#2 has always been a very easy child to bring up. When she was a baby, she was content to simply eat and sleep. My mum-in-law ended up taking care of her most of the time because she would take her into her room and place her on the bed while watching TV, and she would play with the bed frame and when she got tired she would suck her fingers and fall asleep. At night, we would put her in the crib, and while we were still talking and walking in and out of the room settling #1 for bed, she would fall sleep by herself. No soft music, black out curtains, fancy images on the ceiling. Nothing.
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It was also really easy to feed her as she ate most anything. This would have become a problem for her weight, but luckily, she had a natural method of elimination. She had a gastrointestinal issue (which she has since grown out of) so when she ate too much, she would regurgitate everything. We had regular BBQs on the weekends and at the end of the evening, she would throw up. Everyone knows that she shouldn’t be over-fed, and when I go round asking who fed her, someone would have given her just a piece of steak, another one just a chicken wing, another one just a sausage, another one just some sweet potato.. The best part was, after throwing up, she would continue with dessert.
As she grew up, she was such an obedient child. I only needed to tell her my instructions once and she would obey. “Pay attention in class and listen to your teacher.” And that was what she did. “Read a book everyday.” And she did. She followed every rule to the T, to the extent that one day I found her waiting outside the bathroom. I asked her why didn’t she go in. She said, “Daddy said to shower at 6 o’clock.” I looked at my watch, it was 5.58pm.
She is not comfortable looking after babies as she is not confident in handling them. However, once her siblings pass the age of 4 and becomes in her words ‘more rational’, she automatically takes on the responsibility to teach them to cycle and rollerblade. She has a lot of patience and would preserve till they master the skill.
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She hardly gave me any problems at home or in school. She was always the teacher’s pet or model student and when I meet her teachers they always tell me what a delight it is to teach her. In P6, her form teacher even called her his ‘PA’ and after the PSLE, she sat up front with him and helped him with his admin work. She is that dependable.
She’s a very easily contented child and doesn’t ask for much. In fact, she rarely asked for toys and was happy to play with whatever she got from her older sister. She doesn’t ask for much attention and is happy spending her free time designing her own craft projects or publishing her writing on her online fanfic platform. Recently, she found out that #1 and #3 asked their grandma for diamond earrings (nope, my mum doesn’t heed my demands to stop spoiling them) so she requested for a guitar. She knows lessons are expensive and didn’t even dream of asking me for them and she has taught herself a couple of songs by watching youtube.
Now that she is 14, she is not that obedient anymore and is starting to question everything, especially with influence from her international friends on Twitter. Oh well, at least I had 14 good years where this child was amazingly easy to bring up. Perhaps she could see the mayhem around her and felt sorry for me 😉
Thankful… for the hub’s cooking
Thankful… for #5’s cooking and caring of Kate
Thankful… for #3 in so many ways
Thankful… for sister-in-law #1
Thankful… for all who helped create this blog
Thankful… for #4’s resilience and forgiveness
Thankful… for blogging perks
Thankful… for my husband’s extended family
~ www.mummyweeblog.com – a blog on parenting 6 kids in Singapore ~