life with a grade schooler: black hole

Yui: Mommy, do you know how the universe began?

Me: The Big Bang?

Yui: That’s right!

Me: so tell me what you’ve read so far in your new books. Have you read yet about the dark hole?

The moment the last two words came out of my mouth, I felt queasy as I know something wasn’t quite right and that I know they weren’t correct.

Yui: Dark hole? Dark hole? It’s the Black hole, right?!?

Haha. And so we had our first bout of laughter for the day. I wouldn’t have had imagined I’d talk about the black hole with my 7 year old; and have her correct me for that matter.

Goldilocks and the Three Bears

This evening, you asked me again to read this English book to you. I wanted you to sleep earlier but since you can also read along (and hence improve your English) I obliged.

This last page tells about how Goldilocks woke up to find the Bear family staring down at her. And how she jumped out of bed and ran away in panic.

Yui: (that thoughtful expression on her face) Because she ran away in panic, did she eventually get lost? In panic, she could have had taken a different, and unfamiliar road. (Spoken in Japanese)

Me: …….

……Now THAT makes a lot of sense.

things to be thankful for today

  • Friends and family who made me feel very special and who are generous to share their time and blessings
  • I’m working on a ve~~~ery challenging task
  • Our Client now, with whom I’ve worked with five years back, openly told me he was very happy to see my name among those in the top of the TO
  • The one year old baby I’ve been trying to get chummy with seems to have already warmed up to me. When I arrived at daycare and after Yui hugged me & pressed her cheeks against mine, little boy toddled towards me and (to my big surprise) also pressed his cheek against mine. I made him laugh too.
  • The author of a Japanese-English book I once wrote a month ago finally replied to my email and acknowledged that my comment was right. 😍

Waiting by Kevin Henkes

This award-winning book was the first English book that you were able to read by yourself. How you giggled when you realised you could actually figure out the words by yourself. And of course I was proud, your sole main contact with English. I could not take credit with your Hiragana and katakana because your daycare teachers helped you with it. But the English……proud of you babyiii

life with a kindergartener: the T-Rex and its digits 

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.