I have to note this somewhere, lest I forget. So here I go, taking the plunge...
POTUS has been away for the past few days. We are struggling a bit to manage - like Bannu, I ought to give myself a quantitative evaluation criterion for this - but instead I get the idea to have a spiked drink from her blogpost. Vodka Sprite with ice hit the spot really well last night. I would hesitate to call it a 'celebratory' drink, as yet, but improve my spirits, it sure did that. And I slept like a log of a baby.
Our lives are generally chaotic. Both potus & I are like that. So naturally we have the child also on this treadmill, set to warp speed. The details of WHAT we are up to that keeps us so busy has changed over the years. But the speed remains. We all need a fair amount of sleep - I guess we sleep 7-10 hours per person per night - which is a lot (at least for the adults), but if you need it, you need it. This shortens our day just sufficiently to make you feel like you are living in fast forward mode if you happen to, per chance, stay with us in our large but routinely messy home.
The child (I am typing 'monster' here and going back and deleting and saying child. Yes.) has adjusted well to this format of doing things. Right from the time we came back home from the hospital. I remember one time when she was three months old, feeding her, bundling her and mum into the car, driving to work, attending an evaluation I couldn't miss, coming back to bundled person waiting for me in my office, locking the door, feeding her again, changing her, collecting all the associated bags, child, mum, etc., getting back into the car, driving home, stopping for groceries on the way, and generally going nuts like that often enough through the week to give someone the feeling that our feet don't really hit the ground.
In the midst of all this chaos, how does this child read? She reads and reads and reads. Her father, being potus, this type of thing is fully expected of him, has banned her from reading. One time she broke down and cried and said that she cannot survive without books and she would rather read than do anything else including eating. So we talked and so on and now the ban is sort of an 'in-principle' thing that she knows we bring up if she troubles us too much and won't refer to it if she is being reasonable otherwise.
Generally, I guess because she is a reader (and maybe perhaps just also because she is a single child who hangs out with adults - really insane adults like her parents and ludwig and msb who are her especial friends), she is shy. Doesn't come up and start talking immediately to you. In fact, she mostly doesn't even deal with adults too much. She has her close friends - the ones she plays and fights with - all of them having the common feature of being kids of our close friends - and generally also makes friends easily with children. But adults - she mostly ignores - to the point of rudeness. I still remember tripping over words enough because my parents would insist that we formally welcome guests to our home etc. that I don't scold her too strongly for this. In passing, I tell her that she must not mewl like a cat when my colleagues say hello, but she does it anyway so I have mostly let it go and make stupid statements like 'yes she is a bit shy'
We were out with a couple of our friends recently at Vedanthangal. And I couldn't believe it, riding in the Innova. The child of mine was ALL OVER the other kids. One of them is much younger so that was sort of okay, but this 'shy' girl was bossing over even the older kid (who is very paavam and super sweet). And not to mention dealing with the adults and shooting her mouth off big time. Not yet to the point of being super rude, but at the edge. You know, like 'precocious kid alert!'. She usually gets smiles from the adults because of the vocabulary. She chooses the strangest of words to express her - rather strong - opinions. One of the ladies gave them a puzzle to solve. They didn't come up with the 'right' solution but this girl of mine retorted by handing the ladies two puzzles to solve (and she was impatient enough to not let them even attempt to solve it - reminding me of the times we would solve jigsaw puzzles together and it was a race against time. I never cut her slack for being 30 years younger).
I should be more bothered I guess by this teenage-ish, idealistic (you should hear her about trees and tigers and the environment and how much she harassed msb about him not switching off lights and fans upstairs), opinionated, strong, girl that lives with me. But for now, I am just going to enjoy it. Except to admonish her if she starts on me. Like the time she gave me a detailed set of steps to follow for something recently - don't recall what it was - but something clearly I should know better about than that little minx...
POTUS has been away for the past few days. We are struggling a bit to manage - like Bannu, I ought to give myself a quantitative evaluation criterion for this - but instead I get the idea to have a spiked drink from her blogpost. Vodka Sprite with ice hit the spot really well last night. I would hesitate to call it a 'celebratory' drink, as yet, but improve my spirits, it sure did that. And I slept like a log of a baby.
Our lives are generally chaotic. Both potus & I are like that. So naturally we have the child also on this treadmill, set to warp speed. The details of WHAT we are up to that keeps us so busy has changed over the years. But the speed remains. We all need a fair amount of sleep - I guess we sleep 7-10 hours per person per night - which is a lot (at least for the adults), but if you need it, you need it. This shortens our day just sufficiently to make you feel like you are living in fast forward mode if you happen to, per chance, stay with us in our large but routinely messy home.
The child (I am typing 'monster' here and going back and deleting and saying child. Yes.) has adjusted well to this format of doing things. Right from the time we came back home from the hospital. I remember one time when she was three months old, feeding her, bundling her and mum into the car, driving to work, attending an evaluation I couldn't miss, coming back to bundled person waiting for me in my office, locking the door, feeding her again, changing her, collecting all the associated bags, child, mum, etc., getting back into the car, driving home, stopping for groceries on the way, and generally going nuts like that often enough through the week to give someone the feeling that our feet don't really hit the ground.
In the midst of all this chaos, how does this child read? She reads and reads and reads. Her father, being potus, this type of thing is fully expected of him, has banned her from reading. One time she broke down and cried and said that she cannot survive without books and she would rather read than do anything else including eating. So we talked and so on and now the ban is sort of an 'in-principle' thing that she knows we bring up if she troubles us too much and won't refer to it if she is being reasonable otherwise.
Generally, I guess because she is a reader (and maybe perhaps just also because she is a single child who hangs out with adults - really insane adults like her parents and ludwig and msb who are her especial friends), she is shy. Doesn't come up and start talking immediately to you. In fact, she mostly doesn't even deal with adults too much. She has her close friends - the ones she plays and fights with - all of them having the common feature of being kids of our close friends - and generally also makes friends easily with children. But adults - she mostly ignores - to the point of rudeness. I still remember tripping over words enough because my parents would insist that we formally welcome guests to our home etc. that I don't scold her too strongly for this. In passing, I tell her that she must not mewl like a cat when my colleagues say hello, but she does it anyway so I have mostly let it go and make stupid statements like 'yes she is a bit shy'
We were out with a couple of our friends recently at Vedanthangal. And I couldn't believe it, riding in the Innova. The child of mine was ALL OVER the other kids. One of them is much younger so that was sort of okay, but this 'shy' girl was bossing over even the older kid (who is very paavam and super sweet). And not to mention dealing with the adults and shooting her mouth off big time. Not yet to the point of being super rude, but at the edge. You know, like 'precocious kid alert!'. She usually gets smiles from the adults because of the vocabulary. She chooses the strangest of words to express her - rather strong - opinions. One of the ladies gave them a puzzle to solve. They didn't come up with the 'right' solution but this girl of mine retorted by handing the ladies two puzzles to solve (and she was impatient enough to not let them even attempt to solve it - reminding me of the times we would solve jigsaw puzzles together and it was a race against time. I never cut her slack for being 30 years younger).
I should be more bothered I guess by this teenage-ish, idealistic (you should hear her about trees and tigers and the environment and how much she harassed msb about him not switching off lights and fans upstairs), opinionated, strong, girl that lives with me. But for now, I am just going to enjoy it. Except to admonish her if she starts on me. Like the time she gave me a detailed set of steps to follow for something recently - don't recall what it was - but something clearly I should know better about than that little minx...
7 comments:
A bit of fizz and a bit of fuzz.... I am glad the blogpost was of use.
BTW, POTUS=?
Aah. You finally typed child instead of monster.
And, being un-shy is totally overrated.
Gosh. I love her. She's like the most frigging awesome 7 3/4 year old i've met.
remember how she dissed me by saying what? you read only 12 books.. i read like a 100 books a year.
i was like aaaaarrgghh..
but did you want to talk to adult visitors when you were young?
I love Charlie Brown on TV -- when the adult talk if just noise, no real words. That is how we must sound to kids.
Also was the painted stork spotted in Vedanthangal or not? Monster's impressions please...
Bannu, Potus is president of the universe. Your basketball buddy. for obvious reasons. :)
Chox- yeah man finally.
Saad Bhamla - serious attitude she is copping. told me the same thing. 'you mess around on your computer - you don't read' Damn you child, I read to you from the time you were 3 months old.
Madrasi - No I didn't like it. Thats why I don't make her do it too much. But it has value. And Painted Storks up the wazoo man. She cribbed big time that the whole place was taken over by them. She wanted more colourful, more exotic, more awesome birds, apparently, for her viewing pleasure. :-)
It is somewhat unnecessarily fixated on monkeys. Please remedy this. She's also been correcting my pronunciation of "Mekong". My pronunciation. I who know the names of all the 192 countries in the world. Hmph.
Interesting child, this:)
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