Random. Structured. Haphazard. All Me.
A Tangled Yarn of Thoughts Being Unravelled…
There comes a time in every parent’s life (mainly the mothers) where they realise that their child is more like a cartoon character than they previously realized. It’s not always a happy realization. Imagine telling yourself, “Crap. I gave birth to Woody Woodpecker.”
The year started on a fun enough note. Had plenty of adored people around. There was music. There was dancing. There were hyper kids. Loads of alcohol flowing as well. And lights flashing…the whole shebang!
And then we crashed, bleary-eyed, into bed only to be woken up at what seemed like an ungodly hour but it was actually well past the crack of dawn. Bang into the new year I realized what a smartass a 10 year old can be.
I have…sigh…had a rather favorite coffee mug that’d been a part of my everyday routine for more than 6 years. It was nothing fancy. Just a bright yellow mug with Homer Simpson’s face on it, full of his usual goofiness. I’d bought it during my first ‘mom’s weekend away’ trip with the bestie and it was intended for Red. I don’t remember how it became mine, but it did. So the mug broke fairly early in the morning although after I’d bonded with it for what turned out to be the last time and I was more than a “bit miffed”. He-who-shall-not-be-named had butterfingers as usual and had broken the mug just near his feet while not having any slippers on (as usual). Shards were everywhere and Homer was irreparably broken.
After having realized there were no more storms to come, TO saw me sweeping up the broken pieces and looking sad while doing so. In expressing solidarity with his “favorite mother” he stood in attention, clicked his heels together, saluted and hummed a mournful tune. I have never been more caught between looking stern and controlling my laughter at the same time. Laughter won out. Kids..whaddya gonna do!
Speaking of…guess what the kid who kept whining during most of the train journey to my hometown say when I asked him to shush for what must have been the n(nth)th time? ” Oh! so uptight!!” I’m fairly sure I goggled at him while he cackled and ran away like the sprite that he is.
I’m not setting too many goals this year barring one- minimalism. Wherever possible. Wherever…and of course targets will be set to travel more, read more, do new things and make more good memories.
May 2020 find you all in more states of contentment and as little tumult as possible.
Cheers!
TO and I started 2020’s fun segment off with a mother&son movie date. That nachos and cheese popcorn were a part of it goes without saying. And that the dust from the nachos and the cheese from the popcorn don’t go without a hard scrubbing; goes without saying also.
Now, onto the movie! A lone wolf master spy and a lonely young brainiac scientist learn about each other and what it takes to be a team in this new offering from Blue Sky Studios. Will Smith is smooth as ever as Lance Sterling, the uber cool, unflappable, repartee-trading spy who always ‘flies solo’. Tom Holland with his vulnerable ‘young man’ voice as Walter Beckett come together and learn what it means to be friends, save the world and why pigeons are rather misunderstood and far more cooler than any of us every imagined.
It’s a fun movie with the kind of appeal fun that works with both the kids and the big kids in their lives. Check it out for the slick animation or if you simply like Will Smith…or pigeons! because this flick sends messages without being preachy, too uppity or without being too in your face about it. No spoilers here barring that there are LOTS of pigeons.
Rating: 3***
Brian Gordon…redefining the reasons we sometimes want to flip our kids off!
Note: all images are sourced from the book Fowl Language: Winging It: The Art of Imperfect Parenting by Brian Gordon.
Some people have trouble being cooped up. Even if it isn’t in a tiny space and even if they don’t suffer from claustrophobia.
Take my kid for example…sitting still is a challenge. He’d rather be running his mouth and legs off all at once and flit between shadowing bowling, getting jiggy with it and talking his distracted head off.
We’re on a train right now and off to visit my folks for the holidays and am wondering why we didn’t splurge on flight tickets instead. Spending time with our children is seriously overrated at times.
We have a comfy cabin and everything but it’s not big enough to bounce hyperactive balls on, or take a running lead and pretend to bowl out a phantom batsman playing cricket among other things.
Seeing him go through stages of being slightly tolerable to obviously obnoxious, I was reminded of the days when I used to work and he was in kindergarten. His school transport would drop him off at my office and between me and my colleagues, someone would keep him busy while I got on calls or spoke to clients or sent out emails; often at the speed of light just to be able to wind up everything super quick and get him back home
One day I was on a fairly important call with a team we wanted to partner up with while offering our services and an-almost 4 year old decided that post going to the loo he no longer wanted to wear his pants and wanted to moon all the people I worked with instead.
The person I was talking to was droning on and on, not letting me get a word in edge-wise so I couldn’t hang up either and this is the scenario that played out: an irate and striving-to-appear professional woman chased a half-naked kid around her office and hissed at him sotto voce to put his pants back on immediately while uh-huhing with a guy who was tripping on his own voice.
Finally I think I bellowed to a kid who was on top of a kiddy ladder and about to bounce onto a foam mat to behave himself and put his pants back on or he was going to get spanked!
There was an immediate pin drop silence from the phone while a semi-naked little boy flew through the air, giggled his butt off and again ran off to do something else that would make the veins pop on his mother’s head.
The call was hastily wound up and a new time scheduled. The new call went by in a blink, we kept to the main points and even skipped the pleasantries entirely. The synergy took place, bumbums were covered up and the world was at peace again.
Till the next time. S-I-G-H
If anyone’s ever been tasked with getting their kid out of bed on a Monday morning, especially in winter, will know what that kid would look like as a drunk adult.
The lurching, the groaning, the guttural sounds coming from their throat, the near vampire-like sensitivity to light…the whole shebang! You have a mini- facsimile of a person too tipsy to walk or climb into his pants without support.
And while it was funny seeing him do the drunken baby walk with a diaper, trying to get his balance and not topple over; a drunk-like 10 year old is almost as much trouble as a full-blown drunk adult. Minus the toxic alcohol breath coming from their mouth. But that’s hardly a saving grace.
One looks longingly at the doorways as an escape portal into another dimension away from kids and all sorts of other lurching creatures and hopes that the elixir of life aka coffee will do the trick.
Here are some beauties celebrating the magic of the bean.
I admit, I should be caffeined up before doing anything pertaining to my child on weekday mornings. Actually that’s a good rule of thumb to follow all through now that I look back on the last 10 years.
Like every kid on a “winter” morning, he was snuggling deeper under the covers and refusing to get up, saying he couldn’t go to school because he was soooooo sleepy. That’s when my uncaffeinated, let’s also call it my lizard brain, decided I should open my mouth.
Instead of just yanking the covers off him or alternating between kissing him and pinching his butt, I chose to say (most unwisely), ” You shouldn’t have been walking around like a bhatakti aatma last night when you should have been in bed then, shouldn’t you?”
See, giving any sleep-addled person unfamiliar info that their brain needs to process first thing in the morning is just wrong. Especially in the case of a linguistically-challenged child who’s decided that he cannot process anything else barring English. So an unpronounceable word first thing in the morning was like dumping a whole world of WTFiveness on his drowsy head.
Our conversation went like this- TO: What’s a batati aatma? Me: BH-takti. TO: Bakati? Me: BH! TO: Butt-aakti? Me: BH-BH-BH!! TO: just gimme a hug Ayu and I’ll get up.
Now he tells me..
Yesterday TO was in a bit of a defiant mood and decided to test the waters by flouting the rules and diktats laid out.
I did the only thing that I do when yelling isn’t an option; I stopped talking to him. It was quite a bit of a blessed silence for Red am sure.
The requests to read a book at bedtime fell on deaf ears amongst the litany of chants of my name. Finally a little boy fell asleep with a sulky moue.
This morning he woke up and gave me a hug and kiss and looked relieved when I responded in kind. It led to outpourings and declarations of love about me being his favorite mother!
I said I had to be his favorite mother because I was his only mother and he said, “That’s what you think. Ma (my mom) is my mother too! She’ll love me when you don’t!”
I dont think the lesson’s being learnt here, eh what?
Disney’s latest offering is a testimony to parents’ love for their children. A) They buy the movie tickets and then spend a bomb on snacks the kids didn’t need to eat and B) They sit through the entire movie while a small voice in their minds keep going, ” Gag me with a spoon!”
The fact that I have a boy doesn’t stop us from watching a movie which is firmly in the “girlie” territory. The sequel had giants, magic, mysticism and lots more but it also had its characters breaking into a song at the drop of a pin and was very reminiscent of the Bollywood dramas where people gaze off into the unknown and sing their hearts out due to love, fear, doubt…any damn thing that catches their fancy!
But the main things which stand out in this movie are the lack of a strong storyline which was the foundation of the earlier one. It’s almost as if Elsa needs a new drama in her life because being queen and having a normal existence is so humdrum. She begins to hear voices which she cannot resist and that starts off the chain of events which unfold in predictable cliche after cliche. The animation too, doesn’t delight like the previous one. There are one or two instances and those are best watched in 3D but the rest is fairly meh.
So unless your kids *really* love the princessy feel, skip this one. Go watch Inside Out or Hotel Transylvania instead; again. I’ll take Adam Sandler’s Drac over Kristoff singing his heartbreak in a sequence reminiscent of a 90s boyband video.
Sigh…
When wandering around the streets of Barcelona, near Sagrada Familia or the Arc de Triompf, you will come upon the church of Sant (St.) Joan (not a woman).
After seeing the style of Gaudi’s masterpiece, this church seems run of the mill but take a round of the place and discover it’s beauty and architecture for yourself.
