Big brother..

I always know that deep down Ariq loves his little brother very much, but in this stage, they are just young children with their own ego and mischief..

What happened tonight really touched me, because Ariq really showed the 'big-brother' side of him, in one of his most exhausting days..

Today, Ariq had an excursion with the rest of Grade 1 students and I went with him since I am one of the 4 class coordinators (we are supposed to help the teachers in coordinating the students during school events and field trips).

Ariq had a tiring day, after going to the 'Miniature Park of Indonesia' (this is the place where people can have a glimpse of almost all the things related to Indonesian culture and history). We visited the 4D Screen to watch a cartoon movie about underwater life, the fresh water museum (all the fish in there are actually still alive), the insect museum (the insects are not alive here, except the butterflies which live in a dome-like garden), and finally the Al-Qur'an museum, which happened to have a calligraphy expo going.

The children exceptionally enjoyed the fresh water museum, with all the kinds of fish from around the world and some of them looked really interesting...

We arrived back at the school in the afternoon. As soon as we got home, Ariq had lunch (he didn't finish his lunch at the park because playing with his friends was far more an interesting choice than sitting down finishing his food), then we tried to get some rest. Ariq wanted snacks after his lunch, so I sent Aza and his nanny to the minimarket closeby to buy some.

Once he got back, Aza knocked on the bedroom door to give Ariq his chips. Ariq opened the door, slightly irritated because he was drifting off..

I calmly said to Aza, "Ariq is still resting, would you wait about half-an-hour?"

Aza nodded, "Alright". Then, he sat right there, on the steps in front of the bedroom door.

Ariq looked at his brother while closing the door and suddenly reopened the door, "Why don't you go play with your nanny while waiting?"

Aza replied, "No, I will wait here."

Ariq went quiet for some time, then finally opened the door wide, "Just come inside then, but be quiet, alright!"

Aza hesitated for a second but then he followed Ariq inside.

Once they were both inside, as you can guess, neither of me nor Ariq could get any rest anymore.. but Aza was very happy to be with both of us, after being left alone all day..

Later that evening, Ariq had to do his math project, which was to build some 3D shapes from hard paper. Ariq actually wanted to make pyramid, cone, cube and sphere. I planned to do the pyramid first and then the cube, because those two are the ones I was more familiar with.

As we started to draw the shapes, Aza wanted to join in, but he wanted to handle the pencil, ruler and the hard paper! Making it impossible for us to do any work.. I was starting to get a little impatient, but Ariq was really good, he took a pair of scissors and cut 1/3 of the hard paper and gave it to Aza, along with a small ruler and a pencil..

Unfortunately, Aza was still persistent in 'working' with Ariq's project..

Gladly, Aza's nanny and my mother-in-law quickly joined in and 'entertained' Aza, so Ariq and I could get to work. However, since I was already very tired and Aza still interfered a few times, I couldn't fully understand the exact way Ariq wanted the cube to be built and I ended up drawing the cube wrong, causing the end result to have an opening on one corner.. To add to it, Ariq cut the wrong part of the cube too..

But Ariq only shrugged and said, "It's OK, don't worry about it." Then, we just tried to make additional part to be attached to fix the unfinished cube. Once the cube was done, he decided we should just stop there after I told him I really didn't know how to build a sphere, and he said that he wasn't that desperate to make the cone either (his teacher didn't specify the minimum number of shapes each student had to build at home).

Either Ariq was too tired to make a fuss, or he sort of understood that under the circumstance, we had given our best, and there was nothing more that we could do with our half-closed eyes..

I was very touched with Ariq's attitude tonight.. and very impressed! I'm sure they missed each other, and Aza didn't know yet how to express his feelings.. I'm really glad that Ariq showed his 'big-brother' heart for his little brother, although I know for sure, he was really really tired, because I am beyond tired (I'm having trouble sleeping tonight, unsurprisingly Ariq fell asleep much faster than Aza)..

So, I just had another interesting day.. again..