Consolation?

Sometimes I wonder if I should console myself that at least the only complaints I have with Matty’s schoolwork are his illegible handwriting and carelessness… or worry that he can’t even get basics like these right.

Whoosh.....

"Whoosh"... that's how I would describe the period since I last updated this blog. Christmas came and gone, Matty's first day at formal school and now Chinese New Year is lurking around the corner with just about 48 hours away.

All I can remember is the fuzzy madness in trying to pull everything together, and in the midst burning a hole in my pocket. Once again, life is starting to get into a routine... which is good in my opinion. I don't fancy too many changes or events all happening one after another. I like my boring and predictable days. No surprises equate to less stress.

For once, I worry more about Matty than Elaina. Elaina is back to a new school year with her same set of friends and familiar environment. The only thing that has changed is the teachers. The first day was school was simply a "drop-and-go" for her. Matty's situation is quite the reverse - I worry if he will be able to find his way, if he remembers to make his visit to the loo, whether he will lose his belongings and if he behaves in the class.

It really got to me within the first week of school that Matty simply doesn't remember what he needs to get done. Homework and reminders weren't jotted down in his handbook and I had to pull everything out from his bag to run through with him. The beauty is that he didn't seemed as stressed as me and even told me that the deadline imposed by the teacher was "whenever it gets done". I wondered about how I was going to survive the next 10 to 15 years with his kind of attitude. I worried about my school work more than 2 decades ago and it dreads me to no end that I had to go through the process yet again.

2 weeks on, the situation did improved, just not sure if it is because he is getting a hang of how things should work or me growing immune. Whatever it is, I am looking forward to the long weekend of 4 days not needing to worry about homework and checking the school bags!

Handicapped!

The frustration as a mother finally hiked! What can be worse than not being able to scream at your own kids when they ought to be screamed at?

Since the thyroid surgery, I have been monitoring my voice like how an investment banker monitors the stock market. On some days, it can be good and on certain days, it just crashes for no apparent reason. Even on good days, I can only speak slightly more than a whisper in a quiet environment. Just imagine who the hell can hear me when the kids are bickering or throwing tantrum. I can’t even hear myself let alone them.

The frustration is beyond any that I have ever felt and my level of patience is being put to the ultimate test. I cannot take control of a situation, get tired from speaking and most of the time I can’t even be bothered to verbalise to the children my thoughts. Mostly I let them run wild (together with my blood pressure) until the father steps in.

I haven’t even gone past the 1-month mark and I am already very affected by the lost of voice projection. I don’t mind sounding a little hoarse even if my voice won’t recover fully, but I think at the very least the voice needs to be audible in a public place or amongst a bunch of rowdy kids. I wonder how am I going to live with the condition for a few more months to confirm if the vocal cord is merely strained from the surgery or is it permanently damaged.

On a lighter note, I am sure the kids don’t mind a mother who won’t scream at them under all circumstances.

Kicking the Habit

Despite the bloody incident, Elaina has never been deterred to stop her thumb-sucking business. Our hope that she will kick this bad habit once her teeth pushes through didn’t happen either... the moment of ecstasy is more important than any discomfort or pain she will feel from the indulgence.

As her parent, I cannot deny that I haven’t been doing enough in the past to break that bad habit totally, except to remind her that she is going to have an ugly finger or that the finger is going to drop off one day. Whilst we have been able to make Elaina stop sticking her thumb into her mouth during the daytime, it was almost impossible to keep pulling her thumb out in the middle of her sleep. She does it subconsciously in her sleep and it is hard to tell her off for that. And of course, the sucking motion has always been what lulls her to sleep. For that we have to take the entire fault for not stopping her. It was just an easy way out for everyone during bedtime.

I finally harden myself and bought an applicator for putting on Elaina's thumb nail and when sucked on will leave behind a bitter taste in the mouth. We prep her last night by telling her that the applicator will make her thumb and thumb-nail prettier (we are not lying because those years of sucking has left behind a big scarp on her left thumb) but will taste yucky if she puts the thumb her mouth.

Not surprisingly, she instinctively put her thumb in while trying to fall asleep. It was equally not surprising that she ended up crying. But the surprising part is the reason why she cried. It was not because of the after-taste but she is upset that her nail is no longer pretty now that she has licked off the application and even asked for another coating to be applied to her nail.

Enough is Enough

Barely 2 years into being part of the education system, Elaina has decided for herself recently that she had enough of school. Each day she will cry when being dropped off at school and come back declaring that she is not going back to school ever again. The initial enthusiasm burning in her seemed to have dissipated overnight, one would have thought that something bad must have happened to her thus resulting in that reaction. In fact her teachers were extremely worried of the change in her attitude and scratched their heads over what could have caused it. We were even called in by her English teacher for a discussion.

Truth be told, there is nothing abnormal in her behavior. She was just finally “showing her true colours” now that she has grown comfortable with the environment and the people around. She was just like a little walking volcano that will explore a few times a day and mostly over insignificant events. The best advice to her teachers was to totally ignore her and exclude her once she gets to the point of being ridiculous. When she realizes that nobody is feeding her the attention she is craving for, she will naturally stop.

Chances are that her teachers might have been firm towards her bad behavior causing the repulsion she had towards school. Now that she knows the teachers have been talking to us about her has made it harder for her to change her mind that school is not where she wants to be. I am still keeping my fingers crossed tightly that this is just part of the Terrible Two stage and it will blow over soon once she blows the next candle on her birthday cake just like Matty.

All About Punishment

It wasn’t too long ago when a few of my forum buddies were on the topic of their kids telling lies and how they tried to overcome that problem. I was quietly congratulating myself for not having to deal with such ugly situations because Matty had never been caught lying (ok… at that point in time it never occurred to me that he could have been lucky) and Elaina is still at the age of sprouting nonsense and telling make-believe stuff which sounded real (she calls herself “Baby Giraffe” and me “Mummy Giraffe” and gets upset if you call her a big girl) which makes it really hard to tell if there was any ill-intent on her part, let alone brand her a liar.

Of course now, I can’t quite say the same because Matty was caught lying to us twice in a row over one weekend.

First was when he lied that he was playing with the toy shopping basket and Elaina tried to siphon it off from his hands when it was really the other way round. Of course the little sister protested likewise. It was only after we threatened to ask the maid who was the only witness, and that the person caught lying will be in huge trouble did Matty decide to bite the bullet and come clean about his deed. He was punished by sitting on the sofa for 10 minutes and not allowed any toys or TV. The very next day he insisted that the maid told him to get the iphone to keep himself entertained and even suggested to his father to double-check with the maid to prove his innocence. Obviously and needless to say he ended up being punished by not being allowed anywhere near the iphone for 5 days. That was as good as banishing him to hell.

Since then, Matty hasn’t told a single lie (or maybe he is lucky that he didn't get caught?) but each time when Elaina acts up Matty’s first response would be to deny the little one the iphone for 5 weeks. Looks like the iphone is not just a family entertainer it is a good tool when it comes to instilling punishment. The thought of taking the phone away from the kids is enough to make them shudder and think twice about committing “crimes” LOL.

Independence

When you are old, you wished you were young. When you are little, you wished you were bigger. The latter is the stage that Elaina is in right now.

These days she will scream her head off if she is "deprived" of doing something that she wants to do. Like climbing into the car seat herself and buckling up, removing her own clothes, switching off the TV, making her own milk, choosing her own clothes and the list just goes on.

On one hand, we should be happy that she is gaining independence and wants to take on some responsibilities but on the other hand that learning process is slowing everyone down on a busy morning when we are dashing out of the house for school and work. Patience will wear really thin from time to time. Her consistent tantrums became a convenient excuse to justify that lack of patience. Honestly, I feel so bad towards her when that happens and wished that I can be more tolerant.

One thing I can never work out is why she can be so enthusiastic about doing all the "grown-up" tasks but somehow she just refused to be toilet trained. That's what I call a true liberation (suitable for her age)!

Fun Can Lead to Fear

We attempted to get Matty into proper swimming early last month but it hasn't been working out very well.

The first lesson was a breeze but by the second one he wasn't too co-operative and by the third lesson he simply refused to get into the water. We found out the reason to the opposition - he choked on some water while learning to "blow bubbles" underwater. We figured that it must have happened during the second lesson. For now we have pretty much shelved the plan until he is a little older, although we still try our luck once in a while by persuading him to give it another shot. Not getting lucky though.

We also found out from this episode that Matty has a very skewed idea of what swimming is actually all about. He kept insisting that there was no swimming done during the classes. We eventually worked out that because he has been doing nothing but water-play at the pools since he was 6 months old, to him swimming consists of splashing water and waddling around the pool. After much explanation, we managed to clarify this misunderstanding. So now he calls it "fun-swimming" instead.

I am starting to worry if he will have the same repulsion when he starts formal school. At the moment, school has lots of fun factor to it. Oh dear.... he will be shocked to learn the truth.

Die Already

Die already lah.... how to make Matty stop using the phrase "die already"?

He kept using this phrase last night whenever he saw someone on TV made a blopper or had an accident.

I did a self-check and I know that it wasn't me.... not one of those phrase that I had actually used before. When I asked him where he picked that up from, he wasn't able to tell me. All he could say was "ya... because he die already".

Elaina being the mimicker of her older brother these days, started repeating it shortly after.

This time really die already!

In Conversation With

It is a well-known fact amongst the family members that Matty can be quite a chatterbox. Even his English teacher flagged this to us once (not in a bad way) that he can talk non-stop if he wants to. The redeeming part of this whole chattering business that I can take consolation in is that he refrains from making too much noise infront of strangers. I cannot handle people who act over-familiar with me, let alone my children doing likewise to others.

Now with Elaina having absolute control over her language skill, the only time I get some peace and quiet is when both have gone to bed. I can just about imagine having the same discussion with her teacher in the future on how she can yak on and on.

But I have to agree that it used to be worse in the past with both of them going off in different directions and on different topics. All we got were noises in the end. Somewhere, somehow, they grew out of that stage when Elaina started to better understanding of what others are saying. Just noticed few weeks back how both were capable of keeping a conversation going with a couple of exchanges bouncing back and forth between themselves.

The most classic conversation they had recently is perhaps how Matty tried to correct Elaina's pronunciation of "octopus", which always came out as "oct-por-por". Just one of those moments you wish it was captured on video for a good laugh years down the road.

All About Growing Up

We finally got down to some serious toilet training of Elaina. Our efforts have been futile though. Not only did she not improve, she has even unlearnt the skill of telling us she needs to poop. Not quite sure if our attempts at trying to get her to sit on the toilet bowl is turning her off big time that she decided to stay away from it completely. Initially, Elaina threw tantrums and refused to get on the potty. Recently, she relented and was fine with getting on but in less than a minute she will attempt to get off but disappointingly without any output. From time to time she may even want to stand and pee like her big brother.

The cute underwear are not doing its magic like how it did to Matty. Explaining to Elaina that she is now a big girl backfired on us big time, because she will turn around and tell us (in her own words) "I don't want big girl... I want be baby". In a situation like this, I started to appreciate the male ego that Matty has in him. Being recognised as a big boy was a big deal to him and it was easy carrot for us to dangle in front of him whenever we needed him to do certain things. There must be some psychological barrier within that we need to help Elaina overcome rather than the lack of control due to her age simply because there had been days when she woke up with a dry diaper. By far, being toilet-trained is the hardest milestone to hit, unlike crawling, standing, walking that will happen naturally even without us parents doing too much.

On the other hand, Matty is not giving any chances where growing up into a big man is concerned. Just yesterday morning he told Daddy that he cannot hear a thing whilst Daddy was telling him to get out of bed and get ready for school. I bet that he is starting to acquire the "non-listening" skill that all men seemed to have!