"You only need to prepare dinner..."

You know you’re good friends when they have no qualms about giving you notice on a Thursday that they would be dropping by your house the next day to visit you. And no, giving notice about a visit the day before is fine. Its only when they say “Oh, by the way, you only need to prepare dinner for us” :)

In their defence, we’ve been talking about meeting up over IM since before Christmas. But we, or rather I, never could firm up a date to meet. So, after much discussion between my two good pals, HM and EC finally decided that since this SAHM is too busy (even busier than these 2 workaholics) to meet, the mountain will come to Mohammad.

And all of these conversations about the logistics and final decision making had apparently taken place on Tue. But becos said SAHM hasn’t been online (What can I say? I was busy trying to lose that irritating post-delivery tummy), they only informed me via SMS on Thursday. Had to do some frentic grocery shopping on Friday morning to make sure there's food on the table :)

Despite the short notice, it was great to catch up with them though. Couldn’t quite remember when was the last time we met, but it was probably somewhere around my birthday. Faith “acquired” more new clothes, complements of Aunty HM and Uncle Hoo, and also got to show off her budding social skills. Yes, she’s still got some stranger anxiety to tackle, but now, she takes a shorter time to warm up to non familiar faces.

As for myself, I got to feel like my pre-pregnancy days, where we were more than happy to invite people over for some home-cooked food and lots of catching up. Thank goodness my mom was around. Else, I wouldn't be able to cook and look after Faith at the same time.

Which makes me wonder how did all my neighbours back in Fonty do it when they had to cook meals for the kids, as well as for dinners, while their hubbies were busy the entire day at school? I feel terribly guilty now for those nights when Manisa would invite Louis and myself to have dinner at her place, becos she heard that I was too busy to cook. And Manisa then had a less than 1 year old Saniya to look after, amidst all the housework to do. How she even found time to iron (I've got to secret to let out... Manisa even irons all their pyjamas!!) is beyond me :) Then again, Manisa is the best host that you'll ever have :)

Later that night, as we were getting Faith to wind down before her bedtime, Louis had the thrill of a lifetime, or so he thought. He heard Faith uttering "Ba-ba" for the first time. Well... for weeks, Faith has been going "baa-baa-baa-baa-baa" at odd timings. Despite efforts to try to get her to say "Pa-pa" or "mummy", she's only keen to say "baa-baa-baa-baa-baa". Yet yesterday night, she suddenly said "ba-ba" or was it "pa-pa"? Louis let out a loud gasp and tried to get our little girl to repeat herself. But she just smile at us and crawled all over the bed. So, we do not quite know if Faith has called Louis for the first time. All I know is that the day she finally does so, this anxious father would, like a friend said, melt into a puddle :)