He's a growing, he is....

I was a smart mother, I was. But Sonny boy is getting to be too smart for me, sigh!

You may remember that Sonny boy HAS to have a story read to him before he will/can go to sleep. It is left to the Amma to tell said story after she supervises his homework, supervises dinner, DICTATES dining by Sonny boy and then supervises shutting-the-kitchen. This after a hard/maybe not-so-hard day at work.

The Acha would have been busy all this while supervising the different programmes on tv. Ah! Very tiring work indeed, esp when sprawled out on the sofa. So the Acha promptly goes to bed after dinner if there is no more supervision needed on tv. Needless to say, he would be lolling in bed with HIS book, while Sonny boy waits for me with HIS book (When do I get to read MY book? is a pet grievance with me).

When I do crawl into bed, Sonny boy latches on with 'story, story', and bone-tired tho' I am, I do not find it in my heart to turn him away. But I am a smart (read mean) mother. I take the book in my hands, and I start to read, and I turn MULTIPLE pages, keeping to the gist of the story.
For eg, the story is about about a little farm boy who is searching for a name for his pet pussy cat and who goes around taking suggestions from his folks, and the horse, sheep, cow, hen, dog, pig, duck, fish etc etc as to what he should name her. With a page and a few lines devoted to each person/animal, it would normally take about 5 minutes to read thru the entire thing animatedly. (No compromises on the animation, no matter how tired I am, I intend Sonny boy to enjoy his books.) But when turning pages, if you turn two pages together, hey presto! you get rid of two animals and can end the story in 2 minutes. Which, once I knew I could get away with it, I did regularly. With Sonny boy being none the wiser for it. Till last week.

After the granddad, I skipped the horse and the cow to the pig, when up piped an alert voice from my shoulder,
"Amma, you forgot the horse."
"Horse? What horse? There's no horse, the little boy's asking the pig."

And I firmly went on to the pig. And went on reading.
"No Amma, there is a horse."

A little finger comes up and turns back the pages till he comes to the horse.
"There! See? You forgot the horse?" and he beamed at me in the innocent delight of having helped me 'find' the missing page.
"Ooooh! There was a horse...! I didn't see him, Sonny boy..." and I beamed back in fake delight.

A minute later, I skipped the pig and the hen to the duck.
"Amma, you forgot the pig,now."
"Pig? I did...?

Up came the finger immediately.
"See?"
"Ah, I see!"

I see, my little Sonny boy, that gone are the days of little deceptions like these. Don't grow up too soon, my son, my darling son.

What will he be when he grows up?

Read about that poor 15 yr old kid in Trichy who performed a caesarean operation on a 20 yr old girl, and was horrified at the parents who actually supervised it.

It made me wonder- how ambitious can a parent be for their child? To what extent can they push their children? And when does all this start? In the womb? Would this mother have been reading medical books during her pregnancy?

I know that during my pregnancy, I made it a point to do lots of things in the hope that Sonny boy would imbibe... (ala the legendaryAbhimanyu, who heard his father Arjun speak about the chakravyuh, even while his mother dropped off to sleep...) - listen to good music, read good books, not laze around, think good thoughts... I really tried to do all this, in between puking, throughout the day- from month 3 to month 9.
My MIL told me that reading the Ramayanam was tantamount to getting a good offspring, so I did. I faithfully read C. Rajagopalachari's ramayan and thoroughly enjoyed it too. Tho' till date, I haven't told her this. ;-) (Supposedly if you can't read all, if you just read the sundarakandam is also enough)

Maybe all that will yield result, but when, is the moot question. Right now, nothing seems to hold Sonny boy. Sonny boy's attention span really has me worried.
I guess it is kind of OK if he is an average kid. (After all, I am no Einstein, nor is his Acha. I rejoice in the fact that Einstein was considered a dud at school!)
Like any parent, I too would like to see my son reach a higher level of life than me, however, Jack of all trades, master of none is what my son excels at being.


His attention begins to stray 5 minutes after we sit down to some learn-and-play.
I laugh about it later with his Acha, that a boy who otherwise has to be forced to go to sleep, only has to hold his crayon in his little fingers, for the yawns to come in an army.
When we go to the park, Sonny boy sits for a minute on the swings, while he eyes the slides. He trots off to slide, when he espies the see-saw. Off again to see-, but before the -saw, he is off to his cycle, and then again to that gymnast rod.. it goes on...

I mean, how can a child (or its anxious mother) know what he likes, if he doesn't even experience it to the full? Ditto for all else. He is like the proverbial butterfly, sipping from this flower and that, generally buzzing around... I see other children close to his age who at least manage to stay with one toy to finish whatever they are doing. Or at least, they have a favourite toy. Not so Sonny boy.

His nature is evident from the fact that when I tell him to go play with his toys, he goes and tumbles ALL the toys from his toy basket onto the floor. Just in case a few get caught in the corners and don't fall out, he pokes them out! He delights in seeing them strewn all around. PlayDoh is out of bounds in my house now, cos he makes little balls out of it and then runs his toy cars over it to see the tyre marks. Very creative and innovative you might say. NOT, says the mother who had a tough time trying to clean the carpet of the sticky dough. The carpet still has bits of fur rolled in dough!
The ONLY toy he has liked more than the rest is Thomas. He spends some minutes with the tracks and Salty and Percy and the others.. laying the tracks out, connecting them...
And he also loves anything to do with water.

But yeah, sometimes I wonder if I watched any (too many?) kittens while pregnant. Sonny boy simply loves string! A rope, a belt, a tape.. anything that he can wind and loop and tie and knot and use to connect... He can really spend an hour doing intricate, puzzling winds and turns..tying the chairs up, looping the table to the chair, the chair to the sofa, tying up one of our legs in the process. He can also simply walk around the dining table, looking back every now and then, at the way the string follows on behind him.

The Acha and I are totally blank as to what future brillinace this is a sign of. Any of you who drop in here- any ideas?

O Laila...!

Yesterday was a friend's daughter's second B'day. And Sonny boy was cordially invited, with family.

She had come over for Sonny Boy's b'day earlier in Feb, and her parents and we'd gone together for another friend's kid's B'day subsequently.. where the pair of them were the only two toddlers and they'd made a hit pair. She would run after the chettan (big bro) and the big bro would lead her a merry dance. Basically both of them were totally taken with the acres of space after being coccooned in flats, and they had a rip-roaring time running around bushes and lolling about on the green lawns.

Yesterday, when we were on our way, we cautioned Sonny boy that the brightly wrapped up gift was for the B'day baby and that he had to give it to her, and wish her, and not poke his fingers into the cake- it was Leya's not his! and generally be a good boy.. and then we asked him,
"You remember Leya baby, Sonny?"
"O coursh!"
"Where did you see her?"
"In my house"
And then he trills merrily, "Laila, Laila, Laila...!

They proceeded to have a merry time at the party too.
By the time we left, guess Leya's Dad was glad to have his daughter separated from her Majnu.