Mom Chronicles #5

I have been wanting to write a post here for a really long time. I have tried to write many times too but get nowhere. Either I get too overwhelmed and cry half way through the post or I just don’t find the right words to express my thoughts – soooooo I have not been able to write :-)

But, here I am again, trying to put some words together sensibly to make a worthy blog post!

Did you know that tiny human beings are constantly listening to adults? They are grasping at all the words, sentences and meanings they can. It might not look like they are listening – they might be busy playing their own little games while you are talking – but they have super-powers in their ears. Their ears multi-task! They listen all the time and then use their ultimate superpower – use this knowledge back on you at an unbelievably sticky time! There’s no escaping this.

Let me tell you how!

Those that know me, know I have a thing for food :-) It’s a love story. One sided maybe – but I am passionately in love with food. My stomach doesn’t approve of this affair many a times – so I do end up dealing with it’s tantrums by way of acidity :-) And hence, I also have a thing for Gelusil ! I speak of this quite often to my husband, oblivious to the fact that there are more listening ears than intended :-)

I had some relatives over a few weeks ago. Of them were two energetic nephews who dote over my little one. They were playing some planet stuff while all of us adults were seated around them and chit-chatting. In what can only be described as a moment of profound teaching, the older nephew started telling my son about the Sun. “You know, The Sun is made up of gas and hot air and it’s the biggest part of our solar system!!!” My son looked at his older brother with limitless admiration in his eyes but then suddenly something clicked. He responded with “Ohhhhhh woooohhhhh Sunnnnnn. Arrrrreeeyyyyy meri mumma ko bhi bohotttttt gas hota hai aur papa unko immediately gelusil de dete hai. Matlab mumma Sun hai???”
This was followed by pin-drop silence for a few horrendous seconds and then there was LOUD and continuous laughter, of course, with all eyes on me! I laughed too – albeit forcibly. To save face!
What followed was then an array of home remedies, tricks and ideas to deal with my sunny problem! And while all this was happening, the little munchkin of mine had come back into the room with the bottle of gelusil so that his Sun could burp off the hot air!!

In another instance, he thought it was okay to let his class teacher know that an uncle of mine, in Chennai, was old and his bag was torn.  This was because he had overheard a one-sided conversation I was having with said uncle on the phone! The uncle doesn’t have a torn bag!

He also thought it necessary to tell his grandfather – a man who is 70 years his senior – that he must change his ways! In actual words – “Thatha needs to change his behaviour”. So unprompted and soooooo hilarious ….. but well, he had heard his grandma say this to grandpa many times and he used it at the opportune moment when he was denied something by Thatha.

That’s how this little kid rolls. And I know that ALL kids roll this way. Hehehehehe.

We’ve started being careful of what we talk around him. Because we’ve had some funny but many embarrassing situations.

It’s been the hardest on my husband, who is a regular user of certain choice expletives as part of daily conversation :-) So imagine his plight when my son reacted with a loud “F**k it” on dropping his favourite vehicle in the middle of an office conference call :-)