Elgarmummy.com

Author: Sarah

  • Word Play and Limerick

    Word Play and Limerick

    What does a bird have to do with Chinese food? Plenty, it seems, at least to my son.

    El enjoys the sounds of various words, and words that sound alike. He is able to speak English pretty fluently, some Mandarin with a sing song English accent, and some Cantonese.

    My mother had been driving him to school for the past few months, but that day we had gone out earlier, so I was driving. My mother asked him whether he liked ‘dougan’, or bean curd.She had just cooked it for dinner the day before, and hoped he had eaten it.

    He said he liked it, and he suddenly became very amused. After a while he said that there were two types of ‘dougan’. One was an animal, and the other was food. He started giggling.

    It took me a few seconds to know what he was talking about. Thank goodness I had been reading up on some animals.

    “What type of animal is the ‘dougan’?” I asked, as I turned out of the expressway.

    After a few moments, he said it was a bird.

    Toucan
    Tourcan Habitantes de Faunia 10 by Raúl Hernández González on Flickr

    “Are you talking about the toucan?” I replied, while sneaking a glance at him who was in the backseat.

    “Yes,” he said.

    I spelt the word for him, just to confirm.

    He must have thought both words were the same, but he understood the difference in the meanings.

    So I had to explained to him how different the two words were.

    Alright, here it goes. I’ve decided to come up with my first ever limerick. It could be much better.

    There was a bird, a Toucan
    which loved to eat some Dougan
    It wanted to steal
    But had an ordeal
    When sadly caught by a Shogun

  • A Hairy Affair

    If there is someone in the household who could cut hair, wouldn’t you let him or her cut your baby’s hair?

    Apparently not everyone thinks the same. A hairstylist was telling my mother that her daughter wanted to hire someone who specialises in cutting baby’s hair. How strange.

    Anyway, since nobody can cut hair well, unless you want to end up with a bad hair cut, which was my fate when my mother used to cut my hair when I was young, then it’s off to the hair salon.

    Gar is born with a head full of head. That is way much more than his elder brother, who at nearly 3 still has very fine hair. It is so long that it stands up, and it curls nicely, and there is a tinge of brown at the ends of his hair. I was born with a head full of hair, and according to my mother-in-law, he has curly hair like my husband.

    So at three months old, he went for a hair cut. The hair stylist had cut the hair for El, so I know her skills. It is quite hard to cut hair for a fidgety baby. Previously, El would sleep through the hair cuts. However, this little baby was wide awake, and there was no way he would let his hair disappear without a fight. He was turning and moving, and it took tremendous skills to cut his hair without hurting him. She trimmed the top, and shaved the rest. He had bald patches due to sleeping on his back.

    before his haircut
    One day before his haircut
    After His Haircut
    Not too pleased with his new crew cut

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    I think he needs a bit more hair on top to balance his look.

    In the mean time, as she had forgotten to give me a wrap, I had hair all over my clothes, which got onto him even after I changed him out of his clothes into a onesie. It was nearly a tussle against time as I had to get all the hair out of his tiny fist before he put it into his mouth.

    This costs 10 dollars, and is way cheaper than a hair salon that targets children, minus all the frills such as cartoon, balloons, gelled hair with temporary hair dye. I have to be there to supervise the haircut, for the last time the elder boy went for his haircut without me, he ended up totally bald, just like a Shaolin monk.

     

  • Drawing Faces

    El is still young, so his drawings are still somewhat crude. In fact, he doesn’t draw much, but instead loves to write. His handwriting is slowly improving, but that is another matter.

    We bought markers that could write on glass. He had been writing words and names on our glass windows in the living room. I had drawn an alligator before. Now, I’m not a very good artist, but I can copy simple drawings.

    One day, I decided to show him how to draw a spider. I drew an oval, added eyes and a mouth, and then added eight legs. He was pretty amused by it, and drew his own little spider. I thought it looked pretty cute and it had that bug-eyed innocence, a little like a character from Monster, Inc.

    Blue Spider drawn by El
    Blue spider drawn on the glass window

    His preschool had an art exhibition where they raised funds for charity. The school did up the place very nicely, and invited the parents to the place at night. Some of the works were amazing, and I could not believe that 2 to 6 year old children could produce such high quality works. The teachers must have worked very hard on these.

    His teacher told me about how he had drawn the pictures, and she had helped him with the outline. He came up with the title of the artwork himself.

    My World
    Artwork by El, aged 2 plus going on 3.

    I missed his artwork, and it was one of the first place I had started. I went through the entire exhibition before my husband finally located it. The two faces were just like the spider’s face I had drawn, and the eyes mirrored my spider and his spider’s eyes. The title of the art piece was something he had been singing – Save My World. I was totally surprised that the teachers could get this artwork out of a little boy who drew nothing much, and could not even hold his pens properly.

    When I asked him about his drawing, he told me that both were happy faces.

    Of course, parents were supposed to bid for the artwork, with the proceeds going to Very Special Arts, a charity for promoting art for people with disabilities. One painting with Chinese calligraphy was going for over $300 at that point, and it was a fierce fight. I saw my friend’s child’s artwork being outbid, and promptly told her.

    For El’s artwork, I was pleasantly surprised to see the principal of his school place a bid of $100 for it. We had not planned on bidding much, but seeing that figure, from a starting bid of $25 by his school, we decided to bid $150.

    Did we win the bid?

    Stay tuned to find out. Actually, I really have no idea because he has been sick and had not gone back to school to get the results of the bidding.

    Update- We won the bid! It has been on our display shelf ever since.
    He had also requested for art lessons, and now takes art lessons regularly.

    Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...