The Georgous

There are many times when I feel very fortunate to now live in a culture so diverse and so ‘alien’ to the one in which I was raised, and yet, it is just as often that I feel this maddening frustration of what I feel is an internal culture clash – particularly with regards to child-raising.

Yesterday as we joined the Wiggle and Giggle session at the Caldicot Leisure Centre, I was relieved to see that the kids were almost all about the same age as Georgia, and mostly girls too at that. Jay, was rather the odd one out, being the only boy of walking age there – the other two were crawling babies.

Nevertheless, a healthy dose of running about and bouncing and riding cars within a confined space is always welcome. It did not take long however before a lesson arose…this time it was a lesson on Empowerment and saying No!

Georgia with two shakers one in each hand – clearly enjoying her noise makers, and up runs another little girl, approximately the same age (2.5 – 3 years).

“Give me that!” the girl says. Georgia does a pretty good stare-down but it doesn’t stop that nasty brat from simply snatching the toy away from her. I watch this from some distance away, but in such situations, rightly or wrongly, I am rather reluctantly to intervene. My personal feeling is that, she will have to learn to stand up for herself, and rather than fight her battles for her, I would like to teach her and furnish her with the tools to stand up for herself.

Jun who also witnesses the whole event starts saying, in Mandarin “Take it back, take it back.” Thankfully, Georgia did not understand that bit of Mandarin – although I’m sure it’s only a matter of time.

Soon she comes running up to me with a pout, “That little girl snatched from me!”
“I know…” I say, “She’s nasty, but you must learn to say No! Don’t snatch!” 

 She does a couple of practise commands and seems quite confident but all the empowerment seems to fizzle away when the same brat comes up again and tries to relieve her of the one other toy. She’s persistent this kid, it takes me several tries before she finally gets the message that she will not be allowed to snatch from Georgia.

BUT while I am displeased with that toddlers behaviour, I am disgusted by the fact that her mother and her friend are sat hidden out of view in the bouncy castle – oblivious to the entire proceedings. Hence my question – why don’t Mothers mother?

she wasn’t there!

We stopped at Windsor on the way back from Croydon. Being able to step straight in to a working living castle is expensive albeit fascinating.

There have been some changes at Windsor since I last visited in 2004, there’s now the Moat Garden, which looked very pretty over the castle wall, but most of the exhibits and the format of the tour pretty much stayed the same.

While we were there, we made it in time for the changing of the guard, which in itself was heart-throbbing (thank the drums) and very colourful. Unfortunately after about five minutes, Georgia decided she didn’t like the drums – they were too loud. Luckily neither of us were too fussed about seeing the whole changing of the guard thing so we quite happily went on our way. At least it meant that we didn’t have to heave and push with the throng of people when the crowd dispersed.

We made our way in to St George’s chapel, at which point Georgie remembers that she’s here to see the Queen. We had explained to her that this was where the Queen lived and reminded her of the nursery rhyme about the little pussy cat who visits the queen. 

Inside the chapel she sees two chaplains and says to her daddy, “Can we ask them, where is the Queen?”
To which her daddy says, “Ok, you ask the lady where the Queen is and say that you’d like to see the Queen”

So up she totters to this kindly elderly lady and says “I’d like to see the Queen, please?”
Thankfully this lady very politely says,”Oh dear, I’m sorry but the Queen is away on her holidays at the moment. She’s up at Balmoral in Scotland having her holiday.”

Georgie nods, turns around, looks at me and says, “The Queen is busy right now”

Good day, how is your family?

The words from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast song have been fervently sung these past few days. And judging from Georgia’s French pronounciation, I figured perhaps it’s time to expose her to a third language – Francais…

So tentatively we start her out saying…

“Bonjour, Je m’apelle Georgia-mae” -complete with French accents on her name.
She manages exceedingly well, only to continue with “And what about Mama Mirabelle?”

The wisdom of our children forever astounds.

A couple of days ago, after a fairly traumatic day which involved my often shouting – No! No! No! to Georgia, we had a very enlightening conversation. I’m sure all Parenting Experts will at this point say ‘She’s challenging her boundaries’.

I asked her, “Do you like Mummy being angry?”

Her immediate vehement response, “No!” and then she goes on to say…

“I like mummy to be happy happy happy, and daddy and Georgie to be happy happy happy!”

Now, please tell me, how do I help her maintain this as a life-long policy?

Silly mummy – did just that!

Read more »

Do you know how to sing it?

Row, row, row the boat

Gently down the river

If you see a polar bear

Don’t forget to shiver

 

Row, row, row the boat

Gently in the bath

If you see a spider

Don’t forget to laugh  

Another conversation that took place this morning on the way to ‘school’

G: Where is Undy?
Me: In Monmouth
G: Where is Monmouth?
Me: In Wales
G: Where is Wales?
Me: In the UK.
G: Where is the UK?
Me: That’s where we are now…
G: Where does Ah Kong live?
Me: In Penang…

We SO REALLY need to get a world map.

Georgia has been fascinated with the garbage trucks for some time now. Three kinds visit our area each week, the ‘worms’ truck that takes away all our compostable waste, the recyling truck that takes away glass, cans and generally everything recyclable (except plastic milk bottles!) and finally the rubbish truck that takes away everything else.

This morning on our way to ‘school’ we drove past the ‘Worms’ truck….and that led to this conversation.

G: Oh look mummy – the worms truck.
Me: Oh yes – it does look like the worms truck.
G: They are picking up rubbish for the worms to eat eat eat.
Me: Yes – but the worms can’t eat all kinds of rubbish – only some kinds – like paper and cardboard and food that we don’t want. And then all the other rubbish goes into the other rubbish truck – like plastic and everything else that the worms can’t eat.
G: Who teaches the worms?

It took me a while to work out that Georgia as actually asking who teaches the worms (teaches sounded a bit like kisses) but G patiently repeated herself several times until I got it.

My final explanation was : it’s something that the worms do – they break up the soil and eat the rubbish and after that we can use soil to plant more food and flowers.
Me: Where there are no houses….

and how it drives me mad.

Read more »

We all went swimming yesterday – or at least that was the plan. Georgia had helped her dad neatly pack a bag complete with towels, combs and toiletries. The efficiency of it all – just to go to waste as we LEFT IT AT HOME!

Read more »