Dim Sum Mum - Tess' Little Pieces

the knickers were dry!

sela's already high sense of self esteem was boosted even further.

and carys was left pulling at my trousers asking, "mummy, can i have a dry nappy now please?"

************************

snippet of conversation heard yesterday in playground:

jasper to sela: mummy is coming to get uth and we will go to park n thop

sela in withering tones to jasper: mummy is coming for you, but tess is coming for me

oy.

organising events for the kids is part of my job description.

i am not into hyper organisation, in fact my kids spend a great deal of time on our playground, racing around on a concrete playground, exploring weeds and chasing each other and the offspring of other like minded parents. have i mentioned i love our building?

but once a week they go to western playground, for a change of location. many of the youngsters in our building go, (ranging from 10-20 kids) and they eat an early dinner there usually. the kids like it. it is a social event for them.

and so, when tara invited the trio up to hers for dinner tonight (tara being the mother of tallinn and zahlia, the former who incidentally looks quite a bit like the little kid from jerry mcguire, minus the glasses) i decided that we would stick wtih the pre-organised plan of going to the western playground. they like it, it's part of their routine, blah blah blah.

and then, i was talking to the kids, (mistake, i should NOT do that), and i suddenly realised, "i should give them more choices", and so i asked, "would you rather go to western playground today or our playground and then to tallinn and zahlia's house for dinner." and immediately the kids responded, "tallinn's house!"

and so i changed the plans. that's all there was to it. i don't think they knew that i was changing their life so they could have their choice, but it was something that struck me...i should listen to their choices, and one day that will be important to them.

and, tonight, sela is sleeping in her knickers. she has had a dry nappy for six consecutive sleeps and feels she is up to sleeping in knickers like all the big girls do. i will report back soon...go sela go!

if my life were a FRIENDS episode

monday would be called, "the one where tess nearly has a heart attack"

i'm happy to report that last week sebastian was invited over to a friend's house for a playdate. (yes! the friend does exist).  i was headed away to the bi-annual ecumenical retreat that i go on and so i made sure that i made all the correct plans, for sebastian's transportation ahead of time, knowing that monday when i returned, i would be too tired to take care of logistics.

so i wrote in his diary that sebastian would be taking bus #3 home with this friend for a playdate, and i sent a note to the pta informing them as well.  everything was taken care of, and sebastian would have a good playdate, most excellent.

monday, i dragged my weary self from bed and headed to kennedy school and read to the kids. it wasn't as successful as last time, i will have to give your book suggestions a go, because mine were not that great this week. i thought they would LOVE "where the wild things are"...but we had trouble with kid concentration this week.

as i was leaving, (it was a typhoon one, the rain was just pelting down), i walked into the pta office just to double check that sebastian could take the bus. so imagine my surprise when the pta head said, "sorry, he can't, that bus is all full."

talk about a narrow escape. if i had not have stopped in the office, i never would have learned this! i headed home, made plans to tell gary to pick sebastian up and drop him off at his playdate, and then when i walked in, got the message that "sebastian and his friend will be picked up by friend's mother". great! all is excellent again.

at 3.15 i was freshly showered and eating bagel chips (onion) when the phone rang. "mmmhello?"

"yes, hello tess? is sebastian not coming over to our house today?"

"yes, yes he is" i responded, heart beginning to thump..."but you said you would pick them both up from school..."

"no, i meant from the bus stop."

simple miscommunication. big error.

i practically hung up on the very nice lady but screamed i had to get my child. she offered to get him, but i needed to see if he was okay.

it took four minutes to get to kennedy school, and as i ran to the pick up area, i realised that i couldn't look at traumatised as i felt. because maybe sebastian wasn't. then again, he might be in tears. so i slowed my gallop, and looked around the deserted and raining play area, then walked briskly into the office, where i approached the secretary...

"i'm looking for my missing child...."

and there he was. not crying, not freaking out, but curious. dashing toward me.

"mummy! you're here! may i have my playdate now?"

i looked at him, his eyes big pools of trust, his biggest concern that his playdate would be cancelled, and i fought back my desire to crush him into a hug and to apologise and call myself stupid and terrible and many other things. (poorly dressed too, i was wearing bagel schmear flannel pj top, a summer skirt and charles' flip flops).

"yes. let's go, kitten. i'm sorry i was late. i'm here."

am i the only person who does things like this?

my new job

yes, i have added another crown to my gel but not lice ridden head.

yesterday at 8.30 sharp i climbed four sets of stairs to the kennedy school library and assumed my new role as volunteer assistant librarian, 8.30am-10am. it is an extremely prestigious position.

i happen to love libraries, and jumped at the chance of filing books, slotting them away in proper spaces. the head librarian is v. cool and i think we will get along just fine in the 90 minutes we interact a week. a class came in and i just went about my business, putting away books and listening to their teacher read to them.

at 9.15, my real reason for volunteering was up...and i walked down the four sets of steps and then up one set of steps to sebastian's classroom, where my little blonde boy was not even attempting to do his writing assignment "i spy three pigs playing". he was leaning back in his chair looking at the wall. when i stepped into the classroom, he jumped up, made a huge show of hugging me, and i was named their table supervisor and was to assist all the children in their printing and drawing.

after five minutes, it was time to give them all their library books and book jackets, and we walked down one flight of stairs, across the courtyard and up four flights of stairs (30 kids and three teachers, enough said!) and into the library. the kids got 10 minutes to choose a book, and i got to guide them in their choices.

at this level, the kids books are in buckets. and i have to say, there are so many mediocre books out there. but every once and a while, there is a classic. imagine my delight when i saw "FERDINAND THE BULL" amongst the "margery and the medicine man" series. remember ferdinand? the bull that loved roses so much that while in the ring he would stop and smell them instead of charging? imagine my surge of triumph when i suggested a little girl take the book out...and she did!! yay yay yay!!!

and after 10 minutes, i gathered all the children round me and told them i needed their help. did they want to help? hzebezebe they sort of mumbled. you can do better than that! i told them.

yes! they replied.

that's good, i responded, because we're going on a bear hunt! and i pulled out the book.

for the next few minutes i kept them captivated as we walked through grass swishy swishy, through mud, splurk splurk, and touched a wet nose..."is that you, spot?" we got arm movements going, and raving around and then we all practised lying very still under the bed. and then we discussed how sad the bear looked as he walked away and said that he was probably sad because he had been wanting to play with miss c's class, because they are so wonderful!

there was enough time to read one more book after this, and miss c rooted through the buckets looking for a suitable one. i encouraged the kids to shake their sillies out, and then we read one more book and practised playing the banjo (plink plink!), the drums, (rat-a-tat-tat!) and the trumpet (toot!).

and then the teacher and i took the kids back to class.

jk rowling can't do it on her own. i want kids to love reading, and if reading to other kids can help them love reading and make reading interesting, i will come in and climb too many sets of stairs to do it, as many times as necessary. it's something i'm passionate about.

in asia, kids read at a very young age, but so  many of them don't know the definition of the words, can't delight in using them in context, or in the creative sense of word, or just smile when listening to words together making a story. i want to help give them this gift. reading alone isn't enough. i want to make it fun.

so, i am the class reader. not so glamourous, but for me, a very important job.

explaining what i can't understand

today sebastian was told me how he was never going to leave home, ever. i assured him that would be cool, but shared that if he changed his mind and wanted to leave home to go to, say, summer camp or university, his dad and i would be okay with that as well.

"no!" he said in a scared voice. not the pretend scared voice that he uses when i ask him to try a new dish. but his real scared voice.

"seb," i said, and pulled him towards me. "what is it kitten? i said you can stay here for as long as you want?"

and he replied, "i never want to go to university. never."

"why not, honey? your dad went, look at the great person he is now."

"because i might get killed."

stunned silence. and he continued in his precise voice and his eyes filled up with tears.

"those people last year, they were killed by a gun and they were at university. i don't want to go to university, i don't want to be killed."

what do you say?

the kissy girls

friends with older children warned me about the learning curves children face when they start primary school. i was ready for the educational learning curve, it was one of the reasons we held sebastian back. and i had seen the educational learning curve when he started kindy and started spouting songs and terms i hadn't heard before.

as for the social learning curve, i thought i was quite prepared for that...i knew there would be friends, (pretend or otherwise), and stuff, and expressions "easy peasy lemon squeezy" was a fave from last year and "yes sir, bra sir" somehow made it into his venacular not to mention the always popular "ooooh, that's a toughie!" said in an annoying voice.

and he's talked marriage since annie announced it was going to happen, so the girl thing has always been pretty cool.

so what's with this new game and species...THE KISSY GIRLS?

it's not easy to find out. eavesdropping in the car on the way home as he and adam discuss the strategies of the kissy girls has been my only way of learning about them. they don't tell me much, except occasionally when i ask a question (example further below) that is so dense they have to answer it to relieve me of my stupidity.

WHAT I KNOW: each grade level (primary one and two that i know of) has girls in each class known as kissy girls. to be a kissy girl, the girl must be willing to rush around during playtime, chase the boys and, oh yes, (oooh, awful say the boys) kiss the boys.

(i'm not certain whether every boy wants to play with the kissy girls or whether every boy can. give me time.)

if during playtime, a kissy girl catches a poor, defenseless male, then she kisses him and that means he is her prisoner and has to go to the girls' fort. and ONLY the leader of the boys team can rescue you. oh, what a terrible thing it is to be caught by those evil, awful kissy girls.

"so why did you play?" i interrupt, unable to keep silent.

"because, tess"

each day sebastian and adam discuss the day's rescue strategies and if they have been caught by a kissy girl and if so...DID SHE KISS YOU? and sebastian tries to remember the names of the kissy girls in his class. (adam asks him, i don't need to, i can tell you who they are just by looking at them).

yesterday both boys were caught by kissy girls. apparently they are in different groups since both have different captains. (sebastian appointed himself captain of his team which i think just has one other fellow in it).

"oh it's just awful the kissy girls."

"yes, it was terrible, they caught me!"

"did you get kissed?"

"no, did you?"

"no, did you?"

"no."

"i hate the kissy girls. i would hate it if they kissed me."

"so would i."

and again, because i am physically unable to eavesdrop successfully, i say, "sebastian, adam, i have a question. you always say you are very fast runners."

"i am very fast, tess, i am faster than a superhero."

"i am too."

"but a kissy girl could catch you? they must be really fast."

"sometimes."

and then i change the topic to star wars or football or swimming and the kissy girls are done for another day.

KISSY GIRLS !!!

HOT OFF THE PRESS: sebastian was kissed today by a kissy girl who is a year ahead of him that is all i know. adam is ill, so i didn't get to earwig on the details. sebastian mentioned the kissy girl event to me he was so disgusted/secretly thrilled, but that's all i know. i don't even think he knows her name. even if he did, i doubt he would tell me.

happy hunting

yesterday i got the dreaded email from the school nurse saying that a child in sebastian's school had been diagnosed with head lice.

i placed my hand at the top of my head when i read this line.

she gently reminded us that children aren't supposed to come to school when they have living, white, legged, accessories adorning their hair.

i ran my hand through my hair

the email continued that lice are very contagious.

i started to scratch.

i then did a delightful dr google search on "prevention lice" and found some homemade proactive chemistry projects you can make in your kitchen: most involve mayonnaise and vinegar. other suggestions included wearing lots of hairspray which explains why no one ever got lice in the 1980's.

then i ran out, caught the 28 bus and purchased some prevent lice shampoo (smells awful, no wonder lice won't go near it) and waited for sebastian to come home.

the child who contracted lice was not in sebastian's class, or grade but i still needed to have a good look. the fact that i was itching my own head more than he was itching his was a good sign, but i still needed to search.

result: CLEAN.

however i am still a little itchy.

my shopping cart and i ran into a very nice mum today during one of my tri-weekly park n shop $1500 trips.

after showing her sebastian's writing book, which is filled with comments like "try harder, sebastian!" and other positive ways of saying, "this isn't good", we started talking about the pressure in hong kong for kids to obtain academic excellence. she was really worried about this.

i looked at the book in my hand and said, "friend, this generation is raising thousands of academically brilliant, multilingual kids. they're writing earlier, they're learning so much, and we're training them to believe that good jobs are what counts, and only what counts."

and then i started warming up.

"but 30 years from now, would you rather call your child and have 80 per cent of the converation be about their job, or 80 per cent of the conversation be about their friends, life and activities. no matter how much money we make, we'll always want more."

yes, i was simplifying the issue but i am realising more and more that there is a bigger picture, and the person i want my children to be is not about education. it is about being happy with who they are, about being creative and knowing they are loved for their talents. and being willing to try new things. from there, i think succeeding at their educational niche follows, wherever that is. i might be wrong.

and as we enter into the competitive world of writing neatness and maths and reading levels i need to remember:

raising children to have excellent relationships is more important to me than raising children to have excellent jobs.

school is ... okay?

life at kennedy school is getting better, maybe?

with my spidy senses, parenting knowledge and my circa 1976 nancy drew detective kit i have discerned that this week school has gone, okay.

evidence:

1) lunch is eaten

2) not as clingy

3) no requests to stay home

4) he says he spends time with someone called rufus

now of course, this could all be translated into

1) bullies are stealing his lunch and sebastian is too scared to say anything

2) runs from me the minute he hits schoolyard to try to reach classroom before bullies reach him and thump him and give him wedgies/swirlies etc

3) would rather be victimised than at home with terrible mother

4) rufus is a "pretend friend" and sebastian is psychologically unbalanced as well as friendless

conclusion: sometimes evidence is best left alone.

charles is away in australia right now. every person under four feet has asked at least twice today where he is, which serves to reinforce the crap job i am doing parenting in his absence.

this morning i took sebastian to his first rugby practise. it was actually pretty good, there are basically only two, two word phrases that you need to repeat for the first year. they are:

THROW BACKWARDS

and

RUN FORWARDS

many of the kids were confusing those two concepts today.

rugby ended at 10am and then there was a short talk where the volunteers asked for another parent volunteer to be the contact, to send out weekly emails and be an organiser. during the speech, as they were trying to make eye contact with the parents who were all examining their shoes, adam's dad, chad was right beside me and we tried to flip each other's hands up in the air and then tried to sucker the person next to me into doing it by taking a step backwards. all i know is i cannot commit to doing that right now.

rush home, change clothes and head off to church.

then home, lunch, nap....thank you. i watched a couple of episodes of friends. we have cable now, but i don't have the time for a two hour movie or the mental capacity for that matter. what i DO have is a good time watching 22 minutes of sitcoms and i have to say, 30 rock is a very good replacement for arrested development, although i miss the dysfunction.

however, naps end, and the kids woke up and we headed down to the playground. oh the trama and dramas !! charles, need your good parenting to balance out my snarling ways and "natural consequences" style of parenting.

the other night we took sebastian to see the watoto children's choir. www.watoto.com the children are from uganda, and at least one of their parents has been killed due to famine, disease (mainly hiv) or war. they come to the watoto communities, which were founded be canadian missionaries and are given a home, parents and an education. the choir travels the world.

the children we heard the other night ranged in age from 6-13 i would guess. they spoke of losing a parent, and how before they came to the watoto community they were starving, lonely, and scared. this concept struck sebastian hard. "how can they travel on an airplane if they have no mummy or daddy?" "will they grow up if their mummy is dead now?" and the question that tore my heart, "how come they are smiling if their mummy is dead? i want to know."

sebastian wanted to keep one of the singers, and we explained that they weren't for sale like a luke skywalker doll. but i said that besides money, one of the things we could do to help the children was to appreciate our life. we may not like having cheerios instead of waffles, but at least we have food.

"tomorrow i will eat all my breakfast" he promised. and he did.

and today, when he was whinging about the fact that he had to do his reading words for school, i asked him if he wanted to read the "second chance" book, a story about a little boy that goes to live in a watoto community. he said yes, then gave me a hug. i guess he feels one parent who is trying is better than none at all.