31 December, 2011

The Mandatory Year-end Post..

This has been a doozy of a year but then again I guess I usually end up saying that about most years while they're ebbing. But there have been a lot of things, meaningful things, that have happened this year which will probably not happen again. But again, that's true of every year although the degree to which the sentiment is felt varies.


The son and heir started school, playschool, but school nonetheless. He skipped in happily enough and took the hand of the teacher there (a person he'd never seen before in his life) and went right in to the kiddy room. He didn't much give a thought to Red and I waiting outside. But the moment the wailing began from the other children he decided that solidarity was the name of the game and he joined in too. And once his loud pipes joined the melee well...the melee became a solo performance of sorts. The other kids whimpered but mine HOWLED. Anyhow, that went away surprisingly quickly and he completely adapted to this brand new aspect of his life so seamlessly one would think he had been going for ages.

One of my personal highs (and an amusing one at that) was the summer I spent at my parents' place. Finally, that stage in parenthood had been achieved when I took my kid to his nani's place for the summer. Life had come full circle for me- I used to be taken to such a place myself and now I had someone who I would be taking :) 


Little things began to amuse me more than they used to..rather I began to take more joy in the "prosaic". The way the leaves of the plants glowed when I watered them...I watered them and watered them till the discernible dust had been blasted off them. Unfortunately my son too got the same idea only his wasn't restricted to the flowerpots. 
He watered me, the balcony chairs, himself..Oh HOW he watered himself over and over again. I don't know if that's been helping him grow. He's stopped being chubby and has become lean. He lives on air, milk and juice and meal time is usually one where bargains are made over which show he can watch- the horrid Chhota Bheem or the Simpsons. Once Masterchef Australia stopped, he didn't quite take to Masterchef USA. I guess Gordon Ramsay and Joe Bastianich  put off quite a few people!


We got the imp his very own cycle for Christmas and until he begins to pedal properly it's up to us to put the cricks in our back aside and keep pushing him everywhere he wants to be wheeled :) 

The year also marked a departure from quite a few things, people, habits, thought processes and basically set me up for another year of parenting, some tough decisions, some good times and a yearning for patience, good sense and energy to see things through to the end in 2012. 

But knowing me, it'll probably fizzle out the same way the resolutions about getting in shape have been fizzling out for the past few years. One thing I am looking forward to is our first proper family vacation. The rest of the stuff like the monkey starting nursery, completing 5 years of married life (oh boy! talk about doozies) are stuff that future blog posts will be made of.

Signing off in 2011.




26 December, 2011

Necessity, Thou ART the ancestor of creativity!

Parenting is about a lot of things- I will NOT touch upon patience (why break one's head about a quality that's been elusive and will continue to play hard to get for all eternity?) but that apart parenting has got LOADS to do with creativity.
Again, if you aren't totally off your rocker courtesy your kid's antics, you'll be able to harness it fairly well and when required.
MLM is at best a fussy eater. He isn't fussy about what he eats, he's just fussy about eating. Why bother to stop and eat when he could be playing, watching that cursed Chhota Bheem, smearing 'kalash' (colors) on everything from his hair to my nose?
So like it or not the telly becomes an accomplice during feeding time. He gets entranced by the yellow people aka The Simpsons or the goody-two-shoes Bheem and allows me to spoons what I think is an adequate amount of food in his mouth. Threats of turning the t.v. off work extremely well in getting him to open up. It's my personal 'Open Sesame' as it were.
Tonight was no different- he was refusing to eat and I was adamant about not mushing his food so I could almost funnel it down his gullet. And as ever, sighs, Bheem baba was displaying his valor for all the nincompoops like my kid. I made small balls of the rice and curry and kept feeding MLM each one saying they were Bheem's laddoos. He didn't notice each one got progressively larger and he ate till I could do the tummy metrics and deduce he'd eaten *enough*. Of course, in case I didn't get the message fast enough, MLM also told me by raising his palms- EMUFF!!
So a child fed, very little threats doled out and some imgaination was displayed. Plenty of pats on the back- all by myself but hey...you gotta take what's there. If I wait for a bravo I'll be waiting till the cow come home.
But the whackiest and most imaginative thing was done was Red a few minutes ago. We're supposed to get MLM to do inhalations with Vicks or Karvol and Red being all congested too it becomes a way to spend quality time as a family. But where do I come in? Ever watch those shows were those herpotologists try to track down and then measure those boas and anancondas? The snake writhes like nobody's business and the people have to fight to not get knotted up in its coils? Well, the steam inhalation process with MLM is quite like that. He pretzels himself and whoever else is holding him till he's as far away from the rising steam as possible!!
To hold him steady or to get the inhaler close to him while Red's got a grip on him is my main role.
Anyhow, this little squirmer has always had a thing for the red clothes hamper we have in the bathroom. His father had set him down in it once when he was younger and I think that had created a memorable memory in his freaky noggin. So while the fight between father and son ensued, the hamper was brought forth and aforementioned squirmer was released. He dumped all the clothes out of it and said PUT! We ain't stupid. Most of the times. We put him in the hamper and took care to place the lid on top. Now before anyone decides to call Child Care services let me interject that the hamper has holes all over it and allows for PLENTY of ventilation. So there he sat, crouched inside, thinking he'd outsmarted us and his father held the inhaler close to the walls of the hamper and let the smoke waft in.
And that's how you get a child to do inhalation. If you're (un)lucky. When I was his age I responded to the "or else" my mother used to dole out with unfailing regularity. No hamper-shamper for me.
I wonder what's next. I really, really do. And going by recent history I wonder if we have big enough containers for his Littleness when the next challenge comes along!

09 December, 2011

So shoot me!! I get ahead of myself...it's the one thing I CAN do mentally since I have small feet and it takes me forever to go anywhere or keep up with anyone else :p but I do have a strong tendency to jump the gun and sometimes, Praise be the Lord of Russian Roulette for Thou Art Indeed Merciful, the said firearm doesn't misfire.


A lot of people often tell me stuff they are deeply invested in, with some amount of caution. They know the moment they tell me I'll be ricocheting off and planning the way ahead whereas they'll be the ones (im)patiently waiting for things to actually happen. But there's a joy I find in possibilities. More than the probables, its the possible that unlocks your imagination and increases your normally pedestrian limits to absolutely freaky ones. 


I'll give a wee example right about now...my kid's been under the weather on and off for a while now. I saw 'under' purely from a figurative standpoint. That he's been ON my head is the truth. Anyhow, while still a distance from being A-Ok he showed some improvement this morning when I saw one nostril relatively unblocked while the other one looked like I'd need dynamite to clear a path through it. And off I went- thinking of all the things he'd be able to do once he's better and symptom-free. Hang on...that's not good...didn't think it through...him being symptom free is tantamount to a full scale demolition drive :-)


But all those ramifications apart...being able to let my mind race ahead and often just see a whole plethora of things happenings gives me a feeling of being liberated, whether all those things eventually come to be or not is a whole different blog post. Somewhere I know that the probability of all of them getting fulfilled is quite low, but letting the mind unfettered by pragmatism is one of things which I think people should knowingly indulge in now and then. It would surprise them the extent to which imagination still plays a role in our largely mundane, hectic, deadline-bound lives.


And once routine and need-to-dos, must-dos et al intervene and we get back to the grind (not an unpleasant thing as I've come to realize), we can just wait for another opportunity when imagination again takes flight away from the prosaic, the pedantic and into the realm of the slightly whimsical carelessness.