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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