A Day at a Childcare Centre (2)

Went to the childcare centre with Necks again! When we got there, a tussle between Euan and the elder of the twins had just ended. Apparently, Euan bit Kor Kor on his arm (leaving a DEEP indent) and the teachers were making Euan apologize to him. After that, all was settled with no ill feelings, and the children proceeded to get ready to sing children songs.

Necks was overwhelmed by the children again, as usual. Euan was one hyperactive kid with a non-existent attention span and a high oblivion to whatever is happening around him. When we tried to grab hold of him, he would not stop squirming out of our arms. But he is just so adorable.

Me and a wriggling Euan

When the teacher could finally seat the children down orderly (except for a few stray kittens like Euan), they then proceeded to sing Chinese children songs so corny that they made me cringe. One was a Chinese version of 'Old MacDonalds Had a Farm', one was an elongated version of 客人来, and the rest were apparently self-creations about rabbits and crows. Seeing Euan scampering around the room in his own world, the teacher finally caught him in the midst of singing and made him dance to the songs by manipulating his limbs. There was a song about goldfishes and at one point of time, the children fell flat on their stomachs onto the floor and swam around like fishes. Mischievious Bryan propped his feet on Euan's head, and got scolded by Necks for that.

The teacher led them to form a Too-too Train line, and Bryan was up to some insidious mischief again. He was standing at the back-end of the line and he deliberately let everyone go first and chose to stand behind Euan. Then he started pulling the chain Euan was wearing, and was promptly stopped by a stern Necks, because he could have strangled an unaware (as usual) Euan.

Any visit to the childcare centre will definitely entail an enthralling encounter with the twins. Di Di actually pointed to a picture of a shark and said "Shark's fins", then he said to me cheekily "Bite you!". With that, I pouted "Pain pain! Bite you can or not?" and he replied "Cannot!" and he broke into a peppy grin. He was all the more adorable when Necks wanted to take a picture of him with his camera phone and he obediently posed with a picture-perfect pout. Kor Kor kept testing me by pointing to a picture of a green dinosaur in a kiddie book and asking me what it is. According to Necks, they actually know their dinosaurs very well, because the children watch 'Living With Dinosaurs' (the 3D documentary on Arts Central some time back) at the childcare centre. They are so advanced now. I mean, we did not even have that in our younger years and the only dinosaur-based show we had was the cartoon 'Land Before Time' with its unrealistically kind, helpful and herbivorous dinosaurs.

Yong Heng, aka Di Di

After the singing session, it was time for some colouring activity and the teacher handed out some goldfish pictures for them to colour. Most of them coloured the goldfishes purple, green or brown, and in a haphazard way. Only Jiaxian could colour properly (as in the colour does not spill over the outline).

It was lunchtime and the children proceeded to sit at the tables in a corner and await their lunch to be served to them. Neck's mother was scooping the food into the bowls and I could see today's grub: macaroni soup with cabbage strips and chicken cubes. It does not look very palatable, but Necks said that this is actually one of the better meals in the weekly menu.

While they had lunch, we sneaked out of the centre quietly. However, the twins saw us doing that and they rushed to the door. Surprisingly they did not burst into tears on seeing us leave, but that was because Neck's mother bluffed them that we were going to buy sweets for them.