Tag: raising a boy

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Contractually Yours…

Parenting often comes down to reaching agreements with your offspring in order for lessons to be learnt, set and accepted patterns of behavior to be established and also for those invisible lines to be drawn that help kids know crossing which ones will make the parents go medieval on them.

Image courtesy Henry Hustava@Unsplash
When TO was a baby I really, really liked him. He was adorable, always had a smile on his face, wasn’t a fussy baby…he just wouldn’t sleep much but he was not a pain. And he ate pretty much whatever I held up to his mouth.

Image courtesy Kyle Nieber@Unsplash

Somethings he didn’t like from the beginning like ripe papaya, anything with too much crunch or things which left an aftertaste he was iffy about; but this kid ate his fruits and veggies just fine!

Image courtesy Vince Lee@Unsplash

Fast forward a few years and this kid goes around spouting nonsense about being allergic to nuts AND fruit!
No clue where he picked it up from but trust me when I say that the only allergic person in this house is me in regard to excuses this child makes when faced with something he thinks he won’t like.

Yesterday after one of those Eff-It moments when parents decide on the ‘my-way-or-the-highway’ kind of scenario; a historic fruit- consumption contract was drawn up which includes not one but THREE fruits! My mother’s heart was about to burst forth with joy.



Naturally, I had to make it worth his while. And no, I don’t mind using lures when it serves my purpose and gets him to eat and live healthier.


That’s how I got Red to eat more veggies too. I’d wait for the cricket matches to come on and serve him meals that had all the stuff he claimed he never ate and before you know it Mr.Zombie-In-Front-Of-The-Telly had eaten the entire lot of things “he never ate” and liked it too.

So kids, the lesson here is this…next time you want mom to buy the load of tripe about being “allergic” to something, be prepared to go into anaphylactic shock to really drive the point home.

Over and out!

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Sunday Morning Bloglet: Mother&Son

A highly caffeinated and enthusiastic mother greets her only offspring first thing in the morning.

Seeing the zombie walk, the groggy look and the utterly gorgeous lashes fan his cheeks she chirps,” Oh why are you so beautiful?!!”. And the child replies, “Because you made me.” “You bet your ass I made you!” “Hey! You said ASS!! “You bet your ass I did!”

Such is the love fueled by the Almighty Joe. *does we’re not worthy* and silently bows out of the room.

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School Holiday Bloglet

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.”

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Movie Review: Spies In Disguise

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***

 

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Antsy Pantsy

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

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Oh! The Humanity!!

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.

PS: https://youtu.be/PVPWN8c0Sl0

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Wonky Wednesdays

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..

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Sunday Morning Bloglet

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?

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Why Kids Should Come With Disclaimers

It’s a longish title I admit but sometimes you have such a doozy of a week that you just need to get it out of your system and can’t be bothered by the aesthetics of formatting or “optimum” title lengths. Apparently blogging tip#1 is that one needs to keep the title ‘short and punchy‘ to attract more readers.

My kid is 10 years old. He acts half his age at times and then there are other times when I have no idea what he’s acting like except that it A-N-N-O-Y-S me.

Blogging tip#2- occasional allcaps in the midst of a post lends some gravitas and also attracts attention.

Anyhoo…for those who have arrived late onto this particular blog, I chiefly write about my kid. Why? Because he fills up my world rather like the John Denver’s Annie Song but in a less melodious way at times. Blogging tip#3- it’s easiest to write about what you know and see around you so I kinda didn’t have a choice when it came to my topic of blogs since being a M-O-M is pretty much all I do. Note: a effective use of tip#2 in the preceding line.

Another anyhoo- this past week TO and I have been butting heads quite a bit. It’s almost as if his agenda for the week was let’s see how much my mother’s head can swell before it explodes or how high she can screech before she hits a frequency only dogs and bats can hear. I think he hit his targets pretty often and that’s why there were loud popping noises coming from the direction of our house a few times this week and often dogs in the community were seen running around in a frenzied state looking for the source of the noise that left their hoomans mystified.

There is usually a good amount of push and pull when one wants to get a kid out of bed in the mornings. But being told off by a buck-toothed midget that I should come back later because I’m disturbing his dreams, isnt a way I like to start off my week.

This continued for a few days with TO shooing me off like I was a pesky bug on occasion as well. All of which my ego withstood admirably. Since my ego was coming a poor second to my eyes which were firmly fixed on the clock that was counting down the minutes till the school bus came.

Imagine this- you get a super reluctant kid out of bed only to have him lollygag on the livingroom couch as if it’s a weekend siesta. You then kick his butt into the bathroom only to see him stare off into space with gormless look on his face for another precious five minutes more.

You get him on the Express brushing schedule and drag his body to the dining table where his milk has been impatiently waiting for him. There he contemplates the glass of milk as one would the mysteries of the universe and then, after another irreplaceable 10 minutes have gone by, asks the one question you did *not* expect, “Ayu…how do you say the name for Thor’s hammer?”

You instinctively start to answer before you realize that in the next seven and a half minutes your kid has to finish his milk, poop, bathe and meet the bus-a short walk away.

That’s when your inner Hulk breaks loose and you think some rather painful thoughts about where Thor could stick his hammer and get into the shrieking banshee mode.

You think the weekend is going to be better however it’s anything but bereft of drama.

So for all the parents out there who aren’t always looking at your flesh and blood with undiluted love oozing from your pores; fret not. You aren’t the only ones who fantasize about having a catapult that would fling the brat to a galaxy far, far away.

S-I-G-H.

P.S: I haven’t even tackled the mad rush we get into when there’s just 2 minutes left on the clock and someone realizes that he hasn’t packed everything he needs for school day that. There’s not enough Xanax in the world to counter that.

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Turbulent Toosdays

We’ve been having slightly wonky weather here. It’s rainy and overcast one minute but suddenly bright rays of sunshine will burst through the clouds and blind us all.

TO has been slightly under the weather. His usual scheduled spell of cough-cold-almost-guaranteed throat infection during the monsoons is slightly delayed this year but it’s finally made an appearance.

He’s been home since Monday and my good cop’s taken a hike and left the bad cop on indefinite duty.

This morning after meeting our family physician, I told TO that he’s not really sick so he should get cracking with his chores and not spend the whole day whining about screentime.

The love of my life, flesh of my flesh did his chores…with aplomb! He made his bed by folding the bedcover in halves like a door. And he proclaimed it was a coffin. For ME.

I told Red that I’d need a lot of alcohol to get through today. Or maybe a Valium. It’s all the same when your kid prepares a coffin for you with glee and adoration.