Rojak Timeout (by Horse with no Name)

We're getting right into the dog days of summer and the afternoons are getting increasingly muggy. School's out and fun is supposed to be in. Except most days, walking out the door is like stepping not so much into an oven anymore, but a sauna – wearing a full-body, wet burlap sack.

Back when we lived in Australia, we escaped the dry, fiery summer months from December to January by heading home for Christmas in cooler, monsoon-ridden Singapore.

There's no escaping the heat this time.

In early June, when the weather was scorching hot but the air was not so thick yet that you couldn't breathe, I'd find new excuses to stay in, eschew chores or writing, sit on my balcony (or patio, as they call it here?) and while the day away. Except I have two kids, remember? While-ing is a thing of the past.

Fortunately, the older child, Sweetpea, has a curious streak. Loves learning. As a former bookworm myself, I am bereft with joy. It gives me an added excuse to sit indoors and surf the Net, I mean, enjoy the A/C, I mean, TEACH her, about anything she fancies.



The great thing about living someplace new is that you never have to stray far from home to discover something new: Birds that flutter past your window with their tails held vertically instead of horizontally. Plants with bumpy flower buds that never seem to bloom, and that sprout strange cactus-looking fruit. Bugs with forked tails that skittle across the bathroom floor.



Adventure is everywhere.

So our curriculum varies: one week we drifted through books on the different methods of seed dispersal. Another, dinosaurs and early mammals of the Cenozoic era. It's a heady combination.

I rather like our little ad-hoc home-schooling schedule. We're not rushing about, as we usually are back home, to go to the kid's gym, or go to the water park, or go to the million and one classes I would have signed her up for by now.

Occasionally, when a mild breeze would kick up in the late afternoon, we'd venture out on field trips around the compound. Sweetpea would trot ahead collecting sample bags of whatever caught her eye, objects of simple beauty which she would later dutifully tape into her notebook and artfully label.

Pumpkin is just excited to be outdoors. Everything is fascinating to a one-year-old, even dirt.



One not-so-hot day, we ditched housework and learning, grabbed some bottles of soap and a bubble wand that cost me just a buck from Target, and headed downstairs to play. We soon attracted a crowd of kids. The bubbles were forsaken for a screaming game of tag.

As Sweetpea dashed about in the gleaming warmth, I walked with Pumpkin – whose unsteady gallop isn't quick enough yet to keep up with her lanky older sis - and I wondered when it would be her turn. When I would hear her little voice piping up from above my knees asking me why the sky was so blue or why the grass felt prickly on her fingers.



We stopped near the playground, listening to the sounds of big sister chasing the other kids, and spent a minute staring at the carpet of clouds that had begun to creep across our usually clear sky.

Pumpkin grabbed my hand with one tiny fist and gestured upwards with the other. “Rain,” I said gently to her. “The clouds say rain is on the way, sweetie.”

I see these questions forming, without the words to match just yet, in her baby brain. It was gorgeous to witness the first go around, with Sweetpea, and I'm glad I have the opportunity to witness it all over again.