School Already?

This year, Hana turns three.

I've been searching since last year for classes and activities that she can join and interact with other children, something that I can attend myself since at the time, she wasn't the sociable butterfly she's turned out to be. She used to dislike it when strangers tried to interact with her.

Sure, she'd say Hi if someone said Hi first but that was about it. Most times, she'd start whining and burying her face in my shoulder or insist on me carrying her, if she was standing or walking.

And then sometime this year, it all changed. She would be the first to say Hi to someone we bumped into, stranger or not, and it wasn't just greeting people. She'd actually try to strike up conversation as if she has known that person for ages. She'd start telling them where she was going and what she was going to do. She started calling for people by name - people other than anyone she's close to (our families). She started asking for our friends, people who she'd only met a few times in her life and had minimal interactions with, being so introverted before.

And even when we announced that we were going to visit or meet with someone new, she'd commit the name to memory and get excited about it. She was blossoming and from these instances, I could see how much she longed for interaction other than what she is used to.

So we've decided to send her to school starting June. My MIL found a nice kindergarten within walking distance of where we live. The class is small (four kids at the moment, with one joining in the next term, so with Hana it'll be 6 altogether) and there are two teachers watching them. The teacher in charge seems nice - the children seem quite attached to her.

And so there you have it. Hana starts school InsyaAllah.

How do I feel about letting this precious little girl go? I've got mixed feelings. Excitement - for her, and the opportunities she'd finally have to make friends and play with other children. Sadness that she's no longer a baby and no longer needs me in certain ways - there are finally things that I cannot personally give her, things that she needs other people besides her family, and of course, a certain sense of pride that she's finally ready, that she somehow made herself ready without help from me or her dad.

A part of me wants to keep her under my wing forever. But I know that doing that would be selfish. So as hard as it feels for me right now, I gotta let my little angel spread her wings and fly.

Discovering myself

So here's the thing.

I've lived my whole life being this insecure person who wants the whole world to like her. I looked at people who had the guts to tell someone what for and I yearned to be like them but I just couldn't.

And so, relationship after relationship, friendship after friendship, I lived as a self-proclaimed, self-ordained doormat and I have no one to blame but myself. Because I chose to let people walk over me.

After my life turned upside down a few years ago, I vowed to myself that that would've been the last time I sunk that low, but still certain actions affected me in ways I wished they wouldn't.

I started going for therapy again, and I'm happy to say that this time, I've gotten to the core of what's really bothering me - ME.

So I'm done putting myself down, thinking that I'm not good enough. I'm a good mother and god knows I try my best to be a good person, but after years and years of living for the approval of other people, I want to live for me. I want to stop putting impossible standards on myself and then beating myself up for failing to live up to them. I want to move on, I want to let go of that insecure little girl living inside of me all this time.

And so here it is: I'm not the same person I was a few years ago. I will not run to someone to try and get them back when they're the ones who've made mistakes or hurt me. If they come back on their own then my doors are always open because that's a part of me I don't think I'll ever change, but I will not chase after them.

It's not that I've stopped caring. I just feel that it's time that I care for myself (and my family) more.

Photographs.

Of Speech Patterns

Little by little, I've noticed that Hana has started to talk more like adults. Despite her limited vocab, she does try and speak in full, proper sentences. At the very least, she manages to arrange her words properly whenever she talks.

For example, she used to say "Mama takut". Now she says "Hana takut mama!" (When we play catch, just in case people's imaginations start going wild) :P

She used to go "Apa bunyi tu?" When she hears the knocking and drilling that are oh-so-common where we live. Now she says "Bunyi apa tu?"

Yesterday, she crawled under the dinner table and grinned at me. I asked her "What are you doing, Hana?" and she answered "Sit down". So I corrected her with "I'm sitting down", which she duly repeated.

So today, I decided to ask her a few questions in complete sentences, just to see if she can answer them accordingly. My first was when she asked for cereal for breakfast and specifically requested that I put banana pieces in it.

Me: Do you like bananas?
Hana: I like bananas.

This was quite a pleasant surprise to me because I wasn't aware that she knew how to use pronouns. I knew that she can glean meanings out of the things I say, but I didn't know she could refer to herself in the first person in the proper context, if you know what I mean.

I asked her the second question when she was slurping the milk out of the bowl after her cereal was all gone.

Me: Is it good?
Hana: It's so good!

So she's gone beyond repeating what we say to being able to put each sentence pattern into context.

Listening to Reason

My posts always seem overdue nowadays kan? It's hard concentrating on writing a post when things are just happening around me and there's a little girl running around needing my attention.

Anyway, here's a little Hana update.

She's 2y2m now. We spent her birthday in Kedah because it fell on the date of our best friend's wedding. Attempted to take her to the Taiping Zoo on the way back the next day but that place was filled to the heavens since it was still Raya holidays. We came back and took her to a playgym, decided to have a small celebration at home with family. My sister baked a cake and we cooked. Just because Hana is happiest when she's surrounded by the people she loves. Sounds cliche but it's totally true. You should see how she lights up when she realises her grandparents and aunties are all around :)

She is a sweetheart. Such a loving little girl despite the fact that she didn't like to be touched very much when she was an infant. Nowadays, she's taken to climbing into our bed. I scooch over and she plonks herself on my pillow, turns towards me, gives me a kiss and hugs me around the neck.

One thing that I'm glad for is that she understands enough to be able to listen to reason now. Yes, she still gets upset when she doesn't get what she wants but really all I have to do is put her on my lap and explain nicely why I'm not giving it to her. When I'm done, I ask her "Ok Hana?" and she will always answer "Ok Mama", wipe the remainder of the tears and everything is okay again.

Ok so I don't know how to end this post. Talk about short attention span haha :P

Hana and Problem-Solving

My daughter never fails to amaze me. I know I say that a lot but she's been doing that a lot more lately.

When she's not being difficult, she's one of the bubbliest, cheekiest little babies I've ever seen.

A few days ago, she questioned her dad with a "Kenapa?" when he asked her to do something. Looks like we'll be hit with the "Whys" very very soon.

But what astounded me even more was when we were at the Science Center (took her there on Sunday). There was a panel with some buttons on it which she desperately wanted to reach and press. It was a bit too high for her though, so she toddled over to the corner (where there were hula hoops and those mini colourful Ikea stools), picked up one of the stools, carried it over to the panel, set it carefully down in front of it and climbed on it, proceeded to happily press the buttons.

Her dad and I were both watching with our mouths open.

Heartbreaking

A few days ago, we were rocked by shocking news of how a 3-year old died after being left in the car by her mother for about 5 hours.

My reaction to the news came in stages. When I first read the headline, I was like "What the heck was the mother thinking?" then I read the whole story of how she had sent her sister over to the airport and had forgotten to send her sleeping baby to the nursery.

The circumstances under which she found her little girl at the end of the day was devastating, to say the least. Shock and anger, on my part quickly changed to disbelief, a dawning realization that I understood and finally, an unexpected grief and heartbreak - for her, for that poor little baby in the car, for her whole family.

While browsing, I found the photo of the little girl and I started crying. The poses she struck, how she looked, what she was doing in the photos, it could've been my baby. I went into my bedroom where my own little girl was sleeping peacefully and I lay down next to her, touching her hands and cheeks and wishing that I could give her the tightest hug ever right then and there, wishing I could just wake her up.

I cannot imagine how the mother must have felt. The guilt, the disbelief, the emptiness that must be plaguing her every waking and sleeping moment. The longing, perhaps, to just turn back that clock and do that day over again.

I cannot imagine what that little girl must've felt before she left us. We enter a hot car and within minutes we feel suffocated. This was 5 hours. Her thought processes, her emotions, thinking her mommy would come rescue her soon but no one showing up - too devastating to even think about.

Once, about a few months after Hana turned one, I had left her in the crib in order to fill water into her tub. She had been particularly difficult that morning and I thought that it would do me good to leave her there for a few minutes so that I could get this done and calm myself down. Walking back to the room to get her, I heard a loud 'thud', following by the scariest, loudest wailing noise I had ever heard from her.

She had somehow climbed over the barriers and fell to the floor. My guilt knew no boundary. I checked if there was any injury (thank Allah, there was none) and sat on the floor hugging her and wailed right along with her. After my own sobs had subsided and hers had stopped in confusion at why her mama was making that funny noise, I calmed down and called my husband. He came home, found me in a daze with hana clutched tightly in my grasp.

I cried that whole night and couldn't get a good night's sleep for a week, instead, spending those nights just gazing at her, furiously wiping the tears away when I thought about the pain and trauma she must've felt.

That is how a mother feels when her baby is hurt. How she feels when the baby gets hurt BECAUSE OF WHAT SHE DID.

Now multiply that by about a million. Which is probably how the mother of that baby feels right now.

Some "perfect parents with no children" - as someone described it to me on Twitter, and perhaps even some parents whose children had grown and had forgotten how challenging it is to raise a baby, or parents who have had it easy, have called for authorities to punish the mother for negligence.

When answered with "Hasn't she suffered enough? Isn't in punishment enough to have lost her precious baby?", they replied in the negatives.

Being a relatively new parent, I know all too well the fatigue that comes with it. Some days you're struggling to figure out how to tie your shoelaces. There are nights when your baby wakes up at an ungodly hour and only falls asleep after Subuh or minutes before your alarm clock rings.

Even my husband sometimes jolts himself on the highway to work, thinking he forgot to send my baby over to my mothers on days that she's supposed to go there, when he had just dropped her off 10 minutes prior. If you can make that kind of mistake, you can definitely make the reverse, which is something I even shudder to imagine.

We've all had one of those off days. We're just lucky enough that nothing this heartbreaking ever came out of them.