The Middle Child

Have not written about Farah for quite some time so here are some things about her which are interesting.

1. Even though she doesn't have to be in school until 9am, she gets upset when we do not wake her up together with Huda at 6am. When she gets upset, her glare is enough to melt an iceberg. 

2. She is extremely generous with her food. Whenever we eat fried chicken or fried fish, she will share the crispy skin with everyone although that is her favourite part. 

3. She loves reading and she reads well for her age. 

4. She doesn't understand some of the words that she reads. She used to just infer the meaning of the words (not accurately sometimes resulting in her saying things like "my tongue feels so disappointed" ~said in mid 2014) but these days she would ask us to explain the meaning of the words.  

5. Sometimes, she'll ask us the meaning of the words in very random situations. A few days ago, she asked what 'possessed' meant. I thought it was something to do with spirits but I sought clarification from her anyway. 

"Where did you see the word?" I asked. 

"Once upon a time, in a land far away, a single drop of sunlight fell to the ground and grew into a magical golden flower that possessed healing powers."

(Yes. She quoted verbatim from a storybook she read a few days earlier.)

This happens very regularly. Sometimes she's about to sleep and she would ask the meaning of a word and would quote the sentence it appears in. I'm impressed with her memory. 

6. A little voice within me and a few voices around me told me that I should send her to a madrasah. She would definitely be able to cope with the syllabus, they said. But, I am not sure if *I* can cope with it.

7. She is very loving to her little brother but less so to the older sister. Often, before she goes to school, she tells me, "Mak, can you tell Ihsan that Kakak Farah loves him very much?"

After months and months of this, I asked her why couldn't she just tell him herself. 

She said, "I don't want him to forget me when I'm in school."

8. Her treatment of Ihsan when they play together reminds me of Elmyra from Animaniacs. At times, I have to stop her from being too rough with the little boy.

9. I love how much faith she has in Allah. She believes in the power of du'a and many times, her du'a is answered. Her du'a for now is for everyday stuff. Food, ability to do things (like, unscrew a jar etc). Once she made du'a for nenek to cook her favourite pucuk manis masak lemak (otherwise known as 'the green vegetable with the yellow gravy'. I forgot about it and that day, when we went to my mother's house, my mother happened to cook exactly that. Another day, we had leftover beef soup for sahur and there weren't many pieces of potatoes left. She wanted more and to pacify her, I told her to make du'a for potatoes. That evening, my mother gave us a potato dish for buka. Masya Allah. The power of du'a. 

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My du'a for Farah, Huda and Ihsan is for them to always have complete and unwavering faith in Allah. I du'a that they will always be hardworking and will always strive hard for their goals. Being 'clever' when you are young is meaningless if it's not accompanied by a desire and the will to better yourself  throughout your life. 

Stories

1. Yesterday, somehow, the kids got interested in the story of their birth. And it got me thinking about this blog.

2. This afternoon, I took them to my school. They have not been to their own school for more than a week. We went to Bandung and after that I happily let them ponteng. It's December, after all. Their job was to collect the printouts from the printer but changes to the security system meant that I had to go to the printer myself to activate the printer. So, instead, the girls - after about 10 minutes of quiet work - spent the rest of the 1 hour 50 minutes we were there tearing the place down. Thankfully, I was the only one in the staff room.

3. Bandung shopping is best. It's perfect for makcik-makcik like me. I got myself 5 long-sleeved top. Should have gotten more. What's significant about the tops is not the quantity (I often end up with more at gmarket) but the colours. Finally, my wardrobe has more than just three colours. (It used to contain just black, grey and maroon.)

4. Farah said this just now:

F: Mak, you said you are going to take me to see  a doctor?
Me: Huh? For what?
F: My voice. It's so loud.

I might have told her that I wanted the doctor to remove her vocal chords. She really has a major problem speaking softly. I keep on telling her, "Telinga mak sakit tau?" But, aching ears or not, she's as loud as ever.

5. My attempt at speaking Malay is finished. I'm speaking more English now because I got to combat the bad English that the children are using.

Language and Everything Else

The kids are doing some work at the dining table while I'm on the ipad. Heh. (I have a love-hate relationship with the ipad. But that's another story.)

Huda

Huda can now read quite well. There are huge areas for improvement, of course. Like rhythm and intonation. But, for now, I'm satisfied with her progress.

However, there's the issue with Singlish. I'm not from the I-detest-Singlish camp. I see value in it but only after the kid is competent in English. So, my ears hurt terribly when she goes, 'Inside have a spoon.'

Gaaaah! I am now in the process of forcing her to use 'There is...' and 'There are...' in her speech. It's not an easy task because I'm sure that she has friends who use 'have' to start their sentences.

Then there's the wrong structure for questions. She goes 'You go where?' when asking people where they are going. I must have corrected this at least 3000 times so far but I still hear this too often!

I'm hoping that by the middle of next year, I would be able to weed out all these problems and that she would speak in grammatical English. Hopefully, she would develop an ear for correct English and would know the correct contexts for English and Singlish.

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Farah.

Farah sometimes likes to call people by anything except by their actual names. One night, while saying goodnight to her father:

Farah: Bye bye Momok. (ghost)

Ayah: Ayah bukan momok. (I'm not a ghost)

Farah: Ok. Bye bye Bukan-Momok.

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She's not reading yet.

I used to put the Baby Can Read videos on for Huda. Although she couldn't talk til very very late in her toddlerhood, she could identify words. I remember that after a few months of Baby Can Read, she could identify the beginning sounds of words. For example, if I have a couple of word cards in front of her, she would be able to correctly pick out the cards for the words I want. When I give her a new word which she has not seen before, she would choose the word cards that begin with the same sound. I once put in the word 'butterfly' in the set of word cards she had. Up to that point, she had never seen the word 'butterfly' before. When I asked her to pick out 'butterfly' among the set, I noticed that she only picked out the words that begin with the /b/ sound. I believed completely in Baby Can Read after that.

Unfortunately, I'm not doing Baby Can Read with Farah. Tsk.

She enjoys being read to and insists that we read her countless of books. This is her father's area. Every evening when he comes back from work, he will spend at least half an hour reading to the kids. We visit the library every one to two weeks so there's a constant supply of fresh storybooks for them. This father-daughter reading time gives me some time to rush through housework: hanging the laundry, vacuuming and mopping.


TV

The kids still don't watch TV at home. Of course, they do watch TV when we are at other people's homes but not at our own place. There are three videos that they watch sometimes though - Baby Can Read, Baby Signing Times & Iqra' (that's something like Arabic phonics).

Some people are surprised when they discover my no-TV policy. The standard questions will be:

Do they ask for it?

So what do they do at home?

How do you go about doing your work?

What if your daughters don't know anything about TV shows when their friends are talking about their favourite shows?

Short answers are:

1. No. They don't ask for TV when we are at home because it's simply not switched on when they are awake. We do have cable but we don't have the kiddy channels. 

And no, it's not like we replace TV with computer games/ipad/iphone either. I am pretty much a Luddite when it comes to kids' entertainment. The more low-tech, the better. The kids are only allowed a limited use of the ipad on Sundays. About 20 minutes each. Even then, I sometimes distract them with a whole lot of other stuff that they forget about the ipad.

2. What do they do at home? They play/fight/play/draw/fight/play/colour/fight/read/play. They are used to keeping themselves entertained without the use of screens.

3. When I needed to cook or clean in the kitchen, Farah would take her toys and play at my feet. There is a kids' table in the kitchen and that's her work station when I'm there. When I'm hanging the clothes out to dry, she'll help me pass the clothes pegs. Vacuuming the floor will see her trying to chase the vacuum cleaner and sitting on it. When both are at home together at the same time, it's much easier because they will keep each other entertained. 

4. My children know plenty about Dora from the books we bought and borrowed from the library. Huda loves the Disney Princesses but she doesn't know who they are exactly. There are plenty of books we can get if we want her to know about the princesses but we hate them princesses. Life is not about spending your entire life looking for a prince charming. Ptui. 

(This fixation with the princesses may be a losing battle for us parents, though.)

Iqra'

Huda is now at Book 6 of Iqra'. That's the final book of the Iqra' series. She is a rather reluctant reader when it comes to practising this because while she can read, she does not understand what she's reading. Once she finishes book 6 (by the end of the year, I hope), she can start reading the Quran. I want her to start reading the Quran and at least cover 1/3 of it by the time she goes to Primary 1. This will make it easier because once she's comfortable and more fluent reading it, she just needs to spend 10-15 minutes reading it daily and I just need to check her recitation.


Primary School

Primary school will be a frightening time and I want to make it as smooth-sailing as possible. The only way to do that is to prepare her sufficiently for it so that she won't have to struggle. I hope that I am on the right track and that my daughters will not cause grief to their teachers!

House-Hunting

Saturday's headlines: Resale flat prices keep going up. I'm giving up. I'm not going to harbour hopes of getting another flat anytime soon. I'm just going to go ahead and get my floor to ceiling shoe cabinet.

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I started this on the ipad but finished this of on the laptop a week later. The ipad is simply not a machine for typing.