"I-think-one-hundred can."

1 March 2011

"GOOD. I-think-one-hundred-can.", the Little Genius confidently declared as she buckled her seat-belt when i picked her up from kindie today. Today was her 1st semester test and it was her BM paper.

She continued, "All correct!". She sounded so convincing that I then quizzed her whether her teacher had already marked her test paper. "I think not yet. But i think all correct."
"Oh, okay.", was my response.

Moments later, she continues babbling on.
Little Genius: "The boy next to me wrong, er. In the "kau-ser" (Mandarin word for 'test'), he put 'MATA - DAGU'".
Mum: "How do you know?"
Little Genius: "Because i saw his paper."
Mum: "Why do you look at at his paper?"
Little Genius: "I finish my test already then i just look at my friend's paper. I saw he put 'MATA - DAGU'. Then i tell him wrong. 'MATA is LIHAT'. He said, "Correct, wat. Who said wrong?"
Mum: "Ai-yah...why did you tell him? Then what did he do?"
Little Genius: "Then he rub off his answer and put 'MATA - LIHAT'."

I couldn't help but burst out laughing.
Of course, the motherly advice followed on straightaway... "next time, don't look at your friend's paper and tell the answer to your friend, okay.... in case your teacher sees it and think that you are copying someone else's answers.

Fast forward to the next day.
It was her English paper. The same routine follows. Little Genius gets into the Family Taxi and the driver duly asks her, "So how was your English test today?".
Little Genius: "Good. Today i didn't say anything to the boy."
Mum: "Hmm...good girl."
Little Genius: "But the other boy try and copy my answer!"
Mum: "Huh...are you sure?"
Little Genius: "YES! I doing my test then suddenly i see (at this point, she imitates how the boy rolls his eye-balls to the left corner of his eye) the other boy do his eye to see my answer!
Mum: "You sure? Then what did you do?"
Little Genius: "I tell teacher."
Mum nods her head dutifully in return.

Fast forward to the third day of her 1st semester test.
Little Genius gets into the Family Taxi and very promptly and proudly declares, "Mummy, Mummy. Today I put my bag and my water bottle next to the boy and then i put my hand like that, so he cannot see my answer!"
Mum: "Huh...why?"
Little Genius: "Teacher say do like that one."
Once again, Mum nods her head dutifully in return.

~ Jottings by a blessed Mum who continues to be both amused and intellectually challenged by the unstoppable very quick-witted Little Genius.  She did indeed score one hundred in all her test papers. Full credit goes to her own initiative at picking up her school books to self-revise without either of her mum or dad asking her to. And like she always says, "my brain very keng-one, my brain tell me..."

Though the Little Genius can really test one's patience to its maximum limit, I wouldn't trade all these little blessings with a return to the corporate world madness...just with a couple more blinks of my panda eyes, my little 5 year old girl would soon blossom into a teenager with different challenges and more tales to tell...

Just last night, as she was acting up again refusing to get into her bedroom during bedtime, Mr T started counting ONE... [the routine here would be that Mr T would count from ONE to TEN before brandishing the all-powerful rotan!]... as she turned around and started to walk very briskly to her room, Mr T stopped counting...she then stops in her track and shouts out to her Dad, "Huh? Only ONE...never count already?.....".

Left Dumbfounded Again!

On the very historic day of the 22nd day of the Third Month of the Year 2011, the Little Genius left me dumbfounded - again!

It all began as a normal morning school run.
One of the questions we normally discuss on the way to school is the lunch menu for the day.
On that particular wet and rainy day, it was a question of a chicken and cheese pie OR fried rice with chicken. That was the request from the Little Genuis, but I didn't promise that either would be on the lunch menu. Instead, I had said that i would check the fridge and decide later when i reached home.
[A little background information here. Normally, for the simpler dishes, my capable extra set of hands at home - the kids' nanny, would cook the simple meals like steam or fried fish, fried rice, porridge, noodle soup, etc.]

Fast forward a little, being a very wet and cold morning, i knew that the chicken would take far too long to thaw from the freezer. Hence, i decided on steam fish with her favourite mushrooms and tomatoes.

Fast forward a little more.
As soon as the Little Genius got into The Family Taxi, I updated her on the Lunch menu:-
Mummy: "Darling, I cooked Steam Fish with rice for lunch today."
Little Genius: "WHY?"
[Straightforward question, right? Or so i thought.]
Mummy: "Because the chicken too frozen...cannot...."
[I was abruptly interrupted by a very serious-sounding 5 year old girl who had this to say mid-way through my unfinished sentence.]
Little Genius: "I mean WHY did YOU cook? Why didn't Aunty J cook?"
Mummy: "Arh.....arh......Yeah. Aunty J cook the steam fish for you...[trying to still sound unnerved...]"
Little Genius: "Then you should say Aunty J cook steam fish for lunch..."
Mummy: "Ohh...ok. Sorry."

I was left speechless.
Dumbfounded - yet again!
Even when faced with a tough job interview in years passed, I would at least have some sort of answer to respond with. This new career is proving to be far, far more challenging that i had anticipated.

~ Jottings from the Heart
by a still dumbfounded Mother who now has to choose her words so very carefully before the words leave her mouth so as to make sure that she is not continuously challenged by the Little Genius.

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.