Her Little Secrets

Whenever I look at Big Bee these days, she reminded me so much of myself at her age. She had recently started collecting adorable little journals and diaries, and had scribbed many of her thoughts in some of them. Sometimes, she will create her own journal entries in a locked diary, mostly about her friends and teachers in school, and it is certainly interesting to peek into her social life from another perspective.

At other times, she would scrawl action plans on how to ostracise some of her friends (yes, kids are cruel indeed!!). I even discovered a piece of handwritten contract that her best friend Claire and her created - where the contents were about how they would like one of their friends to be out of their team! And there was even a line for the little girl to sign on it! 

She tried hiding some of these things from me, exclaiming smilingly when she saw me buried deep in reading them. But with sweet cajoling from me, she would relent and allow me a privileged peek into her life. And she would tell me excitedly in incessant chatter all the little idiosyncracies that she faced in school.

I enjoy listening to my big girl tremendously. For this signifies a chapter in her life where I am merely on the perimeter as an observer. No longer will I have an omnipresent occupancy in her life, but I am sure she will know that I will be somewhere in her backstage forever, only emerging into her spotlight whenever she needs me. 

This evening, I got her permission to "publish" one of her diary entries here, something that was written a couple of months back. She refused to let me showcase what she wrote about school though, and believe me, some of those entries are juicy indeed ;) 

Enjoy. It is totally unedited, so pardon the grammar. 

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4 April 2009 (Saturday)

Today me and Papa went to Botanic Gardens. First, we went to eat our breakfast. I ate a chicken wing and mee rebus. Papa ate roti prata. After breakfast, we bought fish food to feed the lovely fishes. The fishes were very hungry. We saw five black fishes that look like policeman. I also saw one catfish and many guppies. Then we went to my school for my Parent Teacher Meeting. Our Parent Teacher Meeting is at the Primary Hall. My Mummy told me that I was very good in class. During the Parent Teacher Meeting I was playing on the high beam with my friend. I only played for a while and then we went home. This is a wonderful morning. 

Pillar Of Strength

My Mum is my pillar of strength when I am out in the battlefield at work. She cares very well for my darling Bees, and is highly dependable whenever I travel for work. 

She is also the Bees' fortress for Mandarin, as she will speak with them in Mandarin the whole day long! Hence, Little Bee can now say one to ten in strange, lilting Mandarin, and Big Bee is slowly improving in her oral Mandarin, something I had requested for my Mum to help coach her every afternoon. 

Without her, I will not be able to do all those things I can do in my career and life. She is a simple housewife her whole life, revolving her life around us, her children, dependable on my father for allowance, yet resourceful enough to supplement the allowance with her income as a home nanny. 

So, she is always motivating me to get out there and work, be financially independent and to be a strong woman, emotionally and cerebrally. Yet not forsaking the family, to be constantly hardworking and caring towards the kids, and not to outsource the caring of kids to anyone but myself or Hubby (and her!). 

I guess this is how values are transported through the generations and ages - by example, by love, by demonstration. 

Here's a little portrait of her and Little Bee. She is the de facto hairdresser for Little Bee who doesn't like anyone else cutting her hair! So, she always gets her hair cut in the balmy balcony, which is quite an experience for the little one, I am sure.

 

Sweet Liberty!

That feeling of handing over an 80-page report, of reckless mental renunciation of all the things which I had been slogging over for the past 4 months, and of finally not having anything to worry about in those after-hours when the kids are sleeping.....those feelings are deliriously rhapsodic :)  

The Final Lap

My long loooong drawn MBA saga is still not over. I had pushed the deadline for dissertation submission to next Monday, and will not be asking for any later dates. So, for every night this week, it will be no blogging but only slogging (sounds like an advertisement slogan!). And no learning at home for the kids (except for Big Bee's studies) because I have no time (and should not free up any time!) to research on any learning plans :(

What with work and the kids, I had always been procrastinating. But it is NOT a good excuse. 

I am 93% there, I think. Next Tuesday spells the start of my languid and liberating days, as in seriously having nothing niggling at the back of my mind guiltily when I am enjoying myself with anything outside of academic matters. It is a concept that is overflowing with wonderful promises. 

Wish me luck :) 

Learning At Home: The Big Blue Sea

Since I started work, I do not have the luxury of spending entire days with my two little girls, so I structured the learning at home activities into month-long themes, so that the Bees can be more immersed into what they learned over a longer period. 

Last month, the theme was "Oceans and the seashore". Most of my themes are inspired by the Disney movies my Bees loved to watch. This theme was decided after I saw how enthralled they were with "Finding Nemo"! It is a good way to link their favourite cartoons into the real world they live in as well. 

I also decided to pull Big Bee into the picture. Above all those academic work that I had to revise with her, I thought it might be more holistic and interesting if she can learn things out of the school curriculum (read: more science and geography rather than focusing purely on English, Math and Chinese). This poses a good challenge because I have to customise activities to cater to both Big Bee and Little Bee. But I am thankful because Big Bee had been very upfront and forthright in ideas and suggestions on what we can do to engage her interest. She was thrilled when she realised she was part of the programme too! 

With the oceans theme, we explored everything from living things on the seashore to sea-faring animals like gigantic whales and miniscule starfishes. 

For Big Bee, I extended her learning experience to the solar system, as she started asking more and more questions from "Why is the ocean blue?" to "Why is the sky blue?". We spent one quiet evening when Little Bee was asleep to understand the galaxy we call home, and learned about the different characteristics of all the gorgeous planets in our solar system. She started asking me about the existence of aliens and her questions just kept spiralling beyond my limited knowledge! Still, it was great fun and I must admit, it is a wonderful journey for me too, to be able to learn alongside my daughter whilst she is absorbing all these fascinating information about the beautiful world we live in. 

For Little Bee, it was more of linking the oceans theme to academic basics like learning about certain alphabets (eg, W for whale, S for starfish and C for crab), letter tracing and independent writing, as well as number recognition and counting up to 10 (as opposed to rote recitation of numbers). Not to forget the highly gratifying craft works to hone her fine motor skills. Although she did not ask as many questions as her jie-jie, she is starting to know (I hope!) the different sorts of sea creatures living in and out of the oceans.

Her starfish collage and letter tracing of "S" 

 

Letter tracing of "W" for whale, walrus and water

I did some activities with them together, like reading books to them on ocean animals, using the ubiquitous world wide web to search for photos of sea creatures and painting oceans and seashore scenes. I hope these can be channels for them to learn from each other and to bond closer as sisters. 

Big Bee came up with a fantastic idea of creating an ocean dictionary where we can list by alphabetical category all the ocean-related creatures! We spent a merry afternoon on this. For Little Bee, I did not limit the alphabetical categories to sea creatures as it might be too difficult for her. 

Big Bee's dictionary of the ocean - cover page

Ocean animals for categories "B" and "C": we had to do some research through encyclopedias and books to find some of the animals!

Little Bee's version of an amateur dictionary. Big Bee and I drew pictures and words, and she added in some of her scribblings like the balloon-looking thing in "B" and the funny catface with a conical hat in "C" (I think she was trying to replicate the ears from the cat I drew).

We are still far from completing any comprehensive review about the ocean, but I thought it is high time to move on to a new theme (based on Big Bee's hint today) so that we can broaden our learning odyssey and in the near future, revisit this theme from a different perspective :) 

Big Bee and Little Bee had given some suggestions on what to learn this month (Big Bee proposed zoo or safari animals, Little Bee wanted farm animals...), so I am doing a bit of planning this week! 

Here was our final project for the ocean theme:

Monstrous-looking girls with bright orange hands after an evening of painting! 

Voila! Big Bee's crimson crab. She toiled over sticking the legs in meticulous precision!

Little Bee's crab - I added in the numbers in the legs and claws to teach her number recognition, counting and ordering. As well as reinforcing the letter "C" for crab. 

Alphabetical Delights

Little Bee is starting to write more adriotly these days. A fortnight ago, I was making alphabet flashcards for her. She now recognises all the letters in the alphabet but I think she does not know the order yet. As I was making the cards with her, she followed suit and wanted to make her very own flashcards!

Here was what she created, and she showed them off to me with glorious glee on her face upon completion. I think she was a lot more interested in her own cards than mine!





She also knows how to recognise the numbers 1 to 10. One night, she saw the number 10 on one of my math revisions with Big Bee, and she uttered "ten!" loudly. Then, she went on to scribble 10, but in the opposite way - 01! Kids are just so cute!

Fish-O-Poly

Big Bee loves to play boardgames. Every weekend afternoon, when Little Bee is sleeping, she would always take a boardgame of her choice and we would spend an infinite amount of fun playing it. And strangely, she would win 95% of the time (trust me, I never ever pretended to let her win!)

Her first boardgame, Monopoly Junior, was a present by PF for her 5th birthday. And she never looked back since. We have more than 10 different kinds of boardgames. Game Of Life, PayDay, Star Wars Monopoly, Scrabble Junior, Pictionary, Charades (yes, they have a boardgame for charades!), Horse-o-poly (which is a horsey form of monopoly!), Blokus, Guess Who?....and lots more!

Her favourite game for the past 2 years had been Game Of Life. I love it too, and we would spend endless hours giggling over our "lives" in the game! Hubby would usually play the more "mind-boggling" games with her like Blokus and another which he bought recently (and I could not remember the name!). I tried playing with them several times, and they both always beat me in these games! Those mind-challenging games certainly stimulate creative and logical thinking, hmm, maybe these are the skills lacking in me, hence I always end up being the loser!

Poor Little Bee always tries joining in, and we always let her "pretend-play" with us, by dishing out money and tokens to her, and she would be happily throwing the dice, but not comprehending what she was achieving! So cute! I can't wait for the day when all 4 of us can play together!

One day last month, Hubby sat down with Big Bee on a little project to create her very own boardgame. Both Hubby and me used to create boardgames ourselves when we were children, so we thought this is a fantastic way for her to develop this little hobby too!

After an afternoon of secrecy and hard work, they revealed their product to me. Very sellable, very colourful, and I love those quirky little game messages! We spent many hours playing it too.

The concept "Fish-o-poly" was thought of by Big Bee, as she wanted to create a boardgame with an ocean theme. And she modelled it exactly on Monopoly Junior. We bought ocean creatures finger puppets from Ikea to be game tokens and used paper money and houses from Monopoly Junior. Hubby helped a lot in crafting out game penalties or rewards on the board! I was very impressed indeed!

Game cards (Hubby and Big Bee labelled them as "Clam Cards")

Finger puppets as game tokens

Anyone interested to buy? ;)

3 Countries In A Day

Today was a day of extremes in my work trip to the UK. In less than 18 hours, I travelled by train from up north in Scotland through to eastern England and then, finally, I am in Wales. Throw in a 6-hour meeting as well.

I spent a total of 8 hours in 2 train journeys. Truly exhausting yet amazing.

Exhausting for obvious reasons. The train journey started at 6am. Do not even wonder what unearthly time I woke up! And I reached my current destination, ensconced finally in a cosy hotel room, at 10pm (with fading daylight, so it was truly disorientating). In Scotland, even at 11pm, it was bright like dusk back home! For a night owl like me, these reluctantly waning sunrays are surely strong temptations for me not to sleep, no matter how much I was drenched in fatigue!

Amazing because I simply love train journeys. I used to take trains around scenic parts of China for work, but this countryside scenes of Scotland, England and Wales are just straight out of dreams!

Startlingly brilliant sky with fluffy and sometimes ominous clouds with sunrays emanating divinely from the heavens. Glowing and verdant meadows with arrays of sunny, vivacious flowers of all colours and shapes. Quaint cottages with vast expanses of farms where ubiquitous horses, sheep and cows grazed peacefully. Dramatic cliffs adjacent to the crashing waves of the North Sea with crumbling yet majestic castles perched precariously, almost as if they are floating in mid-air. The sunlight is rich, golden and nourishing...and it lasts beyond bedtime!

I took some photos but could not upload them. So, here's a stock photo of just a snippet of the wonders I experienced today.

Far Away

I will be traversing around this country (see picture below) for 2 whole weeks. Away from my Bees. Away from Hubby. Away from the people I care about.



I just arrived a couple of hours back, and though the plane ride was too long, I do get to see some miraculous sights from the plane that took my breath away. Endless deserts over Saudi Arabia with mysterious, out-of-the-world gigantic circles, almost like crop circles! I think they just might be oil fields. Then, emerald and mocha farms with thick meandering rivers over Germany. Gorgeous.

The weather here is fantastic - cool and crisp with the perfect tone of dazzling sunlight that is mild yet tangerine-coloured. I took a solitary walk for a while, soaking in the relaxed alfresco cafe culture and the old traditional, tree-lined boulevards, and it felt rather good to be by myself, although I am missing the family greatly.

It is now 8.15pm and bright like 6pm back home with the sun still up in the sky. And from my hotel room, I can see right into the apartments of an old Edwardian/Victorian (I can't tell the difference, really!) service apartment block with such nostalgic essence of warmth and cosiness.

Right, it is now 3.30am in Singapore, and time for a sleep, although I am wondering how I am going to do that with magnificent sunrays slanting onto my bed! God, I miss the sweet smell of the Bees though :(

The Sports They Play

Big Bee enjoys a large plethora of sports very much. Although I outsourced most of the sports that she learns (tennis, swimming and ballet, which is somewhat a type of sport to me!), I decided to teach her badminton and yoga myself. Hubby had also taught her table tennis and billiard, both of which she can play fairly well now. In school, she just learned inline skating and she is so interested in that, making me promise to buy her a pair of skates the next holidays! So, I guess Big Bee is a rather active little girl! 

Once a week, we would have our badminton practice rounds in the peaceful courtyard. At first, she kept using tennis strokes to the extent that I was worried that she may confuse the 2 techniques together. However, I am elated that she can now play a smooth game of badminton with me - both she and I are always thrilled whenever we can hit the shuttlecock non-stop for a while, squealing and jumping away like silly girls. 

Big Bee and my mum playing a tough game together - Por Por even took off her slippers to play better with Big Bee!

Poor Little Bee would always try to join us, and I do let her practise a little with us, sort of a tripartite game - albeit with little success as she would just take the shuttlecock and throw it at us! Sometimes, my mum would join in, and I watch them play with sunshine in my heart, rejoicing in the fact that 3 generations can play a simple game of badminton together! 

Tripartite badminton game with Por Por, Big Bee and Little Bee. Sometimes I will join in to play doubles but will always lose to my mum! :) 

We are trying to get Little Bee more involved whenever we have our share of sports, and recently, during Big Bee's swim classes, we had been bringing her along for a good share of pool dipping (as well as exercise for us!). She loved it and never ceased to kick her legs haphazardly everytime! It was a wonderful quality bonding time between Hubby, me and the little one.

 

All ready for some serious swimming! 

Incidentally, Big Bee can swim very well now. She just swam 300 metres (6 full laps!) in her last class, something that I do not even have much stamina to achieve nowadays! She is now preparing for her imminent Bronze swimming exam, and she certainly feels liberated whenever she swims about in the pool, as I can see the pure delight in her face as she swishes in and out of the water like a pup seal. 

Although we would like Little Bee to learn the same sports as Big Bee so they can play together, I guess I will leave the choices to her when she is older :) She is beginning to show some extent of interest in yoga, golf and tennis though! 

Light From The Heavens

Ambling atop a grassy knoll

Last Saturday, we got together with PF and family at the Botanic Gardens for some close interaction with Mother Nature. 

We munched on loads of snacks and best of all, played lots of picnic games! Hubby bought this fantastic game Hyper Dash and we played endless rounds of it. Or rather, the adults played non-stop - it was so addictive! We all thought it was a wonderful form of exercise, and even had team competitions with the wives competing against the husbands. I wouldn't declare which team won here ;) The kids played a few rounds and steered clear thereafter, probably because of the competitive nature of the game. 

I also brought along other games like toss the rings, a ball (which the kids and Hubby played Monkey with) and bubbles that Little Bee was utterly obsessed with! She blew bubbles all the way, not joining the big kids for the games but just sitting or standing on the mat, blowing bubbles non-stop! 

All the activities around her, but all Little Bee wanted to do was to blow bubbles!

Big Bee was enthusiastically fooling around with Eugene and Claire, running off with them to far corners of the lush grounds and creating their own little mischiefs. It certainly is good to bring big kids out because we no longer needed to guard keenly over them!

Top: Mischievous faces in front of an infinite spread of verdant green

Bottom: A pretty smiley little girl in front of a glimmering lake with pristine reflection

The gardens was gorgeous in the fading crepuscular light. Somehow, the luminosity of the waning sun was more spellbinding, more ethereal in this particular part of the gardens. The light was lucid, vivid and resplendent, transforming the green grass into emerald jade, enhancing pretty flowers into flaming, sanguine blossoms. 

This is such a rejuvenating end to a stressful week - almost a rebirth in preparation for the start of yet another week. 

Inexplicable beauty