“DADDY, can i do my homewooooork??”

what the…..

(i am ashamed to say, she has turned into an activity-slash-assessment-book fiend, despite my worst efforts. yes, i have turned to The Dark Side. in moments of weakness. at Popular bookstore, the axis of evil…)

Yoga Barbie does a downward dog.

(ok, so it’s actually Ballerina Barbie.)

the girl got a bit creative with pseudo-Yoga Barbie, taking her to my bed railing, hooked her feet upside down and declared with the full seriousness of a preschool-going yoga instructor: “this is Bat Pose”. erm.

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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.

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:

and yes, she still enjoys prancing around in a tutu. am happy to oblige, miss auni…

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a moment later…
me: *SCREAMS*
girl: *pops head in the bathroom* “what happen, mummy??”
me: “i saw a lizard…!!”

sees a teaching opportunity…
me: “you know why there’s a lizard in here?”
girl: “i donno?”
me: “what do lizards eat?”
girl: “i donno?”
me: “with their loooong sticky tongue?”
girl: “flies?”
me: “yes, and what did you see in here just now?”
girl: “fly!”
me: “yes.”
girl: *thinks* “then what do flies eat?”
me: “errr… they eat any food. some like… fruits. and they like smelly, smelly things.”
girl: *thinks* “how about…. SMELLY ARMPITS?? *cackles in amusement*”
(sendiri buat kelakar, sendiri ketawa)

well, i guess if they smell as ‘lovely’ as cows…

now, maybe if Petr Horacek did one on lizards, i’d be able to empathise with them a liiiiiittle bit more… (but still, EEW!)

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spotlight for the past few days had been about her brother. today it’s her.
she’s really happy to go to school.

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hoping it won’t be rainy where we’re flying off to tonight….

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girl: you mean ponies tie their hair?

me: nooo, it’s like the pony’s tail.

girl: you mean ponies tie their tail?

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turned seven. i don’t see him as often as i did when he was a baby and i’d drive to mum’s all the way from work during lunchtime just to play with him (those being pre-aniq days). these days, i can’t seem to elicit as much response from him as i did then.

what i do know is, i’d borrowed his Diary of A Wimpy Kid, and haven’t returned it. aunty will, i promise!

how about i get your NOISY cousins to sing for you again in the meantime?

(dies in embarrassment.)

Harris Planerds @ 313 Somerset!

OMG where have I been all these while…!! I was practically salivating at the selection of books here, and had a hard time tearing myself away.

I pretend-whined to auni, my eyes roving at the beautiful covers of fiction and classics and parodies and graphic books galore: “soooo many booksssss, mummy wants to buy them alllllll…. *whine whine*”

To which she replied, “you can’t buy EEEEVERYTHING nowww!” which is EXACTLY what I always tell her whenever we’re in a toy shop, in the EXACT no-nonsense mummy tone and inflection, so.. touche. well-played. right through the heart.

I’ll be back. (sans the 3yo nag.)

(found the ‘Go The F* To Sleep‘ picture book which I don’t think can be found elsewhere in sg, and which will go straight onto mummy’s off-limits book cabinet.)

And remember, boys and girls: always mind your language. tsk tsk.

a father and his children and their dog go on an impromptu adventure to hunt for a bear, overcoming obstacles of nature in the form of swishy grass, sploshy river, squelchy mud, stumbly forest, and swirly snowstorm (gotta love alliterations!). they find that they can’t go over or under these obstacles – rather, they have to go through them, battling their discomforts and fear, all in the name of thrill and adventure. they end up in a cave by the sea, where they do eventually come face to face with… well, a bear. which makes them all helter-skelter trace their route home (and here’s where the kids put their memory skills to use), the bear close on their heels. and they resolve, all huddled together under the bed covers, never to go on a bear hunt again, however exhilarating the experience was.

i like how naturally playful the children are portrayed, and the subtle ways they look out for one another; the older siblings taking turns to carry the baby, the older sister helping her younger sister put on her muddy shoes, the baby reaching out his hand to his older brother and dog as they cross the river.

and i know the bear’s made the villain in the story, having chased the family all the way home and seemingly trying to paw his way through their front door. but i prefer to interpret the bear, shoulders slumped, trudging back to his gloomy cave all alone, as somewhat… despondent. sad, because all he wanted was to be part of the family.

BUT THAT’S JUST ME BEING EMO.

as for auni, well, the repetition of these catchy, sing-song lines won her over, obviously.

and hey whaddaya know, a stage adaptation of this book is coming to town in jan/feb next year, and if you have funds to spare, sistic is selling the tickets. (though, as what i mentioned on twitter, it’ll probably cost me less to go on an actual bear hunt than buying tickets for the family to go to the thea-tuh, sigh.)

of course, auni has to like love unicorns. because, as she will tell you, with all the wisdom and solemnity of a 3.5-yr-old, “unicorns can MAGIC, you know.”

aniq likes likes rhinos. they have horns too, he says, but they’re REAL. i guess he’s more of a pragmatic, being all of almost-6-yrs-old.

(update on auni’s progress on spelling the word ‘zoo’: she no longer spells it as “o-z-z”. she has since been rehabilitated and now spells it as the socially-accepted “z-o-o”. i kinda liked it better as ozz, really…)

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