My daughter is two. Can I beat her now?

As the news in Sabah progresses and Ops Daulat inches slowly towards it's goal (some might say too slowly!), I would like to write about something closer to my heart this week.

My daughter Athena Azlee's second birthday falls nicely in this particular week in March, along with my wife's too, and this can cause one's bank account to deplete rather drastically!

Ahh! The terrible twos as they like to call it. I wonder why they call it that, since I feel it should be called the terrible 'ever since they come out from the womb'!

I know it's only been two years since I've become a pops but I can't help always thinking about teaching Athena right and wrong and being a good person.

As they say, 'kalau hendak melentur buluh, biarlah dari rebungnya', right? So whenever Athena starts displaying bad habits, my wife and I try to stop her and show her why it isn't the right thing to do.

And this is hard since I don't necessarily believe in hitting children. My parents never hit me, so why should I hit my daughter?

(Of course, twisting my ears whenever I refused to clean up my room or finish eating my meals is apparently not considered child abuse! Hmmm..)

My wife and I try to speak to Athena like she's an adult. We tell her no and then we explain to her why in simple words even if she still hasn't started speaking in full sentences yet.

But it's freaking hard to be sure that we're doing the right thing! We are first time parents and its a bit scary to think that your kid is just an experimental subject.

But then we've realised that we should never underestimate babies. They can be as intelligent, or even more so, than adults (the latter would apply if I compared Athena with her 24 year uncle, Aizyl Azlee!)!

Recently, Athena has been really into animals. She's memorized the Ol' McDonald song and also the popular YouTube 'The Animal Sounds' song. Name an animal and she can make the sound!

We're currently on holiday in Sydney, Australia, and we visited Taronga Zoo. Imagine Athena's squeals of delight when we walked into the petting zoo!

She screamed out all the animal sounds that even the animals were afraid! It's true! The goats started running away whenever she approached them!

Then she came to the pigs. She started going 'oink oink' when one of the pigs started snorting and grunting loudly. She paused for a while and looked puzzled.

Ol' Mcdonald had lied to her! Pigs don't oink at all! So now whenever she sings the song, and when she gets to the part of the pig, she snorts so loud that I'm worried she might start getting hooked on cocaine!

Then on the night of her birthday, Athena started playing with my wife's iPhone casing which has a small detachable decorative part on it. I told her to be careful and not to lose the part.

True enough, she lost it while we were walking along the Sydney Harbour boardwalk. Luckily I found it and then told her off with a stern voice not to lose it again.

And guess what? She loses it again when I wasn't looking! She looks at my wife and says, "Uh oh! Pops!". And my wife says to her that she has to tell me what happened.

She walks up to me and says, "Pops. Sorry!" with the most remorseful look on her face ever! I couldn't help laughing! Luckily I found the piece again and told her she wasn't allowed to play with it anymore.

So I guess my wife and I are doing something right here and Athena might not turn out to be a failed sociology (or psychology... I can never distinguish the two!) experiment after all!

But then again, she's only two years old. In another 14 years, she might be calling me from the police station asking me to bail her out for snorting cocain with her boyfriend. I wonder how I'll react then?

Oh well! Like all science experiments, we'll only find out the conclusion once all theories have been tested, good or bad. Then, we use the results to produce a better second child!

Happy birthday Athena! I love you more than life itself (even if I have to bail you out from jail!).