... and you are one of them!
Happy Birthday Ikhwan - our most beloved son!
Although I say I shall try to tally my quotation with my latest blog entry (see right column), this time around, I need to say something far more important, that has nothing to do with the quotation I already created, which is based on the TV series Damages (btw, Damages is very cleverly written, don't you think?).
Actually, I wanted to post a short story about the political scenario in Malaysia (thus, the above quotation) and how Malaysia has become 5 years from now. The story is written Damages-style, with some flashbacks. But then, since that story hasn't yet finished, I think that can wait coz like I said, the one I'm posting today, is far more important.
Based on the Islamic calendar, yesterday was 12 Rabiul Awal 1429H, a Maulidur Rasul day, i.e. the Prophet Muhammad pbuh’s Birthday (which was equivalent to 1st April last year). That means today marks our beloved son, Ikhwan, is now one year old. Both Ayah and Ibu are proud of you and love you so much Ikhwan!!! You can read/reminisce the day Ikhwan was born here.
In conjunction with the Maulidur Rasul day (also a public holiday here), the surau at our condo (surau is a place, which can be as small as a room, allocated for Muslims to pray but can cater only a small number of jemaah, unlike mosques) organised a 'selawat', 'berzanji' and a 'potong jambul' (Ikhwan and a neighbour's daughter joined in).
While in the surau, there was a time when Ikhwan crawled from his Ibu (mother) who sat about 2 metres apart from me, just to get to me. Seeing the happy expression on his face looking at me while he was crawling, was rather touching... I noticed Ikwan was also very friendly to those other people in the surau, young and old.
During prayers, again, my heart was deeply touched by the words recited by the imam, who pray not only for the 'potong jambul' babies, but also their parents, and not to forget, the rest of the jemaah and all Muslims. He even prayed for the author of the 'berzanji' book.
Talk about feeling touched, here's a little something:
TUHANKU, sesungguhnya aku tidak layak untuk syurgaMU,
namun tak pula aku sanggup menghadapi api nerakaMU.
Dari itu ampunkanlah segalan dosa aku, dan maafkanlah aku.
Sesungguhnya ENGKAU maha pengampun segala dosa-dosa.
English translation:
YA ALLAH, I am not qualified to be in your Heaven,
but neither can i bear your Hell fire.
For that, please forgive me, for all I have sinned.
For Allah is Most Merciful, Oft-forgiving of all sins, regardless of how big they are (as long as we don't worship other than Allah of course).
For some of us, take these words to our hearts, we might not realise there'll be tears forming at the corner of our eyes.
Ikhwan, here's verse 286, taken from Surah AL-BAQARA:
On no soul doth Allah Place a burden greater than it can bear. It gets every good that it earns, and it suffers every ill that it earns. (Pray:) "Our Lord! Condemn us not if we forget or fall into error; our Lord! Lay not on us a burden Like that which Thou didst lay on those before us; Our Lord! Lay not on us a burden greater than we have strength to bear. Blot out our sins, and grant us forgiveness. Have mercy on us. Thou art our Protector; Help us against those who stand against faith."
Still reminiscing...... ever since only a few months old, Ikhwan always responds whenever his name is called, whether by turning his head around, or twitching his legs a bit, or slanting his head (I have finally recorded a video on this, which I shall put up soon), or uttering his baby words as a way to talk back to us or simply, by smiling/laughing. Nowadays, if he's busy playing or doing his exploring activites, he becomes so excited and sometimes he claps his hands or wriggles his body on the floor, especially when we continuously call his name in full, which is Ikhwan Rasydan. In this particular video, see how he reacted when I whispered his name...
Responsive - The best video clips are here
I shall soon recount the things that he's able to do now, still learning to do and some memorable moments my wife and I had shared with Ikhwan this past year, Insha' Allah...
P/S: Tazkirah for the day
Nowadays, it's common for parents (especially if both are working) to send their kids to be taken care of by baby sitters. Yes, kids these days spend most of their days of their weeks with people who are not their parents. But, despite of that, every single time, when the parents arrive at the sitter's place, the children would drop everything that they do and even 'toss' the sitters aside, to go home with their parents (provided that the parents are lovable to their kids laah!). So, it is in human nature for children to always feel the attachment with their parents and want to go back with them, regardless of what. Likewise, it is nature for all humans to return to the Creator whether or not they want it or they are ready. So, the question is, are we prepared to meet our Creator?
PP/S: In the above photo, Ikhwan was enjoying his meal while sitting down on his portable chair. What an ingenious design for a toddler's chair - it's lightweight yet tough, affordable and safe. I shall talk more about the chair when I share more of Ikhwan's gadgets.
Labels: Al Qur'an, Anatomy, Birthdays, Doa', Family photos, Islam, My Children, My Families, My Videos, Parental, TV shows
Of tongue and mouth.. Part 2
Of Tongue And Voice - Click here for funny video clipsI read from one reliable Internet source that individual children start developing at very different rates, i.e. they develop and learn at their own pace. In other words, as long as your baby is making steady progress, there's nothing to worry about. In fact, if anybody says otherwise, the website suggests responding back by saying that Einstein didn't talk until he was four years old :-) The same applies to our kiddo Ikhwan. He masters his crawling skill quite later than one or two other babies of the same age, whose parents we know. But Ikhwan already has 8 teeth (as of today), compared to one other baby who still doesn't have any.
Put two guardians together and we have different patterns of how they they talk about their respective babies. Sooner or later they're bound to start comparing their babies' accomplishments, as though it were a contest (some doctors call such a 'competition' the Baby Olympics).
Speaking of comparison, here's an interesting one. I observe how differently two male guardians talk about their babies compared to when two female guardians are doing the same. The example here is just based on my own personal experience only, so DON'T take this as something that represents typical behaviours among any gender whatsoever.
Conversation between two male guardians:
Male 1: How are you and how's your daughter? What's her latest development?
Male 2: She already knows how to crawl and is learning to stand up by grabbing on to us or to a nearby furniture.
Male 1: Oh really, that's fast coz my son is hardly lying down on his tummy. He'd quickly flip over to lie on his back... guess that's because his skeletal frame is rather big, he gets tired easily. How many teeth does she have already?
Male 2: None, yours?
Male 1: The fourth one is starting to form...
Male 2: Is it true that babies will be down with fever everytime a new tooth is forming...?
Male 1: Not necessary, I mean that didn't happen to our baby. It's not that he fell sick everytime...
Conversation between two female guardians (the females here are not necessarily someone I know, ok! :-p):
Female 1: The other day, my niece called me up. She is such a cute girl, so talkative now that she knows more vocabularies than before and knows how to call me... (conversation interrupted)
Female 2: Wait till you hear my niece's voice. Hearing her voice can make you feel like you want to go over to her place and squeeze her cheeks... (again, conversation interrupted)
Female 1: Can you believe she asked me to go to the zoo, I mean how was that possible? I was at the office and her house is way over there, the other side of the city... (talking very fast, now gasping for air)
Female 2: I actually took my niece to that Aquaria last weekend. It was a blast and she enjoyed seeing those fishes very much. Maybe I'll take her to the zoo next time... (beaming with pride)
Hmmmm.... I wonder, who's winning here... heehehehe..
Anyway back to the topic. For babies to develop, it is common for them to explore and immitate. In fact, imitation and repetition are key ingredients in early brain development. They discover the use of their hands and fingers; try to mimic our facial expressions and words; finding everything as fascinating - from the wheels of the stroller, the mats, the cabinets and drawers, the ointment bottles... there's just so many things to explore, feel, bang together and bite on huh? :-)
My son is no exception - he is such a natural explorer and a good immitator, for a good cause of course. At times, whenever he's exploring something like playing with his toys or looking out the car window, I like to look at things from his point of view as well.
There was a day when Ikhwan, who was in his car seat, was focusing intently to a particular object. When I bent down, I realised he was looking at the traffic light. He must have seen how the traffic light changed from yellow to red. Upon realising my face was on the same level as his, immediately he said "Ohhh...", probably trying to tell me "The colors are the same like in the book you read to me last night" (or perhaps he was saying "Don't sit too close"? Haha).
Ikhwan has started exploring to use his mouth and tongue (for playing) since a few months ago. He can intelligently create some funny and weird sounds by 'manipulating' his tongue. Only until recently, did I manage to record such moments. This video made my wife and I smiled. But what really made me laugh was the voice of my wife in the background. It sounded really funny (to me at least, I mean she was a bit embarassed upon hearing it).
With the election in Malaysia is just around the corner, I feel like voting for whose voice sounds funnier. Hmmmm... for this case, I think I'd go for my wife's voice (sorry Ikhwan). But I'd still definitely vote for Ikhwan for being the main attention grabber (sorry Ayang, you are a different kind of attention grabber laaa, haha)... Hope you guys enjoy the video!!!
P/S: Speaking of the election (this coming 8th of March), who do you vote for, my fellow Malaysians? The ruling party seems to be trying so hard, with airing all those lengthy commercials on tv and radio. Enough is enough already. I mean haven't they heard, the harder you try, if you fall, the harder (I sure hope so) it must be. They (the commercials) are really starting to make me sick, literally... I wonder whose money did they spend on making those useless commercials and paying for so much airtime huh? Well, upon saying this, guess you know who I'll be voting for!!!!
PP/S: Speaking of tv commercials, currently, my son is sooo into that latest Nokia N82 (Storytelling) ad. He'd stop immediately from whatever he is doing at that time and stay glued to the screen during those few seconds. Only after the ad has finished, would he resume his earlier activities (yes, it can be a number of activities, hehe). I wonder what makes the ad so interesting to him...
Labels: Anatomy, Life, My Children, My Families, My Videos, Of....and...., Road Safety
Of tongue and mouth.. Part 1
A Little Tongue Tied In The Car - More amazing videos are a click awayI obtained my car license more than 10 years ago. But after obtaning the license, I hardly drove, up to the period slightly more than two years ago. In fact, before I got my first car back in November 2005, I drove less than 20 times (whether short or long distances). Why? Well, blame it on self-confidence (or the lack of it). I was just scared of being behind the wheel with all those other vehicles around, especially those motorcyles, lorries and busses (hmm, that pretty summed up almost all other vehicles huh? hehe). Further, I also found myself hard to concentrate while on the road. Weird how my mind easily wandered off in the past. Combine those with the fact I was driving somebody else's car, had really put me off from driving.
But lucily, nowadays, I am more brave, self-composed and focused. I can't really say I'm an expert driver already (really, there's no such thing as expert drivers, just drivers who are familiar with the roads they are taking, don't you agree?), but the roads and the drivers in KL (especially), have really taught me to be aggressive (at least, while driving) to the extent that my wife had said one day, maybe driving has brought the dark side of me to emerge, i.e. easily hot-tempered and impatient.
In the past, prior to us having kiddo Ikhwan in our lives, I sent and picked up my wife from work (even at times when she was on-call). Jalan Tun Razak was one of the roads that I had to take, be it if I left from the office or from home. This is one road that had showed me what does it take to brave through the jams and to change lanes or take over other vehicles at the slightest opportunity available.
I remember one day, during a heavy downpour, a journey that usually took me 15 to 30 minutes to reach her workplace, took me exactly 2 and a half hours. That long of a ride could have brought me back hometown in Muar Johor (or I would be resting at my folks' house for half an hour already - if the highway was not busy and I was speeding a little bit, I would manage to reach there in 2 hours, Insha' Allah).
But now, things have changed. If in the past, my wife would be sitting next to me in the passenger seat, now the view is replaced with our kiddo Ikhwan in his car seat. Nowadays, me and wife have have to drive to work separately. In the mornings, I'd be in charge in sending Ikhwan to his sitter's place. If wife can get off work on time (although that rarely happens), she'd be picking him up in the evening (since her official working hours ends 30 minutes earlier than mine).
Not just our travel arrangements had changed, the interior of our cars too, thanx to the creative child in me. My wife's colleagues had commented how the interior of her car looked like a nursery, that our son must be enjoying himself everytime we take him for a ride (Wallahua'alm, we sure hope so, hehe). If only they had seen my car interior as well :-))
Just as much as I enjoy being in charge of my wife's travel-to-work arrangement, I enjoy being in charge of sending Ikhwan to and from his sitter's house too. My son has always been such a good boy whenever he's in his car seat. Sometimes, even the way he's slumped in that seat, or how he moves his leg (or both legs) around, tickles me. At other times, the way he looks at his surroundings makes him look so much matured than his age. If only I've had the chance to record a video on him, trying so hard to look at me while I was driving, to the extend that he'd turn his head around and slant it forward. In other words, his head would be about 45 degrees to his neck (kind'a hard to describe it, really). He looked really cute and cheeky, looking at me like that, I AM JUST SOOOO PROUD OF HIM!!!!
In my opinion, the bonding between children and their mothers is much easier to form than between children and fathers. I mean such a bond can occur naturally and quickly with mothers. After all, the children have been in their mothers' tummy for months right?
But with fathers, I think they have to work a little extra harder to create that closed knit relationship with their children. I mean, that's just my opinion...
In this one video I took a couple of months ago, I was trying to make him utter or mumble some of his baby words. We had just arrived home and were still at our parking lot. I tried to make him communicate with me by calling out his name a few times but to no avail. But still, I had fun. This may look nothing special to some of you viewers, but, just like any videos with my son in it, I've watched this video, including showing it to Ikhwan, a countless number of times.
By the way, the song that you (probably could) hear coming from the radio in the background, was Tongue Tied by Faber Drive. I lurrvveeeee this song, and so, here's a video clip on the band too:
The chorus goes:
I need a little more luck than a little bit
Cuz every time I get stuck the words won't fit
And every time that I try I get tongue tied
I need a little good luck to get me by
I need a little more help than a little bit
Like the perfect one word no one's heard yet
Cuz every time that I try I get tongue tied
I need a little good luck to get me by this time
Labels: Anatomy, Life, Lyrics, My Children, My Families, My Videos, Of....and...., Road Safety, Video clip
Penguin Rush
