Mid-November 2012

Completely unimaginative title, I know.

1. H is about to start primary school now and I hope I've made the right decision putting her in this school. The only viable alternative is to put her in the school I'm teaching in and the reason why she's not here is because I was planning to get pregnant and did get pregnant at the time when registration was in session and so I thought I was going to leave forever. But now that the pregnancy was a short-lived one, it seems like I'll be with the school til forever (or at least, until I leave the service). I'm trying not to fret about the decision. I must convince myself that there is a reason behind everything and so I must be at peace with this. I MUST. (Saying that slightly louder to quell that noise at the back of my head that goes "Transfer. Transfer. Transfer.")

2.We just had the P1 Orientation and the P said that there are no exams in P1 to ease the pupils into school life and to let them enjoy learning. We also had the final Parent-Teachers' Conference with H's teacher the same afternoon during which she said that Huda can read, write and do her Math well. Alhamdulillah. The teacher said that we had nothing to worry about. No. I think not. A parent's job involves a whole lot of worrying and it's somewhat unnatural not to worry. Huda is, thankfully, like me, (and confirmed by the teacher to which we pretended to be somewhat concerned but we really are not) not at all blessed in the performance arts. So, with that, she can't join any of the time-consuming things like dance ensembles (have you seen how much time they spend preparing for SYF?). That leaves her with academic pursuits like reading, writing and arithmetic. Hur hur hur. All nerdy pursuits given stamps of approval by both parents.

3. I am thoroughly upset about the student care that we had picked for her. Initially it was owned and managed by AMP but AMP decided to sell it off to focus on the school-based student care which presumably are more profitable than under-the-block type of student care centres. With this, I am in doubt about my own working future. I know for a fact that I'll be working for the entire of 2013. But, I am really not too keen on using this student care service for more than a year so one good alternative is to transfer H over to my school by 2014, go on half load so that I can finish all my work by dismissal time and then go home with her. See? This is the "Transfer. Transfer. Transfer.'" noise that's going on in my head since today's P1 Orientation.

4. ME & Kindle
I bought a Kindle last month and have been obsessed about it since. I've downloaded USD130 worth of books in it so far. Some - I'll never read. Like, J.K. Rowling's Casual Vacancy. I don't read to get depressed and I couldn't get past the first page. But, because the book costs quite a bit of money, I won't delete it from my Kindle. Serves me right for buying based on the author's reputation alone. I thoroughly regretted it after I read reviews and synopsis of the book.

One good read is One Day by David Nicholls. It was good until I hit Chapter 18 and that's when I used up one entire box of tissue paper and caused some kind of flooding in Woodlands. I don't read to get depressed and I hated, hated, hated David Nicholls for a good 2 days before I (and another box of tissue paper) went back to the book anyway and continued reading.

 Now, I thought I would love to go back to a physical book but Kindle has spoiled it for me. I used to think of myself as a book snob (not in that way) but in a way that physical book is superior to any form of technology. I've always felt that way when I read from the iPad. But, Kindle has changed that for me. Have you seen a Kindle in action? It looks just like a real book and for the old fogeys like me - it DOES NOT STRAIN your eyes!

And then, there's the dictionary function. I was aware of this function when I saw my friend's husband using a Kindle and he showed me the dictionary function. You just have to touch the word whose meaning you want to know for 1-2 seconds and the dictionary will pop up with the meaning of the word there. To go back to the book, you just press one button and there you are, back to your story. It's just too easy!

And of course, nothing can beat the convenience of having all the books you want in one device. I am in between at least 5 books now. I go back and forth between books depending on what I feel like reading. It's such joy. Just make sure you are the only one using the Kindle cos if you are sharing the Kindle with someone and the other person is reading the same book you are, the Kindle will open up the book to the last page you read. That's a bit annoying so I'm grateful that I'm the sole user of Kindle at home.

H sometimes uses my Kindle to read Fantastic Mr Fox but that's the only book she reads from my Kindle. I downloaded some picture books for her (Harold's Purple Crayon etc) but picture books are best viewed in the physical form. Besides, the Kindle is a black/grey and white/off-white device so children's books and Kindle don't go well together. Unless you get the Kindle Fire. Which is not really as great because it is not a dedicated reading device. If you get a Kindle to read, then you should just get the e-ink readers. This will prevent you from doing something else instead of reading.

Back to children and Kindle. No, I won't recommend it for young readers. Some still need to point at the words while reading and if you get the Kindle Touch or Paperwhite, the device will go to the next page. So, no go.

Let me wax more lyrical about the Kindle, okay? The battery life - it lasts! And lasts! Energy is consumed only when you turn the page so can you imagine how long the battery lasts? If you take this with you on a one-week holiday, you don't have to worry about charging it! I had to charge it quite frequently in the first few days because I was used to charging my toys the moment I see a less-than-full battery bar. And also because I was toggling between a lot of books in the first few days of ownership. But now that I have overcome the early euphoria, I cannot even remember the last time I charged the Kindle.

5. On the topic of reading. There's F's reading. H started off reading on a diet of Baby Can Read. It works as long as that is the only moving images your child sees. No other TV shows or videos. With F, I started her off on Baby Can Read and Baby Signing Times. Baby Signing Times were a whole lot more exciting than Baby Can Read so very quickly she developed a preference for Signing Times. Naturally, I killed off both. Now that she's almost 4 and in my warped world, at a rather late age to start reading, I'm starting with sight words for her. And I spell out the words. So she knows how to spell the/is/you/my etc and can recognise these words but there's not enough recognition on her part for the words to form a coherent meaning. Lesson learnt: Do not show any other videos other than Baby Can Read. In any case, F is read to often enough and I hope she picks up some words there.

6. F is also not using the Iqra' books to learn how to read the Quran. She got started on Iqra but I switched to the Tilawati series. There are only Tilawati Books 1 & 2. So far, F is halfway through Book 1. It's challenging teaching her, just as it was with H. But, I've learnt my lesson here. Stop before the child wants to stop and do not make it miserable for both mother and child. So, I go at her pace. Thankfully (and for this, I thank God each time this happens), she's self-motivated. She'll take her book, place it in front of me saying "Nak ngaji." Then, I must stop everything I'm doing and teach her. Each page takes about 5-10 minutes to cover. And then, that's it. I don't try to fore her to do more than she wants to do lest she gets sick of it (and me).

It's 12.18am now. I'm going to sleep. Good night, all.

The Kids

Huda is going to start school for real in less than 2 months while Farah will be moving on to N2 come December this year. How my kids have grown!

What have they been up to?

In no particular order, here are the milestones they met and the grouses I have. 

1. Farah can speak quite well for a 3 year old. She speaks more English than Malay, unfortunately. And unfortunately too, a lot of Singlish creeps into her language. I have no issues with Singlish if they can codeswitch efffectively but not if that is all they can speak. Her speech is clear and she can use complex sentences in her speech. Hooray!

2. Both kids are eating well. Huda - too well. Huda's eating habits are a bit strange. She eats A LOT. For dinner (which is at 5.30pm on schooldays because she comes home absolutely famished), she has at least 2 full servings of rice. We are not talking about 2 tablespoons of rice per serving. We are talking one entire rice bowl per serving (and more sometimes). She will eat that and ask for seconds. And thirds sometimes. And occassionally she wants even more and I will discourage her. 

The surprising thing is, despite this huge amount that she's eating, she's still terribly underweight - at the 3rd percentile - so the checkup last week showed. At 1.06m, her desired weight should be at least 21kg but she's only 16kg. But, I no longer worry about her weight. I'm happy to see her eating well. The only thing that perplexes me and anyone who sees the amount she eats is, where does it all go to?

3. Huda has problems with her teeth. The front upper teeth have some decay in there. So, she's been going to see a dentist (the one at the polyclinic) about it. She has to start using adult toothpaste which she abhors. If I don't supervise her nightly toothbrushing ritual, the toothpaste will end up all over the kitchen sink. (Toothbrushing takes place at the kitchen sink cos it's so much bigger than the bathroom.)

4. Farah can be so adorable. She'll make the funniest of faces when she wakes up in the morning, all on purpose. 

5. But she can also be so contrary. Being a kid, she has very little respect for hygiene. So she has no qualms picking up ice cream sticks, sweet wrappers or just about anything off the ground. I'll get so mad. The madder I get, the more she will do exactly what she's not supposed to do. In fact, when it comes to anything that makes me mad, she will do exactly what she's told not to do. I am not going to try reverse psychology on her just yet. Instead, I will keep calm, tell her succinctly what she's not supposed to do and move away. I am hoping for that (the keeping calm part) to work. 

6. She is also completely off diapers now. Her nighttime diapers went away after a few nights of dry diapers. One night, I truly forgot to put on her diapers for her before she slept and the next morning came without any incidents. So I tried again, always making sure she goes to the bathroom before she sleeps. And what do you know? We're saving a bundle without diapers now!

7. Farah picks things up quickly. She gets irritated by her sister when her sister goes "pink colour". She'll tell the sister, "Teacher Inah says pink is a colour. You don't have to say colour, right Mak? You just say 'pink'."

Each time she tries to teach her sister something, it's always preceded with a 'Teacher Inah says..'. That's her teacher in N1 who deserves a whole lot of credit for Farah's language development. 

And then, there's her loyar buruk-ness. How do you translate that to English? Once her sister snapped at her, "Padan muka." Serves her right, the sister said. Her reply? "Don't call me padan muka! My name is not padan muka."

8. Now, while Huda goes for her wushu on Sundays, Farah goes for her madrasah at the same time. Kids Alive's madrasah programme is only for kids in K1 and above so until Farah is old enough to join the programme, she'll be going for this other madrasah conducted by Little Muslim Readers. While both kids are away, I intend to start jogging. The keyword here is intend. 

9. My father and sis-in-law bought the special Quran Waqaf from Pergas and Masjid Al-Raudhah and Huda has been using that for her nightly Quran reading. No more ipad cos it was getting pretty annoying with the screen moving everywhere when we accidentally touched it or when I'm jabbing at the letters in frustration. She's now starting from the back where all the chapters are shorter. She spends up to two weeks per chapter (slow progress is mostly due to my laziness in insisting on a more regular schedule) which also includes memorising. At one point in time when I was pregnant, I was just too tired to teach and left everything to the Ustazah who comes in twice a week to teach her. Now that I'm in the pink of health, I have gone back to daily reading (no discounts on weekends either). I set myself a target of 6 times a week which means I can only slack a bit once a week. 

10. I've left Huda to read on her own these days but realised just now that I must get her to read aloud to me to check on her pronunciation. I saw her buried in a book when I went to pick her up from school this afternoon. I asked her what she read. She said, "Danger on the High Seas." Only that danger was pronounced da-nger, like the nger in singer.

11. She doesn't want to nap in the afternoon on weekends so I told her that she could stay up when Farah is napping as long as she is quiet and allows me to enjoy my Kindle Paperwhite (this one, I may just dedicate one whole entry for it). One afternoon, after Farah slept, she sat beside me, took out her English-Malay picture dictionary and started reading it for the entire 2 hours that Farah napped. Huda loves her picture non-fictions. She loves the Disney's Words books - Words that Tell You about Things, Words that Do Things and Words that Name Things. (Those books are tough to find and I definitely did not pay Grolier $3000+ to get those books! I'm glad she loves them!)

12. Farah was reading her Iqra'  book. ah, bah, bah she went, recognising the basic sounds the letter makes when a stroke is placed above the letter. Suddenly she went, "Ba ba ba balik kampung. Oh oh oh balik kampung..." breaking out into a Sudirman song.

Okay. That is all for now. I am going to spend some time with my Paperwhite now before turning in.

August 2012

So here are some updates:

1. Aftermath

The miscarriage is long over and alhamdulillah, I'm feeling so much better now, both physically and emotionally. Will have another appointment with my gynae later and things should be okay.

And now, back to regular programming - the kids.

2. Huda's Mengaji

I have pulled Huda back. She was midway through Al-Baqarah but I stopped it (long ayat, reading getting progressively slower etc). Now we are reading from the last surah of the Quran. Much easier there. Shorter ayat and I can also make her memorise every surah that we read. Unfortunately, my 4 times a week schedule was firther cut down when I was pregnant and after the mc. So, now we are starting again and progress is sloooooooow.

But, at least, I have sought the help of my sis-in-law who managed to get an ustazah ngaji for her. The nice lady comes twice a week and fixes her tajwid and pronunciation.

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Wrote the above in my Multiply account but did not finish it - as always. And now that I'm forced to migrate to another platform, I just exported all my entries - the published ones, drafts and protected ones. Now I have to go through each one slowly and see if I ought to delete any. I do have plenty of drafts sitting around, not published so it looks like it's culling time now.

February 2012

Doing monthly updates now. Hopefully I can sustain this for a while.

I am soooo inundated with work. My honeymoon period is over and I now barely have time to even check my facebook. I am now involved in areas which I previously have no interest in. But I should learn and expose myself to things which are completely new so as to rejuvenate my brain cells so that I (hopefully) do not get a severe case of dementia a few years down the road. 

Farah's School Life

It was pretty uneventful, the first few days. She barely cried so I thought all was going to be okay. But, like Huda, the tears fell much, much later. After she overcame the baby talk (see previous entry), she started waking up in the middle of the night. (Both kids have been sleeping through the night, up to that point.) Sometimes, she would come to my room, wake me up, and tell me in a sad little voice, "Mak, besok Farah tanak pergi sekolah tau?" (Mak, tomorrow I don't want to go to school.") 

Then, she started telling me nonsense like, "I don't want to go to school because my teacher's eyes are too round."

Sigh. I'm sure one day, she'll start enjoying school as much as Huda does. Til that day comes, I have to tolerate all these sob stories coming from her.

Farah the Theatre Practitioner

She can turn her tears on like a seasoned performer. As of now, it's still amusing although I don't really humour her much when she starts her tear-y sessions. She'll just bury her face in her eyes and sob quietly. It's seriously amusing when that happens. You'll see her shoulders moving up and down and you'll hear those gentle sobs coming from her. 

She does this whenever anything displeases her, even something so small and insignificant. The other day, Huda decided to sit in the front seat when my father sent them to school. Farah, feeling lonely at the back, started sobbing. One day, I ended a phonecall with TheHusband without passing the phone to her first, she started sobbing. My brother and sister teased her about taking her bag, she started sobbing. 

But, it's not that she's some weepy little girl. When my nephews tease her (and this can be particularly annoying), she'll turn into some feisty little thing and will disturb my nephew back. So, there's really no pattern in sight for now. It really totally depends on her propensity for theatrics at that point in time. 

Huda's Quran Reading

Aiyoooh. Ever since the new school term started, it has been very, very erratic. I'm trying to keep it to at least 4 times a week instead of daily recitation as planned earlier. 

Huda's School 

I don't know!!!

Gaaah!

School A produces very good results but Huda will have no life for the next 6 years as homework will keep her very occupied . It helps that her cousins are in the same school too so it'll be more convenient when school is closed for Marking Day or whatever reasons. Only one adult needs to take the day off to take care of the kids and we can save on our childcare leave. 

School B is very, very near our house and TheHusband can send the kids to school in the morning. Its results are okay; I think.

Should I put School A as first choice or School B? Both schools will still be double session next year so I doubt either school will be popular among parents. Hopefully, there won't be any balloting needed. I think I will wait til the last day of P1 registration before I make up my mind where to register Huda. 

Argh!

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All right. That's all for now. Hopefully I'll put up another entry soon enough. More about the kids and the antics they get up to (plenty). 

January 2012

I sooooooooooooooo malas to blog!

One of the many reasons is the keyboard of my laptop. It's a chiclet keyboard which means that each key has a space all around. So when I type, my fingers have to move further away to reach the keys. I want the old type of keyboard! (My fault, really. I gave TheHusband zero input when he was looking for a laptop for me. So, I shouldn't complain.)

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School

Farah started school on the first of December. It was pretty uneventful at first. She barely cried. She did not make a fuss. There were some tears when she had to sleep and when she woke up from her nap. Otherwise, everything was okay.

Until about a week after school started. 

She started some regressive behaviour with baby talk taking a prime position. It made me so mad! She refused to call herself Farah. She insisted that she was Fawah - or Pawah - on especially bad days. She mispronounces all her words and made it impossible for me to have any decent conversation with her. 

Initially, I was somewhat amused, but two weeks into baby talk, I was losing my patience. I scolded her, refused to understand her baby words, refused to give in and when the frustration got too much, just sent her to bed. (The good thing is, when she wakes up in the morning, she would be the good 'ol Farah that everyone knows.) She also refused to give up. 

So, like all issues I face, I sought the help of Dr. Google. Apparently, she's stressed. Regressive behaviour was her way of dealing with the stress. 

It made a lot of sense. She didn't wail and cry so there was no outlet for her to express her dislike towards the feeling of abandonment that going to school gave her. So this was her only outlet. 

After that, I praised her each time she spoke properly. Now, six weeks since school started, the baby talk is hopefully a thing of the past. It helps that the latest baby in the family (my almost 2-month-old niece) is doing a good job showing Farah what a baby does - sleep all day. (Both my kids detest sleeping.)

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Sick

One of the most epic thing which happened in December (besides Farah starting school), was all of us falling ill. It all started one Boxing Day when my friends and I met up at our place. During the gathering, Farah developed a slight fever.

By the next day, almost every single person who attended the gathering fell very ill. TheHusband was among the first to fall ill. But he still went to work. The moment he came home that Tuesday, he just collapsed on the bed and remained there til Wednesday afternoon getting up only to do essentials like toilet visits and prayers. 

The next day, although I could feel the beginning of a fever, I was gung-ho enough to go to work for the first day of the end-of-year meetings. One hour into the meeting, I was shivering uncontrollably and at the earliest break, I left and went to see a doctor. My temperature was quite high for an adult and I got myself a 3-day leave from work. 

Thankfully, TheHusband could stand up and get around by that afternoon so he took care of the kids while I was dead to the world. 

It turned out that every single member of the party was down with some variation of the same thing. We all agreed on one thing - that that was the sickest we've ever been for as long as we could remember. One of us even got bronchitis. (The guilt we felt is another story.)

That would be one gathering we'll remember for life.

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Quran

Huda has finished the Iqra' series and has moved on to the Quran. Alhamdulillah. However, it does not seem likely for her to finish reading at least one round of the Quran within this year. At this beginning stage, she's doing 3-5 lines per day. With 6000+ lines to cover, very very unlikely. But I hope for her to be more fluent in her reading in the months to come so that she can cover more lines per session effortlessly. 

I also told myself that I will start teaching Farah the Iqra' series once Huda has graduated from it. For now, I'm going very slow with Farah. Just teaching her a/ba/ta and getting her to recognise what a/ba/ta look like. She's able to identify what they are but sometimes she will just decide to pull some stunt like what she did to Huda recently.

Huda: ah ba ta

Farah: ah ba ta

Huda: What's this? (points to ah)

Farah: ah

Huda: Very good. What's this? (points to ta)

Farah: ta

Huda: Good. What's this? (points to ba)

Farah: Teacher Inah.

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Toilet Training

Farah can now pee and poo in the toilet. Hoooray! But she's still in diapers when we go out and at night. I'm soooooooo not ready to deal with visits to public toilets just yet. As it is, TheHusband deals with Huda's public toilet visits unless there is a guarantee that the toilet is very, very clean. Besides there is always a loooooong queue at the ladies' so it makes sense for TheHusband to take the kids to the loo. 

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I will now upload this post. As always, I don't proofread. So, I'm terribly sorry if you have to go through ungrammatical sentences and typos. Or maybe I'm not. Til next time. Which will be soon. I hope.

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.