The Sound of Music

I caught the children 'jamming' together the other day. It was hilarious, endearing and lovable rolled up in one special moment.  It's moments like this that makes me fully appreciate how wonderful it is to have kids and how lucky I am to be a mom. Aah...nothing like 'the sound of music' to chase the blues away. :))

Thank Goodness for Good Neighbours.

 It's been awhile. I have been wanting to post but I guess the procrastinator in me is back again. New year's day was creeping up yet I didn't have the inspiration nor strength to blog. I was under the notion that this blog of mine would just end up like the old one. If that happens, it would really be sad indeed. At least for me.

New Year's Day has come and gone. I can't believe it's 2011 already. This year will mark my third year living in the sandpit. I'm yet to decide whether the move has been good or bad for me. It's still a win some, lose some situation for me right now.

I've been feeling a tad low off late. Dunno if it's hormonal or I'm just on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I've dismissed my cleaner, decided that I could manage on my own however I'm feeling a little overwhelmed right now. Being a stay at home mom isn't a bed of roses. I guess my biggest problem right now is I just can't seem to come to terms that I am not Superwoman.

I don't know what is going one with me these days. I really don't. I feel hopeful and inspired one minute, and hopeless and frustrated the next minute. I find myself scrolling my phone book time and time again but at the end, I just decide that there is no one on my list that I really feel like talking to. I've met some really fantastic people here, but I'm not just there yet with them to really consider them a confidant.

I feel hopeless, frustrated and alienated. Sometimes I feel like I may even be dying...and that just makes me feel even more desperate. I feel tired, I can't sleep and when I do, I require herculean effort just to wake up. What bother me most right now is the feeling of anger. I feel angry at myself, angry at my friends, angry with my husband and really angry with the kids. Poor babies. I love them dearly but I doubt they realize it as all they see is an angry me.

Before I went to bed last night, and I wasn't even feeling tired but I think I had an out of body experience. I can't even begin to describe it...well, to be more accurate, I don't want to describe it but it was a very frightening experience. Subhan'Allah. I woke up chanting "Allah Huakbar" over and over again. Turn over, pulled my little one close to me and went back to sleep all the while still chanting that powerful verse. May Allah show mercy on me.

I woke up today and prayed and prayed to Allah to lighten this burden I am feeling. I cried on the praying mat for Allah to show me some mercy. Allah heard me.

This evening, I had a meltdown. I really don't know what came into me. I was trying to have a conversation with this really nice friend but I was actually tuning out on her chattering. Baby H and Cheeky M were driving me nuts playing with the door of the gym and at the sight of my neighbor M walking out of the gym smiling away and asking how I was doing, I burst into tears. I excused myself, muttered I had to fix dinner and pick up AD Daddy, screamed at both Baby H and Cheeky M and drag my 2 children home with them sobbing all the way home.

I couldn't believe how I reacted and just left the kids at the door and went to lie down on my bed in my darken bedroom sobbing away. Then, my door bell rang and cheeky M called out for me saying someone's here to see me. I reluctantly got up, quickly splashed water to my face at went to see who it was. It was my neighbour M. She ran in and immediately embraced me while soothingly saying "I know. I know how you feel." I didn't say anything and just started sobbing again in her embrace.

Just like that, I began to feel much better. I felt my spirit lifting up again. I finally felt calmer after the many weeks of anguish. I will forever be grateful to M. Although I couldn't tell her what was going through my head all these weeks, her sympathy and concern was enough to extinguish the misery out of me. We chatted a bit and she was very understanding of my predicament, and thoroughly concern for my well-being. That one moment, it was all about me, the person. We may be of different nationalities, different cultural background and different religion but we are both a mom, put into similar situation. I will forever be grateful to M for her kindness and for lending me her shoulder to cry on.

Thanks to M, the scale just tipped a little, win some outweighing lose some on my decision to relocate. Bless you M. You will forever have my gratitude for showing me some kindness and being there for me when I needed someone the most. Thank goodness for good neighbors! Now I have a reason to smile again. :)

Soon-To-Be Former Procrastinator

Since my last post, I've made some changes in my life. Nothing big, just little changes but as they say, little steps will take you a long way.

I had roped an old friend of almost 10 years to teach me tennis in exchange for dinner. After tennis, he came over to collect his dues. He is those rare sort of men that would actually insist on doing the cleaning up in exchange for preparing his dinner. So while he was washing up, perhaps tuckered out from a long day and tennis, I did my usual ranting on how hard it was being a mom and a home maker. Went on telling how hopelessly useless my hubs was when it came to helping me with the house chores.

Well, this dear friend of mine then said, he imagined it is a lot of work and my husband really should help me out. However you make it sound like it's impossible to accomplish when the fact is, it's not. Huh? WTF is this man rambling about? Told him he wouldn't last a week if he was in my shoes. he smirked and said maybe, but at least he'd be more organized and disciplined about tackling the problem. Seriously, I love this friend to death but at that moment, I had really wanted to give him a good kick at his derrier!

Then with an antagonizing know-it-all look then men have, he pointed out that my real problem wasn't my husband or the kids. It was actually me. My real problem was is that I am a procrastinator.

I've always known I was a procrastinator but being called a procrastinator to my face wasn't the most pleasant of experience. Hmph! I'll show him!

So the next morning, I woke up really early and after fixing the breakfast for the children, I started to tackle my overwhelming house chores problem. I started by reorganizing the DVDs, moved to arranging my photo albums and just went on and on. Ended with two huge bags of garbage and a seriously well organized home. I even discovered that I actually did have space. Lots and lots of empty spaces! I even had an extra bedroom now!

After getting rid of the trash, I confronted my laundry. 3 huge piles that needed pressing and folding and a large basket that needed ironing. After 10 hours of non-stop house work (not to mention of almost starving my kids to death as I had forgotten to prepare their lunch. They didn't dare to interrupt me as they saw how determined I was to get my job done, they just snacked on biscuits and fruits all day long to avoid facing my wrath. Poor babies! :P)

Now I am feeling quite blessed. I have no laundry woes. Ironed shirts and blouses hanging neatly in the wardrobes. Pile ups in the sink is practically none existence and my house now looks immaculate! (Well, almost...I do have 3 kids after that all! He he.)

I have made a vow to myself to procrastinate no more. If I see a used glass, I will make myself wash it immediately. If the kids makes a mess, I will quickly pick up after them or make them clean up that very instance. I will do the laundry every day and fold the clothes before it starts piling up. I will start barking at my husband and hover around him until he washes that single plate that he had just used. This whole no procrastination process does require more effort on my part, but in the long run it does make my life much easier in the long run.

So far its been 5 days since I last procrastinated and hope over time, it will become my usual habit. If my dear friend didn't point out my problem, I guess I would still be in denial that I had a problem (or could this turnaround be me in denial? Hmm..something to ponder on...). I really should thank this man for helping out...but then being a man, he'd probably be all smug about it. I know, I'll just fix him a nice dinner and then consider that we are even. Yup that's definitely what I'll do. At least, if I find myself relapsing...at least he'll never know. That's dignity for me! Ha ha!:P

Chores, chores and more chores.

House chores are the bane of my existence. In addition to it having zero fun factor, it is monotonous, exhausting, infuriating and has the tendency to pile up with a vengeance.

I admit that I am a natural born procrastinator. Procrastinators and house chores just doesn't go so well together. It's like mixing water and oil. My tendency to delay house chores constantly results in my house being a complete wreck. As much as I hate house chores, I can't tolerate mess either. Being around mess just brings out the worst in me. 

I've always had a maid to attend to the house chores when I was growing up. On top of that, I lived with 3 neat freaks at home. My dad was consistently redecorating and rearranging the house. My mom was quite zealous when it comes to dealing with mess and if I was born to be a natural procrastinator, my sister is a natural born Nazi when it came to tidying up and keeping things in its exact order. I was constantly berated for my lack of tidiness and the constant chaos I tend to leave behind.  However, since these three characters and the maid was always quick to clean up after me, who can blame me for being totally oblivious to mess? As far as I'm concern, I'm as tidy as tidy can be. :))

Then I married and even messier procrastinator. Guess there is truth to the saying, what goes around, comes around. Never have had to deal with mess, I am now overwhelmed by it. It wasn't so bad when it was just the two of us. Back then ADD was always flying so I had ample of time to clean after him. Even when he had days off, he was never around long enough to produce mess that I would consider unmanageable.

9 years later, we are now blessed with three little tikes whom have all inherited ADD's messy genes. (Yeah, blame the bad genes on the dad! Ha ha!) Seriously, if I had known how much mess children leaves behind, I would have definitely opted for a cat instead...err...maybe not, a fish!. A fish can do no wrong. Worst comes to worst,  I could always flush it down the toilet! :P

The mess at home is so overwhelming, I'm currently campaigning for us to just leave everything behind and move house so I won't have to deal with this house anymore. ADD's only contribution towards house chores  is to be the sole person responsible for taking out the garbage. Trying to convince him to take on more responsibility towards the house chores is a chore of its own. So now I'm determined to rope in my kids and make them help out. I've listed down the chores that they could help out with and am bribing them with stars for who does the most house chore. At the end of the week, if they manage to score at least 40 stars, I promised them a small surprise. It has been 2 weeks in and I'm yet to determine whether this strategy of mine works or not. So far, at the end of the week, the 2 older kids have scored an average of 19 stars each. I'll give this reward chart thing a couple more weeks and if it doesn't work and I'm still overwhelmed by house chores, I think I'll run away from home. I'll just use that huge mountain of unfolded clothes on the couch as decoy! ;)

Busy Me.

An idle mind is a devil's playground. A reason why I keep going out of my way looking for things to do to occupy my already busy schedule. However, having an almost 2 year old constantly in my shadows does limit the kind of activities that I would like to be involved in. The task of finding someone to care for her while I busy myself with activities that does not involve my children just doesn't seem right to me. I've heard of the guilty working mom syndrome. Maybe this is the guilty stay-at-home mom syndrome?

I had jumped up at the chance to do the monthly bus roster due to several reasons. Firstly, I wanted to be able to help a friend out as I was aware that doing the monthly bus roster was taking up much of his time especially since he had a very busy work schedule. He had put in so much work, time and effort into getting the whole bus service up and running that I thought it was the least that I could do to help out.   

I had also wanted to be more involved with the school bus service since I couldn't do bus duties being the sole carer of Baby H. Bringing her along on the bus wasn't an option as she will not be covered under the bus insurance. This was what I thought to be a way for me to contribute and show my appreciation towards a most valuable service. The bus had solve a huge dilemma we had faced previously when I was unable to drive (till like 2 weeks ago! lol). We had a hard time figuring out the logistics to sending and fetching our children from school each day. Tried car pooling but since the dads involved had erratic work schedules, we would find days with no one to drive the kids to school and catching a cab with the children and the baby became a nightmare for me.

The bus roster was also a good distraction for me. Children, family and house chores keeps me busy enough, but the distraction provided an escape outlet for me to unwind from my monotonous daily schedule. Trying to fit in erratic work schedules and requests while allocating equal amount of shifts to each family each month is like trying to solve a puzzle. Challenging, sometimes fun but most time quite tiresome. LOL. However, when it all comes together, I feel satisfied.

Now that I can drive, I look forward to the days I need to pick them up from clubs and ferry them around for their extra curricular activities. It gives me a sense of purpose and I have a reason to go out. I love being in the car with them talking or just listening to them chattering away.

In future, I plan to join the moms coffee mornings, arrange playdates and volunteer for school activities. It would also be nice if I could involve myself with some NGOs as well but that would have to wait till my little one is off at school which won't happen till 2012.

Presently, I'm running my own community website (which unfortunately is not as active as I would want want it to be), managing this blog, doing lessons and revisions with Dearest S each day, creating my own materials, teaching aids and methods to teach Cheeky M and Baby H to read, trying out new recipes, figuring out activities to do with the kids during the weekends  and the latest, planning a community garage sale. Why do I keep myself as busy as possible? So I could avoid the one thing I loath doing the most, the laundry. ;)

The Return of Aunt Flo

I can't believe I am actually writing about this but I guess in my life, this is as exciting as it gets. :P

Aunt Flo is back. Who is Aunt Flo? She's that monthly 'inconvenience' that all women of age goes through each month. The last time I had it was...uh...hmmm...well, lets just say it has been awhile.

I have always been a hardcore breastfeeding enthusiast. I had breastfed my first two children up to the age of 2 and my youngest is a month short from being weened off for good. The best thing about breastfeeding exclusively on demand for me is, Aunt Flo disappears from my life for a long, long time. When I first began to breastfeed, from the time I gave birth, Aunt Flo was gone for a good 21 months. Second time around, she came back after 19 months and now a whopping 23 months!

Every time a friend asks how long it's been since my last monthly visits, they are usually flabbergasted to hear that I haven't seen her yet. My favorite reply has always been "I'm still waiting for puberty to hit me" Hehe. ;)

However, the downside is, she'll be coming irregularly for a couple of months and based on my previous track record, I'll have her in my life for 2 or 3 times before I get knocked up again. That's another thing, somehow I become really, really fertile.

This time around though, I'm planning to see as much of Aunt Flo as I can. No more baking buns in the ovens. I'm welcoming Aunt Flo with open arms. For her sake, I will endure the bloatedness, cramping and crazy mood swings without any complaints. Hope she feels really welcomes and from now on, comes to visit me each month without fail. Welcome back Aunty dear! LOL

I Passed! Yippee!

I thought this day would never come. I passed my driving exam! I am now truly and officially a UAE driving license holder. I'm over the moon!

No more fretting, no more anxiety attacks and pounding headaches and best of all no more mood swings (well, at least the ones related to driving exams). My life can resume back to normal.

The exam wasn't at all what I had expected. The whole thing lasted perhaps 2 or 3 minutes. I had to do a normal U-turn and another U-turn around the roundabout. The police officer was unusually friendly and helpful (perhaps that was due to his superior being chums with my hubby but never mind that).When the test was over and I received a paper stating I passed, I seriously can't believe why had I fussed so much over it.

Gosh. I'm feeling quite elated that I'm actually speechless. Can't wait to hit the road! :D