Archive for the 'Marriage & Relationships' Category

There are traditions and there are family routines. Tradition may be brought down from generation to generation but I believe that family routines can be created by your family and then enjoyed from year to year.

The kids are older now and our Chinese New Year routine has been established. Before, when they were younger, we did not have any routine but we thought that it would be very nice to have a family routine that they can look forward to each year. Now they know it well and look forward to …

1. Shopping for Chinese New Year Clothes. We limit our shopping to once a year only (unless necessary), then we go all out and have a shopping spree for Chinese New Year and everyone looks forward to having new clothes. We figured out that if you buy new clothes throughout the year, Chinese New Year would not feel any different.
2. Chinese New Year Cookies. Mummy does not bake so she will order the same cookies from the same place and when she brings them home the kids gape and go ooh and ahhh when they see the familiar cookies that they only get to eat once in a year. Then the kids will say “Please, please mummy can we eat them now?” and bad mommy will say “No, you will have to wait till Chinese New Year.”
3. Haircuts. The whole family goes to the salon and  have a haircut together. It kind of breaks the bank a little but its nice to go together. On normal days, sometimes mummy gives them home haircuts but for Chinese New Year, its off to the salon we go.
4. Chinese New Year Decorations. Now that the kids are older, they can help out. They love clipping, stringing and making homemade angpow decorations and I love listening to them work as a team in deciding where to hang each decoration. Usually, I will ask their opinion and let them decide so they can really get in the mood and contribute.
5. Spring Cleaning for Chinese New Year. Mummy gets to do most of it of course but on the eve of Chinese New Year, the kids will be roped in to wash the car and the porch. How they love the water and soap splashing fun.
6. Reunion Dinner. Usually its just the four of us because parents in law are no longer with us but we still cook up a storm anyway and everyone dons new pyjamas after dinner. Then we pack money into the red packets that will be given out as angpows and mummy and daughter will do their nails. Then mummy and daddy will give the kids their angpow and they will put it under their pillow to sleep on. Everyone stays up late and at midnight we will turn on every light in the house to welcome New Year.
7. First Day of Chinese New Year. Everyone gets up bright and early and have mee suah (vermicelli) soup then put on their brand new clothes and shoes. Then we go to the temple to watch the lion dances. At the temple, we’ll make it a point to buy the kids some inflatable helium balloons which we will let go and watch it fly in the sky later in the day. (This is not a Chinese New Year tradition, just our  very own special routine.) After that we may go visiting or just stay home to relax and pack for the next day’s journey.
8. Balik Kampung. We will usually go back to mummy’s home town from the 2nd to the 4th day of Chinese New Year. We visit mummy’s aunties and see more lion dances, we play by the beach, go to more temples, pay respects to mummy’s mummy, play fireworks by the sea and send lighted lanterns into the sky.
9. Middle of Chinese New Year. Sometimes daddy invites his friends over and mummy cooks for them and the kids get to play host and hostess to other kids.
10. Chap Goh Meh. On the 15th day of Chinese New Year or the last day of Chinese New Year, its time to meet mummy’s brothers and sisters to have a gathering or dinner and exchange angpows with all the nephews and nieces.

That’s it. We do this every year to create a routine and tradition for the kids so that they look forward to Chinese New Year and in doing so, we enjoy our Chinese New Year very much too.

Kids, when you are grown and have your own families, we hope that you will remember fondly and continue with this routine and tradition that you have grown up with.

Do You Read Your Old Blog Posts? I normally don’t. After writing, I promptly forget about it. The only time I go back and reread is when I have to use my personalized Google Search Box to find out when my children and I fell sick! How convenient to have a diary with a search box. That reminds me, I haven’t added two of my blogs in my search box. At the moment my search box yields results from 3 of my blogs because I forgot to add the other two.

Anyway, I went back to read one of my old blog posts written way back in 2006 because it keeps on appearing on my Statcounter. It is this post: Why Women Nag and Men Don’t Listen. It appears No. 2 on Google for the search term ‘Why Women Nag” so that is why I get the visitors but the funny thing is Why do people keep on searching for this?

I wonder if the people searching for it are male or female. I have a strange suspicion that they are men.

I reread the post and had a good laugh. However, it also serves as a reminder to myself to listen more to the kids rather than nag. That is a tall order! I am afraid I haven’t been very successful in that area since 2006 till now. If anything, I’ve gotten worse!

What about you? Do you read your old blog posts? You should. It may make you cry or laugh.

I’ll be loving you eternally….. With a heart thats true eternally….. While doing research (yes, I do research) for my Squidoo lens on the Top 10 gifts for Women, I learned about Eternity Rings.

What is an Eternity Ring? The meaning of Eternity Ring

In the Wikipedia, an Eternity Ring is defined as “a lady’s ring, worn on the hand, comprising a band of precious metal (usually gold) set with a continuous line of identically cut gemstones (usually diamonds) to symbolize never-ending love, usually given from a husband to his wife on the occassion of a significant anniversary. Ooooh… how perfectly romantic and pretty too. I want one!

I suppose this  Yellow Gold Diamond Eternity Band Ring best fits the above description of an Eternity Ring.

However, even though I generally prefer gold to silver, I find this White Gold Diamond Eternity Ring above much more attractive and lovely. I wonder if I will ever get one from my dearest. Well, a girl can always dream. I might as well dream along with some romantic I love you music. Here’s Eternally by Engelbert Humperdinck. If you’re a girl reading this, you can dream along with me. If you are a man reading this, well, its time to go shopping.

One recent Saturday, sister invited me and my girl to my  niece’s Ballet Concert. My niece is doing her Grade 8. She is a good dancer very good at choreographing dances. Her ballet background helps her. My sister breathes a sigh of relief from all that taxing her around for her ballet classes for years. It is worth it. She is a confident and poised young lady. They really grow up so fast. I remember, she was my girl’s age not very long ago.

Anyway, there we were, 4 mums and 4 daughters. It was a lot of fun going out, just mums and daughters. After the concert we went for Roti Canai. Everyone had a good time. The younger girls bonded and chatted though they were at first shy.

As for my son and his father. Well, they did not stay at home. No, no. They went out for a movie and Roti Canai too on their own. They had to go for a 7 o’clock movie on a Saturday night. There weren’t any good cartoons playing, so they went to watch a martial arts movie in Cantonese which my boy does not understand. I think he was the only little boy there. The rest were courting couples. Hmm…. why would a courting couple want to watch a martial arts movie for??

The boy and his father had a good time too. A precious bonding time.

I think that it is important for us to spend one on one time with our children whenever possible. It creates memories and helps us bond with our children individually. I am glad that my husband suggested taking the boy out for a movie and supper instead of just staying home. It must have been a special evening for them too as it was for me and my girl.

During the courting stage, couples seldom discuss about their parenting styles. Even if they do, it may not necessarily turn out that way because parenting styles is learned along the way. You may say that you want to be this and that kind of parent but after the kids come along, you will grow and change as a parent. So, what do you do when parenting styles differ? Err…. actually I don’t know and I would be most grateful if anyone could give me a good piece of advice.

I am fortunate in that most of the time my spouse and my parenting styles do not differ very much. We have the same values though we are very different. However, at times we have our differences too. For example, exams. Yes, exams. Whooooaa! That word can create a lot of tension in homes. I really don’t know what to do about parents who scold their child who scores over 90 for their papers. I want to whack them on their heads. But what to do when that parent is your spouse? I really have no idea.

My spouse scolded my girl for scoring 90 for her Math paper. Ok. To be very fair, he does not expect for her to get 100 in every paper. However, he had spent a lot of time teaching her Math (he teaches her Math while I handle other subjects including the Chinese part in Math) so he was disappointed when she made many careless mistakes because he knew that she was capable of doing better. I suppose that is fair enough.  He is also a good father to spend many hours teaching them.

What I did not agree with is the way he scolded her. “How come you only got 90 for your Math! That is shocking!” and then he went on to scold her about her carelessness reducing her to tears. Naturally,  mummy got a scolding as well. “You are too stubborn. You never make her practise past year papers in an exam environment. You never made sure she has enough practise for those kinds of questions that came out.” I tried to tell him that his demeanor was all wrong (to me at least) but he got even madder saying that as usual I did not support him in anything he did. Now that got me mad so I told him that he should go and play badminton with his friends tomorrow evening (Its our 10th wedding anniversary) as he had earlier asked if he should go. Of course asking him to go then and play badminton with his friends has got nothing to do with kids exams! Women are sometimes crazy like that or is it just me?

I digress. Back to exams. I still think that the kids should be praised and that he had spoiled everyone’s evening with his scolding. Everyone was looking forward to a relaxing evening for the first time after exams. The kids had worked so hard and they both did really well, scoring above 90 for every paper. It is the boy’s first time doing tests and he didn’t acknowledge or praise him for getting 100, 99.5, 98 for some of his papers. He was too busy scolding the girl. Apart from her Math, she scored mostly above 95 for her other papers but that was dimmed because of Math. Again I must emphasize that it was not because of the marks itself or because she failed to get 100 but because of the carelessness. Of course she also got scolded because she got penalised for forgetting to write her name on her Science paper. (but that one I agree). I had seen the girl looking forlorn and sad when she had over 90 during an earlier test before. I thought that was all wrong. She should be happy but she was sad and unhappy because she was afraid daddy would scold her. I tried to tell him that but he wouldn’t listen. I worry that he will place undue pressure on the kids to perform as there is no room for carelessness. I agree that kids should be taught not to be careless but zero tolerance for carelessness is scary to me.

He says that the kids should learn from  young that results counts whereas to me results aren’t the only thing that count in life. I guess we are all a product of our upbringing. Husband had strict parents. I had a mum who died early and a dad who was too busy trying to work and take care of 5 kids at the same time that I was left pretty much on my own. I studied on my own accord. I didn’t do all that well but I wasn’t all that bad either.

I think the kids had worked really hard and a positive word of praise and a hug should be given instead of scolding. Something like a hug and “Wow. You both did really well in your tests. I know you both worked really hard. That is good but look here, you made quite a lot of careless mistakes in this paper. Lets see what went wrong and learn from that mistake shall we.”

So what do  you do when you have differences of opinion like that?