Seen.By.Ice.Queen: coming to my senses

I wrote about taking my son to watch The Tooth Fairy three years back and now, he is coming 'face-to-face' with THE Tooth Fairy.

For some weeks now, my six year old has been dealing with the emerging adult teeth and two wobbly milk teeth. At a recent visit to the wonderful dentist at White Dental Group, the nice pediatric dentist told my son that she will task him with the homework of wobbling and eventually extracting his own teeth.

So for the past week or so, he has been religiously doing his 'homework' after brushing his teeth every morning and night. Tonight while supervising his brushing, I noticed that one of his wobbly tooth was hanging by literally just a 'thread' and so ready to come off. So I encouraged him to try and yank it off. The brave little dude took the handkerchief from me for better grip on the tooth and did just that! Before I even realized, he was holding on to this tooth going, "see mom, it came out!"

I was so excited it was almost as if I was the one losing the first tooth. After I calmed down from my excitement, my six year old said he wanted to write a note to the tooth fairy so she knows exactly where to find his tooth and what to do with it.

So here goes the note...

Aww.. My brave little man. And I'd better go dig up that dollar coin that the 'tooth fairy' is supposed to give him before I forget :P

I am 100% Singaporean. Born and bred, raised and stamped. 'Nuf said. I understand Singlish perfectly well. But am still proud to say that I know when to use it and when to bite it back and not let it slip past my tongue.

So I have a boy, now 6. From the time he started speaking, he went to a playschool located in Orchard. It was close by for convenience of drop-off and I liked the fact that it had a good make up. There was a good mix of expatriates and locals. Hence, the young one was surrounded with friends who are Africans, Americans, Europeans, Koreans, Japanese, Taiwanese, Chinese, Spanish etc., as well as, Singaporean Chinese, Indians, Eurasians...

Although I cannot validate the correlation, I had also noticed that the command of English in the centre was also less localized. When I was playschool-hunting, I walked in to a centre in a more neighbourhood environment (mind you, it was also a very reputable nursery). It so happened that the centre was closed for some administrative updates and only the principal was around at that point of time. Nevertheless, she very kindly attended to me and orientated me to the facility.

During the short 20 minute orientation, I could not help but be disturbed by the fact that her English was peppered with lots of 'lahs' and 'lors'. Disregarding that, I bolted (well, at least mentally) when she started making grammatical errors in her sentence structure while having a conversation with me.

Don't be mistaken, I am no teacher and I certainly am not claiming high levels of English proficiency but God forbid an educator in early childhood be exposing our young offsprings to a lack of language foundation when they are picking it up.

Anyway, my son entered the school in Orchard. It was all good until they had to close down the centre because their lease ran out.

Out of sheer frustration at their lack of notice, I refused to be transferred to another branch, choosing instead to source for another school.

We settled on a kindergarten along Bukit Timah. This is again another reputable pre-school that typically has an endless waiting list. I was just so lucky to be able to get a spot at short notice.

It's been almost 3 months since my boy attended this school and of late, horrified little me has been noticing his improvement in Singlish.

Just moments ago, I overheard him saying to our helper, "But you are in my room mah." (Faint... actually, double faint!)

All those years of proper English exposure in school and at home has been dinged by a mere 3 months in school!!!

I have since resorted to the 'fine' Singaporean way of corrective method. He is to be fined $0.10 for every lah, lor, mah, meh or the likes that he uses in his conversations. I can't help it, I am also Singaporean mah... (ooops!)

My son came home from playschool one day and told me, "Mommie, the largest bone in your body is called a FEMUR and the smallest bone is STIRRUP. There are 206 bones in a human body".

This info took me by surprise and I was ashamed at my lack of knowledge to furnish him with more scientific facts about the human body. Today, a colleague kindly beefed up my general knowledge again with the following facts and illustrations. I shall go home and tell my son about them.. :)

Scientists say the higher your I.Q. The more you dream (OK before you get excited, it DIDN'T say that if you dream a lot, you HAVE high I.Q.)


The largest cell in the human body is the female egg and the smallest is the male sperm


You use 200 muscles to take one step


The average woman is 5 inches shorter than the average man (which means to say that either I am taller than the average woman.. OR alot of the men I know are shorter than average men..hmmm)


Your big toes have two bones each while the rest have three


A pair of human feet contains 250,000 sweat glands


A full bladder is roughly the size of a soft ball


The acid in your stomach is strong enough to dissolve razor blades (so ladies, if you ever get attacked by a man, just puke at him buahahaha...)


The human brain cell can hold 5 times as much information as the Encyclopedia Britannica (erm.. ok... not mine..)


It takes the food seven seconds to get from your mouth to your stomach (one, two, three.. yeah i'm eating)


The average human dream lasts 2-3 seconds (i can almost swear that mine are longer. i even get continuing dreams that follows where it ends off after waking up to pee)


Men without hair on their chests are more likely to get cirrhosis of the liver than men with hair (hairless = weaker liver? double depressing for these men)


At the moment of conception, you spent about half an hour as a single cell


There are about one trillion bacteria on each of your feet (now you know why mum always nags at you to wash your feet when you get home huh?)


Your body gives off enough heat in 30 minutes to bring half a gallon of water to a boil (energy conservation ideas anyone?)


The enamel in your teeth is the hardest substance in your body


Your teeth start growing 6 months before you are born


When you are looking at someone you love, your pupils dilate, and they do the same when you are looking at someone you hate (hence the saying that you can only hate someone you love?)


Your thumb is the same length of your nose (and I know you are measuring it now o_O'")

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