Caught On Camera!

I was sorting out videos earlier and came across some worthy ones of Aidan’s cousins.

When we were back home in March, it took a while for him to warm up to his grandparents, uncles and aunts but he instantly clicked with his cousins. I feel guilty for taking him away the life he could have had in Malaysia, his life would be more colourful if they were around.

I’ll make sure to play these videos for him so that he will always recognize them.

Here’s some of them :

I like the next one a lot, it shows how we spend our sundays back home with the kids all over the house.

Cousin Amber was caught hiding in Aidan’s toy box ! LOL!

The last time we were home, Aidan had a very bad cold so he didn’t get to jump into the pool with his cousins.

But he enjoyed watching them from the sides.

In the next one, you can see Aidan playing peekaboo with Fariz, and Farouq knocking his head with a toy hammer.

And here’s Elle on the bike,

And the next one has nothing to do with the cousins, just us fooling around with Aidan at home.

Aidan’s 1-derful Birthday!

Last sunday we invited  a bunch of people to celebrate Aidan’s first birthday.

..

It was a very low-key and intimate event held in our humble home in Dublin. A bbq in the park was on our mind too but we felt it could be inconvenient what with the unpredicatable weather. And besides, Aidan would be most comfortable at home too if he decides to take a nap.

Two families couldn’t make it due to work commitment,  but we still had close to 20 people coming over. The initial plan was to just invite 10 people as I was worried that I couldn’t cope with the preparation of the food.

First to arrive were Uji and  K.Serina. They  came at 10 am when I was still in my jammies!  They made cute finger sandwiches for the guests.

Uji hard at work

K.Serina, her kids and my cousin helped a lot with the decorations. I had no theme in mind, my only aim was a colour coordinated look with matching napkins and paper plates.  I did secretly wished mom was here, she’s fantastic when it comes to hosting parties and  I think I only inherited 10% of her talent, oh god help me!

Bought the deco at a local DIY store.

Matching 1st birthday hanging swirls

and even a matching balloon! I found all this by chance

We kept the food as simple as possible and ordered kuey tiaw as the main dish.

It was yummy!

A bbq was running at the same time so there was plenty of food to offer.

Tasya brought 72 sticks of satay, thank you so much dear! And sorry to hear your nails turned all yellowy because of the kunyit

For the desserts, hubby went on a quest to find that special cake. I wanted something french, and finally after hopping a few french cafes in town he found one . I met with the pastry chef 2 days before the big day and suggested to him if he could do it into individual portions, saves me a job on the day just in case Aidan becomes clingy.

Chef Oliver made it just like how I wanted it to be!

Tasya to the rescue! Thanks for helping to serve tapi apa marah- marah ni? hehe

We also had an unexpected second cake, my mom wanted to be a part of the celebration too and so she ordered a cake through one of the Irish websites to be delivered to our home. She’s full of surprises, thank you mom!

This was a hit too with the guests and I agree, it was really good!

On top of the 2 cakes, K.Serina gave us kuih bakar which she personally baked herself and my cousin made her signature pudding jagung. So as you can see, food was overflowing and at this point of time I regretted not inviting more people. I wished family back home could hop on the first plane to Dublin and be part of this momentous moment.

And this is us early that morning. Hubby : 'Cukup ke ni ?' Hehe.

The bbq was constantly burning from 12 to 7pm, hubby did a great job grilling the meat, fish and prawns and Chef Bob gave a helping hand too when he came later that evening

The birthday boy and his daddy

Towards the end of the evening, we didn’t take as many photos. I missed so many photo opportunities with some of the guests , heck – I don’t even have a photo of the 3 of us.

But at least I have one of my little tyke!

We ate and ate, took seconds (and thirds )...

Played a game of giant snakes and ladders and I won first! We had a good laugh with this one...

Played House of The Dead on the Wii...

Sang Happy Birthday and silly me for not buying any candles..

opened presents...

And at the end of it all, Aidan was one really happy boy! Thank you all for coming!

So that’s a little recap of the party. I guess first birthdays will always be a big celebration, Aidan would probably never remember it but I wanted to do it for him.

Hopefully one day he could look back at these photos and say, ‘Mummy did this for me ?’ ( So don’t go sending me to a nursing home, boy!)  Apart from celebrating Aidan’s milestones, it also marks a year of us being parents.  We hope the next time we celebrate his birthday, the family will be there too and it would be a big plus to have all his 14 cousins.

Till then, I’ll end with 15 more shots of the party in the slideshow.

( Unfortunately I can’t remove what’s been put up there, so fast forward if you find it boring!   )

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Garden BBQ

So finally yesterday we met up with 3 of our friends, they have been tied up with work and oncalls lately that it was difficult to gather everyone.

Woke up early saturday morning to sunny weather and a couple rounds of text messages and calls later, we decided to go ahead with a BBQ.

Hubby came home midday after a night out oncall and headed straight to the nearest halal shop.

Few hours later we got the bbq running in our back garden and feasted on beef burgers, lamb koftas, garlic butter mussels, lamb chops, flaming hot chicken with coleslaw and potato salad on the sides.

Good food, great company, fabulous day!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Smokin’ BBQ

My Inlaws will be coming over later for a potluck dinner.

We’re preparing bbq chicken, coleslaw and garlic bread for the feast, I really hope it will be a hit with everyone.

And since it was such a nice day too, the cousins decided to go for a dip in the pool. Unfortunately Aidan has quite a bad cough, so I didn’t let him join them. Maybe next time dear.

But he did have a jolly good time watching his cousins play (and fight!) and splish splashing his little tiny feet in the water

Aidan’s New Bed

We went on a bed hunt the first week we arrived in Malaysia.

I had my mind set on a white cotbed to theme with a white wardrobe, white dresser etc, so it should be easy to look for one.

We finally found one at Babyjaya with a reasonable price tag, had a chat with the lady and got a little frustrated to find out that with age, white furniture tends to fade to a yellowy colour due to heat and humidity. She showed me a faded one and I didn’t like the look of it!

So after weighing the pros and cons, we finally decided on a dark walnut finish sleigh cotbed. I came home a little shattered but when we put everything together, it didn’t looked too bad.

And best of all, it can easily be converted into a junior bed, so it should last till Aidan’s about 5 or 6.

Ps: it’s such a torture to write this post using a touchscreen phone!

The Great Escape

In about 2 weeks time, we will be going home to Malaysia for a short break.

We had planned this trip months back but only bought the tickets last week, so the price we paid was ridiculously expensive.

But we’ll do anything to escape the dark, grey weather and I think I’ve had enough of the cold weather.

It’s time for some good ol’ tropical sun.

Seeing the tickets right in front of my eyes has definitely got me excited and that this trip is finally happening for real.

I can’t wait to live in our house again. The last trip was all about lights and fans, but this time I’ll be making sure that we furnish Aidan’s room . My top priority will be a solid, sturdy cotbed that can last till he’s about 6 years old. I’ve been doing some research on local websites and found a few to my liking. I just hope the quality is as good as the picture.

Last weekend, we also went looking for a compact lightweight, collapsible stroller. We finally found one at Mamas and Papas and I hope we made the right choice, apart from the fact that it was also on sale.

And once again, I find myself nervous with the idea of  traveling with an active baby. This time he’s much more mobile and I can envision him climbing seats, crawling up and down the aisles and standing in his bassinet!  I hope we survive that 12 hour flight to KL with much ease.

You better behave yourself, Mister!

Photo of the week :

I caught the boy doing a poo in his favourite corner

Oh, I can’t wait.

But first, I have to think about packing, and let’s hope I don’t overpack!

Open House 2009

The little one is taking his morning nap now giving me about 20 minutes to do up this post.

As promised here are some photos from the open house. After browsing through my camera, it turned out that I didn’t have that many photos after all *LOL*

To be honest, I was pretty nervous at the thought of  inviting friends over as the house was nowhere near ready. All we had was a kitchen that was 70% complete and a bedroom which only had a bed and a wardrobe. I only knew mum had placed her old furniture when I arrived in KL.

So that was why I handed out those invitations 3-4 days before, talk about last minute!

It was great to meet-up with all of  you after all these years especially Raz whom I haven’t met since those London days in 1998 or was it 1999??

And to Miss Cream who drove from KL- Ipoh for a friend’s wedding,  back to KL and arrived just in time for our do. I’m amazed that your kids are so well behaved after that really long road trip!

First to arrive was Mother of 3!

Princess Kiki has grown a lot since I last saw her

i've known her since our CBN days

Ithink I have like 10 shots of this particular photo. Didn’t know where to look, there were far too many cameras!

See what I mean ? ( Behind - Is that Imtiyaz having a go at the drum ?)

Another cam-whoring session in the house - oh so many babies!

Am envious of these 2 who have a full mop of hair whilst Aidan has none!

Momster and Dydd, I hope you didn’t go home hungry

To the rest : Coffee-junkie, Krezijexx, Nadio, Mummy-O, Tun – Thank you all for coming, I know some of you had many other obligations with the raya season going full force at the time.

And not too forget the lovely gifts and duit raya for Aidan, it was very much appreciated!

Hope to see all of you again next year!

ps: For some stange reason the quality of the photos are not great when I upload them here. Hmmm…

Aidan’s Aqiqah

Phew, it’s been quite a week.

My jetlag was terrible this time round – waking up at 3am and in bed by 6pm. It took me a couple of days just to get over it. It didn’t help that Aidan was down with a terrible bout of flu ( his first! ) that I had to give him a dose of antibiotics. It did the job though and he’s now back to his chirpy self.

He was in this state for the first 2 days we arrived back in Dublin

All the smiling on the plane took a toll on his health

My laundry and cooking is also now back on track.  5 loads of laundry and imagine all the drying, folding and ironing that came with it too. The kitchen is also up and running, I couldn’t take another day of takeaway!

Anyway, I had meant to put up photos of our trip but never came round to doing so as things have been a little chaotic around the house.

In brief, the trip home was short, memorable and very meaningful as it was our first time living in our new home. It was also our first raya as a family plus I have not been back for Eid since 1999.

Mom was generous enough to give us her old furniture so we felt comfortable living in the new house. We had 5 days to make the house look more decent for Aidan’s aqiqah so you can imagine the mad rush to buy lights and fans.

Amidst all that fiasco, mom and I were on another mission to buy gifts for the Marhaban ladies and guests.

We were expecting a group of 15 ladies but suddenly at the very last minute they confirmed a bus load of 35 will be attending the do. So there was another panic of  ‘What should we get for them?’. Mom finally decided to buy them kain so we bought 35 x 4 meters worth of kain baju kurung!

At the same time, I was organizing little gifts for guests which included chocolates and cookies. Smallhouse Cookies and Coochicoo did a brilliant job on the orders that I would gladly take them again for another occasion, they were efficient thankfully. And it also turned out that the lady who runs Smallhouse Cookies was a friend of my SIL, the name Enolil was too familiar to her What a small world!

3 days before the aqiqah we went to back to Tapah to pay a visit to Nenek’s kebun. Hubby, all dressed in army gear went in search for batang pisang ( to place the bunga telur ) as shown in the photo below.

Hard at work- ada macam macho sikit

A day before the big day, we were busy moving furniture around, arranging and rearranging carpets every single corner of the house.

We had less than 12 hours – tired and drained but the show must go on.

Putting-up fairy lights

One knackered Usu, 2 nephews, 1 Hitler

The big day came and Aidan was all dressed in princely garb. Unfortunately the baju melayu that mom bought for Aidan was a little too big so out came the emergency romper and satin shoes that I had bought for him from Ireland.

My biggest regret was not taking a photo of him individually, infact to be honest we had taken very LITTLE photos being the host.

I know my uncle took some great shots – there was one photo of the 3 of us that I must, must get hold of.

An hour into the ceremony, he demanded to be carried.

Aidan being Aidan, he decided to show his true self an hour into the ceremony by wailing his heart out.

So daddy came to the rescue and carried him around. It was already well  into his nap time so I don’t blame the boy for being cranky.

He managed to stay quiet in Daddy's lap

Whilst all this was happening, Aidan’s cousins were happily playing badminton behind our house.

This was obviously more exciting for them! Mana laa datang raket ni ? Sorang tu siap lengkap berbaju melayu!

Despite little hiccups here and there, overall we were happy with the ceremony. Eventhough we had taken very little photos, the happy memories will stay with us forever. Thanks to everyone who gave us a helping hand especially to Big Bro and SIL who went on a special quest to look for paperbags that fitted our taste and budget, it was very much appreciated!

And finally a photo of one of the gifts for the guests – I will try and take a photo of the rest when I get the chance.

The personalized chocolate

The last minute paperbag

And by the way, the show didn’t end there, we had an open house that very afternoon. I hope to put up the photos in my next entry!

Dr Green

Guess who's been hit by the nesting bug?

Weather was somewhat glorious over Easter weekend – all warm, sunny and most importantly,  DRY!

Hubby came home Saturday morning after a night on call and since he was lucky enough to get a good night’s sleep, he had this sudden burst of energy to mow the lawn.

All geared in scrubs and garden gloves - a sexy combination of McSteamy and Jesse Metcalfe

It may seem like a simple task but as you can see, we only have a manual reel mower in the house, so  it took him nearly 3 hours of sweat to get that perfect manicured lawn look. I kept motivating him – ‘Takpe, exercise sikit je…Heheh’

Anyway, a  few friends will be coming over for my homemade Nasi Ayam tomorrow and I am sure they will be smiling over our green masterpiece

So what else have I been up to lately ?

Well, I have been running around like a headless chicken organizing things for the house.

Made a trip to the local laundrette and and am happy to hear that  they are willing to make deliveries to the house for no extra charge. We also found a lady cleaner  from the Philippines to do domestic cleaning  – vacuum, dusting, bathroom, kitchen etc and she too is charging a very reasonable rate.

At least for now, I can breathe a sigh of relief  that the house will be in tip top condition if things get a little bit out of hand.

Last week too, I bought a whole month’s supply of food for Pepper. She’s a fussy little one and only eats a certain brand that I can’t just buy from any supermarket.

Pepper, The Cat

And next week, we will be sending both cars for a thorough wash and polish.

Oh dear, I could go on and on with the list – A million things to do yet so little time.

So till my next post, Have a Happy Easter everyone! Don’t eat too many Easter eggies!!

A Snowy Day

The Lounge

We have successfully moved into the new 3 bedroom house last night, yea!

I know the next few days will be a great challenge finding out where everything is as we are slowly sorting out our clothes, shoes, books etc and at the same time making the house more livable for the both of us.

As the house is still an utter mayhem, we had indian takeaway 2 nights in a row.

Anyway, to our surprise we woke up this morning to a very snowy morning which is so, so rare in Dublin.

And although I was still tired from from the weekend move, we couldn’t say no to the generous amount of snow falling in our backgarden.

Hubby went all out building a snowman with his bare hands! He insisted on making a bigger one but I said, NOOOO!

The pom-poms were actually meant for my niece, sorry Amber!

He’s so proud of it too, heheh.

Hubby built this snowman with no gloves, crazy! Merah merah tangan!