My Two Girls – All About Zara and Zaria

After watching the video on Tania (who’s connected magnet and metal, and with that connection, was able to help her mother retrieve her lost key) I’d went to check out this site (www.connectedtots.com.my), which gives more information on connected tots.

There are a couple of games there which children can play, that allow them to test out their brain cell connections. Zaria finds the Dress Me Up game fun.

She likes the stories available on the site too (one on a boy connecting sponge with water absorption; and another on a boy realizing that light reflecting on water forms rainbow), and from these stories, she added her own connections to her experiences. E.g. Cloth and tissues are like sponge too, it can absorb water and drinks; and commented she has also spotted rainbows on bubbles etc.

Do check out the site with your children and have some fun time with them.

Also, don’t forget to request for sample of Anmum Essential while you are at that site. I’d submitted my sample request, and will be getting the girls to try when I get them. If they like the taste, I might consider changing brand.

♥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.

In this post, I mentioned about how brain cells need to connect for learning to happen.

Here is a video that shows you a connected tot in action. It is an interactive video, watch it, and you can choose the different ‘answers’ at the end to see what the little girl did to help her mom.

The girl in the video has learnt about magnet, and she had made a connection between magnet and metal, and apply that learning to help her mom. This is a connected moment.

If you want to read more about connected tots, and brain connection, do go here to understand more.

My girls, are extremely good in applying what they have learnt or heard from us in our daily conversation.
Here is one example. Zara (6yrs 2 months) has seen me frying frankfurters for her. I’d always asked her to stand far away, because the oil may splatter while the frankfurters are sizzling. See what connects me with the frankfurters?

What a connection.

**Updated Feb 17th 2011. Stroller is booked!**

The girls have outgrown their strollers.

Here is one we bought especially for air travel because it’s lightweight. It has a strap that you can strap around your shoulder and run while you have to do a dash from A to B, or when the road is too stroller unfriendly, or even when the child refuse to be on the stroller but you’d already brought it out.

We paid ~RM400 for it, and now selling for RM150. Self collection preferred.

(The shoulder strap is seen here, and some room to store your shopping)

When folded, it takes up very little space.

Drop me a mail if you are interested : zarasmama@gmail.com

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.

While the children are settling down to the school routine, I thought I’d better start posting this back dated post or it’ll be stale news soon.

Zaria, who celebrated her birthday at the end of the year, wanted a birthday celebration at Jungle Gym too, but she only wanted to invite Tasha (my niece). Being a work day for my sis, we had to postponed the Jungle Gym play date to the weekend, so on her actual day, Daddy arranged these for her.

A visit to The National Science Centre. It’s free, don’t expect it to be as nice as Petrosains, but it has lots of things for children to play with.

There’s some dinosaur exibition going on (admission is RM25 for whole family) which we brought the girls as well.

(Obivously, they don’t know how to read signage yet)

For lunch, I suggested Japanese. Zaria asked, “Is it your birthday or my birthday? It’s mine right? So I get to choose where to have lunch.” And she chose Wendy’s.

After lunch, I was feeling tired and wanted to nap, but Daddy and the girls were all eager for more activities. What came after next? KL Bird Park.

(I looked after the girls, and Daddy had a jolly good time taking all these shots.)

This girl obviously is not afraid of going near animals.

Their favourite…… Petting Chicks at the hatchling.

It’s rare to see her smiling so happily for the camera. She had a great time picking up one chick after another and didn’t want to leave.

She really enjoyed herself that day.

For her cake, I did a boo boo. I used a new recipe, and the recipe specified a cake pan too small. The cake overspilled midway, and cannot be used as a birthday cake.

Luckily, Aunty C, sent a set of 4 cupcakes over after she saw my FB status.

And for the last day of the week day, we brought them to Bukit Cherakah, just to wrap up the school holidays. It’s a really nice place, but not well managed and maintained. We like the Four Season House the best, where the season is constantly set at Winter.

The thing is we were not properly dressed since we didn’t know there’s such a place in there.

We could only stay inside for a while, but the girls love it, and claimed they have now seen snow.

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.