playing Monopoly with a five-year-old sibling can be a trying experience. Possible scenarios:
a. They get kind of grumpy when you get money from the bank and they don’t.
b. They throw a tantrum because nobody is landing on their property.
c. They
really
don’t like the “Go directly to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $200” card.
In fact, I sometimes wonder if my family’s own obsession with real estate is directly linked to having had a TV-deprived childhood and therefore spending inordinate amounts of time playing Monopoly.
Learning a poem
Alexander is thrilled by my enthusiasm for poetry. Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration. This is the new
quid pro quo
scheme recently introduced: before he gets to buy something he needs to memorize a poem: “Right, new cleats for soccer? Here’s ‘The Road Not Taken’ by Robert Frost. You have one hour. Time starts now.”
Reading a book
Last night, Alexander was looking for something to read (he’s become a voracious reader and considering I nearly compromised my liver trying to teach him how to read in second grade this is no insignificant detail. In fact, he gets away with a lot because he’s reading all the time… I’m that happy, still.) Anyway, he picked up my copy of ‘Catcher in the Rye’. I had a moment of thinking: “Wait a minute, I’m not sure J.D. Salinger is really appropriate for a just-recently-turned nine-year-old. But that feeling was replaced with an intense curiosity to what he would say and what he would think about it. After a few pages he put it down, saying he liked it but he wasn’t going to read it right now. And then, after further consideration, he came up with: “Was this book like the ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’ of your time?” Spot on.
Eliot last night couldn’t fall asleep. I started reading her ‘Cinderella’ and she burst out in tears: “What if you die, then I’ll get a stepmother. Or if you fight with Daddy and he changes his mind about loving you and then I get another mother. Or if you die, but then you come back and I already have a stepmother.” First, I reasoned that I wasn’t dying, that I would always be her mother, and I even added as a reassurance: “Your Daddy would never marry somebody evil. She would be nice.” But this provoked an even more frantic reaction: “But he doesn’t know anybody, he doesn’t have any girl friends, it might be somebody who seems nice and then is evil.”
Hard to fight that sort of logic. So, I did what any rational and sensible mother would do. Put away ‘Cinderella’ and pulled out ‘If You Give a Mouse a Cookie’.
Playing basketball
There is no basketball hoop in our condo. In fact, at the last council meeting, the proposal to install a hoop (even a donated one) was immediately shot down. No surprise, as all upgrading proposals are unanimously rejected. So now basketball is an endeavour that
only
involves jumping over a gate to enter the only condo in the whole neighbourhood that does have a basketball court, hoping the guard at that condo doesn’t figure out he and his buddies don’t actually live there.
Listening to Green Day
Watching the video of his favourite song by Green Day, ‘I Walk Alone’, Alexander observes: “With so much eyeliner… it’s no wonder he walks alone.”
Sleeping
It is Saturday morning after all.
Signs you’re an expat spending Christmas in Singapore
Going
home
involves a 12-hour airplane flight (24 if you’re going to the States or Canada).
Your enthusiasm might make you forget two important things you will experience on arrival: major jet lag and the extreme shock your body will feel as it goes from warm weather to icy cold weather.
In addition to plane fares and presents for everyone at home, you will need to buy a winter wardrobe for every member of your family.
Unlike going home in summer, when you can wear the exact same clothes you’ve been wearing all year round in Singapore, travelling to another country (any
a. They get kind of grumpy when you get money from the bank and they don’t.
b. They throw a tantrum because nobody is landing on their property.
c. They
really
don’t like the “Go directly to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $200” card.
In fact, I sometimes wonder if my family’s own obsession with real estate is directly linked to having had a TV-deprived childhood and therefore spending inordinate amounts of time playing Monopoly.
Learning a poem
Alexander is thrilled by my enthusiasm for poetry. Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration. This is the new
quid pro quo
scheme recently introduced: before he gets to buy something he needs to memorize a poem: “Right, new cleats for soccer? Here’s ‘The Road Not Taken’ by Robert Frost. You have one hour. Time starts now.”
Reading a book
Last night, Alexander was looking for something to read (he’s become a voracious reader and considering I nearly compromised my liver trying to teach him how to read in second grade this is no insignificant detail. In fact, he gets away with a lot because he’s reading all the time… I’m that happy, still.) Anyway, he picked up my copy of ‘Catcher in the Rye’. I had a moment of thinking: “Wait a minute, I’m not sure J.D. Salinger is really appropriate for a just-recently-turned nine-year-old. But that feeling was replaced with an intense curiosity to what he would say and what he would think about it. After a few pages he put it down, saying he liked it but he wasn’t going to read it right now. And then, after further consideration, he came up with: “Was this book like the ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’ of your time?” Spot on.
Eliot last night couldn’t fall asleep. I started reading her ‘Cinderella’ and she burst out in tears: “What if you die, then I’ll get a stepmother. Or if you fight with Daddy and he changes his mind about loving you and then I get another mother. Or if you die, but then you come back and I already have a stepmother.” First, I reasoned that I wasn’t dying, that I would always be her mother, and I even added as a reassurance: “Your Daddy would never marry somebody evil. She would be nice.” But this provoked an even more frantic reaction: “But he doesn’t know anybody, he doesn’t have any girl friends, it might be somebody who seems nice and then is evil.”
Hard to fight that sort of logic. So, I did what any rational and sensible mother would do. Put away ‘Cinderella’ and pulled out ‘If You Give a Mouse a Cookie’.
Playing basketball
There is no basketball hoop in our condo. In fact, at the last council meeting, the proposal to install a hoop (even a donated one) was immediately shot down. No surprise, as all upgrading proposals are unanimously rejected. So now basketball is an endeavour that
only
involves jumping over a gate to enter the only condo in the whole neighbourhood that does have a basketball court, hoping the guard at that condo doesn’t figure out he and his buddies don’t actually live there.
Listening to Green Day
Watching the video of his favourite song by Green Day, ‘I Walk Alone’, Alexander observes: “With so much eyeliner… it’s no wonder he walks alone.”
Sleeping
It is Saturday morning after all.
Signs you’re an expat spending Christmas in Singapore
Going
home
involves a 12-hour airplane flight (24 if you’re going to the States or Canada).
Your enthusiasm might make you forget two important things you will experience on arrival: major jet lag and the extreme shock your body will feel as it goes from warm weather to icy cold weather.
In addition to plane fares and presents for everyone at home, you will need to buy a winter wardrobe for every member of your family.
Unlike going home in summer, when you can wear the exact same clothes you’ve been wearing all year round in Singapore, travelling to another country (any
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