The Curious Case of Vegetable Soup

Three items top the list of 'toys I love to play with Khalish':

1. Doodle board.

2. Lego.

3. Play-Doh.

Nonetheless, during examination and assignment weeks, Khalish needs to play on his own (yes, the examination and assignment weeks have not ended yet, thus the present tense). 

Last weekend, he chose to play with Play-Doh, and, I wished Kamal was there to be the boy's playmate. Unfortunately, he had an urgent task to complete, too. Play-Doh without adults' supervision could be Mess-Doh. We tried to steer Khalish away to other toys. To no avail. We set a rule for him to play the doh on his desk only. To no avail. We let him be.

Once in a while, he came to our work station to show us a pot full of 'vegetables'. From the look of the 'vegetables soup', we knew the magnitude of the mess. We did not dare to look at the floor. Focus, focus, focus on the tasks and assignments, we told ourselves after words of encouragement for Khalish to continue cooking a storm.

A storm it was.

Came bedtime, Kamal gave Khalish another bath. I were to put the house in order again (because I have always loved the sight of a neat house in the morning). That night, I regretted my insistence to finish my assignments instead of playing with Khalish. 

The boy decided to feed the whole house with his vegetables soup, burgers, and lasagnas! Tiny shapes that only little hands could mould were on the tables, the chairs, the sofas, the floor, and the carpets! Not to mention the crumbles. I salvaged what I could, snowballing the biggest doh piece to other pieces of similar colour. I repeated that for the remaining nine colours. There was also a big piece of multicoloured doh that resulted from a meticulous effort to gather all the minute crumbles. 

I left the vacuuming task for the next day. Kamal applauded my labour, but, he did not know about the trauma I suffered from.

The Play-Doh set is now in a cabinet far, far away, out of Khalish's sight. Khalish did ask for it, but, I asked him the same question over and over again, "where did you last put it?" and, each time, he answered, "Khalish tak ingat." Funny.

Sorry, son. We will play Play-Doh together again once all the assignments have been submitted.