Tagged: household chores

Her Powers of Perception

No one perplexes me more than my little gal who turns 5 in March. Most of the time she seems to be in her little dream world, oblivious to what is being said and done around her. But when she wants in for a piece of action, she will repeat tirelessly until we finally address, or rather, blow up at her for her incessant noise and inappropriate timing.

I scold her for being a noise machine; not stopping to think, observe, think, listen, think, then finally speak. Instead, she speaks off the cuff, anytime she likes. And she is naturally loud. Which is a bad match with me, for I value peace and quiet so much. She head-butts my big, glowing “Please be Quiet” button all the time, albeit unintentionally.

Once in a while, however, she amazes me with her powers of perception, which she hides very well under her chatty personality.

I was keeping my eyes downcast and averted all eye contact during dinnertime, but was unable to avoid Megan’s eyes because she was sitting right next to me. When our eyes met the first time, I saw that she was taken aback. Immediately, her eyes took on a curious and very concerned twinkle.

“MaMa, what happened to your eyes?” she blurted out, a bit too loudly. I quickly hushed her, not wishing to draw any attention to myself. “I’ll tell you later. Not now.”

“You can whisper in my ears.” She mimicked my quiet voice, while turning her head and presenting me with her pretty ear to whisper into.

“Later,” was my response to the next 6 times she asked me, staring into my eyes every time. I did tell her a white lie eventually. Sorry, darling.

When we reached home, I busied myself preparing for the kids’ schoolday the next day. Megan helped by bringing their water bottles to me for rinsing and filling up with water.

“MaMa, I help you?” She asked to unscrew the bottle caps. “It’s okay Megan, MaMa can do it.”

“I don’t want you to be 辛苦.” she said, her eyes downcast and watching the bottles in the sink. I did a double take, certain I had misheard her words spoken over noisy running water. I asked her to repeat and she did. She didn’t want me to work so hard.

At that moment, I wished I had disregarded the washing and scooped her up for a hug. This is my gal! I wanted to shout to the world. My sweet, sensitive gal! The only family member who looked into my eyes and watched my body language and deduced stuff!

But I stayed true to my cold personality. I missed the opportunity to show my affection. To the one who cared. I didn’t know how; I am still learning.

I did thank her though, and she smiled her shy smile. Then just as quickly, she bounded away while talking loudly to herself, her naturally loud voice trailing behind her intermixing with the noise of the running water, assulting my sensitive auditory sense again.

But this time, I had a small smile on my face…

Washing the Vegetables

School was closed last Friday, so I stayed home with the kids.

Having been a full time (hard)working individual of the society much longer than I have been a mother (let alone a full time stay-home one), I must admit I am totally clueless on what I can do with kids other than read to them. I am lousy at pretty much anything to do with kids and play.

The morning started very early and the kids being super early risers, were bored by 8am. They pestered me to play with them and I suggested they open a restaurant and serve me food from their stash of pretend-food and apparatus. That got them excited and busy, rushing in and out to serve me all sorts of food and beverages. The hustle and bustle lasted for about 15 minutes before I started to get bored first.

When Matthew announced he could not serve me ‘apple juice’ because the ‘apple’ was spoilt, it struck me that I had something to do! I got the kids to bring me all their food made of felt and inspected them. True enough, the food had become rather dirty from prolonged handling.

This was something I was good at – washing! I declared the food were dirty and had the kids help me wash them so we could have ‘clean food’ again. The kids were excited and agreed immediately.

We got to work quickly. I filled a basin with soapy water and another with clean water. Matthew helped with the scrubbing in the soapy water while Megan helped to rinse the food clean. The kids took their jobs seriously and did their best to get the food washed. Of course, the seriousness only lasted for about 5 minutes before they started to monkey around, as usual. After some wrangling, we finally got all the food cleaned, free of soap but dripping wet as well.

I dumped the lot of food into the washing machine to spin them dry and the kids were mesmerised by the washing machine.

Watching them Spin

Guarding the washing machine to make sure it would not eat up their precious food.

It was fascinating (and a tad grating on the nerves) to have kids who are numerate. They would watch the timer on the washing machine and announce every few seconds how many minutes were left till the spinning was done. Twice, in different high-pitched voices. Towards the end, they turned the timer-watching into a game, where they would sprint back and forth their rooms and the washing machine to read and announce the time left. I did not understand; we ate the same breakfast, but I got tired just by watching them run. Where did their energy come from? Or rather, where did my energy go?

Finally, the spinning was completed and the kids confirmed the washing machine did not eat up any of their food. They helped me lay the food out to sun.

Left out to Dry

Clean food and ready to serve another day.

Now that the washing was done, what could I do to occupy our time? More thumb-twiddling and chin-tapping. Maybe I could get the kids out of the house instead. Maybe we could get ingredients to make pancakes! I am really hopeless at this…