When "I'm coming" becomes "I'm walking"

21 February 2011
Today Miss Chatterbox cum Miss Smart Alec out-did herself again.

As i called out to her this morning to come to where i was, instead of the standard response "I'm coming, Mummy", what i got was "I'm walking!".

And earlier this evening as I was in the midst of reminding her to get something done for me, she retorted "Wait, Mummy. Don't tell me now...my brain is still sleeping!".

Mummy was left utterly speechless.


22 February 2011
Today, Miss Smart Alec tries something different. For almost every question that i gave her, she replied in single letters. Not in a single syllable, but a single letter.
Q: Do you have homework today ?
A: N.

Q: Are you going to join Jie-Jie for swimming class this Saturday??
A: N.

I can just foresee the many challenges that lie ahead of me in her teenage years!


24 February 2011
Today, Miss Smart Alec decides to throw Mummy a different challenge.
Whilst patiently waiting for the traffic lights to turn green on the way to school this morning, she spoke a single word "YOURS".
Her stunned intellectually-challenged mother intelligent reply: "Huh?"
Miss Smart Alec repeats herself: "Yours?"

Silence greeted her.

Seconds later, Miss Smart Alec continues by saying "Mine is eight-o-three."

Turns out that Miss Smart Alec was doing a comparison of the time on her watch, with that of her intellectually-challenged mother's watch and the car's clock.

Sigh. I have so much to learn.

And to think that we were all a little anxious when little Miss Smart Alec took a little too long to start walking (she only started walking at 18 months, as she was very contented crawling on one leg whilst dragging the other!) and talking, compared to her 2 older siblings.
Now there is just no stopping our little Miss Smart Alec.

When she first started talking, Miss Smart Alec did encounter some difficulty pronouncing certain words.
'Biscuit' ~became~ "BIS-TET"
'Lion' ~became~ "YA-YEN"
'Kitchen' ~became~ "Chicken"
'Hannah Montana' ~became~ "HAN-TAH PON-TAN-TA"


Going back memory lane with the other 2 princesses......

The following exchange took place a couple of years ago when Princess No. 2, a.k.a. the Little Empress (not quite a whining queen, yet!), was much younger. Till today, my Princess No. 1 and i still laugh about it.

Mum to Princess No. 1: "Is it raining?"
Little Empress intervenes(without checking the weather): "No. It's not raining, Mummy."
Upon checking the weather, Princess No. 1 replies in the affirmative: "YOU BET!"
Little Empress immediately answers back: "I'm not BAD, I'm good."

Just recently, as Princess No. 2 and I were doing some school work together, she had to read the word "James". Confused between the English way of pronunciation and the Bahasa way of pronouncing the "suku kata", "James" became "Ja-Mis"!


As for Princess No. 1, her amusing moment came about when she used to take a ride home from school with a neighbour's son twice a week when she was in Standard 1. When she arrived home, she would call me whilst i was at the office to let me know that she had safely arrived home and that Uncle Patrick had helped her to get her school bags down from the car. So amongst ourselves, we all referred to the neighbour's driver as Uncle Patrick.

One fine day, as i bumped into Uncle Patrick opposite our house, i called out to him "Patrick...".
No reply.
Uncle Patrick looked at my direction, but did not respond. I called out his name again, "Patrick...".
No immediate reply.
However this time, he sensed that i was calling him and he moved towards me. I found out then, that his name is not actually Patrick.

Back in the house, I asked Princess No. 1 how she came to know that the driver's name was Patrick.
Her very innocent reply sounded more or less like this: "Yah...i always hear Ryan call 'Pak-trick', what."
I guess to an innocent first timer learning Bahasa Malaysian and who is more familiar with English names than Malay names, the word "Pak-Cik" does sound like "Pak-trick"!

My blessings.
Truly my blessings.

~ Written from the Heart
by a blessed Mum who continues to be both amused and intellectually challenged by her four little charmers.