Note leaving

The whole family has taken to leaving notes for each other.

There are various functions for the note-leaving.

For me, it's a case of expediency.

It's convenient, it stops me from nagging till I turn blue in the face and the little reminders do in fact act as little triggers for them to do things. Sometimes we  do it because it's funny and it gets a rise out of them.

Sometimes, it's purely to remind me to do something. Regardless of how much we remind them to pass us stuff to sign the minute they get it, they often only remember just as they are going to bed or when I'm not home. I take comfort in the fact that Evan is very responsible and will remember things told to him so occasionally, I take advantage of it and ask him to leave a note to remind me to for instance, "pick his sister at 3 pm".

Tangentially, Evan needs better handwriting because he wouldn't really know if I 'sighed' on the form.

     

 

Other times, they do it because they've done something wrong and it's easier to confess it on paper than to face the music. Muffin has recently discovered the joys of procrastinating. So he'll read and sit and play even if he has work to do. A few days ago, despite the fact that he didn't do anything else and spent a good 4 hours just sitting at his desk (only to get up for the bathroom and have dinner) he hadn't finished his Chinese homework which included a five pages of exercises and two pages of writing. His siblings, having more experience with the wrath of mom 'orrhhed' at him to the point that he trembled with fear and then ominously warned him of imminent punishment i.e. (Mummy is going to kiiiiiilll you). In an attempt to pre-emptively placate a potentially angry mummy and avoid sudden 'death', he left a note on his board with multiple "very"s to highlight his recalcitrant behaviour. 

Procrastination at work

Unlike her brothers who leave notes for purely functional reasons, Jordan leaves me notes for everything. To tell me what happened in the day, to recount something bad that had happened, prayer requests, to apologise to me for sassing me, everything.

Funny how they don't leave Packrat notes.

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Dealing with loss- a 9 year old's perspective

JED lost their great granddad last week. The twins, in particular were close to him because they grew up living in the same house as he did. There's something to be said about living in a multi-generational house.

Anyway, he passed, at a ripe old age of 100. We knew it was soon because he wasn't doing so well and had done our best to prepare JED. Even then, when we found out that he had passed on, telling them was still going to be no easy feat. For good or for bad, Grandma broke the news to them before we managed to.

Jordan was inconsolable. Evan was very take charge. He took it upon himself to ring myself and Packrat to let us know. He also let us know that Jordan was distraught about it. Muffin was confused because he didn't have as many memories about Tai Gong as the twins did and he couldn't understand why he wasn't as upset as they were.

It took some time for us to talk Jordan through her despair. And what perhaps helped them all process it was for them to write cards to Tai Gong to place before the casket. We also got them to share their best memories of Tai Gong.

Jordan: Going into his room and taking his hymnal and singing with him.

Evan: Stealing butter cookies from his cookie tin (the traditional round tin of butter cookies)

Muffin: The stuffed tiger that taught him to roar loud.

Allowing them to talk about Tai Gong seemed to help. So did bringing them to the wake. When there weren't many people about in the afternoon, we brought them over and allowed them to say goodbye and place their flowers and cards.

We didn't stop them from crying. Some of the elders tried to console them by telling them not to cry since Tai Gong was in a better place and had gone to heaven but we told them they could cry and it was okay to be sad. Because we didn't hide how sad we were to have lost him, we told them they didn't have to either.

By the end of the funeral, everyone was emotionally spent but I think we were all calm and at peace with Tai Gong's passing. And while I thought we were done processing our grief, I found a letter Jordan had written to a friend, two days ago. The passing of a friend's cat had triggered reminders of all the deaths she's had to see through this year and that's when I realised that in their own little ways, they were still coming to terms with Tai Gong's passing.

He had no longer been part of our daily lives but I think he was always at the back our minds. And even though the twins had memories of him, it didn't seem enough to make up for the fact that he wasn't physically present anymore. So slowly, they have to work through it and as parents, we are just there to answer their many questions and hold them tight when it gets too much.

 But in the little things that they have said and done since Tai Gong's passing, they're also showing themselves to be little grown up beings in more ways than one. And I'm pretty sure, Tai Gong had a little bit to do with that too.

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What mornings are like...

Picture essay of the first hour after the morning alarm goes off.

Pictures by Jordan.

The alarm goes off at 6 am. 

Is it a school day? 

Disgruntedly washing up.

Asleep but he remembers to lift the toilet seat.

Breakfast Reading

A hot breakfast with the sun streaming in.

Time to leave for school. Bye to Min the cat. 

Finally, feeling jaunty enough to head off to school.

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Weight of the World

Evan is a worry wart. He worries about everything. He is the 'glass is half empty' kind of boy. He worried when we travelled without him, that the plane would crash. He worried when I was sick because I might be more sick when he lets on. Recently, his worries have become more concrete and it's been keeping him up at night.

We've been trying to encourage the twins to read the newspaper or watch bits of the news on television. Over the Chinese New Year, while out at lunch, Evan caught Channel News Asia on TV in the restaurant. While he couldn't hear anything, he could read that there had been an earthquake in Christchurch and Taiwan. He also saw glimpses of a documentary about the Paris attacks and something about the Zika virus. On top of that, he had read somewhere about MERS and Ebola. He knows there isn't a cure and that they die a horrible death and it's contagious.

His questions to me over the new year were whether Ebola existed in Singapore and what happens if we got Ebola in Singapore? Has there been anyone in Singapore that got infected by Ebola. I try and convince him we won't because we are not in the African continent.

"But what if...?" is his response.

I try many tactics.

I try to just hold him and explain to him the situation with just facts. We've managed to keep ourselves Ebola free very effectively.He wants to know if there is a cure. I tell him they're working hard on a vaccine and are almost there. "But no cure/ vaccine right now, right?" Sigh.

I try to use humour. No, you won't get MERS because you need a camel to sneeze on you. That got him to laugh but unfortunately, he knows that monkeys carry Ebola and there are monkeys all over Singapore and he knows it.

I try to explain to him that worrying about things didn't really work and often they made things worse. What would help him sleep and what would actually make things better if he could try and come up with solutions. In the short term, ways to help himself not worry about it (i.e. think through the facts - use logic) and in the long term, ways he could help other children and people who might worry about the same thing (i.e. we told him how scientists and researchers from other countries were trying to figure out the cure for Ebola). After all, he has said that he wants to be scientist.

I teach him to pray for God to take away his worries so that he doesn't need to think about them. He tells me God hasn't heard his prayers. I tell him that perhaps God wants him to do something about it because God's ways of answering prayers doesn't necessarily mean praying and the problem disappears!

When all else fails, I lie beside him at night and let him hold my hand tight while he tosses and turns till eventually he gives in to his tiredness.

I tell myself that it's not a bad thing that he worries because that means he's introspective and thinks about things. But it's hard to watch him struggle with these worries because he's a not yet 9 year old boy who has the weight of the world on his shoulders.

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Birds and the Bees Part 1

T'was inevitable that at some point, the twins were going to ask how babies were made.

This happened last night. In bed, just before they went to sleep. It started with Jordan lamenting that she didn't want to get pregnant or give birth because it was painful. And my telling her that it was okay to feel that now and she might change her mind later.

It's amazing that even at 8, they could fathom that accidents do happen because her anxious reply was concern about what would happen if they forgot they didn't want a baby and accidentally kissed and as a result, she got pregnant.

She missed a couple of steps there.

That's when I decided it was time that I took them through some basics. In that split second, I decided that I had to be as truthful and as informative as possible.

1. So I used the right terms. There was no couching of genitalia in more cutesy terms that we do on occasion use (though I try to be evasive here).

2. I laid down the ground rules.
a. Girls and boys have anatomy that work together to create a baby. But that doesn't happen till after marriage. Underline, underline, super bold, with exclamation marks.
b. Since the boy parts are more obvious, the definite curiosity must be tempered with the fact that asking a girl where her specific parts are could lead to very dire consequences; ranging from getting slapped to getting arrested for indecent propositioning.

3. I would explain the processes and the parts involved and talk about how to keep safe. (While I do firmly in abstinence, I want to be sure that if they chose any other path, parental wrath and chastity belts notwithstanding, they needed to be safe)

4. I would also explain where we stood as a Christian family.

I didn't quite manage to cover every bit of it. We never made it to the actual process of how a baby was made. What I had not counted on was so much laughter that it was hard to go on. There were obviously questions and here's the 8 year old's toilet humour laced FAQ.

Q. So I pee out sperm???
A: No you don't. You use the same equipment but different things can come out of it.

Q. What happens if pee came out into the woman instead of sperm?
A. You would have a partner who would be extremely pissed off with you (pun totally intended, which they actually got and sent them into greater gales of laughter) and might never ever want to let you go near her again.

Preamble:  I had explained that it was also something that ought to happen between 2 people who loved one another.
Q: What happens if you want to make love but not want a baby?
A: Then there are things that you can use, like a condom. (They had seen a condom before in a coke-Mentos experiment).
Observation: So you use something like a plastic bag to make sure the sperm doesn't swim out?
A: Uhm, yes.
Observation: Then you just throw away the plastic bag? Do you have to tie a rubber band around it so it won't spill into the bin?
A: Well, it's not exactly a plastic bag but it works the same way and yes, you'll have to tie it up to throw it away. That's only polite.

Q: It's like poking right? So won't it hurt?
A: It would hurt if it isn't done properly.

By which time, they were both convinced that copulating was going to be painful, troublesome and required the use of plastic bags.

I did make them both swear not to talk about this in school because knowing them, something would get lost in translation and calls from exasperated teachers or annoyed parents would be likely to follow.

There will probably have to be a part 2 because we never got to the actual bit of how the baby is made. Time to take out the book that I have called "How babies are made.".

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Making a will

Last year when all the air disasters started happening almost in succession, the paranoid and somewhat morbid me started worrying about what would happen to JED if anything, touch many pieces of wood, were to happen to us.

And while that is a scenario that I truly never want to consider and hope that it never ever happens, I didn't think it would wise to live in that much denial. Because my denial could one day hurt JED.

So, I started thinking about making a will.

To even make that decision to make a will was difficult. I pretty much had to stop being ostrich-like and pull my head out of the ground. And it was coming to terms with the possibility of my pre-deceasing the children.

That was hard.

But because Packrat and I occasionally travel without the children, it would truly be irresponsible for us to not have everything in place. I know of people who think that by doing so, we were cursing ourselves and our children by doing that.

We're travelling again, year end without JED. And I'm nervous about it. Every time there is yet another plane crash, I quake and shudder. But at the same time, it would be the beginning of a very huge and steep slippery slope if I stopped travelling because I was worried of orphaning my children. Then I ought to not drive because car accidents are so much more prevalent. And I shouldn't eat chicken and other hormonally enhanced meat because I could die of cancer... slippery slope.

So the only thing we could do short of cancelling the trip or carrying out a personal pre-flight check of all the aircraft we are flying (though lot of good that would do) was to get started on making the will. So I did eventually call up our lawyer friend to start the ball rolling. 

Preliminarily, he said we had to think about various things, including what our declarable assets were (not much!) and in my opinion, more importantly, who ought to be the executor of our will and who would be the legal guardians of JED. 

Apparently, the executor has to be someone who is good with the nitty gritty but also someone who knew the children because they would be the ones who would eventually have to deal with the executor. 

The executor and the legal guardians also had to be people who would be less likely to pre-decease us, meaning that they couldn't be aged or ill at this point. So no grandparents. Picking the executor, we felt was an easier decision to make because the executor's role is a short-termed one. The legal guardian, that was going to be a different matter.

It led to an interesting conversation between Packrat and myself about who ought to be JED's legal guardians. 

We had loose parameters: 

1. The people in question had to love kids even if they didn't have any. 

2. They had to be familiar with and to JED (Children stories are often have the poor protagonist staying with a mean aunt/ relative because the child had been orphaned) and loved  JED. So preferably people they were close  to. 

3. They had to be people who understood our parenting philosophy and hopefully would parent in approximately the same manner. 

4. They had to be people who would raise the children in strong Christian faith. 

The various parameters did whittle down some we were considering. Eventually our decision was to ask two of very close friends as well as one of our siblings. When I asked the sibling, the response was "YAY! Pizza and ice cream for dinner every day!" Ah hence, the need to for co-guardianship. 

But when I told our close friends it would be a co-guardianship arrangement, their response was "How's that going to work?" and my response to them was "We'll be dead. You all can go slug it out." 

Moments of reprieve and relief in what is obviously a very serious topic of conversation.

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Angels on my shoulders

In cartoons, when a character is torn between his conscience and what he wants to do, there is always an angel in white and a demon in black or red on either shoulder whispering.

This is how I've felt, this first full week of school; not so much a demon taunting and tempting me to do something I really desire but a crazy controlling mom with helicopter rotors on her head (read: crazy) whispering and speaking directly to the neurotic, worried, anxious mama in me. At the same time, the zen mom on the other shoulder whispering, slightly louder, that I should let the twins figure things out for themselves.

Thankfully, there haven't been people trying to steal their lunch money but there have been enough situations present that make me want to step in and help them. But that would be against my better judgement. It would make things easier for them, solve their problems for them but they won't be any wiser for it.

Scenario 1

So Evan tells me his allowance is insufficient. We give him $2 but we stipulate that he must come home with at least one coin in his wallet. Iin other words, he is not allowed to spend the whole $2. Anyway, a plate of his favourite char siew rice is $1. He has also fallen in love with the Milo ice blended which is ridiculously priced at $1.50 (I'm not going to start on how ridiculously expensive his canteen food is!). So he wants more money.

Crazy Helicopter Mom wants to give him more money. It isn't his fault that the school canteen is expensive. He shouldn't need to go hungry.

Zen Mom says no. $2 for a Primary 1 kid is sufficient pocket money. And he needs to figure out how to budget. He can't have everything. If he wants the Milo, he can't have the char siew rice. If he wants the char siew rice, he needs to just drink water. In short, he needs to learn how to make decisions. 

The compromise- He has to plan ahead. If he wants the Milo, he needs to tell me ahead of time and I'll pack him a sandwich so that he doesn't need to buy a rice dish. That way, he isn't hungry, he's had his Milo but he isn't broke.

Scenario 2
Jordan tells me that one of the few girls whose name she knows in class is the girl beside her. I ask if she likes the girl. She nods affirmatively but then adds on "She is always angry at me and always scolds me." I ask if she knows why and she shrugs.


Crazy Helicopter Mom wants to march to school and find out why this girl keeps scolding my daughter and wants to tell Jordan to go play with other people. She wants to go and get the teacher to intervene on Jordan's behalf.

Zen Mom says no. Let her fight her own battles and let her figure out how to deal with unpleasant people in class. She might also be, in her clueless way annoying the girl so she has to realise that and stop.

There was no compromise. I just left it. As a teacher, I knew that the teacher wouldn't appreciate being asked to play UN between two girls on an inconsequential situation. I didn't want to tell the teacher how to do her job.

Scenario 3
Jordan has inherited my gene for loving everything there is in the book shop. She tells us that she spent all of recess queuing at the book shop to buy a sketch book, a pink one at that, but she never got the book because the bell went before she got to the front of the queue.

Crazy Helicopter Mom was upset that she had wasted all her time queuing at the book shop and that she didn't have time in her precious 30 minute break to play.

Zen Mom (well, this time channeling Packrat) reminds me that we all went through that and it is one recess in a whole lifetime more of recesses.

The compromise- We've stipulated that they are not to buy stuff from the book shop any time they want to. But with all the money they bring home and save through the month, they can choose to buy one thing a month with their savings. I tell Jordan that she is to find out how much the sketch book costs and save towards it. And when Packrat or myself go and pick her up, we will queue with her after school to buy the sketch book. That way, she gets her recess, she learns to save up for what she wants and the crazy helicopter mom in me gets to control what she buys from the book shop.

Scenario 4
I volunteer at Evan's school during chapel. They have put me in charge of a class not his. Their rationale is we are there to serve the school, not our kid. Fair enough. But when we entered the hall for that first chapel, I realised that there weren't any P1 boys there. They were all in class, being escorted to the hall by their teacher. So he was all alone. Being new, he didn't want to sit alone in the empty row. He wanted to hang with me while I got briefed.

Crazy Helicopter Mom wanted to pull him onto her lap. Any extra time to hug and cuddle is always good.

Zen Mom told me to just leave him, tell him to take out his book and read till his classmates trooped in. Sitting quietly and reading never killed anyone.

The compromise- I told him I was going to get briefed and had to look after another class. I told him he could read quietly and he wanted to look for me, he could turn around and wave.

It is hard letting the twins grow up and fighting their own battles. They are no longer in the sheltered confines of kindergarten where everyone is looking out for them. As a mom, that's a hard thing for me to do because I want to protect them. But I have to and Packrat, the voice of the Zen mom on my shoulder reminds me that we aren't going to always be there and the only way they grow is to fight, and sometimes fail, these battles by themselves.

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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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