Bits and Pieces

A dear friend of mine said without a hint of malice in her voice a few days ago, that she was saddened that all her Mommy friends seemed to have lost a part of themselves when they became mommies. It got me thinking. No one I know enters motherhood thinking that motherhood would be a time to shed the old skin and grow a brand new one. Most of the changes that occur, occur involuntarily and often without notice. The more self-aware among us also know that we are bound to change and what defines us as a person often changes. Some resist the change, some are resigned to it, some attempt to compromise.

But whatever it is, change does occur. Often because we end up juggling so many balls (roles) in the air and something has to give. I've faced this dilemma many times and the most recent encounter with this loss of identity, loss of self thing happened yesterday.

I've been feeling extremely run-down. I'm back at work, I'm entering my third trimester, I spend my days running all over the island on top of trying to spend time with my twins. Generally, I sleep about 5 hours a day, uninterrupted if I'm lucky (although often I'm not). That led to cramps round my belly for days and an episode of bleeding yesterday while I was at work. Any pregnant woman knows, blood of any kind is bad and the minute I saw it, I couldn't breathe. I knew what brought it about and I knew I had to go to the doctor as soon as I could.

Naturally, the doctor took a very serious view about my running about and lectured me about staying in bed and looking after myself. He admitted that it was easier said than done, especially when I explained my obligations to him, but intoned repeatedly that I had to at least try.

2 hours of contraction tracing later, I was discharged and ordered to be on bed rest. Packrat was extremely concerned and also chided me again (as he'd been doing repeatedly over the week) for running around as if I had no children and wasn't pregnant. All this made me feel extremely blue and depressed. It made me feel that I really wasn't living for myself and that I really was in over my head.

That thought, about having more than I could juggle was a thought that just resounded through the day and evening. And it really made me think about what my friend said about how moms lost part of themselves. Yes we do. And sometimes the problem is that it's not on purpose.

I know what I need. I need a break. I need time to just sleep and rest and kick my feet up and do nothing. But I have obligations. Obligations to work, to students whose exams are less than 2 weeks away. Packrat thinks that we should send the twins to their grandparents for a few days because then, I won't have to spend my nights looking after them and chasing their nightmares away. But how can I do that however tired I am? They are my children and unloading them on others is something I desperately want to avoid as far as possible. Is it because it makes me a bad mommy? Perhaps. Perhaps because I know I will be judged by the Nazi Moms out there as well as by myself. Is it because I want to martyr myself? No. But I do want to make sure that my children are ok and when they're away from me, I feel that I cannot do that.

Packrat suggests that we take a short break. Just so that we can finally spend some time together as a couple, to recharge, to encourage and love one another instead of just being on the merry-go-round as parents. I want to, but I worry about our finances, stretched as they are because we've been MPVed and other things. And is it fair for me to dump my children and think about myself? He thinks it's a fair thing because I am absolutely running on fumes but I cannot bring myself to.

So, have I lost myself? Yes, possibly. If I were really selfish, I would tell all the kids that need help to f&*( off. If I were really self-indulgent, I would get Packrat to book us into the Banyan Tree for a couple of days. If I were really self-centred, I would ship my children off and see them for an hour a day. If I really didn't care, I would spend every single cent of pampering myself. It's not unreasonable. Other people and other parents do it. And if I did all that, I would be swinging free Ondine. But I'd imagine, that the Ondine who was single is different from the Ondine that became Mrs Packrat and similarly, the Ondine that was Mrs Packrat, has had to change because Ondine is not just Ondine but Mommy Ondine now as well as Mrs Packrat as well as being JUST Ondine and I guess I will continue to change.

Sometimes, I hate who I have had to evolve into. I hate having to worry about money or in my most selfish moments, hate worrying about my husband or my children or about the baby that is gestating in me. And in these moments, I feel like I spiral into an abyss because these worries will get bigger. The bills will skyrocket as the children get older, as things get more expensive in Singapore and the demands are greater. And it never seems to end. That thought is depressing, sickening and absolutely demoralising, that it is just a downward spiral from this time.

Then, my children come and hug me tight for no reason and my husband wipes away my tears and takes the day off just to ferry me around and take me to lunch and I know that even though I am different and have lost bits of myself, I have gained other pieces that make it less gloomy and less abysmal. And then, I'm just about able to give the tiniest of smile and see that there is a silver lining.

Technorati Tags: twins, parenting

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60 minutes

60 minutes was how long it took for us to queue for petrol yesterday.

60 minutes was what it took for me to be convinced that we could technically drive up to KL with the kids strapped in at the back.

60 minutes was how long the twins played and entertained themselves and us in the car yesterday.

60 minutes was how long Jordan played with my Kate Spade sunglasses for. Thankfully she did not break them or I'd have been extremely upset.

60 minutes was how long it took for the diapers to leak onto their carseats although we suspect that had to do with the adult size glasses of water they downed at Crystal Jade prior to being strapped into the car.

60 minutes for this Mommy to be immensely proud of her twins for not wailing, crying, complaining and actually managing to get Papa out of the foul mood he was in at having to wait so long to fill the tank with fuel.






















Technorati Tags: twins, Buying fuel at Shell

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Of chocolates and sweets.

I've been asked by BlogTV, goodness knows why, to write a piece about the recent PSLE Math "fiasco". Why I put fiasco in inverted commas is that this fiasco occurs every year and every year, parents get incensed. Granted it's usually the next batch of parents who have kids nearing the exam taking age who look at the paper and panic.

Heck, my twins are two and I panicked, rapidly running their academic options through my mind. When I showed it to Packrat, his response was severe annoyance on both a personal and a professional level. One of our favourite experts on education is a British academic by the name of Ken Robinson. I first discovered him on Ted.com and was spell bound when he talked about how schools killed creativity and a wonderfully apt term that he discusses called "academic inflation".

And academic inflation is something that Singapore is so severely suffering from. When I was 12 and taking the exam, I was extremely stressed about the Math paper. Even at that point, the Math paper was difficult. I distinctly remember trying to explain my way out of the problem rather than present a working for it because I couldn't figure out how to present it mathematically. Even at 12, I was more comfortable using words than numbers. Anyway, it was difficult then. And more than 20 years on, it's even worse. It's harder than ever. Packrat swears that if this continues and is worse (which I suspect it will because it's just an upward spiral) when the twins hit 12, we're outta here. Call us quitters if you will but we value ours and our children's sanity more than a label that the government brands us with.

I took days to do it. I finally figured it out with the help of a 13 year-old, a PSLE veteran. When I asked her how she figured out how to do this last year, she said that she that she did sums everyday and was tutored everyday in Math because her mother wanted her to score a distinction and score it she did. And that's the problem isn't it? Everyone's mom and their dog wants them to score distinctions in Math, or Science or Language or Moral Education for that matter. And because that's du jour, there becomes a real need to separate the ones who truly can from the ones who can because they've been drilled to be able to and spend every waking hour at the Learning Lab or any of the other juvenile greenhouses that have flourished all over the island. Hence, the need for the spiralling out-of-control difficulty. But if this isn't academic inflation, I don't know what is. Being good isn't enough and that's just plain ridiculous. And it's just one of the MANY things wrong with our system and needs to be fixed.

We are a nation of complainers and we're good at kicking up a fuss. So that's what we do. Do we need to change? Or as Bob the Builder (I am watching far too much kid television!) asks, Can we fix it? But oh! Why would we do that? Why fix something that gets us clever kids? Oh, never mind if a truck load of them fall by the way side, it's just natural elimination and we are after all a system that is built on meritocracy so you need merit and if you don't have it, well, you don't deserve to be here.

Cruel? Yes. Should the kids, including mine suck it up and just get through it? Well, I think it will do them good and the truth is, I think my twins would get through the system fine. They'll survive, children always do. Will we, as parents survive? Now, that's a different matter. And that's what I worry about. I don't want to end up being a parent that whips the child because he only got 98 when he could have gotten full marks. As a teacher, I see too many of those parents around me and I see how bad it is for the child. At the end of the day, I think that scares me more than my children having to figure out how many sweets Ken started off with.


Technorati Tags: twins, education, Singapore

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From scratch

I told Packrat a few days ago that parenting was stretching my artistic creativity. I am not artistic naturally. One of my best friends and I bonded all those years ago because we were the only two in our class that failed art and that common failure between us was the beginning of a friendship that has lasted 20 years. I am my mother's disappointment in this respect because every bone in my mother's body is artistic. That failed still life of a papaya all those years I think ranks up there as s severe failure in parenting me I suspect.

Anyway, I am NOT artistic. But I see the importance in allowing my children to be artistic and to DO things with them rather than to BUY things for them.

Their Grandma and Grandaunt's birthday was during the past week. We owe these two women a great debt of gratitude because they give up chunks of their weeks to be with the twins. So, our before-after-school project last week was to make presents for them.

First, we decided on clay figurines. That was challenging for me because I needed to figure out what to make and how to make it. Then, there was the issue of the clay itself, that unlike dough does not take kindly to being cut up by a cookie cutter. And clay, unlike dough, was sticky much to Jordan's dismay and displeasure. Eventually we managed to fashion something that looked decent. A heart for each of them and a turtle for Grandma from Evan and a flower for Grandaunt from Jordan.




















That meant the twins' present to the Grandma and Grandaunt. But we felt that we needed to get them something too and we did. And because we did, the twins had even more opportunity to have fun. On top of wanting the twins to make things and mucking about, I'm also trying very hard to set an environmental example for them. A while ago, Packrat and I decided that we were going to try to be parents who weren't going to buy into the whole goodie bag sprial. And part of that was so that we didn't contribute to environmental waste and we wanted to teach the twins that too. But at the same time, we know that little children like to rip and tear wrapping paper apart and sometimes it was actually necessary to wrap up gifts.

So the alternative this time was to get them to make the wrapping paper that they could help to rip. The bonus was that it kept them occupied for quite a while although some of the mucking about was paint and wrapper unrelated. But since the cost was some basic coloured paint, a large piece of mahjong paper, some sponges, cheap brushes as well their bare hands and strangely enough a plastic spoon, I had no issue with it although clean up was going to be a bit of a b!*ch.



























Thankfully, the paint was washable and it was nothing a scrub brush and a big pail of water couldn't solve. And we had one-of-the-kind wrapping paper for the presents for the precious one-of-a-kind Grandma and Grandaunt.

It will however, take a little while before I recover from the creatively intense week that I've had to create the presents. Admittedly, the easiest bit was buying the gifts but on hindsight, I think it was more stressful, trying to find the gifts that we eventually bought instead of supervising the twins' constructive muckabout.


Technorati Tags: twins, art work, saving the environment

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Patriot Boy

Part of our bedtime routine with the twins is to sing to them. The requests are usually action songs they learn in church which winds them up rather than settles them. For the last two days however, the requests have been bizarre.

Evan has had a thing for the Singapore Flyer for quite a while. He loves anything with the prefix Singapore in front of it. Singapore Flyer, Singapore Flag and most recently, Singapore Songs! So, every night before he goes to bed, he requests for me to sing Singapore Flag songs! And these are the songs that really help him settle so I accede to his request.

Thing is, I don't remember much of it. I remember on average, two lines from each of the songs I try to pluck from my memory and I falter badly after that, making up my own words as I go along. Evan's favourite seems to be "We are Singapore" and I have a strange suspicion, it's from the time we took the twins to Packrat's school for the National Day celebrations. They still talk about it from time to time.

So, it has been every night, I lie beside him and mutter the lines I know. Last night, I googled the words to "We are Singapore" and copied it onto a piece of paper. Unfortunately, the boy took away my piece of paper and then commanded me ala the Phantom of the Opera to SING. I made it up as I went along while rolling my eyes at my son's choice of a lullaby.

"This is my country, This is my flag
These are my people, these are my friends...
This is my garden, these are my pets...
We are Singapore, Singaporeans!"

The only bit I get correct is the pledge, but he doesn't like that bit. Neither do I actually, but I'm not telling him that. As I've said before, I'm going to let him figure out cynicism and disenchantment all by himself. He's not going to get any help from his father or myself.

Technorati Tags: twins, Singapore, National Day Songs

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Who Stole the Cookie?

It was a rare gift that I was home in the afternoon when the twins woke from their naps. I'd already decided that I wanted to bake with them. We've played with dough before and pretended to bake. But this time I decided, they were old enough to do it for real. It wouldn't be their first time. They've brought home evidence of baking from school so the concept was not alien to them.

My biggest struggle was preventing them from eating the batter (i.e. cookie dough). The word "Salmonella" kept resounding in my head! And stupid me decided that putting in bakeable M&Ms would be a great idea. Yes, it was, for the twins because they spent a great amount of time digging the M&Ms out from the batter to eat.

Eventually, we got some nice looking cookies, with the help of the cookie cutter moulds that we'd bought a long time ago for the twins to play with, with their dough. All that previous "training" helped because they were quite adept at banging the mould hard into the batter and then ordering me to "cut!" the cookie shape out.

















Jordan hard at work, trying to pull out M&Ms from her batter


















The end product before we put it in the oven.





And of course, here is a video of Evan (who didn't appear in any of the photographs because he kept ducking his head) whining because he wanted more batter and I'd taken it all away.



All in, a great lot of fun, it occupied them for a full hour and Packrat and them had yummy cookies to dunk into milk. Of course, I didn't eat them since I'd seen the giant slab of butter that went into the batter. Unfortunately, I have no photographs of the end product because it was just too risky taking photos of the cookies. My little sniffer dogs would have hunted me down even if they were at the other end of the house had I even opened the cookie jar and photographed them. And I wasn't going to let it spoil their dinner.

They did have it for breakfast and tea for two consecutive days.


Technorati Tags: twins, baking cookies

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Illogical math

Over lunch, I grew increasingly panicky at the thought of sending my kids to school in Singapore. It's not a new fear but every now and again, I am reminded of how much I'll hate having to subject my kids to it and how I'll be stressed and inadvertently stress them out.

This afternoon's topic of conversation was the recent but yearly and to-be-expected uproar over the PSLE Math paper (do not scroll to the bottom if you want to try the question because the answer is there)

"Jim bought some chocolates and gave half of it to Ken. Ken bought some sweets and gave half of it to Jim. Jim ate 12 sweets and Ken ate 18 chocolates. The ratio of Jim’s sweets to chocolates became 1:7 and the ratio of Ken’s sweets to chocolates became 1:4. How many sweets did Ken buy?"



My brain shut down after Ken bought some sweets. Anyway, 12 year-olds are expected to solve this. How? I don't know.

Not bad enough, I was also duly informed that when what 6+8 is, 14 is incorrect.

6+8 has to first, = 10+4 and then subsequently= 14
11+11 has to first, = 10+1+10+1 = 20+ 2 before arriving at 22.

If the child had the audacity to skip from 6+8 to 14, he would be marked wrong. Which is terrible because it's a) the CORRECT answer and b) insisting that the child can ONLY do it ONE way and that's why we're so screwed and complain that the graduates we produce can only think ONE way.

What do they expect when their primary school math insists on teaching them there is only ONE way to derive the answer?

It's annoying and it's worrying.


Technorati Tags: children, Singapore, primary school, education

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The Imelda Marcos Syndrome

Most toddlers I know have some sort of obsession and it starts round about 2 when they start becoming more independent and develop a mind of their own. Both Evan and Jordan have very fixed ideas about what they want to eat, watch on television or Youtube (their latest obsession).

Jordan, being a girl is also very particular about what she wants to wear. She's into pretty dresses and pretty shoes. She's absolutely chuffed that I've gone back to work because she gets to see me in what she terms as 'pretty clothes'.

Sometimes, it drives me crazy because she is hard-headed and adamant and requires extremely creative parenting like allowing her to wear her 'pretty dresses' to school just so that I can get her to go to school. Ok, admittedly. that's not very creative but that's the gist of what I occasionally have to contend with.

Anyway, a few days ago, what triggered off a major tantrum was shoes.

I usually get them to wear sandals to school because they climb around in the playground and the grass can be muddy. No slippers, no expensive shoes and no ill-fitting shoes. The last one was added because given the choice, the little fashionista would wear her younger, but bigger brother's shoes and will end up tripping over herself. If she didn't cry every time she did that, I wouldn't mind so much. But she cries as if it is the second coming and she's not dressed for it. So, the answer is usually no. On this particular morning, she decided she wanted to wear boots to school.

Boots are a good idea if it is raining and if they fit. On this morning, it wasn't raining and she'd picked up a pair that I'd just bought from Perth that were too big for her. Because it would be too big a battle and take too much time to convince her to take off her boots and wear something else, I let her but secretly brought her sandals in a bag to swop in the shoe cabinet in school. By the time it's outdoor play in school, she'd have forgotten what she wore in and merrily put on her sandals.

It did allow me to take some hilarious photographs. Because Jordan was wearing boots, Evan insisted he needed to wear his too. And for him, because his shorts are a tad too long for his short-ish legs, he looks like a little fisher-boy.






















It creates a nice fashion statement I guess and since fashion is always impractical, I guess they're on the right track. A colleague of mine said that she didn't expect any less of my kids since I am pretty particular about what I wear as well, even now, while I am pregnant.

But if they were my kids, it shouldn't be shoes. It should be bags. Although the twins have caught on to that one. See the Kate Spade bag in the picture? When I brought it out, Evan commented very loudly "Mommy new bag!"

Yes, Mommy's new bag. Actually not new. It's just been rotated back out to get some air.


Technorati Tags: twins, toddlers, fashion sense, Kate Spade

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The path to madness

A friend sent me an invitation to take the twins to a trial music class. It was something to do on a Saturday morning so I thought why not? It might be fun, I like music, I would like the twins to like it too and once again, I thought it'd be fun.

All I can say, now that it's over is that thank goodness it was only 45 minutes long and we were late to begin with. In that half an hour, I developed a criteria for parents to judge what sort of enrichment class they should put their kids into.

1. Parents should not spend the entire session checking the time.
2. Parents should not spend the entire session rolling their eyes and trying not to laugh.
   
3. Content in the class should not be beyond the ability of the parents.
   

Why do I say this?

Packrat and I were bored out of our mind when the teacher started singing the scales to apparently "improve the child's auditory ability". Baby J gave me a look when she was made to sing the scales and said "Mommy, no like song". No kidding. Mommy no like either! And Mommy also thinks that the same "auditory ability" can be developed by singing anything from November Rain to Uptown Girl to Twinkle Twinkle Little Stars.

When the teacher gave the kids a paper plate and a crayon and told them to draw, while explaining to the parents that the music would stimulate the child's creativity and help them draw better, we exchanged a very pointed "ARE YOU KIDDING ME?" look and wondered what parent would be dumb enough to pay money and fall for the spiel.

What took the cake was when the teacher whipped out pictures of musical instruments. Not simple ones like the piano or guitar which the twins know but complicated ones that I only know because I had to study it for music theory when I played the piano. What 2-3 year old knows what a Viola, Cello, Double Bass, Oboe, Harpsichord or Piccolo is?

On top of that, playing classical music pieces (albeit famous pieces) and asking the aforementioned 2-3 year olds to identify which instruments were used for which piece just made me wonder who they really were trying to kid? Yes, Mozart did spectacular things when he was 3 but I really don't expect my kids to do the same. Plus, he had to make up for the fact that he was unfortunately named Wolfgang Amadeus. My children have normal names and have nothing much to compensate for at this point.

So all in, I thought the twins would have had more fun at the park on Saturday morning. When I asked Packrat who would pay any sort of money for these sort of classes, he said that those parents intent on hot-housing their kids and go the way of enrichment as a form of keeping their children occupied in all the hours they are not in school. And the parents that believed that it was essential for the giftedness of the child to ensure they not only know how to identify a piccolo when it is heard over Symphony 92.4, they know how to spell it too and by 7, know how to play it blindfolded with their toes.

I rolled my eyes but knew that what he said was true because there truly was one parent of that specimen present at the class. She claimed her daughter being a few months shy of 3 was too advanced for the class. She also told the girl to draw a square with the scarf that was given to the children when they were invited to do free movement to the music (one of the few things I liked about the class) and proceeded to remind the girl that a square had four equal sides and right angles in every corner.

So was there anything else that I liked about the class at all?

Well, yes. The music and movement bit like I said. And them plonking around on a baby piano of sorts.







































But all the things I liked about it, I could conceivably do myself. All I need is some chiffon material and access to a piano that no one minds wrecking.



Technorati Tags: twins, hothousing, music class

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