A Fall And A Wonderful Revelation

Last night, while getting Nadiah ready for her shower, I slipped and fell in the bathroom. Although the fall was painful and the result being that I ache all over today, I realised something wonderful: not quite like Einstein had a revelation when an apple fell on his head but something of a smaller scale.

When I was lying on my bum (a very undignified position, I can assure you!), Nadiah came running to me crying out "What's wrong? what's wrong? oh sorry" and then she asked "Are you ok?" and tried to give me a hug. That's when I realised that she was concern and empathic.

*Empathy is the capacity to recognize or understand another's state of mind or emotion. It is often characterized as the ability to "put oneself into another's shoes", or in some way experience the outlook or emotions of another being within oneself.

In most cases, an autistic child seldom feels sympathy or empathy towards another due to the fact that they are either unable to comprehend the feelings in theirselves, let alone the feelings of others, or if they are able to understand, they find it hard to express empathy to others, as appose to feeling it internally.

Example:
Many times in the past years, I have cried out of frustration whenever I feel like such a failure with Nadiah's progress. Sometimes just little things like trying to get her to sleep after 2-3 hours of lying on the bed beside her and failed to get her to drift off. Usually after a whole day of running here and there and all I want to do is close my eyes and get a good night sleep, the last thing I want to do is lying stiff like a board on the bed, NOT being able to sleep because as soon as I move or close my eyes, she would be up again and the whole process would just start all over again. There are times when the frustration just boils up and I just had to have a good cry and while I was bawling like a baby, Nadiah would just ignore me and do her own thing as if she could not here me. And this frustrates me even more when a good hard hug would have been a balm to my soul.

So back to the fall, I realised three wonderful things.
First: Nadiah was able to understand that when you fall, you may hurt yourself and that it can be painful. And thus, she understood that and felt empathic towards me.

Second: She was sympathatic and corncern for me and that was why she wanted to know what was wrong and asking if I was ok.

Third: Not only was she able to feel those things, she was also able to express herself verbally. And not just a one word expression but a whole lot of stuff was coming out of her mouth.

In the midst of the fall, all my pain was just brushed aside, insignificant to the incredible feeling of my realisation. I pulled myself up, gave Nadiah a quick hug and a kiss while blinking rapidly several times so that tears will not fall. And I've been doing that several times since the incident whenever I thought of it. Even hubby was rendered speechless when he rushed over to the bathroom to see what was happening. Note that I pulled MYSELF up; no gentlemanly behaviour here, people!! I guessed he was struck dumb by Nadiah's show of concern.

It's days like these that I live for. One little incident that would erase all the other failures....

Twilight

In honour of the opening of the movie TWILIGHT on the 21st November, I have changed my blog background.

I think it's so cool....

Snow In The Hot Sun

A few days ago, Nadiah decided she wanted to dress up in winter gear. So she dug out a pair of gloves, a jacket and nicked the cerkup I wear for prayers. And after a few minutes of searching, I found my old woolen scarf and hang it around her neck.

She was ecstatic and ran downstairs to scrape for some "snow" in the freezer. I don't know where she gets these ideas but am only too happy that her imagination runs well. And so, to help her with her play, I decided to gather as much "snow" as possible into this big plastic cup. She was deliriously happy that she started to sprinkle some "snow" on herself and they look kinda real, like flecks of snow droppings on her clothes. I had to take pictures, of course..

With "snow" on her head and scarf

Tying her scarf

"Snow" in her hands

"Snow" from the freezer

Vampires Anyone?

Do you ever notice that since the emergence of Harry Potter and Lord of The Rings on the silver screen a few years back, books and more movies are made around these fantasy, paranormal, psychic, urban myths and legend hullabaloo? And it was no surprise that I fell right into the trap!!

I adore the Harry Potter series, both the movies and the book series. And I just can't get enough of The Lord of the Rings. Admittedly I was one of those who saw the movie first without reading the book. But when I did, I straight away went out of my way to get the books and read it cover to cover, including the appendix. Not enough with just reading the book, I had to browse every LOTR site there was on the internet. Once or twice a year, I still have HP or LOTR marathons whenever possible.

Then about 2 years ago, I got hooked on vampire books. The first book I bought was Twilight by Stephanie Meyer. And wasn't I ecstatic to find out that the movie will be coming out soon. Since Twilight, I've read New Moon and bought Eclipse and Breaking Dawn, of which the last two books I've yet to read.

Then there came the Otherworld series by Yasmine Galenorn. The books are about the three D'Artigo sisters: Camille is a witch; Delilah, a ware-cat; and Menolly, a vampire. These three sexy, ass-kicking, half human, half Fairie sisters are out to save the world from the evil forces of Shadow Wing, the leader of the Subteranean Realm. Hahaa.. you're probably thinking what the heck I'm talking about. But it's great!

But the books that I really got seriously hooked on are the Dark series (or sometimes called the Carpathian series) by Christine Feehan. One day I saw a couple of titles in the series at Popular Bookstore and I chose just one, just to give it a try. The next day, I went back and bought all the other titles. After browsing the website, I found out that there are 18 books in the series that have already been printed. And I had to have them ALL of course. Those that were not at the bookstore, I made the people there order for me. And it wasn't just to be any book printed on the series. They had to be from a certain publisher so that when I arrange the books on my shelf (in order of the series, of course), I have the pleasure of seeing the books in order and of the safe cover design and height. That was how obsessed I was!! And yes, you've guessed it, I have every single title from the series except the latest new release. That is only because it's in largeprint and thus will not be of the same height as the other books. I read the books day in and day out and in a year, I've read every single book twice already and some even 3-4 times. Hubby is baffled with my strange obsession with the books. And so am I.

Nah... no, I'm not. I'm just weird. I just get into the characters and the plot that sometimes I have difficulty drawing a line between reality and fantasy.

Ok, now that we've establish how weird I can be, shall we stop now before you decide what a complete nutcase I am?

I'll leave you with a picture of some of the Dark books



Ta, see you in a few days....

Bowling Day

This time I'm not going to even comment on how long it's been since I last blogged, nor make any such promises that I would be more diligent and update regularly. Because I know I will renege on that promise again and again. So I won't even bother. Instead, I'm just going to start blogging like months and months had not passed and ignore the "basi-ness" of some news. There! Now I can start.

Among Nadiah's hundreds of VCDs, there is one that shows kids playing bowling which she keeps watching again and again. So one day, hubby and I thought we would take her to the bowling alley and see if she would be interested. Usually places like that are really noisy with the music blaring out of the speakers, bowling balls being rolled across the floor and crashing against the pins. Not to mention people shouting and jumping up and down when there was a strike. So I wasn't too encouraged when we neared the place.

But then Nadiah suprised me when she walked in without a blink of an eye and only belatedly tried to reduce the sound around her by sticking a finger in each ear. And even that was done half heartedly. When I tried to get her hands down, she complied without much arguement. So that was a start.

One look at her face, I knew that she was excited. What with all those coloured balls sitting nicely in a row. I think she was amazed to see that she was actually there, at the bowling alley, just like the one she's been watching on her computer. But then, that day was just a trial to see if she would even step into the place. We stayed for a few minutes more to let her soak everything in and promised her we'll come again another day.

And so we did. After a few days, with our socks on hand, off we went. On the way, we kept talking about bowling to get her all hyped up. And she was. She was so excited that we could hardly make her stop and sit for a little, while Baba registered and get our shoes.

So how did she do?

Well, she's 6. What do you expect? I don't think I'll be dreaming of her in the Olympics pretty soon. I think we spent more time chasing after her then we did on the floor rolling the ball. She just did not get the concept that different coloured balls have different weights. If it was up to her, she would like to "throw" the ball according to the colour of the rainbow, regardless of the weight. At one time, it was Nadiah rolling on the floor instead of the ball. Thank God there were not many people around or we would have gotten the boot for sure!

But all in all, she had a blast!! Mama and Baba on the other hand, was totally exhausted.....

Choosing the right ball

Getting ready to "throw" the ball

Disappointed that her ball just disappeared down the drain

Giving Baba a hi10 after she managed to hit a few pins

Trying to pick up the 15lbs ball on her own

But she sure did enjoyed herself.... so that's what matters.