Barnyard Dance by Sandra Boynton
Suggested read alone ages 4-7
Suggested read together ages 0-4

This review was written for SaffronTree.

Sandra Boynton, the author and the illustrator of this amusing book, portrays goofy-looking farm animals, square dancing with a lot of bowing and twirling. Throw in rhymes like,

Bounce with the bunny,
Strut with the duck
Spin with the chickens now
CLUCK CLUCK CLUCK!

Whats not to like in a book like this?!

This book is super hit at home turf and has been successfully holding its position as ‘one of the favorites’ for the past two years! Even the musically-challenged-me can make a decent song out of the catchy rhyming verses. Now I know the content by heart and when ever I start off ‘Stomp your feet, clap your hands, every body get ready for a barn yard dance….’ my children start bouncing with uncontainable glee!

Sandra Boynton brings out a mood of merriment with not just the rhymes but also with her illustrations. Plump hens dancing with eyes closed in total involvement, horses and donkeys slow dancing, the little chicks running around with confused expressions on their faces – all illustrated in simple cheerful line drawings.

Check out Sandra Boynton’s official website to get a flavor of her drawing style and her sense of humor.

Barnyard Dance is featured in Sandra Boynton’s music album The Rhinoceros Tap. Check out song #10 to get a flavor of the music and the rhyme.

Other:This book is the winner of the 1994 Gold Medal from the National Parenting Publications Award.

Ahem…..aaaa….. Hmmmp…..Uuuummmmm…….I don’t know…….Lifting eye brows….Shaking head….looking listlessly at the ceiling……
Never had so much starting trouble since my communication theory paper. Seriously.

I have always considered the my wedding very unromantic and typical. The thought only aggravated after reading all the engagement mush that circulated on the blogs. The Green Sulk Club was formed. For more details about GSC, our history, motto, how to apply for membership and point of contact, please read Tharini’s introduction.

There I was busily sulking away and Dotmom tags me on the engagement story. Quite frankly there isn’t much to write about. The horoscopes matched, my elder SIL dropped by one evening to see me, after the seal of approval was issued, boy meets girl, gets engaged and they get married after eight months. I tried my best to get out of the tag, but DotMom was relentless. She wanted me to write about the most mushiest momemt of our married life. I discussed with the co-members of Green Sulk Club and we decided to take up this tag. Tharini requested I write a little bit about the engagement. So here is the typical south indian engagement story and the mushes after that.

On the D-day (May 21, 1998) R came with my MIL, his two sisters and their husbands. A very cozy affair with 6 people from R’s family and only the immediate family from my side. I was wearing a salwar, which was ‘noted’ and ‘mentioned accidentally’ on a much later date 🙂 . Some one in the audience suggested that the bride-to-be and the groom-to-be talk privately for a few minutes. I had anticipated this and had cleaned up my room on the earlier part of the day. But the privacy the majority had in mind and managed to give us was, R and self sitting in the living room and the rest of them sitting in the dinning area keeping and eye (and an ear) on us.

R asked me what I think about the wedding and I replied something insane like, ‘If it is okay by my father, I am okay with it.’ (Blaaahhhh, I have never been the person who come up with intelligent answers on the spot. 24 hrs later I would have the best quip, best answer to any question. But the moment would have long gone!). The engagement was to be conducted on May 29, 1998. A few minutes after R and his family stepped out of the house, our telephone line went dead. So our chance of us catching up over the phone went down the drain. During the numerous visits my father made to their house in planning the engagement details, a request was placed to my father, asking his permission to take me with them (R, his two sisters, mother, four nieces and nephews) to the tamil movie Jeans. My father promptly refused saying that it is not appropriate since we weren’t even engaged. God, I don’t know why he did that?!

In the 8 months of post engagement time, there was the biweekly phone calls. But hubby’s voice kind of wanes after sometime and I for the fear of being pronounced as ‘hearing impaired’ if I ask him to speak up every five minutes, settled in to a pattern of ‘Oh – okay – ahha – ooooh’ at periodic intervals. Long story short, I am still discovering all the things I said ‘yes’ to. Hmm, the letter…I must mention the letter. I used to send him pictures through snail mail and one of his snail mail replies was 10 pages, double sided, hand written with about 15 lines per page. That letter is one of its kind, still puts a smile on my face. Now a days it is mostly one line emails – ‘Refinance done’, ‘Are we attending this b’day party?’, ‘pick up diapers from Costco’.

What made it trickier was that hubby reads my blogs and is not too keen about me writing personal details on my blog. After reading my tag posts about My quirks, My dreams, Middle Name Tag etc he commented that off late my posts have become ‘too weird’. I became defensive and of course we had a fight. If he objects personal details about the kids or myself, I could brush it off, but if it is something that involves him, I have to be civil enough to accept his feelings about it. Right?! So I enlisted his help.

Me: R, there is this tag about the most mushiest moment in our 8 years of married life. What do you think it is?
He: Ummm. What do YOU think it is?
Me: I can’t think of any.
He: Ooohooo. You mean we don’t have any? Okay I want it mentioned in bold, big fonts in your blog that, ‘We have two kids and still feel there is not even a single mushy moment in 8 years’.
(Here it is R, it is mentioned. I am a lady of my words.)
Me: Don’t digress. What do you think is the most mushiest moment? I asked you first.
He: What about the time I swept you off your feet when I took you to that French restaurant? Wasn’t that romantic? We ordered soufflé and we had fun. Right?
Me: (Desparately trying to recall the French restaurant) Ummmmm….Okay next.
He: Next–a? What about the top of the Eiffel tower?
Me: Naaaahhh.
He: What about the first time we met?
Me: Che che. (After a minute, my face brightening up). Oh, so WHAT did you think the first time you saw me?
He: No. That moment is gone. Nothing. What about it? You are imagining things that I didn’t say.

Truth is we both had some memories under the ‘romantic’ tab, but they were so different that will make a neutral third party observer to suspect that we are not married to each other.

From my memory, I have few significant instances. The one most, utterly, incredibly nice thing he did for me was hike with me up the Kilimanjaro. I like to travel. If I make plans to visit a place, I like to do a extensive trip under the following two assumptions: (1)The world is going to be destroyed and I simply HAVE to see every inch of this place. (2)Okay the world is not going to be destroyed, but this would be my first and last trip to this place and I simply HAVE to see very inch of it. According to hubby I have the special power to turn a vacation in to a hectic ordeal, after which he needs to take a vacation (without me, of course) to recover from the first vacation. I some how managed to convince him to go for an African safari. For reasons unfathomable I felt we had to do the Kili hike. I put my fundas, convinced hubby and roped him in. Now, hubby likes certain things, relaxed sleep in a warm and cozy bed, his morning coffee, reading his news paper sipping his coffee, simple and healthy but good food, a long jog/run, doing things around the garden, if possible a nice afternoon nap, watch some silly stuff on TV. He is a creature of habit, we are talking about a person who had the same cereal for 4 years, every single day in the morning! He threw all that out of the window. He trained for months, took vaccines, medication for altitude sickness, drank water from streams in which we added chlorine tablets to kill germs, ate what was put on the plate, woke up at insane hours in the morning to start the hike, walked with me enduring my instructions and at times alone, slept in the A-huts along the Marangu route with three layers of clothing to escape the biting cold and frost…..beeeecaaaause, I wanted to do it. All this, for ME.

Right after surgery, I was lying in post-op busily sulking away, filling up my mind with as much negative emotions as possible. The one thought that stabilized me was ‘what hubby would do all alone?’. Then I started thinking that we need to be there for each other which led to the thought that ‘this too shall pass’ -> we may never have children, but we for sure have a purpose in life -> how can I leave without knowing my purpose? Convalescing at home, I would wait all day for him to come back from work and crash on the couch with him. Kind of felt right.

If I am the ship that wants/tends to wander away, he is always the lighthouse. The ship has never thanked the lighthouse(never will in direct words, read between the lines R and thats it 🙂 ), in fact most of the time thinks that the light house ropes her in from all the wonderful adventures the mystic sea has to offer. Our characters and personalities are as different as the ship and the lighthouse – one in water, ever dancing, going up and down with every wave, always wanting to move and fluid – the other firmly rooted on land, unrelenting, not bothered by the lashing waves, but always there. But they belong to each other.

…..this is just in the past month. Sure more are to come up in the near future 🙂

Thing 1 – I am taking short video clips of Chula and Mieja playing using my digital camera. Chula suddenly walks to position herself behind the camera.

Chula: Amma, where is Chula?
Me: Right here. (Pointing to her)
Chula: No. Where is Chula(Pointing to the camera’s display). I want to see Chula.
Me: If you are here(pointing behind the camera), you cannot see yourself here(pointing to display)

**Chula is confused.**

Me: OK, if you need to be seen (in the display) you need to stand in front on the camera.

Chula walks to the front of the camera and demands the camera to be turned 180 degree and show her in the display.

Well…that explanation was a disaster. Any one in same situation and done a better job?

Thing 2: She is now in to the gender labeling phase. She barely knows that there are two sexes – male and female. Barely because she knows the social construct of gender, what society wants a gender to be. She has no clue about the biological classification. (Interesting that she got the social generalization even before the biological universality. Okay digression alert..!) She kind of knows that only living objects can be male or female – it is the case in both the languages (English and Tamil) she is used to. But her perception of female is long hair and beautiful. So she looks at a lion with all his mane and splendor and yells, ‘Amma lion’. She thinks a peacock is a girl and peahen is a boy. When I try to explain she firmly says, ‘No this is amma(pointing to lion/peacock), this is appa(pointing to lioness/peahen)’ and walks away signaling that the topic is closed. In the same lines she thinks that her sardar classmate’s father is the boys mother. Every time the father walks in to the classroom to pick up his son, she runs to him with the welcome slogan, ‘Hello A’s mommieeee….’ and does the courtesy of announcing to A that his ‘mommy’ is here. Of course, I am all red and embarrassed! At home, all explanations about A’s mommy is actually his daddy is meted out with a firm, ‘That IS A’s mommy. A’s mommy has hair up just like you after you clean and wash your hair amma’.

Ever since the last mishap Mieja has been doing really good. She has picked up a lot of new words. We understand only a hand full of them, but she is expanding her vocabulary.

After a while we decoded a few difficult ones

Hichi – High chair.
When we didn’t get it, she just pointed to the high chair.

Uppun – Up
Want to go up, like climb on a chair or couch. One fine day she got tired of saying UPPUN and the idiot mother trying to OPEN everything in her vicinity, she simply climbed up the dining table chair, turned facing the mother and said UPPUN. Well, another milestone here – climbed on something all by herself.

Thakadil – Crocodile
She watches national geographic videos with her sister. Last Saturday, in the mall, she pointed to the La Coste showroom and kept repeating THAKADHIL again and again and again. Simply too cute.

Aaachich – Ostrich, Cheecha – Cheeta, Sheepuaa – ZebraCourtesy – National Geographic.

She points to elephant, hippo, rhino, buffalo…all heavy set animals and goes ‘Maammi maammi maammi maammi…..’ I don’t know if this is an insult hurled at me!

Fly – Butterfly.
There was this phase after Halloween she wanted me to sing the butterfly song 24X7. She would dance and smile to this song.

Aaat – Heart, Ovee – Oval
She can recognize some shapes.

Thuthi – Cookie.
Following her big sister’s foot steps, she is now in to imaginary cooking. So after getting tired of scratching the ever silver utensils on the stone tile floor and making every hair in my body stand up, she picks up a plate and walks around the house offering THUTHI to every one.

Thoothi – Thooki (Meaning: Lift me up)
She says THOOTHI and extends both her arms. When I lift her, she swings her legs, adjusts her tush and settles well on my hip. If I had obliged her request without any delay, she flashes a wide smile at me and throws her hands around my neck. If for some reason there was considerate time delay between the request and the lifting, she purses her lips and pulls my hair.

Eat – Eat
When she wants some dry cereal in a bowl, she first says EAT. If my response time is slow, she picks up a plastic bowl, drags me to the place where we keep cereal, points to the cereal box, then says ‘AAAA’ points almost to the back of her throat, then to the bowl and says EAT. Any thing I give her to eat at this point, I end up collecting from various parts of the house, through out the rest of the day.

Akka – Akka (meaning: Big sister)
She calls her big sister Akka.

Shayiee – Sorry
Mostly to inanimate objects just like her sister used to do. But sometimes she uses it in context to Chula, like when she has accidentally(??) knocked down Chula’s Lego blocks or accidentally(???) grabbed Chula’s hair or accidentally(????) pinched Chula. That too the sorry comes with an expression that says, ‘OMG, did that pinch hurt? I never realized that it would. I am so sorry and will never ever do something like that in my life again’.

Name
She can tell her name and screams her name whenever she sees her picture or her reflection.

Numbers
She goes ONE, TOO, THEE……and starts singing the song ‘Thee, thee, thee’ from Shivaji wildly shaking her tush. She can count up to twelve. This rare feat I have witnessed only a handful of times, but her day care provider says that Mieja counts to twelve in English and Spanish with ease. The first time she said 1-10, I nearly fell down from my chair. She was hardly speaking, just out of the screaming phase and she starts counting?!

Pepi – Baby
She points to kids younger than her and says PEPI. My friend was staying with us for 10 days and Mieja wouldn’t let her 6 months old son in peace. She sat next to him trying to poke his eyes, put her finger in to his nose or mouth, rocking his car seat trying to make him sleep all the time yelling PEPI, PEPI, PEPI…

Peepul – Paper

A Bheembo – ??
Well this sounds a lot like ‘Bheemboy bheemboy, andha aaru lakshathai yeduthu yindha Avinasi naai moonjil viteri…’ Bheemboy from Michael Madana Kama Rajan. Still trying to debug by trial/error/elimination. Yesterday she pointed to the dustpan and said BHEEMBO. I was about to shout hurray, but she also pointed to random, in no way related to dust pan objects and said BHEEMBO. So I am trying to figure out if BHEEMBO is a verb/adverb/adjective/noun.

How can I forget ‘A’?
A as in the article ‘a’. Everything in her world is a pepi, a peepul, a bheemboo. Very rarely a word is uttered with the article. I could say she is very articulate!

Mixed Up Chameleon

This review was written for Saffron Tree.

I get excited every time I pick up a book by Eric Carle. The reason being, there is always a message, not just for the kids but for the adult as well.

This book is about a chameleon that goes to the zoo. He looks at the animals around him and wants to be like the other animals. When he looks at a giraffe he is awed by the graceful, long neck. Does he stop with that? No, he pines for a long, sleek neck like the giraffe has and his wish comes true! At the end the chameleon acquires not only a long giraffe-like neck but a huge white body like the polar bear, a pair wings and long feet like the flamingo, fins and gills like the fish, shell like a turtle, antlers like the deer, huge trunk like the elephant, the wit of a fox and flippers like the seal. At the end of all these transformations the chameleon realizes that he is the happiest being just himself. The sad mixed up chameleon wishes to be his normal self and lucky for him, his wish comes true!

What excites my three year old is the simple, bright colors in the book. Also she now knows that a chameleon eats insects and changes color to blend with the background. When I ask her, ‘If the chameleon sits on a leaf what color will he be?’ ‘Green’ she pipes enthusiastically.

The message for older kids and adults is ‘Be yourself and be happy with it.’ I am trying to introduce this message for my three year old in a simple form. Every time the chameleon undergoes a transformation, I ask her to point out what is different with the chameleon. When she does, I ask her, ‘Is the chameleon happy now?’. For this she replies ‘Noooo.’ At the end of the book, I always point out to smiling, back to its original self chameleon and ask her, ‘Is the chameleon happy now?’ and she answers ‘Yyyeeess.’ Then we both chorus, ‘You get what you get and be happy with what you get.’

I Don’t Want To Go To Bed
by Julie Sykes

Suggested age group: read alone ages 4-7, read together ages 0-4

This review was written for Saffron Tree.

Every night it is the same routine in our house. When I announce ‘Bed Time!’, my announcement is met with an instantaneous ‘NO’ from my daughter. Even if it is late and she is tired from the day’s activities, she always has immense inertia to get in to bed, just like the little tiger in this book.

Having read ‘Wait For Me Little Tiger’, my children are already familiar with the Little Tiger series. This plus the title really got my attention and I decided to borrow this book from the library.

The story is about a little tiger (tiger cub) who refuses to go to bed. One night mama tiger, out of sheer frustration, allows the little tiger to ‘stay up ALL night’. The overjoyed with the prospect of playing with his friends all night, the little tiger runs away in to the forest to find his friends. His first visit is to the lion cub. The little tiger is disappointed to find the lion cub nestled between his dad’s paws getting ready for bed. Daddy lion asks the little tiger ‘Why are you still up?’. The little tiger replies, ‘I don’t want to go to bed’ and runs to his next friend. He visits the little hippo, the little elephant and the little monkey only to find that all his friends are getting ready to go to bed. The little tiger realizes that all of his friends go to bed when it gets dark and it is no fun to be by himself that late in the night. To add to this, the little tiger thinks he has gotten himself lost in the forest. At this moment a bush baby comes to his rescue and escorts the little tiger home…..just in time for bed. The tired little tiger falls asleep safely tucked between mommy’s paws.

Both my children like the little tiger series. The elder one, because she empathizes with the little tiger. Through out the book she points to the little tiger and says, ‘This is me amma, this is me.’ Then she points to the mommy tiger and says, ‘This is you amma.’ The literature is simple, repetitive and very easy for my three-year-old to follow. All mommy animals and daddy animals ask the little tiger the same question, ‘Why are you still up?’ and it is met with the same defiant ‘But I don’t want to go to bed’ answer from the little tiger. Even my younger child who is only 18 months and has no clue as to what is going on in the book, loves this book. She identifies all the animals with a happy squeal.

From the adult point of view, I found the illustrations by Tim Warnes to be highly appealing. All the baby animals are cute and cuddly to look at. The pictures and the concept were appealing enough to make me forget the fact that tigers and bush babies do not co-exist! Instead of nit picking, I convinced myself that the author is imagining a better world without boundaries!

Other:
Author webpage: http://www.juliesykes.co.uk/littletiger.htm

Edited to add a new link (from Kiran’s blog)

We had a discussion in class about the ‘Sexualization of young children’, little girls in particular.

Well about the sexualization of young children….I don’t know where to start. Sexualization in the past used to mean gender typing/stereotyping the role of a woman/body image. But now the problem has moved far beyond this. To give a gist, it talks about how everything under the sun in today’s capitalist world, from clothing to toys to entertainment to movies to magazines, are portraying children as sex objects. It talks about the trend of the present days where the average age for a young girl wanting to start wearing thong underwear is seven. It talks about the dangerous trend where in the name of “cute”, today’s children are dressed in skimpy clothes which is leading to insanely high number incidents involving pedophile.

Sitting at home mulching over what we talked about in class, my mind was filled with nothing but questions. So folks please feel free to help me out.

Why does a seven-year-old child want to wear thong underwear with words ‘cute’ or ‘eye candy’ printed across it? Why does a 9 year old need a push-up bra? What exactly is she trying to push up? What ever is present is consistent with her age, then why push it up? What does a seven-year-old have in her chest or in her rear that she wants to flaunt? Do they do it out of free will/instinct? Do they understand the full impact of the message? Or the do they do it because they are getting noticed only if they give out such a message? If they are doing it for getting noticed, noticed by whom? By another child who is in second grade with her? Or they just want some eyes on them, does not matter if the eyes belong to a seven year old boy or a seventeen year old boy? There is nothing wrong in dressing for attention. But where do we draw the line? How do we tell the difference between positive attention and negative attention?

The professor told us that parents need to start making a stand in this issue. Okay, having said that, where does one start?

Clothing? Look at a young girl’s clothing department – do the parents have a choice?
I have seen t-shirts with phrases like Delicious, Tease, Hot Chick, Good Girls Do Bad things, Hottie…..??! People living in the country like US, where manpower is more expensive and it is cheaper to buy things out of a super market, where is the choice? Some of the clothes I see displayed in malls, have an elastic under the breast area, with a deep V neck. Why do children under ten need to wear clothes like this? Thongs – Is it really fun to walk around with a self imposed wedgie? What if the panty line shows through the pants? Every one knows every one wears underwear…right?!

Toys? Why does a 10 year old need a pole dancing kit?, that too with the wordings ‘unleash that sex kitten in you’. Barbies…..OMG, do not get me started with Barbies. Why does a toy for a three-year-old need to be so well endowed? As if one of this kind wasn’t enough, Barbies are now joined by the Bratz dolls wearing mini skirts/fishnet stockings/garters.

Stationary? Good news folks…. now play boy is selling stationary and school supply, with play boy logo to young children…What?? Why? An attempt to put the play boy logo in to young minds, so that when they grow up they are tuned towards playboy products? I am not a prude. I do not have anything against porn or people viewing porn. But that must be the choice of a mentally mature, stable adult. Seducing children by sending subliminal messages is sick.

Visual Media? I don’t even have to go in to this. By far this has been the widely accused, highly prevalent medium that sends out strong sexual messages. It is not just sexual messages, if you look at movies, there are messages that promote smoking, drinking and violence. I am not talking about the explicit messages in R-rated movies, I am talking about the hidden messages in PG-13 movies. Now, two adults making out in complete nudity is an explicit message. Versus, ‘boy visiting museum, trips on a nude statue, breaking the phallus, trying to stick the phallus back and the phallus keeps falling back’. The later scene might be passed off as comedy, but the message that is conveyed is more dangerous because it portrays sex/sexual image as ‘fun’.

Peers? Now my three-year-old want to wear stockings just like Sara. When she is 10, what do I do if she wants to wear a mini skirt just like Victoria? Peers are by far the most powerful influence on young mind and parents do not have much control over the friends a child chooses.

Adult figures? Who do I talk to? Who do I appeal to? Do I change my entire wardrobe with respect to what might impact my child? Do I ask my child’s preschool teacher not to wear a thong + low rise jeans or low cut blouses? Should schools be imposing dress codes for the teachers? If so, isn’t it interfering in personal freedom?

Magazines? Books? I have seen teen magazines with messages like, ‘Straighten your hair and loose ten pounds to get the man of your dreams’. Publishers can no longer get away with lame excuses like, ‘Oh we target these for 18 year olds’. Don’t extensive marketing and survey show these people that 18 year olds have moved on to reading Cosmo, Vogue kind of magazines and the average age of their readers is 10-12?

Just tell me where I must take a stand as a parent and I will do it. To me it seems that everything that is marketed to young children has a hidden message in it.

What makes this issue even more sensitive + dangerous is the level of understanding. For a teenager or a teenage mom, hung up on looks, such symbols are just ‘fun’. A teenager who can use her brains will argue, ‘Why must I be victimized just because I am a girl? I must have the freedom to dress up the way I want to. i can’t change my way for the sake of perverts’. To a newly married woman, it does not matter as it is not the area of her focus. To a new mom, halter tops, low cut jeans, belly showing clothes are just cute. For a mother with a daughter who is at the verge of puberty it is scary. If you are a mother to male children, you will not realize this till your boys are around 10 years old, getting visual stimulation from girls around them. Based on this, I am sure some of you readers may fail to ‘get’ what I am ranting about. Some of you might think I am over reacting and some of you might empathize with me.

Parents can take a stand – screening friends, constant talking – not just to your kid but also to your kid’s friends, careful monitoring without crossing boundaries, refusing to buy certain types of clothing/music/videos/magazines/books, screening TV…..but there is only so muchone can do.

Additional Reading For Your Interest:

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDNkODc3NWJkNDNmMTQ0YmFmZjI3MTJiMmU4ZDZjNzQ=

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/16/AR2007021602263_pf.html

http://www.livemint.com/2007/12/01001537/In-a-Barbie-world.html

http://www.apa.org/pi/wpo/sexualization.html

This post has been sitting in my documents folder for 10 days now. Every day I would read it, refine it, add some, delete some, just linger around dwelling in the nostlagia. Shobana’s post and the way she has beautifully described her college days(especially the bit about being ready to laugh) really gave me that nudge to hit publish.

Muzhugadha ship-e friendship-a……..This song is from tamil movie Kadhal Desam(KD). KD was released a year before I graduated from college. The orchestra sang this song in our cultural program in the final year of college. We final year students turned off the auditorium lights, waved lighted candles and got in to big trouble with our professors, inspite of getting prior permission from our principle and professor in charge of cultural program.

Any ways, coming back to the title of the post, it means friendship is the only ship that does not sink. Sounds cheesy right?! We (self and my three friends) heard enough of this song in college, but never cared much for this song. But this is what popped in my head when I was thinking of a title for this post. I kind of surprised myself!

At college, I had three other best buddies. Taking the first alphabet from our names, we were called the ‘STAR’ group. We were roommates. We were classmates. We were famous. Every one at college knew about us. We literally did E.V.E.R.Y thing together. We were and still are the fantastic four. When ever I run in to people from my old college, they enquire about my other friends and when I give them a detailed update I detect a mild surprise that seems to say, ‘Still tight after all these years?!’.

The best way to describe us to make comparison with The Golden Girls. Yaada Yaada introduced me to the reruns of this sitcom. (Yes, when every one is comparing them selves to the women from Sex and the City, I am making comparisons with the old women from Golden Girls. Not that we are THAT old, but this comparison feels more real.)

T is Dorothy. The tallest of the lot at 5 foot six inches. The rest of us are barely five feet. The final year hostel was far away and the four of us got couple of cycles to commute from our department to our hostel rooms. At that time T did not know how to ride a cycle. So she would sit at the back seat. I remember inspite of sitting at the elevated front seat, our heads being at the same level! Soon we shortys taught T to ride the cycle. The tall girl zig zagging weaving random patterns on the tree lined, usually empty road, screaming her head off as if she was riding a roller coaster and the three tiny tots running behind her yelling at her to steady herself. It was quite a scene. T is the ever smiling, sharp, career minded, always has time to hear my rant and say couple of nice words, most-complicated-and-mysterious-with-the-person-she-holds-the-dearest-to-her-heart kind of girl. She is a perfect scorpion, deadly with her stings, forgives but never forgets. I have known her for 14 years now, but when I sit down to write about her, it feels as if I know so little of her. Sounds quite complicated right?! Yep, that what she is.

R, is the sweet, mild natured Rose. Ha! Even their names start with the same alphabet. Now this one is very simple. Not simple as in simpleton. But she is simple as in unassuming, hard working, confident, down to earth, patient and innocent. Just like Rose she is also from a small town. Oh, her storytelling skills deserve a special mention. She narrated Bazzigar story to a classmate, for over a period of three days! This three-day frame by frame, scene by scene narration after starting with the opening line, ‘Sharukh Khan is the villan. He is the killer.’ She is an only child, just like me. But has always been responsible, unlike me. She has always been (and still is) the best daughter parents can ask for. Now she is the best wife on dreams about and a patient mother of two adorable kids. What I do with great commotion, ado and analysis, she manages to accomplish with no big fuss.

S aka Yaadayaada is Sophia. Always making off color jokes and very comfortable about it, she is the most out spoken of the group. She is also from a small town but one can never tell. She would put any city bred, uppity, ‘convent girl’ to shame with her talking skills and diplomacy. I still don’t know why but she picked me as a friend. It took me a while to get in to the right frame of mind and get comfortable with her as a friend but once that happened there was no turning back. Now, we live 20 minutes away from each other and reconnect every few days. If I sneeze she knows about it and if she coughs, I hear it. No matter how busy or hectic her life is, she always finds time for the three of us and updates us as to what is happening. We do pull her leg and call her SBC (S Broadcasting Service), but we all thoroughly enjoy the updates. Today Chula said, ‘Hey,we are going to see S aunty and V uncle. My daddy’s name is appa. My amma’s name is amma and my mommy’s name is S aunty.’ If that doesn’t explain how close we are, I don’t know what else does.

Your’s truly is Blanche. Blanche is stylish, sophisticated and has the most-male admirers. I ‘think’ (therefore) I am sophisticated and want to be stylish (but has never managed to accomplish it) and about the male admirers may be in the past but in the present….duh :(.

The four of us have had really great adventures at college. Yaadaa Yaadaa and self are perfect alpha males – big talk and lot of bossing over. The two of us have convinced T and R in to doing a lot of stupid things. In the third year, for a variety bit we decided to do a skit based on the national award-winning movie ‘Meendum Oru Kadhal Kathai’. The movie features Radhika(Sachu) and Prathap(Gappi) as the lead. Gappi and Sachu are mentally unwell. They have the metal maturity of a five-year-old. They meet in the hospital and some how Sachu ends up pregnant. Coming back to the point, we made T play Gappi and R play Sachu, made them repeat the ‘Ulagam urundai, laddoo urundai. Ulagathai Andavan seithar, laddoo-I amma seithar’(Meaning: The world is round just like Ladoo. God created the world and amma made the ladoo) dialogue in front of the whole damn college and our profs…..OMG, what were these two girls thinking?! For the rest of their days in college they were ridiculed like there was no tommorrow.

Then there was this one particular time that we decided to form a basketball team. The annual sports competitions were coming up and we didn’t want the lack of a basket ball team to prevent us from participating. So three days before the match we formed a team. As usual, Yaadaa Yaadaa and self made T and R give their names for the team. They practiced and we cheered. On the D-day, the game was over in 12 minutes. No prizes for guess who lost! Some of the highlights were the girls from our team running with the ball in their hands all across the floor only to deposit the ball in to the opposite team’s basket, playing tug of war and snatching the ball from a player from the other team, playing well after the referee had blown his whistle signaling the end of the game and the referee squatting on the floor in the middle of the game holding his heads with both his hands and vigorously shaking his head (can’t blame him. He was a year senior to us, a really good basket ball player and has NEVER seen anything like
THIS in his life before). We lost with a ridiculous score like ‘a zillion’-0 or something like that!

If we are still close, at least half the credit goes to our husbands. They understand how important it is for us to keep in touch and make the necessary adjustments. They tolerate the hour long phone calls, the numerous dinner and lunch plans we come up with without checking with our spouses, are okay with the fact that what ever brews at home, no matter how private, the others know about it.

Okay why all this sudden burst of nostalgia? R was here last week and stayed with us(Yaada Yaada and self) for 10 days. Our children played together. We cooked together, chatting like there was no tomorrow and had tons of fun. 🙂 Oh and the giggles, we did a lot of that…for no reason!

And this picture Boo sent on a e-card wishing me on my birthday, couple of years back…..

Just puts a smile on my lips and takes me 14 years back every time I see it. I treasure it. Thanks Boo. She always knows the right things to send/tell/talk!

By observing Chula and Mieja, I have a rough humor development chart.

This got me quite interested in (1) What is sense of humor? (2) How does sense of humor develop in children? Are children born with it or do they acquire it? (3) What is the connection between intelligence and sense of humor? (4) Can it be conditioned? If so what can a parent do to encourage the child’s sense of humor? (5) Is there a universal pattern in the development of humor in children? (6) How does humor help a child?

I did a bit of research about this. People like Aristotle and Darwin did quite a bit of research and ended up just touching the tip of the iceberg. So I am definitely not doing full justice to this topic.

In simple words, humor is the ability to appreciate the unexpected.

Is humor nature or nurture? My understanding is that humor is acquired. Because, infants simply do not have the verbal and cognitive ability to process jokes. The baby laughing when tickled is just a response to physical stimulation. As they grow a bit, they see the adults laughing and mimic them. Then they see they can please the adults by laughing and they laugh. Then they realize that some thing falling down and the mother making a funny ‘oopsie-doopsie’ or a parent making a silly face is an unexpected action and they laugh in response to that. Humor development is strongly associated with the brain’s ability to process and support the processed information.

We do not see animals laughing. Nope I stand corrected, apparently it is proven that even rats ‘laugh’ when their ribs are tickled! But that is just a response to a physical stimulation. What I menat is animals do not perceive jokes and respond to that with laughter. Well, I am not counting chimps, they do seem to have a concept of humor, mostly slapstick. So sense of humor must be a sign of intelligence right? Looks like we human beings come with the biological capacity to laugh, make jokes and understand jokes. Our brains are ‘wired to take pleasure from humor and laughter’. There are three different zones in the brain, each with the synaptic information to process different kinds of jokes (semantic jokes, phonological jokes, and slapstick jokes). By correlating this information with the study (if I may call it so!!) of my daughters, I conclude that the zone for slapstick develops earlier. For the other kind of jokes the brain has to be mature enough to grasp the humor. So is a child shows the ability to understand a phonological joke or a semantic joke before she is expected to, it is logical to assume that her brain is quite mature for her age. Also to see through the current disaster, pick the sliver lining and make a joke about it requires complicated brainwork. So I am convinced that humor is definitely a sign of intelligence.

Yes, humor can be conditioned. Parents with good sense of humor have children with good sense of humor. The more humorous situations a baby is exposed to, the better his sense of humor.
At the risk of sounding too Baby center-ish here are some practical tips

A much as I would like to take credit for this humor development chart for children, it is NOT MINE. I found this section on the web. But I misplaced the link and I am not able to trace it. If some one finds this link, I will be happy to give credit to author.
**Begin quote
Here are the general stages of development for what makes children laugh. Keep in mind, though, that it’s impossible to be specific about each child’s development, and stages typically overlap.

6-12 months: Takes delight in caregiver’s unexpected actions. Example: peekaboo.
12 to 15 months: Graduates from reacting to something funny to initiating it. Example: putting a cup on Daddy’s head and calling it a hat.
2 years: Makes “mistakes” to show mastery of a subject. Example: You ask her to show you her nose, she points to her knees.
3 years: Distorts known features of words, ideas, and objects. Example: asking for a dirt muffin and worm cheese; slapstick and potty humor.
4 to 5: The pre-riddle stage, when they have the form but not the content.
Example: “Why does the chicken cross the road?” “To go to bed.”
6 to 7: Riddles and knock-knock jokes.
End quote**

This making mistakes to show mastery of a subject is how rubber duckie and donut originated! So Chula, Mieja can’t wait to hear your knock-knock jokes!

Sense of humor helps children the same way it helps an adult. Every one loves, accepts and are friends with a person with a good sense of humor. Apart from the social aspect, humor helps people get through the dull, boring, hard, hectic, painful, lousy, anxious, uncomfortable, dark phases of life. Jokes, especially phonological and semantic ones, will help cildren understand the subtility in language. Personally I developed my tamil by reading jokes from Ananda Vikatan/Daily Tandhi. Of course, all of us have heard about the bit laughter + endorphins = healthy body/life/mind.

Some more interesting information:
Coming back to one of my all time favorite topics, gender differences, sense of humor starts off the same in children of both sexes. Around 6 years or so, owing to the differences in brain development and the way the information is processed, there are certain things that are more appealing to boys than girls and vice versa. Girls like verbal humor, boys like physical, slapstick and off color jokes! Since society accepts boys making physical jokes, better than girls making physical jokes, the pattern gets set.

Resources:
http://www.boston.com/yourlife/family/articles/2005/08/04/laughing_now_might_help_your_children_to_be_funny_later/
(If the full link is not displayed, click here to read the article.)
http://www.kidshealth.org/parent/growth/learning/child_humor.html
http://www.wireheading.com/intracran/funbrain.html
http://www.scholastic.com/earlylearner/age3/learning/qc_humor.htm
http://www.sesameworkshop.org/parents/advice/article.php?contentId=48260

I have always had a love hate relationship with IKEA. I fall in love with their products the minute I set my eyes on them in the catalogue. But I lack the eye for visualizing how the product will look in my home. Most of time, what I buy does not gel well with the things I have at home, so I end up hating it. There are plans to throw out everything I have and order the whole room…..but not going to happen-huh?

A trip to IKEA is like a one day thingy and on the average I make only one visit a year, that too mostly to take parents and in-laws for their customary before-they-leave-to-India-shopping.

Now, my children have the I-hate-IKEA gene directly inherited from their father. The first time I took Chula, she was around 4.5 months old. I forgot to take extra feeding bottles and ran out of water for her formula. I leave it up to you to visualize what would have ensued. During this particular tip, I was in the living room display, when the then 40 week pregnant Boo called from Swiss, seeking my expert(?) medical(??) opinion if she must go to the hospital, if it was time…. Boo, every time I walk by that corner, the display is different, but it is always Ashu corner for me!

The second time I went Mieja was around 3 months, Chula was 20 months. Chula felt claustrophobic the minute we stepped in to the elevator. She started screaming, took a short break from screaming when she was in the ball pit, promptly resumed her screaming the minute we took her out.

This time I went with a dear friend. She had a 3 year old and a 5 month old under her wing and I had Chula and Mieja with me. At any given point of time, we had at least three screaming children in our hands! Half the time we adults were running from the showroom-restroom-parking lot in frenzy.

Some interesting things I noticed with the kids during this trip.

When Chula was getting antsy (may be she thought we were in some one’s home, but it didn’t look like a home…I don’t know), I told her, ‘Kannamma, just for a little while. Amma and aunty want to shop’. She enthusiastically chirped in, ‘We are shooping ammmmmma? Okay.’ From then on, anything she set her eyes on, she piled in to my shopping cart and told me, ‘Shopping amma. I am shopping.’

Mieja would cry and the minute she sees a stuffed toy, she would calm down. She would hug her toy with all her strength and bury the toy in the crook of her neck and give a wide smile. The second she sees a new stuffed toy, she would throw the one she is holding, ask for the new one and proceed to hug the new toy.

Chula was playing on the slide and there was a 4-5 year old boy monopolizing the slide. He was lying down on his stomach, kicking the children behind him and screaming at the kids at the foot of the slide. Chula was right behind him. At some point, she imitated me, same tone, same calmness in voice that means business, the same way I make eye contact and said to the boy, ‘Honeeei you need to move. You are blocking the way.’ The boy starred at her for a few seconds and said, ‘I have sharp teeth. Don’t come near me.’ But he did move away 🙂

Okay, this is what happens if you all decide to twist my arm in to writing a new post! Any more third degree treatment, I have a post about a trip to the market coming right up!