When your child does not squint, does not have cross eyes, does not complain about eyes being tired, does not show any inability to string beads, put details on drawing, does not complain about not able to see writings on the board or books, how would you know if her eyes have problem?

You don’t. Just like us.

I only realised something was not quite right, when Zara dashed towards a car one day in the park. She said it looked like her Daddy’s car, that was why she got so excited. Unfornately, it wasn’t her Daddy, and the car did not look anything like Daddy’s car, except it’s also a sedan. That day, when we walked back home, I decided to test her eyes by asking her to read out the number plates of cars parked along the road.

I have low astig power, and I could read them all without my glasses. Zaria had no problem chipping in with her answers. Zara said all she could see was lines, no letters nor numbers were visible to her. o.O”

We had an appointment made for her to see an eye specialist in Tun Hussein Onn National Eye Hospital (THONEH) immediately.

5 minutes with the doctor, and she said yup, Zara has very high power and also astigmatism. She has not complained so far because the power on the left eye is lower, so the left eye is doing all the work. And because of that, her right eye has turned a bit lazy.

Next, we had her power checked (they had her eyes dilated with eye drops before checking).

And then had a pair of glasses made for her in THONEH.

Daddy wasn’t with us, and when I told him about her power, what the doctor said; he said I wasn’t asking the right questions. o.O” What is Zara’s problem anyway, why is her power so high? So we thought a second opinion should be seeked, and we made another appointment in International Specialist Eyes Centre (ISEC). This time Daddy took time off to go with me.

At ISEC, she went straight to Optemetrist. Got her power checked the 2nd time (they too had her eyes dilated with eye drops before checking).

Then we got to see the pediatric eye specialist, and here is his diagnosis. Zara has hyperopia. He did this drawing for us.
The top showing a normal eye, where far objects are focussed on the retina (yellow colour), and near objects are focussed at the back of the retina. Our lens through relax accomodation, will make the focus of the near object be on the retina (As we age, our accomodation weakened, and hence we’ll need reading glasses).

Someone with hyperopia, will have far objects focussed behind the retina, and near objects even further away from the retina, so in this case, near or far objects are not clear to this person. Being a child, Zara has higher accomodation (up to 7 to 8 diopter), and hence, she can still focus and see things. Her left eyes which has lower power, is also doing most of the work, compensating the right eye. However, it has taken a toll on the right eye, and she has a bit of lazy eyes.

But anyway, we need to get her prescribed glasses, so that she does not tax her eyes trying to accomodate, and her lazy eyes will not worsen.

I asked the doctor, can Zara’s hyperopia caused by anything that we’d done? Too much TV/iPAD? Fringe too long (I get blamed for this)? Reading light not bright enough (and this)? Doctor reassured us it was nothing we’d done which could have caused this, it’s probably something she was born with. *Relief*

We went back to THONEH to get them to make the glasses according to ISEC’s prescription (which is +100 more on the right eye).

Glasses were collected after a week.

Zara didn’t like it. She said everything looked blur to her. She could see better without the glasses.

You can imagine our frustration! After so much money and time spent, the problem was not resolved!

Daddy again took time off and brought Zara back to THONEH to complain. She got her eyes re-checked by another Optemetrist, this time without dilating the eyes. The power is +100 less than ISEC prescription for both eyes. According to this Optemetrist, it’s common after eye dilation, the power gets higher, some children are ok with that power, some are not. We had THONEH took back the 1st pair of glasses and made a new one using this new prescription.

So another week of wait and then last Saturday, we collected the new pair of glasses for her. She likes it, and said now everything looked magnified to her.

Obviously she chose the frame because of the cute designs (although I think half frames are so not practical for children). (See the snowman and the Christmas tree?)

This week was her first week in school with glasses. She said her friends, especially the boys, laughed at her. I’m blessed to have a daughter who’s so confident, she wasn’t upset by all the taunts. She told me when her boy friend laughed at her, she laughed back and told him, “哈!等下你也有啊! (Ha! Later you get it too!)”

Now if you are an optemetrist, or an eye doctor, or someone who’s familiar with hyperopia, can you tell me if Zara should be wearing her glasses just for reading? Or she should have her glasses on all the time (to see far and near)? Because I think there’s some contradiction we read on the internet. The ISEC pediatrict eye specialist said we should let her wear the glasses all the time though.

If you have been reading this blog for a while, you’d probably recalled posts about Zara and her very first boy friend; a boy who’s captured her heart for 2 years. Even though on her last year of kindergarten, the boy has already went to Standard 1 and attended another school and they never met again, Zara still thought of him as her boy friend. o.O”

After being in Standard 1 for 1 month +, she came home 1 day declaring she has found another ‘boy friend’. When I went to pick her up the following day, she excitedly pointed out the ‘boy’, R, to me. R sits several rows away from her, is really cute, looks like a goodie-two-shoes, with a radiant smile and deep dimples. Well, if I was her age, I’d probably like the same boy too.

A couple of times when I was there to pick Zara up, after the last bell rang, I saw them running out to the waiting area together Zara chasing after him to the waiting area. o.O”

In the car, she likes to share with me what happened to R and herself, here are some to share.

Zara : “Mom, today I kissed R.”
Me : *have to sound like it’s not a big deal* “You did?”
Zara : “Ya, I did.”
Me : “Where did you kiss him?”
Zara : “Well, I blew him kisses.” (and she showed me how she did it, 1st kissing her palm, then blowing the kiss out)
Me : (a bit shocked, but found it funny too) “And what did he do?”
Zara : “He dodged them, like this and like this.” (moving her body left and right) And she smiled, like it’s no big deal he dodged her kisses. o.O”

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Zara : “Mom, every day I walked out to the hall with R after school”
Me : “You walked side by side?”
Zara : “Oh, well, he ran really fast, and I just chased after him and keep up with him.”
o.O”

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Me : “Zara, you said R is your boy friend, does he treat you like his girl friend?”
Zara : “Ya, he does, he walks with me after school.” (more like she chased after him) o.O”
Me : “And you are his only girl friend?”
Zara : “No, he has 3 girl friends”
Me : “And you are fine with that?”
Zara : “Ya, I’m fine. Because he’s not married yet so it’s ok to have so many girl friends.” o.O”

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And the best one…. yesterday on our way home from school.
Zara : *happily*“Today R talked to me.”
Me : “Oh, what did you talk about.”
Zara : “I touched him, and then he told me 不要摸我 (Don’t touch me).” *laughed*
(Faint! This is ‘talk’?)
o.O” o.O” o.O”

But…….. I’m amazed at her confidence, and her perserverence, and the way she looks at things light heartedly. Way to go my girl!

♥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.

At times the girls get along beautifully, at times, they fight like they are the worst enemies. I guess this is the same in most housewhole.

We notice that Zara sometimes can be a big bully. When she wants something Zaria is holding, she’ll snatch from her, without asking. She doesn’t do that to her friends, this ‘rudeness’ is only reserved for her sister.

Zaria on the other hand, blames Zara for everything!
When she fell once in the living room, immediately she said, “Jiejie make me fall.”
I went o.O” because I saw the whole thing. I asked her how could have Zara caused her to fall as Zara was siting on the sofa far from her.
She replied, “Just because jiejie moved the sofa, so I don’t know where to step.” (Zara repositioned the sofa earlier on, but the sofa was far from where Zaria tripped and fell on her own). o.O

Another time, Zara accidentally stepped on Zaria’s feet. Immediately, the accusation began, “Jiejie stepped on me.” Then she checked her toes. “Jiejie stepped on me now my toes cannot straighten already.” o.O”
(actually, she’s born with a toe slightly crooked, but she now blamed Zara for that)

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When one of the girls are naughty, and we want to punish them, the other would quickly search for the cane, bring it right to us.

When Zaria is the naughty one, Zara happily fetch the cane for us to punish Zaria. However, she won’t allow us to carry out certain punishment on Zaria.
Once Zaria was really naughty, i.e. she smacked Daddy when Daddy scolded her, when Daddy smacked her, she kicked Daddy repeatedly, and then she wailed loudly non-stop.
I wanted to put her outside the house (within the compound), and Zara blocked my way, claiming, “Even when Zaria is naughty, you cannot put her outside of the house. What if bad people catch her?”
I pushed past her and got Zaria to stand outside.
Zara was standing at the door, watching and guarding over Zaria, and kept turning to glare at us. She got so upset and angry, she didn’t want to talk to us for a while after that.

When Zara is the naughty one, Zaria would somehow behaved really well, and then tell us something like jiejie is so naughty, but she’s so good girl. o.O”
When we punished Zara, and Zara started crying, Zaria will be fetching tissues to wipe Zara’s tears, and then will be hugging Zara.

This is the way they show their sisterly love.

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.

(I was meant to post photos and write about this earlier, but only found time now)

If you have been reading my blog from the very beginning, you know it’s been a rather long and bumpy journey for us to be finally blessed with Zara. And here, she is already 6. And in another 3 1/2 weeks, she’ll be Standard One. *sweat*

What can I say except time flies! And my baby girl is growing up too quickly.

What did we do for her birthday?

We had 1 combined celebration for Zaria and her in school (although Zaria’s birthday is not until end of December).

I made some cupcakes and brought to school during their snack time.

Their friends sang the birthday song to them in different languages. Now for Zaria who doesn’t like to be sung the birthday song any other time, she didn’t mind her school friends singing to her at all. Funny girl, she is.

We hired a clown.There was another girl in school who celebrated her 5th birthday, and her parents hired a clown to entertain the children for a couple of hours. How nice.

They had so much fun in school, I could tell because she was soooo tired, and fell asleep in the car in the oddest position.

Zara was really happy with the celebration. I was feeling a bit sad for her because it’ll be the last birthday she can celebrate in kindergarten.

As for her actual day, per her request, this year, there’s no big party at home, but a very small one in Jungle Gym. Since I told her Jungle Gym is very expensive, and we cannot afford a big crowd, she invited only 3 friends and Tasha (who couldn’t make it last minute), and she insisted that no boys should be invited.

I made another batch of cupcakes for her with a different theme for this occasion.

We had dim sum lunch, although the dim sum was really good, the children were more keen in starting their play time than enjoying the food.

The girls had so much fun, it was hard to catch them on camera.

She said she had such a good time! And so did her friends.

How is Zara’s growing up affecting Zaria?
“I don’t want to be in Standard 1.”
“I don’t want to grow up.”
“I don’t want to go to primary school, I want to be in XXXX XXXX (her school name) forever!”

Having sensible kids is like having something precious stacked some where, which will occasionally bring a smile to your face. Do you agree?

Zara is turning 6 next week, besides still being rough when playing (the shouting, the shoving when she doesn’t get her way) and doing occasional crazy stunts (riding her new bike down a slope in full speed), she’s growing up to be rather sensible.

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We asked her how she wanted to celebrate her 6th birthday.
She said she wanted to have it in Jungle Gym.
I told her Jungle Gym is very expensive, we cannot afford to hold a party for her there.
She asked how come Zaria can celebrate her birthdays there?
I told her, that’s because Zaria only invited one guest, Tasha (my niece).
She asked how many guest she’s allowed if she wanted a party in Jungle Gym?
I said the most is 3.
So, she said for her birthday, she will invite only Tasha, Chloe and Chiyi (kids from the neighbourhood), that’s all.
Then I asked her, what should we have for lunch before playing.
She said she wanted to go to Grand Imperial which is also in BSC.
I told her that’s a very expensive restaurant.
So she said, “Then, you just cook a big pot of nasi lemak and bring there, and we can have nasi lemak for lunch.” O.O”
Good idea!
I’m actually trying to check out if Jungle Gym allows outside food to be brought in, so I can order pizza (her favourite food) for her friends before the play. I’d been trying to call Jungle Gym but no one picked up the published phone number (can’t you beat that?). So if any of you know the answer, please let me know.

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I was just complaining before bed time, “So long I didn’t do my exercise. Aigh.. You girls never remind me also.”
Zara answered, “Well (this seems to be her favourite word before a start of answer nowadays)…. this is not daddy’s (body), this is not your daughters’ (body), this is yours, so you must remember yourself.”
O.o”

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Daddy spend 30 minutes to 1hr coaching Zara on her Bahasa Malaysia everynight. Zara doesn’t appreciate the language, and always trying to avoid Bahasa Revision time.
She negotiated with Daddy. Daddy will spend half the time with her on Bahasa, and she will spend half the time coaching Daddy with Chinese.
And Yes, she’s more comfortable with Chinese now, and can write a few words confidently, so in her ‘class’, she’ll ask Daddy to translate what she wrote into English, of give Daddy 听写 (Chinese spelling).
One particular day, we only had 30mins before bed time, and she told Daddy they should do Chinese instead of Bahasa.
Daddy told her, “It’s more imporant for you to learn Bahasa than for Daddy to learn Chinese.”
She replied, “It’s important for you to learn Chinese. If you don’t know Chinese, when you go to China (for work) what are you going to do?” o.O”

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And here is the Ms-Coming-To-6-Year-Old frying an egg. I just started letting the girls do some egg frying for their own lunches recently.