A bed time Story

There are nights when I wish I had all the money in the world to be able to buy loads and loads of books for my kids. Especially, the nights when we land up having no new books to read for the nightly reading time. It is then I need to put on my “Creative Head” and conjure up stories to fill in their “hungry for stories” pangs before bedtime.

My Two year old is also totally into the books and stories thingie now and wouldn’t allow me to sleep in peace if I don’t tell him stories of his liking. Well, my son is a big “animal lover”. He absolutely loves them. Another thing he cannot be seen without is his Badminton racquet. Even when he is busy with other stuff, he has to carrying his badminton racquet and shuttlecock. So, here is his favorite night time story these days. (You can quit reading if it bores you ;) Just felt the need to share this story so that you too can be motivated to conjure up stories with the stuff your kids love and don’t forget, your little kiddo has to feature in the story. Keep it Real! )

“Once an eaphant (elephant) badly needed a friend to play with. He searched the entire forest looking for a playmate. In a meadow, filled with green grasses, he met a ‘Moo Cow’ (cow). He asked the Moo Cow, “ Would you like to play with me?” The Moo Cow immediately agreed but set her own rules.

“ I want to play Badminton!” she declared.

“Bu…u…ut, I don’t want to play Badminton,” pouted the Eaphant.

“Then I don’t want to play with you,” Moo Cow said and went looking for a partner. She saw a Horsey (horse) running playfully in the meadow.

“Horsey, come lets play Badminton,” as soon as Moo Cow said this, Horsey readily accepted the offer.

“Where are the Racquets?” asked he.

“I don’t have!” Moo Cow mooed Loudly. “But I know Ninda has it,” she added, dragging Horsey towards Ninda’s house.

Knock…knock…knock…they knocked on Ninda’s door. (knock using your knuckles on your little one’s forehead.But do it lightly!)

Nobody answered.
Then they pressed on the doorbell. Tr….r…rr……iii…..nnn…..ngg…..(Press on your little one’s nose, they love this and gurgling giggles is guaranteed).

Ninda was playing with his truck inside. He heard the doorbell and called out, “mamaaaaa…..Someone’s at the door.”

Mama opened the door (Put your palm across your little one’s face and act out the opening of the door) to find Moo Cow and Horsey standing outside.

“Ninda, give me your Badminton racquet,” Moo Cow snatched the Racquet while Horsey asked politely and took the other.

“Mamaaaa…I don’t have any racquet to play,” Ninda cried.

Mama took the racquets from the two animals scolding them, “These are my Ninda’s!” and put it on….

“The cupboard,” Ninda adds. That’s where they normally keep the racquets.

Quickly Mama brought out the football and so Moo Cow, Horsey, Ninda and Mama played football.

“Bhhhuuuutttaaannnnn ni?” Ninda adds. He has watched the recent football matches between Bhutan and other countries. So he never forgets to cheer for Bhutan whenever he kicks his football.

“And the four of them played football happily,” Mama ends the story.

“Good night,” Mama kisses Ninda.

“Seeep tight,” Ninda responds kissing Mama back.

P.S. This is a fun way of putting your little one to bed. Think of your own creative stories involving your little ones and the stuff they love.

Blue Moon NIght

Tomorrow night is a special one if one can rely on the authenticity of the news that floods on the facebook walls. It is supposed to be a BlueMoon night. Isn’t that cool! I’ve heard the cliché,”Once in a blue moon” but never actually thought that there indeed would exist a night such as this in reality.

Well, if not a blue moon, it would still be a full moon night. The full moon with all its shimmering beauty often makes me step out and just sit on the verandah, watching it but the fifteenth day of the sixth month of the lunar calendar has never been deemed beautiful since 2012. How can I bask in its beauty when it was on this day that my Ama chose to leave us? This year on this day, it would be my third year as an Orphan. I know I should not dare to call myself an orphan when I still have the blessings of my father who does more than his share of parenting even though I’ve become a parent myself. But no matter how many years I catch on, I’ll remain my mother’s baby.

Since I lost her on 2nd Aug, 2012 (which was the fifteenth day of the sixth month of the Lunar Calendar), I have known the black hole in my life that has been created by her physical absence from my life. The more I missed her each day; I found a change taking place in me.

Mothers are amazing miracles of life. They not just make you; they build you too!

What do I mean by this? Well the explanation is as simple as the line. Firstly, they make you by giving birth and physically bringing you into this world.

But They not just make you……

From the first word, the first step to the first instance of love, she has been the witness of the molding of you into the human being that you become.

So they build you……

You become the love she has sown into your infant heart. You become the faith that she has put you on your toddler feet. You become the hope she has yielded in your adolescent eyes. You become the dream she has harvested in your adult life. You become what she has made of you.

I don’t know how many of you would agree with me on this. I know we all have different kind of hearts although it is the same organ with the same functions implanted in our body. Coming back to what I was saying, I’m what I’m owing to what my mother has made me.

She gave birth to me: she is the mother.
She taught me love, hope and dreams: she is my mother.

But before she left me to go to the other realm, she made me believe in myself and planted the wings of dreams to put me to flight. I still remember that twinkle in her eyes as she read a piece of article I had concocted about our journey to Vellore from Chennai. I still hear the jingle of her laughter and I miss a heartbeat! If only she could have been here with me to read my maiden novel, “La Ama” she would know what she means to me! But I know, from where she is, she has read my feelings.I now fly with the wings of Dreams my mother has sewn on my heart before she left me. Along with the wings, she left a whisper, “I’m always here, right in your heart! My blessings are with you, right in your heart!”

So, on this Blue Moon night, I would dare to sit outside, unlike the past years I’ve shied away from the moon of this particular night, and maybe look for her in this special celestial body. People believe stars to be the ones they have lost in life, I’ll try my luck with the extraordinary Moon and fetch her there.

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.