Raggedyanne Rambles

To some people, house birds that nested around their houses are pests. They bring dry grass, straw and other junks into the crevices of your house and leave bird poop in at your front door. In my grandma's house, they poop all over her bathroom in the guest room. She complains to me all the time about the smell and the back breaking chore of cleaning up.

But she never once told us to try get rid of them. She told them to let them be, as the birds are signs of 'rahmat Allah' or prosperity. It's believed that all Allah's creations extoll His greatness in zikr and extend their prayers to those who have done good deeds to them, such as providing them shelter.

Even when three of these little fellas dropped from their nests located at my front door, she scooped two of them who survived into a plastic container and placed them somewhere safe.

I feel a little bad for letting her do worry so much and didn't act much when the chicks fell except snapping up some close-ups (psycho kapa). I thought she wouldn't care coz she hates the birds so much when they mess up her house. But she did care.

The next day, I transferred the chicks into a shoe box and placed them on a high beam behind my kitchen wall, hoping that the other birds would find them and feed them.

The face of survival.

I wonder what happened to the sole survivor. One of the two died in the shoe box and the last fella was still alive on the second day. On the third day, it was gone. If it was eaten by a cat or a fox (they can easily climb up that high beam where I hid the container), I'm sure the box will be knocked over, but it wasn't. The chick was beguilingly... gone.

* This is an old post which I notice was put in draft mode. I can't remember why. When I hit the publish button, it's published on a current date. Malas lak nak check when was the actual date. Kalau rajin, bacalah...*

This post is actually a response to Nin's and dedicated to all mothers (and fathers alike) out there who are pulling their hair and gauging their eyes out of their sockets while coping with child-raising (No? None of you are feeling this? Just me? OK, call social service, people)

I don't think that I put enough emphasis on how wonderfully irrational Nunu has been since she's been plagued with the terrible two virus.

Every request for her to be more independent is met with cries of helplessness. When she used to love using the stairs without help before, now she wants to be carried like a poor wretched soul. Now that I mention it, she's been asking me to carry her almost all the time especially if I'm standing - while cooking, while loading the washing machine, while doing the dishes, while hanging the clothes, going in or out the car, going in or out of the house, while walking to get some dinner at the stalls or browsing at the grocery shop. She even wants me to carry her while I'm sitting down folding the laundry!

And no, momma has to carry her a certain way ("like this! macam ni, bukan macam ni!") with both hands under her bum lest I let her fall in my exasperation to do as she says. So I know how it feels like when she's been walking around with a 28 pound monkey hanging around her neck. Clingy to the max! I've tried reasoning with her with both cool-calm authority and harsher firmer parenting (scolding, pinching, nagging = bad parenting!) but tell me, how do you make a pool of screaming, kicking, weeping force of nature listen to you?

Sure she acts cute most if the time

Every command for her to keep her stuff neat is met with ferocious refusal - followed with violent, most convincing crocodile tears. God knows what got into me when I bought for her a masak-masak playset, some musical toys and a new pair of baby tennis racket while shopping for groceries the other day. I guess it's one of those impulsive dump-into-the-trolley buys you get when you see something so good and so cheap. We had fun and made those toys worth their while, make believing that she's cooking me moi for a change, that we're a team of mother-daughter troubadour playing on the streets, and that she's Maria and I'm Daniela.

Look at those scrapes and scabs!

Now that the novelty of their newness are wearing off, she likes her toys just scattered around because she's comfortable with the clutter. Like her crayons, she actually threw a fit when I packed them up because she wanted to keep on scratching the surfaces and make more colourful crayon flakes on the floor *slaps forehead*

And when I told her to tidy up, her ultimate response would be "NO! Momma kemaslah!" *insert eardrum piercing whine and other annoying sounds here* If I stuck to my guns and keep on insisting she should take care of her own belongings (which I did last Friday night), get prepared to lose a battle and feel shitty for the rest of the night.

You see, Nunu should be a poster girl for Malay old wives tales. If she throws a fit, things will get worse later on or melarat-larat. She would be tossing and turning or wake up in the middle of the night crying for no apparent reason. She must have been only emotionally distraught by the day's incidence, but you know what, I'm sick of being the bad guy who makes her cry, and can I do something about it to at least alleviate this sense of guilt in me? Apparently no, coz almost immediately I get the "Ouh, you shouldn't have made her cry" piece of wisdom.

This may sound a little funny now, but believe me, it was not. More excruciatingly torturous was this experience for me due to the hard to digest fact that it's straining our relationship with the master of the house whose opinion on child raising differs from mine. His latest ultimatum is to stop buying Nunu toys until she learns to pick after herself. Can you believe that? A rather simplistic solution, don't you think?

A couple of months ago when Nunu was just fine-tuning her new found art of tantrum throwing over silly things (which was a rare occurrence because she's just normally rowdy in her girly buas way) I had a nerve wrecking time trying to deal with it all by myself, and it's even more disappointing that people thought that I was encouraging this type of behavior by doing all I can to pacify her instead of putting my foot down and telling her to stop the nonsense.

For example, one of the first events when Nunu started pulling stunts in public, we were just about to get ready to go back to our apartment after a swim at Bukit Merah Waterpark. She suddenly started screaming and thrashing about and was babbling nonsense. I couldn't find out the source of the tantrum and she wouldn't be pacified (not even with nenen!) until about 15 agonizing minutes later at the changing room, all she wanted was to wipe her runny nose on my shirt. Everyone around me was genuinely stupefied at her behavior.

Now, whenever she has some hingus/snot, I have to give her my shirt or tudung as wipes, no tissues or hankies please. And it irksome to others, because 'dah ajar macam tu' (I've 'taught her that way)

Am I being shamelessly bullied by my own child here? Am I being a floor mat and letting everyone step all over me all the time? Will my forbearance with this behavior result in a more spoiled child? Do I need someone to smack some sense into me and quit being so whiny and just deal with it?

No wonder my daughter is such a drama queen. She got it from her momma.