"How much do you love me?" ratings on a toddler scale !

The newest game in the Das household is the "How much do you love me?" game.

Yours truly: "How much do you love me, Raya?"
Raya: '10' mamma...she stretches out her arms as wide as those teenie weenie arms would allow her to.
  
Yours truly: "How much do you love 'Baba'?"
Raya: Hmmm...'8'

Yours truly: OK. What about 'Koka'? (Raya calls her maternal grand dad Koka)
Raya: Hmmm...'7'

Yours truly: Hmmm...OK. How much do you love 'Ma'? (Raya calls her maternal grand mom, 'Ma')
Raya: Hmmm...'9'

Yours truly: Ok Raya. What about Ashish mamu? (Raya calls my brother, 'Ashish mamu')
Raya: Hmmm...'1'

Yours truly: (Laughing out loud)Oops...Raya, Ashish mamu will be really sad if you give him a '1'.

Now every year Raya's 'Ashish mamu' showers her with the most number of expensive gifts ever. Every time my parents visit, he sends an overload of gifts for his one and only niece! But of course, the busy body that he is(with an investment banking professional life and a just as hectic social one) , Raya doesn't get as much face time(in terms of Skype time  etc.) with him as she does with everyone else in the family.

So I took this opportunity to psyche up my little brother about the dismal rating he's  received on his niece's 'love' scale. That resulted in a very distraught "Ashish mamu"  setting up a long Skype call with his niece, listening to and applauding the recitation of 'n' number of nursery rhymes and being at the receiving end of what seemed to me like "endless chatter". Looks like Raya had a lot of things
to tell her Ashish mamu, after all!

Now at the end of that skype call, we repeated the "How much do you love me?" game with Raya. All of us were literally rolling on the floor with laughter at the revised ratings, primarily because while all the other scores remained the same('Mamma' still got a 10, 'Baba' got an 8, 'Ma' got a 9 and 'Koka' got a 7), Raya's Ashish mamu's rating got bumped up from a dismal '1' to a decent '6'. Ah...such is the power of Skype!!Ain't it! So now Raya's Ashish mamu  needs to make that long over due trip to visit her, if he has any intention of seeing his"How much do you love me?" score bumped up further on his niece's scale. :)

On another note, while I am really happy with my ten pointer, looks like Raya's 'Baba's' score is a bit misleading. Apparently, from what her teachers tell me, Raya is all about "Baba" in school. So looks like "Baba" is a ten pointer in school and "Mamma" is a ten pointer at home. So all well there for household and parental calm and sanity, I guess...LOL.

On another note, my parents leave next week and they are indeed leaving behind a really spoilt brat for us to deal with. Oh well...that's what grandparents are for, aren't they?!

Other than that, Raya turns 3 this week. Time does fly. All I can say is I am really grateful for all the happiness and incomprehensible blend of sanity and insanity that my little munchkin has brought into our lives! I can only hope 'D' and 'I' can do justice to this enormous blessing and responsibility called parenting and help Raya  grow into someone, who in her own small ways, will learn to make this world a better place!

Wish us luck folks !