the girl seems to have a knack for recognising letters. she’s picked up a few by associating them with the way the letters look… e.g. ‘A’ looks like a mountain; ‘B’ looks “boncit” (big-bellied); ‘C’ looks like a moon; ‘E’ looks like a comb; ‘S’ looks like a snake, etc.

well, whatever works for you, honey…

spelling out ‘OLIVIA’, our current favourite read. they love the fact that Olivia and her mother negotiate for bedtime storybooks the same way we do.

ps: turning three in about 2 weeks’ time!

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her third lesson, all suited up. parents get to sit in for a bit.

at some point, they play these ‘contemporary’ songs for the kids to let loose and move their limbs while still listening to rhythm and instructions. you can tell from the shaky parts that i was trying very hard (and failing) to stifle my giggles… :p

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round 2 of book-reading by auni.
title: Creeping Crawlers

good night, don’t let the (powerful) bed bugs bite!
(or worse, the dung beetles.)

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book-reading by auni.
title: Alive and Not Alive – an “I Know Opposites” series.

(you can test her on other objects too – she can pretty much tell them apart. )

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SEE U2 – CHECK!

so the day FINALLY arrived, with nary a glitch. i almost couldn’t believe everything fell into place according to plan. it was TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE.

yes, it was my birthday. the kids were settled (they were whisked away from the house), the weather was great (no rain!), traffic was smooth, and we even found (relatively) cheap carpark available near the stadium in good time. everything was, to say the least, miraculous.

the stadium was MASSIVE. our seat was like… fourth from the front, and in broad daylight, we could see the stage pretty well.

–> countdown to the start of the show

but as you can see, when the skies dimmed and the lights came out, and the free-standing zone filled up, we were as good as sitting a thousand seats away. lol. i guess i could’ve secured the free-standing zone, but the thought of being elbowed and crushed to an asian pulp by the big-sized ozzies was a little off-putting.

so anyway, jay-z came on and tried to inject some hip-hop vibe into the mostly.. white crowd. lol.

oh hey here’s a crowd-pleaser, though!

and then….

heh. they broke into ‘beautiful day’, which set the mood and the crowd going in an instant.

–> bono did his concert trademark of picking a lucky girl from the front to serenade and fondle. DAYMMMNN. i mean, he had his head ON HER LAP while she sat swooning on stage, and then proceeded to slowdance on the bridge with her for a good entire song. what a cad!

–> the 360 degrees rotating screen at the top unfurled itself downwards halfway through the show, to create a MONSTROSITY of a stage. seriously, it looked like alien royalty had docked its excessively-blinged spaceship right there….

with such a large catalogue of songs to pick from plus their new material, they were spoilt for choice. but they did a pretty awesome job at mixing in their classic crowd-pleasers with their less commercial songs. the date also marked the death anniversary of john lennon, so there were a few beatles’ snippets thrown in as tribute, which bono, the veteran that he is, gelled effortlessly into the setlist. i was especially delighted with tracks from achtung baby (which i’ve decided is my favourite U2 album, evuh), in particular Ultraviolet… which, like in their ZooTV tour, went hand-in-hand with this song.

come on, SING IT!!

they played for 2hrs 15mins with 2 encores, and even though there were tens of thousands in the audience, bono had this ability to make an intimate connection with them through some of the songs, somehow. I DON’T KNOW HOW. maybe he’s magical.

the only downside to the whole evening was – i got a wad of pink strawberry gum stuck on the back of my shirt. like, why do people even stick gum on chairs, right?! which got me telling the man behind who pointed out the stuck gum to me, “this is why we ban gum in singapore!” and gawd, am i glad we did, coz it really sucks trying to get gum out of your shirt. seriously.

the kids were soundly tucked in by the time we got back. i even got a card and a note from the babysitters. how heart, right?!

all in all, it was a totally A-grade awesome birthday. and a perfect end to the trip.

setlist:
Beautiful Day
I Will Follow
Get On Your Boots
Magnificent
Mysterious Ways
Elevation
Until The End Of The World
I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For
North Star (John Lennon Tribute)
Pride (In The Name Of Love)
In A Little While
Miss Sarajevo
City Of Blinding Lights
Vertigo
I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight
Sunday Bloody Sunday
Scarlet
Walk On
Encore:
One
Where The Streets Have No Name
Encore 2:
Ultraviolet (Light My Way)
With Or Without You
Moment of Surrender

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parents getting ridiculously excited watching their kids on a bouncy ride. (i confess i wanted to go on it myself but no adults were allowed.) (i’m an incurable amusement-rides-addict.)

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i guess i spoke too soon – “inspired” by discussions on the merits of the Peter & Jane series, i managed to persuade aniq to try it out one evening, by insisting that it’s “VERY EASY”.

it took a week of frustrations (on both sides) as we plodded through book 1a before he surprisingly picked up speed and went on to 1b.

i think one of the challenges i faced teaching the kid (other than the typically boyish playfulness and impatience) was having a younger sibling interrupt us ever so often – e.g. she’d demand for HER book to be read, or ask for a drink, or chatter on and on, or be plain mischievous and cheeky, as evident in the video below:

in any case, i have to say i feel a liiiitle bit relieved at having made actual progress in our “thorny but exciting” road to literacy.

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i’d been growing a liiiiittttle anxious that the boy is ending his K1 year and turning 5 in a few months’ time, and was still resisting our nudges to start reading independently.

sure, he knows his ABCs (occasionally mixing up the small letters ‘b’ and ‘d’, and a few others, especially when distracted – and boyyy is he easily distracted), and would randomly seek my confirmation that ’snake’ starts with ’s’, or ‘finger’ starts with ‘f’, or ‘Honda’ starts with ‘h’, or Toyota starts with ‘t’. (his current fascination is car brands, btw – according to him, we drive a ‘Honda e-way’, and a Beetle is a ‘Boxdragon’, which i repeatedly try to correct with the german pronunciation of ‘Volkswagen’, which in turn confuses him more since ‘V’ is ‘F’ and ‘W’ is ‘V’ in german… and his favourite car? a PROTON. gawwwwd, run me down with a Boxdragon, now!)

so anyway, i’d attempted an evergreen beginner-readers’ classic, the Peter & Jane series, which i’d read to him since he was still a crawling mass, but perhaps the too-early introduction, plus the antiquated illustrations and the stilted flow of words, did not interest him very much to pursue the perusal of Peter, Jane and their dog’s antics and adventures.

his preschool curriculum doesn’t impose spelling tests or rigourous worksheets, which i’m quite thankful for actually, coz mummy thinks he spends plenty of time in school in the day already and all she wants to do after coming home from work is play and talk and not have stressful evenings of drilling and cajoling a preschooler to “finish up his homework”, coz there’ll be a disgusting amount of years ahead yet for that. :S

having said that, i AM amazed at kids his age or younger already adept at doing spelling and math and various languages in other preschools. and VERY intimidated.

i think aniq’s reluctance to read probably has to do with a lack of confidence, of getting things wrong or from having been compared to his older cousins or friends who are already skilled readers. but a few factors are slowly helping him overcome this.

first, the sense of competitiveness he feels with his sister, who is admittedly displaying a quick grasp of language and literacy. and second, the lure of a reward….. now i KNOWWWW early childhood educators out there are probably GASPING in disapproval at this; that one should not ‘bribe’ a child to learn a skill that should be an intrinsic reward by itself, blablabla, but aww, what’s a little carrot at the end of the stick, i say? ;p oh stoppit, i DO all the other things i’m supposed to do too; bedtime stories, reading aloud, heaps of encouragement and praise, going to the library, be seen reading myself, blablabla, heyyy i’ve done the googling. but maybe some kids are just motivated… erm, differently?

in any case, this was the first book he’d agreed to read aloud in full, and it was quite an exasperating task to get him to recognise the words, what with his attention span. but after i’d video-ed him a few times, he felt more confident and let’s hope he moves on to other more, hmm, ‘exciting’ books, yes?

feel free to guess whether he memorised most, if not the entire thing, instead of actually reading the words, hehe.

oh, and so what WAS his reward?

it was on sale. (yeah, corrupt AND stingy parents. tsk.)

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every day i pose the same question to the both of them: “what did you do in school today?” and so far, the girl has been more forthcoming with her replies, varying them each day, sometimes answering “play toys”, or “i sing”, or “i draw”, or “i eat”, or “my friend cry” (nothing to do with what she did but a reply it is).

one of the things she readily picks up is the singing part. there’s this one particular song they sing in centres before every meal, a merry little ditty that mixes english and chinese and which i have NO IDEA half of what it means, other than that it asks all their teachers and friends to join them in the meal and to enjoy the food together… or something. obviously her so-called chinese is all rubbish, and i should probably rectify this with a proper ‘doa sebelum makan’, but… oh well.

i’d video-ed her for fun and simply suggested she say “thank you” at the end of each song, and out of the blue, she amended it herself with a “thank you everyone” (!) AND a bow, so that just… tickled me.

ohhh, little girl.

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somehow, baa baa black sheep has associated itself with a carefree big bad wolf, and doe, a deer, induces much emotion.

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auni dancing to vampire weekend’s giving up the gun.

enjoy your long (vampire) weekend!!

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(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.)

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no! i most certainly did NOT teach her how to apply cosmetics! i swear! it is all mimicry!

in any case, she seems to have a knack at lipglossing sans mirror, just like me. won’t be long before she too can do it WHILE driving.

it’s, err, genetic.

*no alien figurines were harmed during the filming of this video.

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Two-year-olds are likely to:

well, we’re right on track, then.

from primping girl to domestic goddess!

dressing up:

making up:

pinkberry-ing:

mothering:

um, diapering?:

cooking:

cleaning:

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