What Love Means..

Love means never saying “shut up”.

Because of a promise I made to her a few months ago (probably to make her stop whining), I took Nuha our eldest to the KL Bird Park last Thursday. And to make the day more bearable, I asked Nuha’s cousin, Tijani and her mother (my sister) to tag along.

In ZombieDaddy’s world, girls are the inquisitive type. They ask questions every few minutes eager for answers. And when they get excited, like when they can’t wait to reach the bird park or when they get to go there with their cousin, they ask more questions.. at a more rapid rate.

So we went. And they started asking questions the moment we left the house – as 6-year olds typically do. Here, in loosely chronological order, is what they asked:

Abah (btw Nuha and her cousins except for her aussie cousins in Perth, all call me Abah), is the bird park near or far?

Abah, is that the bird park?

Abah, why did you wave at that man in the other car? Do you know him? Is he your friend?

Abah, why do you have to buy tickets?

Abah, why do I have to wear my hat?

Abah, why is that bird not moving?

Abah, why is that bird statue look like a bird?

Abah, why that peacock not pretty like that other peacock overthere?

Abah, why now is not birds’ feeding time anymore?

Abah, why can’t I give my bread to the birds?

Abah, why is it so smelly here?

Abah, why is that bird outside and that one inside the cage?

Abah, what is the red parrot going to do now?

Abah, what is the blue parrot going to do now?

Abah, where is the eagle? I can’t see it.

Abah, is monkey friends with bird?

Abah, can we go into the shop? I won’t ask for anything.

Abah, why can’t I have the eagle soft toy? I never had any eagle soft toy.

Abah, can I have ice-cream?

Abah, are we going home now?

Abah, can we go somewhere else after this?

Abah, are we going to the bird park again tomorrow? I like the bird park.

All this in between “Abah, I need to chiing (pee) now” and “Abah, I need to chiing again now”

Nuha and cousin Tijani at the bird park

The parrots that bit the hands that fed them. Ouch!

The Gift of The Flying Ants

We love watching animals planet. Well, maybe Supermama loves watching the Asian Food Channel more, but that’s another story. We love watching animal documentaries on the telly because we get to see the biggest cat in the universe up close. It’s actually a hippo but Raisa kept on saying ‘Caaat’ with her eyes opened really wide and drool coming out of her mouth, there’s no way in hell you could tell her it was a hippo instead. Anyways, apart from the biggest cat, we also got to know about a few interesting facts about how nature works.

Did you know that penguin parents can detect their own chick’s cry from a field of hundreds of seemingly identical baby penguins that are all squawking at the same time at a distance of 200 meters? We didn’t know that too. It’s just the amazing wonder of nature. Parents of identical twins, babies that have the same DNA and look exactly like each other, can at a glance seemingly tell their children apart. People are always intrigued by this impossible feat. How can you tell them apart? they always asked. Well, the answer is quite simple. It is through the Wonder of Nature. Or in our case, it’s through the gift of the flying ants.

You cant find this on the documentary channels, but babies are incredible yummy. Not to us of course, but to the little insects called mosquitoes. From the beginning of life, when the babies were still having that heavenly fragrance, the mosquitoes were already following them ever ready to have a little bite. And then there were the flying ants. These little buggers just dropped from the sky, landed on your babies or hid under the pillow. Before you know it, you’d hear a cry, your baby just got bitten by the little bugger. And if your baby is like Raisa who’s allergic to insect bites, then you’ll notice a big-assed swelling on the area that got bitten. That’s when you started looking for the little red ant, and when you saw it, you immediately squashed it. When you saw it was still moving, you squashed it again. When it wasn’t moving anymore, you squashed it again.. just to be sure. But why then did I say ‘the gift of the flying ants’ when all I wanted to do was to squelch them. The truth is while a swelling on a baby’s body might elicit sighs and sympathy from most parents, for the fathers of identical twins, it is sometimes a Godsend.

So all this goes to say that, unless the little red ants also decide to bite Raina on her eyelid, Raisa is going to be easily recognizable for at least four days or so. And that’s how nature works.

This is Raisa, and you don’t need to be penguin parent to recognise her.

And this is Raina. Notice the difference between the two?

Search & Rescue Mission

That's what we do without fail on a nightly basis. Supermama and ZombieDaddy (well, mostly ZombieDaddy actually) conduct Search and Rescue missions every single night. Sometimes it happens once or twice a night, which is tolerable. But there are nights when it happens every freaking hour that it's making me lose hair faster than a speeding rempit. What are we searching for you might ask. What is so bloody important that we have to wake up from our much needed sleep and rescue it every single time, you might wonder. Let me show you what the culprit is..

Nuby Natural Flex pacifiers (dummies)

The twins sleep with their pacifiers. But after a while they would unconsciously chuck the pacifiers out. Then they would notice the dummies are not in their mouths anymore. This is when they would ask us to help look for them. When I said ‘ask’, I mean scream at the top of their lungs complete with tears, snot and drool, in no particular order.

You can judge us all you want, but yes we admit it! We depend on these Nuby pacifiers like the desert needs the rain or more like Shrek needs Fiona. Our sanity and survival as parents depends on this tiny little dummies.

Raina and Raisa have been on pacifiers since they were a few months old. Mind you, they are not on the dummies all day long. They more or less need the dummies only when they’re going to sleep. You know like a blankie or a special pillow, the twins would ask for their pacifiers when it’s sleep time. As it is right now we are not strong enough to say no to them because when they sleep, that means we can sleep too.

With Nuha last time we adopted a totally different philosophy. One that did not involve a pacifier. We were ardent believers back then. When the twins came, they cried a lot and they always cry at the same time. So we adopted a different philosophy, that is, to hell with philosophy. Survival instincts kicked in, Zombiedaddy and Nuby became best friends.

So, if you say anything bad about my best friend, that means you are hurting me too.

The twins being pacified

Teach me Tai-Fu

I just got a call from Nuha our eldest, asking me to teach her Kung-Fu, Tae Kwan Do and also Tai-Fu. I’ve heard of kung-fu and tae kwan do before but tai-fu was definitely not in my vocabulary. The other thing that I have not a freaking idea where it came from is that Nuha thought her Abah was some kind of a master of martial arts. I dont think I have ever done any kung-fu or tae kwan do move in front of her. The closest I’ve gotten to, was when I tried to shoo a ‘musang’ away from our fence with some fierce-looking karate chops and noisy barks. Even then I had to quickly run back inside when the musang seemed to move forward towards me instead of disappearing into the wild as it should be doing.

Anyways, being a good father, how do you react when your kid started to call you ‘master’ and asked you to teach her kungfu or tae kwan do or tai-fu? So, being a good father, what else could you do? Masters never say no. Master always say: “Yes Nuha, Abah will teach you Kungfu, Tae Kwan Do and Oh, I have to look the other one up on wikipedia before I can say yes or no”. You could hear the happiness in her voice and almost saw that sparkle in her eyes when she heard I said yes. That was priceless and worth a thousand yesses.

So now, where do I download those “Kungfu for Dummy” books from? And I wonder if I can have Tai-Fu for lunch..

This is Abah being kung-fued by his disciple

Half of it gone

So there we were somewhere inside Tesco just about done with our grocery shopping. Just Nuha and Abah doing the bonding thing while the boisterous duo are at home with Supermama doing hmm doing what they always do. boisterousing.

Anyways, Tesco was getting more crowded as more people started to arrive. And Nuha has loudly upgraded herself from “Abah I’m hungry” to “Abah I’m starviiing!”. This coming from the same girl who gulped a bowl of honeystars not two hours ago at home for breakfast while Abah had none yet. So the Daddy asked his lovely Daughter if she wanted donuts or roti canai for her second breakfast. And the Daughter happily said “donuts please”. On the way to the mamak, the Daughter bought 1 donuts on a stick and 1 big ring donut.

So there we were sitting in the mamak restaurant. The Daddy ordered a roti telur bawang for himself while the Daughter was eagerly munching on the donuts. Teh tarik for the Daddy and Milo tarik for the Daughter. Later came the roti telur bawang for the Daddy who was quite hungry by then. The Daughter was still happily munching on her donuts. The Daddy cut the roti and ate a piece..hmm nice and warm. The dal was not bad too. The Daddy cut another piece and was about to put it in his mouth when a little voice appeared from somewhere to his left. “Abah can I have some roti telur?” It was the Daughter. Maybe she liked the aroma coming from the roti and wanted to have a little taste, the Daddy thought. The Daddy cut a big piece of the roti, put some dal on it and spoon it to the Daughter who was holding donuts in her hands. “hmm nice” said the Daughter. “Nak lagi Abah” requested the Daughter.

So here we are, inside the van, ready to go back. The Daughter is still munching on her donuts. The Daddy is still hungry. Had only half of the warm nice roti telur bawang while the other half of it was gone to the Daughter. The same Daughter who had a bowl of cereal for breakfast, then had donuts on a stick at the mamak’s and is now happily munching on her ring donut on our way back from Tesco.

The Daughter proudly making and baking her own donuts.

Confession of a lazy bum

Forgive me O’ World Wide Web, for I have sinned. It has been two months since I last updated my blog. I know that I used to say I was gonna be a good blogger. I was gonna update the blog regularly, with at least one entry every week. I know that I have promised a lot of things. But at the end of the day I know that I’m just a big weak lazy bum with lazy fingers, lazier than a sloth on a summer vacation.

It’s not that nothing much was going on in the lives of our three princesses. In fact, many many things are happening with the three girls that contributed to the growing number of white hairs on Zombiedaddy’s head.

If only Zombiedaddy is not too lazy then this blog will be full with writings on the joys and pains (well mostly pains) of fatherhood.

Well, maybe it’s time to make another promise. Maybe it can be part of the birthday presents for Supermama that took place yesterday. Zombiedaddy is going to write and update this blog again, more regularly this time, with lots of stories, funny stories, horror stories, mostly smelly stories about donut monster, sandbox gangster and legend of the cry-baby.

There you go. I promise.