Thing 1: Giving them the opportunity to go to school

Someone at work warned me rather ominously that if I didn't start my children on the Chinese language, I was going to have a lot of problems with them later. This poses a large problem to Packrat and I whose ability to speak Chinese ranks just above our ability to speak French or Urdu. The irony is that both of us went to Nanyang Kindergarten- a kinder that is renowned for its teaching of Chinese. I guess the both of us slipped through the cracks. Actually, both of us had above average Chinese till somewhere mid primary school and then lost the ability to converse in our mother tongue thereafter. He more than I.

At the same time, I've been wondering about where to put them into school. Those who say "but your children are only ONE", let me just say that I'm ONE year too late. Our first choice of kindergartens chided me about not having rung to put them on the list the day they were born. I'm sorry, I had better things to do then, like FIGURE OUT HOW TO BE A MOM!!! So, anyway, we've had our hearts set on a Christian kindergarten because we felt it necessary for them to have the right Christian foundation. At the same time, there has been the niggling thought about how I should also make sure they have a good Chinese foundation. The more we thought about it, the more we felt that we could create the Christian base for them much more easily than the Chinese one. This point was driven home when Baby J cried and Evan looked at me very quizzically when I spoke to them in Chinese.

So, last Friday, on my way home, on an impulse, I swung through the gates of Nanyang. Immediately, I was floored by it's Chinese-ness. All the signs were in Chinese and it took me a while to figure out where the office was because it took me a while for my brain to slowly work out the seemignly alien characters ahead of me. Once again, I was chided, not for my ability to speak Chinese- thankfully the admin staff could converse in English, for my tardiness in putting them on the, by now, infamous list. This kinder, worse than the previous one I enquired at, had a wait list of 200 for 2 classes of 15! Virtually impossible.

The good news was that the wait list for 2011 hadn't opened yet and I still had the chance to get them into nursery if not pre-nursery by ringing on the first working day of 2009. I have set my phone to remind me. I was also told that I had some priority because I was alumnus. Not much, my children ranked 3rd in importance after children who have siblings in the kinder and siblings who went to the kinder. Parents who went to the kinder were, I was told, 3rd priority. Well, in a list that could be 200 deep, I guess I should be thankful for any crumb I'm tossed.

This was however, on the provision that I was able to produce documentation to prove my alumni connections. A graduation certificate (can we say PAPER QUALIFICATION?) or a report card. Aghast, my mind raced through where I could possibly have kept my cert. Report card, I hadn't seen in like 20 years so I didn't have much hope on that front. But certificate, I recall seeing the yellowed piece of paper with Chinese calligraphy on it. I just couldn't recall where.

I rushed home and turned the house upside down. I was not going to fail and be unable to send my kids to Nanyang because Mommy wasn't good at keeping things. I knew that in this instance, I was going to never forgive myself if I let the chance pass me by because I had lost that seemingly useless but now priceless piece of paper.

Thankfully, I managed to unearth it, after all the mental freaking out.

Now I can say that I am a good mommy because I can possibly send them to Nanyang and I was able to give them a little bit more of an edge by not being a dumper and throwing everything out. I am genetically predisposed to that because my dad throws out EVERYTHING. To him, it's not less clutter, it's NO clutter.

So, one star for me. For now.