Bus is best.

Packrat is at reservist. That means, he's taken the car and all the picking up and dropping off that I usually do has to be done by bus.

JED love it. Public transport rocks. Put the on a double decker bus in the front seats and they are as happy as clams.

Never mind the heat. Never mind the wait for the bus. Never mind the trek up the hill from the road to their school.

They stop and pick up leaves, flowers and sticks. They stop to look at the ants building a nest and chase butterflies and birds.

By the time they get to school, they are flushed pink in the cheeks and brimming with stories to tell their teachers and friends.

On my part, it means I do less in a day than before and I am much more exhausted; what took ten minutes by car takes about an hour by bus. But apart from that adjustment, JED are nonplussed.

May it always stay this simple to keep them happy!

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Painting, mosquitoes and an unexpected conversation

A grocery run led me across the road where I saw a marquee set up and long tables where people seemed to be painting. On closer inspection, it was a community event set up by the constituency- the all powerful one; Tanjong Pagar and there was indeed painting- communal batik painting. On the other side, there was a display of mosquitoes to raise dengue awareness and balloon sculpting.

Something for each of the kids.

I high tail home to get the kids to return with all three and Packrat in tow.

As expected, Evan was fascinated with the mosquitoes; them at different stages of their life cycle- larvae, pupae and the adult ones malevolently flying about in a contained box. No photos because Evan was both fascinated and freaked out by the them and gripped on to my arms for dear life.

Both of them loved the batik painting. If I hadn't been holding the container of dye, I would have done some too. I suspect it will become a mural of sorts somewhere.

Muffin didn't do any of that but loved the balloon swords they were giving out and duelled with anyone willing to give him time of day.

They marched home with the 'swords' held high, patriotically coloured in national colours resembling a shaggy rag tag contingent for National Day.

Because it was a community event, the MPs for the constituency were in attendance. I point out to the twins one of the constituency's MPs Indranee Rajah and tell them that she helped saved their school.

Jordan walks up to her, stands by her side politely and waits while the she finishes off her conversation with someone else. The MP notices Jordan and Jordan mouthing something to her in all the noise. She bends over and Jordan says to her "I am Jordan. I am from St James Kindergarten. Thank you for saving my school." 

I can't get out of Jordan what Indranee Rajah's response was. Every time we try to ask her, she tells us what she said and smiles. But the MP did break out into a big smile and looked up at me to ask if Jordan is my daughter. I reply in the affirmative and she asks where we live; that to me is a strange question. But she does comment how nice it is that a little girl came up to her and spoke to her and how interesting that she and Evan (who had by then torn himself away from his beloved mosquitoes and appeared by my side) were twins.

Packrat's only comment on seeing a photographer take a photo of the exchange; that it doesn't appear in the press because Jordan looks like a little street urchin with wet hair, an old t-shirt and shorts paired off with wellies. Unless the press wants to try to make scruffy chic.

All this for the want of some painting and some mosquitoes.

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What kind of week it has been*

The week that has passed has been an extremely surreal and weird one. This week, I have done things that I have never done before and this isn't to say that I have stuff that I could tick off my bucket list (that is, if I had one).

Anyway, I have, in the last week,
1. Lived through the horror of Muffin getting bit by a husky. What goes round does come around. My dad tells me that the scariest day of his life was when our dog leapt up and bit me square in the eye when I was four. And now, I've had front row seats to that happening to my own child. Never again.

2. Sent off a letter from a lawyer to the dog place where Muffin got bit.
I never imagined being one of those people that had to send out 'lawyer's letters'. It was every bit as cold, intimidating and condescending as I imagined and I didn't really like being at the sending end of such a notice.

3. Become a typical Singaporean Kiasu mother watching statistics and stalking the poor admissions people at 2 schools.
Jordan's Primary One registration happened this last week. We were pretty set on the one school that I volunteered at. What complicated matters was that Jordan's grandma expressed explicit desire for Jordan to go to her alma mater, her not having had daughters to send there. All the while, we thought that grandma's school wasn't in the running, but this year, there were more vacancies and there was a possibility for Jordan to get in.

That meant I had to play my cards carefully. Give up the spot at the school I had volunteered at to possibly end up balloting for Grandma's school. To eventually make the decision, I had to call the schools almost on the hour to get updated numbers. I also appeared at Grandma's school once on the first day of registration and twice on the second day to see the break down of the numbers. Embracing the kiasu mom totally.

I couldn't have on me the responsibility of not having given Grandma's school a fair chance. But that meant a constantly elevated blood pressure and a constant urge to vomit from the anxiety of possibly making the wrong decision that might render Jordan school-less. It really was too close to call at some points. Eventually, the take up rate at Grandma's school excluded everyone outside 1 km and all I had to do then was to race down to our original school of choice to submit all our documents with about 50 minutes to spare. Never again.

4.  Packrat and I are now separated. On paper anyway. Because we wanted to give Grandma's school a fair chance, one of our addresses had to be at Grandma's house. I drew the short straw and changed mine over. Procrastination does have its benefits since a lot of my mail still gets sent there.

So on paper, both Packrat and I don't live together. When I told him that, he said "Trust you to break up with me and not tell me. Trust you to break up with me, move in to my parents house and not tell them."

To be fair, I did tell his parents.

5. Our neighbour died on us. Our neighbour is very old. She's been hospitalised for a while. An hour after she got discharged and came home, her care-giver was screaming and hysterical. That drove both Packrat and I over. While there and trying to call the ambulance, Muffin ambled over and wonders why his parents were in the neighbour's house. I had to shepherd him back and when I returned, Packrat was performing CPR under the instructions of the emergency services operator on his mobile's speaker. He looked at me and shook his head. At that moment, the Fast Response Emergency Rider entered the house, took over from Packrat for a moment before pronouncing time of death. Thereupon, the entire squad from the neighbourhood police post descended upon floor.

So the gamut of strange; over for now and hopefully for a long time yet. It does bring out the ostrich in me, wanting to bury my head in the ground and pretend to hide in full view.

Desperately in need of a vacation and a time out from this surreal reality that I find myself existing in.

* The title of this post is based off one of my favourite episodes of The West Wing, What Kind of Day Has it Been which ends with a shooting.

 

Technorati Tags: JED, Singapore, P1 Registration, lawyers

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The Pirate Girl

Jordan has had a squint since she was born. It hasn't been bad but she hasn't really out grown it. It is one of the reasons why JED are on a strict no-TV, no electronic device diet on the weekdays. While it has prevented the squint from getting worse, it hasn't really gotten any better either. In fact, as she becomes more competent with reading, the speeds at which both eyes read are markedly different.

So at her recent visit, we go every four months, the ophthalmologist says Jordan needs to be patched. Her stronger eye needs to be patched for at least an hour a day, allowing her lazier eye no choice but to do all the work. The hope is that then, her lazier eye will get stronger.

It's a hard thing to do. To get her patched. It's uncomfortable and it's hot and it's inhibits her greatly.

To make it easier, we tell her she gets to be a pirate girl; that she needs to look like a pirate so that her eye can get stronger.

It helps that their current favourite book is about pirates and the girl in the book, Tilda wears a pirate patch and has no qualms playing with the pirate boy. (On the side, it's a great book about teaching kids to not judge others because they are different; a lesson no one is ever too young to learn) 

So she dons the patch but keeps trying to pull it off, sort of like a puppy because it gets in her way and she is used to 3D binocular vision. We're starting off slow. We're giving her a lot of encouragement so that she gets used to it before we let her use it in school as recommended.

Part of me aches because she struggles with it and is physically uncomfortable with it on. But the other part of me knows that shes young and she'll adapt; she'll get used to it as long as we don't make too big a fuss about it. And to make it easier for her to bear, I've joined her in patching my eye for the duration that she has the patch on. It helps me understand what she is complaining about and helps me help her deal with it. And when she sees Mommy put it on quite gamely and do what she is doing,  she doesn't complain as much and is much more willing to try.

Technorati Tags: JED, Amblyopia

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Choosing my battles

I took a nap this afternoon. Fighting a sinus infection meant I was woozy and in no condition to play with JED.When I woke up and was conscious enough to go out and look for them, I discovered that tired little Muffin had fallen asleep. I felt bad because I hadn't caught up with him the entire day and I wasn't going to be able to do so till tomorrow morning.

It drove home the point that for me, as a mom, sleep was important. It was one reason why I stopped teaching at school. I couldn't teach and parent on 4 hours of sleep a night. I don't get very much more sleep now but I don't have to be coherent on my feet for long stretches of the day and that goes a long way in helping me. It might sound selfish but I am much less cranky, much more willing to do fun things with JED and much more tolerant of their rubbish and shenanigans.

Tangentially, there have been many in the family who have suggested that I night train Muffin. That way, I wouldn't need to waste money on diapers and that money could go towards something else. While austerity is a big deal to me, this was one thing I was reluctant to do. Night training Muffin meant that I would have to get up to bring him to the bathroom. I remember when we were intensively night training the twins, Packrat and I would take turns to get up and haul them to the bathroom. By morning, both of us looked as if we were battling a newborn again. And truthfully and others may disagree and judge me for saying this but all that night training wasn't really worth it. Till now, the twins still go through the night with more than occasional accidents and that actually means we have a lot more laundry to do in the mornings. The amount of Febreeze we use on their bed and the number of times their sheets get washed, I am certain, comes up to the same amount as their diapers cost.

And the truth of the matter is that the diapers that Muffin is using aren't exactly the most expensive on the market. He uses Drypers and it is a somewhat recent discovery. When the twins were little, Packrat refused to go anywhere near Drypers. Then, they had plastic tape, that when we removed sounded like poor quality scotch tape; that also meant that they didn't re-stick well . So we stayed well away till I saw a sample of their new ones with the flex tape that works like velcro. On top of that, the prints were adorable. Acorns (Muffin started off on the L size) and elephants (The L size he is on now), what's not to like?

Now it was easier to convince Packrat to switch to Drypers since they were reasonably priced and  often sold on offer as a two pack. That two pack, because we only use one a night, lasts a long time. And the ditzy me also loves the fact that there are elephants on his bum. Hang on, I've said that already.

                                    

Because he is much older and he only uses the one diaper a night, I don't worry so much about diaper rash. But I have realised that when Muffin strips off his own diaper in the morning (he doesn't like the feel of it on) and I sleepily grope his bum (Ok, I'm his mom and I'm allowed to!) to check if his diaper is full, I've been met more than once with an exceptionally dry bum. 

So why would I want to go through the trouble of night training him right now? I will freely admit that when the nice people at Drypers sent me a couple of packets to test drive on him, I was most thrilled that I had more reason to hold off the night training that I'm constantly nagged about. 

I think he will go through the night dry when he is ready for it and I'm not going to push it to just save money. The only reason I would love for him to go diaper-less is more about the carbon footprint than the cost to my pocket. And if he isn't ready, all that washing and laundering will similarly contribute to the already large carbon footprint.  I am also quite sure that my coping mechanisms to deal with the sleep deprivation will similarly balloon the carbon footprint. Once again, first world problems. I would love to buy diaper credits if such a thing still existed (It did a while ago but I can't find seem to find the site anymore). 

So apart from that, I make little apology for choosing sleep, sanity and diapers over deprivation, insanity and wet beds. That way, I wake up in the mornings a little cheerier and much more willing to plan adventures with them. 

Disclaimer:  Muffin's diapers were a gift from Drypers and neither he nor I got any monetary compensation for it. Apparently, if you go to the Drypers Singapore Facebook Page and ask nicely, they might give you a couple of samples too.


Technorati Tags: JED, night training, Drypers

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Saturday Morning Cartoons

JED take full advantage of the television only on the weekend rule. The minute they are done with breakfast, they ask to watch television. Since it is a losing battle that I don't have energy to fight, I give in. And this Saturday morning, they watch television as I did on Saturday mornings decades ago.

I put on Gummi Bears that we managed to borrow from a video library.

And just as I loved it years ago, so did they.

Just as I loved the the theme song long ago, so did they; swaying and humming 

I haven't heard the theme song for years but the opening words got me singing along too.

"Dashing and daring, courageous and caring, faithful and friendly, with stories to share..."

What a nice blast from the past!

  Technorati Tags: JED, The Gummi Bears

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The alma maters

It's P1 registration season and as usual, there are people who have their knickers in a knot because of the stress of not being able to get their kid into the school they want (the parents, not the kids). There has been a lot of talk in the press to scrap the alumni-old boy/ old girl phase of registration because that seems to take away the bulk of the vacancies, leaving people with no affiliation huffing and puffing.

I get that P1 registration is stressful. We are in the midst of it now. Evan's registration is done. Jordan's is the following week. And it was with great difficulty, well not really because I just had to feed frogs, that we will be able to register her in that phase.

People have asked me where I weigh in on the issue of scrapping the alumni phase since I am on both sides of the fence on that one. The boys haven't been a problem because Packrat is part of the Old Boys Association but Jordan cannot go to the boys' sister school because that was not where I was from. That thought brings me back to being in P6 and trying to figure out where I wanted to go to secondary school. My mother asked if I wanted to try that school since it was a mission school but the visions of me in a blue and white shapeless sailor dress was NOT APPEALING at all. I remember putting it down as my last choice. Ah! The clarity of hindsight.

Anyway, even with that difficulty, I would still be on the side that says don't scrap it. I'm very big on loyalty; to people and to places. And the alumni phase is about loyalty.

Granted there will be people who will abuse the phase, who will join the alumni just so that they can get their kids in but that is discounting those who are fiercely loyal. Packrat, his brother and my brothers are extremely loyal to their schools. I have very strong feelings of pride for my secondary school as well and it's something I want JED to grow up with.

But it's not just individual and personal loyalty we talk about. I don't talk much about Singapore on my blog because this blog is for JED. But this loyalty thing has got a lot to do with Singapore as well. This year's Pre-U Seminar was about “Singapore 2030: Our Future, Our Home” and one thing that was hotly discussed was the heart-ware of Singapore. The issue of identity, which has been something our government seems to be groping about, trying to figure out. Why is it that Singaporeans seem to be somewhat disconnected from Singapore? There is always talk of fleeing, even in our family. It boils down to what keeps us rooted to Singapore.

Family is one thing but connection and rootedness is another thing. Everyone spends at least 10 years in schools. Some schools more than others build on tradition and emphasise tradition. The ones that do, call it elite if you want, are the ones that seem to have a stronger alumni base. I cannot say how proud I was that my grandfather, my father, my brothers and my nephew come from the same school. That sort of pride, that sort of loyalty and identity is what Singapore needs. If the alumni phase of P1 registration gets scrapped; obviously for pragmatic reasons it makes more sense, Singaporeans lose one more way of maintaining some sort of connection to themselves and to the institutions. As it is, every time an old building is torn down in the name of progress and development, there is one less thing for us to identify with.

Loyalty, school pride and identity are not pragmatic things. People want P1 registration to be fair across the board, clear and transparent (because that's how our government claims to work) but matters of the heart are always messy. And while this system has lots of flaws and generates a great amount of stress for parents, this really isn't how we ought to fix it. I don't have an answer but I know that robbing people of a way to be loyal to something in Singapore, isn't the way forward. And I hope that it never happens.

That will be a sad day for Singapore, even if we don't realise it.

 

  Technorati Tags: JED, Singapore, Primary One Registration

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Somewhere over the rainbow

How to make a child beam from ear to ear?

1. Allow them to still have their birthday celebration in school even though their birthday was two weeks ago.

2. Allow them to choose the image print for their cake. (Evan wanted Jake and the Neverland Pirates and Jordan wanted My Little Pony)

 

3. Show them the cake that they are going to share with their friends and get them all jazzed up about it. (Evan refused to have a snack before school for fear that he would have no room for cake)

4. Have them do a combined birthday celebration. With 60 children singing happy birthday to you, it's very hard not to be thrilled. Especially when all the lights are off.

5. Not tell them what cake their cousin baked them and see their jaws drop when they realise that there was a full rainbow in it.

How to make a mom beam from ear to ear?

1. See the enormous cakes get inhaled by the children. (The guilty conscience popped up because the teachers were going to have to scrap the kids off the ceiling)

2. See Evan lick his fingers while he very graciously gave everyone else cake first (Including Jordan's teacher)

3. See seven pretty layers laid flat on a plate. I know it's a lot of colouring but hey, they get a rainbow cake just once.

4. Have both Evan and Jordan spontaneously thank God for the wonderful party they had in school even though all we did was bring cake.

5. Hear all the children talk so excitedly about the cake and the characters and hear them engaged in a conversation with the teachers about what twins are and why Jordan and Evan were twins.

I'm sad that it's the last I'm going to be doing for the twins. It's just another sign of them growing up so fast. Thankfully, there's still Muffin!


 

    

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Saturday Snapshot: Fruit glorious fruit

Cherries are in season.

But I balk at the price of cherries here (averaging $20 (Turkey ones) to $40 (US/ Rainer ones), especially having been in the US in summer and street side carts sell them for $4/ lb.

So I got it in my head to go to the Pasir Panjang Wholesale Market this morning.

We brought JED and they loved the varieties of fruit, some they had never seen before like bananas as long as their arm, jackfruits half their height and the more common ones but all contributing to a wonderful cacophony of colour. 

 The temptation was so great to buy more than just the cherries. But even if I wanted to, I couldn't store 90 extra large New Zealand Rose Apples in my house, nor could I 60 extra large Australian oranges.

Muffin proudly showed off his fruit vocabulary in Chinese. Evan went in search of giant coconuts and Jordan just wanted to touch all the pretty pretty fruit!

Look Mommy, 苹果!

We wanted that box of oranges!

The 橙 is cold!

Pretty pretty Rainer cherries

So, we made off with 5 kg of Rainer cherries to be split with a friend, 6 large apples, 6 large oranges and 6 large pears!

I think we've got our fruit intake for the week set.

Technorati Tags: JED, fruitSingapore

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Oh! The Places We Will Go!

It's amazed me that the projects that the twins get allocated seem to always suit them perfectly. Evan would have had fun with Jordan's Book project but he totally loved the geekness of his Chair project. He was in heaven when we were out looking at chairs, testing them out and insisting that we took photographs of him in them. He even got up enough guts to go to the counter at Ikea and ask them for a catalogue for his project; his words not mine.

If I got Evan to write stories or draw, he would be reluctant. But give him a dismantled chair to assemble and his eyes light up like it was Christmas. Packrat and he spent a great load of time assembling the chair, messing around and pretending to paint the chair. The name of the game was to get as dirty as possible and paint on the most impossible bits of themselves. But the chair did look very cool after and Evan and Packrat did spend a great deal of time together pretending that they had carpentering skills.

Here are some stills that I've taken out of his project booklet chronicling what he did. 

Because two projects are a lot to handle, I tried to do things that bridged both. That meant ordering and reading a book about the Wishing Chair by Enid Blyton. I'm big on getting them started on Enid Blyton, partially because of nostalgia but partially because I think there is a lot of cultural capital (post colonial though it may be) to be gained. 

And because of that, when the chair Packrat and Evan built was dry, they thought that they would mutter a few magic words (I could have sworn I heard "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious " being mumbled) and turn the chair into a Wishing one. But as with the tooth fairy, the chair's magic powers come from the fairygodmother, me. So with a wave of my manic wand and a Bibbity Bobbety Boo, I turned the Ikea chair into a Wishing Chair complete with paper wings on their legs like the one in the book.

The other thing that Evan really likes to do is to explore. Jordan is happy to stay home and draw and look at her books. Evan, however, itches to be out of the house doing new things all the time. Everyday that he is not in school, he starts the day asking "Where are we going today?". He also knows to ask to go places, the zoo, Sentosa, the Bird Park, Takashimaya! On more than one occasion, he has started his sentences with "How I wish that we could go to..."

So, we took him seriously, gathered a bunch of local travel brochures, got him to cut up his wish list and stick it up on his wishing chair. On a side note, it is downright difficult to find a travel agent when we need one. I think it's because people book their holidays online and the travel agents that do exist, exist in Chinatown and other places too far for the crazy busy fairygodmother to get to.

Thankfully, the boy doesn't have lofty dreams of going to Caribbean islands and Disneyland. Most of his choices were local. He did say he wanted the Wishing Chair to take him to Penang. But since we've just got back from there, there wasn't a real need to put it on the again. And as much as possible, we will try and take him on as many of these adventures as possible. After all, his wanderlust does very much come from the both of us.

At the same time, we picked up a silly poem about a Table and a Chair having a conversation and while he has it memorised, he isn't as keen to recite that in class than to show off his Wishing Chair and talk about all the places he would like the chair to bring him if the chair were real.

I wish the chair was real too. I would totally use it. No ERP, no ridiculous Hello Kitty type traffic jams and no expensive fuel. And what's not to love about red/ pink flapping wings on each chair leg? To quote Dr Seuss,

“You're off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting,
So... get on your way!”

That, is totally up ours and Evan's alley. 

Technorati Tags: JED, School Projects, Ikea

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The Little Story Teller's Adventures

'Tis the time of the year for project work again. Every year, before the June break, we wait anxiously to find out what project the twins will be involved in for the next term. I love project work season. I love how their classes take on relatively simple and straight forward themes (they are all pre-schoolers after all) and turn out mega projects. It always culminates in an Open House at school that I am guaranteed to leave with my jaw on the ground. I think I am relishing this year's projects with the twins more than ever because I know that it will be their last.

This is the first of 2 posts. One for Jordan and the other for Evan. Next year, Muffin starts his annual project cycle. Unfortunately, the twins would have gone on the Primary One by then. It would have been great to go to 3 project work presentations at school.

Anyway, Jordan's class project is about books.

We'd done an array of projects at home to do with books. We did some of it during their "Fake Birthday Party" but that seemed to make the project totter dangerously around obsessing on Charlotte's Web. So we moved away from the spider and the pig.

The great thing about these projects is that we can base it on what piques their interests and we can build on it. Jordan loves drawing. At the same time, with no surprise coming from a family with two English teachers, her Chinese ain't that hot. So to help her do something she wouldn't be all that comfortable doing (reading an entire Chinese story book), I get her to illustrate her book as a puppet show. And that's where she takes off. She draws all the characters herself though by the lion, she gets tired and asks me to do it. I tell her, truthfully, that I can't for the life of me draw a lion for her. I could write her 10 stories in Chinese better than I could draw the lion. I am not sure what that is testament of; my inability to draw or the delusion that my Chinese is actually better than my art.

Anyway, she came up with all the puppets, coloured and mounted them herself. I painstakingly wrote a 4 page script, careful to only use words that she could read. It became a task of Dr Seuss proportions (Green Eggs and Ham was written with 50 words). All we were short of was a cardboard theatre stage but her 'wayang kulit' attempts that started with halting Chinese soon gave way to smooth Chinese story-telling with the help of the table's edge. (Video will go up once I get one without Muffin squealing in the back ground or Evan talking to me.)

Today, she came home with an addition to her project. What must have been a lesson in school about writing a narrative was very quickly assimilated. She told us that stories required 'conflict' and could quite quickly identify 'conflict' in her bed time stories with us. On top of that, she produced a little story booklet, complete with 'conflict' as well as an ending open enough to warrant a sequel.

It combines her loves of My Little Pony (very very hot favourite with both Jordan and Evan), drawing and story telling. We left it mostly intact, wanting it to be all her  (The first page, she corrected when we read it out loud and she realised her mistakes. We stopped because we wanted to keep it in the spirit it was written).

And tonight, as a family, we discovered an almost wordless book with only 12 words in it. It's called Tuesday by David Wiesner. It's a great book because we get to make up stories based on the pictures. And we took turns making up stories. Each of us, Packrat, the twins and myself (Muffin was happy counting frogs or toads as Packrat claims) came up with a story paying attention to different details and each of us had different favourite images.  And what we identified as 'conflict' was entirely different. A lesson on perspective if you will.

We will probably let her bring the book to school to share with her class. I'm going to miss doing these mega projects with them next year when they go up to Primary One. Fingers crossed that they get to do these things then but I'm not putting any money on that.

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