Life with Jerry

As a friend sternly pointed out to me recently, “I don’t know if it’s third child syndrome, but I feel I hardly know Bojjandi, whereas I know the other two rather well through your blog”. Duly guilty and chastened, I have finally sat down to fill the gap. Especially since the primary reason for starting the blog was so they would have reference material in case I was gaga by the time their kids came around - and the way the three of them behave sometimes, I hope I will be!

So…Bojjandi really reminds me of Jerry from the Tom and Jerry cartoons. I don’t know whether it’s because of his hyper-energetic body language or his chubby cheeks, pointy chin and cheeky expression which remind me of Jerry’s looks, minus the big ears. He’s an action mn from the minute he wakes up in the morning, and quite stubborn about what he wants. His day starts with plaintive wails of ‘Abba, take me down’, and he gets quite annoyed if left to sleep in. Next comes a run into the kitchen and a perch on its counter for his Yakult – since our pal has given up milk since he was weaned off the bottle about a year and a half ago – talk about stubborn! Thankfully he loves Yakult – so much so that he’s constantly pretending he hasn’t already had one, so he can have another bottle of it!

He’s a real mischief-a-minute baby, constantly looking for the next thing he could get into trouble for. Jerry, excuse me, Bojji is happiest when he’s scurrying around at a fast pace – whether he’s running around the house on his tiptoes, jumping off furniture perilously close to hitting his head on a chance occasional table or so, zipping around the house on his scooter, or ramming his bicycle into walls when forbiddenly riding it indoors. He’s a crazy chatter-box, whose stream of commentary, plaintive pleading, arguments and general purpose chat don’t stop even when he’s asleep.

I expect a flock of penguins to come take up residence in our house any day now, given his habit of opening the fridge every 15 minutes to sniff out a new snack. He’s also the supreme techno-freak in our house, even more than his dad and elder brother. As soon as his eyes open in the morning, he’s plaintively asking for the mobile phone, dad’s new galaxy note or the iPadeesh as he calls it. If thwarted, he stands on tiptoe on top of the sofa to reach the iPod and starts spinning through the tracks. In fact, I’d say he’s better versed in the technology than me (no great accomplishment J) – he’s the one who figured out how to switch on the iPod on the iPad first. We joke that he’s the kid easiest to kidnap – all it takes is a fancy mobile phone!

He loves music and any time he hears a tune, starts wiggling his bum in time to the rhythm immediately. One of the cutest things I have seen is that he’ll turn the iPod on to play a favourite song (currently Sadda Haq), switch on a blue spotlight in our living room and start dancing underneath it all by himself. It really reminds me of those T&J sequences where J is dancing ecstatically. In fact, he amazed me during a concert at Chubbocks’ school, when he identified a song within the first bars of it playing!

He thinks he’s no less than either of his siblings in terms of size or ability and constantly psyches me out by trying stunts that a toddler really shouldn’t be. He turns wheelies on his cycle or balances his whole body on the crossbar of it while I watch, my heart in my mouth, thinking he’s going to tumble off and hit his head. He keeps telling me he needs to ‘feed my neopets’, an activity actually done by Chubbocks and he has no clue what it means. He constantly argues with his siblings as to the rights and wrongs of whatever game they are playing, and watches Oggy and laughs right along with the elder two at the jokes. In fact, he’s got a definite sense of humour and loves knock-knock jokes.

Knock-knock
Who’s there?
Ach
Ach-who?
Thatsh a nashty cold!

Knock-knock
Who’s there?
Mister
Mister who?
Mister Plod
….and so on an infinitum, with all the characters from his favourite books and TV shows.

At bedtime, listening to stories, he’s hugely inquisitive, asking dozens of questions about every word he doesn’t understand, or the motivations of characters. He can never wait for the story to be told and keeps flipping forwards and back through the book, exasperating Puddi and Chubbocks no end. He grouches about the fact that we don’t sit on his bed ever ( it’s a crib) – in our highly litigious household, we have regulated that we will sit on a each child’s bed to tell bedtime stories alternately; we have also legislated that the child whose choice of story is told first will be the last to get his/ her back scratched.

And then, as Morpheus gets closer, he turns into a confused little cuddle-bunny. He keeps repeating a catchphrase over and over – it could be ‘abba, abba…’ or Mamma, mamma…’. He makes a deal with us every night that if he has a bad dream, he will come into our bed. And 6 nights out of 7, as A and I prepare to sleep, there will be a polite tap-tapping on our door. It’ll continue despite our shouts to ‘come on in and close the door’, and one of us have to ceremoniously open the door and invite the polite interloper in. At which point, he promptly demands my favourite pillow, lies down smack bang in the middle of the bed and shoved his chubby little arm down my sleeve. Caressing my arm makes him sleepy, apparently.