Academically speaking…

Exam fever

Truett’s first exam starts in 2 weeks and things are getting straight up academic around here. I don’t remember what my first Primary 1 exam was like or ever preparing for it.

At the start of the year, I told the husband that I’d let Truett learn at his own pace and not stress him out about the exams, but 2 weeks out from the first paper, I’m totally flip flopping because here we are, with 116 pages of past year papers from other schools to get through. I might have also told him that if he fails his exams, he would have to join Kirsten in redoing his Primary 1 next year and they can be classmates. Does that still happen? Fail then kenna retained??

At first, he was all “yay, we can be best friends and go to Primary 1 together”, then he realised the implications of that particular scenario and he said, “I think…no thanks.”

In any case, Truett has been a real champ, powering through 4-5 exam papers after school everyday without the onset of his usual ailments such as a headache, stomachache, and excessive boredom. Even if he doesn’t kill it during the exams, I’m so proud of how well he’s done.

E is for English

I can only conclude that whoever created the English language wasn’t a very nice person. It’s like he was trying to be annoying about it just because he could. You think you know these rules that govern the language but really they’re just sort of vague guidelines that may or may not be applicable to similar words.

For example, singular and plural forms. By and large, it’s relatively simple, just add an “s”. Bam. Problem solved.

Except for when it’s not. When it ends with “y”, you sometimes change it to “ies”. Not always though, because some “y”-ending words like “boy” continues with the “s” rule. When it ends with a ch/sh/s/x, you have to go with “es”. “O”-ending words are tricky. Tomatoes vs casinos. Heroes vs photos. “S” or “es”, how do you tell? You just have to know it to know.

Foot becomes feet. Tooth becomes teeth. Child becomes children. Woman becomes women. House becomes houses but mouse doesn’t become mouses. They transform into mice. And don’t even get me started on axes, crises, formulae, chateaux, mothers-in-law, cacti, octopuses? octopi?

Then of course, we have words that refuse to change even when they’re pluralised. Sheep. furniture, aircraft, deer, offspring. They insist of having the same word represent both singular and plural forms. Why? Maybe they want to be special.

Oh wait, there are also words that can’t make up their minds as to whether they want a plural form or not. Bread is bread even if you have many slices of it. Unless they’re different kinds of bread like wholemeal, white and wheat. Those guys don’t like each other very much, so you have to use breads to refer to them collectively.

“Why don’t they just make it easy and add “s” to all the plural words?” Truett asked as I tried to explain the randomness that is English plurality.

“Well, it wouldn’t be fun now, would it? If it was easy, you wouldn’t get to laugh at people who say mouses because they got tricked by the non-rules of English. Kidding. Don’t laugh at people who say it wrong ok, that’s mean. Besides, would you rather be learning Chinese?”

“No way.”

Orange you glad…

I was sharing an orange with Finn yesterday evening and here’s the thing: sharing a potentially messy fruit with a child who’s all dressed and ready for bed requires a system. I peel the orange into perfectly de-skinned, bite sized pieces for him while he carefully picks up those pieces and puts them in his mouth one at a time. No fuss, no mess.

As he picked up the last piece of orange, I saw him put it between his tiny hands in an attempt to divide it in half. “Don’t!! Don’t squish it, just put the whole thing in your mouth.” I said in my mom voice. “You’re already in your jammies, let’s not have to change it again.”

With juice dripping down his pyjama sleeve, he shoved one half of the squished up orange into his mouth and offered the other half to me in his outstretched hand.

“For you, momma,” he said.

URGGGGH.

Of all the lessons I’ve learnt from the kids, perhaps the most important one is “If you really want to overreact and yell at your offspring for doing making you do extra, unnecessary chores, make sure they’re not just trying to be a sweetheart and giving you half of their last piece of orange.”