Nevergirl’s

If there’s anything being mom to two girls has made me, it’s stalwart. Nothing ever surprised me anymore, not the fact that on my bookmarks you will find alongside sites on insurance advertising and whatnot kiddie staples like Nickjr.com and Y8.com. Or the fact that I’m almost always jolted awake at 4am by a 5-year-old who has nightmares in English. Or that I watch what my 5-year-old watches – under duress most of the time, I tell you – and actually enjoy it!

I’m sure motherhood has changed me in a lot of ways.

On Friday nights, I put on a floppy hat, grab a tote, and spend an hour or so marching about the living room, singing a Peter Pan track, “Following the Leader”.

On weekends, I resign myself to eating whatever the 5-year-old whips up as she “cooks” beside the hub. Thank goodness for my tum, she hasn’t come up with anything poisonous yet.

Every day, I fully expect to find toys in the bathroom sink, Play-doh in the laundry basket, and plastic dinner stoves and plates under the pillows.

So yes, stalwart would have to be the best adjective for the person motherhood has turned me into. I can clean up after poop, change nappies, endure tantrums, and stop my two daughters from killing each other without batting an eyelash.

If you ask me to come up with titles to describe just what it is I do at home, it would have to be these, in the following order: maid, nurse, barber, entertainer, jury, judge, personal shopper, executioner, referee, and warden.

Posted in Raising Alex | Comments Off

We had to wake up really early for three days, to be in Alex’s school. The first one was for a general meeting. The second one, for the family day meeting. And the third, for the distribution of grades.

In the early days, I probably would have stressed my way into needing Medicare supplement because I’m a worrywart like that because while getting up at 8am is very much doable – we’ve been getting up at 7:30 am these days, in fact – getting all showered, dressed, and somewhere that other people are is a different story entirely!

I’m grumpy in the mornings, and it’s a matter of principle that I don’t shower so early. Hey, I worked 8 to 5 and 9 to 6 for years! I never had a choice about how I spend mornings. Now that I do, believe you me when I say I take almost fiendish glee in “wearing” my bedhead as long as I could.

Going back to those three mornings when the husband and I had to be at the little girl’s school really early, the 5-year-old morphed into a human alarm the nights before. “You have to sleep early, mom. You’re going to my school tomorrow.” It amused us that she knows us so well. She also gave us a crash course on what her teacher is like. Perhaps she’s worried her old people are absolutely lacking in social graces? Perhaps she thinks we will scare her teacher?

I’m not sure how the rest of you young parents out there are faring in the PTA department. But, in our home, we have a self-declared press relations coach and this little person insists on giving us dossiers of her teachers, her classmates, and her  classmates’ parents.

This explains why I know H’s mom is – to quote my little girl – Japanyukis. Alex had heard the yayas gossiping in the school bus. She thinks Japanyukis is the Japanese word for “mom”. I’m not sure how to correct her. I’m not even sure if I should.

Yay, PTA!

Posted in Raising Alex | Comments Off

Alex has been writing a lot. You’d think, by the number of pads she goes through, that she’s writing letters to half the world population… or a quarter of all the bushmen in Africa. She pretends she’s writing stories when all she ever writes is the alphabet, over and over again.

Every now and then, she copies the words off my books, strings them together, and tells us she finally came up with a title for her book. Today, the story was Diwata Festival Undone. Yesterday, it was Globelines Lake Wogone Days. Who knows what she will be writing tomorrow? She makes hydrocephalic stick figures by the dozen and drawings of herself and her sister being chummy with cute little rats.

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Posted in Raising Alex | 1 Comment »

These days, we seem to be always at sea. Alex is a joy to travel with. She never whines, throws tantrums, cries, or gets cranky from having to warm her seat for hours.

The last time we rode a slow vessel to Tubigon, she had a grand time making up stories about the islands and flotsam we passed by.

Perhaps it’s time we get this little girl her passport. She’s now old enough, methinks, to start seeing just how vast the world is. If there’s one thing I wish my little girls would have, aside from intelligence, kindness, courage, and charm (I don’t ask for a whole lot, do I? hahaha), it’s love for adventure, humankind, and travel.

Posted in Family, Raising Alex, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

The girls are growing like weeds. I wonder how they got to be so big so fast. Not too long ago, I was 22 and heavy with Alex. Now Alex fights me for Xbox time!

Last year, I was 26 and pregnant with Charlie. Today, Charlie wears size 2 of the infants’ clothing range and pigtails. Her yaya told us today she might be teething. She drools enough for three babies and snacks on her fingers all the time.

I don’t know what it is about kids these days but it seems to me they’re all growing much faster than kids did in my time. It won’t be long now before we’ll be feeding Charlie Gerber and Cerelac and signing her up for classes!

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Posted in Charlie, Family, Raising Alex | 1 Comment »