How to deal with a tween???

Nina has been giving me pains in the heart lately -- and I have been quite Bersabar until today. Today, I broke down because I feel like I am at my wits' end. If I do A, she might do this, if I do B, she might do that.

When I was 12, I don't think I had given my parents too much trouble. I was a reasonably good girl. I stayed within limits of my parents' rules and regulations.

Sometimes I wonder if things would have been different if we had remained in Malaysia. I think it would but we are here already so I really can't dwell on that.

Maybe she is going through a phase and once she's gone past it, things would be better.

Sometimes I feel like I want to blame my husband for "spoiling and indulging" her. Her clothes are from branded stores, her shoes are way too pricey for her age, and just because all her friends in school have BB, she wanted one too and darn it, she eventually got one too! At the same time, he imposed a lot of don'ts in her life. And given her "savviness" in IT,   it's easy for her to "manipulate" us parents in thinking that she is observing the don'ts when she is really not.

I had tried my damn hard to become an understanding mom. To become her friend whom she can talk to about everything. I was young once too, I would tell her. I thought we were okay ...

When she used to have a diary, I gave her all the privacy she wanted and never once I read the contents. Even when I came upon them accidentally, I kept the contents to myself and never judged her. But this time around, I "hacked" into her laptop and what I found, I don't like and I am finding it hard not to judge her.

But it's her exam week and I can't be emotionally stressing her. But I am sad, dissappointed, angry ... I want my sweet child back! Ya Allah, please give me strength .... and show me the right way.

Nina, if you ever read this one day... you really made me cried today.

My kids

Amir woke up this morning and immediately told me of this "dream" (err, no, no, it's a nightmare, he quickly said) last night. Being a long-winded person that boy is - he tells stories from L to W, before going back to A to K, then jumped to almost Z before he realised he missed X and Y! - so you must really have great patience and a lot of time to listen to his stories. And in the morning, when I am busy in the kitchen, rushing to make breakfast, I ain't really the best listener but I gave my best.

His dream or nightmare as he said : (after mummy edited to make it coherent)

Amir mimpi Amir dengan papa and mummy kat Jeddah airport nak balik Malaysia. And then bila sampai Malaysia, Amir nampak Azri kat airport (Azri is his most closest cousin). Ok lagi tu. Tapi Azri tak de kereta, so we walked lah to rumah kita. Masa walking tu, Amir nampak Burj Dubai! (Of all the things! he spends too much time on google earth that boy). After that, we reached home but it was Jeddah, not KL. Tapi bila Amir tengok kat luar, ada pulak KLCC. (at this point, I was like, mana nightmare ni??) And then mummy and papa hilang, and I searched everywhere tapi tak de. Amir takut. Amir cari-cari lagi sampai Amir reached KLCC tapi mummy papa tak de. Lastly, I went home and bila masuk rumah tu, it looked exactly macam rumah kat Jeddah. Suddenly, nampak mummy and papa, keluar from that! - (he pointed to the washer in the kitchen!) It was so scary... "(itu rupanya nightmare dia. Ha.. ha...) Like that Japanese movie where the ghost comes out from the tv set, except we probably came out all twisted or mutilated from all the spinning and rinsing in the washer! I can't help but laughed when he finished his story. For the first time, I did not mind his incoherence in telling his story because this time around, he did leave the climax bit until the end.

An update on Imran :
He turned four a few weeks back and since then he hates it when we say things like "Imran kecik lagi. Tunggu Imran besar ya?" He would loudly say that he is a BIG boy and to stop calling him budak kecik.
Last night I told him, being budak besar, it's time he sleeps in his own bed. (As it is now, he sleeps in our bed and once I am sure he is deep in his slumber, we move him to his bed, which is just next to ours. Occasionally, he will wake up and climb back into ours, much to my annoyance.)
Anyway, back to me telling him that big boys don't sleep with their mummies, he just smiled sheepishly and said : But why? Papa dah besar, why papa sleep with mummy?
:)

An update on Nina :

I never liked helping her out with her homework unless it's really necessary. Last week, when she came home from school and said rather dramatically that she could not believe that her geography teacher gave them only six days to do a news writing on the 2004 flood in Bangladesh and create a newspaper to fit that story in, I could not believe myself when I practically jumped from my seat and said, "hey, I can help you!"
Ha.. ha.. If I had my way, I would have written the entire thing myself but fearing that the teacher might suspect something (ce... I perasan I am a good journalist lah ni!), I asked her to give me her own sentences and I help edit them.And the amount of time I spent editing it felt like I was back at work doing my centrespead for Business Times (coming in to office before 7am etc!). Doing that homework of hers, I was transported back to my life as a reporter and for that few hours, I felt alive. :)

Ada Bakat ke?

In Amir's last report card, his Art teacher wrote that Amir has quite a talent for drawing. "A budding artist in the making," he wrote. I don't know about that. But I do know he is very good at copying other's people drawings and he is very detailed. He said he did a Van Gogh painting in school last month and since I never saw it, I have to take his word when he said, it was SOOO NICE.
The picture below is an example of his copy-cat work of art. I have to say they are very good. For a second I thought he'd traced those pictures from a book but he said he didn't and his sister vouched for him.

This talent, I am certain he didn't get it from me because I suck at anything that requires creativity. Back in school, Art is never a favorite subject but always a favourite class period because it was when I did nothing when others were intently drawing. My excuse : I focused better at home. The teacher knew I lied because I always ended up with a C or D anyways! So Amir must have gotten it from his dad? Maybe because when it comes to the art of precision and detailing, HE is the man!

Now my other offspring, who a week ago turned 12, claimed she is a musician whose talent is ready to be unleashed and wanted nothing else but a guitar for her birthday. She got a Sony MP4 from his dad and a "Fendi" look-alike watch from me. Well, we know, they were not guitar. His dad promised she'll get one this coming summer when we are in KL, a remark that almost "killed her" apparently! (Her facebook status right after being told that was : I AM SO HAPPY I COULD DIE.)

But does she really have a talent? If she does, where did she get it from? I am not musically-inclined although I do love listening to music. At her age, I was happy listening to English songs from Barbara Streisand and Roberta Flack, then writing the lyrics down and checking the dictionary to make sure my spellings were right. That was as good as I got. No desire for a guitar ke, a piano ke or an organ. Her dad meanwhile claimed he can strum an electric guitar like a pro. Yeah, I'd believe it when I see it!

I personally believe, Nina's current craving for a guitar is a result of "peer" pressure ...... from Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift!

As for their mom, who is not creative nor pandai main muzik, she "scored" another D for this following incident:
(Look carefully at the picture and ignore the very careless "painting" I drew over the other kids' eyes.)


Got it? No? Then take a look at this:


LOL! this was taken the week Amir told me that his socks were not matching and I told him that they are not THAT obvious what! I was wrong....

Nina oh Nina

Nina came home from school yesterday with a note from her school nurse. The note read : "Fainted after deep breathing exercise. Bruise with swelling to right side of head. Cannot remember the incident. Awake, alert response at all times. Pupils equal, reacting, light." (the last two words were my own assumption as they were rather ineligible)

Being a rather blunt person I am, even in my role as a mum, my immediate response was : "Mmm... that shows life is short. Anything can happen, we can die anytime. So it is important that we don't miss our solat, we don't show disrespect to our parents ......"

She looked rather upset that I did not sympathize. So I reminded her of what had earlier happened in the morning before she went to school.

Her dad gave her a 100riyal note to pay for her Alice in Wonderland "party" tomorrow and told her to be careful with the money. Her reaction was very nonchalant with her eyes glued to the tv, like her dad was not talking to her. Papa repeated again what he said and again, this anak bertuah continued to be deaf. Then she said something that was not making sense to us mature we-have-lived-longer-than-her adults like we her parents were stupid or something.

That really ticked me off. And understandably, her dad too. Of course, she was scolded by both of us. And as she put her $$ into her bag, she looked pissed and kind of shoved her bag angrily.

My last words to her was to stop her rude manners because what goes around comes around and not to forget Allah, The Almighty.

So when she related her fainting incident later that day and how her friends thought she was going to die because her eyes were all white etc, all I could say, yet again, Allah is Great.

I don't know why she fainted really. She wasn't in her PE class, and it was after lunch hour. Since it was a Music class and the teacher was teaching them how to breathe correctly when singing, I figured she must have done it wrongly, causing a sudden shortness of breath.
Alhamdulillah, it only caused a small swelling in her head. It did not kill her appetite! :)