The Adventures of Lai-Lai & Yum-Yum and the Whasamagidgets

By Mamalaide

Elaine, the only child among the many children around the world, was chosen to introduce the Toymaker to the world after his long search for a toy that he could make that could entertain his invalid son.

Therefore, Elaine and her four granddaughters traveled to England in search of a family member of the Toymaker’s, but instead, they found the Toymaker himself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 12, 2018
• ISBN: 9781532058271

Mamalaide

My name is Mamalaide born, December 05, 1936, into a family of educators and writers. I was a High School Biology Teacher, however this was nothing compared to my granddaughters’ inquisitiveness about the books I read. Their questions gave me the motivation to write about the toys that wanted to live, the Whasamigidgets.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Yum-Yum in Nursery School

J une 12, 1996 is when it all began. The lives of Lyzitta and her two daughters, Lai-Lai and Yum-Yum, would never be the same again. Lai-Lai and Yum-Yum were two beautiful girls of color, raised only by their mother; their father was not around and their older brother, Miguel was away visiting his uncle in D.C. and going to baseball camp while his uncle was at work. Every summer he would visit his uncles, one in California where he went to basketball camp; and one in Chicago where he went to football camp. He was an all-around athlete.

Lai-Lai was now six years old and Yum-Yum had barely turned three but had a vocabulary that matched that of a four or five-year-old child, nobody knew why. When the girls were babies, their Uncle Carl started calling them Lai-Lai and Yum-Yum, however, their actual names were Elaine, after her Nana, and Lynn; but the nicknames stuck with them to this day.

Their mother, Lyzitta, worked for the high school system so she was off for the summer with the girls. During the school year, Lyzitta took Yum-Yum to school where she taught; there was a nursery school right on campus and Yum-Yum had been there since she was seven months old. There were some students who worked in a studying program that Mrs. Chang taught, and their jobs were to help her get the children ready for kindergarten. Most of the children were just about ready to move on. This was good for Yum-Yum because she bonded with the student aids very well and since she was not old enough to move on, she would be there for at least two more years.

Lyzitta did not believe in talking baby talk to her children, so the students did likewise to Yum-Yum, and nor would they allow her to do things babies her age would do that kept them running behind her like the terrible two’s. As she watched the students, Yum-Yum learned many skills from them; her speech improved tremendously and she learned to walk. Unlike most of the other babies, Yum-Yum did not like anyone holding her; she wanted to move around. She was not one to get into trouble; she enjoyed crawling around observing everything and everybody. She would venture over to the bookshelves, occasionally taking a book down that she could reach, and look at the pictures, through her nap time if she was allowed.

One day, one of the students saw Yum-Yum about to take a book down off the shelf, when she was about to stop her, Mrs. Chang said not to bother her, she told the student that Yum-Yum would not rip the pages. She claimed that Yum-Yum was a very intelligent baby. They watched her as she turned the pages with ease and laughed at some of the pictures she saw. Most of the books she chose were about animals; funny animals, dangerous animals, scary animals, sweet, and vicious animals. When Mrs. Chang saw how interested Yum-Yum was in the books she choose to look at, she got the idea to approach the art teacher, Mrs. Coffey, and asked her to get her best students, in their spare time of course, to draw as many pictures as they could find of animals so that she could make a scrapbook for Yum-Yum’s Christmas present.

Mrs. Coffey thought that would be a great project for her students in her upper classes; she made sure there were no duplicates. When they finished with the project by the end of November, the students had several hundreds of pictures, which they categorized the animals by name and species, put them in plastic covers, and then put them in three ring notebooks according to the types of animals they were.

One of the students said she wanted to study invertebrates when she goes to college; therefore she made a notebook of all the animals without backbones she could find. There were five books in all: insects, birds, mammals, fish, and animals without backbones. One boy in Mrs. Coffey’s class, was also in woodshop, took it upon himself to design, make, and paint a very colorful bookcase with Yum-Yum’s name and many beautiful animals on it. Mrs. Coffey was impressed with the beautiful work he put into making that wonderful work of art. They wrapped each notebook separately and gave them to Mrs. Chang in late December, just before the Christmas holidays.

Yum-Yum walked very early, just before she turned eight months to be exact. I guess she thought that since the big kids and other babies were walking, why couldn’t she.

One day while sitting in the middle of the play rug, one of the girls was passing, Yum-Yum reached for her. The girl thought she wanted her to carry her around and said, No baby, I don’t have time to carry you around. Yum-Yum said, No, walk! she said it with such great force; it seemed to almost knock her off her feet. The student was surprised that Yum-Yum was learning to talk so well, the girl raised the baby to her feet, took both her hands and began to walk with her. She was amazed that she did not have to keep protecting Yum-Yum from falling by holding both hands; she walked beside the baby as if she had been doing this every day. Finally, Yum-Yum let go of the girl’s hand and began to walk on her own.

Yes, she fell a few times, but got up and tried again. Before long, Yum-Yum was completely walking as if she had been walking for months.

It was Lyzitta’s free class period; about a week later when Mrs. Chang sent one of her aides to bring her to the Children’s Lab. Lyzitta thought something had happened to the baby and when she walked in and saw Yum-Yum walking around this big room, she wanted to run and grab her out of sheer excitement. Mrs. Chang grabbed her arm, lightly squeezing it, telling her to slow down and let Yum-Yum come to her. This is your Christmas present, Mrs. Chang told Lyzitta.

Yum-Yum finally turned around when seeing her mom, she tried to run but fell. Lyzitta jumped to the baby’s defense. Expecting this reaction, Mrs. Chang reached for her arm again, shaking her head for her to let the baby try on her own. Yum-Yum struggled to get up, falling back down a couple more times; finally she made it up on her feet, balanced herself, and tried it again. She made it over to her mother and reached up for a hug. Lyzitta picked Yum-Yum up and gave her the biggest hug ever and then turned to ask Mrs. Chang how long has she been walking? Out of the clear, Yum-Yum said Day. Mrs. Chang nodded her head confirming the baby’s answer as being, Today.

This was her first day of walking around by herself, Mrs. Chang confessed.

She’s talking too, Lyzitta exclaimed. Mrs. Chang smiled her reply of yes. How did you do this in such a short time? Lyzitta asked.

Ancient Chinese secret, Mrs. Chang spoke with pride. They all laughed, after which they went back to their own respective duties; Mrs. Chang went to attend to one of the other children that needed her attention; the student went on with her work; and Lyzitta watched Yum-Yum as she went back to what she was doing. Lyzitta was leaving quietly, but before she left the lab, Mrs. Chang asked her to stop by before the holidays to pick up some gifts for Yum-Yum. She acknowledged with a thank you and left.

Lai-Lai was a quiet little girl; she always seemed to be in deep thought. At six, she already knew what she wanted to be in life. Her mother frequently said she acted old for her age. She had an almond color with little hints of blush in her cheeks, big brown sparkling eyes with eyelashes so long that every woman would envy her for having them.

Lai-Lai was an honor student practically from day one. She loved to read, so when she started to learn to read, it came naturally; she was reading at third grade level before she got out of kindergarten. She noticed that Yum-Yum loved to hear about animals and insects, even though Lai-Lai didn’t care about them, she grinded her teeth and read about them to her anyway. Lai-Lai was four years old when her baby sister was born; she pretty much lost the attention she should have been getting since she was the middle child. Therefore, she found ways to entertain herself. Once she learned to read, she started to read books with more than the three or four words per page that went into the preschool books, the more words there were, the better it was for her. She read books like Cinderella and The Three Bears, and one day she was even reading The Jungle Book. She had already outgrown The Cat and the Hat.

The last day of school before the Christmas holidays, Lyzitta went by the nursery where she found Yum-Yum sitting in the middle of the rug reading to a group of babies, all older than she was. Lyzitta could not believe her eyes; she laughed as she addressed her remark to Mrs. Chang, Another one of your Chinese secretes, huh?

Mrs. Chang said No, this was a surprise to me as well. That book, The Three Bears is one of her favorites and she asked for it to be read to her every day, sometimes twice a day, if time allowed. She has memorized it word for word; I still didn’t believe what was transpiring, so I looked over her shoulder as she supposedly was reading it and lo and behold the book was upside down. I ran to my office and laughed so hard that I thought I was going to pass out, and every time I started out the door, looked at her with that cute little smile on her face as she was reading, I started laughing all over again, Mrs. Chang said hysterically in laughter.

CHAPTER 2

The Beginning Of Summer Vacation

A change is coming

T his summer was going to be a summer they will remember for a long time, especially the girls. Exactly the day after school was let out the girls had gotten up extremely earlier than normal on a school day. Just as Lai-Lai and Yum-Yum jumped from the stairs, a slight movement caught them both by surprise. Lo and behold, there were things stacked in front of the fireplace that had not been there the night before. Yum-Yum went in instantly, quite naturally being so young, she was not afraid; but Lai-Lai was hesitant.

She called to her little sister to wait, but Yum-Yum had turned a deaf ear and kept on walking. She went straight to an ugly toy that was ultimately going to turn her entire life around.

This toy was the craziest looking thing you could imagine. It started out round like a ball and the closer she got to it, body parts began to materialize. The face was round with the most beautiful set of emerald green eyes that looked like bowls of the deepest green lime Jell-O you could imagine. There was a slight imprint of a nose, but not enough to get excited about. It had ears on more than the two normal places they should be; a pair on the left side, a pair on the right side, and a pair on the very top of its head. Each pair of ears was different from the others; one pair was mouse-like, another pair catlike, and the third pair on top of the head was antennae like that could move in all directions. Just below each pair of ears, on each side was an arm. The one on the left was like a mouse’s arm and the one on the right was like a paw of a cat. On the side of each antenna was a large beautiful butterfly wing. The toy had a slight resemblance of a body, but there were a pair of long skinny legs that fit the same descriptions as the other named parts, mouse, cat, and insect. It was as if this thing had no idea what it wanted to be, which really made a horrible sight. Believe it or not, Yum-Yum grew attached immediately, she fell in love instantly.