In my world: Blessing is her middle name

DD drew up this activity sheet for her brother the other night. In her own words, “it has a ‘Find the Differences’ section, a ‘Trace the Dotted Lines’ section and the below is for Di Di to colour”.

And she sat with him patiently, explaining the sections, keeping an energetic younger brother quietly occupied as her father and I leaned back to catch a breather from the long day.

*****

Sometimes in the middle of cleaning the rooms, I discover little gems left behind by the children. This Friday series was started with the intention of celebrating the imagination and creativity in a young child’s world…and hoping that it’ll bring a little ray of inspiration and joy to your day, as it does mine.

*****

Papercraft, Prime and Pteranodons

kitchen counter dusty with icing sugar
perfect recipe of vanilla buttercream swirled in the mixer
gobs of tissue paper, piled up toothpicks of Wilton deep red and royal blue
kids bent over with laughter and giggles
sugar highs from too much cake
late night papercraft ventures and conversations with your lifelong best friend
of how you will never attempt such a crazy thing again
yet knowing full well that you’ll go ahead and do it anyway and crazier the next time round

three hugs a day for long life
three cheers each meal for birthday celebrations

and three glorious reasons and persons to celebrate life with for life.

Trans-four-m!

He squares his shoulders
Walking tall to school in his new shirt of blue
So much like his father
So much his own little man too

The children sit in a row
Reciting their lesson with their teacher on tiled floor
And I catch his face light up aglow
As we sneak him a wink round the frame of the door

It’s a wonderful day for a birthday
All together now, smile for a picture
“How old are you now, God bless you today”
It’s a great month to turn a grand four!

Copyright – iwonderbee.wordpress.com

In my world: The floor of my home office

This is the floor of my home office.

This is the open toy bag that lay on the floor of my home office.

These are the dinosaurs spilled out, from the open toy bag that lay on the floor of my home office.

This is the container, yellow and tall, that towers over the dinosaurs spilled out, from the open toy bag that lay on the floor of my home office.

These are the bricks all scattered about, that go in the container, yellow and tall, that towers over the dinosaurs spilled out, from the open toy bag that lay on the floor of my home office.

This is the stuffie horse and plastic spoon belonging to the children, that played with the bricks all scattered about, that go in the container, yellow and tall, that towers over the dinosaurs spilled out, from the open toy bag that lay on the floor of my home office.

This is the mummy who paused in the middle of work and thought up a nonsense rhyme as she picked up the stuffie horse and plastic spoon (and everything else) belonging to the children, that played with the bricks all scattered about, that go in the container, yellow and tall, that towers over the dinosaurs spilled out, from the open toy bag that lay on the floor of my home office.

Time with Daddy: Legobots roll out!

From L to R,  meet… 

Bumblebee (“What happened to his arms?” “He lost them when he was fighting…”)

Powerpack (“Heyyy, give me back the yellow and black blocks on his shoulders!”  “No, they are his power packs.”  “They are not, they are my Bumblebee’s arms”), and

Optimus Prime (“No Mum, we didnt run out of blue blocks, the black thing on his right arm is his gun”).

Graphic precis

She draws a flower and colours it in on the sheet of paper.

“Look, Mummy.”

“Very nice, dear.  Um, how about doing some writing?  You’ve been drawing a lot and we’ve not touched writing for some days.”

A messy sheaf of recycled paper full of her brother’s and her drawings is stacked loosely on the blue table in the room, teasing me cheekily with its precarious tipping over the table’s edge.

“No…I don’t want to write”.

“Just a little?  Shall I pick a short verse or phrase?”

Silently, thoughtfully, she fingers the markers in the box.

“Mummy, how do you spell ‘Jesus’”?

“J E S U S”.

“J E S U S. Okay.”  I can hear the light scratching of the marker against paper as she prints each letter out.

“And this is the bread, and this is the blood, and a heart, ‘cos God loves us and Jesus died on the cross.”

“Very nice. Pretty much the gospel in a nutshell! Are you drawing anything else?”

Nevermind the writing practice, I tell myself it can wait another day.

“I’ll draw…a little girl standing here, and a little boy…”

The marker continues etching out a busy little trail.

“…when we sin…Jesus is sad…but when we are good…He is happy…right?”

I nod.

“So this is wrong…”  she marks an X beside the sad face, “and this is right!”, she finishes off with a tick beside the happy face. 

She goes on to finish a few more details on the sheet, before handing it to me as a present, and running off to join her brother in play.

Leaving me here holding on to this precious piece of paper.  I’m not adding this one to the stack. 🙂 

I don’t know that we’d done writing practice as I would have envisioned it to be…

but I’m pretty sure we’ve just had a very good session of Word practice!

***** 

All your children will be taught by the Lord,

    and great will be their peace. – Isaiah 54:13

Happiness is –

Hugging each other in the morning, and the afternoon and the evening and the night again, just because.

Three chocaholics sharing ONE chocolate milkshake.

Bedtime prayers for “going to the Singapore Zoo, Jurong Bird Park and Dinosaur Show”. Every night. Even though the last time we all went was six months ago.

Counting down from months to days to the actual day of bundling into the car – horses and dinosaurs and Transformers and all – at the break of day for the five and a half-hour drive to Grandpa and Grandma’s home.

Holidays spent eating and sleeping and playing and…eating and sleeping and playing…and eating and sl…

 

In my world: At home

 *****

The Friday “In my world” series was started with the intention of celebrating the imagination and creativity in a young child’s world…and hoping that it’ll bring a little ray of inspiration and joy to your day, as it does mine.

*****

Preschooler Art: Mother’s Day

Our favourite memories of the day – in both digital and drawn form, courtesy of DD.

 

Rest is good for the heart.

Yes. I know.

That should be so glaringly obvious that I needn’t state it.

 *****

Yesterday was the Labour Day public holiday and we had a picnic at the beach with our friends.

And as we set out the food for our families, we happened to talk about how I’d had to make a decision in a blink about a certain event and how this threw me for a loop as I struggled with the dissonance.

You see, I don’t generally make blink-style decisions.

It kills me more to have to decide on the spot without full information, than to engulf myself in energetically chasing down every single byte of information I can get to make the thought process and decision workflow that much more complete and comprehensive, and failsafe and right-the-first-time and all that.

My friend laughed and said she wasn’t sure how I could possibly be more comfortable with that much effort.  I laughed right back because it’s oxymoronic weird to me too but I still do it for every single thing. 

The business of chasing down information, how do I explain it… it tires me and yet energises me at the same time?

Insanity. That I’d been pursuing relentlessly for the past two weeks straight.

Anyway I suppose God decided that enough was enough, and knocked me out for a completely sound asleep nap yesterday evening for a good two hours, in spite of my struggling to stay awake (yes I never learn the easy way…) working through my to-do list.  

And then, again, I fell into another deep sleep in the night despite that late evening nap. 

Two Sundays back, a visiting speaker to our church shared this over the pulpit.

The Chinese word 忙 “mang”, which means “busy” is a composite of two individual characters – the left radical, 心 “xin” – “heart” and the right radical 亡 “wang” – “death”.

So by literal translation, “busy” = heart death.

I laugh, at the memory and the necessary paradigm shift in thinking. By that reasoning, it technically kills me more to be in busy pursuit of to-do’s than it should to make a blink-style intuitive choice.

 *****

Rest is good for the heart.

I need to not be so buried in busy-ness to see the glaringly obvious. 🙂

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ~ Matthew 11:28-29