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.
with the daddy on night shift, it’s easier for me to impose my no-tv rule in the evening before bed (we activated the child-lock, and it’s SO effective, even mommy doesn’t know how to unlock it… erm..), which means having to come up with more ways to ‘entertain’ or keep them occupied. so we’d play bouncing balls or monopoly or ‘masak-masak’ or drawing, and sometimes they’ll ‘exercise’ with me….
(i think auni’s downward dog is so cute – her heels are all the way down. love how flexible kids are the younger they are.)
you can guess what usually happens during my downward dogs and my bridges and whatever poses i attempt – they’d gleefully crawl under/over me, so yeah, yoga at home – not so safe for me!
but i figured out a way around it the other night, by giving them the important grown-up task of taking mommy’s pictures with her grown-up camera. is she a genius or what? :p
(my amateur-ish Wheel/Upward Bow and Plow – still works-in-progress.)
(the girl on the mat – perhaps a little confused, heh.)
was caught up with cleaning and rearranging the girl’s room today. finally got her a proper big-girl bed, about the same age her brother got ‘upgraded’ as well, i think. realised the bed rails look a bit, erm, clinical, but it’s comfy, definitely nicer than a cot, and the two of them reckon it’s just “like hotel”. (yes, they’re still in a holiday mood.)
(a little note: about the part on the rattlesnake, coincidentally, an episode of The Pink Panther was shown after we’d read this a few times together, where the panther accidentally stole a basket containing a baby instead of food during a picnic scene and in an effort to pacify the said baby, now crying, he’d removed the end of the rattlesnake’s tail to give to the baby as a rattle, and i guess this left such an impression with the kids that they associate it with this particular rattlesnake every time.)
(also, another note: they will inevitably ask the same question in every story with illustrations – “where’s the daddy/mummy/baby?” not sure why but there’s always a concern for the whereabouts of a missing family member in the story.)
it was the first time for the quasi-playgroup-teacher-wannabe mommies conducting the baking session last weekend, and all we had were basic baking ingredients and an online recipe we’d never tried before. we were each sorta assigned to take on one activity and thankfully, Is took the lead for this one.
we went for a ‘thematic approach’.
we spelled, counted, measured, talked about what the ingredients did, passed around the vanilla essence for everyone to smell….
we scooped, stirred, broke eggs, took turns, resolved conflicts…
we rolled dough, created shapes, sprinkled rainbow sprinkles and chocolate chips…
and with the smell of cookies baking in the oven, we did some storytelling… bilingually, too.
and of course, we tasted the fresh, warm, home-baked cookies, nevermind the dubious hygiene level of the cookie-makers, lol. they tasted pretty good, actually, despite the fact that we didn’t follow the ingredients too closely (seeing how things kept spilling).
we balanced tea time with fruits and nuts and then it was free play…
and we got hungry again at dinnertime, so we made some pizza. the little chefs were actually more interested in piling stuff on the dough than eating the final product, though they did collectively run to the oven every few seconds to peep through the oven door. so the ones who eventually ate were the adults, who also got creative and designed their own satay pizza (izad’s family are in the satay business, so it’s a staple at every function – the satay and peanut sauce are awesome.)
inspired by the success of this playgroup session, we’ve assigned the daddies to take over the next one. something less domestic and more outdoorsy… though it’d be interesting if they could conduct, oh i don’t know… origami or scrapbooking, maybe?? :p
one of those things i’ve been meaning to do but never got around to, due to my… erm, non-sahm status. bad excuse, i know, but weekends always seem to whiz by with little time to execute such activities at leisure. and it’s not much, but oh well, at least we were inspired, if only for one afternoon.
the little girl’s many ‘aunties’ have been asking what she wants for her birthday.
what do you think?
clearly, she has waaaay too many boys’ toys at her disposal. from power rangers to ben 10 merchandise to cars to trucks to dinosaurs to (i’m ashamed to say this) guns (none of which i’m responsible for, i stress) – she’s been sharing them all with her brother.
which is not such a bad thing, actually. i think it’s kinda cute. (this is her favourite set of pajamas, by the way. i kid you not. “eh-men! i want eh-men!”) ha ha.
sure, there’s a cooking stove, which both of them congregate at every day to concoct imaginary dishes/drinks for me or the daddy. there’s a little pram with a freaky blonde doll, which they both take turns to chase each other around the house with. there’s a shopping trolley, which they equally find pleasure in scattering its contents all over the floor with.
i’ve not discussed with her yet about princesses (except that one book about a Princess Polly and her potty, and even that, it’s just a girl with a crown wearing panties, not your standard Disney-type womanly princesses with coiffed hair and frilly gowns who go around kissing frogs or supposedly rich, handsome, young, single, charming men), but somehow, either from the incessant advertisements on tv or from observations of older girls and peers, a kind of, hmm, ‘social osmosis’ happened, and she can identify with the concept.
“(pr)een-cess!”, she’d exclaim, her head tilting, her voice extra high-pitched and in such a sing-song manner that you can practically hear glitters and pink sparkles coming out of her. O-o
“princess?”, i’d ask, giving her a sceptical grimace. “dowan lah.”
as you can see, i’m still trying my best to resist the idea of over-gender-conditioning and hyper-femininity. i’m fighting against creating a ‘gu niang’ girl. just as i’d lost the battle with the boy and his penchant for toy guns, i may be losing it with the colour pink.
and, admittedly, mummy isn’t being a great example herself, what with her girly makeup and lipglosses and dresses and high heels, eh? LOL.
the thing with siblings, they can get pretty competitive, and i think even more so if their age gap is close. one of our tricks to make them do something is to turn it into a competition. most times it works.
another thing we like to do is go “who wants to [fill in activity]?” eg. “who wants to eat ice-cream?” (“ME!”) or “who wants to go swimming?” (“ME!”) etc. the daddy thinks sometimes they don’t even hear what he’s suggesting, they simply go “ME!” coz they don’t want to lose out. so he tried an experiment by garbling his words. “who wants to grgmmbfyabbayabbabla?” “ME!!”
for the purpose of this photo exercise, i’d asked “who wants to eat popcorn later?”. guess the answer.
i don’t know how they can be so chipper in the morning. they came back late from a party last night (bad parenting, as usual), yet here they are, all ready to take on the world the next morning… while we adults are cursing away the monday blues.
and i better remember my popcorn promise later in the evening.
i didn’t realise the daddy twitpic-ed this. been trying to capture her in this position for some time, without success. i don’t know why, it just tickles my mommy funny-bone, the way she lies on her “stummy” (her brother’s word for stomach+tummy) with her hands squishing her cheeks.
when we gave him a free rein of the digital camera, he began snapping pictures like there’s no tomorrow!
how, can pass? i think he can continue my already dead APAD post, lol!!
oh well, if all mummy had WAS a backrub, we wouldn’t have anyone for abang aniq to torment.
and we wouldn’t have anyone else for daddy to dress up like a boy. (yes, this was all his work.)
she’s turning out to be quite a character, and developing quite a sense of humour too. this is the part i like best, where they discover they can purposefully make us laugh, and laugh along with us.
and just as soon as she’s perfected her nodding, she’s gone on to the next phase – head-shaking. which made me laugh the first few times she started doing it, till i realised that encouraging it probably wasn’t the best idea coz now she’ll start to refuse everything we want her to do.
two kids, outside my bathroom, banging down the door, hurrying me to be done with whatever i’m doing already. they can always sniff me out when i’m in there. internal gps, much? but, it’s mummy’s only sanctuary!
and if you can make out the big brother’s silhouette, he’s bending down to relay to his little sister that mummy is not done yet. (he also heard my camera phone in action and asked “why you taking picture?”. i was too busy giggling to explain.)
44 visitors online now 7 guests, 37 bots, 0 members Max visitors today: 58 at 11:05 am SGT This month: 68 at 07-02-2012 06:32 pm SGT This year: 68 at 07-02-2012 06:32 pm SGT All time: 103 at 10-12-2011 05:33 am SGT
Entries (RSS)