(overheard at 10.11 PM…)

“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…)

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we’ve completely run out of shelf-space, despite occasionally handing down books to their child care centre, and regularly discarding worn-out toys, and with his recently acquired pile of primary one school books and paraphernalia, we’re even more hard-pressed for storage space.

we seem to have little luck looking for the right bookshelf – many times our intention to shop for one was shelved (so to speak) due to circumstances; one time we managed to step into ikea tampines but the shelf we eventually decided on was sold out; and a few days ago we got round to the ikea at alexandra, finally purchased one to our satisfaction, but when we got home to assemble it, it couldn’t be fixed and the wood broke (we got a full refund).

it’s as if SOMETHING is conspiring to prevent us from getting a new shelf in his room… or perhaps, just one from ikea?? i don’t know. (we could be reading too much into it.)

meanwhile, our furniture woes continue.

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“mummy, what is ‘facebook’?”

hmm.

“Facebook.. it’s like, a place on the internet – you know, internet? on the computer? – you can tell people what you are doing, where you are, put up pictures to show your friends… Daddy has a Facebook. Aunty Nur has one too.”

“wah, Daddy also got? some more, who else? you got also?”

“i used to have one, but i closed it down.”

“why??”

hmm.

“because i didn’t like it, so i closed it down. why, you want a Facebook? but your friends must also be on it, then you can add them. your friends have or not?”

“have! i think they have! I want, I want also!” [i seriously doubt they do.]

“you sure? then you must know how to spell, you know. but who told you about Facebook? your teacher, is it?”

“nooo. i saw, you know, that one… the man, the *PRESIDENT*, that one, came to our school… then we take picture with him… i saw, he say ‘join me on Facebook’….”

“OHHH, that one not *PRESIDENT* lah! that’s our MP! Mr B/a/e/y! Hahahahahaaahahaha”

(well, at least we know he attempts to read what he sees in his surroundings.)

speaking of which, come, guess who else has a FB account?

our domestic helper.

!!!

she’d acquired a mobile in secret, we discovered it, and decided to give concession for use only on weekends. during one of her (naive/foolish?) over-enthusiastic ’sharing of information’ about other maids, she SHOWED mum their FB pages from her mobile, and also revealed how she found her old boyfriend’s Facebook, leaving him a message, etc.

!!!

i mean, i know FB has become so ubiquitous and universal, any literate person with net access can easily open up an account and start sharing, expressing, interacting, trolling. and it really shouldn’t surprise me that our domestic workers too have jumped on the social network bandwagon.

and yet, i still find it… kinda disturbing. my domestic employee, active on FB. sure, it’s somewhat an accepted norm now for any employee, especially those in an office, to access FB in the course of their work day. so how is it different for maids? how exactly does it cross the line? should i stop her, would it be hypocritical of me?

anyway, i’m letting it go. for now. i can’t justify why she shouldn’t have a social life, albeit a virtual one, while under my employment.

perhaps I should even warn her how social networks can be scarily addictive and detrimental to one’s health and well-being.

or maybe I should just tell it to aniq. and hopefully quell his curiosity all together. (and that’s another issue to ponder – young children on FB: yes/no? i bet you can guess my answer to that…)

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i first heard this through a storytelling session, and only realised how much of a perennial hit it is with pre-schoolers when i brought the book home and aniq instantly recognised it because his teacher had read it to his class.

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.)

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Happy Birthday, Daddy, originally uploaded by izadd.

so with all the hari raya preps and excitement, i forgot our 8th anniversary (!!) yesterday, which was hari raya itself, BUT i did remember his birthday today.

and i sacrificed one entire nutella roll aka kek tapak kuda to celebrate it. see what a good wife i am??

ok, so i made up for it with a proper dinner at a nice place. i swear, i did! (aptly enough, at aquamarine @ marina mandarin. talk about themes, right?)

oh, by the way, right after daddy’s song was sung, candles blown, and cake eaten, auni had to ask the question on every 3yo’s mind with regard to birthdays: “DADDY! where is your goody bag??”

happy 34th birthday, daddy. enjoy getting your own birthday present at the Comex tomorrow.

and DON’T FORGET YOUR GOODY BAGS, ha ha ha hahaa.

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she has yet to learn how to decode words since the last post. but i have to say her preschool teachers have been doing a pretty good job teaching them letter recognition, because truthfully… i haven’t really done much. *ashamed*

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bought this from a Borders sale for five dollars some time back for the kids. it’s called ‘Stretch’, but they associate it with ‘yoga’ coz mommy does some of the strange stuff on the pink mat too….

like this…

and this…

and this…

gotta keep those limbs flexible after all…

so you can dance.

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I’d been wondering when the time would come when they’d tuck themselves into their beds without me hovering over them (I’m always looking for solutions to minimise my energy usage, especially at night when supply is at its lowest…), and came upon a tactic that worked these past few nights.

After our pee+wash feet+brush teeth regime, i invited them into my bed with their choice of books. Note that my bed is considered a treat to them because I’m always shooing them off it, so I give them the terms of condition: that they must kiss me and go straight to bed as soon as I finish the books, which they understood and agreed to.

I’m amazed it worked. Read, got my kisses, said goodnight, watched them march out of my room, everything’s quiet and am now snuggled under my duvet, feeling gleeful coz I managed to trick them into going to bed on their own accord, without having moved an inch from mine heh heh. (Then kick myself for not having thought of this earlier.)

now if only everything had a solution as simple as this….

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post-note: in their defence, they’re really not that bad at cleaning up after themselves. when i’m in a good mood to humour them, they are pretty easily motivated. my trick is to turn it into a game (variations of “lets pick uppppp… the RED lego pieces! now… the BLUE ones!… aaaand the yellow ones! faster faster, quickkk! now close the box, don’t let the lego blocks come out! argghhh!!” -> imagine a 33-yr-old woman prancing about animatedly at this point), or a competition (“let’s see WHO’S THE FASTEST!” coz siblings just loveeee to outdo each other, don’t they?), and they’re at that age when they still fall for such trickery.

there’s also another trick i employ to get them to voluntarily do their nightly 3-step routine of peeing, feet-washing and teeth-brushing. by a sheer stroke of luck, i’ve made book-reading my bargaining chip, my ‘time currency’. when it’s nearing bedtime, i’d start with a high number of say, 5 books (the boy would negotiate for a bigger number), and for every few minutes they dawdle and delay, i’d work my way down to 4… 3… 2… 1… 0 books. (it usually works out to on average of 3 books, which is about the number of books i have the energy for after a long day anyway – sometimes i’d cheat and choose shorter stories heh heh.) now whenever it’s nearing bedtime, the boy will ask “how many books now, mummy?” and off they go….

speaking of books, they’ve concurred with my proposed policy of one malay book per night as part of my on-going Speak Melayu Campaign. but don’t worry, i do not borrow from the library dubious ones like this.

stumbling upon solutions (and subtly winning battles) makes me happy (and slightly smug – please don’t slap me.)

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being the hard-headed april-born Arian that she is, she’ll insist on putting together her own outfit, and will protest when we overrule her choice. many battles have taken place when we veto her decisions – especially in footwear, her final resistance at the door before one party concedes defeat – and are the usual cause of our delays.

here, modelling her brother’s grotty old crocs, just because it matches her shirt (she’s big on matching of colours, something i’m to blame for, really).

speaking of battles, have been reading amy/chua’s book on the Tiger Mother. while she may come across a little nuts (major momzilla alert!), i strangely empathise with her, agree with her opinions, admire her values, and envy her sheer tenacity.

there’s this chapter that i particularly liked, for her in-your-face honesty to her kids (and the reader), which reflects in her own way, her high regard for her kids and her resolute belief that they can and MUST do better, even in something as seemingly trivial as a birthday card.

(to put this in context and how it relates to another important story, you have to read the book holistically – and i recommend it, if anything, for her sense of humour.)

*************************************************

… Lulu handed me her “surprise”, which turned out to be a card. More accurately, it was a piece of paper folded crookedly in half, with a big happy face on the front. Inside, “Happy Birthday, Mommy! Love, Lulu” was scrawled in crayon above another happy face. The card couldn’t have taken Lulu more than twenty seconds to make.

I gave the card back to Lulu. “I don’t want this,” I said. “I want a better one – one that you’ve put some thought and effort into. I have a special box, where I keep all my cards from you and Sophia, and this one can’t go in there.”

“What?” said Lulu in disbelief. I saw beads of sweat start to form on Jed’s forehead.

I grabbed the card again and flipped it over. I pulled out a pen from my purse and scrawled “Happy Birthday Lulu Whoopee!” I added a big sour face. “What if I gave you this for your birthday, Lulu – would you like that? But I would never do that, Lulu. No – I got you magicians and giant slides that cost me hundreds of dollars. I get you huge ice cream cakes shaped like penguins, and I spend half my salary on stupid sticker and eraser party favours that everyone just throws away. I work so hard to give you good birthdays! I deserve better than this. So I reject this.” I threw the card back.

“May I please be excused for a second?” Sophia asked in a small voice. “I need to do something.”

“Let me see it, Sophia. Hand it over.”

Eyes wide with terror, Sophia slowly pulled out her own card. It was bigger than Lulu’s, made of red construction paper, but while more effusive, equally empty. She had drawn a few flowers and written, “I love you! Happy Birthday to the Best Mommy in the World! #1 Mommy!”

“That’s nice, Sophia,” I said coldly, “but not good enough either. When I was your age, I wrote poems for my mother on her birthday. I got up early and cleaned the house and made her breakfast. I tried to think of creative ideas and made her coupons that said things like ‘One Free Car Wash’.”

“I wanted to make something better, but you said I had to play piano,” Sophia protested indignantly.

“You should have gotten up earlier,” I responded.

Later that night, I received two much better birthday cards, which I loved and still have.

****************************************************

personally, i doubt i’d have the heart to “throw” a birthday card back at my kids. i’d be lucky enough if they could write ‘happy birthday mummy’ without any help. heck, i’d be lucky to even get a card in the first place.

unfortunately, i’m too soft, and truthfully, not driven enough to go the Tiger Mother way. at five, i still let the boy wriggle his way out of boring tasks like writing or counting or reading or colouring after a few minutes. to add a musical instrument to that? unthinkable. (ms chua, by the way, makes each kid practice the piano and the violin respectively for hours on end without toilet breaks and even rents the hotel lobby pianos/brings the violin for the girls to practice during their family vacations. just so they don’t slack off.)

so, our battles are different.

for example, there’s this one thing that always makes me go absolutely ballistic – that is, when they make a terrific mess with their toys/books in one spot, then move on to do something else without cleaning up first. that’s when the roars and claws come out, and i’d maul them if i could, but i can’t – instead, i admonish them, threaten them, sweet talk them, bribe them, put them in the naughty corner and a few times when none of the above worked on the little one – yes, the hard-headed april-born Arian one – i plonk her outside the house, close the door and won’t let her in until she promises to clean up – which she invariably does, after some drama filled with tears and wails, scuttling back in like a tiny mouse released from a tiger’s paw. the brother has smartened up, though; he’d take it upon himself to either: a) complain to me about his sister’s mess (preemptive measure); b) scolds her (preventive measure); or c) simply volunteers to tidy up after her when he senses the impending wrath of the tiger (give up!).

maybe i should pick better, more worthwhile battles.

then again, i imagine there’ll be many, MANY more battles ahead of me as they grow older, and these right now are the easiest ones yet…

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the small training wheels on the bike we got him in december for his 5th birthday had gone wonky from.. err, ok, actually it was my fault – we were at east coast beach some time back and i, in a moment of impulse, tried out his bike for size, but my, hmm, considerable gluteus maximus weighed it down (the bike clearly was not ready for this jelly) and caused one of the training wheels to bend upwards, so technically he’d been riding on < 4 wheels ever since.

which was a good thing, coz it made him learn to balance much faster, and after seeing how he'd been zooming around with the training wheels barely touching the ground, the daddy removed them over the weekend.

once again, mommy's a genius.

he’s fascinated with speed. he’s already asked for a skateboard. and a motorbike. and let’s not forget, that “fe-lari” sports car…

at this point, i wish to launch into an introspective post about my many worries for him, The Firstborn. but… my anxieties need further evaluation, so let’s just say for now that i worry a lot about him (well, obviously not his physical or motor development), and maybe i’ll pen them down in another post.

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found a kids’ yoga book at the library, so that evening they dragged out my mat…

Bow pose (Dhanurasana)

Triangle pose (Trikonasana)

err… Wrestling pose? (WWFasana ha ha)

inevitably, they ended up in a crumpled heap within minutes and started horsing around instead. a 5yo and a (almost-) 3yo staying in one position for more then 5 seconds? HAH, fat chance.

meanwhile, mommy is always trying to find her inner calm, peace and zen… because she tends to lose them a lot. *does a Lion pose (Simhasana) on her cubs*

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so our weekends are quickly turning into a vortex of activities as we’ve added two more to his weekend itinerary – reading and swimming.

am not exactly proud for sending him to the former, really. i mean, a mother who was an english & literature major… quite embarrassing, doncha think? oh, the irony! but i tell ya, teaching your own kid is quite a different animal altogether. the cajoling, the threatening, the negotiating, the emotional blackmails, the guilt trips… they never taught you all that, you know.

but as much as you hate it, and are very likely perpetuating the vicious cycle of putting unnecessary pressure and expectations upon a child when he’s probably not developmentally ready, you do it aaaanyway, because the harsh reality is: it’s terrifyingly competitive out there, and being a full-time working mother with little time (and frankly, patience), you swallow your pride and do what it takes to keep him on par with – if not ahead of – his peers.

it’s sink or swim, honey.

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