Diligence

I must, I must, I must be more diligent in documenting my girls' growing years!

Let's start with the Little Miss F.

1. F is VERY loud and VERY chatty. She speaks clearly enough for me to understand and she tries really hard to make me understand when I don't. (When I say "enough for me to understand", it means that only I understand what she's talking about. Eh, no. Huda understands her too. But generally, I need to interpret what she's saying for other people.

(Completely unrelated: I hate that word 'interpret'. It always looks incomplete to me. Like it's missing an 'e' at the back.)

This afternoon, she held up her toy ladle and said, "Mak, Ni ah-lish" (Mak, this is ah-lish.)

Me: Errrr. Ah-lish?

F: Ah-lish!

After a few more similar exchange, she said, "Ah-lish. Purple."

Ooooooooooh. Finally this thick mother understood. Ah-lish = orange. Which was the colour of the ladle. The poor girl must have been so vexed because I couldn't understand a concept as simple as colours. :p

2. She likes to copy the phrases that H uses. Sometimes, wait, not sometimes. Many times, they fight over various things and H will say, "Huda dah amik dulu!" (I took it first.)

F, who has no clue what that means, uses the same phrase to stake claim on whatever her sister is holding. She can be in the next room when H starts playing with her Lego. But the moment she sees H doing something (and to Farah, the grass is *always* greener on her sister's side), she immediately exclaims, "Falah dah amik dulu!" (She calls herself Falah nowadays instead of Lalah.)

3. Her speech is getting clearer by the day. I feel somewhat nostalgic to say goodbye to her baby speech but these are things which are better for her in the long run. F used to call all pillows Papa. Cute or what. Pillow is bantal in Malay. When I first tried to get her to say it a long time ago, she could only say Papa and it stuck. Now she can say bantal clearly so as much as I find it endearing that she calls pillows Papa, I must allow and encourage her to use the right term. Sigh.

4. She is doing less and less of that wailing/rolling-on-the-floor-while-arching-her-back routine whenever she's upset. In fact, my poor short-term memory cannot recall her doing that in recent times. Instead, when she's upset, she'll just stare at whoever made her upset and throws whatever which is in front of her onto the floor. I prefer this new brand of tantrum because it's a lot less noisy and I get to smack her hands after she throws things on the floor. If this happens when we're having dinner, TheHusband and I will just clear the area in front of her before she can start throwing things.

5. Her eating is erratic. There are good days and bad days. But, like I've said at least five hundred times, I've done too much worrying about food with H and she seems to be okay (I hope) so I'm not gonna fret too much about this. I prepare well-balanced (hopefully) meals for her and if she eats them, good. If she doesn't, I'll just hope that tomorrow will be a better food day.

6. Night time awakenings: Last night, she woke up only twice. Hopefully, today will be similar. (Is it too much to hope that she will sleep through the night?)


Big Sister H

1. I forgot to say something about her check-up at KK the other day. At her 3rd/4th year (can't remember which one) check-up, I told the doctor that she snored at night. The doctor checked her nose and found that something inside her nose was a bit swollen and she prescribed some medication (sprays and nose drops etc) and more check-ups. Her snoring stopped and further checks showed that the swelling had subsided somewhat.

Last year she had an ear infection. While her ear no longer hurts, her ear wax is a bit too watery and as I use this check-up to highlight all non-urgent medical concerns - such as "mysterious" stomach ailments that seem to happen only before she goes to school :rolls eyes:) - I brought this up to the doctor. The doctor, being the clever woman that she is, also notices that H has this habit of opening her mouth, stretching it and scrunching up her nose at the same time. I noticed this strange quirk developing in the past two months and I thought it was just a bad habit that I will be able to stop in time. But the clever doctor made the connection between her watery ear wax, the slight swelling in the nose (sternum, I think, the swollen part is called) and her mouth-stretching exercises. The doctor says that it's possible that she does that mouth-stretching thing to block off some nose juices (my own coinage, not the doctor's. the doctor is much too smart to use kiddish terms like that) from her throat.

It's so interesting the medical conditions these kids have. Thankfully, this is just a small problem and I'm sure the ENT doctors can fix this issue.

2. H is beginning to read a lot more. This, I must give credit to the school. I've been doing sight words, Baby Can Read, and a whole lot of reading etc with her but she's can be the most unwilling participant in reading. Suddenly, in the past month, she developed a desire to read everything she sees. Hmm. That is quite a bit of an exaggeration. Not everything lah. But enough to make me sit up and realise that when people say that children develop at their own schedule, this is what it means.

I'm aware that her school has a structured reading programme in place for K1 children and I think that must have spurred her interest.

So, I'm capitalising on the interest she has now to get her to read, read and read.

However, comprehension may be a bit lacking at times but that one will require a bit more maturity. And when she's ready, she's ready.

3. H is strangely averse to toothpaste. Her cousins love to eat their toothpaste so much so that children's toothpaste is practically a contraband item for them. My daughter? Nightly toothbrushing session can be such a chore (to the parents) because it involves tears and threats. Sigh.

4. I remember writing about this one before: That before kids, I had this image of myself being a completely calm and rational mother who does not use threats to get the children to do anything. Yes, go ahead and laugh like hyenas.

I've done everything that I never dreamt I would.

Materialism: "If you don't go to school, you will not get a huge salary when you go to work and you won't have any money to buy salmon and cod."

Bogeyman (and friends): "If you don't use toothpaste to brush your teeth, tonight the germs will eat up your teeth and tomorrow, all your teeth will be gone."

Vanity: "If you don't apply this cream on that scar on your face, you'll have an ugly black mark on that spot for the rest of your life."

5. H has always been a very shy child. For a looooong time, whenever we see our neighbours, I'll tell her, "Say hello to Mr Lee/Aunty Irene/Aunty Catherine/Uncle/Aunty/Atok/Nenek." I used to get, at the most, a whispered, "Hello (insert person's name)" which only the collar of her shirt could hear.

Suddenly, this year, she started greeting the neighbours really loudly. It was so loud that I was quite taken aback. Now, I don't even have to prompt her as she will greet them on her own.

6. It is really nice having children around H's age. They are independent enough to do many things on their own but not so independent that they don't need you anymore. It's a nice balance that gives the parents a bit of a breathing space after the hectic toddler years.

Okay. That is all for now.

PS: Wahleow. Typo errors. Grammatical errors. So many errors in this entry. That's what you get when you never proofread. I'll do the correction another day, okay? Or maybe never.