Skip to main content

A Piece Of Work

J has learnt a lot of objectionable things from other kids at daycare. Since I have no control over the elements she is exposed to, I have decided it best to allow her to bring everything home and demonstrate to me what she knows. There is no censure or reprimand.

The rules of engagement are Mommy will decide if something is good or bad. If it is good she can take it outside home, but if it is not but J still wants to say or do it she has to keep it home until she gets over it.

The latest entrant into her repertoire is a particularly crass booty shake. J knows she can shake her booty all she wants at home in front of Mommy but this show does not go on the road. She has been quite happy with that arrangement and is slowly weaning out of it too. However, there was some residual and lingering discontent as I found out this morning.

"Guess what Mommy" says J excitedly while eating her breakfast. I know from experience this is one of the J-epiphany moments. She has just figured something out.

"There was one place where I could shake my booty all the time and even Mommy could not see me" she announces proudly.

"Where could you do that ?" I asked.

" When I was really teeny-weeny and lived inside your tummy, I shook my booty all day long and even you could not see me" she says very proud of herself.

Being that she had been working on her small breakfast for close to an hour without any significant progress I was too frustrated to appreciate the ingenuity of this discovery.

"At the going rate J, you'll be so skinny that you won't have any booty left to shake anyways" I said.

"Would my booty disappear if I did not eat well ?" she asks me, her eyes wide open in concern.

"Exactly. So stop talking and starting eating" I replied testily. We got done with breakfast shortly thereafter.

I was out to lunch with my friend D this afternoon and told her about this incident. She burst out laughing and said "That J of yours is a piece of work" I could not agree more.

Labels:

Comments

Priyamvada_K said…
So true about J being a piece of work. It was amusing to picture her at the breakfast table with her aha! moment....and your reaction, so typical of a rushed mom, was something I could relate to also.

Oftentimes, I wonder if I'm too rushed to appreciate the things my kid does. One day I went to dinner with a friend and her three children. I sat next to her youngest who would soon turn 6.

I found myself laughing and enjoying the things he said - and suddenly remembered how impatient I was with Kamala when she was that age. Felt an instant twinge of regret...and wondered how many cute moments I must have rushed through.

Priya.
7:16 PM
Heartcrossings said…
Not long after this incident J told me "I wish I could go back into your tummy" and I asked "Do you think you'll fit in ?" to which she said "You could grow really big and tall then I would fit" I must have underestimated her passion for the booty shake :)
7:39 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cheese Making

I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha...
5 comments
Read more

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
111 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...
6 comments
Read more