We have been talking a lot about blessings lately. It was Thanksgiving here last week and we asked our students to reflect upon their blessings. I guess it is just human nature not to count yours until you are one short. I find it funny that we always think we have problems and tend to focus on them, rather than on the positive points in our lives. I remember times when I had a totally different set of priorities and worries. It is almost like that was a different life. Still, I somehow managed to find things to stew about. Sheesh! Sometimes I wish I had an internal “suck it up” button. I know I really need it sometimes. A smaller but equally useful button would read “you are not a victim AKA don’t take yourself so seriously AKA stop being self-absorbed”.

I look to my children in order to get back on track and in touch with reality. They are good about that because their priorities are totally different from mine and from each other’s. Lu wants me to know that he likes girls’ movies and his sister likes boys’ movies. Chichi wants me to sit down and make the ornaments she needs for the Christmas pageant. Still, they know where those buttons I was talking about are located! Sometimes they push them!

Chichi is practicing for 2 Christmas programmes this year. One at school and one at gymnastics. Yesterday she went to the dressmaker to take measurements for her gymnastics costume. That reminded me we needed to see if she had a party dress that fit her to wear for the school pageant. The kids are presenting the Sound of Music and the girls need to wear party dresses, party shoes and ribbons in their hair. Chichi has a couple of really fancy party dresses handed down from a friend that she has never worn. I tried both of them on her yesterday and luckily, one still fits. As we were trying them on she said: I have to wear this? YUCK! I hate dresses. I told her that she also needed to have ribbons in her hair. She thought that sounded terrible. Meanwhile, her brother was watching the whole scene and he had a different reaction. He said: Mommy can you buy me one of those?

Yesterday we spent the day with some friends and on our way back we went over a speed bump. I was not totally ready when we went over it. As a result I went over it rather abruptly. Lu asked me what had happened. I explained that we had just gone over a speed bump. He asked what a speed bump was. Chichi and I tried to explain to him what a speed bump was exactly. We told him that it was like a ramp in the road that made cars go slower. He wanted to know what else it made go slower. We answered that trucks and motorcycles also went slower over speed bumps. Then he wanted to know what a ramp was. Again, we said it was something that made cars and so on, go slower. Then he said, what else is it? I said it was something that made things go up. He said again, what else is it? I told him the same thing again, and again he asked the same question. I tried to think of other ways to define ramp, but again, he was not satisfied. I thought of a lock and that it might be a device that helped another item go from one level to another. He was not satisfied by my answer and I simply could not think of anything else, so I resorted to diversion tactics to get him to stop talking about it.

The most powerful aspect of this relentless questioning is that it starts to fool you into thinking that maybe you don’t have all the answers.

Have you ever stopped to consider the world of possibilities in a note? Some of the note types that spring to mind are thank you, doctor`s, and principal`s. Yet there are also notes in the following varieties: foot, musical and bank. This may not be an exhaustive list, but that`s not the point. These lists do not include the best ones – those which are written by your own young children who may not know how to write or spell that well, but that can convey their profound sense of love nonetheless.

We received a note after our daughter`s sleep away camp that said something like:

“Dear Mom and Dad, you are very nice.”

I was thrilled to receive the note and put it on the fridge beside the note she wrote to her brother, which by the way said he was very cool and very cuddly! So the other day I decided to leave a note on my kids` pillows before I went out to work. In the middle of the night my daughter woke up with a start and proceeded to wake up her little bro too. When I got them back into their room, my daughter looked at the bookshelf where she had placed the note. At one in the morning she thanked me for my note.

That falls into the category of love note.

When I was a baby my parents apparently read a child-rearing book by an expert. The results were pretty clear. According to all accounts I was a skinny, under-fed, annoying, pain to be around. (I am not sure much has changed except for the skinny and under-fed part!) So we have sort of all come to the conclusion that hard-core child-rearing techniques are not where it´s at. But I have to confess that sometimes that stuff just slips out. This morning it happened with my own daughter. She has been “under the weather” lately with something I was unable to identify. So today at breakfast when she started fighting with her brother about whose spoon was better – I snapped, literally. I got right up in her face, started snapping and proceeded to say: “That’s it. Snap out of it. It’s over.” Maybe that would have been considered acceptable, but then I topped it off with a zinger: “Start being HUMAN again.”

Yup!

She will definitely have lots to tell her therapist.

Today I took my students on a tour of the school. We first visited the server room, then the library and several other locations of network interest on our campus.

When we arrived in the preschool area, my son was standing in the middle of the path with scissors in his hand. He and another little girl from his class were clipping blooms off plants to place in a basket. When he saw me and all my students, he ran away. I had such a big smile on my face, I couldn’t talk. One of my students had to tell him – hold the scissors the other way – don’t run – be careful.

As we were finishing our tour and ready to go back up to our room, Lu reappeared with the same girl. He came running up to me this time to tell me they had collected enough blooms.

Chichi was at a 3-day camp this past weekend with 2 friends from school. She called us a couple of times from the camp and wanted to talk to us and so we went over there twice. I went with Lu on the last day and hung out there for the afternoon while she was in the pool, and with her friends. It seemed like she was happy to be home, but that she had enjoyed her stay at the camp.

That all changed on Monday when I saw her at lunch. I had just placed my tray on the table when she bounded over to me and hugged me tightly. She was bawling uncontrollably and it took me a long time to understand what she was saying. When she finally calmed down, she told me that Lu did not say hello to her when he saw her at school that day. He had only said “hi” to one of the friends that went with her to the camp. Her conclusion was that he forgot about her when she was away. I told her I would eat lunch with her and we talked. I convinced her to stay at school for the afternoon.

When we got home and told Lu about the confusion he had caused at school, he was dumbfounded and had absolutely no idea what we were talking about. So there was no closure there.

This morning I left before she got up, and so I did not realize it was still a thing. Chichi just could not get herself to school today. Again, she woke up crying and carrying on. Apparently there is something going on. I just have no idea what it might be.

My son was asking me the other day to sing the “Halloween song” with him – you know the one – “shilla, shilla nye”. You may also know it as “Thriller, thriller night…” – well 3 year old, 2nd language, kid vocab does not lend itself well to the “TH” sound. But surpisingly you can tell what the song is by the tune!

The funny thing is that my son is totally devoted to his sister. For example, she only wants to listen to the “High School Musical” CD in the car. There is no such thing as musical democracy with her and no time for anyone else’s music. So when she has not asked to listen to the CD, he will. He loves the song, “The boys are back…” and was encouraging us to sing the following: “shilla, shilla nye – The boys are back…” Can you hear that?

Possibly the funniest thing about all of his antics is that Chichi and I now look at each other and bust up about the things he says like: “rabanada (french toast) cookies”!

As I was telling you yesterday, Chichi did a presentation at school on Mahatma Ghandi. So my new parenting technique is to refer to Ghandi about everything. For example, if Chichi say she doesn’t want to eat all her dinner my response is: “Well Ghandi would never waste food.” If she refuses to be nice to her brother, I say: “That is not peaceful.” Or, when she watched me get dressed this morning and did not bother to get out of bed, I said: “Mahatma Ghandi would never do that.” As I was over-using the Ghandi referrence, my husband was behind Chichi fake-gagging himself. My response to that: “Whatever works buddy!”

So yesterday I was trying to get the family rallied to talk on Skype. The kids were busy doing crafts and I thought we were golden. However, it all went south when they started pushing and shoving each other with scissors in their hands. We all know how that might have turned out, so I quickly hung up on the family and put each of the kids in time out. Lu was wailing like a stuck pig in the living room and Chichi was doing anything but, in her room. As a result of the bad behaviour, we agreed that neither I nor her father would attend her school presentation. That sent the sound meter off the charts.

We all decided that she could come up with an alternative punishment if she wanted to have us there at her presentation. So I asked her what alternative punishment she wanted. Her response? “Mahatma Ghandi”. Me: “Pardon…”

So it seems the presentation was all about peace. The children presented information about Mahatma Ghandi, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr. They also presented “skits” which described how to deal with conflicts. The resolutions were to do rock-paper-scissors to mediate disagreements and to say sorry when you take something without asking. So I sat there watching the spectacle wondering again how it was that I live in a parallel universe. My daughter can give a speech about Mahatma Ghandi and act out non-violent conflict resolution but at the same time do nothing of the sort at home with her little bro.