Just another day in the life of a SAHM

3.00 am Wakes up to baby screaming for feed. Baby wets his clothes and cot.
Quickly change baby’s clothes and cot sheets then breastfeed baby.
6.00 am Repeat of scene at 3 am. Only this time, did not change baby clothes
or cot sheets. Just used tissue to soak up wet parts of baby’s clothing
while breastfeeding half asleep. (Its only a small spot after all!!!!)
7.30am Woken up by toddler’s “Mummy! Read book.” “Mummy! Go outside”.
Grabs some books on the bedside table and hands over to toddler
“Here, read yourself, mummy is sleeping” and roles over for another
five minutes of zzzzzz.
8.00 am Cooks baby’s porridge, feed toddler breakfast and throws some clothes
in the washer whilst having a cup of hot Milo and stuffing some bread
into mouth all at the same time.
9.00 am Baby screaming for mummy. Tries to breastfeed baby but baby prefers
to look at toddler. So feed baby cereals and expressed some breastmilk
for next day’s cereal.
10.00am Blend baby’s porridge and hang up clothes.
11.00am Entertain toddler with some building blocks while checking email.
11.30am Baby crying for pacifier (Me!) and a nap.
12.30pm Feed baby his porridge.
1.00 pm Feeds toddler mashed potato (prepared the day before).
1.30 pm Eat lunch (“Chap fun” “ta pau” the night before) while doing the dishes.
2.00 pm Bathe toddler (Baby crying in the background)
2.30 pm Toddler’s tea time
3.00 pm Tries to get baby and toddler to sleep at the same time.
4.00 pm Aah. Everyone asleep at last
4.30 pm Baby wakes up crying.
5.00 pm Toddler wakes up crying.
6.00 pm Hubby home with “ta pau” “chap fun” for next day. Feed baby porridge
7.00 pm Serve hubby his own “ta pau” “chap fun”. Tries to have dinner while
feeding toddler dinner.
8.00 pm Play “Draw and Colour” with toddler
8.30 pm Sponge bath for baby
9.00 pm Feeds toddler milk and get toddler ready for bed.
9.30 pm Breastfeeds baby while reading to toddler.
11.00 pm Toddler falls asleep at last.
11.30 pm Baby fell asleep at 9.45pm but woke up crying for the 3rd time.
11.45 pm Ah…..time for myself. Hot Milo and typing this. Hubby tired and fallen
asleep in front of the tv. Hubby has to be up at 6am so won’t wake him.

Oh forgot to mention, had to change numerous diapers during the day (plus Aunt Flo visited today, so now there’s even more “diapers” to change) and pack away the stacks of rubbish that created. Ok ok, not everyday like this. Some days much more organised and even have time to brush teeth and have proper bath!!! At the moment not cooking because cannot cope. When baby is older will go back to cooking again. Don’t like to eat “ta pau” food and catered food too often but no choice.

The Five Love Languages

I have often heard of the phrase "The best thing you can do for your children is to love your wife" Its probably coined by a woman. Haha. I suppose its true that "The best thing you can do for your children is to love your spouse." You will be giving your children the best security there is when your relationship with your spouse is harmonious and your home becomes a safe haven for all your family members.

One relationship book which I particularly enjoyed is "The Five Love Languages" by Gary Chapman. The author suggests that there are 5 Love Languages and if your love language differs from that of your spouse, you will have a hard time understanding each other or feeling loved in the relationship. For eg. the author states that "Your emotional love language and the language of your spouse may be as different as Chinese from English. No matter how hard you try to express love in English, if your spouse understands only Chinese, you will never understand how to love each other." (quoting from the book).

So what are the 5 Love Languages? They are:

Words of Affirmation (WOA)
Quality Time (QT)
Receiving Gifts (RG)
Acts of Service (AOS)
Physical Touch (PT)

After giving this some thought and analysis I've discovered that my love languages are PT and WOA and hubby's are QT and AOS. Wow, so different. We would have a hard time understanding each other.

Hubby does not speak my love language because they are not his but he speaks his own love language(LL) very well. I only have to learn to "listen" harder. To illustrate this, one of hubby's LL is AOS that means that he feels loved when I do things for him, so similarly he "speaks" his LL to me ie. by doing things for me like making sure my handphone is switched on before we leave the house and off when we return and charging my batteries for me, making sure my car is in good running order etc. Now since AOS is not my LL I do not "hear" it and this may make him feel taken for granted. He may tell me "I do all these things for you and yet you still complain!" After understanding this concept, I now realise that he is telling me in his own way that he cares about me.

When I speak hubby's LL of AOS, I can see that he truly appreciates it and is very happy. I try to make a simple sandwich lunch for him to bring to work whenever I can. It only requires a small amount of my time and very little effort but it makes him content. He says he feels happy eating the simple lunches I fix for him. Ah... my hubby is a very simple man to please indeed.

Another one of my hubby's LL is QT. He likes us to spend time doing things together. Earlier on in our relationship, I never understood this but I've come to appreciate and enjoy these moments. For eg. when hubby used to call on me to help him fix the toilet, I would be a bit irritated to be interrupted from whatever I was doing but now that I understand his enjoyment for doing things together, I've also learned to speak his LL and enjoying it too. We have:

- painted our yard together
- climbed up the roof to fix a water tank
- poked our heads into the bathroom ceiling to fix a broken pipe
- put up mosquito netting for our windows
- played addictive computer games together
- I could go on and on

One of my LL is PT. I have over the years drummed into hubby's head that I like touching and I think he's beggining to get it at last. Hehe. I like it that he puts his arm around me or lightly brushes my hair when we go shopping with the kids. I like that he hits my behind when he passes by me in the house although I always protest with a loud "Ouch".

Another one of my LL is WOA but this one hubby doesn't speak very well. I like to hear I love you's, you are a great wife etc etc but seldom get to hear it. Hubby claims he's shy but shy even to write? Grrrr... Oh well, I will just accept that this is alien language for him so it feels unnatural for him to speak it. He does however show that he appreciates me by thanking me all the time for simple things that I do for him and thats great.

One of the things we have in common is that neither of us has the LL of Receiving Gifts. we seldom give each other Valentine's Day gifts and on certain years we even make a pact not to get each other anything on our birthdays. This may sound very unromantic but it does not bother us as much as it would bother a person whose primary love language is Receiving Gifts. Personally, I would much rather receive a homemade card with his Words of Affirmation than to receive gifts of expensive jewellery from hubby.

Why am I posting this today? I want to remind myself everyday not to take my spouse for granted especially now that we are parents of two little one's who take up so much of our time. Often, once partners become parents, they forget to nurture each other and in the process lose each other and create broken and unhappy homes for their children. So if we love our children, we must first love and care for our spouses and not give them leftovers, leftovers of our children's food, leftovers of our time and our love. :-))

The Art of Smiling

My daughter has got a smile that I can only describe as "Sunshine Smile". When she smiles, her whole little face lights up with such pure delight, joy, excitement, pride, happiness just like a wonderful ray of sunshine and I cannot help but smile back at her. She often gives me that smile when she accomplishes some new task she is trying and really gives true meaning to the term "beaming with pride", her face so full of obvious delight at her simple accomplishment.

As adults we have forgotten how to smile like that. Our smiles do not reach our eyes and sometimes we can even smile with a frown on our faces. We have also forgotten how to be happy with the simple things in life. We have so much to learn from little children.

Last night after I turned off the lights, my sweetie pie took my hand in both of her little ones. Then she turned my arm around and around until she found a position that suited her (I felt like an arm contortionist) and then she flashed me that sunshine smile of hers. After that she hugged my arm like it was a little bolster and gave my hand a kiss and I got another sunshine smile.

I am ashamed to say that at the time a fleeting worrying thought that she might develop a habit of having to hold my hand before she sleeps every night did cross my mind for a brief moment. When she was younger she used to grab my sleeve and muttered to herself until she slept but has outgrown that. As if sensing my worry, she let go of my arm, then shifted to her favourite sleeping position and smiled to herself as she drifted off to sleep. She was merely enjoying my company and I should learn to enjoy these precious moments instead of worrying about this and that.

I shall add this to my treasure box of sweet memories of being a mum and try to learn the Art of Smiling from my daughter.

Techno Headache

My Computer is Sick. Its having numerous booting problems, system crashes and is painfully slow. My husband and I was wondering whether to upgrade to a new computer but it seems such a waste to get a new monitor, keyboard, speakers, mouse etc when they're all still working fine. So in the end we opted to upgrade the cpu, change the psu, motherboard and upgrade the operating system but of course this led to a host of other problems, teething problems from the new OS (Operating System) plus this OS does not support my existing viewcam. And we've wasted a lot of time and money too!

Help! I think I'm turning into a computer geek! The PC has become such a part of our daily lives that we feel rather lost without it. Its the first place we head to first thing in the morning and last thing at night. I feel totally lost now that I can't:

• Check my numerous email accounts every nano second
• Instant Message (IM) hubby to tell him about my day. Hey with two kids under 3 its the only way we manage to get any real conversation going without being interupted by a sweet little voice saying "daddy/mummy hug hug" or the wail of a crying baby. Besides we enjoy sending silly emoticons to one another and cracking stupid jokes. Its less damaging to argue too via the IM. You can always delete what you've said if it sounds too harsh ie "we can think before we say" unlike face to face where you can't "retrieve whats been uttered." IM is great. Only, I sometimes tend to complain too much about the kids. I'm not sure hubby needs a full blown account of "and then while I was bathing girl-girl, baby yelled at the top of his lungs, and then he pansai, and then she wanted biscuit and then she pansai..........."
• post on my favourite forum MyMomsBest (Hehe)
• check the site statistics on my personal website Mumsgather
• email my girlfriend to chit chat about "girl stuff"

The email is also great for organising get togethers. Just press one "Send" button and everyone gets the invite at the same time.

Yesterday I lost several postings and email when my computer rebooted before I was finished and boy oh boy did that make me MAD! Help. I think I AM a computer geek!

Contests Galore

I love contests! I am mad about them. Or maybe I am just kiasu. Its almost as bad as gambling. (but not quite - self talk) Send in your entry and hope for a chance to win. I justify it by saying at least it gives me a chance to dream. We all need to have dreams in our mundane day to day routines. I get to dream about what I would do about my prize money. He he. All the while, the marketers are gleefully keying in all my personal information which I have so freely offered to them.

I have won one or two but usually they are items which are of not much use to me. Like the RM1,000 watch which is not my style and sitting in my drawer somewhere in the house. I tried to sell it to a watch shop but of course they are not interested, then I thought of a pawn shop but did not know any so its still sitting there....... I also won a pretty costume jewellery pearl neckless so at least thats being used. Once I won a voucher for a wedding dinner gown AFTER my wedding.

One day my husband returned from work and when he saw me filling up yet another contest form he commented "Oh I see, now you have become a professional form filler!" Hmmrhp! He was forgiven the next day when he rushed to the post office to send off my form which worked on a first come first serve basis.

I wonder what I will win next....... that nice mpv or the RM5,000 shopping voucher? Wow! Now what shall I buy with my prize money???