what kids want

Tech-Savvy Woes

I’ve written earlier about the advent of Alexa in our lives. Red was in the market for good quality speakers and was considering buying Sonos and then suddenly got his head turned by the cute lil dot that now talks to us in a STRONG American accent and frequently gets our song choices wrong because she doesn’t get us much. And that’s funny because the offspring has his own twangy accent that sounds kind of like Alexa and yet they don’t always communicate correctly.

Properly enunciated crisp diction rings her bells though. Take for example, MLM wanting to hear Ra.One’s Chhammak Chhallo. He yelled out into the general direction of Alexa, “AlexaplaymeChamakChalo” and pat came the reply, “I’m sorry. I am unable to understand you.” El Brato grumbled, “Stupid Alexa” and then yelled out to me, “Ayu…come and tell Alexa the song I want to hear. It’s not listening to me.”

And there I was, speaking to the dot, yet again, telling her to play Chhammak Challo, said with tight lips and no hint of any accent anywhere. And she popped up saying, “Here’s ChamakChalo from VishalShaker”. I swear there was no difference between her and MLM but someone must have a hearing problem somewhere so I’m still running interference for them both and waiting till he asks me to tell her to play ‘Rashke Qamar’. Last time he asked her to play the song she played Paula Abdul’s Rush Rush

For my troubles, I get to hear the dratted song on loop till my brains start to leak out of my ears. *rolls eyes*

Signing off!

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Waterloo-Circa 2014

“Quite a few times it’s happened that I wrote something but couldn’t publish it because my inner crazy lady didn’t allow for anything to get sent out unless the requisite tags and categories had been ticked off. While cleaning up the blogging space, I’ve come across stuff I’ve left half-written, written but unedited or written with just the publishing bit left. This is one of them.”

Ordinarily I am a card-carrying agnostic but today I am ready to drop to my knees and give thanks to the Galactic Amoeba if it means that MLM will conk off early and give me a wide berth while he does so.

Today has been mind-numbingly exhausting and I have begun to think that I’ve lost my temper for the last time with no clear roadmap to find it again. I just wanted MLM restrained in one place. And since they don’t have straitjackets in preschooler size…well you get my drift.

Some days are so extraordinarily taxing that you end up questioning what the heck you thought you were getting into when you were happy to see those 2 little red lines. Let me illustrate…I’ve had dinosaurs in my food, in my coffee, in front of my face, going up my nose, peeking into my ear, poking in my gluteus maximus and all because I sought to foster his love for the wretched reptiles by buying him more dino figures to boost his pretend play and keep him from the evils of the idiot box! *bangs head against the wall*

Right about now I have no problem if he turns into a tater tot on his way to becoming a couch potato if it means I’ll get 2 minutes of peace while I use the loo.

Till then I’ll give my knees some workout and pray for sleep…

“He that sleeps feels not the tooth-ache.”
Cymbeline (5.4.176)

Or the aches brought on by the force of nature in the guise of a child!

Image courtesy-garthandkaceyhamilton.blogspot.com

Right As Rain!

I’ll be the first one to admit-my kid is a bit of a digital media junkie. He’s a tater tot who’ll transition into a full-blown couch potato unless Red and I nip it the bud!

When we travel, he like most brats..erm adorable children of his ilk, prefer to bury their noses in an iPad or a phone rather than look outside and see the landscape zip by.

Although blaming this generation isn’t fair by half….when I was his age if I didn’t look out the window or sleep, I’d go stir crazy and 3-4 hour car journeys were the norm rather than the exception. On train journeys, it was climbing up and down from the berths till my mom put a stop to it or I conked off. And it was a damn fine way to travel!

The offspring has been on planes since he was 4 months old so any journey that doesn’t get over in 4 hours max is like a life sentence to him. And even in flights he’ll usurp the window seat and *still* have the iPad on, playing his neverending dino games. God have mercy.

Today Red and I kibboshed his unending whines about watching something he wanted (his grandfather is currently alternating between the French Open and the Champion’s Cup) and wonder of wonders and miracle of miracles, Boy Whiner wanted to go and ride his bike in the rain. And not the blink and you miss it rains mind you. The halfway decent ones.

I saw him zigzagging from my window while Red walked behind him and he just came back thoroughly drenched, hair in spikes but damn! I really love that kid right about now!!

Life is made of little moments like this which make you feel that the little tater’s going to end up just fine.

“So let it be written.So let it be done.” quoth Rameses.

The Malady of Summer Holidays

I’ve noticed that there’s a strange and inexplicable condition that happens to kids, especially mine over the summer holidays. They become deaf, louder, motor movements mimic being like marionettes with their strings cut or like mini Boomerang videos. Polar opposites but somehow they seem to be able to switch between them effortlessly enough.

The specific keywords that they don’t seem to comprehend are these:

  1. Get up.
  2. Slow down.
  3. Enough.
  4. No more (pool time, t.v., iPad, laptop, playing with water…till infinity)
  5. Get out of the pool.
  6. It’s late.
  7. Come home.
  8. Go away.
  9. SHUSH.
  10. GO. TO. SLEEP!!

Barring that it’s the same ol’ symptoms of childhood+boredom+curiosity all rolled into one delicious little buck-toothed package of silliness!

Bedtime Bloglet

Many kids sleep clutching a teddy bear, plush toys and even a blankie.

Mine sleeps with dinosaur figurines under his pillow and a wooden alligator/croc in his arms.

God I love that kid when he’s sleeping!

That’s how we roll!

Will You Be My Whale?

Outside of the ocean and the ocean parks, Vegas and the other Meccas of gambling probably love the word whales as much as little kids do. Of course the meaning differs but the word whale brings a lot of different things to mind depending upon who is saying it and why.

Associate a woman with a whale and your friends will probably be delivering your eulogy or trying to contact you over a Ouija board one fine rainy night. But there’s loving side to being called a whale. And it can happen like this…imagine one fine day a mother and child are frolicking in the pool. The child is a rambunctious ‘un who takes to the water like an otter and gambols like one too.

He suddenly clings to his mother’s neck and demands a piggyback side all up and down the length of the pool. When his less than thrilled mother asks why, pat comes the reply, “because you’re my whale.” There are very few women who wouldn’t have a brief spell of a body dysmorphic disorder over these words. Especially one who has enough of a body to spare for a few starving people from third world countries.

So the mother tries to put a positive spin on things by saying, “I think I’m more like a dolphin. Don’t you think so? Dolphins are nice.” The child agrees that the dolphins are nice but stoutly (‘cuse the pun!) maintains that the mother is a whale.

When the water around the mother starts to bubble and churn, the child senses some element of danger and asks with a quasi-pouty face, “Will you be my whale?”

The imminent whirlpool ebbs and the newly christened (and no longer smarting) whale gives her cub the desired ride. But a few minutes into the return trip, when the cub just lets go and turns the mom-whale into a floating mattress, the urge to kick a tiny little rump over the horizon surfaces again. Strongly.

But oh that little hopeful face and those wistful words…”will you be my whale”. What mother wouldn’t melt? I almost did. And then I turned up my tail and swam away 🙂

image courtesy: http://www.clipartpanda.com