M: so, did you eat up your food today? (referring to his fourth lunch box of the week i’d feebly prepared in the morning.)
B: hmm, not so. i didn’t finish the oranges. and the bread with nutella. because you know why? the nutella was not so nice anymore. it tasted like oranges.
M: then the oranges tasted like… nutella?
B: yahhh. and can i ask you another thing? how come the box, like so difficult to close? i tried to close but cannot. then i asked my teacher to help me.
M: did she laugh?
B: no, why?
M: yah lah, laugh at your silly mother. for the silly food. and the silly lunch box.
B: nooo, she didn’t laugh. why you call yourself silly??
M: *sigh* ya lah, because i’m just not good at this. you know, doing anything with food. i’m not good at a lot of things. (it’d been one of those rough days.)
B: it’s OK. you tried your best.
M: *burst our laughing at his candour*
B: NOW you are silly, laughing at yourself…

(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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please enlighten me why a bowl of salad costs more than 2 entire mcdonald’s meals or chicken rice sets? ridiculous i tell you.

and yet.

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the girl was being whiny one evening, insisting her father change the football channel to something else. we tend to ignore these, mostly unreasonable, whiny moments, but on this occasion, her brother got up and placated her, “ok ok, come i got something for you”. he went to the fridge, with her tailing behind, and handed her a piece of chocolate. whine stopped instantly.

“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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some time last year, i wrote about shel silverstein’s ‘The Missing Piece Meets The Big O’.

revisiting this book, because over the weekend, we did this.

i’d chucked aside some colored cardboard paper to recycle, knowing that one way to keep the girl occupied is to direct her to “go do some cutting”, and i was busy experimenting with the egg thingy (see previous post) when she came up to me with some shapes, declaring that she’d cut out “the missing piece and the big O”, which i’d dismissed distractedly at the time.

it was only later when i looked properly at her handiwork that i got the idea to take out the book and cut out shapes from each page, with some help from the girl to draw dots for eyes, and then turned it into an interactive storytelling time, with the kids playing out the scenes from each page with the cut-out shapes.

well, at least they’re easier to do than HAND PUPPETS.

“some fit… but could not roll.” (i hear ya.)

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not going to embarrass myself with images of my pathetic attempt at making cute food for the kids, but i was too amused by this egg-mold thingy i found at Daiso.

well ok the egg’s supposed to be star-shaped, but because the egg we had was too small or maybe because i didn’t leave it in long enough in the fridge, it ended up looking more like a fat flower, but whatever! i was still fascinated by the fact that someone actually had the idea to invent such a thing.

had to restrain the kids from first, opening the mold too early, and then, from gobbling it all up. because they simply LOVE hard-boiled eggs, whatever the shape they come in.

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i rarely ever use a proper bookmark, usually using whatever is within my reach – receipts, stubs, cards, whatever bits of paper, and if all else fails, dog-ear the page. and when i find a nice bookmark, i don’t want to use it because i’d only end up losing it. like the receipts, stubs, cards, whatever bits of paper within my reach.

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got terribly depressed last night after looking at pictures of beautifully-decorated bento lunches for kids.

i now have bento-envy.

but at 5.30am, you can forget about me even slathering peanut butter on a slice of bread, much less cut it into cute shapes of mice.

our lil fella is given $2 for his recess and i can only guess at what he’s eating in school every day. all i can get out of him is either “fishballs” or “pizza” or some unidentified, nameless food. occasionally the money goes to the bookshop. i ask if he can eat the flag erasers he buys.

then again, he’s not a fussy eater and has little appreciation for aesthetic details (i.e. gobbles up food without much thought of its presentation). plus, knowing him, it’s probably not ‘cool’ to bring a lunchbox to the canteen. (previous bags of sandwiches or snacks have come back unconsumed.) besides, he’s already declared me as “the best cook ever” with my occasional culinary serving of plain maggi mee, so i’ve pretty much set the bar low.

a kind friend, in an attempt to make me feel less guilty, assured me that giving him an allowance teaches him to be independent, and not expect life to be served to him in perfect little boxes. but that perfect little box (of carrot sticks and shaped sandwiches), to me, comes with thoughtfulness, love, and an A+ for sheer motherly effort.

never mind. let me just wallow in my bento-envy for now… (till the time i muster the energy to make a feeble attempt – hey who knows? stranger things have happened.)

i mean, srsly?? ‘Where The Wild Things Are’ bento lunch?! too much, i tell you. TOO MUCH.

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the boy had to do a presentation on his favourite animal to his class, complete with a short script and a hand puppet, and we were to help him prepare as he would be graded. he has no qualms about speaking in front of his class (he clearly did not inherit my fear and loathing of addressing an audience), and although he tended to mix the sequence of his script, i cut him some slack because it was his first time after all.

the part that did get me worried, of all things, was the hand puppet, AND it wasn’t even going to be graded. it’s just that, i’m not very good at crafts. *sheepish* i even considered printing out a picture from the internet and giving him a sock to stick it on, it was that bad. besides, when was i to do this with him by the time i came home in the evenings?

so i brought my fail-mother woes to work, and casually asked if someone could make a hammerhead shark (who chooses THAT as a favourite animal, i ask you?!). a volunteer whipped around, asked for a box of tissue, scavenged some paper, brandished a pair of scissors, snipped, folded and pasted, and within lunchtime, produced this with nary a moment’s hesitation:

(… while i sat watching uselessly beside her with my jaws hanging.)

<– arm goes in the cut-out side of the tissue box and voila, HAND PUPPET.

i don’t know how he did for his presentation (it was earlier today), but i do know i need to go for some art & crafts class. and public speaking ones too.

heck, i should just GO BACK TO PRIMARY ONE. (coz they sure seem to be learning and doing a whole lot more than we used to.)

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1) I fil anxious evry tyme speling day coms arround.
2) Aniq tinks lerning to spel is boring.
3) Sumbady ushually endds up gehting or gowing mad dewring speling tyme.
4) We ar allways glad wen ther ar no speling lissts fer da weeke.
5) Beeing perpechually worried abaut incorreck speling is stoopit.

(ps: it was pure torture trying to misspell all those words up there. definately definitely.)

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what am i, A FACEBOOK PAGE?!

that’s it missy, NO MORE CAKE for you until you say you LOVE your mummy. >:(

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happy birthday auni!, originally uploaded by izadd.

a big thank you to our wonderful family for celebrating with us. :)

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we were nibbling on fish and fries at long john silver’s last weekend, mulling over the wisdom of holding yet another birthday party for the girl, at such short notice.

“princess theme? fairy theme? ballerina theme? princess-fairy-ballerina combo/hybrid/mutant?” we mulled and nibbled, nibbled and mulled.

“how about mermaid? Ariel IS technically a princess…”

“hmm, mermaid… fishes… seafood… mmm…” a quick call to Fish & Co. to make a reservation for the guests, who were concurrently texted, and we were good to go.

can you tell by now that the highlight of a party for me is filling up goody bags for the kids? it was, erm, unfortunate that i could not fill glitter-glued goody bags with, oh-i-don’t-know, shell necklaces, sparkly combs, diamante stickers, The Little Mermaid dvds… because 80% of our little guests were boys, who would surely declare the contents as “lame!” and proceed to stomp the bags into a glittery pulp.

on the other hand, no one can say no to a cute, friendly crab.

my favorite item – these came in a box of 3 different titles which i unpacked to give out individually, so a family with 3 kids would get a complete set. plus, they glittered. without being… girly.

i ended up hanging around the aisle of toys ‘r’ us for half an hour playing with this. i knew the kids would like it because: a) it is a toy, b) it is not a book, c) it will keep them occupied for a while, d) it will never run out of battery, e) it will never get spoilt, f) their parents will want to play with it too. (well, i did.)

and WHICH KID DOES NOT LIKE STICKERS? please tell me.

the obligatory mix of foodstuff. because you have to feed kids at parties or they’ll cry foul and complain to the Association of Universal Goody Bags.

and now this has nothing to do with the goody bags, but it was the only thing that had an ACTUAL mermaid on it. and it definitely made the girl (and all the boys) happy, because it was sooo cold and yummy. :D

I LOVE BIRTHDAYS.

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to the little girl who’s turning 4 this monday :)

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(reading a book with picture of a unicycle.)

M: “this is a unicycle, it’s got only one wheel.”
Girl: “like a tricycle has three wheels? and bicycle has two wheels?”
M: “yes, and a unicycle has one wheel.”
G: “like unicorn?”
M: “yesss, a unicorn has one horn. so you know what has two horns?”
G: *thinks*
M: “A BICORN! you donno?!?”
G: “HAHAHAHA! mummy so funny.”

#unicornyjokeoftheday
#onlymykidsgetme

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