Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Origami Sivagami

Dear schools 2 year olds go to, what certified sorcery do you really have in mind when you send messages like “Please send a handmade 3D Origami shape with your child for activity tomorrow.” to unsuspecting parents. Did you realize that some of us might be sending our blood and flesh there just to avoid more work? I would like to address this set of unrealistic expectations, please. One, it has to be 3D, meaning you will not accept if I send a square. Two, it has to be Origami, wherein you assume I can fold paper artfully. Three, it has to be a shape, in case you thought I were going to get away with sending a boat or a flower or something. And the final nail in the coffin. HANDMADE.
Thanks to you, I am now the Messiah of Keyword Youtubing. Yes, that’s a thing. Allow me to explain. I spent the hour from roughly about 11pm, yes PM, to roughly midnight searching for tutorials on Youtube with emphasis being on words such as “basic”, “easiest”, “simple”. You get the drift. ALL THIS after a day that was packed with meetings and general running around looking all busy.
Ok, I am losing focus now. Back to SivagamiOrigami. So 3D shapes. I decided on cube. I looked up some 4 minute odd videos and decided it was too basic for the child of an engineer to carry to school. We can be very vain like that. I put on my search cap and hunted for something more sophisticated than a cube and more befitting of my crafting capabilities. A few dodecahedrons and rhombuses later,  I realized this kind of stuff might need me to be high on steroids to be seen through. Reject. Plus, I told my pride that my 2 year old could certainly not pronounce these words at this tender age. Yes, this is the explanation the world would hear of. Based on above mentioned acquired Keyword Youtubing skills, I came to a conclusion that pyramids were not my thing. So weren’t fancy looking stars. It was past midnight now and the only thing main aur meri tanhaayi had done so far was Google. Things were not looking good. I swallowed my pride. She will take a cube to school and a cube it will be in all righteousness. A mildly bruised ego soothed itself by saying we would totally kill the next project, oh you just wait and watch.
So these really amazing people who have taken Herculean efforts to put a tutorial out there, one question. Y U NO SPEAK, BRO? I am all for pausing your mute video a gazillion times and rewinding on my sad third world Internet plan, but surely you understand that that one tiny fold I missed on your video ended up making my supposed-to-be-cube look like NASA’s pathfinder.


But a wise person once said, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. I picked myself up and decided that I would make this cube, come hell or high water. What it finally looked like was THIS. Sort of like with intestines inside out. Clearly, my daughter is not going to understand cubes for a long long time to come, if this is what she is going to be shown.


So long story short, dear schools 2 year olds go to, I am filing a suit on grounds of cerebral laceration towards unwarned parental units that are being subject to this agony on weekday nights.

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Bedtime Shenanigans.

Scene : A 2 year old and her mother are somewhere midway setting up the battle ground for what is generally the biggest combat between the two daily. Wait, scratch that. There is eating and then there is that other thing.... You know what, just scratch 'biggest' like altogether. Let's just say "one of those big" combats for the sake of continuity of conversation. Lights are off. Eyes are shut(well, there are ways of making parents believe so). Stage is set. 

The mom(while caressing the little one's hair) : The cap seller was too tired and decided to take a nap under a tree....

The 2 year old (who is just about learning to talk and tries to say as much as she can using all of her vocabulary) is clearly not too happy about this caressing of hair business and promptly takes mom's hand off of her hair and places it on her tummy. Eyes still closed, mind you. And says, "Thoppe thattuuuu..."(which loosely translates to "Pat on my belly" or some such.) 

Quite taken aback at this clear set of instructions, mom decides to pat her daughter's belly while continuing above story.

2 year old, after a minute : "Bus chollu... BUS!" (which loosely translates to "Sing wheels on the bus, NOW!" in toddlertongue.)

Seriously? Fine. Sings wheels on the bus. 

2 year old : "Toly chollu. Cap toly chollu." (I want to hear the cap story)

OK that's it. Thine will not be done. Shows toddler who is the boss and that only wheels on the bus will be sung. Ends up going back to cap toly story. 

A series of "kai ethukkooo..."(take your hand off of me!), "thol thaachi"(I want to sleep on your shoulder), "pillow down"(put me back on the pillow), "thallikko"(just move away, shoo!) follow and in general, it feels like 20 odd years have passed and somehow-god-knows-how, the toddler has just drifted to la la land. 

Mommy heaves a sigh of relief, just loud enough for her own self to hear, petrified that the breathing might wake the mini up. 

THERE IS A JARRING SOUND. SEEMS LIKE AN APOCALYPSE. Ok no, it's my PHONE. I press a thousand buttons in panic to shut that thing down. 

Someone reaches for my hand, places it on their tummy and goes, "Thoppe thattuuuuu......"(Pat on my belly).