Pia peeps into the kitchen:
Pia: Daddy, can you enjoy me and Sammy?
Daddy: (??) What did you say?
Pia: Can you enjoy me and Sammy?
Daddy: What do you mean 'enjoy'?
Pia: Come play here with us.
Daddy: Oh, the word is 'join'. Come 'join' us.
* * *
"Stop calling me Pia!", screamed Pia. "I don't want you to call me Pia!"
Daddy: Why not?
Pia: I just don't want you to call me Pia.
Daddy: Why not?
Pia: There's no why!
Daddy: (poor attempt at humor) Should we call you....turkey?
Pia: No!
Daddy: Don't you like your name?
Pia: I like...but I don't want you to call my name when you're angry.
It seems we've been calling out her name using a stern voice far too many times. But she doesn't respond until the seventh call, so what can you do?
* * *
Pia has taken to drawing animals. She copies them from a drawing book that teaches how to draw farm animals. She's very motivated and getting quite good.
Showing her latest drawings to Daddy:
Pia: Look Daddy!
Daddy: That's a nice horse. You should draw the legs like this...
Pia: (grabs the drawing) I want to learn by myself. I don't need any teach!
* * *
Pia has a set time for reading every day. Outside that time she is usually at play. Hell hath no fury than Pia bothered at play.
While browsing through Pia's older (and simpler) reading material:
Daddy: Pia, come here and look at your old reading lessons. See how you knew so much fewer words then? Can you still read these?
Pia: (approaches and starts reading ) "May..I..come..
Suddenly she realizes that she's 'reading' during play time!
Pia: Hey! (and runs away)
* * *
Morning rush hour.
Pia was spreading peanut butter on her bread in extreme slow motion. Daddy gets impatient, grabs the butter knife from Pia, quickly spreads butter on his bread, then hands back the knife to Pia:
Daddy: Thank you.
Pia: Daddy, don't say thank you to yourself.
Daddy: I was saying 'thank you' to you.
Pia: But I didn't give you the knife. You took it from me.
* * *
Dominic: I know a homonym: 'cross', which means 'angry', and Cross, where Jesus died.
Daddy: That's right. Where is Jesus now?
Dominic: In heaven.
Daddy: And he can see everything. If you do something bad, he's not happy. If you do something good, he's happy.
Dominic: What if I do something that's half-good and half-bad?
* * *
On the way to school:
Dominic: Is the earth moving fast?
Daddy: Yes...(mental calculation...25,000 miles at the equator in 24 hours)...very fast. We are moving faster than most planes fly.
Dominic: Why don't we fall off?
Daddy: Because we stick to the earth. If you look at the earth from space, people in Australia are standing upside down.
Dominic: (makes a fist and points East) and people here stand like this (horizontal).
Daddy: And people in the North stand upright.
Dominic: People in the North just turn around and around on their feet when the earth spins?
Daddy: I guess. That's how it works. And if you jump, the earth under you will move and you land on a different part of the earth
Dominic: If we jump here, when we land we can be already in school.
Daddy: Or you may smash into a moving building.
Dominic: Or smash into the tram.
Daddy: Don't forget, the earth moves around the sun.
Dominic: So when we jump, when we land, the earth is no longer under us so we fall in outer space.
Daddy: Right. The earth has already moved around the sun.
Dominic: Wow.
* * *
Pia seems to think she's in rehab, or on probation, or something:
One day a lady with a big dog walked past us. Pia looked with interest at the dog:
Pia: Daddy, when I start becoming a good girl, will you find me a dog?
* * *
We discovered that at lunchtime he plays with his best friend in the school's sandbox. The sand mixes with sweat from his feet and turns his socks from cloud white to mud black.
To stop this daily delivery of dirty socks once and for all, Mommy told Dominic that he can no longer play in the sandbox.
One day, coming home from school...
Mommy: "Dominic, did you play in the sandbox today?"
Dominic: No
Mommy: Very good! Where did you play with your best friend?
Dominic: I didn't play with him.
Mommy: Why not?
Dominic: I told him you said I cannot play with him anymore.
* * *
Dominic's normal morning routine upon reaching school is to go to the toilet to wee-wee, wash his hands, then go to his classroom.
One morning as we neared the toilet...
Daddy: (going through the daily motions) Ok, go to pee, then go to your classroom.
Dominic: (stiff as a rock)
Daddy: (louder voice) Go to pee now!
Dominic: (face turning red, groaning) Daaadeee....
Daddy: What's wrong?
Dominic: (boiling red) Don't..tell..me..to..pee.
Daddy: ??
Then looking around, the reason became clear. A pretty little girl was loitering nearby. Our little Romeo who has only just recently graduated from 'wee-wee' to 'pee' is now embarrassed at being told to pee within earshot of pretty girls.
My days as a 'cool' Dad are numbered.
* * *
On the way to the supermarket after church.
Daddy is pushing Sammy's stroller. Pia is at the right and holding on to the stroller, her feet just a couple of inches away from Daddy. Daddy almost stepped on Pia's foot.
Daddy: Watch out! Don't walk too close to me.
Mommy: Pia, come over to this side.
Pia: (will say anything not to obey) I can't...I will break my leg.
* * *
The city-sized behemoth ship Titanic easily slipped into the ocean bottom.
Meanwhile, the vitamin C tablet that Dominic has to swallow just won't go in.
He'd drink glass after glass after glass of water, and the capsule would still manage to float to safety and stay in his mouth. It would melt a little but still manage to hang on.
Finally, after many many tries, he just decided to bite the capsule, chew the tablet (it tastes like very bitter lemon anyhow), and wash his mouth with water.
So that's how it goes every morning. Younger Pia easily swallows exactly the same tablet, while Dominic chews his.
* * *
Lunchtime again. Still Pia's job to set the table for lunch despite her daily attempts to evade it:
Mommy: (in the kitchen) Pia, set the table now.
Pia: (shouting from the bedroom) I can't!
Mommy: Why not?
Pia: I have a lot of work to do!
...and proceeds to play with her toys.
* * *
Term vacation is over. It's back to school again.
During the term break, while thinking of ways to help Dominic with his writing, we hatched a sneaky plan.
We decided that, before the school re-starts, we will practice him on writing about the most likely topic they will write on on the first day of school. It was very easy to guess the topic. No doubt it would be: "What I Did on My Vacation"
So we made him write on that topic one day ahead, and he did very well on the practice writing. We were confident he wouldn't do so badly when the teacher asks them to write about it.
When Dominic came home from school, our first question was:
Daddy: Did the teacher ask you to write?
Dominic: Yes.
Daddy: Did she ask you to write about what you did on your vacation?
Dominic: No.
Daddy: (surprised) Hmm...
Dominic: I wrote about the planets.
Daddy: Oh? Did she say you can write about anything?
Dominic: Yes. She said write about anything...anything we did when there was no school.
* * *
Dominic and Pia are playing in the living room. We want them to play in the bedroom where Sammy is:
Daddy: Dominic! Pia! Come into the bedroom and play here. And keep an eye on Sammy while you play.
Pia turned quiet and appeared to be looking at empty space a foot from the tip of her nose.
Pia: Daddy...how can I watch Sammy with one eye and look at my toys with the other eye?
* * *
"Yes boss," said Mommy, in response to Sammy's insistent crying, a sign that he really wants to go to sleep now.
Pia hadn't heard of the word 'boss' before:
Pia: "What's a boss?"
Mommy: Ask Daddy.
Daddy: (trying to explain) Hmm...for people who work, a boss is someone who tells you what to do, just like for students, your teacher is your boss.
Pia: Someone who tells us what to do?
Daddy: Yes
Pia: They tell you what to do, like: "Finish your food!"
* * *
Domu is bugging Pia by echoing everything she says using a robot intonation. Pia is getting pretty annoyed:
Pia: DADDY! Domu is copying what I say!!!!
Dominic: Daddy..Pia..Is...Copying...What...I...Say.
Pia: STOP IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Dominic: Stop...It.
Pia: You're not a robot!
Dominic: You're...Not...A...Robot.
Pia: You're not a robot! Robots aren't smelly! No robot is smelly!
* * *
The best way to improve your writing is to write, say the experts.
Dominic's grade in writing lags behind his grades in other subjects. According to his teacher this is mostly because he doesn't write much of anything when she asks the students to write. He writes one, two, or three sentences at the most.
We decided to help Dominic improve his skills and confidence by making him write short 'essays' every other day. And we demanded that each essay be at least ten sentences long.
We gave him the freedom to pick his topic, but if he can't think of one we help by suggesting some.
Here's his first essay,unedited (including reference to grandchildren we didn't know we had):
When I swim
When I swimed in the swimming pool. I played in the swimming pool. When I went with my children to the deap water. I, jumped in the deap water. I went up the swimming pool. I did it two more times. then I hanged on the monkey bars. then I went back on the water. where I started swimming. then I went up.
* * *
Pia approaches Mommy...
Pia: (innocently) Mommy, what is 15 minus 8?
Mommy: (too smart to be fooled). Ah-hah! You're trying to get me to do the assignment Daddy gave you. Do your assignment yourself!
Pia: (slinks back to her desk) Ohhhkey...
We give the children 'assignments' everyday, to help Dominic keep up his grades in school and to prepare Pia for school. But Pia is known to try and get help from wherever she can.
* * *
Ever since Sammy started crawling, we have had to keep an eye on him to make sure he doesn't go near baby-unfriendly spots, like near things that can potentially tip over or objects that he might scatter about.
If he approaches such spots, Daddy or Mommy will shout: "Sammy, no!", and shake our head. He will normally stop, listen, and then continue on, requiring us to pick him up and re-orient him to another direction.
One day we observed him crawling to one of the forbidden spots. Suddenly he stopped, shook his head left and right, as if reminding himself this is a no-go zone, and then change course.
* * *
When we had our daughter, we may have had visions of her being a fine little girl who likes pretty clothes and behaves with princess-like poise. Like what the children's poem says about little girls -- sugar and spice and everything nice.
At the dinner table we spy her spooning pumpkin soup into her mouth, then looking up at the ceiling while noisily gurgling each mouthful of the soup.
Where did our princess go?
* * *
Pia is starting to find it annoying that she has to help around the house. She's coming up with various (ineffective) excuses.
It's lunchtime again. Pia's job is to set the table for lunch:
Mommy: Pia, set the table now.
Pia: (playing with her toys) Mahmeeee.....I'm not you messenger boy!
Daddy and Mommy: (giggle)
Pia: That's NOT funny!
* * *
Sammy is crying and looking for attention.
Mommy is busy. Daddy is busy. Dominic is in school. Pia is playing with her toys:
Mommy: Pia, can you help me take care of Sammy?
Pia: No, thanks.
* * *
Dominic acquired the ability to read words that he hasn't seen before. He doesn't know what those words mean of course, but he can pronounce them, if not correctly, then with an educated guess.
It has to do with the way they teach reading at his school. It seems they are taught to remember how various letter combinations sound like, so that when he sees those letter combinations, he knows how to sound them out.
This approach works for reading, but not for writing.
We asked him to write a few sentences and we were aghast to discover that he also writes words by sounding them out. Thus, 'castle' gets written down as 'cassel' or 'cassle'. Even words that he has known for years get written down phonetically: 'becos' (because), 'hause' (house), there (their), clowd (cloud), etc.
We will have to fix this.
* * *
Dusk time. We were walking to the grocery and the moon was following us.
Dominic was staring up at the full moon. This is the same moon that Pia caused to follow her.
Dominic noticed that the moon seemed to be following us:
Dominic: (joking) Daddy, when we go inside the grocery, is the moon going to follow us inside?
* * *
Pia picks up expressions from her TV watching. Sometimes she hears them right, sometimes not quite so right.
One time Pia was in the kitchen. She wants to get out but Daddy was blocking her way:
Pia: Hey Daddy, I want to get out.
Daddy: Oh, sorry, am I blocking your way?
Pia: Yes, get away from my way.
(Get out of my way?)
* * *
Pia is playing with her toys in the bedroom. It's almost time for lunch. It's her job to set the table for lunch:
Mommy: (in the kitchen) Pia, set the table.
Pia: (no response)
Mommy: Pia, come on now. Set the table.
Pia: (no response)
Daddy: (angry tone) Pia! Are you going to set the table?
Pia: (from inside the bedroom) I AM ! ...but I cannot.
... and then she goes on playing.
* * *
In his quest to get his hands on some money, Dominic once considered being a bounty hunter.
His second idea sounds just as promising:
Dominic: Daddy, if my teeth falls out and I put in under my pillow it will become money?
Daddy: (not sure if he will bust the myth and end the child's innocence or tell a lie to prolong the childhood) Who told you that?
Dominic: Nobody. I just know (that's his standard reply)
Daddy: (not committing to either position) Some say if you put your tooth under the bed, the tooth fairy will come in and get your tooth and pay you for it.
Dominic: (touches one of his teeth) Hmm...
* * *
Pia's reading practice at home:
Daddy: (points to the word WE) What's this word?
Pia: Me!
Daddy: Nope
Pia: (thinks it's the accent that's wrong, so tries the Australian accent) Meih?
* * *
