18 December 2007

My Dear Daughter

Not too long ago, someone in CNA forum guessed that I must have a very well behave daughter. Well, I must admit she is and I certainly hope she can continue to be so.

Over the last 4 years, I hardly see my daughter. The reason is that wifey and I are weekend parents. That means, we'll fetch our daughter home over the weekend and comes Sunday night, we'll have to "deposit" her with my mother-in-law. Also, we make it a point to visit her (and my mother-in-law) at least once a week during the weekday. Do I really have a choice to do otherwise? We certainly hope that we can see her everyday and have her calling out to us, "Papa! Mommy! You're home! See what I draw!". However, we can't... both of us have to work. Can we fetch her home on a daily basis? Maybe... but I think travelling for 45mins on either direction between my M.I.L. everyday will be taxing on us and our daughter... not to mention traveling from my M.I.L's place to/from my workplace. Why don't I buy a car? Yeah, right... might as well suggest one of us quit our job. Or better still, go buy toto and pray that I'll strike the first prize. $500K will do - I do not expect to win the rolled up millions although I do not mind :P

To cut the long story short, wifey took a couple of "long weekend" leave recently such that the "weekend resort home" become "weekend cum Monday resort home". Instead of the usual practice of returning her (my daughter, not my wife) to my MIL on Sunday, we go there on Monday so that we can have more time with her (my daughter, not my MIL) and hear that "Papa! You're home! See what I draw!"... aaaaaah...bliss!

She can really be chatty if she wanted to and will take the initiative to play with us with her usual "SURPRISE!" She will attempt to hide...by covering her eyes and then shout surprise while removing her hands to look at you :=) (I think I'll need to teach her the story of 掩耳盗铃). Anyway, it is always fun playing with her.

Also, the honest truth is, she rarely makes me angry... frustrated perhaps but not angry. However, on a recent occasion, she got on the nerves of wifey. Now, try to understand that wifey is very, very pregnant now so she tends to be a bit more sensitive. So on that particular day, wifey was teaching Trix to spell "The" and "This". After several rounds of coaching and repetition, Trix still spell "This" like this "Theis". Wifey lost her temper and hit our daughter's hand with a cane! Ouch! To be exact... a candy cane :P ... (not so ouch). Tears welled up in our daughter's eyes and only then did that irresponsible papa who hides in the study room blogging, came out to the living room and save the day :p.

I could see from her eyes that the tears rolled not because of the pain from the candy cane (it's really a very small one) but more like somehow, she felt she has disappointed us or made us feel unhappy. That made me look at my daughter in a very different perspective and I really think she is quite capable of sensing when someone's emotion is really not quite right. In other words, she is quite understanding. On top of that, she isn't those who wails and screams nor shout (touch wood) - she just cry, trying hard to hold back her tears and look at you with pleading eyes and that look totally melts my heart... like this one, taken a couple of years ago...With that look, we continued to coach her for another hour or so with as much patient as we can muster. Finally, at the end of the day, when I asked her to spell "This", she wrote "T h i s" and then I asked her to spell "The", she wrote "T h e"... woohoo! So I tried again and asked her to spell "This", she wrote "T h e i s"... ... ... ... perhaps, she's not ready for "This" yet.

Maybe, I'll a different approach next time and teach her "This" and "That" instead of "This" and "The". But whatever the case may be, we still love you, Trixie!

8 comments:

The Frog Prince said...

Froggy got big big problem with spellings when he is young. Thus thats why froggy hated english so much.
Spellings for shapes particulary.. rectangle, triangle, circle.. and even items like refrigerator... grr.. took me millions of years to learn how to spell.

Anonymous said...

i have problem spellings even until now ;p
gosh! know i know i dun like english as well.
little Trex is so smart know how to spell the at her age liao, dun push her to hard, let her enjoy a bit of her childhood!
when auntie was young, in kampung time.... auntie didn't even hold a pensil until errr.... dun remember but once i'm in primary 1...... zoom.... auntie always the top student in class (because all were not very smart).
i know i can't compare den and now but just relax and let Trex enjoy her childhood ;)

Ape said...

Erm... auntie, she's Trix, not T-rex :p

Ya... I still think she should enjoy her childhood, while she can. Wifey kan cheong mah... after hearing all the horror stories from her colleague-mums-with-school-going-children.

Anonymous said...

Auntie is all mixed up!! T-Rex is my older JRT!!! :lol:

Anonymous said...

i told u i have problem with english and spelling! now u believe me?? wahahaha!!

Ape said...

But come to think of it... perhaps I'll name my son T-rex... can can? Sounds erm... aggressive, Type A personality kind of person? :p

The Frog Prince said...

Ok donch like that.. froggy is begining to think Treats or Tricks... since Trix sounds like Tricks.. name your son Trits? so hello.. are you calling Trix or Trits tricks or treats?????

Kekekeke.

Ya.. i think let children have a bit of play play childhood to enjoy lah. Froggy young time no childhood one ok. Its just plain sad when people talk about childhood things when froggy doesn't know anything! :( Sad.

Ape said...

Froggy is right. Every child must have their childhood... every frog must have his pond, every ape must have his tree :=)