The Georgous

When I started this blog way way back in June 2007 (according to my Archives) it’s sole purpose was to serve as a parenting journal of my (our) experiences of Parenthood and as a chronicle of the milestones and developmental phases Georgia progressed through.

In many ways it has served that purpose really well. I can actually read back and remember her first words, her fascination at seeing real life ducks and geese, and all those wonderful conversations we have had. I haven’t always been very good at keeping this blog up-to-date. Completely guilty in fact of never writing about our holidays, saving drafts upon drafts of posts, half written, never posted, always meant.

This year though, I have decided to make more of an effort, not least because I would so so love to print it all bound in a hard cover book form to hand over to Georgia when she’s 21…or maybe when she becomes a mum (now that’s a scary thought!). She does not know that this blog exists, nor that she is the subject of such passionate discussions at times. Perhaps one day, I’ll tell her, but only if she’s good 😉

What has been a wonderful extension of this greater effort is the support and general friendship that has grown from readers commenting, sharing thoughts, opinions, advice. Thank you so very much to Circus Queen who nominated this blog for the Liebster Award, with such a wonderful description of my ramblings:

Stories of Georgous written by Li-Ling who grew up in Malaysia but is now raising her daughter Georgia in the UK. She speaks eloquently of the contrasts between the cultures and parenting styles, often sharing the funny or startling profound things that Georgia says. You don’t have to be from an Asian background (or even be a parent!) to find something extraordinarily human in her writing

And in accepting this Award, the three steps following are:

1. Create blog post about accepting, with Liebster logo.
2. Link back to person who has nominated me, and happily accept their praises.
3. Nominate 3-5 of my fav blogs, that maybe not everyone in the blogosphere will have tripped over but that are nonetheless FAB, and tell them they’ve been nominated.

A little bit of digging around on the Award hasn’t revealed very much apart from the fact that it is a way of helping blogs you like gain a greater readership or following. These blogs should have 300 or less readers, apparently.

So here goes my three nominations:

http://kloppenmum.wordpress.com/ written by Karyn, who sometimes writes so assertively it’s a bit scary ;), but her real, really lovely (!) personality comes through in her responses to her comments (you are allowed to disagree with her and she’ll still be your friend, I hope :). She is so passionate about parenting and creating a better life for her family and herself, you just want to keep reading.

My Adventures in the US of A Letti is a ‘real-life’ friend from my undergrad days deep in the jungles of Borneo (not quite!). She moved to the US from Malaysia and has been there for a while now. This blog and her other one on parenting Jaxon, her lovely boy Our Journey in to Parenthood are interesting descriptive stories of her experiences both in life and in parenting.

Our World My World written by… :O I don’t actually know her name. It’s a fascinating journey of parenting in Singapore, a super-‘kiasu’ ( I will come round to explaining that term soon, for now, it means competitive) country. I’m seriously in awe of how she manages to not be overly influenced by the hugely competitive parenting environment, being able to keep to an identity and a somewhat laidback (by Asian standards!) approach to parenting her children. Being there supporting, talking and spending time with them – just the way it should be!

So there you are, thank you all my lovely readers. And if you trip over to one of these blogs, I’m sure they’ll happily welcome you.

From our last visit to the local library, I picked up a couple of audio books that I thought we might all enjoy especially during our car journeys.

We are really audio book virgins, never have we ever had anything other than music in the car (OK even the times tables CD  was in tunes!).

Roald Dahl’s Matilda, read by Miriam Margolyes, was simply fascinating. We actually sat in the car after arriving home, just to listen to a bit more of the story. Read more »

Maths is easy

Georgia’s school recently held an Information Evening for the parents of KS1, mainly to introduce a new Maths scheme that the school had recently bought in to – Maths Makes Sense.

Designed and developed by Richard Duune, I first heard and saw Mr Duune and his new approach to Maths teaching in a Dispatches programme on Channel 4 in early 2010. (A related Math quiz) In ‘Kids Don’t Count’, featured in typical sensational broadcasting fashion, Mr Duune was brought in to ‘turn around’ Maths instruction at a couple of schools in the South East. The programme focussed mainly on the vast discrepancy in Maths ability among students and how being perceived as a boring subject, students were unable to answer some very basic Math questions.

The new Maths Makes Sense scheme is essentially a new style of presenting mathematics based on visual aids and models to both allow children to be able to better visualise the direct link between numbers and physical objects and a new style of teachings mathematics that rely significantly on the teacher to provide the information in an engaging, stimulating and fun way.

Read more »

to Reinforce the Positive and Encourage Achievement. First let me explain how we came to create the Star Book.

Throughout almost all of last term, Georgia, moaned and whined and made a fuss of going to school. She would be clingy and there were even daily tears.  It was awful! For those of you whose children skip happily along to school, you’re really lucky… 🙂

It helped tremendously that I knew and trusted her teachers and their feedback was always taken positively, and it was great knowing that we were partners working together towards a common goal. However, it was still a challenge every morning.

Over the Christmas and New Year holiday, as a treat to myself, (I had been good :)) I read Jack Canfield’s The Success Principles. Now if you like me watched The Secret and liked it but never really got to the practise of  ‘the secret’, Canfield’s book provides and almost step-by-step guide (an all very logical too) to achieving anything you set your mind to. One of the chapters in the book, suggests that you list every day, 5 achievements for the day (even if you did not accomplish things that you set out to do that day, if you reflect on your day, you will often find achievements each day) and to focus on goals for the next day.

So we thought, what a great way for Georgia, and especially for us, to focus on what we can achieve and to celebrate the successes each day, and that was how we came to create the Star Book. Read more »

Georgia mentioned that she saw a video clip about Noah’s Ark in school yesterday, so this morning I asked her…

Me: So what did you learn about Noah’s Ark yesterday?
G: Noah?
Me: Yeah…
G: Noah …..washed all of the BAD people away! (She explained this complete with actions – with a ‘wooshing’ motion)

It was actually quite funny….but the conversation carried on.

Me: Are you sure that was Noah?
G: Yes…wasn’t it?
Me: I thought it was supposed to be God?
G: Oh yeah…maybe it was.

Now….was that REALLY the reason for the big flood? Because I’m sure we could use it in some countries 🙂

An on-going obsession in our household is with babies, so Georgia pretends to feed, change, dress and basically anything you do with babies, she does with her Dorothy (a.k.a Thumper). So although it was not surprising this conversation took place, it was still nonetheless very sweet.

Georgia looks at me very intently and then says:

G: Mummy, when you were a baby, and you grew up, did you just decide to have a baby?

Me: Umm…yes

G: Well, I’m going to have a baby too!

Me: That will be nice….

Georgia is fascinated with gadgets and basically anything that looks as if it may make life a little easier.  She has been impressed by the walk-in baths, the ones with the doors on the side, and fascinated by walking sticks.

So one day as we were getting ready to get in to the bath,

G: Mummy when I am old, please can you get me a walking stick and the open-door bath?

I just burst out laughing….but what a lovely thought.

It’s amazing how Georgia’s english grammar is almost always perfect. We have never attempted to teach or explain to her why we use past tense or present tense – she seems to have picked it up perfectly.

This is evident in the use of : Brang…
As Georgie would say, I brang this baby here today.

After all, if the past tense of sing is sang and the past tense of ring is rang….then why not the past tense of bring be brang!

Dr Gray Dr Green Dr Red, Dr Blue…

Dr Orange my bed…

as in Dr arrange my bed

We’re in the car travelling back home from Cardiff when a little voice in the back seat asks:

G: Mummy, when were you a baby?
Me: Oh that was quite a long time ago.
G: So where was I when you were a baby?
Me: You were not born yet…
G: Yes but where was I?

…. what would you have said, given that Georgia is just over 3 years old.

Dad eventually joins the conversation:

D: Mummy and daddy did not know each other then, we were only babies. So you were not born yet.
G: But why?