To Be Or Not To Be

I had posted this briefly on my Facebook last week, but had been ruminating over the valuable lessons learned, so I will blog about this - for my daughters' perusals when they grow up.

I attended a Women's Leadership lunch at the beautiful Capella last Wednesday, thanks to a dear friend who invited me. The co-author of the book, Mothers On The Fast Track, delivered a talk focused on juggling motherhood and our careers, a perennial conundrum faced by many working mothers like me. This was followed by an active debate by many working mothers about the many problems we face - and I found this session to be most refreshing and very enlightening.

View from our luncheon at Capella

I had been pondering over many dilemmas and issues associated with working mothers, and unfortunately, there are not many spaces for many working mothers to bond and share our woes. Also, frankly, there are not many women who had "been there and done that well" to mentor us. Hence, this forum was truly an eye-opener for me. More importantly, this is not a talk about whether a SAHM or FTWM is better for our children, but about how women in general consider these factors when making life choices. It is also a little about how men in general benefit a lot more from marriage and children in their careers, whereas women in general, from the chronicles of history till the present times, usually have to make very difficult choices and sacrifices.

Here are some precious lessons learned from delightful anecdotes raised by other mothers who had all of us applauding or nodding vigorously. I also think these lessons hold true for stay-home mothers!

1) We do NOT need to aspire to be a superwoman at home or at work. It is perfectly fine if we cannot excel BOTH at work or at home. It is perfectly alright for us to leave right on the dot after work, with all our colleagues eyeing us suspiciously or disdainfully - because we need to fulfill our second shift at home, and because we want to spend as much time with our children as possible.

It is also perfectly fine for us to sometimes languish in fatigue at home, with no energy or spirit to coach the kids, thereby throwing them to their own devices at times, because our kids would welcome this little respite to be creative and innovative in coming up with their own play plans.

2) It is fundamental that we love ourselves first (and this applies to all parents, working or not!). Love ourselves, make the choices we truly want, give ourselves ample space to grow and develop as individuals - for only then can our happiness radiate to our children and husbands. Otherwise, everything would be jaded clockwork and I had seen some unhappy parents snapping with wrath at their poor children because they are ultimately unhappy with themselves.

So we definitely need me-time for ourselves - even if it means getting our husbands or parents or in-laws to help oversee the children for a short few hours, or even 30 minutes every day, doing a little yoga, a little meditation, a little reading, a little quiet, calming time with ourselves, listening to our hearts, understanding our core essence.

However, from a working mum's perspective, this may be a little tough as we would want to spend all remaining waking hours with our children, because we had spent the majority of the day at work! But it is still possible - by waking up a little earlier before the rest of the family stirs, or sleeping a little later to indulge in the restful silence of the night.

3) It is perfectly fine if we feel so tired at work that we want to call it quits! It is normal to take a career break and get back into the workforce after we spend time with our children. It is also fine if we decide to work part-time to focus more on our children. (And the mother who mentioned this point caused uproarious laughter from the audience when she related her experiences of getting nagged by her mother-in-law if she comes back too late after work, and when she finally resigned, she was queried by the same mother-in-law on why she resigned, won't this be a waste of her experience, degree, etc? It is hard to please the wider society, so just listen to our hearts!)

In addition, a distinguished woman leader proclaimed that while it is possible to listen to our hearts and go with our own wishes, irregardless of what society tells us, it is essential that we have the key ingredients of 1) finding a good partner in our husbands and 2) having a strong support system, be it our parents, in-laws, domestic helpers, child-care centres and/or understanding employers.

Finally, the co-author posted a question that most of us could not answer in time, due to the rushed lunch hour: How would we advise our daughters in future? (or sons, as I foresee many generational transformation and gradual changes in gender roles in future)

The Bees at a recent zoo outing

My advice to my 2 Bees would be: Listen to your hearts and do what you want. Do not get hot and bothered about what society thinks of you, whether you are a stay-home mum or a working mum. And as a mum, I would try not impose any prejudice or opinion on your choices, so that you can truly select the choices you want, unfettered, carefree, unbiased.

Solar System Minibook

We had been reading LOADS about the 8 planets in the solar system in all semblance of books and online materials. The Bees now have their favourite planets in the solar system, they now know how to sing the planets song and they also know the order, key characteristics as well as look and feel of these planets. More importantly, it is a learning process that I go through with them. Nothing of the mentor-student relationship, but we all learned together and enjoyed the process thoroughly. 

To synthesise what she had learned and read, Little Bee created a minibook on the Solar System with key facts about each planet. She selected some of the facts to highlight, but copy-wrote a fair bit as her spelling is still not strong yet. She based her planet pictures on actual photos of the planets, so there might be shadings and sketchings in odd multi-coloured hues as she was trying her best to emulate real-life photos, which was rather challenging. She also added her own little sketchings and doodlings on some pages, which looked a little out of place!

We also used this book to further reinforce the concept of ordinal numbers as evident in the booklet.  

Enjoy!

Her doodlings: She was trying to highlight the day and night concepts of Earth in her little sketch of a half-shaded Earth, and drew stars to represent space.

She claimed the little dot right in the centre of Earth is the tiny island of Singapore, where she lives in. Haha, the perception of a little kid who thinks the world revolves around them. 

Nightly Spa Sessions

The Bees and us had been indulging in nightly spa sessions - by ourselves! It was a simulation/play-acting game I devised last week because the girls' bedtimes were getting really late during the June holidays (11pm!), and I had a long day, so I dimmed the lights of their bedroom, turned on some spa music on my iPhone, and encouraged them to whisper like therapists in a spa (they had been to one spa with us in Penang). Then of course, I had to be the first customer, and requested for Big Bee as my therapist. She is seriously an excellent massage therapist. Her full body massage on me was rapturous, which was followed by Little Bee's little hands on my face for my "facial".

Soon, it was Big Bee's turn and I could literally see her winding down, relaxing and all ready for bed after my full body massage for us! Same for Little Bee! Lots of sighs and smiles from them during my massage on them :) They were very tickled whenever the "male masseuse", in the guise of their Papa, massaged them though, haha. 

Thereafter, the Bees were truly excited by this game, and looked forward to the "spa session" before bedtime nightly! Big Bee, being older and probably knows how to enjoy relaxation techniques more, especially looked forward to it every night, and would insist that she gives me a massage every night as well. What a darling. 

Hence, we now have a "spa" at home, complete with soft soothing music, dim lighting and cute little whisperings. And we never failed to drift off to dreamland shortly after our 5-10 minutes massages. Divine...

Mountainscapes

In the midst of creating the mountain glitter globes, while waiting for the clay to dry, the Bees decided to indulge in a bit of casual doodling and sketching mountains. They were shown pictures of different types of mountains on the Internet, and both selected different choices of mountainscapes :)

Little Bee drew sharp, narrow and barren peaks after pictures of desolate Arctic mountains caught her eye. She also drew green snowflakes drifting down from the sky and doodled all 4 of us as mountaineers, attempting to conquer the peaks of some very challenging Arctic mountains! I believe she drew Papa who conquered the peak of the second mountain from the right! 

As all mountain ranges have names, I asked Little Bee to name her mountain range. Here was what she named it in English, and I translated it into Chinese for her, as well as taught her to write the Chinese name of her mountain range (her Mandarin is still not strong). 

Big Bee - like me - love anything lush and green, so she sketched out lovely emerald fold mountains, undulating in a tropical setting, complete with a graceful coconut tree and a tranquil river. She created a very idyllic, rustic and picturesque painting, with a fisherman fishing placidly by the riverbank, a fishing boat and a quaint simple jetty. It makes me want to disappear into her painting and live there forever! 

She also drew a couple of us who conquered the peak of one mountain (can you spot it?) as well as a couple of us who were still scaling the mountains. 

I must bring them to Nepal or New Zealand for some trekking soon! They had perused through Hubby's and my trekking photos in Nepal, and were adequately intrigued...so I guess we should start training them in Bukit Timah Hill first! :)

Vivification

We are back home - rejuvenated, revivified, recharged. 

7 days of traversing through...

Spectacular gorges

Gentle valleys

Photo courtesy of Big Bee

Photo courtesy of Big Bee

Breathtaking undulating hills

Photo courtesy of Big Bee

Majestic craggy mountains

 

Photo courtesy of Big Bee

Tranquil emerald lakes

Placid meandering rivers

Photo courtesy of Big Bee

The tempestuous Pacific Ocean

Serene farmlands

Splendid sunrises at 4.45am

And myriad stunning landscapes 

Photo courtesy of Big Bee

A true escapism with the entire extended family - all 4 grandparents, the Bees and us - to Taiwan. More details soon! :)

Pancake Art

On lazy Sunday mornings, we would indulge in the Bees' favourite breakfast fare of pancakes. To add variety to their pancakes, I would sometimes present them with different fruits to decorate their pancakes, and they may pile whipped cream, butter, honey or jam onto their creations at times. 

Here were what they created some time ago!

Big Bee's pancake

Little Bee's pancake

Homemade Mountain Glitter Globes

We were learning about mountains last week, and the Bees understood how mountains were formed by using clay pieces. We simulated tectonic plates pushing into each other by using "clay continents", slowing pushing 2 continent clay pieces together so that the edges buckle and squish up into mountains. 

We bought a brand of clay that was exceedingly soft, so it was rather hard to create big strong mountains just by pushing 2 continent pieces together, so the Bees had to mould their mountains a fair bit thereafter. 

We then let the mountains dry before painting them. Through this process, we learned about the shapes and structure of young and old mountains. Big Bee created narrow, jagged mountains with rounded peaks, whereas Little Bee created rather undulating, broader mountains with sharp peaks! 

Big Bee's mountains on the left; Little Bee's mountains on the right

The painting allows us to talk about snow-capped mountains and how mountains changes colours with the seasons. We also learned about snow mountains (arctic mountains), stony mountains (grey slate and all) and green rolling hills and mountains (their favourite!). 

Big Bee's painted mountains

Little Bee's painted mountains

When the clay hardened, we decided to create homemade mountain glitter globes by sticking the mountains onto the caps of glass jars. 

We then filled the glass jars with water, and the Bees were excitedly sprinkling glitter in the shapes of sun, stars and moon into the glass jars to emulate the atmosphere around mountains and demonstrate how close mountains are to celestial beings. 

Big Bee's jar

Little Bee's jar. She also learned about sinking and floating concepts of lighter and heavier objects in the process.

However, this craft turned out to be a disaster because 1) our acrylic paint was not water-proof, despite what the package stated, and 2) our clay - although hardened - was disintegrating gradually in the glass jars, resulting in a murky glitter globe! I took the opportunity of a cloudy jar to explain the concept of snowstorms swirling around a mountain! 

Big Bee's mountain glitter globe!

Little Bee's mountain glitter globe!

The Bees, albeit disappointed, were laughing alongside me as we embarked on a couple of rescue missions to rectify our mountain glitter globes, to no avail. 

But the spirit of endeavour permeated our house that evening, as we gamely destroyed our crafts despite working on it over a few evenings. The Bees were great sports about this, and we used this opportunity to learn about the concept of impermanence, where we created an object of pride and beauty in one moment, and eradicating it with mirthfulness in another moment. I was glad they were laughing through this entire process :)

Big Bee wrote a rather hilarious account of our craft in her blog here. Enjoy reading! 

Her Ambition

Little Bee has always been highly expressive and articulate, with strong EQ (emotional intelligence) skills. She is also an enthusiastic kinesthetic learner with keen interest in dancing and singing all day long at home :) 

Which was why it came as no surprise when she wrote that she aspires to be a singer and dancer in a recent piece of schoolwork. She aptly drew herself performing on stage with a beaming row of stagelights!  

She loves pirouetting and prancing around the house in her ballerina shoes and ballet skirt. Or strumming her little pink guitar, one minute crooning like an Italian serenader, another minute prancing around like a little rock star.

In school, she revels in regular assembly performances, always eager to present her best on stage and never displaying any semblance of stage fright. 

In a recent Book Week in school, she dressed up as her favourite book character, Belle, from Beauty and The Beast, and brought the book along to school. Her teacher was chuckling as she was relating to me how Little Bee was describing the story of Belle's life through a first-person account, with the teacher addressing Little Bee as Belle. During the Book Parade, she was strutting without diffidence on stage, breathing the role of Belle with true conviction!

Little Bee with her friends in school during Book Parade. Her teacher is dressed as Elmo beside her! Little Bee's sunny disposition usually means she has no qualms about hugging or cosying up with teachers, chatting with them and expressing her affection for them.

She certainly brightens up our lives with her brilliant showgirlship! :)