'Rapunzel gallop-a-troted on Maximo. She got scared of a litttttttle bunny and she clinged to Newgene tight. And the bunny hopped and hopped and hopped away' ...... and so she went on with the story of Tangled movie on a Monday night. It was her turn to tell me a story and put me to bed. Three minutes into the story, I hear, 'I will stop now, you sleep now. I love you to the moon and back!'. I almost choked, and successfully held back the tear that was ready to burst out.
It is impossible to describe the feelings that she can evoke within me with her most innocent voice and her creative choice of words. Today I felt, like I relived my childhood through her - the childhood that I will never forget, the childhood that I hope will never get vague as I age.
Earlier in the evening as we were driving back from preschool, she almost broke into a tantrum on dropping her artwork from school. 'I cannot reach that far back when I am driving Nyah, you have to wait until I park the car' I was desperately trying to speak sense through her impatience. "You can reach if you decide to !!!!!" was the response. Really ??? Did she really say that? I am pretty confident I didn't use this sentence on her before.... Did she hear that from one of her teachers? Is it that easy to come up with sentences like that when you are just 3 yrs old, 37 months to be exact? I guess I will never know the answer. Whatever it is, I decided to stop the car and reached over for that green-colored honey bear. Well, just for the record, most of her paintings are green, green bears, green eggs, green pots of gold, green sun, green world ! :)
We were supposed to be heading for a blah evening, with Navin travelling. But the incident in the car, inspired me to take it easy that evening. I was not going to watch the clock for anything, not even her mealtime. There was nothing that HAD to be done for the evening other than, 'us'. I was going to actually pay attention to all her gibberish, play, talk, think, feel and jump like a child(without even worrying about how the pregnant lady downstairs will be cursing us, she can just head out for shopping if she had to!!! ).
We read books (I lost count after six) , stacked blocks and played bowling, made trucks with lego blocks, watched Curious George, played memory game, spit at each other, played pretend swim in the bath tub during the bath. I even let her eat pasta all by herself without worrying about how many she actually swallowed, hugged and apologized to her when she fussed about that phone call I took admist reading books together !!!! I literally lived the life of a toddler even if it was only for one evening. And I don't care even if it sounds cheezy - 'what a poetic evening it was!'
It was one of the best gifts I could've given her and myself and will give this gift to us a little more often than I have in the past.
- All my fun childhood memories are with my sister and my grandfather, and I would love for hers to be with me !
P.S :
'I love you to the moon and back' - is something I tell her everynite when she goes to bed ......
