Growing Up!!

Whenever Meghana, Mrunmay and I step out somewhere, it usually is a challenge for Mrunmay to keep himself occupied. As much as we want him to converse with us, experience the surroundings, learn to appreciate good things around, he usually runs out of patience pretty soon, unless one of us starts telling him some story. Many-a-times that is not possible. 

Out of sheer need to teach him pass time, I invented related words game, which Mrunmay pretty much loved. We end up playing it in long journeys or even on the dining table. This game can't be played at a noisy place or when Meghana or I want to have conversation either with each other or some other people around. This had necessitated me to keep Mrunmay engaged with various things. Things like asking him to count specific objects around - e.g. Count all the empty chairs in the hall. Once he has done that, I'd add some qualification to that - Count all the red empty chairs. And then may be count wall mounted fans etc. This also results in he creating something like this!! Train of chairs...

Things like this usually keep him busy for a while with very little involvement from Meghana or me. 

As he is growing up and is well versed with mobile games, the only thing that he would ask for is mobile. He would play on it for a while, but gets bored even with that at times. 

Recently we visited one of the nearby restaurants - Rugved for lunch. As usual, Mrunmay finished off his portion of meal pretty fast. He already had his screen time done for the day, so Meghana and I refused to give him mobile for his entertainment, which obviously hadn't gone down well. It was time to give some activity to him until we were done with our lunch. While looking for something that is interesting for Mrunmay I found this:

I immediately asked Mrunmay to go and count how many bunches of flowers are there in the garland. it was good 30 to 40 ft long decorative garland and I was sure it would be at least 5 minutes for Mrunmay to complete his counting. However, to my surprise, he returned under a minute asked:

Mrunmay: Baba, how much is fourteen twelves are?

Me: Why? What happened? You were counting those threads, isn't it?

Mrunmay: Yeah baba, first tell me how much is it...

Me: I quickly calculated and told him that it is 168.

With his usual twinkling eyes and with a winning expression he announced there are 168 threads in that garland!!

And then I realized, he had conveniently created 12 sets of 14 and wanted to know the multiplication. Apparently he had learnt the concept of sets and multiplication recently in his school and was absolutely thrilled to apply it to get me the answer!!

How fast kids grow!!

Now I need to find something new to keep him occupied!! But that is a welcome challenge for a father :)