Daddy stays up late each night reviewing for an exam:
Pia: Daddy, why do you always work late at night?
Daddy: I'm not working, I'm...doing my assignments.
Pia: So that we will have more money?
Daddy: Yes
Pia: If we have plenty of money we can buy many things, even expensive things?
Daddy: (hesitation) ... yes ...
Pia: And you can buy expensive gifts?
Daddy: Yes...
Pia: Daddy...
Daddy: Yes, Pia?
Pia: I want you and Mommy to be rich.
* * *
Another day, another round of assignments for the children. Pia is really really incensed:
Pia: Daddy, if you give me another assignment I will leave you in a snake farm!
* * *
To hone their academic skills (or at least prevent rust from taking hold), we try to give Dominic and Pia 'assignments' everyday.
Pia tries different approaches to escape from having to do these pesky assignments. These days, she uses threats.
A few weeks before Christmas:
Pia: (in a sing-song) Daddy, you - are - going - to - lose - all - of - your - gifts
Daddy: Why?
Pia: BECAUSE YOU ARE ALWAYS GIVING ME ASSIGNMENTS!!!
* * *
We give Dominic and Pia 'assignments' everyday, to improve their reading, writing, and 'rithmetic. While Dominic is ambivalent towards them, Pia detests these assignments and tries different ways to avoid having to do them. Lately she has been resorting to threats.
Resignedly accepting today's assignment:
Pia: (serious) Daddy, when I finish this assignment I will also give you a very hard assignment!
* * *
The primary school year ended mid-December. Dominic has finished Grade 1 with acceptable grades, and will move on to Grade 2 next year, with the resolution to do better.
The school sent back a bagful of stuff that he had been using in his class: crayons, pencils, a CD of their PowerPoint composition, a calculator, and half a dozen partly-used scrapbooks.
One of the scrapbooks was used for his science class. The entry on one page caught our eyes:
HYPOTHESIS: My plant will grow big.
On the same page was a photo of Dominic smiling and holding a flower pot.
The next few pages, with photos, chronicled the life of his bean plant over several weeks, how it started growing, then started limping and finally, the last page had:
CONCLUSION: I am wrong. My plant is dead.
* * *
Pia folds a paper sword from newspapers and hands it to Daddy:
Pia: Here Daddy, take this. I will make another sword for Mommy. Then you can fight each other.
* * *
Sammy has learned sing on cue and might one day, not very soon, join Australian Idol.
Anyone: Old MacDonald had a farm...
Sammy: Eeya!
We are working on the rest of the syllables.
* * *
Pia holding a stuffed toy duck, and jumping up and down in bed:
Pia: I... am... Duck Vader... I... am... Duck Vader... I... am... Duck Vader...
* * *
Pia has a little brown and white fluffy stuffed toy puppy that she brings to bed each night. She won't sleep without it.
We realized we didn't know whether she had named the 'puppy':
Daddy: Does your puppy have a name?
Pia: Yes
Daddy: What's his name?
Pia: His name is Darth Vader.
She grabs another stuffed toy, a yellow chick.
Pia: And this is Darth Chickee.
* * *
Pia is learning to read with Dr. Seuss books.
And each night, before they go to sleep, we read Old Testament stories to Dominic and Pia. Last night we also watched 'The Prince of Egypt'
Pia puts two and two together and comes up with a question that, despite two thousand years of Christian writing, no mystic or Doctor of the Church thought to write a treatise about:
Pia: Daddy, is Moses' staff more powerful than the Cat in the Hat?
* * *
A day after we bought her her unicorn stuffed doll, which we made extra-clear was reserved for Christmas, Pia started changing her mind.
Walking into the kitchen while Daddy was eating...
Pia: Daddy! That toy you bought me yesterday is not for Christmas. It's are for playing right now. You thought it's for Christmas, but it's not. I should play with it now.
Daddy: Oh no, it's for Christmas.
* * *
After finding out that people eat goats...
Pia: What about horses? Do people eat horses? (her favorite animal)
Daddy: Some people eat horsemeat
Pia: But not us. (Right, Daddy? Right?)
Daddy: Yes, not us.
Silence.
Pia: Is it yummy?
* * *
Pia just finished showing off how she can read 'The Three Billy Goats Gruff'
Pia: Why did the troll say he wants to eat the goats?
Daddy: Because he was hungry.
Pia: Trolls eat goats?
Daddy: Yes
Pia: How about mans? (humans)
Daddy: Yes, we eat goat.
A brief silence, as innocence meets stark reality
Pia: (In a hush) Eew
* * *
We used to have a thick ream of blank A4 paper. The children use it for drawing and for all sorts of paper craft. But the paper's almost all gone now.
Pia: Daddy, why don't we have any more blank paper?
Daddy: (wasn't aware we had run out) Why? Don't we have any more blank paper?
Pia: (suddenly angry) Daddy! Don't ask me, I'm asking you! Why don't we have any more blank paper?
Daddy: I know you're asking me.
Pia: But you are repeating what I say!
Daddy: (confused) I wasn't repeating. You asked me why we had no more blank paper. I asked you, 'Why? Don't we have any more blank paper?'
Pia: But they're the same words
And she was right. Same words, different punctuation.
* * *
At the clothes section of the department store. Pia gazed at the dozen mannequins spread across the section and surrounding us.
Pia: (in a disappointed voice) Daddy, why aren't the statues moving?
* * *
We went to a department store to buy toys for the children's Christmas presents. Dominic and Pia and Sammy were with us, so any notion of buying things in secret was out of the question. We just decided to let them pick out one toy each.
The children went through the toy section store, picking one toy then replacing it with another, and then another, and then another.
Pia's choices were a revelation. She always picked toy horses each time. Eventually picked out a stuffed toy unicorn, half as big as she was.
Daddy: Listen, we are buying these toys for Christmas ok? You cannot play with them yet. You will open them for Christmas.
Pia: (arms around the stuffed toy she will be getting for Christmas) Daddy, you should wrap this toy when I am eating in the kitchen so that I will not know what it is.
Daddy: (ok...) Good idea. But you must promise not to look when we are wrapping that unicorn ok? Otherwise, you will know what's inside.
Pia: I promise.
Daddy: And you must not peek.
Pia: I won't.
* * *
Dominic: Pia, I'm Darth Vader.
Pia: You're not him. Darth Vader doesn't drink juice.
* * *
Pia: Daddy, why is Dark Vader dark?
Daddy: It's not 'Dark Vader', it's 'Darth Vader'. Say 'Darth'
Pia: Dark
Daddy: No, not 'dark', say 'Darth'
Pia: Dar...dar...darth...Darthy the Dinosaur. He's Dorothy the Dinosaur!
* * *
Dominic has picked up an unsettling expression from school. He goes: "What the?" each time a new challenge presents itself while he played a game on the computer.
T'is a befuddlement.
What do we do with him and his new expression? On the one hand, none of the expression's variants lead to anything good. But on the other hand, he does a full stop after the second word, and there's nothing wrong with the phrase as it is.
So what the...do we do?
* * *
Daddy calls home from the office.
Pia: (picks up the phone) Hello Daddy!
Daddy: Hello Pia, can I talk to Mommy?
Pia: She's not here.
Daddy: Where is she?
Pia: Mommy left us. She's not coming back.
Daddy: (??)
Dominic: (takes the phone from Pia) She's outside hanging clothes.
* * *
Dominic and Pia often don't respond the first time you call them. This gives us grief because everything takes three times more effort -- you have to call them three times at least.
Sometimes it gets tiresome:
Daddy: (angry) Dominic! Pia! Mommy has been calling you two several times! Didn't you hear Mommy calling? Why didn't you come?!
Pia: Because we're stupid.
* * *
We read stories from the Old Testament to the children, and they become sensitive to what people in olden times didn't know how to make. Things like cars, computers, airplanes, etc.
Tonight's story was about Jericho's walls, which crumbled after the Israelites blew their trumpets against it.
Dominic: (in the upper bunk) I think that's not true.
Daddy: Why not?
Dominic: Because people in the old times didn't know how to make trumpets.
Daddy: Well, yes they did. They knew how to make things from metal. Of course, they didn't know how to make electrical things.
Pia: (in the lower bunk) Like electric fans?
Daddy: Yes they didn't have electric fans.
Pia: What did they use when it's warm?
To illustrate, Daddy grabbed the nearest thing around -- an inch-thick book -- and fanned himself with it.
Daddy: If they wanted to keep cool, they fanned themselves like this.
Pia: They used a book?
* * *
They've been showing all the episodes of Star Wars on TV, one per Saturday. Dominic and Pia have discovered this series and are slowly being 'turned' and drawn in.
We watched "Return of the Jedi" this weekend. Naturally, some of the story's complicated twists and turns were beyond their comprehension:
Pia: Daddy, why is Luke Darth Vader's son?
Daddy: Because Darth Vader is his father.
Pia: Why is Darth Vader his father?
* * *
Pia: (pointing to the emperor) Is he bad?
Daddy: Yes, he's very bad
Pia: Who?
* * *
Dominic: Is Jabba the Hotdog dead?
* * *
