Letter To My Child

I plan to have MLM read this when he can link more than three words together and has attained the attention span of a human instead of a bee buzzing from flower to flower. So essentially I'll have to wait till he hits 30.

Dear Monkeyboy

1. When I sleep don't stick your fingers up my nose. I do that all by myself and in a far more efficient manner, thank you.
2. The moment I'm lying down don't assume I'm pretending to be a trampoline. The extra fat wasn't piled on keeping in mind your need to bounce.
3. If I bend down to retrieve my slippers or wipe the floor after you've trailed food on it; don't climb on my back thinking it's horsey time. It'll be time for a chiropractor if that continues my friend.
4. STAY ON YOUR SIDE OF THE BED or go in sleep your cot. This body was not meant to be squished into a tiny sliver of a space. If it was, my clothes would be marked XS instead of XL!
5. Don't beg and plead each time you want something. I grow immune. Learn to time your pleading...it's far more effective and you'll be surprised how far a sad face goes when it's used sporadically instead in a drop of a pin.
6. When I'm gesturing wildly on a phone call and don't sound all that perky, it is definitely not the best time to say, "Susu is coming." "Potty is coming is even worse". Use the loo by yourself as you are wont to do when you think am not watching.
7. When I ask you to go to the loo to do your business before we set out in the car, GO! Saying you need to go when am at a red light or in the midst of heavy traffic doesn't magically conjure up Port-a-potties all over the place.
8. Hugs and kisses are fine. In fact they are great! But when given after a calm and steady manner it's even better than attacking me like a herd of stampeding rhinos.
9. The powder either stays in the jar/bottle or goes on your body. Putting it all over the floor where I go careening all over the place is not what Johnson & Johnson made it for. If you really want me to go sliding off somewhere, ask your father to take us to Aspen.
10. You  biting me on the cheeks was fine when you were a drooly baby. Now with teeth like a barracuda, it hurts.
11. Don't chomp down on the toothbrush every time. I have to pry your teeth apart like I use the car's jack and while it gets the job done, I'm in danger of getting a tennis elbow without ever having lifted a racquet!
12. Your father and I like to watch the t.v every now and then you know. And that goes double for us using the iPad. Something about being able to enjoy the stuff we paid through our nose for.
13. My phone is mine. I give it to you when you're in the throes of a major meltdown but it's mine. You asserting ownership over it aint gonna help!
14. The sofas are for sitting on and their backs are not balancing bars. We'll put you in a gymnastics class once you're older. That goes for karate as well so stop chopping at me and swinging your toys like their nunchuks!
15. We have our taste in music when we drive. Dance Gymbo Dance looped for miles on end does nothing for us enjoying the long drive. 
16. The iPad charger, the laptop mouse are not pets. Stop dragging them around the house. We'll get you a pet once your allergies abate.
17. When I make the bed, for once forget the Parachute time from Gymboree. I can't fly the "parachute" for each bed I make.
18. What is this fascination for clothespins? I end up stepping on them or sitting on them at all odd places and can never find them when I'm hanging out the laundry. 
19. Watering the plants are fine. Drowning them is not. And no...they don't want to take a bath like you do for an extended time.
20. Don't take my gripes to heart. You're beautiful but try targeting more sleep time because when you sleep my world is a more serene place.

With Love Always,

Your Deranged Mother

Retribution...

“Vengeance is mine, and I will repay.”

Or something to that extent I imagine must have passed by an old chappie's lips when four loud, boisterous kids from his neighborhood would filch his precious stack of clothes pins and make them disappear day after day..

The more he complained to his neighbors (the parents of the brats) the more clips kept disappearing. They'd go off the clothes line and end up in the oddest places, like the water tank. Which after a point of time seemed to verily have more clips lying at the bottom than coins in the Trevi Fountain itself!

Anyhow, he'd rant and rave and often cuss at them, not that they gave a hoot! It was fun to see the crusty old man finally move his potato sack of a body off the swing and lumber after them. Else it was the swing where he sat, day after day and made it squeak,squeak and squeak as if it was his life's purpose.

The brats didn't know that the irritable man who always told on them was actually retired and wanted nothing more to sit on his swing and sip from his stainless steel glass of booze that would remain undetected in that wettest of dry lands. So the sight of children causing a ruckus put a cramp in his guzzling plans indeed!

And if he stayed compliant and ignored them, he would have to face the task of answering his not so little woman who would wonder about the regular disappearance of her clothes pins.

Cut to present day- one of the brats is grown up now. Somewhat. When she finished her laundry today and went to hang up the innumerable little things that her child grows through daily, she found that she wasYET AGAIN short of clipsies..!

How she gnashed her teeth and wished that for once her beloved dumpling would throw something else off the balcony or find other things to confiscate instead of the oh-so important clips...

And while seething and doubling up the clothes (since there weren't enough clips to go around) she thought of a curmudgeon whose clips she and her fine companions would to love to chuck into the water tank or use as marks to get badams off the tree.

And then it came home to her...what goes around definitely comes around. And there was plenty more coming her way...!

The hard and soft of it all..

Right from the time my son was born, I was struck by how delicate he was. I knew babies are vulnerable and helpless but this one seemed to embody those qualities and more.

He was a thin baby, weighing just on this side of an acceptable birth weight but he never lacked spunk.

That 'scrawny' baby's learnt to run now and also balance himself on his toes to reach heights hitherto out of his reach.

One thing that's absolute about children is that you NEVER know what they'll do next. If you think there's a line they haven't crossed yet, they always manage to cross it and then some! So if you threaten your kid with that 'last straw that breaks the camel's back', you'd better be prepared to have a whole herd of camels waiting out there. Your offspring will find plenty more straws and with it plenty of camels' backs too.

I used to think of little children (infant to toddler stage) as being fragile but it's us as parents who're fragile methinks. The kids are resilient and how! They fall, they bleed, they sprout bumps here, there and everywhere and they still keep going even after the tears have left tracks on their face.

And speaking of tracks, while you may not need therapy to get over the minor cuts and nicks on your child; it definitely takes some doing to see your child hurt and you not being able to prevent it. And some things do stay with you. Whether it makes you a better parent or a hovering one is anyone's guess.

And by the time you're over the initial trauma and your monkey is again gallivanting off for newer places to fall down from; you tell them what's sure to become your motto in life- "Don't cry! You wanna cry? I'll give you something to cry about if you dare do something like this (fill in blank with your pet peeves about your kid) ever again!!!"

And you go on. Both of you...sometimes with one chipped tooth, a brief black and blue mark and you with a near-paranoid obsession for stuff your child could hurt yourself on again. But you do go on.

And before you know it, they're onto newer things, more things they could make hurtful for themselves and with you still trying to be their life-long safety net and catch them before they fall. But that's not to be...what is to be their ever-growing curiosity, activity and ability to bounce back each time.

Amen to that! The rest will keep I suppose :)