You can call me Saj'a

It has been awhile since I last did a Sadia-centric post. With her second birthday coming in a month's time, it seems more than apropos to record her developmental milestones and other funny observations.

So without further ado, here are some nuggets of information:

• Nowadays, she weighs a little over nine (9) kgs which is considered quite light for certain quarters but not so to her harried mom-carrier. And as long as her pediatrician OK-ed her weight with respect to her small frame, that's fine with me. While small weight gain is normal for toddlers in general since their growth momentum plateaus at this stage, Sadia's little size has to do more with her fussy eating habits.


• As the habitual grazer, her current favourite foods are keropok ikan (Kopok), Nestum (Wheat and Honey variety) (Poweege), love letters, and cheese slices.


• Besides food, Sadia also exerts her independence through clothes, or, in her case, the lack thereof. Apart from her diaper pants, she rarely wears any at home because of the heat. The feat of putting her top on always get our knickers in a twist. She would take it upon herself to choose her own top and bottom if the ones we picked are not to her liking. My kid, the fashion coordinator!


• She is also a habitué of Kizsports & Gym in GE Mall, with sporadic visits to their branches in OneUtama and Bangsar Shopping Centre. She loves to play and interact with other kids in this indoor environment, with her parents tagging along and breaking out in sweats as spillover exercise for the day.


• Before being misconstrued as a snob, she also craves for the regular outdoor playgrounds like the sprawling one in KLCC. Slides and swings win hands down.


• As previously mentioned in another post, she loves swimming in the pool and in the bathtub, both a luxury we look forward to during vacations. :) Attempting to get her out of the pool is next to impossible!


• She is also interested in animals as evidenced by the frequent, enthusiastic visits to the pet store in GE Mall and MidValley. Except for ants and cicaks (geckos), the ones topping her list, in ascending order, are hamsters, rabbits, turtles, fishes, dogs and cats. We hope to get a cat once we move house, God willing.


• She refers to herself as Saj'a, when looking at her photos in any conceivable medium, be it on the Digital camera itself, old-fashioned prints or phone-camera stills.


• Once Sadia and I were in the toy section of Robinsons (The Gardens) playing with the lego on the kiddies table and a bunch of slightly older kids came scampering towards her direction. She became excited by their exuberance that when they ran away from her area, she cried out Guys! Guys! Guys! running towards them, much to my amusement. This line must be something she had copied from...


• her all-time favourite movie, Happy Feet, which is being played ad nauseum at home, and a slew of other PlayHouseDisney's gems like Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (Oh Toooodddlllleeesss!!), Little Einsteins (Pat! Pat! Pat! Blast Off!), Barney (Big Kug!) and recent addition, Bob The Builder (Yes We Can!).


• Speaking of Barney, she loves the final 'I Love You' song and proceed to hug (kug) and kiss us on cue whenever the words 'Hug' and 'Kiss' are sung.


• Sesame Street is another educational tool that she loves to watch, with characters such as Elmo, Big Bird, Ernie, Bert and The Count from whom she learnt the concept of counting. While she is still a novice at counting - random and unordered at times, her 'purchase' of Numberjacks, a favourite BBC show while in Holland, should assist in further comprehension. Funnily enough, she was the one who found the VCD in MPH and showed it to us.


• With respect to shapes, she knows of tungle (triangle), hart (heart) and tah (star).


• As for Happy Feet, we tried varying her animated flicks with other offerings but to no avail. She's even scared of the mouse in Ratatouille. I put the blame squarely on its mostly adult theme and composition. Hehe.


• She likes to sing her favourite song from Happy Feet - the one where all the penguin chicks singing together in class while Mumble gazes skyward - and the evergreen nursery rhymes, the obvious of which are Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star (Littel Tah!) and Old MacDonald (Eee Eye Eee Eye Owh!).


• As for toys, she still prefers soft toys and anything of that ilk. The more popular hits are Baby, her babydoll and Woof-Woof, a Light-Brown Dog we got from H&M.


• Other than that, she is more inclined to play with ordinary objects found in the house, such as her Yayah's shoehorns, empty shoeboxes and (plastic) hangars. She even relishes our jumping rope as a way to emulate Pocoyo and Elly (she much prefers the pink elephant than Pocoyo!) playing the same.


• Another perennial favourite game ever since our stay in Delft is going inside Yayah's kain pelekat while Yayah is in it, either going choo-choo-train or playing peekaboo all over the house.


• If Yayah is either not available or tired out, she would go under my telekung after I finished my prayer for the same bit of fun. I don't mind much though because I had in turn taught her to salam me after solat.


• Speech-wise, she has yet to master the art of putting a sentence together, unlike her four-month-older cousin, Zahra the eloquent speaker. Rather, Sadia would use one-word, ranging from one to two-syllables, to communicate what she wants and wants done. For example, Froot refers to the canned fruit, Nanas is for bananas, De Bon is for balloon, Tubbies for Teletubbies, Mouse for Mickey Mouse or any type of mice, Ukis for Lukis (Drawing) and Kakak for any friendly-looking Malay-esque ladies.


• The other day she surprised me again by saying Mine as she took back her stuff from my hands. Other words like Gone, Pull, Sorry and Boring follow. Hmm, must be PlayHouseDisney the culprit again!


• Before resorting to crying, she would say Bye, Bye to the people whom she doesn't want talking with or touching her. This also applies to food that she refuses to eat. Bye, Bye is interchangeable with No, No, No which earns her the name Ms NoNo back in Kuching.


• She'd call on either of us excitedly whenever she sees a rat-on-wings, err, I mean, pigeon perching on the balcony overlooking the living room, saying Kuawk, kuawk! (Squawk, Squawk - for all intents and purposes, any type of birds is called Squawk, Squawk - not One Squawk but Two in succession)


• Every night before bedtime, she'd have this routine of drinking OJ, Ba (or Milk in adult talk), with the occasional tidbits.


• Oh yeah, whenever my husband and I have a heated discussion, she'd interject by saying Pease, Pease, Pease! (Please, Please, Please!) as a sign for us to stop whatever the heck we're doing. She must be sensing the tension in the air. My kid, the diplomatic mediator. :)


• Sometimes, before we doze off, she'd make sure all of us are lying down by saying 'Bing, Bing' (Baring, Baring) and thereon 'kiss' us by giving us her forehead to be kissed.

Whew, that's a long one! There might STILL be some more pivotal steps that I'd missed out. If something else comes to mind, I'll prepare a new one. *wink!* I leave you now with a video of Sadia walking on the grounds of Delft's plaza, dating somewhere around March to April 2007. That is, tottering away before she got scared by the flock of pigeons. (Originally, I wanted to put a vid of her singing as well but YouTube is not cooperating)