Pri 1 Registration

This three words. So potent. Mention them to any parent with 4-5 year-olds, and they send hearts palpitating.

Many parents start to scramble and look for "good" schools around their area. Not good schools? Shift to a new place. To increase chances, dig for their primary school report books, do volunteer work... whatever. As long as it guarantees a place in that school.

I am more the bochap parent. My expectations are simple:
1. Must be co-ed. What to do, I have kids of both gender.
2. Must be near home. I think in terms of convience of sending and fetching. And to consider CCA.

Too bad, both Clem's and my primary schools closed down. So we will go the traditional track - go by proximity and cross our fingers that it doesn't require balloting.

The next question put us in a dilemma. So should we consider a school near our CURRENT home or our FUTURE home (which will be ready in 2-3 years' time)? Whichever school Cavan goes to will determine our lives for the next 12 years!

Unfortunately, our property developer decided to be reaaaaally conservative and gave a late TOP. Which means we won't qualify for the school near our future home. We are just one quarter short.

Clem suggested doing parent volunteer. This, I'm dead against. I'm not going to pump in 40 hours or more to get my kids into a school! There are so many schools in Singapore, I don't believe there isn't a school my child can get into? It's just not worth my time. If I want to volunteer, I will, after my child has gotten into the school because I want to give back to the school. Not "volunteering" with an ulterior motive. That isn't "volunteering" anymore, just "buying" a place in the school with our time. What's worse, some schools have bad ethics - take in more volunteers than they have places for. Some parents did volunteer work and ended up being balloted out! Good grief!

As the date drew nearer to the registration, I thought hard and started feeling bad. What if, for all Cavan's potential, he didn't get the opportunity to develop it because he is in a less-than-optimal system? Then Clem, in all his wisdom, said,

"God is more interested in our children's future than us."

I hung on to this revelation. It was very liberating. I let go and let God.

Since we fell short of the TOP date by one quarter, we decided to register for the school near our current home. Afterall, we have received positive comments from friends from the MOE that this school was quite good.

I didn't expect it to be THAT good. When Clem called the school, the adminstrator was confident that we could get in cos we just stayed across the street. It turned out later that there were 125 vying for 87 spots! We had to ballot!

Though I was anxious, I had peace of mind. God was in charge. Besides, I didn't have any expectations so, no pressure. At most, go the other school down the street.

The day came for the balloting. There were many PRs. They got 1 balloting slip, while the Singaporeans got 2. I must commend the principal for conducting the session so well. I felt he was very empathetic and the entire process was very transparent. I liked him very much that I really wished Cavan would get in.

The PRs were lucky. With only 1 slip, many of them still got a place. When they picked the 78th spot, it was Cavan. Thank God!

Not to be xenophobic, but I thought it was unfair to put PRs and Singaporeans together in a balloting process. Though Singaporeans received 2 balloting slips, they were still thrown in together with the PRs for the balloting.

Anyway, Cavan is going to have many multinational friends. What will happen in 1-2 years' time when we shift? I have no idea. Will leave it in God's hands.

stealing time

Once we became parents, couple time becomes non-existent. Not to mention couple time, even personal me-time is zilch. I can't eat my dinner in peace. Even when I shower or use the toilet, one kid will be there asking me to look at their painting, ipad game, writing, goodie bag from school etc. (Err... yes, I have an "open door" policy.)

Basically when we are home or with the kids, they will just clamour up to us and want every second of our time. Of course I relish all these, for when they grow up, hanging around mom and dad is no longer cool. But sometimes after a day's work, we just want to wind down, eat our dinner, talk to our spouse about our day.

We decided that we will just steal time.

When I was pregger, Clem would send me to work and fetch me home. It didn't make sense, if you see it in an economic and practical sense. His office is just 10 min's drive from home. It wastes time, petrol, ERP charges to send and fetch me from CBD area. But he didn't mind it. And because I said this was the only time we can have uninterrupted conversation, he made this a routine.

Then it got better. From car rides, we progressed to breakfast. So we enjoy our mornings together having breakfast at Amoy, Tanjong Pagar Market, Maxwell etc. I treasure these moments alot, as these are times we shared our challenges, our joys, our struggles, our aspirations.

If not for such moments, we would have missed out on each other's lives. We don't want to come to a point where when the kids grow up and have their own lives, suddenly we realise that this person sleeping next to us has become a stranger. That we have no more kids-topic to talk about and we don't know what else to say.

So we constantly look for time to steal. When the kids are in school, and we take leave. When the kids are napping and we do grocery shopping and have tea. When they are asleep and we have supper.

 Having supper holding Vesper in my arms. Not fair? At least she doesn't interrupt our conversation!

It's fun looking for time to steal. Well, of course it helped having a helper or grandparents.

Hmmm... should we catch a performance next Sunday afternoon while they are napping?

friends

At their young age, we can already see how our kids develop friendship and what matters to them. Cavan and Verity are completely different in their approach to making friends.

Cavan thrives on having many friends. His teachers say that once he reaches school, friends start to call out to him. On the school bus, children will compete to sit next to him.

And he is also a loyal and forgiving friend. When he was in Nursery 2, there was a boy B, who said hurtful things to him. Once I saw B and remarked, "Your friend, B, fat fat one ah." Cavan got indignant and retorted, "You can't say such rude things about other people." "I thought you didn't like him?" I inquired. "Still, you cannot say bad things about him!" Two years later, he told me that B had become better and not so naughty anymore.

He has another friend, who was also abusive towards him. And he gets hurt easily. I was angry with Cavan cos he still wanted to be friends despite being emotionally and physically hurt by this person. Why subject yourself to so much pain? You're asking for it.

But Cavan believes in forgiveness and believes that every person will change for the better. Whenever we arrange for them to play, Cavan would pray that he will not be hurt and that the friend will be good. Whenever he gets hurt again, he'll cry and get very upset. But in the end, he'll always say, "I forgive him." And he does notice if the person has improved. He will report to me and say that so-and-so is now a good boy, so on and so forth.

I have such an angel for a son.

Verity, on the other hand, is highly selective when it comes to friends. She is happy just to have one best friend, K. All other people do not matter.

She was at a ballet class and this girl kept calling out to her. But Verity ignored her. I asked Verity why she ignored this girl. Weren't they from the same ballet class? Verity replied that her friend is K.

When K is around, Verity will not pay much attention to other friends and sticks to K like glue. I am always amused how Verity and K will hug and kiss each other non-stop whenever they are together. To the point of being disruptive. Cos they spend more time hugging and kissing each other.

Once, in the ballet class, I asked Clem to peep into the class. He said that the children were doing their exercises around the classroom and when suddenly Verity and K bumped into each other. Then they started giggling and hugging each other and totally disregard the class activity.

In school, the same thing. Her nursery teacher shared that Verity and K will talk non-stop to each other. And Verity only talked to K. She wanted to help them build healthy relationship with others as well so she separated them in different groups and they were no longer partners. Both gals went home and "complained" to their mommies that they were very sad because of this.

Of course, it's so sweet to see her so pally with her BFF. I really pray that their friendship will blossom till teens, till adulthood. At the same time, I also worry about her social life. I mean, her BFF will make other friends and she simply doesn't care about having other friends. I worry she ends up being alone and lonely.

Sometimes, she gets very sullen for no apparent reason and says that no one plays with her. I told her that she has to learn to play with others and not get angry and sulk when her friend is not around. I pray that when she grows up and mature, she will learn to make good friends.

Here they are, my two bubbies, so different when it comes to making friends. One a popular one, the other a highly selective one.

But both, very loyal.