Slow Down, Mummy!

Abang is known among family members to be rather forthcoming with "advice". Not to say it's a bad thing, but it takes some getting used to when you get told off by a 4-year old. In fact, he's been doing it since he could talk.

I remember when he was much younger - maybe 3 years old - he told my sister off for talking on her handphone while driving but without wearing a headset. And since he regularly gets told off for wasting water, lo and behold, it came back to bite me when I was running the shower to let the water get warm before bathing him and he said, "Mummy, you are wasting water."

Oops!

So now, before bathing him, I run the shower but let the water collect in a pail. Thanks for the tip, Abang!

Another time he chided me for "driving so fast". (I wasn't, really. Honest.) "Slow down la Mummy, you are driving so fast," he said in his usual like-duh-can't-you-see-what-you're-doing tone.

"It's not very fast, is it?" I asked.

"Yes laaa ... why you drive so fast, Mummy?"

That actually caught me by surprise a little. There's always so much to do and we're usually rushing from one place to another that "rushing" is almost automatic for me. When he asked me, I suddenly was at a loss for words. Why WAS I rushing, anyway?

So I said honestly, "I actually don't know why I'm rushing. We're not late for anything. Thanks Abang, we really should learn to slow down and enjoy the journey, kan?"

Even Adik in his own way is telling me to "stop and smell the roses". Or in his case it's "stop and smell the weeds that look like flowers". Whenever I take Adik for a walk he absolutely loves to stop and collect what he calls flowers. They're actually weeds. But it's so cute the way he says, "Adik nak get 'owers" and he bends down and slowly but deliberately plucks them from the ground.

When his hands are full then he passes them to me, "Mummy hold 'owers?"

A stretch that is normally a 1-minute walk would take 10 minutes. But I've learnt to slow down, so that's ok.

And I'm happy to hold weeds for my son.