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Raine and I had a really great brainstorming session last night. Like me, both my girls love to write. I’m glad some of their teachers notice this. Yesterday Raine was asked to submit an article to the school magazine. All afternoon while in the car, she and I were tossing ideas at each other.

Should I write about Twilight, Mom? Everyone’s so crazy about it at school but I think it’s way overrated . Or should I do a book review? How about fashion trends? I sure have a lot to say about, oh, never mind, forget I said that *giggle*.

Come dinner time, she’d finally decided she was going to write about Twilight and we discussed the angle. She showed me the piece later and asked me to proofread it.

Going through a piece together is always a great time for us to bond and discuss the finer points of writing.

I see great potential in my children’s writing. They write very well and I love cheering them on. I was never a cheerleader at school but I swear I’m getting pretty good at it now . Raine was so excited about her piece last night I could almost sense the feverish tingling from across the room. Rah!

We got a note from the guitar teacher that the girls have been moved up to Grade 2 whatever that means. When we signed up, it was supposed to be a fun class, no grading, no tests so this came as quite a surprise.

Anyhow upgrading is great but the fees have gone up too, definitely not so great! I wouldn’t mind the fee increase so much if the teacher would take his job more seriously and have a little more structure in the way he teaches.

He promises to teach the girls one thing next week and when next week comes, he does a totally different thing! At one point, he asked the girls to name some songs they like so we gave him a CD of the girls’ favorite songs. He taught 2 or 3 songs from there without so much as a chord sheet and our CD has never been seen again!!

After the girls practise what he’s taught, he changes the chords of that same song the next week and they have to start over!! I’m no expert but I don’t think that’s any way to teach music. The girls told him they want to learn how to read chords but he says no, just play it by ear. That’s certainly not how I learnt to play the piano so .

He has taught them a number of techniques and I’m pretty happy with that. But his style of teaching sounds awfully unstructured, haphazard even. The girls are confused and losing interest. Frankly I’m confused too. Does anyone know if this is how guitar classes are taught?

I had breakfast with a girl friend this morning. We have breakfast regularly but I haven’t seen her since Chinese New Year. She’s been out of the country, as usual. I really envy her lifestyle. She is a swinging single, recently retired, and she has all the time and money in the world to, you know, see the world.

The economy may be bad, yet she can still afford to jetset regardless of how much air tickets, hotel rates or international travel insurance cost! So travel aside, what else are you up to? I asked her.

Guess what, she’s signed up to do a professional baking course. I’m freakin’ green with envy. Hey, that’s what I want to do! But I’m really happy for her. And for me too . No doubt, it’ll soon be raining cakes and cookies and pastries at my front door!

I’ve been showing up early at the gym this week. Chinese New Year the past two weeks was my excuse for slacking even though I really wasn’t that busy at all.

First thing Wednesday, I jump on the scale at the gym. Not obsessing about my weight. Just curious since I’ve been such a slacker lately .

I peek at the scale just as I feel it sink under my weight. Whoa, 57kg (125lbs)! I jump on the treadmill next to my gym buddy and walk 3km while chatting away. I jump back on the scale after that and it says 56kg. Okay, whatever!

First thing yesterday morning, I hop on the scale and it says 56kg. Three km and an hour-and-a-half later, it says 58kg. Cute! The more I exercise, the fatter I get .

Woo-hoo, my girls finally learnt to play their first song on the guitar. It’s been three months since they first started taking classes. Last night, when I heard them struggling to play Daniel Powter’s Next Plane Home, it was music to my ears !

Between the guitar teacher who mumbles, goes too fast and keeps disappearing during class hours and me constantly nagging the girls to practise, I’m thrilled we even got this far.

At one point, I was almost afraid they would lose interest. But those two are real troopers. They keep each other going even when it means sharing the practice!! See, they’re sitting arm over shoulder. Raine is strumming while Skye is pressing the chords !!

While digging for the children’s old school books recently, I came across a box of foreign coins. Wherever we’ve traveled, we always keep the leftover currency, especially coins, when we come back. Don’t ask me why, it’s almost like a sentimental thing.

Some of the coins we’ve had for ages from before I was even married and certainly before the kids came along. Some of the coins are so old, I wonder if there’s a rare coin or two in there that we could sell !

Maybe I could get the people over at Monaco Rare Coins to evaluate our stash and see if there’s hidden treasure we didn’t know about. Otherwise what are we keeping those coins for anyhow?

Whenever I hear about other mothers who have successfully set up their own businesses, I’m always full of admiration for them and wish I too could something like that.

I like the idea of selling stuff and giving my kids a taste of doing business. At one time, me and the girls were thinking of renting a spot at The Curve’s weekend flea market to sell our hand-crafted jewelry.

The idea never took off because we can’t imagine ourselves manning the shop in the searing heat of the sun all day. A more feasible idea would be to have an online store, I guess. We talked about this over the holidays but we haven’t got around to doing anything yet.

I don’t want to start something that we can’t keep up with when school gets busy, know what I mean? So while waiting for school to settle and to give ourselves more material to chew on in the meantime, I’ve been checking out some resources about online business.

I’m thinking we should set up a merchant account that’ll help us to get our business going and kickstart our sales. First Data’s merchant account is perfect for eBay, internet, mail and phone order businesses.

I’m also attracted to their low rates and those who’ve used their services say it’s easy to set up an acccount and get approved. I’m definitely keeping it in mind for when we’re ready to embark on our little business. Frankly I can’t wait but I need to figure out first what we’re going to be selling .

We always feel a bit uncomfortable when our friends ask Steev “so what books are you reading now?” and Steev would just shrug the question off with an inaudible mumble under his breath, an answer I always hope our friends won’t hear .

Truth is we’ve been trying to get him to read without much success, or so we thought. Steev and Raine were both early readers. Before age 3, they were able to read simple Peter & Jane books and were progressing nicely up the number series and onto Enid Blyton books.

Skye started late because I was so busy with the two older ones and she always being the ‘baby’, I didn’t realize she was already 3 and still couldn’t read a word!

Today, Raine and Skye are my two bookworms always reading, always hungry for more books. Steev, on the other hand, has probably read all of two books in his entire school life.

I only realized recently that we’ve probably wrongly accused him of not reading when all this while, he’s been soaking up technical and technology articles on the internet. Okay lah, bad mommy thought he was only playing games!

Today I read in The Star that many of our schoolkids read only two books a year! It’s a shame, too many distractions competing for their attention these days. The trick is to start them young and consistently build on their interest from there (how to get kids to start reading?).

I did it the hard way but it really doesn’t have to be that hard. Funetics actually has a phonics-based Early Reading Program that’s not only a great place to start but also lots of fun for both parent and child.

It also makes a valued Christmas gift, or anytime gift, for friends with kids. It contains 81 lessons from early letter recognition to preschool concepts to reading and writing.

Like I always say, each child is different and this kit contains lots of interesting games and activities to suit your child’s learning style and allows you to pace the lessons according to your schedule and his/hers.

The printed version comes with a free audio CD of the program. You can try out 3 lessons for free. Shipping is available worldwide and it’s free for those living in the US.

Many working parents don’t have time to figure out how to get their kids interested in books and a guided program like Funetics is just the thing to get started.