ever since Hilwa demam haritu,
She's been super clingy.
To me & only me.
Ke tahap even if papa or tok ana dukung dia,
She would struggle towards me & cry bila tak dapat.
(On the plus side though, dia dah pandai push herself up into a sitting position & also semalam dia berdiri sambil pegang railing cot)
So she's been sleeping on our bed for a few nights now.
Sebab bila letak dia kat cot,
Tak sampai setengah jam dia dah terjaga & merengek & as soon as aku angkat dia naik katil kitorang she would fall back asleep.
Semalam Ikhwan balik kerja we both just automatically fell into each others arms,
& said how much we miss each other.
But despite that,
Hilwa took some time to fall asleep.
By then aku dah penat nak mampus,
& when I woke up just now he was already leaving for office.
Tetibe rasa macam tidur atas katil besar yang kosong.
Yes Hilwa was also up & as usual menyondol-nyoldol sambil senyum kambing dia.
But I miss my husband.
So, so much.
At this rate,
I don't think we can even leave her for a short dinner together,
Let alone have the bed to ourselves & fall asleep in each other's arms like old times.
Gosh, like old times.
It does feel ages ago.
Baby kasi can mama papa pls T.T
(Disclaimer: when I said falling asleep in each other's arms, I do mean that. Tiada aksi ranjang yang cuba diselindungkan lol)