Calvin is my favourite comic strip. Even though Calvin himself is just a kid….. the life lessons in these are simply fantastic. And this particular strip shows the predicament of all parents very clearly.

You know that moment…. when you sit back and relax with your favourite book…..thinking that your toddler/pre schooler is busy/sleeping….. open to the page where you left it(a month ago!)…… read a couple of pages….. start enjoying the story again…… and……. enter, your unbelievably right on time, child!!! That’s it! All your dreams of having a relaxing peaceful time are crushed under their numerous questions and orders of playing with them.

They just know the right time, don’t they? Whether you’re reading a book or even go to the bathroom to do that most essential thing….. they just appear from somewhere. I have noticed that A will be nowhere to be seen. Maybe more than half an hour has passed. But the moment I decide to take a bathroom break…. I hear loud screams and cries “MAMMA ROOM MEIN NAHIN HAI……WAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!! (Mamma is not in room…… waaaaaahhhhhh!!!!) I don’t know how but she knows it by intuition, the exact time of me going to the bathroom. Even early morning. She will be sound asleep….. but the moment I wake up and go to the bathroom….. she is out there crying her lungs out. And I don’t understand…. why cry ya??? Papa is right there. Sleeping beside you. But no….. MAMMA is not there.

Have you noticed how when you are resting or relaxing the older one remembers her work? “Mom….. my homework” or “mom you were supposed to do this with me” or “mom…..mom…..mom” 😫 and then it won’t do if I tell her I’ll do it in half an hour. It’s has to be NOW! After a lot of persuading and pleading and sometimes scolding she will agree with a timer in her head. The second that half an hour is over she is back…. now with something more in her list.

So now I’m learning a trick. First thing in the morning (or after she has come from school and finished her snack) let’s do something together (btw P is on a 3 week summer break…….European summer ), then she is satisfied and her hunger for mom is fulfilled. Then she lets me do my thing for the rest of the day. Which is a good thing because this way I’m forcing myself to spend time with her also. Which, if left for some other time in the day, sometimes gets totally left out.