♥Zara♥
Finally, 6 years and 3 months old, she had a shakey tooth (lower central incissor).

As she has 2 new teeth sprouting (her 1st permanant molar), and caused the gums to be pushed back and bleed (she spat out blood when she was brushing her teeth this morning! Gave me a shock!), I brought her to the dentist to have a look.

Since we were there, I got her shakey tooth extracted.

As for the bleeding and pushed back gums, it’s common when the permanant molar sprouts. And to think all the teething problem is over!

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♥Zaria♥

Just the other day, I called her mei-mei, and she told me “Don’t call me mei-mei. I’m not small any more. I’m 5 years old.” o.O”

This girl has grown up. Yup. Since she was able, she has been sleeping with 1 finger in my belly button.

Daddy has been reminding her that she’s older and has stronger fingers now, and she shouldn’t be poking my belly button any more, or she might actually puncture my belly button and blood will start gushing out like a fountain.

That did deter her a bit, and slowly, when she’s concious, she’ll retract her finger, and then, just leave her hand on my belly when she goes to sleep.

If you are my Facebook friend, you have read about Zaria being our new English police.
In a carpool journey home from Zaria’s school, I overheard this conversation between Aidan, who’s my neighbour’s son, and Zaria.
Aidan : No lar. (forgot what prompted him to say that)
Zaria : There’s no la in English.
Aidan : What are you saying lar?
Zaria : Hello Aidan, speak Harry Potter English please. There’s no lar wor meh in English.
o.O”

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On a different occasion, Zaria was being naughty, and I was scolding her; the more I scolded her the more funny stunts she carried out, and the more I scolded her. Zara gave me the solution. ”Mum, just stop scolding her.”
I replied, “But she’s naughty.”
Zara told me, “But if you keep scolding her, she’ll be naughtier, and you’ll get more stressed. If you stop scolding, she will also stop being naughty.”
There, my new parenting guru.
o.O”

I recently read somewhere that all humans are born with 100 billions brain cell. And for learning to happen, brain cells need to connect. In other words, if I want your children to be smarter, they have to have more brain cells connections. Next time if you want to scold someone chi-sin (痴线), think twice, it might actually be a compliment. 😛

Children’s brains are like a sponge, they are hungry for information and knowledge, given the right exposure or stimulus, more brain cells will be connected, and they will be connected tots.

I’m happy to know that breast feeding has a part to play in assisting with this as well. Breast milk is found to have gangliosides, which help brain cells to connect for smarter learning. The girls being both breastfed for 18months, would have been taken lots of gangliosides.

I won’t say my two girls are smart, but I think they are very good in applying what they have learnt (consciously or unconsciously).This in fact indicates, their brain cells are connected, see how they can teach others what they have learnt from their daily lives?

One day, on our way home from school, Zara was exceptionally quiet while her car pool friends were shouting chatting away.
I asked her if everything was alright or if anything happened in school.
She sighed a big sigh, “I’m so bored in being me.”
I asked her why did she say that? Why is she feeling bored.
She replied, “Just because every day I have to repeat everything I do.”
o.O”
I have to explain to her life is full of routines, just like us, we have to wake up daily to work, pick the children up from school, etc.
She continued to keep quiet. Then after a few moments she told me, “But.. I’m best at being me. So, I’ll continue to be me.” And the smiles and chatter box returned. o.O”

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Zaria was dancing ballet in the house. I had to warn her that she cannot try to walk with her toe pointed (Zara used to do that when she ‘danced’ the ballet).
Zaria replied, “Ya, only in cartoon you can do that right? Because in cartoon you can do anything.”
o.O” Well said.

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Zara attended a friend’s birthday party, and she wanted to wear her nicest dress, with lace, ribbons and sewn on sequins.
When she was there, she was playing and doing all kinds of funny stunts. She didn’t ruin the dress, but she was drenched in sweat at the end of the party. I told her in the car she shouldn’t have worn the beautiful dress, because she was playing like a troll crazy in the party.
She replied, “In a party, you are supposed to have fun and play right? Not sit around and do nothing!”
o.O”

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I was writing this blog post, and reading aloud the content.
Zaria asked, “Are you telling your invisible friend about me?”
o.O”
Indeed, my blog readers are my invisible friends.

It’s the 3rd week of school, so far, everybody is doing fine.

Lucky for me, there is another child, who lives nearby attending the same kindergarten as Zaria, so we have arranged to carpool, taking turns to either send or pick up the children.

And there are 2 other children across the street attending the same primary school as Zara, so again, we arranged to carpool.

I only have to make a trip to the kindergarten daily, and 3 trips a week to the primary school.

I’d also signed Zara up for extra curicular activities in school. Her Saturdays will be full. Starting the day at 8:30am to 4pm, Arts & Craft, Han Yu Pin Yin, Gymrama and Maths one after another. I only insisted she took Han Yu Pin Yin, the rest, it was her choice. And because the fee is cheap, I told her she can just join in, and if any time she found it stressing, she can drop off.

Last Saturday was the first time she went through a jam packed day, and when I asked her if things were ok at the end of the day, she said it was, and all the classes were fun. Which is a good sign. I think the mommy couldn’t take the stress from driving as much as she did. I was going to the school 3 times that day, to bring her to the next class and pay fee for that class etc. TIRED!

Just more than 2 weeks in school, she seems to have improved in Chinese. At least now, I can give her full instructinos in Chinese, and she can ‘translate’ the instruction back to me in English (I made her do it just to gauge her understanding). But she herself admitted she couldn’t do it the other way (translate English instructions to Chinese), not yet anyway.

As for Zaria, she’s doing fine in kindergarten without her jiejie, and she’s rather proud to be in 5 year old class now, holding her big homework pouch to school, and then back home. She’s started having homework, and so far, she only threw tantrum once, preferring to spend time on iPad instead of getting her homework done. One threat that I will send her back to 4yr old class, and she quickly picked up the pen, and did her homework (albeit sobbing).

I’d also started her on Yamaha JMC. She’s enjoying her class very much, she thinks her teacher is better than Zara’s (she follows me to Zara’s class sometimes), and always boasts about it. If you have children attending JMC, you’ll realise the first song they teach the children is the Happy Fingers song, and the children are supposed to stick each of their fingers out, thumb, pointer, middle, index and pinky. Here is what Zaria said about finger number 4 (ring man), “Finger number 4 is so stupid and stubborn, don’t know how to stand up.”

These girls, they keep me busy, they keep me entertained.

It’s back to school.. after a month’s off.
Zara to Standard One in a Chinese school and Zaria back to her kindergarten alone.

♥Zara♥
We went to school for orientation last Friday, to pay for her fees, collect her text books (from government) as well as to buy her work books.
The headmaster then had a communication session with the parents, while the kids got familiarised with the teachers.
The school is not too huge in size, there are 320 children in Standard One, out of which 80 are Malays (and our goverment is still in denial, not building enough Chinese schools).
She’s in a class with 38 others.
The amount of books she has is A LOT, so we had to get her a huge trolley bag (those of you with Trunkie, you can consider using that too. :P).
After orientation, I asked her, “So how? Are you ready for Standard 1?”
Zara replied, “I don’t think I’m ready yet.”
I asked her again, “Then how?”
She replied, “Well, I don’t think I can go back to kindergarten, so I’ll just have to handle.”
Big girl in deed.
(And no, her school doesn’t have the horrendous toilet mentioned here, they have squatting toilets which are pretty clean)
She doesn’t know anyone in her class, although some close friends of hers are in other classes (Standard 1 and 2); but this girl is sociable and she makes friends easily. I’m more worried about her Chinese than her ability to mix around.
1st day of school, she’s fine, even started swapping snacks with a friend she just got to know during recess. 🙂

♥Zaria♥
Seing how much there is to Standard 1 (the big bag, the books, the coaching that Daddy is giving Zara on her BM), she said, “I don’t want to go to Standard 1, I want to be four years old forever!” o.O”

Asked if she wanted to go back to school, she said, “Go to school go to school, how many times more do I have to go to school? I like holidays more!” o.O”

But no fuss for her when she went to school, happy to meet her BFFs.

♥Daddy♥
Worried.
He only realised on the day of the orientation that there is no more English maths nor science, and Zara will be doing both subjects in Chinese.
How is Zara going to know the English terminologies? When all Chinese in China are trying to learn English, here we are sending our kids to learn Chinese.
These are his comments.
Do we have any alternatives? Malay school? Private school? But still these subjects are taught in Malay.
International school? Can we afford it?

♥Me♥
Tired and Worried.
I have 1 attending school in morning, and another in the afternoon.
And a lot of people think working from home means you have all the time in the world to do all these chauffering, or homework coaching etc etc. As if.
Anyway, I’m doing some car pooling with neighbours.
I’m not trying to be kiasu, but the pressure is there; and because Chinese is not a language she’s comfortable with, am worried if she’s going to be held back due to the language.

Anyway, we shall see.

The other day, when I put on the primary school uniform on Zara, and saw her in the blue pinafore, I just realized, my little girl has grown up so much, and there’s this sense of sadness. Do all parents go through the same thing?
When the time comes for her to try on her wedding dresses, how would I feel then? Sigh. Can’t imagine.

I wish I was like HN and HN’s husband Lybil, who are so soft spoken, especially with their children Sophie and Sethy.

We do raise our voices with the children, and although they may not like it, sometimes we just had to do it to get our message across. What do the children do when we raise our voices at them?……….

Not sure what happen, but I think Zaria was scolded by Daddy who was coaching Zara with Bahasa Malaysia (she was probably disturbing them). So she came upstairs extremely upset, and complained to me, “I don’t like my Daddy any more. I think I’m going to throw him in the dustbin. But if he says sorry, I’ll pick him back up from the dustbin.”

And later the same day, Zaria wanted take some photos with the point and shoot, so I let her. I strapped it around her neck (in case it dropped, it won’t crash on the floor). She happily went down to look for Daddy, planning to take some shots of Zara and Daddy.

Daddy, of course freaked out. His cameras are his second (and third) wife ok. He told me off claiming I’m crazy to let Zaria play with the camera, and snatched the camera away from Zaria and told her loudly she cannot play with the camera. So again, Zaria came up stairs, this time crying. I told her that’s because the camera is so precious to Daddy. She replied through her sobs, “If I die already.. then you no more meimei right. If the camera spoilt, daddy can still buy another one. Who’s more precious.” o.O”

Zara on the other hand tries not to say anything mean when she’s angry (one part of her nightly prayer is “Jesus please help me not to say anything bad.”). So what does she do? She draws.

Today, she got scolding from me because she was fooling around when she was doing her keyboard practice. So she stopped playing, turned off the keyboard, went down stairs, and 15 minutes later came upstairs with this drawing.

(I locked her in a chamber, and shot her with a gun, the speech bubble is saying, “I don’t love you.” See how wicked I looked! o.O”)

I laughed when I saw that (couldn’t help it, really). I asked her if I looked so evil? And if I would ever shoot her? She broke down and cry, only after some hugging and reassurance, she stopped crying and felt better.

The other day Zara taught me something.

Zaria was playing with a watermelon in the kitchen.
First trying to kick it like a ball.
I told her, “Don’t do it, this is not a ball!”
Then she tried picking it up.
I raised my voice, “DON’T DO IT. This is NOT a ball!”
She ignored me, and then picked it up (she’s really strong, this one), and then tossed it like a ball.

“SPLAT“

The watermelon cracked into two.

It was the time of the month, you know, when women get grouchy, and easily irritable.

So I took the cane, and gave her a twack on the butt.

She cried of course. Looking for Jelly, then Daddy to ‘sayang’ her.

Zara who just came out from the toilet, saw the watermelon cracked into two, and Zaria wailing. She told Zaria, “Never mind Zaria, it’s a small matter. It’s not like you broke mummy’s precious jug or what.”

It’s like this light just shone down on me. Yah, it’s not even a precious jug or what, why did I cane her? Then I told Zara, “But I caned Zaria, even though it’s not a precious jug.”
Zara told me, “It’s ok. Just remember next time don’t do it again.” o.O”

So that day, I learnt from my child.

Thank You.

Daddy likes to say we always end up in the shopping mall during the weekends, but guess what? He was away this weekend, and we didn’t step into the mall at all, and the girls still had a swell time.

We did something we would never have done if he was around, we had a sleep over at my sister’s place, and spent the whole of Sunday there. With Tasha, their cousin, also sleeping over, the girls absolutely enjoyed themselves.

On Saturday, I did some cookie decoration just for fun, and kept some icing for girls to have a go with decorating their own cookies.

To stop myself having to scream the
“Be careful!!”
“Don’t spill it!!”
“Watch out!!”
I set up the table at the porch, and let the girls make whatever mess they wanted, and I could focus on trying to take some shots of them hard at work.

Zaria did hers real quickly, she topped them with lots of icing and lots of sprinkles, all for her beloved Auntie Jelly.

And she proudly showed off her decoration.

Zara took her time, but she was frustrated they didn’t come out they way she wanted.

I think I’ll have to invest in the edible marker set for her to do drawing on cookies, but I kind of like her abstract ‘art’ pieces here.

We then drove to my sister’s, had dinner there, and the girls (Zara, Zaria and Tasha) played together. When it was bed time, I think I knocked out first, the last phrase I heard was from Tasha, “Agnes yi-yi, who talks must go outside one.” (she was repeating this the whole time, when I said whoever spoke next would have to go outside). I was too lazy to reply the 100th time, “Yah, now go to sleep.”

On Sunday, we went to the market together. Jelly deliberately not get ready in the morning although I told her she had to follow me to the market a day before (normally it’s Daddy and I who did marketting together, and she never had to follow). I was handling the 3 girls alone until later my sis and her family came and joined us (they woke up slightly later than us).

In the evening, it was to the most ‘fancy’ (borrowing this word from Zaria) birthday party I’d ever attended. My cousin threw a grand birthday party for her daugther, Monique’s 2nd birthday. I have to write a post about all the fancy stuff, but here is one photo of Tasha, full of courage, singing I Love You from Barney.

(Look at Zaria covering her mouth, she was so afraid she had to sing too.)

When Zaria was younger, I mean not even 1 year old, we found her having this liking to hold on to something to sleep, i.e. remote control (See photos from here and here). Now at 3yrs plus, she still likes to do that.

Unlike Zara, whose loyalty lies with her softoy Fifi and a piece of linen cloth, Zaria holds on to anything her heart fancies on that day.

Today, it was the party rattle.

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Yesterday morning, Zaria woke up declaring she didn’t want to go to school. Her excuse, “I know how to read already wut. I know all the names of the shopping malls. I don’t need to go to school.” o.O”

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She got caned again in the night. She was eating dinner (carrots and potatos) using her hands, and I was telling her to user her utencils instead of her hands, and she didn’t like it.
When I took the last piece of fish cake from the common dish, she stood up and reached over to take it from my plate, then tossed it to Jelly’s plate, and told me, “You don’t eat!!”
When I told her sternly to put it back on my plate, she tossed it towards me, on the table, instead.
I smacked her twice.
Then I told her, “Now you are done with your dinner, go and wash your hands.”
Guess what she did? She walked over to the sofa, and wiped her oily hands on the sofa!! Just to spite me.
SMACK! SMACK! SMACK! SMACK! 4 strokes went to her buttocks.

How would you have reacted if you were me?

Like the weather, she gets moody real quickly, and she calms down real fast too. After her shower, she came over to me with her upturned lips and said, “Sorry mummy.”

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The day before, Zaria saw Jelly packing clothes for her (to change at my sister’s place since we were going over); Zaria came over to me and said meekly, “Maaa, I don’t want to go to jail.”
She thought we were packing her bags to send her to jail because of her attack on her sister!

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As for Zara, here is how her eye lid looks like.

On Tuesday

On Wednesday

Getting better, and kids, they don’t bear grudges. They are best of friends still (for now!).