Raya Celebration and Pregnancy Background

I have no excuse for not updating. No time? I have plenty of time, only used it for something else, not updating the blog. No stories to tell? Plenty, if I include ALL the juicy happenings which might not be printable in the first place ehehe. However, Raya and wifey being pregnant are 2 big occasions that are worthy of an entry by themselves. Since I am lazy I'll combine those 2 in this one.

Maybe I'll adhere to pure chronological event and tell a story that I have been telling others countless numbers of times in real life and chat boxes. About the pregnancy.

If anybody had been paying close attention to my blogs that much, they would notice that I have not even made a single passing mention on the worthy subject prior to Athyra is Walking entry. Not that I wanted to keep it as Highly Classified Information (though we'd like to keep the gender secret *wink wink*) that deserves a place under the OSA but simply owing to the fact that we (we as in me and wifey) did not know about it. After getting her menses for the first few months, she mentioned to me that she had missed one and the test came out negative. I had asked her to go to a clinic for a proper check and ultrasound scan just to make sure and throughout, I've always thought that she actually made the trip to the clinic, and she did not. And the menses never came back with innocent breastfeeding as the wrongly-blamed culprit.

In the absence of morning sickness and any other related telltale signs, she was only convinced to actually pay a visit to an O&G only after she felt some kind of movements and I went along just to make sure. Surely enough, she was estimated to be 20 weeks pregnant and the not-so-little worm thriving inside was almost half a kilo already with the EDD around late January or early February. And my sweet little adorable Athyra would be around 1 year 3 months by then.

So, there you have it. Hopefully I won't have to repeat the story again after this. I think I am way beyond broken records already ehehe.

Ok now about raya. Of course, apart from the usual commute back and forth between one PD to another (my kampung is also a PD you know? Grandfather's Swamp), this was the first raya without my father. As much as we would like to remember him in our prayers and celebration, the living keeps on living, right? My fear was mostly for my mother and thankfully she seemed to be strong enough to be going through it alone among the full regiment of my siblings and their children. Again, we did not take a group photo this year (which we did not last year) and those limited photos that I put up in my FB was taken with a measly phone. How I wished I had a proper camera, compact or DSLR to prop up the mood of photo sessions.

I also gave the usual raya BBQ routine that we have on the eve of the second or third day of raya which had been going on for many years this year a miss and I do not even know if they did have one in the first place because by the that time, my Raya time in my kampung has ended as we made our final stop in PD with my in-laws.

We spent the whole day of Saturday visiting wifey's a few of wifey's sisters houses and I spent the night glued to Time Traveller's Wife while wifey needs to come up with the usual things required for a menerima and engagement ceremony. Oh yeah. I almost forgot to mention that I finally unwrapped the book from its pristine, transparent cover and got through it over the raya period. My verdict, a very technical love story, most possibly a tear-jerker for the fairer sex and I like it. Not the run-of-the-mill love story and I am pretty intrigued on the subjects that they do talk about within their daily conversations. Sounds pretty unreal to me but then again, he was a librarian whom thrives on books anyway.

Ok back to the topic at hand. The engagement ceremony was performed on Sunday, the fifth day of raya, complete with dais and my 2 girls were selected as the accompanying flower girls. It went on until around 3 o'clock. After some acts of trying to look busy helping out with the cleaning bit, we made our way back to KL around 6pm. Except for the half hour queue at a right-turning traffic light junction, traffic was smooth on the trunk road and thank goodness I don't have to endure that multiple hours traffic jam in those main arterial highways nationwide.

I guess that's all I can say in this ironically very muted entry. And a longwinded one at it as well