Swings & Roundabouts

Look at my brave li’l boy – peering down at nothing! We went to Blackpool last weekend and this pic was taken atop the Blackpool Tower. This is the famous Walk of Faith where there is nothing but clear glass underneath your feet. You’ve got to remember at this point, one is at a height of 300+ metres! Totally unfazed, P sat quite comfortably on the glass and peered down below.

Like most children his age, P loves to do stuff he has no business getting his hands into. DIY, stripping wallpaper, cooking… every activity we ‘big people’ are involved in always starts with the obligatory ‘can I do it too?’ The resultant NO generally never puts him off.

But the cooking thing has been cultivated happily in the nursery and school. He even went to a friend’s cooking party recently. I have actually found it rather lovely to do something with him. One of our favourite things to do is pancakes. He loves holding the blender and pressing the button for all he’s worth. Most of all, being so actively involved in the cooking process, he’s quite eager to taste the results. Here are the pictures from our breakfast do this morning:

P had a real busy Saturday – he first had his swimming lessons in the morning, which he tried to duck out of by lying in bed with the duvet over his head. We just dragged him to the pool, nonetheless. Then he had to go to a friend’s birthday party (it was a cooking party, for kids – the mum deserves a medal, I tell ya!), after which we went to lunch with some friends. We followed it up by a spot of bowling, which he loves and finished the day watching Spidey spin through the streets of NYC on the big screen. When I say big, I mean big – we were sat 4 rows from the front!

As we spent the remaining part of the long, Bank Holiday weekend DIY-ing, he had to be satisfied with being cooped up in the bedrooms. He did okay, didn’t complain much. To make up for it, we went go karting on Monday. P is absolutely nuts about cars and when he learnt he was going go karting, he was so excited he kept telling us that many times! I had got S go
karting vouchers for our anniversary and half-way through it, we sat P in this mock Bat mobile type kart and S drove him round the track a few times. (I will put the pic here soon!)

So, all in all, it was one packed weekend!

Yesterday, P and I decided to go to the next town to visit his cousin so he can have a play date with some family. His dad was at work and P was quite puzzled by the fact that his pater was away working and not having off-days and play dates like him. When we saw more than usual number of cars parked in the nearby streets, he was prompted to remark ‘lots of daddies are at home today, mummy.’

I said ‘yeah, possibly.’

He carried on, ‘but my daddy has to go to office. To earn money so we can have mumm-mumm (food)’.

Me (absently): Uh-uh.

P: Then we will have loads of mumm-mumm and we can give some to Paris.

Me (startled): What? Paris? Why?

P: Yeah. If we give them some proper mumm-mumm, they can stop eating froggie legs.

‘Get your Easter bonnets in by Friday, as we will be having the Easter Bonnet Parade later on in the day’, stated the missive from the school. Easter bonnet? What the hell! I had visions of P walking up and down his school, looking like Peter Rabbit. Why in God’s name would these boys wear bonnets in the first place anyway? After all, this is the land where the tiniest smudge of pink isn’t allowed anywhere near a boy (lest he become traumatised or gay in the future?) and here we are talking about decking them out in bonnets. That was when I was firmly steered in the direction of caps, hats and other manly accessories. No easy way out, then.

Giving in, I asked around work for ideas. ‘Make a top hat – make it green so it looks like grass and then put Easter eggs and chickens on it’ suggested one colleague. ‘Or, you could dress up a baseball cap to make it look like a nest and place the eggs, chicks and things on it’, quipped another. Whazisthis? Top hats? Nests with chicks and eggs? When did I die and come back as a Blue Peter presenter?

By now, I was panicking big time and decided to take refuge in that temple of modern materialistic society, Tesco’s. And whoop-dee-doo, right at the entrance there was a massive aisle full of Easter-y things. The firang know how to make money, I tell you. Crepe paper, cardboard, balls of cottons, paints, all in a variety of colours, were stockpiled to the ceiling and harried parents were digging into them like they were manna from heaven. I did not have a clue what materials to procure and ended up getting two of everything. Which turned out to be the one smart thing I did.

Once home, the real battle began. I sat with the bag of goodies spread around me, along with other necessities like scissors, sticky tape and baseball cap and realised I did not have any glue. After a long trek for the same, I was now ready to tackle this thing – or so I thought. That was when I realised having ideas is one thing, execution is something else entirely. I sat looking at the pieces of cardboard, felt and the baseball cap alternatively, hoping the spirit of Martha Stewart would come and join me for a while and make the whole thing a doddle. As that did not transpire, I set about trying to tap into hitherto undiscovered, and possibly non-existent, wells of creativity.

As concocting a top hat from pieces of card were beyond my capabilities, especially without a compass to keep me on the curve and narrow, I decided to plump for the baseball cap / nest idea. My thought process ran somewhat as follows: cover the cap with green felt, send some brown felt through the shredder, glue the resultant strips in artistic disarray all over the now-green cap, plonk assorted bits and pieces of junk all over it and hey, bob’s your uncle.

Remember what I said about thought and execution? Well, read it once again ‘cos, as always, reality and my thoughts had nothing in common. For starters, the green felt refused to stick to the cloth cap, even after I slathered half a gallon of glue on it. I now had an extremely sticky ex-cap and some sodden pieces of green felt. Then, I shoved some brown felt through the shredder, hoping for some lengthy pieces of felt which I could twist to look like twigs. But the shredder decided to make a meal of it and I ended up with some brown felt mince. Pulling my hair out at the roots did not help. Not one bit. So I decided to stop fiddling with technology and cut the darned things into strips using old-fashioned scissors.

That complete, next on the menu was the lawn on which I had to lay my nest. Sticking it didn’t work; stitching it proved lot more difficult. I binned the lot and watched ‘House’ for an hour. Contemplated committing blasphemy during one of the breaks by modelling the nest along the lines of Christ’s crown of thorns. Finally, at 11:00 PM, S hit upon the idea of just laying the (spare piece of) green felt on top of the rudimentary circular cardboard crown base I had made, a la a green lawn and just plonking the nest and its assorted bits on top of it. Typically, I wasn’t sure any idea of his would actually work. But as I sat plaiting the brown strips and strategically placing coloured feather and balls of cotton all over it, it seemed like a neat one after all. After grappling with it for a long and sleepy half an hour, I finally finished my creation. And boy was I one chuffed mummy or what?

P adored it when he saw it the next morning, thereby making it every bit worthwhile. I also got lots of ‘ooh’s and ‘aah’s at work so I think I may have pulled this thing off. I realise now that I got off lucky with the Dressing Up as a Fairy Tale character lark the school sprung on me last month. It was by sheer chance that I realised how seriously the other mums took this when I eavesdropped on a coven of them discussing what their children were going to show up as, the next day. Peter Pan! Tinkerbell!! Dick Whittington!!! Jack (not the Ripper, the other one – him with the Beanstalk)!!!! I would never hear the end of it if I sent my little man to school as his own adorable self. I had a major brainwave when I spotted a white sherwani of his hanging in the cupboard, unused and unloved, and made a golden crown to go with it and sent him off as Prince Charming, armed with a red rose, no less!

When I saw the other mums rolling in with huge bonnets, their girlies fighting their way in through swathes of tissue paper or trying to balance a tray of eggs on their heads, I felt rather proud of myself. I had come through this, hopefully without scarring P for life! And now, I am ready for the next challenge. Produce your own mega serial type saga? Come dressed as an eco-warrier? Discover the cure for AIDS for school science project?
Easy peasy!

I am now Super Mummy, P says. I can do anything.
Bring it on!

This is what my baby got me for Mother’s Day this year. I know I said I did not believe in that but he, being angrez thinks Mum’s day is an essential part of the year’s calendar!!!

We recently bought a hoola hoop for S and me to use, to help reduce our extremely fetching love handles. Of course, as with everything P decided to try his hand at it, to some hilarious moments.

TIme was, when Pratik used to be really interested in my lippy – well not that way! The colours were so bright and sparkly and he always wanted to see how I put it on. Then there was this period when he wanted me to kiss him once I’ve put some lipstick on. Even when I kissed him goodnight, I used to get this question: ‘have you got lipstick on, mummy?’

But in the last week, he’s changed. Yesterday, I kissed him bye bye at school and he was frantically wiping his cheeks! Now, he makes sure I DON’T have any lipstick on, before I kiss him!
*sigh*

We had a sudden, unexpected day of snow last Thursday. When we woke up and opened the curtains, the whole world was white – and wonderful. P was doubly pleased cos the schools were closed. So he had a lovely time playing in the snow. He chucked snow balls at his dad and generally spent a marvellous time rolling about in the white stuff. Check out some pix:

For the past couple of weeks, I’d been dealing with P more or less on my own 24/7 as he had chicken pox and then his dad went off for a week long trip to India. As a result, I faced a barrage of questions from a variety of topics – one that is preying on his mind, with couple of friends ready to give birth to their second children are details of his own birth.

Foolish me: There you are baby in mummy’s tummy.
P: How did I get there? Did you eat me?
Me: …..
P: How did I come out then?
Me: !!!
P: Did the doctor cut your tummy out to get me?
Me: (Relieved) yeah!

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P: Can I have a sock to make a snake?
Me: WHAT? (I have major snako-phobia)
P: Don’t worry mummy, it is a toy snake it will not bite you.

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P: Where does umachi (God) live?
Me: In Heaven.
P: Oh? With God and Angel Gabriel?
Ahh the joys of a catholic school education!!
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P: Where is Heaven, mummy?
Me: Up in the sky, above the stars,….
P: Is it over Earth? Do the other planets have their own Heavens?
(P’s rather keen on astronomy)
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P: I do not like to eat tomatoes.
Me: Why not? They are good for you.
P: Eating tomatoes will make me turn red. Antony said.
Reminds me of the Green Giant sweetcorn ad!