Category: QueenBee cartoons (Page 2 of 2)

Rowdy Baby!

Thanks to the energetic and graceful dancer Sai Pallavi and Rajnikanth’s Mapillai (son in law) Dhanush, Rowdy Baby is a popular chart buster in South India. The song is beautifully pictured and choreographed and is a foot tapping number, which doesn’t bore us, even if we have seen it more than a couple of times in one sitting!

The context in which I am going to use the said catch phrase of Rowdy Baby is completely different though. This one literally means a baby who is a rowdy, i.e. KBee!

Two years ago, when the little baby KBee was born, I and Mr.Bee were alone in the hospital thanks to COVID restrictions, we had everyone of our family near us but no one was allowed inside!  (So near yet so far!) We had to fend for ourselves, leaving GBee at maternal grandparents’ house and ya, it felt lonely!

Since we were managing everything by ourselves, we had little to, no sleep. Mr.Bee and I took turns to sleep when the tiny KBee was awake and when he was asleep, both of us would sleep.

On the day of his birth, by evening, the duty pediatrician had arrived, to check the progress of KBee.

Queen Bee in a post partum daze, standing with her hand on imaginary wall!

The pediatrician was so good as to warn us before hand, that the baby is going to be one hell of a rowdy fellow! I laughed it off, poor Queen Bee!

One and half years later…one evening…

1.5 years later, KBee, kicking the books, like there is no tomorrow!

KBee enjoys throwing all the books from their shelves on to the ground and stamping and kicking them, like they owe him an apology for some reason!  I am yet to come up with a reasonable explanation, except that boys will be boys and they tend to ‘rough-house’! I pity all those books, which have lost their covers or miss their pages and which are forever imperfect, thanks to the rough housing! Suddenly I am thankful that they have managed to survive these many years, without all the abuse, so that is a plus.

Some other times, KBee tends to bring his shoes, wear them and plead me to take him outside to play. If I ever tell him NO, then all the hell breaks loose.

A ‘no’ from me gets, flying flip flops as a reply!

I once told KBee that the Moon was already out and it is not the time to wear his ‘shoos’ and go to play outside. The next second, I saw flying flip flops and a tantrum throwing baby on the ground and I knew he will surely shine in soccer or football or whatever it is Lionel Messi is good at! (Soccer = Football, but these people love to confuse us with two different terms for the same sport.)

With incidents like these happening in quick succession, a memory suddenly flashed before my eyes…The one, where the duty pediatrician had commented about KBee being a Rowdy Baby!

The prophecy comes true ; Rowdy Baby indeed!

What else can I do now, except play Rowdy Baby in a loop!

P.S:

Disclaimer : I am in no way trying to demean Dhanush by saying he is just a son in law of popular superstar and nothing else! I wanted to use the little Tamil that I know in the post and that is the only reason for such a usage. No offense intended.

By the way, I prefer the Rowdy Baby song in Tamil, than in Telugu.  Which one do you like? Do drop in comments.

Till the next post…cheerio!

The Loudest of all

While on most days, the kiddos manage to entertain themselves with some games and a little bit of rough housing, some times, they have, who is the loudest matches!

Almost always, the one to initiate these matches is GBee. He loves to shout and scream at the top of his lungs. It is such a regular occurrence that, once in a while, if he manages to stay quiet, our neighbours are worried! Why is there little or no noise? Is GBee sleeping? These are the questions I get from them.

One fine day, I was busy being the bookworm, reading and dwelling in the imaginary world. That’s when GBee starts to shout! He hates it when my attention is elsewhere!

GBee, shouting and scaring QB in the process.

Before I could get back to my book, I heard the baby KBee, reciprocating GBee’s shout!

KBee imitates GBee, while continuing to play.

KBee is like a Koel. Koel never run away from competition.  Have you ever tried imitating a koel? I did. I used to imitate the cry it made during the onset of monsoons. That’s when Koel begin to sing along. It is like our own Pitch Perfect competition! Koel don’t like to lose. That’s for sure.

Anyway…

Feeling Proud, listening to KBee

While I was busy admiring KBee and got pulled into the shouting contest, I was worried about the dogs in my locality! KBee was able to shout in ultrasonic frequency!

Meanwhile, the stray dogs in my area, visibly whimpering at their daily meeting!

Ultrasonic sounds scare the dogs, even if the one making them is hardly 2 years old!

P.S:

  1. Our neighbours have their hands full with 3 dogs. The dogs are so noisy, always barking at perfectly calm people walking on the street. In-spite of all this, the owners manage to hear the noise GBee and KBee make! (Or even observe, when my kids are silent)
  2. The next time you hear a koel singing, do imitate it and sing loudly, The koel changes the tempo of its beautiful song – like cry, to beat us. The early monsoon is the best time for a singing competition with Koel!
  3. The one who shouts the loudest is GBee. But the one who shouts at ultrasonic levels is KBee.
  4. GBee’s class teacher once complained to me that he has the habit of shouting suddenly during the class. One particular day, he scared his teacher and got beaten! He is 5 years old.  He can be childish sometimes!

The Tale of the White Leaf!

Before I start today’s post, let me tell you that, if you ever read any post titles, which sound at once intriguing, rest assured that it is related to the kids. This is one such incident I would love to elaborate on…

The daily routine of GBee is, to wake up at 7 a.m. Laze around on the bed, planning ahead, about what he is going to do for the particular day! Then after much coaxing and coddling, get out of the bed at 7:40 a.m.

The next step is to run around the bed, either to wake up his baby brother KBee or to bring his school bag, open the pouch and begin sharpening his pencils and chatting all the while.  He has his pouch always filled up with atleast 10 pencils. He writes with a different one each day.  (Never buy kids pencils in various colours, they ask us for one in each colour. Buy them boring pencils in same colour and they never ask for another.  Don’t repeat my mistake! I bought him colourful pencils and now he has one in each colour ready for any emergencies and still asks me for more!)

When we first joined him in school, he would cry incessantly and always plead me not to send him to school. (I spent many nights wondering if he would ever make any friends or go to school at all!)

Because he manages to cry a lot, he would throw up before going to school, each day. So feeding him breakfast early in the morning was a bad idea. In his early school days, he never ate anything before going to school and always brought his tiffin / snack box, as it is, without eating. (For a week, it felt like he was fasting and opposing the school, in his silent way!)

That’s when I decided to just give him milk before going to school. To make him slowly begin eating at school, I would send his box filled with his favourite cookies and pooris in the shapes of hearts, squares and circles. The little GBee, never liked Pediasure to begin with. (Any new food / beverage never interests him. He has zero interest in trying new food) To get GBee interested in Pediasure, I bought the Vanilla flavoured one and would mix it in milk and give it to him before school and slowly he began drinking it. He never knew I mixed anything in milk, because, vanilla flavoured Pediasure was off white in colour.

Just as I was getting used to him having his morning cup of milk, one day ….

A white leaf!

Since I was busy packing his snack box, I really didn’t understand what he meant at first. My mind was occupied.

He was referring to the layer of protein on the milk, a White Leaf!

Milk Skin = White Leaf

I say ‘sad’ layer because, I hate the layer of protein on top of milk. I just hate when the milk skin forms on milk. Or even tea for that matter. I exaggerate and tell everyone who listens to me, that milk skins suffocate the throat, so I can’t have it! (which is a lie)

After he complained about the ‘white leaf’, i filtered the milk for him and then and ‘only’ then did he drink his milk.

That, dear readers, is the Tale of the White Leaf!

P.S:

  1. I was inspired by ‘The Tale of Two cities’ of Charles Dickens while naming the blog post. I may read it in future.
  2. The milk skin infact has a scientific name, Lactoderm! But,  as usual, I love the one coined by GBee, ‘White Leaf’. He also calls grey hair as ‘White Grass’!
  3. Do you know ‘the Order of White Lotus’? If you are an Avatar geek, you may know it. If you are not, it a secret society of intellectual people who share knowledge. It is part of the ‘Avatar’, the anime and not the James Cameron Avatar.

Till the next post!

Dadamoni!

As I begin to write yet another post, I am beginning to understand myself a whole lot better. I keep going back and forth between movies and book references in my life! ( It must be due to my upbringing, in a family where both books and movies were treasured alike!) Today, it is the movie influence that is apparent in my post title, Dadamoni.

Dadamoni is a Bengali term, where ‘Dada’ means an elder brother and ‘moni’ means a jewel. An elder brother who is as good/precious as a jewel! (If you have been Indian cricket fan, you will know Sourav Ganguly was referred to as Dada. But the original Dadamoni was the actor Ashok Kumar, the elder brother of the eccentric Bollywood singer Kishore Kumar da)

Since I am done with the introduction, lets jump into today’s cartoon…

The scene starts with an interaction between QueenBee and KBee. My aim was to teach KBee some basic words.  KBee had successfully repeated Amma, after me. Then I make him repeat Nanna, Anna and other two letter words. Then, I see GBee zooming away, running fast, passing us both, shouting at the top of his lungs ….

Jumping right away into bigger words!

Just when KBee was getting comfortable with two lettered words, I threw a bigger word at him, Dadamoni! (I am a para bhasha priya! One who loves other languages, more than their own. My bad!) It is safe to say that KBee found it difficult to even utter ‘dada‘.  He already calls his brother, anna.

Meanwhile, Mr.Bee in his office room…

Done with two syllable words already!

I would still prefer if KBee referred to GBee as Dadamoni, but, I am not going to force it upon him! Some words are just so beautiful, they remain with us. Dadamoni is one such word, which captured my heart, during my movie research, years ago.

Does anyone like Golden Oldies? Like the movies of Dev Anand, Ashok Kumar, Amitabh Bachchan, Rajesh Khanna and the likes?

P.S:

  1. My all time favourite actor has always been Shammi Kapoor.
  2. Dev Anand’s brother,Vijay Anand, played a detective in an old Hindi serial in Doordarshan, Tehkikaat. It was the first detective serial I had ever watched, not that I remember much. I hope to watch it again. I also watched Byomkesh Bakshi, a series in Doordarshan, starring Rajit Kapur and not the one starring Sushant Singh Rajput. (God I feel so old!)
  3. Some day I will surely write about all the detective movies and  series, I ever watched. It may end up being my longest post.  And, did anyone observe that today’s post has a lot of Bengali flavour!  😉
  4. I think Mr.Bee in today’s cartoon looks very young! I should have given him a stubble!

Until my next post, cheerio!

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