My secret wish has been granted. We have our favourite sensei as your head teacher for this year (さくら組)! Happy! She was one of your head teachers too during Year 2, and you bloomed then.
I pray you’ll have a great year of fun in learning about life and love with young Sakura gumi classmates under the tutelage of your redoubtable head teacher.
We are excited for you! We love you.
You’ll be moving to your new, upper grade classroom tomorrow so I’ve been looking for your “Oh, the Places You’ll Go” book for an hour but to no avail. Looked for it on your bookshelf, on my bookshelf, in daddy’s library, in our bedroom’s book nook. It’s nowhere to be found.
Thankfully we technically still have a week for our yearly tradition since your class will still be with your previous head teacher for this week and your moving up ceremony is still this Thursday. But I still couldn’t be at peace knowing that I couldn’t find your book. Told you about it and you tried to ask (and understand) why I was looking for it.
Then you sang “Remembering, remembering” from the series “Land Before Time”, in which save for those two words, you altered the lyrics to suit how I am trying to remember where we put your book so we can have our little tradition in your moving up to Sakura class.
And you know what, you did comfort me. Your thoughtfulness and creativity and sweet voice soothed me.
Thank you our dear little one. Indeed, you’re moving up in so many ways. Thankful.
We’ve been arguing for weeks now about this particular issue. You against me & your Dad. But you just won’t relent. In fact, you’ve grown more vehement in your belief that you were right. That it is an indisputable fact that the T-Rex has only two digits on its fore limbs. Your Dad and I insist it had three.
At one point, Gon the dinosaur was even involved in our discussion as we (Me and your Dad), suggested Gon is a T-Rex. And with this, you passionately told us this is not correct because Gon has three fingers.
It went on for weeks. But it was only tonight that I thought of checking it out so that once and for all, the matter will be settled. And I was shocked to see you were right! You were jumping gayly on your bed, saying “desu yo?! Desu yo?!! I won!” while Dad hid under the covers because well, we lost.
Yes I’m very proud that you were able to notice such detail.
But I’m even more proud on how relentless you were on your stand; how confident you were even when your views were very different from Mom and Dad. You didn’t even go and look for proof (as I would do at the office); you just say it in a very confident manner that has a tone of a “full stop” on it; no room for discussion.
By even as you rejoiced, you also felt the need to comfort Mom and Dad because we lost in our big debate. And so you went really really generous. You shared with us your two most favourite toys that you almost couldn’t go to bed without. You gave Pinkie Pie to Daddy for the night, and to me, Arlo.
I pray the world, us including, doesn’t change you anak. May you continue to be firm yet gentle; determined yet generous.
For many, it can probably be described as a very laid back birthday. I’d say it was one of my special ones. Was able to have a “me” time with a good movie (La la Land), lunch date with Hubs, salon pampering, cake date with Yui, a beautiful bouquet from Hubs, good dinner, relaxing evening. And messages from family and close friends across the globe even sans FB usage (well, discount Messenger since it’s another app). I even love how the weather today was – sunny early morning, gentle rain the rest of the day and stopping at late afternoon such that Yui and I could enjoy singing while walking. And since I picked Yui up early today, while she went to toilet, I got to talk with her classmates who were all eager to show off their newly-learned English words. Love it as well that the evening was capped with Yui sweetly singing “happy birthday” while holding her Lego cake.
Heart overflowing with gratitude and brimming with anticipation.
On a visit to our daughter’s daycare, one of her girl classmates suddenly exclaimed albeit with a serious expression while looking so self-assured at me: I’ll be a pianist when I grow up!
Boy classmate then piped in, “I’ll be a Godzilla or dinosaur when I grow up! Really, really big!!” (His voice then changed to emphasise how big he is gonna be)
Of course my daughter wouldn’t allow herself to loose ground. She also has to say her own piece.
Yui: when I grow up, I will be a….FLAMINGO!!
There’s a golden rule: never, ever laugh at someone else’s dream. And so of course, I tried not to.
A few weeks later…
Yui: I will be a prime minister. Flamingo prime minister!
Well, at least she’s consistent.