Jethro's Game On!

The other day he saw a girl his age inline skating, and he told me he wanted to learn.

Another day I saw a person playing violin on TV, and asked him casually, "Want to learn?"
"Yes!" was the reply.
"What about your piano?"
"And piano also. And guitar. And ukelele." came the gleeful and greedy rejoinder.

Jianming just told me - Jethro saw an art class on his way home from the swimming pool, and he wanted to learn.

He's been ever so enthusiastic after his success with the bicycle. I wonder when it'll wear off - okay, okay, stop the internal dousing already. That mental wet blanket - keep it to yourself...

Toasting Marshmallows

I had half a packet of marshmallows left over from Christmas baking activities. I had been giving these to the kids as treats on and off until there were only 4 left before the thought hit me, "Why, I do have a fire at home!"

So one afternoon, I got out 3 skewers and poked a marshmallow through each. I got the kids over, turned on the stove, and started roasting one. The marshmallow was surprisingly easy to get burnt, as I found out after the first one, so that was devoured by me. I learned to hold the two other marshmallows higher up and toast them to a light speckled brown before handing them to Jethro and Heidi. Ethan had a go on his own.

The look on their face ('crispy on the outside and soft inside' was Professor Jethro's pronouncements to his siblings) - flushed with the happiness of the sweet, sweet taste of marshmallows - that was priceless. And it really didn't take much time and effort, nor did it create much mess.

The kind of 'new knowledge' you could actually pass on to your children, triumphantly on your side and wonderfully taken on the other - that is so invaluable and scarce.

Of course I won't do it again. Toasting marshmallows over the stove? That's so sad it should only occur once. Then again, the novelty may be gone but the pleasure won't, so I suppose it's not that sad really...?

Dearth of Mirth

2013... I only wrote two posts. REALLY? Only two? At one point, I was even considering seriously closing this blog down. There was no inspiration, no impulse, no joy.
Ironically, the less I wrote, the less of myself I feel. Like I am really losing some part of me, not into the life of mothering and 'housechoring', but off, scraped away from this life, by constant 'un-usage' (hence the irony) of my (still present?) faculties. Even words have to be invented! Why can't I find legitimate substitutes?
And that is my summing up of last year.
This year, if only I can find the urge and ingenuity to write again. Most importantly, the lost part of me. Trust me, it is an uphill task, because I believe I am currently going downhill and I need to brake and turn around.
And on the mothering front, I will have to try very hard to "Praise your children openly, reprehend them secretly." For only in doing so am I really putting them before myself. Then, what was that saying again? "Children should be taught not the little virtues but the great ones." Wow, gargantuan task to undertake. Try another one: "What you teach your own children is what you really believe in." Now this sort of contradicts the previous one at times and implies a certain generational fatalism, no?