I am one worried mom

My son is now in the process of applying for middle school and of course I want him to go to the best school for him. The middle school process in new york city is comparable to college application process. You have to fill in a form and put your five choices and depending on the schools that you have selected, you might be called for interviews and tests. It is so stressful not only for the kids but also for the parents. It is highly competitive as there are only a certain numbers of seats in the top schools and the applicants are getting more and more by the year. Ok, that is for the public school application. Now, we have also been trying to get him into the international school and that is a another process that is giving us headache. he had to sit for this Independent School Entrance Examination for two and a half hours, comprising of Math and English. We had some practice done on the sample questions and even though he didn't get everything right, he managed to answer most of the questions. Come the real thing, he said he didn't get to finish quite a number of questions as he was spending too mich time double checking his answers because he was really scared he might answered them wrong. I was so upset because he was supposed to answer all and then checked the answers! He is a bit of an overthinker so he would always take longer time going over things and that has caused him some marks. I have been reminding him time and again about his time management, that he should know how to time himself in tests and he had sat for his state exams twice and he had done really well. I guess he got freaked out about this test and he was being too careful. Well, he got most of the questions that he answered right, that is good but the fact that he could have gotten more marks if only he tried to answer the remaining questions. Anyway, we got the results and it is not as good as what he had gotten on the practice test (I think). A few days after the test, we went for the interview and it was a family interview. While he did conduct himself well, he was so nervous in the beginning that he kept looking at me for answers when the director of admission was asking him questions. Anyway, the process had passed and all we can do know is wait and hope and pray for the best. Tawakkal is what we do now. I keep on reminding myself that whatever happens, it is for the best. But still, until we get the results, I am going to be one worried mom.

Bread making

For the past two weekends, I have been learning to make homemade bread and it had been fun. Kids got involved, they love punching down the dough and kneading..well, actually more of playing with the dough. The outcome was better the second time,"practice makes perfect". It is a nice feeling to be smelling the bread baking in the oven and to know that something simple yet delicious is about to be done in a few minutes. The best feeling of all is when my hubby and kids enjoyed the warm bread and nearly the whole loaf was attacked within minutes.. For me, that is a huge achievement! Am not a huge fan of cooking, i mean i dont hate it but i dont love it either but there are times when i want to try new things and when it comes out great, I am a happy bunny!! So far I have made the basic white loaf so next project, at the request of husband dearest, is the dinner rolls and cinnamon raisin bun (well, the second one is my request to myself). So maybe soon we will not be buying bread from the stores anymore, maybe just maybe...:)). Nothing is impossible. Who ever thought I would be making my own bread? Not me, for sure. Cooking used to be so foreign to me before! Everything related to making food was and sometimes is still scary to me but I have to say I have come a long way. Last week, I made fish curry and hubby said that it was delicious! Yeay! Then we told our daughter the story of the very first fish curry I made, it was when we were still dating and oh my, it was a disaster. It was sweet and the fish was all falling apart! I was living with my aunt at that time and well, she freaked out too. she wasnt a good cook either and both of us were trying to "fix" the curry by putting salt, then sugar, then salt again then sugar again because the taste was so weird! we didn't have tome to make a new one so by the time hubby came,we had no choice but to serve him the horrendous dish. my aunt and I were trying to read his face when he ate it. he was a good actor I guess because not only he ate as if it was okay (he didnt say it was delicious but he didnt say it was bad either), he also had a second helping of the unedible dish. I couldn't eat it myself. Yeap, it was THAT bad! Then I told my daughter that if your dad hadn't eaten it, maybe I wouldn't have married him. Hahaha.