Gallons of Dollars

We all get excited on Fridays due to our own different reasons.....the kids, well are always excited, they don't need Fridays...but yes, they are treasure days so they look forward to Fridays. As for myself, I look forward to the two weekend days where we can steal a movie(netflix) and sleep late and wake up late (yes, sometimes the kids allow this) and not have to worry about school. Not sure what excites my husband about Friday but lets just say that he is excited about Friday too, just to be with the family.

This friday was an exception. It started well, with Manav and Arnav getting blue icing cupcakes from school as it was Daniel's birthday but soon turned into a nightmare. Arnav's finger got jammed in the door that Manav was trying to close and we had an extended trip to the doctor's. Luckily, it was nothing major though it was not all that simple either. He's doing fine. They woke up from an exhausted evening nap (afternoon was spent rushing, crying, soothing etc) and hugged each other amidst 'Sorry's ' and 'Its ok's'.

The reason I mention this episode despite its lacking any "conversation material" is the astonishing rate at which Arnav (and any toddler I suppose) is heading back to normalcy. From the hysterical "I cannot move my finger" to actually holding a pen and coloring in less than 48 hours is amazing to say the least. His finger is still black and blue and red. He is using his good left hand for a good number of tasks like drinking milk, eating strawberries, picking things etc. But the fun thing is he can manipulate the good 4 fingers in his bad hand to do almost any task now like ride his bike, climb on his bed, car seat etc. As many times I see his finger, I wince but there is no reason to, as with just a little aid of pain killer he is doing great. My humble salute to this strong little boy of mine. Someone in the family at least has some decent pain threshold.

That night though we were all back to normal enjoying our ice creams at the colored (lighted) water fountain. Manav had remarked earlier at the dinner table

"I have never been to an ice-cream shop ever before"

It was a beautiful Friday night with live music, people enjoying the weather and food and my boys squealing with delight being drenched by the water when a wayward breeze would sway the "mighty" fountains toward them.

The other day it was getting particularly too much for me and I yelled at the boys. They complied with muted understanding to whatever I was saying but seeing their about-to-cry faces I sat down with them and said

"Listen boys, Mommy gets really frustrated sometimes when you don't listen and then becomes a bad person and yells. It can be avoided by you helping Mommy and doing what she says. Right?"

"What is frustrated?" asked Arnav

"Why do you get frustrated Mommy? You should not get frustrated. You should just let the kids do the things they want. Have you seen dinosaur daddy ( as in Dinosaur train)? He lets his kids do everything. If they want to fish, he lets them, if they want to play with water, he lets them. We can write down on paper 'No getting frustrated.' and 'No putting kids in timeout' so that when you feel frustrated, you read it and say 'N-O', oh that means I cannot get frustrated. Simple" (We have a hand written wall mounting which says things like 'No hitting', 'No pushing' etc)

I sighed (an extra long sigh) and went blank though now I can think of so many apt responses to this long lecture from my almost 4 year old. So now I have to compete with dinosaur dad.

In the midst of my another mad sewing spree when the whole house goes upside down, I happily doled out the big packet of goldfish for their evening snack. A word here about my rule of having one fruit and one junk food for evening snacks will make it clear that only goldfish is a "strict no-no" (as the kids would say) but I break my own rules when I am sewing. (All my sewed stuff is in a way like blood diamonds, with more stress on blood rather than diamonds). Back to the topic, Arnav was playing with the goldfish, throwing them around and crushing them. (Kids will always find ways to amuse themselves in the process either providing you with amusement, which is rare or making you extremely mad, which is often) Manav said

"Arnav stop doing that. Do you know how much this costs?"

"No"

"It costs gallons of dollars. If you waste so much, no money will be left to buy cool stuff like toys and more goldfish"

Yesterday we went to a birthday party and Manav is particularly fond of the birthday girl. I asked him whether he had a good time. He said

"Yeah...I did. But she didn't let me stand next to her during the game."

"Why Manav? What did she say?"

"She said, I have my sister, so she will stand beside me"

"Oh, ok. Its her birthday and she can choose who she wants, right? Thats fine." I kind of consoled him

"Yes. I said I had a good time." came the sulky retort which led me to wonder how many thwarted attempts this boy/young guy/man will have in his life before he actually meets his sweetheart. Gosh, the rate at which I try to fast forward things is not funny at all.

Now the kids' pretend play is at its peak ( or I will find out better). Arnav has kind of jumped up a whole year as he had to catch up with Manav and trust me it is not easy to not catch up with Manav as he (Manav) will drive you nuts with his non-stop nonsense and the only way to tackle that is to join him. (to our complete agony). In a typical day they start with being cats, cows, lions, dogs morphing into humpback whales, killer alligators and ending with robots, soccer/tennis/baseball/cricket players.

These days they pretend a lot to be the Kratz brothers Chris and Martin (from Wild Kratz). Yesterday in the park they drove away a little girl calling her a 'wild animal' (In the Wild Kratz series, they introduce a wild animal and give all its detail in a fictitious story). So Manav aka Chris and Arnav aka Martin would "steer" the ship (the play area is built like a ship, complete with viewers, stern, mast etc. as you can see my knowledge of ships is limited though once upon a time I did have a good understanding having immersed myself in Amitav Ghosh's 'Sea of Poppies') and yell out

"I see a wild animal Martin" as the little girl would try to climb up the "ship" and they would just point to her and go "wild animal" "wild animal" and to their utter delight the "wild animal" would abandon her climb and run into Mommy's arms. I did my bit to stop this but it ultimately ended in the girl and her mom's departure.

We also cut short the boys' play, citing their bad behaviour and started driving back. The punishment didnt work though as Manav started

"Hey Arnav you have such ugly shoes."

"No my shoes are very good." The shoes were new, just bought them day before in my way of atoning for not being able to keep Arnav out of harm's way.

"No, they are very muddy and ugly"

"No, my shoes are good. Your shoes are ugly" Arnav countered

"Are you kidding me? My shoes are ugly? Really" you should have seen Manav with his exaggerated actions and accent.

We stopped to pick up mail and Manav as usual asked

"Are they asking us to go to church?" in reference to the fliers we get about attending church

And sure enough there was one for Grace Church and I handed over the same to him

"Oh look Mommy, they have a map here." there was a world map on the reverse

"Can I have that Manav, please? pleaded Arnav

"No, you cannot. This is all fairyland. And you cannot touch fairyland" Manav fantasized.

Today Manav decided to be a robot while having lunch. I am not sure whether Caunteya had something to do with it as the "robot" would open his mouth and eat and chew and open again for food responding to a "voice command". I also pretended to be very impressed with the robot's abilities and said

"Wow, I like you robot. Can I buy you for $20"

"You will have to ask the waiter" said Manav pointing to Caunteya

"No, he is my pet robot. I will not sell him" said Caunteya

"Mommy you cannot buy me for any dollars" confirmed Manav

Then he continued the act all through his bath (and learned 1-10 in hindi) and also cleaned up the toys from the living room in his robot frenzy ( that was initiated by me)

Some time before, I reminded them for the umpteenth time that they cannot step on paper or books as God ( Lord Saraswati, as Manav says) gets very upset and all stories and words from books will disappear. Manav came back with this

"Where is God Mommy? I never see him around"

I delivered a weak lecture building on keywords like 'super power' , 'temple'.

So as you see things are getting complicated by the minute. I am still struggling to keep abreast with these soon to be 3T and 4T at the expense of my mental, physical and egoistical well-being. Already, there is an alarming increase in "I don't know"  and " I will google" responses. All I can do is wait for the inevitable "Don't ask Mommy, she doesn't know" or go back to work.