i’m so glad penmanship won’t be graded… it won’t, right?? O_O

****

one of the recurring jokes that crop up in our conversations with the kids is about “boyfriends” and “girlfriends”.

the boy can list out who Mummy’s Boyfriends (yes, plural) are..

#1: “Bu-noh!”
(“it’s BO-NO, not Bu-noh. ‘bunuh’ tu ‘kill’. i don’t want to kill him.”)

never mind that he looks a hundred years older now, he’ll always be this 80′s version in my mind.

#2: “The Vampire!”
(refer to the hottie in the middle, not the Cullen-wannabes at the sides.)

never mind that he’d think nothing of ravaging my womb into a bloody mess with his bare teeth (ref: Breaking Dawn), i’ll still forgive him.

#3: “Thor!”
(self-explanatory.)

i demand to know, WHY WAS HE NOT TOPLESS IN THE AVENGERS? WHY? WHY?! *does a Hulk smash* (no, Hulk being topless does NOT do it for me.)

#4: “that one, he sings like *makes deep, throaty voice*”
(i chuckled out loud at this, because i’d only made a passing remark once when a The National song came on during one of our drives, and well, i was surprised the boy actually remembered.)

ILY, MATT!

etc. (the list goes on. will need to introduce ryan gosling to them some day.)

and every time the subject of “boyfriends” crops up, especially when we tease the girl on her potential nuptials to Prince Charming ala Cinderella or Captain America (it would appear that the goody-goody, ‘clean-cut’ types appeal to her), she will do this:

*facepalm*

****

so anyway, we like asking the boy about his classmates, and we have established that there is a Smartest Girl in his class. we tease him that he should make friends with the Smartest Girl in class. because Smart Girls can help him with his schoolwork. and the Smartness can rub off on him. who knows, maybe even improve his penmanship. (hey i can hope, can’t i?) we get updates that Smartest Girl likes giving him little things, e.g. pencil, keychain, food.

M: aniq, when you grow up, you must marry a smart girl. your wife must be smart. then your children will be smart. remember, ok? marry a smart girl! THAT IS ALL.

D: yah, see, like daddy. *snickers*

M (who picks questionable mythical characters/hairy musicians as fantasy love interests): *gives the evil eye*

Boy: ……

M: and auni, when you grow up – marry a rich man. THAT IS ALL.

Boy: you mean like daddy?

M: ……

D: yah, rich what… rich with LURRVVEEEE.

Girl: *facepalm*

#greatparenting #educationyoucantgetinclassroom

(now, what’s the likelihood someone’ll get me that Thor action hero for Mother’s Day….?)

(sometimes, i wonder who’s the child and who’s the grown up.)

(plus, what was I thinking putting oranges and bread together in one box?!? #fail)

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“that was easy,” he declared, heading back to the football match on tv with his father.

!!

on another occasion, the girl was being whiny (again), insisting her father stay in her bed that night. (again) we tend to ignore her, mostly unreasonable, whiny requests (tough love, honey), but the next thing we knew, the whines had ceased. her brother had invited her to his bed and they were happily snuggling under the covers.

brother = problem solver.

it’s times like these when the concept of having siblings makes a lot of sense.

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he may not know or understand every word he comes across, but i’ll just have to trust that he’s absorbing whatever he does. as it is, his reading has improved, but spelling is still a painful thing… for me. (to keep coming up with ways to motivate him to “learn” those damned spelling lists.)

and hankers for more, scouring library shelves (although they’re usually all loaned out), exchanging with his cousin adam, and ultimately, begging us at bookstores. but do you know just how many there are in the series? SO MANY. i’d be utterly broke if i let him buy one every time i enter a bookstore (and err, we know how often that is).

so when i told him that a very kind aunty (who wrote in through our blog) is offering to give away her son’s collection of Geronimo Stilton books to him, he was ECSTATIC. and look, it’s as if he struck lottery! (and that’s not even the entire series, btw, plus there are spin-offs and graphic novels and special editions….)

and the very kind aunty even surprised us with something extra – a box of home-made cottage pies, so beautiful and delicious.

thank you, Rohaya, for your generosity, and for making a little boy very happy (and very occupied!). :)

nah, he was on e-learning for 3 days, so brought him to Greyville on one of the days. (ok, he’s on a break here and playing online games. at least it’s not facebook.) they get THREE whole days off from school to do homework online! kinda like telecommuting. yes, they do start them early.

boy: (eating fried fish) ow, the bone poked my finger.
girl: the fish must say sorry to you.
boy: no, *i* must say sorry to the fish… for eating it.

(lots of giggling ensued.)

boy: oh my god, i can’t believe i’m having so much fun at dinner!

sheesh.

****

speaking of fishes, got a call in the afternoon from the boy, begging me to let him keep pet fishes.

boy: please?? it’s free! from the longkang! (i believe this is arising from some school excursion to Pasir Ris Kid’s Kampong in two weeks time.)
me: longkang? gross. then what will happen when they die?
boy: we can cook them! and eat them!
me: ewww. let me think about it…

sheesh.

“pretty shoes!” she’d exclaim before I leave the house, uncertain of my choice.

“pretty fingers!” she’d say admiringly of my hastily self-manicured pink nails.

“but you so skinny!” he’d say when I refused their ice-cream, clutching my guilty tummy.

anybody wants to hire my kids to boost their self-esteem…?

++++

“you cannot ngaji right?” he asked, looking at my pink nails.

“I’m having my period.” I explained.

“What time? Is it like Malay period like that?”

++++

“what is ‘rotan’ in english?” asked the boy, referring to the offending item we’d recently acquired in our continuous quest for effective parenting methods.

“cane,” I said.

“oh, cane.” he asked.

“like Barbie married, that one!” piped the eavesdropping sister in the room.

“itu KEN lah.”

++++

curious little horticulturists poking away at mimosa leaves.

(mummy keeping her pink nails clean thankyouverymuch.)

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- i get easily irritated by music on radio. i got into the car this evening and that horrendous ‘on the floor’ song started and my heart started palpitating at the sound of the opening beats and i scrambled for the ipod to save my life and breathed a huge sigh of relief when something less j.lo came on. i love you and your booty, honey, but if i hear that god-awful stuff again, imma stick some louboutins up your pitbull.

- over the dinner table earlier, the boy asked in his usual inquiring way:
A: “mummy, I want to ask you something. why is it that you marry daddy, and daddy marry you, ah?”
M: “i dunno. It’s a big mystery to me too.”
A: “is it you look at him, he look at you, then you fall in love, like that?”
(he says ‘love’ as in ‘laff’, so,)
M: “Ya. I look at him and i LAUGH, like ha ha ha hahahhahahaahahaa.”
he didn’t get it. oh well. i thought it was funny.

- i’m giving up on Orhan Pamuk. i’d started on ‘Museum of Innocence’ last year and only picked it up again halfway through this week. it’s basically about this rich guy who fell crazy in love/lust with a beautiful but poor relative of his, who gave away her virginity to him even though he was engaged to be married, and when he broke up his engagement to ask for the girl’s hand in marriage, she’d already gotten married. then he started pilfering all kinds of things she’s had contact with (spoon, lipstick, ice-cream cone?!), to remind him of the happiness he felt at each moment he observed her touching them, every item and memory of her painstakingly described. OMG OBSESSED MUCH.

- after seeing the boy off on his 6am bus to school, i’d sometimes disturb the girl in her sleep with kisses and tickles. sometimes she’d wake up, then i go back to sleep. (very evil, i know.) this morning while i went back to sleep, she was wide awake on our bed. when i woke up for work, she excitedly told me that as the sun came up, the sky went from very dark, to brighter, to even brighter. she’d been watching the window for over an hour. how nice, to make first-hand ‘discoveries’ or have eureka! moments like that, like you’re the first person to ever observe such phenomena of nature.

- re: boring Orhan Pamuk book, the husband said he took one look at the cover and he knew. could that have applied to aniq’s question…?

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“Miss Kinnian teeches me how to spel better. She says look at a werd and close your eyes and say it over and over again until you remember. I have lots of truble with ‘through’ that you say THREW and ‘enough’ and ‘tough’ that you dont say ENEW and TEW. You got to say ENUFF and TUFF. Thats how I use to rite it before I started to get smart. Im mixed up but Miss Kinnian says dont worry spelling is not suppose to make sence.”

- extracted from ‘Flowers for Algernon’, Daniel Keyes

#currentread #ootdmatchesbookcover #FREAK

*********

the boy was down with one of those 24-hr stomach flus on tuesday, at around 1 in the morning. it was to be his first MC from school.

at 6am he cried out, “but today i got spelling!”

yeah, that was my first thought too, ha ha.

*********

he did his spelling yesterday, all ten words in one go. and got them all correct. (feough. phew.)

next week’s spelling’s going to be tuffer tougher.

*********

a bit on ‘Flowers for Algernon’: it is a story of Charlie, a 32-yr-old with a low IQ, who undergoes an experimental brain surgery to artificially increase his intelligence. the result is a rapid rise to great intellectual heights. like a modern-day creation of Frankenstein’s, he begins to question his existence, and what makes up humanity since it soon becomes clear that intelligence alone does not fulfil the criteria.

a subset of the story is the far-reaching repercussions of childhood traumas on one’s psyche. one of the memories Charlie gains from his new-found clarity of mind is of constantly being pushed – and punished – by his mother when he was young, to accomplish tasks other kids his age had already mastered, to no avail, and even to detrimental effect. all the doctors told her to give up hope that he would ever become smart. she eventually sent him away to a facility for the mentally-challenged, for the sake of giving her younger daughter of normal intelligence – aptly named Norma – a normal childhood. for Charlie, these memories and events have remained fuzzy all his life, but when they finally emerge from his subconscious, there is pain, anger, grief and disillusionment in place of blissful ignorance.

the part where Charlie’s mother tried to teach him to read, and him trying so hard to please her yet only succeeding to make her even angrier, made me so, so sad. :(

i ended the book last night feeling wretched.

#greatread

*********

i gave the boy extra kisses in the morning. i know i’m sometimes hard on him.

they test my patience, each in different ways. but i am just grateful they are normal, average children.

*********

but seriously, i swear i don’t know what to do about my spelling-nazi-ness!

(brain surgery, anyone…?)

i was initially apprehensive when i saw his spelling list (twice a week, starting from the third week). they went straight into long vowels, double letter words, and past tense. how delightful.

i turned ‘a-n-i/m.a.l.s’ into a catchy rhyme. i bribed him with a kiss for every correct word. i barked “LONG VOWEL E, ‘E-A’!” probably a hundred times. i promised a scream at his sister every time he got the word ‘screamed’ right. (hey don’t judge, it worked.) his daddy and oma too took turns to – shall i say it? – *drill* him. yes, the dreaded drilling has (sadly) begun….

gladly, his ejaan (once a week, phew) was slightly less stressful. i was more amused by the stickers than the fact that he got them all correct. the stickers say “Teruskan” and “Menakjubkan”. indeed. :D

atrocious handwriting aside, i think he did ok. we asked if he copied. he assured us he didn’t. because everyone did this: *demonstrates hunching over with arm covering book*.

**********

meanwhile:

was it not just yesterday that we reached that exciting milestone that is peeing in a potty?

no no, i’m not complaining, not at all. in fact, please, keep growing. i’d even petition for you to skip the whole dreaded business of teenagehood and go straight on to mature adulthood if i could. but i suppose that’s why milestones are necessary in the first place, to prepare them for that full bloom ahead…

++++++

and so, here he is, one of the 38,600 children this week to reach that exciting milestone that is P1.

as you can probably tell, he was VERY psyched to start his P1 life. being in a new environment and making new friends and having access to ‘big children’ – these things have always thrilled him. (what’s that? studying? meh, that’s just a distraction…)

at the school, we were quite impressed that there were hardly any display of first-day jitters or anxiety or nervousness or clinginess or tearfulness normally associated with first-days (i’m talking about the children AND parents here). we reckon that’s the upside of having already been to pre-school. another thing we observed, they were such a well-behaved, orderly bunch. (for now.) and oh-so-cute. (for now.)

the first thing he asked after he alighted from his school bus and met me by the canteen was: “can i buy something?” i think to him, primary school is a kind of ‘freedom’ – getting to hold on to his own money, having the autonomy to choose and decide for himself what to buy without mummy perpetually nagging or ordering him at his side. (instead, he had a P5 buddy to do that, ha ha. nahhh, he was very nice and all big-brotherly. we didn’t have to worry at all.)

“don’t worry,” assured one of the teachers to a bunch of parents peering from behind the barricade surrounding the canteen during recess time, all their eyes searching the blue sea of little uniforms for a glimpse of their kid.

“i’m not worried; i’m just CURIOUS,” i muttered, chuckling at how preposterous we parents must seem, waving at our kids like mad visitors at a zoo.

some, like me, got promptly IGNORED.

LOL.

oh well.

+++++

as soon as i got home, i smothered the girl with kisses and inhaled her heady sweet-sour scent all over her body. “i’ve got one more,” i rejoiced. maybe it’s a last child/only daughter thing, but i got sentimental imagining her first day of primary school in the future, in her oversized uniform and oversized school bag, coz obviously, she too will be as tiny as i was back then.

(like this tiny:)

yes, i’m afraid with the girl, i’d prefer the growing up to go juuuustt a teeny little bit slower. (although her streak of independence, while totally charming now, is quite a force to be reckoned with…!)

when i was briefing him after school on the timetable i drew up for this week, he actually negotiated/bargained with me to reduce his 4.00-5.30 slot by half an hour, and thereby increasing the 5.30-6.30pm slot by half an hour.

first day of school already so clever ah?

ok lah, since it’s your first week, i give you chance…

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new bag packed with list of books, new shoes and socks set by the door, new uniform hanging on the door knob, allowance of two dollars (in small change) tucked in new money pouch.

the boy has to be in the school hall by 7.15am, and we have to be up by 5.30am because his school bus is scheduled to be at our block by – ugh – 6.10am.

i don’t know how i ever made it through school. what a horrible feeling. it’s like preparing to be sent to the gallows.

BUT THAT’S JUST ME.

the boy, well he is /quote/ SO very excited /unquote/.

we’re still undecided whether to send him to a student care centre nearby after school, or just keep him at home with a routine timetable (although this option runs the risk of driving his grandma up the wall in the afternoons).

guess we’ll have to work it out over the next few days..

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