A Mother’s Monologue

What is little T2 looking at so curiously? On a daily basis, T1 will entertain T2 as she needs a platform to perform. She needs an audience and who better to pick than her own little baby sister, who is always enchanted by Che-Che’s songs, moves and grooves……

This time, T1 was actually performing for both Aunty Paik ling and T2……she is obviously not shy, right? Since this is her 1st time interacting with Aunty Paik Ling!

T2 pays close attention. I’m going to be like my Che-Che one day. Or maybe she’s thinking, I am so NOT going to be like my Che-Che one day.

I assure you, T1 can be quite the entertainer. Her jokes, her wit, her sense of humour; pure joy.

Because the Hubs has an astronaut friend who got launched into space, T1 has naturally been exposed to all things space having attended the launch itself in Florida. She also excitedly received this very good book on space from a very dear friend from London which she has read through many times over.

Last week, she randomly asked, “Mommy? What was the name of the guy who first went to space?”

“Neil Armstrong.” I answered confidently.

“NO!!! That’s the first guy on the moon!! There’s another guy!!!” Alamak…..fail.

I stopped at my tracks for a moment and thought. “Yuri Gagarin?”

“Yes! That’s the one. What about the first guy on the planet Jupiter?”

Man, she was asking this old hag really tough questions. Space, geography, history…..my entire school life, subjects were never one of my strong points and I promise you, the only reason I passed my SPM with flying colours is because I had ESP and a photographic memory, and spotted ALL the questions which came out.

“I’m not sure, T1….I think you have to ask Daddy that one.”

So later that night, she asked Daddy (and of course, she had to add that MOMMY DIDN’T KNOW THE ANSWER). But when she needs me, oh, the tables are turned for sure. T1 is the greatest politician who manipulates situations to her advantage. All the time.

Daddy told her that nobody has yet made it to Jupiter. AND he had a good laugh about my lack of general knowledge.

Ohhhhhhh………..now why didn’t I think of that? Bodoh betul.

The Hubs vs Mommy ( 1 – 0)

That’ll be my T1. Every other day, she comes home from school ‘boasting’ about how her teacher always asks her to help. Of course, she only dares ‘boast’ to me. She isn’t allowed to do it otherwise. Either help in the canteen or help in the classroom, almost like she’s a class monitor. Even if she’s 2nd shortest in class.

The other day, she said teacher made her sit right in front beside a particular classmate because she was very good in reading and teacher wanted her to help her classmate read. Then teacher wanted her to help distribute some books in class, sometimes help distribute food or snacks  in the canteen.

One day, her entire class of twenty had to go up to the whiteboard one by one to do a maths equation and she was the only one who got it correct. Really? I was kind of suspicious and can’t be bothered am unable to verify her facts but will take it at face value. She said everybody just simply counted or guessed (I wonder how she deduced this!) but she was smart enough (her exact words, fuah! so humble!) to use the number chart on the wall. What is a number chart, I asked? A poster with numbers from zero to a hundred. Ohhh…..So she cheated then??? No!!! She calculated the sum on the whiteboard, and then looked at the number chart to check if she was correct. Ohhh….whatever…….

Today she said her teacher asked her to help another classmate with a fan making project. They had to fold paper fans (accordion style) and her classmate either was too slow or couldn’t do it properly for some reason, so she had to complete it for her. They were making paper fans because they were learning about air and wind in Science. I saw the end result of T1′s fan – very pretty. She had drawn and coloured flowers on it.

Then she told me her teacher made her sing 5 songs because she remembered the lyrics faster than her classmates. Oh, was that during music lesson? No, it was during maths. Hah?? Yes, maths! I was curious! Apparently, they are now learning about 3D shapes and for each shape, there is a song! So for pyramid shape, they sang it to the tune of Happy Birthday and the lyrics go something like, P-Y-R-A-M-I-D……spells the shape Pee-Ra-Mid…….With 5 flat faces and corners……and 8 straight edge borders. Then she started singing the song for cube shape to a different tune. I thought it was an innovative way for the kids to learn the characteristics of each 3-dimensional shape. I mean, we never had such things in school. Then again, I don’t think we were ever that advanced in school for Primary One Maths.

T1 sure knows how to butter her teachers up for she has enough manipulative skills to wile her way into her teacher’s good books. For teacher’s day, she wanted to get her teachers roses amongst other things (I can’t remember what now). When she bakes brownies, she suggests that she brings some for her teachers to try. She keeps thinking of thoughtful things to do or get for her teachers, and I am always wondering why she makes my life so difficult. At such a young age, she already knows how to BUY people!!!

Little do her teachers know what a devil she can be out of school as she is so well behaved in front of them. Sneaky, huh?

Ever since T1 was 3 years old, she would cry after a holiday. I don’t know why. She’d cry every time we came home and we’d have to endure her dramatic tears and sadness for a few hours. It was almost like she’d sink into a depression after a holiday because she’d had too much fun and now the fun had ended. We have tried talking to her, explaining that there are good times and not so good times and if she was on holiday all the time, it would no longer be a holiday! Yadayadayadaya…..

Once, after returning from Kota Bharu, she began her primadona performance and when my MIL called to check if we’d arrived home, T1 cried and cried and cried so loud, so of course my MIL wanted to speak to her. T1 told her she missed KB *sobs* and she missed Ama’s apple pie *bigger sobs* blablablabla……and do you know what my MIL did? She couriered a fresh apple pie tightly sealed in a tupperware the very next day.

*FAINT*

Lately, she’s started having sleepovers at her Nana’s and every single Sunday when she comes home, she’d cry. Cry because she had TOO MUCH FUN at Nana’s and now she is home with stressed out Mommy who always has no time for her and a crying baby. How depressing is that?

At Nana’s she gets to do paper mache, design and string necklaces, paint her nails, go swimming, watch as much TV as she likes, play games, chat without being told to shut up be quiet, eat as much of anything she desires, paint and draw, go anywhere she wants……BUY anything she wants……in fact, now she’s lobbying to stay with Nana every day!

But she has to learn, right? Life is not a candy and lollipops everyday.

What do you think I should do with this girl? I feel like selling her!

T1 goes to a school reputed for slave-driving kids with academic pursuits and lots of homework but really, she doesn’t get much homework at all. Not to me anyway. I’ve seen kids with lots more, or perhaps she does it independently and quickly that it doesn’t appear to be a lot?

She gets homework once a week on a Thursday and has 3 whole days plus half of Thursday in order to complete her homework. When she is focused, she usually finishes it within 15 minutes. When she is not focused, meaning the TV is on, she takes up to half an hour. We have a rule in that she has to complete all homework on that Thursday itself or no going out over the weekend. Might as well get it over and done with and out of the way, right?

This weekend’s homework was this:

Mathematics: She was given 12 sums in total in equation form (double digit numbers within a hundred, addition and subtraction) and had to convert it into vertical format and then complete the sums. She did this in a breeze and I caught one careless mistake.

Bahasa: She was given 8 jumbled up sentences (of only 3-4 words each, like Kucing itu comel, Nama saya Ali, Kereta itu sangat laju) and had to rearrange its order to form a correct sentence. She surprised me by being able to do this without help and got it all correct. I didn’t realise her Bahasa had progressed so much. At the start of the year, she was just starting to learn some vocabulary and now they’re doing sentence construction?

English: She had to practise her Similes. Earlier at school this week, she was taught Similes (as blind as a bat, as strong as an ox, as graceful as a swan, as cold as ice, as cunning as a fox, etc. 15 Similes to be exact – we have a standing joke now – as chatty as a Tessa, she hates it). So for homework, a worksheet with some fill in the blanks of 8 similes were given.

Another worksheet was to match by drawing lines joining pictures of 6 animals with their corresponding habitats (lions live in a lair, rabbits in a hutch, wild rabbits in a burrow, blablabla…..).

The third worksheet was matching masculine and feminine words (doe and buck, duck and drake, dog and bitch – love this one, lord and lady, boar and sow, stallion and mare, fox and vixen etc).

I must say I am very happy with the school’s standard in English because even I am having difficulty with her English work. T1 knows more than me! English is her current weakest subject in school and has been from Day One. And her English is not bad at all. The standard is just exceptionally high.

T1 had no problems doing this English homework as she has a good memory and has remembered the necessary.

Science: She had one page of pictures of objects and she just had to tick which objects were noises made at home and which were noises made outside the home. Easy, right? I think so! But she got the cat wrong. Cat was supposed to be a house noise (I checked!) but T1 is not familiar with cats at home and only know of stray cats lurking outside some homes…….hence the mistake. Actually, our syllabus is really lousy.

Doing homework – Macam ini pun boleh?

So what do you think? Do you think it is a lot of homework for a 6 year old, considering she completes it in less than half an hour? I think half an hour of homework is not much at all. Of course, some kids may find it overwhelming but T1 isn’t complaining just yet. I hear that there would be homework everyday next year when she starts doing Standard Two work, but just one page everyday. Yikes!

I love it whenever I see T1 entertaining herself with creative play because I think it is so important to be creative in this day and age what with all the commercialism that is thrown at our kids every single day.

Here she was a hill (and she explains all this to T2) with a little story made up in her head, and the baby climbs up the hill and THEN!!! The hill turns into a VOLCANO!!! And explodes!!! BWAAAAAA!!!!! BOOM-BOOM-BWAAAAA!!!!!

And T2 finds it funny.

My girls. They have a quirky sense of humour. They humour me.

Since she is always alone and having to entertain herself most of the time, T1 makes up her own games and songs a LOT! The other day, she asked me if I’ve seen her stone dinosaur trick. She clasped her hands together almost like praying, in a joint fist and said, “This is a stone.”

Then she released her fingers in a spurt and shouted, “DINOSAUR!!!”

Then she runs to show T2 and repeats her stone-dinosaur-stone-dinosaur-stone-dinosaur mantra…….

It is amusing to see how she amuses herself. And us.