bedtime stories

Now Michelle has started a new daily routine for Shee Yun. It is now Shee Yun telling us bedtime stories instead of the other way round. Every weekday before bedtime Michelle asks her to tell us about her day at school. She tells us about what she has learnt, about her classmates, about her teachers, about who was scolded by teachers, and all sorts of other things. She seems to be adapting to primary school quite well. One thing that she doesn't do so well yet is remembering what her teacher asks the class to bring. Once the teacher asked the class to bring their birth certs, but when Shee Yun got home, she only remembered there was something she was supposed to bring the next day, but could not remember how to say it. She panicked and cried. We have to keep telling her there's no use crying, and she should be trying harder to find a solution instead. Eventually Michelle found out what it was by making a number of guesses until Shee Yun recognised the right one. Just yesterday something similar happened again. The teacher asked the class to bring a particular book of a particular subject, but Shee Yun could not remember which book it was. Eventually Michelle called Shee Yun's classmate's mother to find out which book it was. Shee Yun has the phone number of the boy who sits next to her. It's written in one of the school books, I think the teacher asked them to do it. The boy seems a nice chap. Shee Yun said he is kind, and he even picks up rubbish on the lawn when he sees it.

Shee Yun seems to have some difficulty in either understanding or remembering (or both) what her teacher wants her to bring. I wonder whether it's because now the primary language in school is Mandarin, and she is too used to English-speaking at school. There are terms that she is learning for the first time.

Chen Rui still asks us (mostly Michelle) to scratch her back before bedtime. So both this scratching and Shee Yun's story telling are daily routines for us now. Sometimes Shee Yun asks for a massage too.

18 Feb 2012. At a Chinese restaurant having yumcha. They children enjoyed it a lot, and I suspect a large part of that is because they were given fun-looking cutlery and bowls. They ate much, which made Michelle happy.

One new thing that the children sometimes like to play with is my face. It started one evening when I felt tired and just lay down to rest while accompanying Chen Rui who was watching TV at my room. When she saw me do that, she came to poke at my face, asking me to play with her. Just to entertain her, I made various different responses, both in expression and in sounds, depending on what she did to my face. She tried to force open my eyes, she poked my chin, she pinched my nose, etc. She found my reactions very funny and kept playing with my face. Well, although I didn't get to rest properly, at least I only needed to move my face and head and my body could relax. Later she taught Shee Yun to play with my face too, and now they sometimes request me to let them play with my face.