Questions! More Questions!

Questions, questions, questions….these days I’m bombarded with questions by my kids. “Mama, why…Mama what…mama where…mama how?” and it goes on from the moment they open their eyes till they finally close their eyes and surrender themselves to Goddess of sleep.

My two-year-old son is the first one to wake up. Well, the moment I slide out of the bed, he knows and he is up. He is the one with whom I spend the most time with and even in his limited vocabulary, he has learnt to tag “Ong? Ong?” becoming a "question master."

I tell him to sit and he will ask me, “Sit, ong?” then only sit.

I ask him to eat and he is like,” eat, ong?”

“No, ong?” “Yes,ong?” so many ‘ongs’ fill our busy day.

And if it is something he wants badly, in his cute tone, he adds,” Drikpay?”

The two of us land up going to the shop right across the road, everytime we walk in, he is like,” Juice, ong? Ong?” While I stand staring at me without any affirmations, he will add, “Drikpay?”with a hint of a pout and I land up buying whatever he asks for.

But the most interesting questions comes from my little daughter. She is different from the other two. Most of the time, you will see her with a pencil and a book, asking me spellings of stuff that she writes about. She makes these cute drawings of the family members and friends and he writes stuff explaining those drawings.

Her question aren’t limited to the spellings she needs to fill in her page. It crosses all boundaries and subjects. The other day, two of us were seated across each other. She was, as usual, writing and drawing while I was flipping through an old album. I took out an old photograph of my husband and me and looked at it, not realizing that my little girls’s eyes were on me. She takes me by surprise by asking me, “Mama why did you marry papa?”

I smile and tell her, “because I fell in love with him.”

“But you won’t fall in love with him anymore, right?” she asks solemnly. I ask her why she thinks so and pat comes her reply, “Look at his fat belly, do you think you love that?”

Seriously!

I laugh and she returns to her drawing before I can draw her attention to my own chubby and aged body. I let it pass (lol).

The same night, as we say our good nights after the bed time reading is over, she asks me, “Mama is it only girls who give birth?”

“Yes!” I answer sleepily.

“and a boy marries and girl and girls give birth?” she continues. I nod, wishing she would just put her wild questions to rest and allow me to sleep.

“Mama, if a boy marries a boy, will that boy have baby?” she asks with her voice deep with concern.

“No!” I respond wondering where did that idea come from.

“What if a girl marries a girl?” “Nope!”

“I don’t think I want to have a baby!” she exclaims in the dark as I put off the reading lamp.

“Sleep. It’s way past your bed time!” I scold and kiss her good night.

I hardly get a chance to wonder why she said that as my eyelids come crashing down, heavy with sleep.

These are just few instances, there are many such ‘unfathomable for her age’ questions she can conjure up and leave you totally bemused.

Asking what about my elder daughter? Well, she has a lot of questions and it depends on a season of something she goes through. Currently she is in the “quiz season”. She would quiz you on thousand and one things.

All in all, I’m bracing myself for the wonders of these little ones and enjoying every moment God grants me to be with them.