Storytime

Vir has reached the stage where kids will do anything to try to stay up a little bit longer. His usual bed time routine used to be to just lie down on the bed with me, have his milk, and slowly drift off. About the time he started developing the idea that sleeping later would give him more time to do other stuff, he also discovered storytime. What a perfect excuse to stay up a little later than normal! And of course, two or three or four stories and rhymes are better than one because they take longer to tell:-). So now, when either Vijay or I take him to bed, we have a barrage of requests from him as soon as he's done with his bottle of milk. He has his favorites among the totally made up stories that Vijay and I have come up with to entertain him. There's a story about a Lucky Car - a red car that loves to take risks, yet never gets a scratch till she decides to take a big jump off a hill called Big Hill. We've never made it to the end, so I don't know what happens to Lucky Car...by the time I get to the point where Lucky Car is getting a car wash in preparation for her big day, Vir moves on to wanting a different story. If Vijay is the story teller, his favorite request if for the Lion and Monkey Story, which is about a monkey who isn't afraid of the tiger and actually manages to defeat him by jumping on a coconut tree and shaking it till a cocounut falls on the waiting tiger's head and knocks him unconscious. Another favorite is about a chipmunk who only eats peanuts...he needs three peanuts every day, one for breakfast, one for lunch, and one for dinner. He gets tired of going out to collect three peanuts everyday and decides to go for the big haul and look for a hundred peanuts in one marathon peanut hunting session. Of course, I don't know how this story turns out either since we invariably move on to rhymes by this time. Favorite rhymes keep changing too. The current favorites are Humpty Dumpty, Little Miss Muffet, and the Mighty Hokey Pokey. This last one is hilarious and Vir and I have Shroopie masi to thank for her contribution to the rhyme ensemble. I'm just glad he doesn't know what it means yet. Here goes:

I am the Mighty Hokey Pokey Tippy Top Top
All disobedience by beheading I will Stop Stop
Chippy Choppy Chippy Choppy Chippy Choppy

If you sing the last part cutely enough, you can ignore what the chopping is actually of! Vir calls this the Hokey Dob Dob poem. I wonder if this will scar him for life when he learns what it means. Time will tell I guess. Though hopefully we'll move on to more cheerful poems in a couple of weeks and he'll forget I ever almost messed up his head. And if he doesn't I'll just point him to the masi who started this whole thing!