My Very Own Brother By: Manav Parekh

The most helpful person in my whole life would be my very own little brother Arnav. He helps me when I'm hurt, and plays with me when I'm lonely. I always pay him back in one way or the other. He is the best brother anyone could have.  

I play games with him like chess or sports like tennis and occasionally even soccer or football. When we get into a fight, we get mad at each other. But for some crazy reason after all the commotion and argument .......... we just start LAGHING! We have a lot of fun connecting worlds in Minecraft. We build amazing buildings and obstacle courses . When we get bored of Minecraft we move on to maybe a snack." Delicious" we say as we eat peanut butter sandwiched into two crackers. Then our mom might say "I just took out the clothes out of the dryer. Can you please sort them into piles !" Then its off to laundry sorting we go !

We'd make piles and after we are sure which pile is which we shoot the correct clothes into the correct piles like basketballs. "Score, Score, Score" we'd say and clothes started plopping into the sorted piles of clothes. We get it done in a total jiffy ! Its a win, win, win. We get it done fast, we have fun and its getting work done.

Then its finally time to go to sleep (since we have eaten our meals of breakfast, lunch and dinner already) We walk up the stairs to the room that we share. We brush our teeth and plop down on our beds. We need each other to sleep in different ways. My brother needs me because he reads at night. If you don't tell him to stop he'll read till morning ! I have to tell him to stop reading to finally go to sleep. He helps me because I'm scared of the dark. When I'm frightened I cant sleep but when my brother walks up the stairs with me and in bed says "It's okay" I can sleep without nightmares.

After one of our average days me and my brother make it through. We helped each other to make our day the BEST!

Arnav is TRULY the awesomest brother anyone could ever, ever, have !

         

Catching up and Letting Go

" Is been ages since I wrote...its time ...."

" Write? Of course I want to but where is the time....no time even to die...."

" I think of prose in my head....what I would write if there was a keyboard in front of me....if I wasn't cooking/cleaning/working/driving....."

"If you really really like to do something you'll make time for it...."

Played around with these and many such openings. Settling for this.

Life is good. Yes, as I have known it. Recently I did some reading about the Fermi Paradox and seriously "Where is everybody"? And that led to the realization we are such a tiny speck in the fathomless universe, kind of zoomed out and zoomed in and I stayed where I was. And lo I had the perspective. There were "better" off folks than me there were "worse" off folks than me. Its all relative. Sometimes the "better" and "worse" flips buckets with time. You know what I mean? What was "worse" is now "better" and vice versa. So maybe the dimension I need to always keep in mind is time and "this too shall pass ".....

Ok enough philosophy. Lets get back to conversations. There have been so many interesting ones during dinner. Usually it is the boys babbling between them which is invariably around minecraft or Pokémon. I had refused to be pulled into anything that has video games connotation but soon realized that I cannot shy away from the single most important thing for the boys. So I spent my precious time learning how to play Minecraft and Pokémon. Minecraft seems way easier than Pokémon and I am aware that sheds light on my mathematical abilities. So I will stop there.

Coming back to dinner table conversations. The one that stands out ( I realize there has been way too many dinners since I last wrote) was when Papa and Mommy was super funny and laughing all the time rather than redirecting the boys' focus on eating. They even said you can leave your food on the plate. And I am not telling you what transpired before dinner time to bring out this "best" behavior (from the kids' perspective) in us. That story some other time.

So it was a conversation about names and meanings.

"I have a person in my class named Yaya" Manav said and added " I am not being racist when I say that he is colored"

"You have a person in class named Yaya?" I asked

"Ya" he answered and rolled with laughter

And the other time we went to Walmart and ended up letting the kids buy junk food like pizza and ice cream. They came home and Manav said "Are you sure you're our parents? Sometimes I feel you put on our parents masks and when we sleep you take them off and become aliens. Its scary" So being extra nice when most of the times you're lousy comes with some questions. 

Tough Life .......Shows that I started writing this page an year ago. At least I finished, that's something.

Cosmic Yoga with Darth Vader

This is so scary...I mean its more than a year I have penned anything here. In my mind though I keep spinning the sentences I would write if I were to write and get vicarious pleasure in that. Today I almost forced myself to write. I mean the boys read the posts occasionally and laugh their heads off and repeat things that they find so interesting and that brings in the real pleasure. Plus so much has been happening, they're growing up and every day brings in stories, every moment is worth photographing, framing and jotting down. Alas, cannot do that. And then memory is fragile, fades away and I just cannot remember what was it that made me clutch my tummy and go crazy that Arnav said.

Without further ado let me get to the point. We will go LIFO (Last In First Out). So I was putting the boys to bed. Ripe moment for awesome frame worthy kiddo quotes but invariably I'm the crankiest around that time and all I want Oh God all I want is somehow they lie down and fall asleep. Instead 

"I'm Jedi. And here's my light saber" says Arnav sitting on the bed with his leg raised cradled in his arms - yes the yoga pose and goes on to do some more like hopping dinosaur : forward bend with hands behind ankles and what looked like downward dogs and back bends. Couldn’t catch all the descriptions since he’s babbling at a speed where his speech becomes undecipherable. Once I was able to calm him down he said this is cosmic yoga and they teach this in health class at school.  

The other night Arnav goes – “Hey Mommy”
“Yes baby”
“Can you put me to bed tonight?”
“Sure”
“No not with just hugs and kisses and then you leave. You have to make sure I fall asleep. I have been lying awake all night lately”
Apt to mention that the kids were sick. Some viral fever. And Manav being sick turned in way faster than Arnav.
“Ok. But what happened?”
“Manav doesn’t talk anymore. And then he doesn’t tell me Arnav go sleep. And so I don’t know when to sleep and cannot sleep”
That night I slept with him, made sure he fell asleep then stepped out. I did Manav duties in a different way for 2 nights till he took over. Things are back to normal.
 

Another day Manav goes – “Mommy did you complete your MBA? Are you an MBA?”
“Yes”
Manav hugs me. Aweee he hardly does that on his own accord, I’m surprised.
“You earn more than $50/hr”
“????”
“Well they taught at school that MBAs are the top of the career chart and earn highest.”
Checked the paper after the fact that they were using some charts etc to figure out hourly income, compute monthly income all commensurate to your education level. So many things going on and my boy just reveled in the fact that I was top of the chart. I did feel a wee bit proud of myself too. Too much financial literacy going on as well in third grade.


Have to insert this - So we have plans in summer. Or lets put it this way I have plans for summer. I want the kids to learn Hindi. They know quite a bit, speak broken Hindi but we want to do better than that.
So I said " This summer I'll teach you Hindi. A penny for every Hindi word you say"
"Haan Ji" says Arnav
"Two pennies. Yes that's the way"
He thinks some and then breaks into a song "Dance Basanti" !!!
After the laughter mayhem dies down, he says "Teach us Telegu or Tamil or Gujju"
I was just plain impressed he even knew those languages existed, while conveying my inability to teach those.

There are just way too many things to write in this single post. But I need to call it a night. Tomorrow awaits with don’t-want-to-wake-up kids, bus for school, lunch ,work, thank-god-its-Friday, no not really its chess tournaments till midnight, then sleep in late on Sat, Manav’s birthday party on Sunday that-reminds-me-I-haven’t-ordered-cake and its Monday already !! So long and hope I keep posting. Here's to me and you, will do a happy baby to close it out. Wonder if that was R2D2.