Sometimes I really think my father will make a worthy nominee for those “life long learning” award. His highest level education level is primary two, had too much fun catching fishes and playing running around then. Since his retirement (when he was 40yrs old, which is about 17 yrs ago), he has been trying to make up for this lost and does self study diligently in his Chinese, History, Geography and English.

His passion for learning is our nightmare. He began learning English using our used primary school English text books and reading materials. His pronunciation is extremely bad and he really couldn’t make sense out of the sentences. He seeks help by checking through dictionaries, but direct translation from Chinese usually makes the sentences more incomprehensible. He continuously ask us to teach him to pronounce or explain the meaning of words to him, which irritates everyone in the family. Imagine a very persistent father asking you to explain this and that to him every five minutes.

Drove all of us crazy and we begged him to stop his nonsense. Sometimes we just ignore him. He got the message finally, and toned down on his zeal in learning English. This continues for 17year until some family members gotten ill and need his attention or when he shifted his attention to another subject, like History (which nevertheless posses the same problem to us).

But after 17yrs of learning English, his English is still bad! It has certainly improved, but still at a lower primary standard. The bad news for me now is that he is very keen to practice his half baked English with his granddaughter because no one else wants to practice with him. My English is already bad enough; his is a hundred times worse. Bad pronunciation, weird sentence structure, improper use of vocabulary with mixture of Mandarin, Hokkien and Malay, the ultimate language poison to a baby.

I have expressed my worry to him and requested that he use either Mandarin or Hokkien exclusively (no Malay, semi cooked too) when communicating with the kid. I better be more obliging to teach him in future so as to curb his urge to use his bad English with Yauyau, who happens to be the only one that could tolerate his maddness.

I remember myself proclaiming that I am going to start potty training Yauyau sometime ago. I was feeling really confident then, since she was very punctual on doing her big business. I bought the potty and was all ready to start. It was a failed venture from the start. She hated the potty. There was no way that I could make her sit on it. It was also useless to carry her above the potty and try to sshh sshhh or ngghh ngghhh her. She just cried and struggled to break free. No, she doesn’t friend the toilet bowl either, so I didn’t bother to let her do it there.

I didn’t give up so easily. With persistence, I thought I would be successful someday. Just as I was encouraging myself not to give up, she counteracted by changing her poo-ing habit. It used to be once a day, in the morning, remember? Now, it is so random I couldn’t predict at all. Sometimes, she doesn’t poo at all. Sometimes her output is so high she does it round the clock, five times a day. Sometimes she decides to do it scantily all day long. Her latest habit is to do it once or twice before she goes to bed.

I have decided to give up. Please remind me to wake up my silly idea and stop fantasising Yauyau to be toilet trained by 18mths if I harbour any intention to start any training regime again. I will just let her wear diaper for the time being.

My biggest mistake is to procrastinate potty training her. I was advised by my mother-in-law to start right after her first month, but was lazy to do so. I thought it can wait, what’s the hurry! No, big mistake. Once babies start to be more mobile and be in better control of their body, they just don’t want to sit still, slim hope that they would want the potty. Start very early if you want to EC them or potty train them, or suffer the same fate as I do.

Maybe I will just let her get friendly with the potty first….

Yauyau is not that selfish anymore. Yeah!

For the past months, it was very difficult to take something from her hand without her stirring up a storm. The feeling was awfully lousy when you begged “give it to mama, pleassssssssss” with a very big smile but she reciprocated with cries when you tried to show how it was done by guiding her hand to pass on the object. We usually have to sing a song to confuse her or gave her another object to distract her from the item she was holding. Can’t help feeling worried that she would grow up unwilling to share anything.

So, I have been most diligent in teaching her to give me the object she was holding. I passed her a toy, then stretched out my hand with opened palm to signal a receiving gesture and said “give mama”. She either ignored me or looked at me with a blur blur look. Repeat the session X times until she started to fuss. She was unyielding, but I press on relentlessly hoping that she would understand the passing action one day.

She finally attained enlightenment yesterday! When I stretched out my hands and said “give mama”, she happily dropped the item she was holding onto my palm. I think she is very happy to see adults smiling, clapping and praising her whenever she passes on an item. And of course, she is very pleased to realise that we always return her whatever she gave us. That should have made her less insecure about loosing her stuff.

We had a gathering session with James’s ex-hostel friends plus their spouse and kids. Well, they are all Malaysians and therefore banded together to become really good friends, the kind of friends we have since secondary school days who rarely meet up but posses certain telepathic powers that keep the relationship going year after year.

Anyway, I am not talking about friends here; the key word is “Malaysian”. Ok, out of the four couples, including ourselves, three already have at least one kid. We are all born in the early 70s; most of us spoke Mandarin to each other during our school days, weren’t we? We are still conversing in Mandarin, and we also speak Mandarin to our kids, except Vincent and Amanda, who speak English and Cantonese to their baby.

I am always very curious about parent’s choice of spoken language to their kids. For our case, it is natural to do so as James and I speak Mandarin at home. We are sure that the kid will be able to learn English proficiently when she starts school in future, but I don’t have the same confident for Chinese. I rather get it started now and teach her myself (oh yes, I also have a secret agenda to train yauyau into some super cheena elite). For Zhaokang and Peibing, the reason is probably the same, Mandarin as their daughter’s mother tongue seems more appropriate and practical. What about Vincent and Amanda who speak English and Cantonese to their baby? Vincent has been posted to Shanghai and the family will probably stays there for a couple of years. Amanda insists in speaking Cantonese to the kid because that was her mother tongue and she wants the kid to speak that language. Vincent speaks English to the baby, because there will be ample chance for the baby to learn Mandarin. Their reason is really similar, I am sure it would be Mandarin too if they are staying in Singapore.

We met up with TK and his family during our trip to Malaysia last week. TK was educated in Chinese schools in Malaysia and went on to England for his tertiary education. His wife was English educated and doesn’t speak Mandarin. They converse in Cantonese and English and speak English to their 2yr old+ Guoyao. Why not Mandarin, because they have decided to send Guoyao to a Chinese medium school in future, so ample chance for him to pick up the language later, and his kinddy is bilingual too.

Really, when you are in Malaysia, you notice that most parents converse in Mandarin with their kids.

I find the case opposite here with fellow Singaporeans. Almost all of my friends speak English to their kids, including some Chinese Language teachers whom I know. Those couples who converse in English find it easier and natural to speak the same language to their kids. Those who converse in Mandarin want give their kids an early head start in English. Some of them try to “squeeze” in some Mandarin talk time with their kids, but usually failed, because the conversation becomes awkward, or the kid continuously replies in English.

This is a little observation I have made and not sure if it is representative enough. I do observe that Singaporean parents are less anxious in getting their child to be proficient in Mandarin, or to be effectively bilingual. There are many parents who really cannot speak Mandarin, but they are not enthusiastic either in sending their kids to more Chinese oriented nursery or kindergarten to expose the kid to the language. If parents are to choose only one language, I am quite sure that they will forgo Mandarin. Sometimes I really think Mandarin is going to become extinct like the dialects here.

It is already the 5th day of the New Year, and I know it is so outdated writing a New Year resolution, but I am going to do it anyhow. Putting it into words will definitely drill them into my head and constantly remind me about them.

For my bog:
1. Average one entry a day.
2. Change banner regularly.
3. Be more open in writing about our parenting style, even if it portrays us as very kiasu, overprotective or evil parents.
4. Build an online Chinese resource for parents who are keen to introduce more of this language to their kids.

For my family:
5. Gives everyone more attention.
6. Make it a point to buy a present for their birthday.

For my husband:
7. Gives even more attention to him, ie doesn’t doze off before he sleeps.
8. Remind him to go to the gym thrice weekly.
9. Makes him eats a lot of fruits and drinks lots of water.
10. Be less grouchy to him.

For my baby:
11. Spend more time interacting with her instead of dumping her with toys.
12. Increase talk time to her.
13. Read to her more often.
14. Shop around for an ideal pre nursery.
15. Plan for at least one outing a week.
16. Bring her out for morning walks more often.
17. Start a playgroup in my neighbourhood.

For myself:
18. Spend 2hrs practicing my calligraphy instead of the 1hr.
19. Get rid of that stubborn and undesirable flabby tummy.
20. Exercise at least once a week.
21. Read at least one book a month.
22. Cook more often, at least once a week.
23. Start my own business to earn some money.
24. Stay happy and youthful and never become an ah-soh.
25. And last of all, make sure I am not pregnant.

That’s what I could think of for the moment. 25 of them, it would be quite an achievement if I could fulfill all of them. I hope 2005 will be a better year compared to last year, which is quite bad if not for the joy of having a baby.

I have not been updating this site for a few days although I wasn’t really busy. There are quite a few things I would like to write about, but the recent tsunami has been weighing me down and holding me back to submit any post. Though I cry easily seeing sad things and little things can make me happy, the sadness or happiness never last long. I get over them very fast. But this time, the images of the media footages and sad accounts of the survivors keep appearing in my mind.

Well, probably due to the extensive coverage of the calamity (however, comparing to foreign media, I think Singapore’s coverage is still quite subtle), it makes me feels guilty to indulge in my very blessed life and rattles on about how happy, please or amusing it is to be with my little baby. Seeing parents crying and almost driven to the brink of insanity due to the loss of their little ones, our joyfulness seems to be a censurable misconduct.

Anyway, I am planning to watch fewer programme like “I, Witness”, which totally left me in tears, and hopefully make myself less affected by it.

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