Mama Says So

It's here!

2012-01-18T20:53:00.000+05:30

*takes a deep breath*

(Yes, I know. It's been exactly four months since my last post. But that is the subject of another post, which I promise will not be another four months in the coming.)

This post is a particularly special one. It's been one that I have been waiting with baited breath to write for well over a couple months, ever since the lovely Kiran Manral, of KarmicKids, FortyAndCounting and IndiaHelps fame and a very dear friend, announced that she had written her first novel.

Last week, the big moment finally arrived and The Reluctant Detective went on sale. I jumped at the opportunity to order the book from Flipkart. I had hoped to actually read the book before I wrote this but a life with no time to blog also leaves me with less time to read so I am just a few chapters down. But it's been a totally fun read so far - with laughs on every page, a very relatable lead character and a rollicking pace that makes me long for the days when I had the luxury of getting through a book in one sitting.

The Reluctant Detective revolves around Kanan Mehra, a thirty-something suburban housewife and young mother with a penchant for sticking her curious nose into things she definitely, absolutely and certainly shouldn't go near. When a couple of corpses turn up in quick succession in her neighbourhood, she teams up with her detective friend, Runa, in a half-hearted attempt to find the murderers, only to suspect that perhaps the detective business doesn't quite become her. A hilarious account of how not to get involved in other people's murders, The Reluctant Detective is every school-gate mom, searching for a purpose to her life beyond kitty lunches, shopping and fish pedicures.

To know more about the book, where you can get it and what others are saying about it, head over here.

My Own Byline

2011-09-18T22:38:00.001+05:30

Last weekend, a commenter on my previous post asked whether I'd be interested in writing a guest column for the Indian Express Sunday supplement on the first year of motherhood. Well, 'interested' is too mild a word - the idea of seeing my name in print was thrilling!

And today, the column appeared in print. I couldn't get my hands on the actual paper for love or money but a few of my friends did and have been asked to save me the copy for posterity.

For now, I've had to make do with the online edition and that's what I shall share with you guys. You can read the article here. Let me know what you think.

Disclaimer: That is not me hiding behind that baby in the accompanying picture.

Toddler Fashion Trends

2011-09-08T16:18:00.000+05:30

There's been a lot of whining on this blog lately and what is much needed is some light entertainment and nothing does that better than funny photos of kids. So here's a look into what avant-garde toddlers are sporting these days.

No shrinking violets these little girls, they wear their superhero ambitions on their sleeve...er, bum. They are not averse to borrowing their brothers' (clean) undies to pull off the authentic look either.

The parade of hats at Prince William's wedding have nothing on this. For faddish young babes, shampoo hats are the it-accessory to be seen in.

And shoes in the correct size are so over-rated right? Much, much cooler to borrow over-sized shoes from the shoe cupboard.

What's that, you say? It's a multi-purpose toddler t-shirt - can also double as a head scarf or even a turban. Comes in handy in games of peek-a-boo too.

When you are this cute, there's not much you can't carry off :)

Next Doctor, Please

2011-09-04T16:23:00.000+05:30

It's been over a month since I last posted and I don't have a real reason for my absence. It was just a case of blogger's block, plain and simple. But nothing resurrects lost blogging mojo faster than a need to rant about something. And rant, I shall.

Over the last couple of months, I have had a few run-ins with the medical community and I have to say that I am thoroughly disillusioned with their ilk. It's not like I was wearing rose-tinted glasses earlier - I posted not too long ago about my earlier run-ins with doctors out to make a quick buck. But three incidents over the last three months have re-opened that particular Pandora's box and made me ever-more suspicious of doctors.

The first happened when Ayaan, pushing an empty swing, got distracted for an unfortunate moment and had the said swing smack into his face. There was not much blood but there was a small cut on his eyebrow and two nasty bruises, both under and above his eye and one on his nose. I was pretty sure it was nothing serious but with head injuries, it's best not to take a chance. So I rushed him to the ER of a reputed children's hospital within quick driving distance of our house.

By the time we got there, Ayaan was clearly past the pain and shock of his injury and was bouncing around in his usual fashion. A doctor came to see him and quizzed us about his injury and my answers to all of his questions - vomitting, dizziness, disorientation - were in the negative. Then he examined Ayaan and announced that, in his opinion, there had been damage to the nasal and ocular bones and since these could cause internal bleeding, it would be best to conduct a CT-scan.

You mention 'internal bleeding' to a mother and she will pretty much acquiesce to anything and before I knew what was happening, I was being ushered over to a counter to sign some forms and fork over a reasonably obscene amount of money. The boy was then made to lie absolutely still and subjected to some radiation so that they could conclude that, surprise surprise, nothing was broken and there were no internal injuries.

At this point, I was a little irked with myself for getting conned into doing the CT-scan but I was still willing to give him the doctor the benefit of the doubt. But get this, we never saw him again. The report was handed over to me by some junior assistant, who reassured me that everything was fine. Along with that, I was handed an ER report which had some medical advice illegibly scribbled on it by the missing doctor. I had to ask the assistant to read it and tell me what was written - an ointment for the wound and advice to return in case of vomiting or excess bleeding - which he did most grudgingly. Obviously, since he had met his objective of fleecing me, the doctor no longer felt any need to deal with me.

Also, my regular paediatrician (who wasn't available at the time of the incident) saw Ayaan a couple of days later and was very surprised that a CT-scan had been suggested at all.

The next incident has been sort of a eye-opening with regards to Tarana's w-sitting and the months of physiotherapy we did in Mumbai. I needed to know whether to continue the same. I met with three doctors here - all highly recommended and successful paediatricians - and all three opined that her physical skills and development were well within the range of normal for her age. They strongly disagreed with the need for any further physiotherapy or corrective footwear. I am totally confused on this front. What the hell was going on in Mumbai then? Were those doctors simply taking me for a ride? Or are these Hyderabad doctors just less experienced with this issue? Having met not one but three of the supposedly best paediatricians here and being told to do nothing (other than favouring closed shoes over sandals), I am a loss to understand this.

The third and last incident happened just last week. I had posted about Ayaan losing his first tooth and I felt that the permanent tooth was coming in a little crooked. I pulled out the number of a dentist that a friend had recommended and took Ayaan along for a check-up. The dentist said that the tooth's alignment was fine but pointed out a black spot on one of the back teeth and informed me that it was a cavity that needed an urgent root canal. Since this was swanky clinic, I was then taken through a power point presentation about root canals (!) and presented with an estimate of 10,000 bucks for the entire procedure. Mind you, this diagnosis was made without a proper x-ray because the oral x-ray probe was too big for a little boy's mouth and Ayaan kept gagging on it before they could get a good picture. Also, when they tapped the tooth, Ayaan felt no pain - a bit unlikely if the tooth was decayed badly enough to need a root canal.

All my money-grubbing doctor antennae were up after this visit so I decided to get a second opinion. And what do you know. Dentist #2, as reputed as Dentist #1 but much less flashy, and his assistant separately examined the tooth and concluded that the black spot was, in fact, not a cavity at all!!! They said it was just a flap of gum that had not grown out of the way and its blackish appearance was a result of blood having clotted there from Ayaan biting down on it whilst chewing. Next steps - do nothing!!!

Now, don't get me wrong. Doctors have as much of a right as the next guy to run their businesses with a profit motive. But profiting through inflated diagnoses and unnecessary medical procedures is clearly and totally unethical. Especially when it means destroying a perfectly healthy tooth or exposing a young child to radiation just so that the hospital can recover the costs of a swanky CT scan machine.

Apologies for the diatribe. I just needed to get that off my chest. And get back into the blogging saddle. Yeah, I'm back, baby!

(Mis)Adventures in the Kitchen

2011-08-01T22:16:00.000+05:30

Apparently, there is more to being a stay at home mom than just staying at home. You have to obsess about their friends, spend some quality time with them, personally drop and pick them up from school and when you get some time off from all that, you have to morph into a veritable Julia Child and serve up nutritious, delicious, home-cooked meals too. (I would have said Nigella Lawson, but I am just not feeling that sexy these days)

Now for some history. I do not cook, never did, never felt the need to. My mom, who worked full time, was an infrequent cook and when she did enter the kitchen, it was usually to whip out one of her recipe books and carefully follow their instructions to bake us a cake or cook a Chinese meal. Cooking was not big in her scheme of things and I was not expected to learn to cook while I was growing up either. My paternal grandmother tried to get me to learn because it was unthinkable to her that a girl not know how to cook. I told her I'd be willing to learn if my brother learnt alongside... so nothing came of that.

Once I moved away from home and started working, I was lucky enough to always be in Mumbai and have very reliable maids. My contribution to the kitchen stopped at buying groceries and giving instructions on what was to be prepared. I cooked very occasionally and it was an 'event' that involved identifying recipes, shopping for exotic ingredients (which got tossed after one use because they rotted before they were so much as looked at again) and clearing all other plans for the evening. This didn't change with motherhood either - I saw my job as making sure my kids ate healthy, tasty food - being their personal chef was not in the job description, as far as I was concerned.

And then we moved to Hyderabad and my luck ran out. I have managed to find a part-time cook and her cooking is pretty decent but she thinks nothing of playing hooky without so much as a moment's notice. The first few times that she didn't show up I just packed the kids into the car and took them out for lunch. But after a point, it seemed a bit excessive. I mean, you can take pride in outsourcing food when you are a working mom and don't have the time or bandwith to take on kitchen duties. But as a stay at home mom, rushing to a restaurant or the take-out folder at the drop of a hat seems kind of erm... lazy.

So, I decided to pull up my proverbial socks and learn how to cook. And it's been an interesting journey so far. I have been trying my hand at simple stuff like dals and sabzis but also experimenting with somewhat more exotic stuff from cookbooks and various food blogs.

For starters, I have set myself really low benchmarks. If the kids eat it without a fuss, I count it as a success. And I have to say the kids have been real troopers - they have eaten everything from slimy bhindi (how was I supposed to know bhindi goes to hell when water is added to it), overdone dal and undercooked potatoes. Their unwavering unfussiness has kept me going, otherwise I would have thrown in the towel and run screaming towards the takeout menus weeks ago.

My biggest saviour has been this book - The First Time Cookbook. I picked it up on a whim years ago and have hardly looked at it since. But it really is a fantastic book and I could not recommend it more for those looking to make their first forays into the world of Indian cooking. It teaches you things most cookbooks assume you already know like what vessels to buy, shopping for and storing vegetables, meat and spices and most importantly the authors do away with the most confusing of instructions 'Add salt to taste' and tell you exactly how much to add. Its first recipe is a foolproof method for making plain rice, it covers all dals, details a foolproof and easy method to set your own curds and even has instructions for boiling an egg. It is as if someone wrote a cookbook after looking into my head and knowing what I'd need if I ever decided to enter the kitchen. With its help, I can now at least put together a basic meal. I have even experimented with somewhat advanced stuff from the book like matar paneer and dum aloo with reasonable success (which, like I said, simply means that the kids ate it)

The other book I have really been enjoying cooking from has been chef Ritu Dalmia's The Italian Khana. This book is the polar opposite of the previous book in terms of ease of use. The ingredients can be hard to find, the instructions can assume a level of foreknowledge that a novice cook might not possess and the recipes are laid out in a confusing manner - instead of chapters on soups, starters, main courses and desserts, her book is divided into sections like 'Cooking with Friends', 'Showing off', and 'Cooking for the Beloved'. Not everything in the book is easy to cook and there have been some not-so-great meals as a result (the kids still ate them though - you see what I mean about them being troopers) but I have learnt some useful stuff. Her recipes for tomato sauce and pesto are very doable, so no more store-bought stuff for our pastas.

I have also been trying my hand at baking cakes. My target is to bake at least one cake or batch of cookies a week so Ayaan gets home-made goodies in his school tiffin. Until recently, all my baking was done in my microwave, which happens to have a convection cooking option as well but it does have its limitations - the cakes don't taste as good and you can basically only use round cake tins. So I went ahead and invested in the Morphy Richards OTG (Oven-Toaster-Grill). So far, the results have been mixed. The first two things (an applesauce cake and chocolate chip cookies) I attempted to bake in it were burnt even though I followed the instructions to a T. In fact, the recipe for the choco-chip cookies was from the cookbook that came with the oven! And when I baked a batch with the same batter in my microwave, those came out just fine. However, the chocolate cake I baked in the oven came out perfect. Very confusing.

Not including the baking, I try and cook at least twice a week irrespective of the maid's absenteeism. Since I want to master the process as a whole, I do everything required to put the dish on the table, including chopping the vegetables, which I could easily outsource to the cook or the full-timer. This takes me a-g-e-s and my fingers and nails are full of scrapes; it's a miracle I haven't done any serious injury to myself.

I am slow in many other ways as well. I can't multi-task for peanuts. I need to make one dish at a time and as a result, I need to spend at least two hours in the kitchen to put together a relatively simple meal. I also completely lack instinct when it comes to cooking so I look for recipes which tell me exactly how much of stuff to add and when to assume that the dish in question is done. I'd like to think I will one day get to a point when I can effortlessly thrown some random ingredients into a dish without looking at a recipe book or using my measuring cups and produce something delicious. I don't know if that day will ever come, though I do know it is not likely any time in the near future.

The fringe benefit of cooking regularly is that I am loving the way my kitchen looks. It has never been this clean or well-organsied. In Mumbai, my cook had a free run of the place and while she churned out yummy stuff, she tended to be messy and had her own way of putting stuff away. It was often impossible for me to locate stuff on my own and other than the occasional cleaning drives, I pretty much let her do her own thing. Now, everything is spic and span and I know down to the last container where everything is. It is strangely satisfying.

So that, in short, is the story of my initial forays into the kitchen. From being something that I detested, I now find the task of cooking fairly tolerable and depending on what I am making, even enjoyable. Let's see what the future brings.

How Not To Potty Train a Toddler

2011-07-28T23:00:00.002+05:30

This post will pretty much write itself if I share two of my tweets from last week.

First this:

And then two days later, this:

Yes, you may now join the dots and fall off your chairs laughing while I mourn the loss of my third limb, my precious iPhone. If you are particularly mean, like some folks on iPhone forums, you may start framing a preachy comment on the inadvisability of taking one's phone to the loo.

Now for the gory details. I have had the Koi Pond app on my phone for the longest - Ayaan used to love it when he was younger and it was a surefire way to keep him busy at the doctor's office. For those who don't know it, it is a simple app with fishes floating on the screen - you can feed the fish by shaking the phone or scare them away by touching them. A few days ago, I introduced it to Tarana during potty time and soon discovered that the watery visuals and sounds had an almost magical effect on her bladder and she demanded the 'fishie game' ever time she deigned to oblige me by sitting on the throne. Since she was on the baby seat, there seemed very little space or chance of her being able to drop it into the toilet bowl, or so I thought. So one fine day, I left the loo for a measly 30 seconds only to hear a splashing sound and rushed back in to find that the seemingly impossible had happened.

Without any queasiness whatsoever, born out of six years of being a mother and all that that entails in terms of 'bathroom duties', I quickly fished it out. I switched it off, ran it under the tap, applied some sanitiser and wiped it down. Then I went online. It turns out that there are a lot of kindred souls whose phones have suffered similar fates. There was some interesting remedies, like one that involved baking the phone in an oven at a low temperature for 8 hours. I decided to go for a less extreme step that many seemed to swear by. It involved removing the SIM tray, wiping out all cavities with a earbud and then packing the phone away for a fortnight in a bag filled with rice. Yes, it sounds weird but at this point, I don't have much to lose and the rice supposedly helps draw out all the moisture. It's just been 3 days so it remains to be seen if it actually works.

So there you have it. My public service announcement for the month. DO NOT USE YOUR PHONE AS A TOILET TRAINING DEVICE. I think I should change my blog tagline to 'Mama Says So. Making Mistakes So You Don't Have To'.

Milestone Alert

2011-07-26T15:47:00.000+05:30

On Friday night, Ayaan held out his palm towards me and said, 'Mama, look! My tooth fell out'. The tooth had been shaky for a while and we had been eagerly waiting for it to fall out so that the tooth fairy could visit. So much excitement ensued.

First, we had to discuss how to keep the tooth under his pillow. The brat was in favour of just putting the tooth there. But I, having no desire to rummage around for a teensy bit of tooth under his pillow in the dark and risking waking him up, insisted that we put in an envelope to make it easier for the tooth fairy to find.

Next, there was the question of what the tooth fairy's going rate was these days for a tooth. When we were kids, I remember getting a few rupees which would go as far as buying myself a packet of boiled sweets or the much wanted bottle of Campa Cola or even a packet of Crax but that was it. Times having changed, I decided on Rs. 100 as adequate compensation per tooth.

I decided to check with the brat what he thought the tooth fairy would give him and he confidently announced '1000 rupees!' I almost fell off my chair and then when I had collected my wits about me, I gave him some spiel about the tooth fairy having to give money to lots of kids around the world so it was unlikely that she would be able to afford a thousand bucks, which was a LOT of money. To his credit, the brat took this in his stride.

Once he was fast asleep, I sneaked into the kids' room and retrieved the envelope and replaced it with a crisp 100-rupee note. In the morning, he came rushing out of his room bright and early and held out it with great pride. It was super cute. I was asked to keep it in my purse for safekeeping but in the coins section so it did not get mixed up with the rest of my hundred rupees. I decided to hold the lesson on money and its fungibility. :)

He wanted to go to the toy shop to decide what to spend the money on. It was quite disappointing for him to realise that everything that he wanted (remote control helicopter, set of toy airplanes and a big globe amongst other things) was way beyond his slender means. A part of me wanted to step in and buy him one of those things but then the mean mommy half prevailed and I stuck to my resolve of having him choose something that fit his budget. He asked if he could have some time to think about it and come back another time and we left.

Since then, he has also asked if his money could pay for a dinner for all of us in an Italian restaurant. I had to regretfully tell him that it would not and suggested that we could go to McDonalds and order a round of fries but he wasn't too thrilled at the idea. So back to the drawing board. Meanwhile, the money remains safely nestled in my coin apartment.

So all you moms of gap-toothed brats, what are your practices when it comes to fallen teeth? Do your kids believe in the tooth fairy? What do you do with the teeth (some people bury them, I have preserved his first one)? How much, if anything, do you shell out for the tooth? Tell me.

Down with Mommy Guilt

2011-07-22T11:32:00.000+05:30

Art tagged me with this tag. The rules are:

Write about 2 instances where you have put yourself before your child/ children... been a wee bit selfish.
How did you feel? Did you feel a pang of guilt or were you comfortable?
Tag 2 more moms

I have been a working mom for about four years and, to hear some tell it, that is the ultimate way to put your own needs ahead of the kids' needs. But what with that being ancient history for the time being and all, let me think of some stuff from more recent times.

The first instance involves the pre-bedtime routine we follow in our house. In Mumbai, I was the one who got them brushed, changed and ready for bed. But here, what with me being a slave to their demands all day long, I am all mommied out by the time dinner is done. So this task has been handed over to Jai. There was a lot of whining about this for a while but I just hardened my heart and ignored it. To stay truly out of the various grumblings and battles that go on during these 20-odd minutes, I keep myself safely out of earshot and line of sight. It's not like I have anything very pressing to do with this time - usually I am just downstairs twiddling my thumbs on Twitter. I don't feel the slightest iota of guilt about this and consider this as Jai's quality time (if whining and resistance can be counted as such) with the kids.

Take Two. It's exhausting being a role model 24-7. If I feel the urge to stuff my face with chocolate or some other junk food just 15 minutes before dinner time, I sometimes indulge that urge. I wait till the kids are occupied with something, sneak into the kitchen and chow down the stuff before they are any the wiser. This makes me feel somewhat dishonest but the happy feeling in my stomach more than compensates. (On a related note, I recently purchased a jar of Nutella, ostensibly for the kids - but a week later, it was all gone and the kids were never even informed of its existence).

Those are mine then. What about you folk? I tag Noon and Sai. Take it away, ladies.

Crafty beginnings

2011-07-18T11:28:00.000+05:30

I have never been much into doing crafts with Ayaan. Books have always been the cornerstone of our quality time together. But at six, he's now starting to read on his own more and more and though there is a part of me that wants to grab the book out of his hands and insist on reading it to him, I am thrilled that his love for books goes beyond cuddling up to me and being read too.

But he won't read all the time and there are other times where his energies need to be channelised. Otherwise crazy things start to happen - like last weekend, when he managed to get hold of the maid's talcum powder and sprinkle it all over the kitchen floor, sink and freshly washed dishes. Also, I am fed up of having a constant stream of his pals running through the house at all odd hours of the day, so I have designated Tarana's afternoon nap time as a sort of an activity hour for just the two of us. On some days, we just lie next to each other and read our individual books. But on other days, he's way too keyed up after school to settle down to something so low on energy. So on those days, I rack my brain to come up with stuff we can do together.

I have been reading some mommy craft blogs and mostly feeling over-awed by the ability and willingness of these moms to create super-fancy stuff with their kids. My objectives have been somewhat less grand - I want to do stuff that both of us will enjoy and that will be within the range of Ayaan's skills (and mine).

If you promise not to laugh, I'll show you some of things we did over the last couple of weeks.

One of the first activities I designed for him was a scavenger hunt. I didn't want to make it too hard since he is blessed with the frustration tolerance of a wounded tiger but I also didn't want to make it too easy. So this is what I came up with:

His answers were actually quite fascinating and very different from what seemed obvious to me. For things that can stretch, he came up with arms because we stretch them when we wake up. And despite having a clock and a measuring tape lying within his line of sigh, he took a long time to find something with numbers of it and finally settled on Tarana's counting book lying upstairs in their room. It was surprisingly fun and we managed to get through it without him losing his cool.

Then I came across these adorable, and eminently doable flower girls. We broke this up into two separate activities. On day one, we went around our complex, scavenging for all the fallen leaves and flowers and twigs we could find. On the second day, we used them to put together these artworks. Mine is a girl in a garden with the sun shining in the sky (at this point, I'd like to remind you of your promise not to laugh):

Ayaan's is supposed to be a setting (orange) sun and a tree with a ladybird sitting on one of the branches:

The one below was Ayaan's idea. He found this rock when we were out scavenging and he wanted to paint it with all the colours in his paintbox, even mixing some to make new colours. The result: my new paperweight.

So that is what we have been up to. We are now in the process of making a papier mache stick puppet. I was hoping to make something pretty like a butterfly but the son had plans of his own and we have made a mushroom that is waiting to be painted. Expect to see it if it is even vaguely presentable :)

Class Concerns

2011-07-08T17:14:00.000+05:30

I have been wondering whether to write about this, especially because it seems like something that might draw the trolls in but then what's the fun in always being on the safe side of the line. Also, it's a genuine problem I am facing and I am hoping for some suggestions.

One of the big upsides of this move has been the place we live in. It's very centrally located, yet it has all the facilities of an apartment complex in the suburbs - spacious house, play area, swimming pool and most importantly, lots of young children. The last one was something that was on my must-have list as we were house-hunting. In Mumbai, we lived in a smallish building and there was not a single child in the building with whom Ayaan could play. The youngest boys were 4-5 years older and there were a couple of baby girls. Finding him age-appropriate company outside of school hours meant organising play dates and daily trips to the park.

Now, the thing to know about our complex is that most of the houses have a servant's quarter allotted to them. So the families living on the property include those of the domestic staff living in this accommodation. And Ayaan seems to largely prefer the company of these kids and this is starting to bother me. This is probably the point where some of you will think I am class-conscious, a snob and maybe even a racist. But just hold your horses for a few more paragraphs as I get to what exactly troubles me about the current situation.

It all started about a fortnight after we had moved in. This young girl (let's call her Raji) was playing just outside the downstairs house, where her mother works. School had not yet started and being at a loose end, Ayaan saw her and started interacting with her. Notice I say interacting as opposed to talking or chatting because Raji does not know a word of Hindi and Ayaan does not know a word of Telugu. Anyway, about twenty minutes later, he came and asked me if he could have her over to play. At that point, I found his supreme ignorance of class boundaries utterly charming and I immediately agreed. An hour later, it was lunch time and they were still at play, so I invited her to stay for lunch (rather I told my Telugu-speaking cook to do the needful).

The next day, she was back. Their budding friendship survived the traumatic (for Ayaan) incident where Raji broke his treasured snow globe and was nourished by the constant stream of snacks that Ayaan kept appropriating from the kitchen to share with his new friend. Up till this point, I was still quite positively inclined to the events unfolding in my house. But I guess word got around about the stash of toys and the unlimited snacks and soon my house was like a creche for domestic staff's kids. A couple of days later, I came down to find five boys and girls sprawled across my living room eating from a jar of biscuits. And as they got comfortable in my house, things started to get chaotic and with a very dodgy maid situation and another baby (if I can still get away with calling Tarana that) in the house, it all got a bit too much. So I cut off the snacks and lo and behold, most of them disappeared.

But Ayaan is very clear about his preferences. On a typical evening, there are two disparate groups of kids playing outside in the complex - the kids of the residents and the kids of the help and they usually tend not to mix and Ayaan is usually (read: always) to be found with the latter. And it's not the snob in me upset about this; it's the mother.

Now for the stuff that bothers me. Firstly, there is the question of hygiene. I am not talking from a general, 'poor people are dirty' point of view but on the basis of stuff I have observed. The other day, I saw Raji's mom sitting on the steps of her house with her daughter and searching through her hair, in a way that mothers only do when they are looking for lice. I don't think regular baths and change of clothes are much of a priority either for most of these kids, judging by their appearance. Also, Ayaan was recently diagnosed with a case of intestinal worms, and I can't help but wonder....

Then there are the behavioural implications. While Ayaan might be blissfully unaware of class boundaries and hierarchies, these kids clearly are not. So that automatically makes it an unequal relationship and when they are playing together, Ayaan has no trouble donning his Alpha male avatar and giving free rein to his bossiness. Kids from a similar background are more likely to put him in his place and that's why Ayaan has stopped hanging out with the kids from the other flats.

Now this bothers me more than the hygiene issue. Because if there is a kid who needs friends who will teach him to play fair and keep him grounded, it's Ayaan. And these kids do nothing of the sort. Even though a couple of them are slightly older than Ayaan, he has managed to, in a few short weeks, establish himself as the leader of the pack and pretty much gets his way when they are playing together.

I am a loss when it comes to what to do about this though. I can't just forbid him from playing with these kids and force him to play with others. That will probably be a recipe for disaster and I am not sure I have appropriate answers for all the 'whys' that will follow any such order. Ideas, anyone? Or am I just over-thinking this and should I just let him choose his friends, whoever they (and their parents) might be.

Hyderabad Blues

2011-06-26T15:46:00.001+05:30

We got here about one and a half months ago and it has been one crazy settling-in process. A lot of things are still up in the air and I don't know when (and even if) this city will ever feel like home in the way that Mumbai did.

To start with, we had an awful experience with the packers and movers. Everything was dandy at the Mumbai end but when it came to unpacking the stuff in Hyderabad, things went southwards. They had promised that things would be unpacked and settled in by the weekend. On Saturday, the stuff arrived only by noon, then they took a two-hour lunch and finally packed off at 6 p.m, after announcing that despite previous assurances, they would not be working on Sunday. On Monday, they kept claiming they were on their way and finally showed up in the evening. They unpacked the rest of the stuff but had failed to bring their carpenter to assemble the kids' beds, bookshelves, etc. The carpenter finally showed up on Wednesday, making it a full 5 days before they completed what they had committed to do in 2.

This was our first experience of the Hyderabadi concept of time but was unfortunately nowhere near the last. The first three couple of weeks were an endless struggle to get the carpenter, the plumber and the electrician (the holy trinity, as I only semi-jokingly referred to them in a tweet) to show up and get the house into a basic level of functionality. Whenever called, they would promise to be at the doorstep in a manner of minutes, which usually turned into days. The carpenter has still not finished everything he was asked to do. The broadband provider, after payment, installation and week of dodgy connectivity, had the gall to tell me that they don't really support Macs. And many, many more such incidents for everything from the gas connection to the washing machine technician.

The language barrier is also quite substantial. Before I got here, I was labouring under the misconception that most people here spoke at least a passable degree of Hindi but that is far from the case. Most of the employees at the chain supermarkets can communicate in Hindi and/ or English but dealing with the smaller shopkeepers can be quite frustrating. One of the two receptionists at our paediatrician's office also can't speak a word of Hindi so I have to pray like hell every time I call that the other lady will attend to the phone.

The biggest challenge of all has been finding househelp. Again, language has been a problem and many of the employable maids in the area can converse only in Telugu. After some tough early days, I have managed to find two part-timers - one to cook, one to clean - so at least life is somewhat less gruelling. But the reliability factor here is low. Unlike my Mumbai maids, who rarely ditched without prior warning, not showing up at will seems to be the prerogative of these ladies. So, at least twice a week I am left holding a mop or tied to the stove depending on who has decided not to show.

I have had absolutely no luck finding any reliable help on the child care help front though. For the last one week, we have had a Bengali maid my mom arranged but she doesn't speak much Hindi and I don't see myself leaving her in charge of the kids even for a short time. The other day, Ayaan hurt himself in the play area and I had to take him to the ER (all's well, that end's well on that front, thankfully). Since it was Tarana's nap time, I put her down for a nap before I left and asked the lady to call me in case she woke up. I came back an hour later to find her (the maid) fast asleep while Tarana was crying loud enough for me to hear even before I opened the door. So, on the whole, I don't think she is going to work out. The search goes on.

The first two weeks were especially bad since I had both kids on my hands all day long and often had to get some cleaning/ cooking done on the side. But since Ayaan started school, things have been a little better. But it is still exhausting and I don't have a minute to myself. Even when I go to pick Ayaan up from school, I have to take Tarana with me and grocery shopping is an exercise in frustration with both the kids in tow. The other day, Tarana managed to grab my key ring (car, house and cupboard keys on it) and drop them while she was seated in the supermarket trolley and my hair turned substantially more grey in the ten minute rampage through the store it took to find them.

At this point, I also feel kind of isolated. I don't have any friends here and I am not getting a chance to make any since I don't have the bandwidth or the child care support to get out there and socialise. Forget other people, even a dinner or movie with the husband is an impossibility since there is no one to watch the kids.

And so that, to sum it up, is what has been happening at my end. I just re-read the post and I sound like a real Moaning Myrtle. The upside though is that I seem to be the only one in the family with the settling-in issues. The kids are loving it. It took Ayaan one day to settle into his new school and he is really happy there. Tarana loves the extra space. And Jai is finding work challenging but exciting. Hopefully, I'll catch up with them soon. Till then, be prepared for a lot more whining... :)

Sleepless in Mumbai

2011-05-08T05:32:00.002+05:30

It's 4 a.m. I have spent the last 5 hours trying to sleep, to no avail. The butterflies in my stomach just won't let up. They are alternating between creating havoc in my stomach and attempting to climb up into my windpipe and choke off my air supply.

So what's keeping me awake? To start with, all sorts of last minute shit is hitting the fan. The car was sent to Hyundai for a touch-up job over 10 days ago. They were supposed to deliver it back on Thursday. On Thursday, they said they would get it to us on Friday. Yesterday, they came up with a cock-and-bull story about the paint not having dried because of the cloudy weather (?!) and expressed their inability to get our car back to us before Tuesday. One day after we leave. (Thankfully, the car is on a separate truck so we are trying to get the packers to pick it up directly from the service station). The Siemens technician was supposed to come yesterday to screw the washing machine drum in preparation for transit. He didn't show, his phone is switched off and customer service is enjoying their weekend. The Tata Sky dude was supposed to come yesterday but has promised to come tomorrow now. The admin chick in my ex-company chose last week to wake up to my request from two months ago to tell Vodafone to transfer my number from the corporate plan and despite a very clear e-mail spelling out the same, sent them a mail asking them to deactivate the number. Much calling and running around happened and it's back on. God only knows what surprises today will bring.

And there is the big, humongous, life-changing move. This time tomorrow, I will be sleeping in a service apartment in Mumbai. This time on the day after tomorrow, I will be sleeping in my mom's house in Jaipur. This time next week, I will be sleeping in a hotel room in Hyderabad. This time next fortnight, I will be sleeping in our new house in Hyderabad. All of this sleeping, of course, assumes that the butterflies would have moved on to greener pastures.

Some people like to move. I don't. I had a wandering childhood. I never went to any school for more than three years in a row, lived in many towns and cities, went to boarding school and even stayed with my aunt for a couple of years. It made me yearn to settle down in one place and grow some roots. For me, Mumbai has been that place. Eleven long years in the city have made it my own, my home. It's the longest I have lived in any place, but it is much much more than that.

I came here in 2000 as a young trainee, fresh out of MBA school and a year spent in a rigourous cross-country training program. I moved into a company-provided chummery. It was a blessing - I didn't have to keep house or cook. I came and went as I pleased. I went out a lot, sowed my last wild oats (the ones that had survived MBA school) and enjoyed the kind of carefree freedom that few other cities in this country could have afforded me. I went out on debauched nights on the town (often with the girl gang), took public transport at the oddest of hours, saw the latest of the late night shows at the cinema and in general, waltzed about the city with supreme unconcern for my safety. Really, I couldn't have done it anywhere else.

In 2002, a few months after our wedding, Jai finally moved to Mumbai. Since I was in a conventional, stable job at a company where people tend to spend their entire careers, my career became and stayed the lead career till I upped and quit, so moving away from this city was never even an option.

Once Jai was here, the chummery was no longer an option and we finally moved to rented digs. We bought furniture, hired a maid and got a couple of dogs. We worked long hours, ate out a lot, watched a lots of movies and pretty much lived the DINK (double income, no kids) dream.

2005 was a watershed year. Ayaan was born. And life was never the same again. The littlest human being in our family became the biggest priority. All preconceived plans and notions went flying out of the window. I struggled with the decision to go back to work and finally did. We hired a nanny. We had to send the dogs away; thankfully my mother was happy to take them. We bought a house (flat).

Much of 2006 was spent doing up the house. I love this house. Leaving it is one of my biggest sorrows. We were lucky to buy it when it was still under construction and were able to do it up as we wished. The coloured panels in some of the rooms, the bright yellow wallpaper behind Ayaan's bed, the cheery red tiles in the kitchen. the fish motif in Ayaan's bathroom, and so much more. It's not going to be easy to live in an impersonal, rented house after this.

We moved in on New Years' Day in 2007. It's been four wonderful years. Yes, there were fights, tantrums, moments of doubts, and all the little inevitable downs of life. But above all that, we made a ton of memories here. Some of them reside only in my head, others have been captured on camera and still others left their physical mark - like the stains on Ayaan's door from all his sticking and the grubby finger marks on the walls - some boy-sized, others baby-sized. In the next few days, the painters and polishers will get to work and wipe out most of the physical reminders of our stay here and another family will move in and make the space on their own. But the stuff in my head, in my pictures folder and the blog will stay.

This house has been witness to Ayaan's journey from toddlerhood to boyhood. It welcomed Tarana into its arms when she was born and watched her leave infancy behind to become a vocal, active toddler. It has seen my transition from wannabe supermom to struggling SAHM. It's been home.

I guess it's time for goodbyes. Mumbai, I will miss you. I may come back to live here, I may not - the future is uncertain. But you have a special place in my heart that no other city can take. Product of a mixed marriage and a nomadic upbringing, I always struggled to name my 'native place'. After eleven, long years, I finally have the answer to that question. Thank you for that and for everything else.

Thank you for welcoming me into your arms. For not judging me. For protecting me when I was silly or less than sensible about my own well-being and safety.

Thank you for seeing me through my transition from footloose single girl to married woman to working mom to stay-at-home mom.

Thank you for enabling and nurturing me through ten years of a fulfilling career. I don't know what lies ahead but I do know that those years will stand me in good stead, no matter what I choose to do.

Thank you for helping me maintain and build some of the best friendships of my lifetime. For making sure that my best friends from college and MBA school have been in and out of the city. For the friends I made at work, who made office so much more than job.

Thank you for being kind to my children. With all your constraints, you have ensured a happy early childhood for them. You gave us trusted maids who cared for them with affection. And schools that we didn't have to fight for but were wonderful places for Ayaan to spend his pre-primary years. And friends, playdates, parks and so much more.

Thank you for being you. I wouldn't change a thing. (Except maybe the traffic)

In the immortal words of John Denver:
So kiss me and smile for me
Tell me that you'll wait for me
Hold me like you'll never let me go
'Cause I'm leaving on a jet plane
I don't know when I'll be back again
Oh, babe, I hate to go

Au revoir, Mumbai. Till we meet again.

A Fish Out of Water

2011-05-04T14:55:00.000+05:30

It's time to come clean. It's taken some time for me to admit this, even to myself, but I am starting to wonder if I am cut out for this stay-at-home mom business.

As a working mom, I felt stretched and exhausted and I envied women who didn't have to juggle motherhood and a career. I thought choosing to do just one - staying at home with the kids - would be easier in comparison. I thought I would finally be rid of the guilt monster, discover heretofore hidden founts of patience, have more time to read, and be rewarded with more content, secure and well-behaved kids. In a nutshell, I thought we would all be happier. It turns out I was wrong - we aren't.

On most days, everything just seems almost unbearably intense. Ayaan has always been a demanding child, trying to soak up every bit of the time and attention that I had to give and even that I didn't. I never minded all that much before because I was spending a fair amount of time away from him so I thought it was only normal that he would want his pound of flesh when I was around. I really expected a big change on this front once I quit my job. I thought he would become more secure and independent, but that has not happened. Add Tarana and her acute separation anxiety to the mix and it's mama-time all the freaking time! Despite the fact that there are two maids in the house at any given point of time, they both seem to want to hang out mostly with me.

A prime example of their clinginess is what happens every time I try to leave the house. Tarana has a screaming meltdown and Ayaan pelts me with questions about where I am going, why I need to go, when I will be back and why he can't come with me (in a tone that gets increasingly more whiny). I mean, for goodness sake, is it too much to ask that I can slip out for a short trip to the grocery store or the salon without facing a mini Spanish Inquisition at home?

I wrote a proud post about Ayaan's geekiness recently but on an everyday basis, it just translates into a LOT of questions. And towards the end of the day, it takes all my resolve to keep from snapping at him when he asks me what seems like his millionth question. And it's not just questions about the world around him but his need for a detailed reasoning for everything he asked to do. It just drives me crazy.

And the guilt? It never goes away. These days, I feel totally awful about my lack of patience. On most days, I spend a good part of my time with the kids nagging, scolding, yelling and even smacking. I go to bed feeling like an awful mother every single night. I resolve to be a more patient, loving parent the next day - a resolve that rarely lasts more than an hour on most days and I am back to being cranky, with my temper on a hair-trigger.

The last month has been especially hard since Ayaan has been home all day long and since he doesn't nap any more, and barring a few classes he goes for, that is 14 very long hours. I don't know whether it's his latent insecurities about the upcoming move, boredom, the fact that he misses his dad or a reaction to my crankiness, but he has been supremely high maintenance. A simple request to come for breakfast can become the cause of a major mutiny and the rest of the day just goes downhill from there.

Honestly, I didn't expect it to be this hard. I had this very utopian ideal of what my stint as a stay-at-home mom would be like. I thought life would be easier, more relaxed and more fulfilling. It has been anything but. I rarely get any time to myself, read fewer books in an average month than I did when I was working and can't even go to the loo without an entourage. It doesn't help that Jai is not here during the week. I am lot calmer and happier on the weekends when he is here but being the only go-to person for the kids five days a week, every week gets really stressful for me.

At the risk of sounding boastful, I have to say that I was a successful working mom. The four years I worked after Ayaan was born were good years. Sure, it was tiring and complicated. And yes, I was more impatient than I would have liked even back then. But overall, I have to say I rocked the working mom scene. I did well at my job, my home ran smoothly and Ayaan was a happy child (high-maintenance but happy). As a housewife, I don't quite cut it. I have nothing to show for my efforts but a messy house, meals entirely cooked by the maid and bratty kids.

Honestly, the fact that I feel this way makes me feel like a bit of a failure. I mean, come on, what kind of mother does it make me if the primary reason I think of going back to work is not professional ambition or financial need but to put some time and distance between me and my kids??! Go ahead. Say it. It makes me a bad mother. It won't be any worse than the names I have been calling myself in my head.

And now, big changes. We move to Hyderabad. New city. New school. No friends. No maids. I am terrified. I am giving it another six months. I hope by then, life will settle down and I will find a reliable maid. And if I am still feeling like I do right now, I am packing my lunch box and going right back to work. I think it will be best for me AND for the kids. That 'the best mother is a happy mother' cliche is right on the money.

Grabbing Travel by the Horns

2011-04-29T10:49:00.000+05:30

I had meant to write about my Matheran trip, but it happened during my dry spell and when I got back to blogging, it seemed like it was in the distant past (if two months can be called that). Then just today, I happened to read The Mad Momma's post about her recent travels and decided to write about this very unique trip I took.

Our book club decided to shake things up a little and do our February meet in Matheran, with families in tow. I checked with Jai a couple of months in advance and he committed to being in town on that weekend. But it was not to be, and two weeks before the upcoming weekend, something supremely important popped up on his work calendar and he backed out.

I had made up my mind to cancel but Sonya, who runs the book club, would not hear of it. My biggest issue was that I really could not see myself doing the 3-hour drive (some of it on scary, winding roads) alone. She nipped that objection in the bud by offering to take us along with her family in their SUV. I was still a little freaked out at the thought of traveling alone with the two kids, but a sudden spurt of adventurous spirit had me saying yes.

A few friends suggested I take one of the maids along to ease the burden but at a very basic level, this traveling with maids business just does not appeal to me. I never take my maids to restaurants either. It is just too weird - they would be uncomfortable sharing the dining table with us, I would be even more uncomfortable asking them to wait outside. It is very socially awkward for all concerned, to say the least. Moreover, I like to believe that when push comes to shove, I have the ability to manage the kids on my own and holidays are my one chance to prove this.

The first challenge was having the troops packed and ready to leave at the crack of dawn. This was not such a big deal since my kids are early risers in any case and Sonya and family were running late, so we were actually waiting down for them when they drove up at 7 a.m.

The drive to Matheran was relatively uneventful. Sonya has three lovely daughters and the youngest is just a couple of years older than Ayaan and they got along like a house of fire. They spent much of the drive in the back of the Scorpio, reading, chatting and generally fooling around. Tarana sat in my lap and was reasonably low maintenance. We stopped for breakfast at a little restaurant on the way, which happened to have fishes, geese and chicken so the kids had a gala time checking them out.

Those of you have never been to (or heard about) Matheran have to know this - no motorised vehicles are allowed beyond the parking lot, which is a good 45-minute hike from the town. There are essentially four ways to get there. You can take the toy train from a place called Neral but getting tickets can be quite a challenge, especially in the tourist season. Or you can drive up to the parking lot and then make the final ascent in one of the following ways: ride a horse, hire a manually-operated rickshaw or walk.

With the kids, the horse or rickshaw seemed to be a more sensible option but I decided to walk, with Tarana bundled into a sling. Ayaan was having a good time with Sonya's girls and since they were walking, I thought Ayaan would enjoy that more and the longish hike would be a good experience for him. I could have let him walk and taken Tarana on a horse or rickshaw with me, but he can be quite a handful and moreover, I wasn't sure he would agree to go without me. Also, I have a problem with hand-drawn rickshaws - they seem somewhat colonial and exploitative - and managing Tarana on a horse wouldn't have been easy either. So yes, we walked. My back and legs were seriously achy by the time we reached, especially since Tarana fell asleep and got about twice as heavy. Ayaan was a pretty good sport about what was probably the longest walk of his life, though he did get whiny towards the end.

We were staying at this lovely hotel called The Verandah in The Forest. For those of you who were reading me in 2006, we had been to this place when Ayaan was a toddler. Anyway, after a refreshing drink and a quick snack, the older kids went off to play while Tarana toddled all over the verandah with me in attendance.

There were eleven children in the group, including mine, and it turned out that 10 of them were girls!! I wondered if Ayaan would get bored but I don't think it bothered him at all. Barring two incidents, I barely saw him as he traipsed around the place with the other kids - hanging out in the treehouse, throwing pebbles into pond on the property and swinging away merrily.

The first incident happened when he got into a fight with one of the girls. For some reason, the two took an instant dislike to each other and before I knew what was happening, Ayaan poked her with his pencil. There was no harm done but he refused to calm down so he was hauled off to our room. He had a nuclear meltdown there that shook the very foundations of the place but once he was done with that and the accompanying fit of the sulks, he was ready to go back and play.

The other incident happened when he landed up in the pond. I wasn't there when it happened, but I think it was an accidental shove by one of the other kids and I went rushing over when I heard him screaming. The pond was less than a foot deep, so the only harm done was to his ego. I quickly handed Tarana to the first willing set of arms I found and rushed him in for a bath and a change of clothes. He was a bit subdued for the rest of the evening but thankfully, it was almost time for dinner when his bath was done.

They served the kids dinner first so after they had eaten, I put them both to bed and came out and joined the adults for the only bit of real adult conversation I got throughout the trip. We had dinner and then sat around discussing the books. It was good fun. I excused myself at midnight, knowing that my kids would be up in a few hours.

The next day, the kids were up by 6 and I had to keep them entertained in the room for a couple of hours. When I heard sounds of the other guests stirring, we went out and Ayaan headed straight to his favourite spot by the pond, where the other kids soon joined him. After breakfast, we headed out for a small trek. I came back early but Ayaan went on a longer jaunt with a group of kids and their parents. By the time they got back, it was check-out time. We stopped for lunch at a restaurant in the main town and started the walk back to the car park.

I think Ayaan had had his fill of walking by now and he complained endlessly on our way down. 'Mama, how much longer?', 'Mama, are we there yet?', 'Mama, I want to take a break' and so on and so forth. This was the hardest part of the trip for me. I was achy, sleep-deprived and exhausted and it took an almost super-human effort to stay positive and keep encouraging him to walk and keep up with the others. Once down, we drove straight back to Mumbai and though Ayaan was hyperactive and Tarana was cranky, we made it back in one piece.

Would I go on a holiday without Jai again? Probably not, definitely not till the kids are a little older and more self-sufficient, especially Tarana. She had just about started walking when we went on this trip and would refuse to stay put in one place. Having no other back-up, it meant constantly following and monitoring her and even with me watching, she managed to take a few spills, eat some mud and break a plate. So, it was not much of a break for me and I watched enviously as the parents with older kids (Ayaan and Tarana were the youngest in the group) lazed around in the planter's chairs and read their books or chatted desultorily.

I am glad I went though. I think Ayaan had a fantastic time. He got to spend some quality outdoors time, learned to get along with a diverse bunch of kids, and exceeded my expectations on his ability to walk. And me personally? I have to admit I felt a great sense of accomplishment at having flown solo and done a pretty good job of it. The only regret; I had my hands too full to take any pictures and the camera stayed comfortably ensconced in my backpack.

Mommy Comebacks

2011-04-26T07:40:00.001+05:30

One evening, I happened to be hanging out at my latest adda (also known as Twitter). I had just dropped Ayaan to his skating class and before that, we had had 'words'. It got me thinking about all the times when he said horrid or whiny stuff to me and I had managed to gather my wits around me and retort effectively. It resulted in a mini-series called #MommyComebacks. In the interest of keeping up my blog frequency, I decided to make a post out of them.

Brat: I don't like you.
Me: You don't have to like me. I just need you to listen to me.

Brat: You are not my friend.
Me: Yes, I know. I am your mother.

Brat: I know everything.
Me: Name all of Jupiter's moons.
Brat: I don't know them all.
Me: See! You don't know everything.

Brat: Why does he get to bring chips in his tiffin?
Me: Because I am not his mother.

Brat: I am not talking to you.
Me: Don't talk. Just listen.

Brat: I want to win this game.
Me: So do I.

Brat: When can I choose the hotel to stay in?
Me: When you are paying for it.

Good fun, no? What's your favourite mommy comeback?

Schools and CSA Awareness

2011-04-24T08:20:00.002+05:30

Some time in February, we headed down to Hyderabad to get the school admission process started. We were quite lucky since Ayaan got into 4 of the 5 schools on our list - some because he did well on a test, others because they liked the look of us and yet others which liked the look of our bank balance.

The first school we visited was a well-known school and we were offered a seat there after Ayaan cleared the test but I hoped we wouldn't have to take it because I just did not like the place. To start with, they had a written test and I have a problem with schools that test 5-year olds. Then I saw a teacher swatting a kid on his upper arm - I was too far away to see if it was done in anger but it left a bad taste in the month. Then, they wanted a hefty admission fee - in cash. Very, very shady.

So, we were pretty much decided against the school (in the hope we got into some of the others) but the final nail in the coffin was the principal's interaction with the parents and the way she responded to a parent's concern on child abuse and the measures the school was taking to protect the kids from it.

Now, I have never actually seen a deer caught in the headlights but I would bet good money that the look on the principal's face was a reasonably good likeness. I guess she was just not expecting a direct question on this. Once she had schooled her features back into their principal-like stern demeanour, she went on the offensive.

After making some vague and completely unconvincing sounds about how they take 'adequate measures' on all aspects of the children's safety, she then went on to say that children were much more likely to face abuse at home than at school. To make her point, she then went on to tell the story of a girl student who was being abused at home by a servant and how she did not tell her parents but confided in her teacher at school.

I thought her response was inappropriate on so many levels. Firstly, while she might be right about the fact that more kids are abused outside schools than in, it is hardly a reason to be complacent about the issue and have no stated policy on how the school plans to keep kids safe. Secondly, I was quite shocked at her 'story'. My husband felt she made it up on the spot and I hope he is right, because I don't think she has the right to violate some student's privacy by telling her story so casually in a public forum.

The laws on child sex abuse are virtually non-existent in India and there is no governmental pressure on schools to put in place a formal system for avoiding and dealing with incidents of sexual abuse. To add to that, the supply of good schools falls way short of demand so most parents aren't as pushy as they should be when it comes to holding schools accountable for their policies.

I am no expert in this field, but as a parent, I would like to see schools do the following when it comes to Child Sexual Abuse, I would like to see the following happening across schools:

Schools should have a greater sense of ownership of the children in their care and a partnership approach to working with parents to keep them safe. Ayaan's Mumbai school is pretty good in this respect. They pro-actively call experts to conduct an annual session for parents, making it compulsory for at least one parent to attend.
Schools should also work in safety lessons into the curriculum including 'good touch-bad touch' and not talking to strangers.
In addition to parents and children, the teachers and staff should get regular training on appropriate behaviour with students and warning signs displayed by abused children.
There should be a written policy of Child Sexual Abuse and it should not be a state secret - any current or prospective parent wanting to know about it should be able to access it easily.
There should a robust background check on all new employees - both teachers and other staff.
Every school should have a qualified child psychologist or counsellor on hand to pick up warning signs amongst studens and work with victims.
School buses should have responsible escorts, preferable a teacher from the school.
The school toilets should be brightly lit and easily accessible and manned by gender-appropriate staff.
In the event of an incident, big or small, happening in the school, it should not be hushed up and swept under the carpet. The privacy of the abused child is supremely important and should not be breached but strict action should be taken against the perpetrator and this should be publicised as a deterrant. The school should warn other schools in the city about this individual so that he does get another job working with kids.

That's what I could think of. Do let me know if you have some ideas on this. I will update and add to the post.

This post is part of the Child Sexual Abuse Awareness Month. Go here if you want to read more.

Blowing My own Trumpet a Wee Bit

2011-04-21T11:47:00.000+05:30

A few commenters on my last post happened to say that I worried needlessly about Ayaan clearing the tests and indicated that since he was a bright child, he would have made it anyway.

I beg to differ. I don't want to take away credit from him. He is definitely a smart boy and in the end, he went into a room without me and delivered the goods. But I'd like to talk a bit about the run-up to these tests and way that I prepped Ayaan for them, which I do believe made a big difference.

Both the schools that required him to take a test were kind enough to provide a curriculum. The things that had me worried were Hindi, addition, subtraction and spelling numbers up to 100, none of which he had been taught in his Mumbai school. I mean, come one, in the English section you say you expect them to know three and four letter words - then how the hell are they supposed to know how to spell words like nineteen and eighty eight?!

The Hindi part was easily solved. Once we told the schools that he hadn't been introduced to written Hindi at school, they said they would not count the Hindi section when scoring the test. But the rest of the stuff, he had to know! Teaching it to him was easier than I thought. We had already been working with fingers to add small numbers - I just taught him to draw a short line for each number and then count them for addition and cross out lines when it came to subtraction. His number spellings were a bit dodgy but he got them phonetically right (thurteen) most of the time, so I left it at that.

A bigger part of my effort went into emotionally preparing him for the test. Knowing him as I do, I knew that that would be the clincher. Here are some of things that I think worked:

I played on his excitement of moving to a new city. I told him that we couldn't move unless he got into a school by clearing a test. I told him that he needed to practice doing some tests before the real ones and he was really charged up and was practically nagging me to set the tests for a couple of days before I got around to doing it. Overall, he was as invested as I was in the goal of cracking those tests.
I set him about 7 tests that he had to sit and do, one a day for a week. I drilled it into him that I would not be there to help him. The first day I sat in the room with him - I was available for clarifications, but not answers. On the second day, I stayed in the room but I sat in a corner and read my book - he was not allowed to ask me anything and was told to leave questions that he didn't understand or know the answer to. The rest of the tests he had to do alone in his room, and for one, I timed it for when I was out of the house.
Ayaan does not deal well with failure. A difficult puzzle or a craft activity that does not go as planned can be the cause of a severe meltdown. The first few times he didn't know the answer, he got awfully upset and he actually crumpled up one of the tests in a fit of rage. But towards the end, he learnt to accept that he would not know all the answers and peacefully move on to the next question.
I set pretty elaborate tests. There were fill in the blanks, sums, pictures to be labelled, match the following, and a whole lot more. I think he was pretty familiar with almost every type of question that was finally asked in both the tests.

It worked. At the second school, the teacher who took Ayaan in gave me very pessimistic vibes saying that there were only a couple of seats left and unless he scored over 80%, he didn't stand a chance. There was a marked change in his body language later and he told me that the boy was intelligent and he was very impressed with the confidence with which he left my side and went in for the test. He said most kids at this age tend to cling, whine and even cry.

So yes, I am going to take at least some of the credit for Ayaan acing those tests. I am not saying that he wouldn't have done it without my help. But it would have been harder for him, intellectually and emotionally.

The Final Countdown

2011-04-18T21:50:00.001+05:30

Our decision to move lock, stock and barrel to Hyderabad was taken way back in November but for quite some time, it was merely a theoretical concept in my head. This was especially so because we had not told Ayaan about the move. I wanted to tell my maids as late in the day as possible, worried that they would start hunting for jobs the moment they heard that we were off in the not-to-distant future. And there is no way to keep a secret if the garrulous 5-year old in the house is in on it.

I finally broke the news to Ayaan (and subsequently the maids) some time in February, a couple of weeks before we needed to take him down to Hyderabad for the schools admission process. I thought I would take my time about it and slowly build up the excitement, but once the ball was rolling, he pretty much took it all the way. It went something like this:

Me: Hey, you know what? When I was a child, I never went to the same school for more than three years.
Ayaan: How many schools did you go to?
Me: *doing some quick mental maths* Six
Ayaan: Six schools?! Why so many schools, Mama?
Me: Because Patti had a job where she had to go and live in a new city every few years and so we went with her and joined a new school in the new city. It was a lot of fun living in different places, going to different schools and making new friends. (Ok, it wasn't - but it's my maternal birthright to stretch the truth a little when I want to sell him something)
Ayaan: I also want to go to different cities and schools.
Me: Hmmmm... which city would you like to go and stay in?
Ayaan: Jaipur. Because then we can stay with Patti and play with Buddy and Beanz everyday.
Me: But we can't live in Jaipur, because neither Mama nor Dadda have a job there and at least one of us has to have a job in the city we choose, otherwise we won't have any money
Ayaan: *thinks for a few seconds and has a light-bulb moment* But Mama, Dadda has a job in Hyderabad. Let's go and live there. (Jai joined the new organisation in December itself and was spending weekdays in Hyderabad)
Me: That's an interesting idea. But do you think Dadda would like us to move to Hyderabad?
Ayaan: We should tell him that it is a good idea because then he can see his children every day.

Post this conversation, he made me call Jai up and then 'sold' him this grand idea of being able to see his kids everyday and 'convinced' him that we should all move to Hyderabad. So he basically thinks this whole Hyderabad move was his idea

My biggest stress point on the move was the school. Two of the five schools on our shortlist required students to take a test. Now, I personally think a written test for kids who have just learnt to read and write is nothing short of ridiculous but it's a seller's market when it comes to schools in India so you just have to suck it up. In addition to clearing the test, I wanted to make the process as less traumatic for Ayaan as possible. So for a week before we left, I set him written tests to do. I made him sit alone in his room and he was not allowed to ask me for any clarifications till the test was done, to stimulate the actual tests. He did pretty well at home and finally made the cut at both the schools. Overall, he made it to 4 out of the 5 schools and we had the luxury of choice. We finally went with a school that did not test him. In fact, they never even met him and decided on the basis of an interview with Jai.

We hadn't done much about finding a place to live because we wanted to close things on the school front first so that we could factor commute time into the decision. Once that was done, Jai did a preliminary search over a month and short-listed some flats for me to see. The poor man's hard work was somewhat wasted since I summarily rejected all but a couple of places that we saw. We weren't entirely happy with anything so Jai kept looking and then last week, he finally found something that seemed to fit the bill. I went down last week and hallelujah! we now have a house, that will be available in under 4 weeks.

Now, there is no running away from the fact that this time this month, I will be living in a new house, in a new city and days away from Ayaan starting a new school. Needless to say, I am getting the heebie-jeebies. It's time to get my butt in gear and amidst some pointless hyperventilating, I have been doing semi-useful things like making lists, de-cluttering like crazy and calling packers and movers (or relocation specialists, as they are calling themselves these days). There's so much to do, and it doesn't help that Jai is only here on the weekends. Anyway, these things have a way of coming together at the end. Or so I keep telling myself.

Letter to a Worrywart Circa 2006

2011-04-13T15:23:00.000+05:30

Dear Rohini of 2006,

The other day, I happened to catch up with some of your posts, especially this one. It lists down all the things that worried you as a mother. Gosh, were you paranoid or what? Well, worry not (if that is at all a possibility given your current frame of mind). Six years of motherhood and a second baby (yes, you will want another one some day) will cure you of most of these fears, though you'll probably have a new list of stuff to worry about.

Firstly, what is with all the germ phobia? Get this. Germs are everywhere and there is no way to protect your kids from them entirely. In a year from now, Ayaan will be diagnosed with enlarged adenoids and months and years of chronic coughing will make you lose your fear of them. You will grow to ignore minor coughs and colds and use only home remedies unless the kids are in active discomfort. You will realise the inefficacy of most OTC medications and learn to hold off on antibiotics till it is absolutely necessary. You will leave your current paeduatician and find one who thinks the same way. You will even buy into the 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger' philosophy and accept that most childhood illnesses are a necessary evil for your kids to build their immune systems.

Stop fretting about your childcare support system. You have been blessed with rare good fortune. The nanny you hired three months ago will turn out to be just the right person for the job and will stay with you till you leave the city. She will be reliable, dependent and affectionate. She will never, like many others, take a day off without adequate notice and will show herself totally up to the task of managing your mischievous, energetic son through infancy, toddlerhood and early boyhood. This will enable you to keep working till the birth of your second child, pay off the home loan and therefore have the option of taking an extended break after that.

No kid learns to crawl and walk without hurting themselves, obsessive child-proofing notwithstanding. You have cleared your house of all the dodgy furniture and put sturdy grills on all your balconies, so now relax. Your son will get his share of bruises, cuts and bumps but there will no serious injuries. When your daughter comes along, you will let the tablecloth stay and forget to use the corner cushions and door stoppers, and she will be just fine too.

Thankfully, you will learn to relax about the food. You will come to terms with the fact that you seem to be destined to have skinny kids. Your reward will be a relatively non-fussy eater. With your daughter, you will discover baby-led weaning and just let her take the lead when it comes to food and be pleasantly surprised with the results.

Your heightened sense of your mortality will stay with you though. You will fret about leaving the boy alone at night (even after he is fast asleep) with the less-experienced full-timer and will finally find the courage to go out for dinner on your seventh anniversary. It will turn out to be 26th November, 2008 - the night of the terror attacks in Mumbai. All those stories about children orphaned because the terrorists killed the parents while they were out for dinner will haunt you and it will be over two years before you will realise how irrational your behaviour is and start going out together again. And you'll wish you had done it sooner. You will never get around to making that will but it is about time that I did.

There are some things that you didn't seem to be worried about as much back then but will be worried about as time goes by. Teaching your son to rein in his energy and behave safely while walking on the road. Keeping him safe from sexual abuse. Protecting him from what you believe are inappropriate and violent children's shows, even though all his peers seem to be watching them. Keeping him from developing the sense of entitlement that is an almost-natural outcome of having affluent parents.

We will worry, you and I. Much of what you worried about then seems silly or downright paranoid to me today. But it's hardly as if I am worry-free. Rohini of 2020 will probably pooh-pooh at my current fears but I guess a mom's got to do what a mom's got to do.

Love,
An older and hopefully somewhat wiser Rohini of 2011

With a Little Help from my Friends

2011-04-12T08:23:00.000+05:30

This year, my birthday was something of a non-event. As things panned out, the weekend of my birthday was the only time we could fit in a trip to Hyderabad for a spot of house-hunting. So, the day dawned in a hotel room with both of us catering to the never-ending demands of the bratsome twosome. In fact, it was an hour into the day before I got my first wish by SMS and remembered that it was my birthday! We spent the rest of the day seeing a whopping 11 flats, with just a break for lunch. By 9.30, we were all in bed!

To be honest, I wasn't too fussed about this situation. One's got to do what one's got to do and I am at the age where birthdays are not such a big deal any more, unless they happen to be one of my kids'. But some of my friends thought otherwise. So after I came back to Mumbai, I was treated to a little surprise tea party and presented with this:

Now, for some background. Months ago, I had happened to mention to my friend N in passing that I wanted to get myself one of these chairs because it was just the thing for me to lounge around in and read. I never got around to doing much about it but N rounded up three of my other friends and they decided to get it for me as a birthday-cum-farewell gift. N also happens to be an artist, so she made me this adorable 'voucher', which is almost as special as the chair itself and goes into my keepsake box.

After this, my friend M was deputed to accompany me to the Oshiwara furniture market to help choose the chair. For those of you in Mumbai who haven't been there, you should go - it's quite an experience. Dusty, old shops piled from floor to ceiling with antique and not-so-antique furniture and the hard-core bargaining make it quite unlike any other furniture shopping experience. Anyway, we knew what we wanted and had been recommended a shop by a friend's mom, so we got right down to business, chose the chair, bargained a bit and then left him to finish the chair.

For an interesting history of this chair, including its shockingly x-rated name, go here.

The chair got delivered last weekend. Please note my re-creation of the artist's illustration, complete with the frog. (The frog is there, by the way, because I was christened Frog/ Froggie by the husband a long time ago and the name seems to have stuck).

I am totally thrilled by my newest possession. I have banned the kids from playing with the arms and the husband, who was thinking of appropriating it as his TV-watching chair, has been told to take a proverbial hike. I am looking forward to hours of lounging in it and reading.

A big thank you to my super-awesome friends, especially to N for being the architect of this scheme and to M, for taking time off to trek with me to Oshiwara. Being miles away from you guys is the biggest downside to the Hyderabad move. I will really miss you guys.

Our Boys Need Watching Over Too

2011-04-09T22:22:00.001+05:30

I think one of the biggest misconceptions that people, especially those from the previous generation, harbour is that only girls need to be protected from sexual abuse. I have seen this in practice with my own mother. It does not occur to her that sending Ayaan somewhere alone in the car with a new driver or to an art teacher's (a man) house for art lessons is risky behaviour. Once I point out to her that I am not comfortable with it, she readily makes alternative arrangements but at some level, she thinks I am being paranoid and over-protective.

In reality, our sons are as much at risk. And we need to think about how we want to keep them safe, just as we would with our daughters.

For more on this, go read Monika's post on why our sons need our protection just as much. And then read Sue's post on what measures she takes to educate her son and keep him safe.

Also, there have been some folks who have been giving the organisers of this great initiative a lot of grief because this kind of stuff makes them uncomfortable and they think it is obscene and best kept out of the public domain. Well, that is exactly the reason why child molesters are able to do what they do and get away scot-free. Because we are only too willing to brush the whole thing under the carpet. Well, not anymore. It's time to bring this out in the open, talk about it and equip ourselves with all the knowledge we need to keep our kids safe.

You Know You Are Raising a Geek When...

2011-04-07T08:41:00.000+05:30

.... he sees the shapes of continents in potholes, clouds and pieces of chappati

.... he looks at a cutlet coated in sooji and comments that it looks like the Milky Way galaxy

... you walk into your room to find him curled up in your bed with a globe

... he chooses to watch a Discovery Science programme called How the Universe Works over his favourite cartoons, even though he understands not more than 10% of the content

... when you teach him to play 'Name, Place, Animal, Thing', the places he comes up with include Oman and Libya

... his farewell card for his teacher features a map of Australia, copied from one his favourite books, on one page and a map of Maharashta on another

... he knows more about the solar system than most adults

... he asks a million questions a day. Ok fine, I am exaggerating but definitely a hundred, most of which revolve around space and geography which, in case you haven't picked up on it already, are his current ruling passions

... the only time he is ever really quiet these days is when he is poring over his set of solar system books, which he chose over a Winnie The Pooh book at a recent book exhibition

... his idea of a fun colouring activity is to take a map of India he found in a car brochure and colour the states in the same colour as his India-shaped jigsaw puzzle

... he doesn't have a favourite colour, but has a favourite planet (Saturn)

... he wants a telescope and a microscope for his next birthday

... he wants to be a 'space and sea scientist' when he grows up

... when you tell him you don't know something, he asks you to go find out on Google

Child Sexual Abuse Awareness Month – April 2011

2011-04-01T23:44:00.004+05:30

The statistics on sexual abuse of children in downright frightening. According to a recent study, over 53% of children reported having faced some sort of sexual abuse. Just in case that didn't quite sink in - FIFTY THREE PER CENT. That is freaking more than half of our children. What's even worse? In 50% of these cases, the perpetrator of this awful act is a person known and trusted by the child and his/ her family.

It is not a small problem. It's not something we can wish away or pretend that it doesn't exist. It's not a dirty little secret to be locked away into the family vault, leaving the child to bear the burden of the guilt and scars from the abuse, while the sicko who deserves all the blame walks scot-free.

All through April, over 40 bloggers are coming together to talk about various aspects of Child Sexual Abuse. Their posts can be seen on their blogs as well as on the CSAAM blog. The CSAAM blog will also feature survivor stories and posts by experts and NGOs working in these fields.

You can join in our efforts to make the world a safer place for our children. If you want to join the discussion, or know someone else who would like to, entries are welcomed and can be submitted in any of the following ways:

mailed to csa.awareness.april@gmail.com OR
posted as FB notes and linked to Child Sexual Abuse Awareness Month Page OR
posted on your own blog with the badge and linked to the main blog OR
linked or posted on Twitter tagged twitter.com/CSAAwareness

A list of suggested topics is available here. Anonymous contributions are accepted and requests for anonymity will, of course, be honoured. Please remember to send in a mail with all necessary links or just your input to csa.awareness.april@gmail.com to ensure that your contribution is captured and tracked.

You could also support this initiative by putting the CSAAM logo on the sidebar of your blog or website. Here's the code:

Thawing

2011-04-01T08:27:00.001+05:30

I have had such a bad case of blogger block these past few weeks, that it qualifies as more of a blogger freeze. For a bunch of reasons (worry not, list coming up, in typical Mama Says So style), I have had a lot to say but couldn't muster up the enthusiasm to actually get it down on the blog. Over the last week, I have felt the urge to shake myself out of it and it looks like today is the day I finally manage to do it.

Just this morning, I happened to be catching up with my blog reading, and I happened upon this on a blog friend's blogroll and almost fell off my chair. 5 weeks??? It's been 5 weeks???! That's about four weeks too many even by my slow blogging standards. So here I am, making sure that number doesn't inch up to 6 weeks.

Friends in the real world have been asking why my blog seems to have dried up to. One of the husband's friend's (Hi, there!) asked him to tell me to write another post already since she was heartily sick of seeing the word 'boobs' every time she came by. LOL! And Sai left a comment on my last post saying she missed my blog. One more reason to update :)

So anyway, to cut a long story short, I am back and hope to be more regular in the future. Remember, my December resolutions? Sounded great in theory, but resolutions are resolutions and these too fell by the wayside. I stopped going to the gym and the blogging frequency has been worse, if anything. Oh, well. Now, I am just going to try and blog more frequently and not hold a resolution-loaded gun to my head.

Anyhoo, onwards to some navel-gazing about the multitude of reasons that robbed me of my blogging mojo.

All written out: I don't think I have mentioned this here before but I took up some freelance writing a few months ago. So, on an average day, I spend an hour or two writing stuff for that. I know that does not sound like much but in my current schedule, that is a big chunk of my free time. And when I am done with that, it's hard to push myself to write for leisure. It's far easier to read something that someone else has written, in a book or on a blog.
Busting the SAHM myth: Call me delusional, but when I decided to take a career break, I thought I'd have more time to myself - to do stuff that I didn't get to do enough of when I was juggling work and motherhood - like meeting my friends more often, reading more books and, of course, blogging a whole lot more. Well, not so much. For some reason, I can never seem to find that me-time I was so looking forward to. One of the kids always needs me and when they don't, I am either catching up with my freelance writing or my sleep. And you know how they tell you that a SAHM's kids will be more secure and less clingy. Again, not so much. Ayaan pretty much thinks every waking hour of mine belongs to him and Tarana's separation anxiety is way more severe than Ayaan's ever was. Leaving the house without them is an exercise in diplomacy and speed and they both seem to be allergic to the sight of me powering up the laptop.
Going solo: Sometime in December, Jai joined the organisation he will be working for in Hyderabad and for the last few months, he has been living there and coming back to Mumbai only on weekends. So, during the week, I am living the single mom life and boy, has it given me a healthy respect for women who do this regularly. Come Friday evening, I am so up to my neck in all things mommy, that I can't wait to hand the kids over to Jai as soon as he walks in the door and hang up my mommy shoes. And that includes writing about the kids!
Exit mode: At work, we used to have this concept of exit mode. It refers to the period after one knows that one is moving to a new role or job and hence one loses all motivation to work. That's pretty much happened in my household. Whether it's small maintenance jobs around the house or bigger projects like toilet-training Tarana, everything is on hold till we are done with the move. Blogging more frequently is also one of the biggies on my 'Things to do in Hyderabad' list.
Twittering my time away: Sometime in February, I finally gave in to the temptation and hopped on to the Twitter bandwagon. It's been just over a month and goodness, I am addicted. It doesn't help that I have downloaded the Twitter app on my phone as well. But if there is one thing I am sure about it is that I definitely don't want to become one of those bloggers whose blogs fell by the wayside when they got onto Twitter. So I am trying to cut down the amount of time I spend there. Let's see how that goes:)

Anyway, so that is what has been happening in Mamasaysso Land. Sorry for the prolonged absence. I hope to be more regular. See you around :)

Mind Your Own Boobs....Er, Business

2011-02-17T23:49:00.001+05:30

Here's the thing. Tarana is 16 months old and I am still breastfeeding her up to 4 times a day. And I have no immediate plans to wean her - in fact, I plan to let her decide when she wants to stop. Now, for some reason, this seems to really bother a lot of people - friends and family - and has since Tarana turned a year old.

It's not as if I am going out of my way to announce this to the world (not unless you count this post). Unless I want to lie, it's the explanation I have to give for limiting myself to one glass of wine (which is unusual enough to attract comment) or get home in time for Tarana's feed or excuse myself to nurse her when we are over at someone's house.

Here are a sampler of the reactions I have got over the last few months:

'You're still nursing? Why?'
'Don't you think it's about time you weaned her off?'

'Aren't you bored?'

'What if she asks for 'it' in public? Won't it be embarrassing?

'What if she gets too used to it?'

'She will get spoiled.'

'I know the WHO favours breastfeeding up to the age of 2, but that guideline is basically for poor people whose kids don't have access to good quality nutrition.'

And this is my favourite:
'I know women in rural areas feed their babies till much later but I just find it a bit weird' *accompanied by a shudder*

When I was nursing Ayaan, I had no intention of continuing past the age of one. I bought into the argument that it was unnatural and unnecessary for kids to breastfeed after their first birthday. Besides, that was also my deadline for return to full-time work (with some travel thrown in), so it would have been logistically impossible. So I followed a very strict schedule of weaning. From five months of age, I added one solid meal and dropped one feed every month till we were down to a single feed at Month Eleven. At that point, Ayaan took the matter out of my hands and self-weaned (he was never a big fan of breastfeeding in the first place).

Everything about Tarana's infancy has been less planned - from sleep training to her diet - and nursing has been no different. When she was born, I was committed to breastfeed her for a year and after that, it would have depended on my work situation. But once going back to work was off the table, I saw no reason to stop.

What I did not expect was the almost universal disapproval - mild and outspoken - of my choice to continue nursing beyond the age of one. The benefits of extended breastfeeding are well-documented but it's possible that most people, like my first-time mom self, are not aware of them and just follow the popular motto: 'If they are old enough to ask for it, they are too old'. But even then, I don't understand why it attracts this kind of negative attention. I am not even, like mothers in many Western countries, asking for the right to bare all and breastfeed in public. Most of Tarana's nursing sessions happen in the privacy of my bedroom and the occasional in-transit ones behind the modest nursing apron that goes with us everywhere.

I think the problem lies in the way that we have sexualised breasts. Prop them up with push-up bras, enhance them with surgery or bare them on the Playboy centrefold and most people are unlikely to so much as bat an eyelid. But, God forbid, that you use them for their intended purpose and actually nurse a 2-year old, you'd better be ready to be an eye-popping spectacle!

The other problem is that breastfeeding has become such a touchy issue. We all feel judged, no matter what our choices. Those who stop early feel that the ones who carry on into toddlerhood make them look bad, who in turn feel that the former look upon them as weirdos. In other words, just another front in the Mommy Wars!

I think the decision to breastfeed is a personal one. There is no universal right answer. Just one right answer for every mother and baby pair, depending on their needs and circumstances. In my case, I am at home, Tarana still seems to need it and I can't think of a single good reason to stop.

It's early days yet (I am just 4 months past the one-year mark) but I am happy with my decision. Sure, it cramps my style a bit - I can't go on a trip without Tarana or indulge in a boozing session - but I have found that the benefits far outweigh the inconveniences. Here's what has worked for me:

When Tarana was still an infant, I came across the concept of Baby-Led Weaning. They had me at hello. So Tarana has never had a mashed or pureed meal and her first taste of solid food was a slice of apple at five and a half months that she sat and gummed for twenty minutes. I will do a detailed post on this at some point but it has been great and she has been able to explore and take her time with food since there was no pressure to wean or stress about how much nutrition she was getting from her non-milk diet.
Travel is so easy. We went to Mauritus when she was just over a year and I did not carry a single thing for her to eat or any feeding equipment from home. There was always something that she would find interesting enough to eat at the restaurants we ate at and even when she was fussy about the food, the breastfeeding was a backup and I did not have to worry about whether she was getting enough.
I have actually seen the immunity thing in action. It's not that she falls ill less. Thanks to her brother's susceptibility to respiratory infections, she has had more than her fair share of coughs and colds. But what is different is their intensity and duration. She usually kicks the bugs off faster than Ayaan does and usually without any help from medication. In fact, she has needed antibiotics just once (when she caught the virulent bug that caused Ayaan's pneumonia).
Even when she is ill and goes off her food for a bit, she continues to nurse so I don't have to agonise about her not getting enough to eat.

However, while I have not been actively weaning her, I definitely don't want her to get dependent on breastmilk. So I have been nudging her along in small ways. As part of her sleep training, I have been slowly pushing the time for her night feed. She now has it at 5 a.m. and then sleeps for another 45-60 minutes. When she gets up, I give her a cup of cow's milk. She doesn't have much but she's gradually increasing the quantity. I am doing this now when she is less rigid about her tastes because I worry that she might reject it altogether if I wait longer.

After she turned six months, I also cut out her comfort feeds and stopped feeding on demand. Unless she is sick or her ears are blocked on a flight, she only gets a feed after waking up and just before bedtime (that's four feeds a day currently). This way, breastfeeding is not likely to become an emotional crutch for her, another thing the experts warn against. And it also means that it is rare for her to ask me for an unscheduled feed in public (hence ruling out the embarrassment factor, which would have been high given that her word for it, rather inappropriately, is 'booboo')

So anyway, that's what it is. How do you feel about it? Go ahead, speak your mind in the comments. If you dislike the idea of extended breastfeeding, I'd really like to know why.

(Image courtesy http://alliancebreastfeeding.com)

Adding to the Chua Chatter

2011-02-09T15:48:00.120+05:30

Like almost every one who hasn't been living under a rock (or without Internet access), I read the WSJ article on Amy Chua's book titled 'Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother'. The article pretty much went viral and every one from journalists to bloggers to the twitter republic was weighing in, mostly against the 'Chinese parenting' way that Chua followed with her kids.

Being a mommyblogger and all, I really wanted to add my two cents to the debate but I decided to read the book first. Mostly because Chua herself reacted to the WSJ article saying that they had just picked the most provocative bits from her book and therefore misrepresented it. And also because I didn't want to play Aditya Thackeray to her Rohinton Mistry. So her book had the honour of being the first paid book to grace my Kindle.

It was a quick read - I was done with it in two days, which has to be the fastest I have read any book since Tarana was born - and I have to say I found it quite interesting and even agreed with parts of it.

The excerpts featured in WSJ are all there but what is perhaps different is the tone of the whole book. In the author's defence, the book is not a how-to manual on parenting and at no point does she set herself up as an expert on the subject. It was more of a memoir of her years as a mother to her two daughters and her style of raising them. Sure, she has strong opinions and takes potshots at what she calls Western parenting methods and thinks her way is better, but aren't most of us, mommybloggers in particular, equally certain and opinionated about our parenting choices?

In fact, she openly states upfront in the preface of her book: This was supposed to be a story of how Chinese parents are better at raising kids than Western ones. But instead, it's about a bitter class of cultures, a fleeting taste of glory, and how I was humbled by a thirteen-year-old.

In parts, I actually admired her foresight and determination. Her kids clearly had musical talent. If she has done as most of us do, they would have learnt to play the instruments as a hobby at best. To get to their level of excellence in fields like music and sports is not easy. You need to start young and put in hours and years of practice. And no, no kid will willingly put in that kind of effort in their childhood. Of course, parents have to be sensible about identifying talents and working within the boundaries imposed by the child's temperament - something Chua herself went totally wrong with in her second daughter's case - and be willing to accept it gracefully if the kid they think is the smartest fellow on the block is not quite the prodigy in the making. But if you do see potential, wouldn't it be a criminal waste to not do your best to help it flower in the pursuit of that chimera - a happy childhood.

Why do we assume that kids who are pushed to maximise their potential are unhappy? We Indians are no strangers to this kind of parenting. Many of us grew up in homes where our parents weren't that far away from the Chua school of raising kids. And most of us would testify to having had a happy childhood.

Forget about child prodigies, regular kids need to be pushed too. Kids are no judge of their potential. Especially in the early, formative years, they need their parents to nudge them in the right direction and to put the requisite amount of effort. Like I heard Chua say in an interview, 'if you give a 5-year old free choice, he will spend 5 hours a day playing video games'.

I have had a few trying experiences with Ayaan lately. He went off his swimming and skating classes, in both cases at the exact same time that the difficulty level was upped. (They took away the floats and moved him to faster skates respectively). He didn't want to go anymore, he would cry before each swimming class and whine and drag his feet for the skating class. But I stood firm and now he's back to going for the classes willingly. I didn't give in because I had seen him enjoying both classes till the going got tough. If I had let him quit, I would have been sending him the message that it is okay to walk away from challenges and obstacles instead of persisting. Like Chua says, "As a parent, one of the worst things you can do for your child's self-esteem is to let them give up". I totally agree.

I think children grow and learn when you push them out of their comfort zones. Otherwise don't be surprised if they grow into adults with a huge sense of entitlement, and the expectation that life will hand them everything on a silver platter, which we know it rarely does.

Back to Ms. Chua then. While there are definitely some points to ponder, overall I have to agree with popular opinion that she is totally over the top. I think in China (or India) she might have been the model parent, but trying to raise an American kid that way in today's world is totally crazy. I think she deprived her kids of some happy childhood experiences - sleepovers, playdates, fun - that are as important in a child's development as training him or her for future success. I think her obsession with getting her kids to practice even when they were sick or on holiday was nothing short of cruel. And her methods - shaming and punishing - questionable at best.

There were also bits where she said things that were clearly attention-seeking in their provocativeness. They left me with the feeling that maybe the whole book was an attempt to be controversial and sell more copies (it worked!). Some of the stuff she says makes her appear positively bigoted. Some examples:
"I wanted her to be well-rounded and to have hobbies and activities. Not just any activity, like "crafts", which can lead nowhere - or even worse, playing the drums, which leads to drugs"
"In the West, obedience is associated with dogs and the caste system"
"Tennis was very respectable. It wasn't like bowling"
And on sleepovers: "Sophia didn't need to be exposed to the worst of Western society"

Honestly, it was statements like these that put me off her. I am all for having a strong point of view about the way you do things - but that's really no cause to put down other people's choices. And it's not as if she is railing against huge problems like permissiveness or alcoholism - her judgement seems to be reserved for parents who allow their kids to indulge in harmless pursuits like sleepovers, drums and bowling!!!

The other bit where she came across more as a caricature than a living breathing woman was the chapter about the family getting their first dog. She says her 'first instinct was to apply Chinese parenting' to the dog. And then goes to say some contrived stuff like "There's one difference between a dog and a daughter. A dog can do something every dog can do - dog paddle, for example - and we applaud with pride and joy. Imagine how much easier it would be if we could do the same with our daughters! But we can't; that would be negligence." Oh, come on!

Anyway, I am glad I read the book. I don't think it will change my parenting approach in any way. I know there are times when I will have to get down into the trenches with my children and make their lives somewhat miserable for their own good. But I also hope to balance that out with loads of fun, leisure and good memories.

For those of you haven't already read it, check out The Mad Momma's take on the Tiger Mom debate. Like she says, most of us holding forth on this have the luxury of choice. For those on the economic fringes, the success of their kids has the potential to change their lives and circumstances. I doubt they have sleepless nights about pushing their kids too hard or damaging their self-esteem.

ETA: Also check out CeeKay's take on debate over at Women's Web.

Pearls of Wisdom from the Resident Five Year Old Grandfather

2011-02-05T21:08:00.001+05:30

Day before we leave for a trip - Mama, don't leave all the packing for tomorrow. Do a little now, a little in the evening, a little after I go to sleep and then you won't have lots and lots of things to pack tomorrow.

Out with his dad and it starts to rain - Dadda, you are not a small boy so you should check the season and see if we need to carry an umbrella.

When we are expecting some guests - Mama, you can give your friends an ice cream or two, but only if they don't have a cough.

On raising children - Mama, you have to teach the baby one new thing everyday.

To a friend who dropped by with baked goodies: If you keep eating and eating, you will become fat like Mr. Greedy.

On eating healthy - Mama, chips are healthy because they are made from potatoes and chocolates are healthy because they are made from milk.

On the impending move - Dadda, find a house fast in Hyderabad so that we can come there. Then you can see your children everyday

To colour or not to colour

2011-02-03T14:38:00.001+05:30

There's no getting around it. I am going grey with a vengeance. It's in my genes. Both my parents were well past the salt and pepper stage when they touched forty. And now at 60, my mom's hair is almost completely white so I am under no delusions about the fate that awaits me.

Even if I did choose to delude myself, kind friends and family are ever eager to remedy any lapse on my part. A recent family wedding was a prime example. I don't think there was a single cousin or aunt in the place who omitted to comment, in horrified tones, on the white hair sprouting from my scalp. And then proceeded to gape at me in wide-eyed amazement when I announced my intention to stay away from hair colour!

My hair stylist has tried unsuccessfully to get me to colour my hair and has finally given up. On my last visit, she finally gazed upon me with an expression that scientists usually reserve for a new strain of a wildly infectious disease and pronounced that she was very impressed with my guts to stay grey when everyone around was succumbing to the hair colour trend. She even went on to say that it didn't look bad on me since it didn't seem to bother me and that I was carrying it off with confidence. Hmmmm... I am still wondering if her tongue was firmly ensconced in her cheek!

Let me set the record straight. This is not about rejecting vanity. I am as vain as the next girl, or almost so. I frequent the salons - pedicures, manicures, blow-drys, waxing and facials are all performed on me with varying degrees of regularity. I spend a good proportion of my discretionary income on clothes and am quite a brand whore. And while I am no Imelda Marcos, I do love my shoes. So why not colour my hair?

Well, the big reason is the chemicals. I am just 35 (or will be in less than two months) and if I start colouring now, I'll probably have to keep going till I am 60. And unlike hair straightening (which I have done 3-4 times), this requires a monthly commitment to keep the roots from showing. So, if I am going to colour my hair every month for 25 years, that means I will dumping a shit load of chemicals on to my hair, scalp and possibly into my bloodstream about 300 times! That's about 290 times too many, as far as I am concerned.

There is also another reason for my colour-ban stance. This whole preoccupation with age bothers me. If the average beauty TV advertisement is to be believed, ageing gracefully and looking one's age is no longer an option and the jazzy anti-ageing potions, hair colourants and cosmetic surgery are the must-haves in every sensible woman's arsenal. The alternative - you won't get a man or the one you have will lose interest. Bah! And have you looked at the models in these ads who are worrying about greys and fine lines? None of them look a day over thirty, if that. Is the thirty the new fifty??? In other more disturbing news, a range of anti-ageing beauty products for tweens is just around the corner. What next? Wrinkle cream for toddlers? Diaper rash cream with AHAs?

Sometimes, people do make me feel a bit like a freak. Imagine being all dressed up to the nines and you get more comments about your white hair than about your pretty face or lovely outfit... It can get somewhat disconcerting. But most of the time, it really and truly does not bother me. So no, I don't plan on changing status quo any time soon.

What about you? Where do you stand on the colour divide? Or are you one of those lucky souls who will probably get their first grey hair at 60?

ETA: Check out Planethalder's post for some truly inspiring pics of grey-haired women

The Resignation Story

2011-01-26T22:18:00.000+05:30

It’s been a while since I mentioned that I had resigned my job and joined the ranks of stay at home mothers (SAHMs). At the time, I had said I would write a more detailed post on why I did it. Well, hold your breath – here it comes. Actually, don’t hold your breath – this is likely to be one of those long, rambling posts. There might even be bullet points, but if you’ve been coming around here a lot, you already know to expect those ;)

In the immortal words of Julie Andrews “Let’s start at the very beginning… a very good place to start”. The beginnings of this decisions do not, as you might expect, lie in the birth of Tarana but go back to the time when Ayaan was a wee babe a few odd months old and I was faced with the prospect of going back to work. It was one of the hardest things I ever did. But the fuzzy cloud of expectations of family and friends hanging over my head and the markedly less fuzzy spectre of a massive home loan hanging over our bank accounts ensured that I didn’t really have a choice in the matter. So I whined and wept, but pulled up my socks and went back to work.

After the initial teething issues, I settled into work well. It helped that I had an amazingly understanding boss, a job that I liked and some great colleagues. I never really looked back and questioned my decision and while I did regular attacks of working mother guilt, I was largely comfortable and content with my choice.

Four years zoomed by. I did well at work and was due for a promotion to middle management when I found out that I was pregnant. Giving higher responsibility to a woman who was pregnant and would be disappearing for six months soon was obviously not something I could expect from the organisation so I tabled my expectation that I should promoted post maternity leave and left it that.

Tarana was born and before I knew it, six months of maternity leave had gone by in a flash of diaper changes (Tarana's), attention-seeking behaviour (Ayaan’s) and sleep deprivation (mine). And before I knew it, it was decision time again. This time, the loan was almost paid off and I cared a lot less about what other people would think about my decision to stay at home or go back to work, as the case might be. This time, the battle was purely internal. On the one side, there was an opportunity to bury that infernal guilt monster, at least temporarily. On the other hand, there were my career aspirations. The promotion, if it came through, would be a level jump from a junior manager to a boss, with a ‘director’ designation. If I turned it down and took a break, I would have to put in a few more years of slog at the junior level to get back to where I was.

I decided to be coldly rational about it. I knew that the regret from turning down the promotion would haunt me so I decided I wouldn’t. But I would only go back if it came through with immediate effect and the role was something that excited me. It would still be hard to leave the kids and go back to work, but I knew I could make it work. I had already done it once and while my opinion might be biased, I know deep in my heart that my working for four years of Ayaan’s life did him absolutely no harm.

If the promotion didn’t come through, then I really didn’t have that much to lose professionally by taking a break. Either way, I would have to put in months or years at my existing level when I did go back to work.

In a way, I copped out. The seemingly simple decision was too hard – the kids or my career? So I decided to leave it up to fate. If I was destined to go back to work, the promotion would happen and I would rejoin the workforce. If not, it was the universe’s way of telling me that staying home, at least for a while, was the right thing for the kids and me.

So anyway, that was my thinking as my maternity leave drew to close. I got back in touch with the people in my company who were supposed to help me figure out what I was supposed to do next. In my first meeting with the HR manager responsible for my move, I was told that there were a couple of interviews coming up for jobs at the higher level. (In the organisation I worked for, there is a system of shortlists and interviews even for internal candidates). Both did not pan out – the HR department, in all their wisdom, forgot to send in my application for one of the positions and while my interview for the other job went reasonably well, the hiring manager was looking for someone with a somewhat different experience profile.

I was then offered a choice. I could either continue to be on leave till other positions became available or I could return to work at my current level and move up when the next opportunity presented itself (subject to, in both cases, clearing the interview). I was counselled that choosing to extend my maternity leave would reduce my chances of landing a promotion, ‘out of sight, out of mind’ and all that. Since I was clear on my decision matrix (no promotion = no going back), I decided to continue staying at home.

Over the next couple of months, I applied for and attended another couple of interviews but again, they seemed to be looking for someone with a different set of skills and exposure and I wondered why I was shortlisted in the first place. I got the feeling that the whole process was a mere formality. I also started to get really irked by the way HR was treating me - almost as if they were doing me a favour by even returning my calls, when all I was doing was asking for my due.

Finally, I decided I didn’t want to go through the whole charade any more and told them that I wanted to resign. It wasn’t an idle threat just to make them sit up and notice but they did. And within a couple of weeks, a job materialised with the promise of a guaranteed promotion within 3-6 months. I turned it down and resigned anyway.

It was not an easy decision. I worked for this same company since I passed out of business school over a decade ago. I enjoyed most of my time here, and the ups were way higher and far more numerous than the downs. I also had the good luck to find some great colleagues and bosses, many of who are and, I hope, will continue to be friends. But I decided to leave for a bunch of reasons, which I shall get into now. (Enter bullet points – numbered ones, no less!)

Often it takes just one person to destroy years of trust and loyalty that you feel towards your employer. In this case, it was the HR person who single-handedly managed to do so and I was left feeling undervalued and ignored.
The whole process took six months – six long months filled with uncertainty, bitterness and even moments of self-doubt. Again, this didn’t leave me with a very positive feeling about returning.
What they finally offered me was too little, too late. They still expected me to wait around for 3-6 months before getting the official promotion. Maybe if they had offered me this at the outset, I might have considered it. But after 6 months of being put through the emotional wringer, I was in no mood to compromise.
While this was going on, Tarana’s w-sitting problem came to the fore and we started physiotherapy for her. If I had already been back at work, we would have found a way to make it work – between Jai, me and the maid, we would have ensured that she made it to all her sessions. But since I was on a break already, this was another very strong reason for continuing to be on one.
Now for the biggie. (ALERT: More big news in the offing). As I was still figuring out my choices, Jai was approached for a job that greatly excited him. The twist: it was in Hyderabad. Since I was veering towards quitting in any case, we decided he should interview and see where the whole thing went. Eventually, they made him a really attractive offer at the same time that I was offered the job with the delayed but guaranteed promotion. With everything else, it just was the final nail in the coffin of any plans to get back to work. So, yes! WE ARE MOVING TO HYDERABAD!
The last reason is what I like to refer to as my need to scratch my SAHM itch. Through the post-Ayaan years of a full-time career, I had the guilt monster sitting on my shoulder. I looked at moms who had stayed home and felt a mixture of curiosity and envy. It was my ‘grass on the other side of the fence’ and it looked temptingly green. If for nothing else, a break will allow to me experience both options and hopefully find a greater degree of peace with whatever I finally choose to do.

So that, in a very large nutshell, is it. I don’t know what lies ahead for me career-wise. I am hoping I will figure it as I go along and that I won’t live to regret the choices I have made.

'Winter' in Mumbai

2011-01-12T22:36:00.002+05:30

The other day, I found myself at a class meeting at Ayaan's school. Once the agenda was over and done with, a parent raised her hand to ask a question:

'It is so cold in the mornings. My son's legs are exposed in the shorts. Can we please have the option of sending them to school in long pants or jeans till the winter gets over?"

I wondered whether the mother in question was joking and turned around to find her to be completely in earnest. I looked down at my sleeveless top, cotton capris and flipflops and wondered - what winter?

My mind instantly went back to my school days, spent in the chilly environs of Delhi. When winter rolled around, we went from wearing our summer uniforms to more heavy duty woollen stuff. But even as we braved the fog and temperatures in the low single digits on our way to school, our legs were pretty much exposed to the elements. Girls, irrespective of their class, wore skirts and boys wore shorts till they got to senior school but with our feet encased in thick woolen socks and 2-3 layers of warm clothes on our torsos, we weren't in any danger of hypothermia. And here in positively tropical climes, there was talk of covering up legs in long pants or stockings!

To my mind, Mumbai has only two kinds of weather. Hot and rainy. Cold is simply not on the menu. My wardrobe remains the same through the year in this city. December doesn't see me banishing my shorts and slinky tops to the farthest reaches of my wardrobe. And my limited stock of woollies stay wrapped up with mothballs unless a trip to the North is on the cards. The only concession I make for this so-called winter is to reduce the speed of the fan.

But that's not how most long-time Mumbaikars view the city's seasonal variations. In fact, you can tell a born-and-bred city slicker from the migrants by the way they dress in the 'winter' months. They are the ones with the jackets, scarves, stoles, socks and turtlenecks in full display on their evening walks. They are the ones who carry warm stuff to office in December because the air-conditioning at work makes them shiver. They are the ones who put up Facebook status updates about how they are chilled to the bone. To someone who grew up in the North, it's all very amusing :)

And the media hops on to the winter bandwagon as well. Every city newspaper worth its salt carries at least a weekly article commenting on the drop in mercury. Here's a random sampling from the last month or so:

Temperatures dip in city as winter sets in

2010 ends on coldest note in seven years

City's coldest day

And what do you think this brrrr-inducing annual low temperature they are talking about is? 12.8^oC (or 55^oF for the American residents amongst us). And that is the minimum temperature, recorded at hours when most respectable people are fast asleep. During the daytime, the temperature continues to be in the tropical late twenties and early thirties.

I shouldn't be too quick to poke fun at the warm-blooded Mumbaikars though. Because my son is one by virtue of being born here and having a father with Goa in his blood. Like the husband, he wants to take his jacket along to air-conditioned movie halls and restaurants and complains bitterly if we deign to forget. And wears a sleeveless sweater to school in December and January. Kids exist to make us eat our words, don't they :)

'Tis The Season To... Er... Travel

2011-01-09T12:19:00.001+05:30

Every year, when December rolls around, we pack our bags and go traipsing across the countryside. It's never a simple visit to one place and one year, I even needed a flowchart to explain our wanderings! This year was no different and starting with a trip to Calcutta in the east, we proceeded to cover all the other directions as well.

First, we headed northwards to Delhi for my cousin's wedding. This was a pretty complicated event in itself since the pre-wedding celebrations were in Delhi, the wedding was in Neemrana and the reception was back in Delhi! As a result, we spent most of our time between getting dressed, attending functions and traveling in the car. But it was fun and Neemrana makes for an amazingly grand backdrop to a wedding - the whole thing had a royal feel to it. The kids got nicely pampered by the extended family. Tarana, being the only baby in attendance, got almost as much attention as the bride! She charmed everyone with her cheesy grin and even perfected her fake, social smile in the course of the wedding.

Done with the wedding festivities, we flew south to Bangalore for our annual Christmas visit. It was a full house with my sister-in-law, my brother-in-law and his wife in residence. We took every opportunity to palm off the kids on to the willing tribe of baby-sitters so that we could get some R&R. Mornings were the responsibility of the grandparents as Ayaan was taken off for an early morning jaunt in the park by my father-in-law and Tarana had an al fresco breakfast with her grandmother.

Ayaan also took to my brother-in-law's wife in a big way and happily went off with her to unlikely places like her parents or aunt's houses. He also had great fun leading the Christmas tree decoration effort and we ended up a monstrosity where you could barely see the tree for the ornaments. But he was super-thrilled with the results and we actually had to ferret away some of the ornaments when he wasn't looking so that they didn't end up on the tree as well.

He remembered his trip to the giant Xmas tree and gingerbread house at the Leela last year and insisted on being taken there again. He went crazy with all the eats up for grabs and had a huge sugar high for the rest of the day. (I know that the latest research says there is no such thing as a sugar high but there is a boy in my house who proves otherwise)

Unsurprisingly, the exchange of presents on Xmas day was the highlight of the trip. He even made a tracking sheet to monitor the number of presents each person got and was happy to note that he won the 'race' by far. His favourite gifts were an airplane cup from his uncle, a gingerbread man dinner plate from his grandma and a picture atlas from us. (My favoruite was my swanly new Kindle from Jai - yay!)

We got back to Mumbai a couple of days before New Year's eve, did a rushed round of unpacking, laundry and repacking before heading off a friend's farmhouse near Murud to bring in the New Year. It was a relaxing couple of days, spent lounging around and taking desultory care of the kids. This picture says it all:

The kids were pretty good and kept themselves busy. Tarana spent her time chasing after the resident dog, flashing her fake grin at all present and foraging for crumbs on the floor. Ayaan's favoruite activities included picking shells at the beach, watering (read drowning) plants and fishing with a mug in the little pond in the front garden.

We got back last weekend and since then it has been a jumble of unpacking, putting away woollies, getting back into the school routine, catching up with my favourite blogs and kick-starting my neglected freelance work. The resolutions have been somewhat on the backburner for the last three weeks but now's the time to kick their ass. So expect to see more of me around these parts :)

Oh! Calcutta

2010-12-15T21:47:00.000+05:30

A little over four years ago, I wrote this post about our Matheran trip. As you can see, I was feeling mighty chuffed about the fact that we had taken our first trip with a 1.5 year old Ayaan without parental presence or assistance. Well last weekend, I decided to conquer a new bastion - travelling with BOTH kids and NO husband.

Some of my favourite bloggers were congregating in Calcutta so of course, I had to go. In an ideal world, I would have gone without the kids but as I have learnt the hard way, the world is seldom ideal. I am still breastfeeding Tarana so she goes where I go and it didn't seem right to take her and leave Ayaan behind so to cut a long story short, last Friday found us on a flight to Calcutta.

We were not completely on our own though. Kiran was one of the aforementioned favourite bloggers coming along and so was young Krish. The boys, as always, got along like a house on fire. Literally. They seemed to feed off each other's energy and proceeded to be boisterous, hyperactive and violent in turns - Ayaan more so than Krish. For a hilarious account of their antics, check out Kiran's post. This was the proverbial calm before the storm:

Dipali met us at Calcutta airport. After much hugging and greeting, she led us to her car and probably wondered what the hell she had got herself into as the bachcha party raised Cain through the long drive to her home. Her home was welcoming and cheerful and it felt good to finally get there. Assisted by the brats, we proceeded to take over her guest room and made short work of the well-ordered space.

Sue, Eve's Lungs and Rads (who doesn't blog anymore) arrived soon after we did and much merriment ensued. Given that I had Tarana on my hip, I was roundly ignored by certain people who went straight for their little doula baby without so much as a look-see at the prop holding her up! Ah well, such is life. And the certain people were Sue, in case, you were wondering.

We then proceeded to exchange gifts and it was as if Christmas had come early. The kids got a bunch of toys and I raked in a booty of stoles, purses, jewellery and a hand-embroidered handkerchief amongst other things. The kids had fun exploring their toys and some of them didn't even survive the evening - notably the play doh and the delicate wooden toys.

After that, we settled down to a lovely potluck dinner. All the girls had pitched in and the result was an awesome meal. Dipali had made a raw papaya salad, a pasta salad and a spinach, corn and cheese bake. Eve's Lungs has provided the mandatory non-vegetarian item - some yummy mutton curry. Sue, who complains about her poor cooking skills, had turned out a fantastic corn and mushroom quiche and a sinful chocolate tart.

After dinner, the kids were packed off to bed. The boys (including Sue's Bhablet) insisting on sleeping together so Sue was deputed to go and lie with them till they fell asleep. I wouldn't have offered myself up for the job for anything in the world but Sue claims she had fun! With the kids out of the way, we nattered away till it was 3 a.m and then took ourselves off to bed.

The next day dawned bright and early, for me that is. My kids refuse to sleep in no matter what time they have gone to bed so both were up and about by 7.30. The rest of the household stirred soon enough thanks to the racket they created. After a round of tea, milk and baths, we settled in to eat Dipali's trademark cheese paranthas, which were just yummy!

Mid-morning found us floating around New Market. I didn't buy much but enjoyed the hustle-bustle of the place. The boys, again commandeered by Sue, hung out at the Christmas market till they were shooed away by the shopkeepers for endangering their wares.

We then went to Good Companions, where they sell hand-embroidered kids' clothes and home linen. I had a few clothes from here when I was a kid (since my grandparents lived in Calcutta) and one of the jhablas had even survived and been worn by Ayaan and Tarana. So, of course, I had to go. I picked up some adorable frocks for Tarana from there. This is an old pic of Tarana in a classic Good Companions jhabla.

Lunch was an authentic Bengali meal at Kewpies, a quaint bungalow re-purposed as a restaurant. We were joined by Suki and Eve's Lungs lovely, young daughters. Ayaan had one of his redeeming moments during the meal when he sweetly fed the Bhablet from his own plate. As soon as lunch was over though, the boys were back to regular programming.

After a much-needed afternoon nap, we set off to dinner at Mamma mia! Me a mamma?, who from henceforth shall be referred to as M4 for the sake of brevity :)

I was worried about the brat's behaviour since there going to be TWO MORE BOYS at the dinner but M4's boys were friendly and gracious and kept all the kids busy with their Wii. After they went to bed, the rest of the kids zoned out in front of the television and largely kept out of harm's way.

M4's house was gorgeous and full of old-world charm, with some seriously lovely paintings on the walls. But all that was nothing compared to the spread she laid out for us, a big part of it cooked by herself. I didn't even look at the vegetarian stuff though I hear that was brilliant as well but the carnivores had a veritable feast comprised of tiger prawns, mutton curry and fish paturi. I was already considering opening the top button on my trousers when the dessert arrived. Oh my - it was the most unusual cheescake I have ever eaten: the base made out of boondi, follwed by a layer of mishti doi and then a layer of chocolate hazelnut mousse. And all this yumminess was garnished with some roasted cashews. Wow! If the Calcutta girls ever come to Mumbai, I am catering in the meal. There is no way I could ever live up to these standards!

Back at Dipali's house, the kids were put to bed so that we could continue our chatting marathon, which again went on till 3 a.m. Morning brought chaos as Kiran and I ran around bathing and feeding the kids in an attempt to get out of the house by 9, while Dipali fed us some more yummy paranthas (aloo this time). We made it to the airport just in time. (Kiran has a post up on our horrible experience at Calcutta airport). And then we were on our way home.

What a trip! Utterly exhausting but oodles of fun, gossip and affection. Next time though, no kids so that I can soak in the fun without feeling bone-tired :)

3 Updates, 2 Clarifications, 1 Milestone

2010-12-08T22:08:00.004+05:30

There I go again with my fascination for numbers and order :)

Three Updates: just following through on stuff I wrote in earlier posts

The December Resolutions: The blogging one is self-evident. I have written more in the last two weeks than I usually write in two months! The resolve to exercise is going pretty strong too. I have got some serious exercise EVERY SINGLE DAY for eleven consecutive days - four days at the swimming pool and seven days at the fitness class I signed up for. My body feels battered and achy but I am feeling super chuffed!
New tagline for the blog: The whole working mom, stay at home mom, figuring it out mom deal got way too confusing so I decided to ditch having labels in the tag line altogether. It's still work in progress but the tagline I have sort of settled on is: Not just motherhood statements. What do you guys think?
Tarana's Physio: We continue to visit the physiotherapist for Tarana's w-sitting issue. Progress has been slow but steady. Her default sitting position continues to be the W, but she mixes it up by putting one or both of her legs in front for her occasionally. When in the mood, she responds to verbal commands or a tap on her legs and straightens them voluntarily. She still can't stand or walk without support but cruises efficiently and is able to toddle along if you hold one of her hands. The doctor said it would take 6-8 months of sustained physiotherapy for her posture to be completely normal and so far we have done about 3 months with some breaks in the middle. So still some way to go...

Two Clarifications: with respect to my previous post about working moms being judged

A lot of you asked what brought on the post. Actually, though the post was pretty dramatic in nature, nothing substantial triggered it. Small incidents and comments that I have heard and overheard in the last few months. Moms at Ayaan's skating and swimming classes who feel sorry for the kids who have to come with the maids because their mothers don't have the time to bring them, other moms who effusively congratulate me on my decision to quit, and so on.
The post came across as dramatic because I was exaggerating to make a point, the point being that a world where every woman felt pressured to ditch her career because of judgement and lack of support from her family and her peers is not necessarily an ideal one. The intention was definitely not to suggest that every woman who chooses to quit her job after kids is a traitor to the feminist movement. I think true feminism lies in letting every woman to choose what works for her and allowing her to be happy with her choice. And for the next generation to have successful role models on both sides of the fence so that they recognise that both choices (and everything in between) are acceptable, respectable and admirable.

One Milestone:

This is the 200th post on this blog! I know 200 posts in almost 5 years is probably nothing to write home about. Most other mommybloggers who started blogging at around the same time have written posts in multiples of that. But it is a big number for me and I have loved every post I wrote and enjoyed the interaction in the comments space. Here's to reaching 300 a lot faster!

Questions for the Judgemental

2010-12-02T22:58:00.001+05:30

I have a few questions I'd like to ask all the women out there who are stay-at-home moms, the ones who judge other moms who chose to work. Not only do they judge, but they criticize their choices, pity their children and cannot for the life of them understand how a mother can choose to go to work instead of staying home with her kids. They make extreme statements like "If she wanted to focus on her career, why did she have kids in the first place?" They walk around feeling all superior because they believe they had the sense and sensibility to make the right choice, the only reasonable choice in their books, to 'sacrifice' their careers for their children.

So ladies, you know who you are, tell me this. What does your ideal world look like? Since you seem to believe that motherhood and careers don't mix, do you believe that all women should partially or totally drop their careers the minute they pop out their babies?

Do you think we should step back about two centuries ago to a world where being a wife and a mother are supposed to be the extent of a woman's ambition? A world where men dominate and take centrestage, with all that that implies? Where women don't bring their experience, diversity and compassion to all spheres of life, inside and outside their homes?

And if you do indeed feel that way, what about future generations? Do you want your daughter to grow up thinking that it isn't possible to have jobs and children and do well by both? Do you want your sons to grow up thinking that it is alright for them to expect their wives to be the ones to chuck or downsize their careers and assume primary responsibility for child care?

Isn't it is bit hypocritical for you to denounce working women when you yourself push your daughter to excel in her studies? Surely that can't be just because you hope she will be a really intelligent mother?

Or do you actually prefer status quo? Are you secretly glad that there are some women out there who continue to work, so that you can compare yourself to them and feel superior about your (good) choices versus their (bad) choices?

Just wondering...

On resolutions

2010-11-29T22:59:00.000+05:30

When I was young and idealistic (a very long time ago admittedly), I was very serious about New Year resolutions. Come New Year's Eve, I would be ready with my list of good habits to adopt in the coming year - read more books, eat less junk, exercise, leave work before sunset... the standard stuff. Often in the heat of the moment, January would find me at the local gym, forking over huge sums of money for an annual membership, fueled by the power of my resolutions. The end result was predictable - I would make it to the gym a few times in the months of January and February and then spend the rest of the year suffering the husband's snide remarks about how that money could have been more gainfully used and how gyms depend on exactly my type of member for their profitability. Bah!

The blog has been a victim to the same kind of annual optimism. Every year, I resolve to post more often. Not for any other reason but because I can. I cannot even begin to count the number of posts that I have written in my head, which never saw the light of day. Even now, I can think offhand of at least three post-worthy topics that have been whirling around in my head this week. But somehow, I just never seem to get around to it. For a start, I spend a lot of my recreational time on the net reading blogs and other websites. When I am done with that, I am usually out of time. Or enthusiasm. And when I do get around to a posting frame of mind, I suddenly develop writer's block and cannot summon to mind any of the ideas that were till then at the tip of my tongue (or fingers) or if I can, their due date is long past - like the Diwali post that never got written this year.

So, somewhere along the way I just gave up on resolutions, deciding that they were quite simply not my cup of tea. It was clearly not the ideal situation since the habits I wanted to change still lingered and irked me no end but that was better than living with the disappointment of underachievement.

And then last Friday night, I had an epiphany. Why did resolutions have to be made on New Year's Day, with the whole year spreading out in front of one's eyes in a daunting fashion? At work, one learnt that targets must have stretch in them but they must appear to be within reach. Well, planning to ditch a habit that has plagued you for ages at one shot and sustaining that over 365 days certainly doesn't sound realistic, does it?

So here's my idea. I am going to do December resolutions. I am going to pick two habits that I want to change and then go after them hammer and tongs for a month. Just one, measly month - how hard can that be, right? And then if I can sustain it through December, we'll see about taking on 2011.

So without much further ado, here are my resolutions for December 2010:

1. I will get back to exercising.

Tarana is 14 months old now and there's really no justifiable reason for me to procrastinate any further. I think one of the reasons I have not yet done this, other than pure laziness of course, is the inconsistent daily schedule that I live by these days. On some days I have Tarana's physiotherapy, on other days there is Ayaan's swimming and skating classes. Then are are feed times, meals, naptimes, bedtime, park time... The result: there is not a single time slot that I can commit to on an almost-daily basis.

And then I had a eureka moment. Why must I commit to one activity or time slot? It would probably be a lot easier, not to mention more interesting, to mix things up. So here's the plan.
- On weekends, I will swim. The pool hours usually clash with Ayaan's morning school routine and/or Tarana's physio. But on weekends, there is no school routine and usually no physio.
- I went to my favourite exercise studio, one I frequented before I got pregnant, and signed up. I started today and am hoping to hit at least two, if not three, of their high-intensity work-out classes every week.
- On the days Ayaan has his skating class, I am going to walk (briskly, no less). There is a stretch of road just outside the class and so instead of lounging around with a book, I am going to wear my sneakers and walk while he skates.

2. I will blog more

If I have an idea for a post, I am going to blog it before I lose it. I am not a big fan of regimented blogging so I don't want to make a NaBloPoMo type of commitment. I have enjoyed blogging so far because it is something I like to do. I don't want to turn it into something I have to do.

So the target here is somewhat internal but I am suddenly feeling all charged up about this and if you notice, this is my third post in less than a week - I usually write that many in a good month - so I have a good feeling about this.

Since we are off on a 10-day jaunt on 20th, it 's actually not even going to be a month. But I read somewhere that it takes just 21 days of sustained effort to change a habit, so maybe I'm on to something? Time will tell... :)

News

2010-11-25T14:39:00.000+05:30

Mama Says So was in the news recently. Mumbai Mirror did a piece earlier this week on mommybloggers and yours truly was in the hallowed company of two-time author Parul and multi-tasker extraordinaire Kiran. You can read the article here.

I am still bummed at the picture in the article though, since you can only see the back of Tarana's head. Usually, I am the one behind the camera. So pictures of me are rare enough and pictures of me and both the kids are a once-in-a-blue-moon occurrence. So this was the ONLY recent picture - the last one was from when Tarana was three months old!!!

The perceptive, amongst those of you who follow the link, might pick up on the first few words in the section about this blog - 'former marketing professional'. Which brings me to the other bit of news. About a fortnight ago, I finally threw in the towel and quit. It was on the cards and when it finally happened it was so anti-climatic that I couldn't muster up the enthusiasm to write about it. But the article has forced me out of the closet. :)

Another post is due on the whys and hows of my resignation and I promise to get around to that sometime soon. Meanwhile, I am trying to figure out what neat, little box I now fall into. I was always the 'Working Mom'. What am I now? I am not your typical SAHM - I don't cook, my house is neither very neat nor very artistically done up and I have enough help that I don't need (or want) to spend every waking moment with my kids. At the same time, I am in no rush to get back to work. For now, a small freelancing gig keeps my brain ticking but who knows what lies ahead. I guess I am Figuring-Out-Herself-Mom :)

On to more immediate matters, my blog tagline still reads: 'Life as a working mom in manic Mumbai'. I have been wracking my brains (so much for the ticking) and can't seem to come up with a single, half-decent option to replace it with. Ideas, anyone?

An idea whose time has come

2010-11-24T22:24:00.000+05:30

One of the biggest temptations of living abroad for me at our current stage of life is the range of fun and exciting stuff that one can do with the kids. From picking fresh strawberries at a farm to ballet classes to camping in the great outdoors... there's probably enough to pack every weekend of the year. However, given my aversion to cooking and housekeeping, it's unlikely that is ever going to happen so we try to make the best of what we have within our reach.

In a city like Mumbai, the problem starts with there not being many available options. I think most cities in India would be similar but Mumbai's lack of space and green cover reduces opportunities for non-school kids' activities even further.

Then there is the problem of knowledge. There is stuff happening but no way to ensure that the information gets to you in time. Sometimes, we get lucky and hear about stuff from friends, newspapers or blogs - the recent International Clown Show which Ayaan absolutely loved - was one such lucky break. But most of the time, weekends are spend lounging at home, running errands and hanging out the handkerchief-sized lawn that passes in this city for a neighbourhood park.

I have often wished there was a local magazine or portal that made this easier for me - that consolidated everything I need to know to survive and enjoy life as a parent in my city. So I was both impressed and jealous to come across the Facebook page for the Delhi-based mycity4kids a couple of months ago. I really liked what I saw and decided to unselfishly share the joy with my mommy friends in Delhi.

They now have a website as well - which all you lucky Delhiites can find here. The long list of stuff they cover is amazing - from schools and tutions to hobby classes and kids' events and almost everything else in between. Enjoy! Me, I am just going to linger mournfully on the sidelines and hope they get around to other cities some time soon. (mycity4kids, are you listening?)

Mauritius!

2010-11-10T15:54:00.161+05:30

I have been trying to motivate myself to write this post in the 10 days since since we got back but stuff kept getting in the way - stuff like unpacking, laundry, packing, flying to Jaipur, the maid's upset tummy, Diwali and lightning trip to Delhi amongst other things. But things are comparatively calm so it's time to spill all on our first holiday as a family of four to the sunny shores of Mauritius.

Even when I was procrastinating about the actual writing of this post, I was trying to put it together in my head. And I had a thought. You know what I love as much as holidays - finding order in chaos. And nothing does order better in a post than numbers, bullet points and headings.... so here goes :)

Three bad omens on Day One

Now I am no great believer in superstitions but even I had to wonder with the mishaps that we ran into within eight hours of leaving home:
1. The stroller died on us. Barely after clearing immigration, we noticed that one of the straps holding the seat to the frame had broken. It looked a bit dicey but the other strap was still hanging in there and doing an adequate enough job of holding Tarana in place. But it was not to be. Within minutes of landing and Tarana being strapped in, the other strap gave away too. So we started our holiday (one in which we planned to do a fair bit of walking) stroller-less.
2. Both the kids were awful in the flight. They refused to sleep - Ayaan was too impressed by having a little TV to himself and Tarana took major offence to all attempts to pop her into the bassinet. So we all walked off the flight looking like something the cat dragged in.
3. We were standing in the line for immigration when nature decided to play a mean trick on me and Aunty Flo picked that very moment to announce her arrival. I did mention we were going on a beach holiday, didn't I?

Three small solutions for three big problems

Undeterred, we kicked life's ass back:
1. On Day Three of the trip, we managed to discover a shop that sold baby gear. We didn't have a lot of choice available to us, so we bought a cheap Silver Cross stroller. It was pretty shoddy and we ditched it as soon as we got back but it saved our backs, literally and figuratively, while we were there.
2. We got to the hotel by noon, stuffed food into everyone and hopped into our respective beds for a long afternoon nap. Everyone was pretty perky once that was out of the way and we went and caught the sunset on the beach.
3. One word. Tampons.

Five awesome animal encounters

Left to ourselves, Jai and I would have spent the week in Mauritius lounging around on its beautiful beaches but we consciously planned the holiday around the kids, especially Ayaan. As a result, we ended up visiting two lovely zoos - Casela Nature and Leisure Park and La Vanille Crocodile Park - and the Mauritius aquarium. As Casela, we couldn't do some of the activities (lion walk, rando fun, segway rides) because the kids were not allowed there but we walked around the bird enclosures, went on a safari and hung out at the petting zoo. La Vanille was pretty much designed for kids so we did the full reserve and I think it was one of Ayaan's favourite parts of the trip. The aquarium was nothing special but considering we couldn't do any of the undersea experiences, it gave Ayaan some idea of the marine life around the island.

1. Communing with an ostrich. There were some lovely birds at Casela (most of which we didn't recognise) including flamingos and peacocks but the one that most caught Ayaan's fancy was the ostrich.

2. Feeding zebras (and deer): Also at Casela, we took the safari jeep and did a 45 minute round of the park. We saw more ostriches, peacocks, tortoises and deer but the best experience was when a herd of zebras came right up to the van and allowed us to pet them and feed them chunks of bread. After the safari, we hung out at the petting zoo, where Ayaan played with some very docile deer.

3. 'Emormous' and not so emormous crocodiles: One of Ayaan's favourite reads these these days is Roald Dahl's The Enormous Crocodile (or as he says it - 'emormous'), so he was very thrilled to hear that we would be going to see crocodiles. La Vanille did not disappoint with huge specimens on display, as well as some baby and medium-sized ones. Much time and discussion was spent on categorising them into emormous and not-so-emormous. We even got a paid photo of Ayaan holding a baby croc (with its mouth taped shut, of course) clicked but I can't seem to find it anywhere :(

4. Up close and personal with the giant tortoise: The coolest think about La Vanille, however, was not the crocodiles but some 30-40 giant tortoises that were left to graze in an open field. While some of them were shy and withdrew into their shells when approached, others were quite content with being mauled by the kids.

5. Sharks and stone fishes: Even though it was a small aquarium, Ayaan did get to see some interesting sights. There was a shark-feeding event but the sharks were small white-tipped reef sharks and seem quite content so there was no menacing feeding frenzy. But Ayaan spent a good 10 minutes watching the show. The most interesting fish there was the stonefish, which actually looks like a stone unless you look really carefully. On our way out, we picked up this really cute book from the aquarium shop called S.O.S Shark: it weaves a tale using many of the marine creatures we saw in the aquarium and we picked it up for Ayaan - it is now a daily must-read. The book is part of a series featuring a boy named Tikulu that highlight different aspects of Mauritian life - I was keen to pick up the one about the dodo too but they only had that in French.

Three ways in which Tarana was introduced to the joys of water

Before our holiday, Tarana had made two brief trips to the swimming pool just to get her acclimatised to being in the water and she enjoyed those. But in Mauritius, she really expanded her repertoire of water bodies...

1. Little Mermaid: The only time we took her into the sea was at the calm and endlessly shallow waters at Ille Aux Cerfs, where we spent a day. This pic was taken at least 50 metres away from the shore but it was so shallow that Tarana's feet easily touched the seabed. She totally loved it, in spite of a few inadvertent sips of the salty water.

2. River Nymph: We happened to visit a lovely colonial estate called Eureka. After lunch, we trekked down to a set of waterfalls that were part of the estate. Even though the water was pretty cold, Tarana had a fantastic time splashing around with her feet and hands and was most upset when we decided it was time to leave.

3. Water Baby: Last, but definitely not the least, was the fun she had at the hotel pool. We had just carried the arm bands so she mostly explored the pool in my arms but the shallow bits were shallow enough for her to sit and splash around as well. She particularly enjoyed trying to fish out bugs and dried leaves from the water.

Three things Jai and I would have done had the kids not been with us

While we had a great holiday with the kids along, we did at times heave deep sighs and wonder at how the trip would have been different if we had gone without them. These are the things we would have definitely done:

1. Water sports: including but not necessarily limited to scuba diving, snorkeling and parasailing. We had hoped to take this submarine trip to get some underwater joy, but even they didn't allow kids under the age of eight.

2. Relaxation: The holiday was fun and action-packed but definitely not even remotely relaxing. We didn't expect it to be but the sight of all the child-free couples strolling on the beach, tanning themselves by the pool or lounging at the bar was envy-inducing.

3. Romance: We spend 100% of our time there being parents. No moonlit walks, no candlelit dinners, no cuddling even. We ran around behind the kids all day and fell exhausted into the bed the minute they were asleep.

Four things we wish we hadn't done

Not everything was topnotch though. If we had a do-over, there are definitely some things that we would drop from the plan:

1. Chamarel Coloured Sands and Waterfall: A definite inclusion on all package tour itineraries, these were a total let-down. We had planned not to go based on advice from friends and our trusty Lonely Planet but once we were there, our driver convinced us that it was worth seeing but the long drive to get there was totally not worth the effort. The sands are just a couple of hills covered with volcanic sands in seven different colours, ranging from brown to purplish. The falls are touted to be the biggest in Mauritius, but as we discovered, that is not saying much.

2. Waterfall trip from Ille Aux Cerfs: This was a 45-minute boat ride around the island to see a very average waterfall. Again, recommended by the driver who clearly had vested interests. But Ayaan enjoyed the boat ride so all was not lost.

3. Domaine Les Pailles: The Lonely Planet described this as a charming sugar estate with lots of activities and some great restaurants. We ate at the Creole restaurant, which was pretty nice but the rest of the experience was nothing to write home about. The train ride and horse carriages were not operational and the walk through the spice garden was just a short stroll with a sniff at some 6-8 common varieties of spices like clove and curry leaves. The quaint bull-operated sugar mill was cute though.
4. Botanical garden at Pamplemousse: It was a nice enough garden but we weren't in the mood for a guided tour and they haven't labeled the trees and plants so it turned to be a just a pleasant walk. Also, if you have been to the Lalbagh Botanical Gardens in Bangalore, you can afford to give this one a miss.

Two things we wish we had done more of

1. Nothing: I think we got too caught up in soaking in all the sights and sounds of Mauritius. In retrospect, more time spent hanging out at the hotel pool and beach would have been nice.
2. Kids Club: We stayed at the Sofitel and they had a fantastic kids' club for kids in the 4-12 age range. Ayaan went there twice for a couple of hours each but he had a good time (and we got a bit of a break since we timed it with Tarana's naps) but we could have used it more. There were actually kids who spent the whole day there - their parents dropped them off after breakfast and picked them up after dinner. I think that would have been too much for Ayaan though and most of the other kids were French-speaking, so he would have felt left out.

Four standard hospitality experiences that thrilled Ayaan

Apart for the sights and sounds of Mauritius, Ayaan reveled in some of the smaller joys of travel that globetrotters take for granted.
1. His own little TV on the airplane: On the way to Mauritius, we didn't get seats together so he was sitting with Jai and convinced him to let him watch a movie followed by some cartoons for almost four of the six hour trip. On the way back, monster mom allowed him to watch only about an hour's worth. But he can't stop talking about how he had his own TV on the flight.
2. The bathtub at the hotel: The bathtub was one of his favourite haunts. He would wallow in the water for ages every day and play elaborate games with a Buzz Lightyear action figure, who would be made to play superhero and rescue some imaginary stranded turtles and defuse a bomb amongst other things.
3. Free sweets: Every night, just after dinner, the doorbell would ring and Ayaan would screech and rush to open the door so that he could commandeer the chocolates from the housekeeping aunty. And every time we passed the concierge desk, he would grab a candy from an ever-full bowl placed there. Since we were on holiday, I was pretty relaxed about how much junk he ate and he totally made hay while the sun shone.
4. Buffets: We had breakfast and dinner at the elaborate hotel buffets. Another fun experience for Ayaan - he would get me to walk around with a plate and would point out all the goodies he wanted. His eyes were always bigger than his stomach so a good portion was wasted but then again, we were on holiday so I let it slide. He wasn't the only one who loved the buffets either. All of us pigged out and the weighing scales are not our friend these days.

Four ways in which Tarana was a littler trooper

Our biggest worry before the trip was how Tarana would take to strange places and erratic schedules. Other than rejecting the bassinet and car seat, she was quite a sport.
1. Naps: Since we were gadding about madly, her naps went for a complete toss on most days. For a girl who's hardly ever napped anywhere but her cot, she was surprisingly flexible and took her naps where she could find them - in my lap, in her stroller, on her dad's shoulder, and even after a quick feed on the bumpy safari ride at Casela! They were, however, much shorter than her regular naps so she was understandably grumpy by about seven in the evening but otherwise was largely cheerful.
2. Night: She largely stuck to her night routine. We were anal about getting the kids to bed by nine. It was that or go mad since they were irritable (Tarana) and hyper (Ayaan) by then and we were completely drained. After that, she followed her regular routine of waking for a feed at 2 and then rising for the day at 6.
3. Independence: With my army of maids, she is rarely left to her own devices in Mumbai so we wondered whether we would have to expend oodles of time and energy entertaining her. But she was very self-contained. We would just plop her down anywhere and she would find something - coral, shells, beach towels, spoons, etc - to keep herself entertained.

4. Food: Thanks to my second-time mom benign neglect approach to food, she was ever willing to try new stuff and at a pinch was happy to fill her tummy with bread, peas and fries. Her breakfast favourite was a fruity yoghurt.

Three miscellaneous things that didn't fit into any of the other headings :)

1. Port Louis: We spent half a day at the capital 'city' and we were glad we did because it is a completely different experience from the touristy stuff. In some bits, you really feel like you are back in a cleaner version of a small Indian town - many of the shops have Indian names, there are loads of women in salwar kameezes and the Central Market is a cross between a sabzi mandi and Janpath :)

2. The hotel room: We really lucked out with our choice of hotel. We had got a great deal on the room rates from our travel agent, so we wondered whether there was a catch. But nope, it was a full-service five-star resort. Their housekeeping was a little slipshod and some of the dinner buffets were average but otherwise, it was really great. Our digs were roomy and, in addition to a plush double bed, easily fitted in a baby cot and a day-bed for Ayaan for sleep on. It was also sea-facing and had a verandah with this view:

3. Holiday art: Ayaan made this just outside our room - with sand, shells, coral, pebbles and flowers.

I guess that's about it. Phew! That was long. So much for bullet points :)

The Evidence

2010-10-22T22:57:00.003+05:30

In the last post, I mentioned that thanks to the husband's brilliant (not!) photography skills, there was not a single decent picture of the birthday girl. Now, I got the feeling that some of you thought I might have been exaggerating so here's the evidence to prove that I was not... and believe me, I am not withholding the stuff. This is all there was.

It's quite the cautionary tale. I call it How Not To Photograph Your Baby

Lesson One: Keep the light behind you

This one had the potential to be a really cute mother-daughter pic but for the fact that you can barely see the mother and daughter in question.

Lesson Two: Try to catch the baby in a good mood

Believe it or not, this is the best solo shot of Tarana from the party. At least, you can see her dress. Sort of. It was a white satin affair with a very light classic Winnie the Pooh print. Courtesy her Mamu from London.

Lesson Three: Wait till the baby looks at you

Ok, so maybe I am being a little unfair. I mean, babies do this all the time, right? You set up the frame and just as you press the button, they look away. So in a roll of otherwise good pictures, you'd probably delete this and move on. But what if this is one of the good pictures?

Lesson Four: Try and keep the baby in the centre of the frame

What I said in Lesson Three. Understandable but...

Lesson Five: Hold the camera steady... with both hands

I am not kidding. Jai holds the camera most casually with one hand. And this is one of those somewhat bulky prosumer cameras. Add low light situations and we have a lot of blurry pics... :)

(Sidenote to Jai: Sorry, darling. But a girl's got to put her money where her mouth is :) I promise to make it up with a post about what a great dad you are turning out to be)

And Then She Was One...

2010-10-20T21:56:00.000+05:30

Yes, that's right. My little baby is now a one-year old. We celebrated her first birthday last week and my last baby is no longer officially a baby. *sniff*

My initial birthday plan was to do nothing much more than cut a cake and carry on with the rest of the day as usual. But the big brother would not hear of it - the little sister had to have a birthday party with presents, streamers, balloons and a chocolate cake. That, combined with the fact that my my mom flew over from Jaipur just for the occasion, changed my mind so we had a small little do at the house with some friends and their kids.

It was nice, relaxed evening with old friends. We chatted about this and that while the four kids (ranging from just-turned-one to five and a half) pretty much ignored each other and did their own thing. The food was uncomplicated too - the chocolate cake, mini-quiches and mini-tarts were outsourced, there was a running supply of potato chips for the kids and my maid whipped up some hot, fresh pakoras for the adults.

My mom took charge of the decor and Jai was in charge of photography, which explains why there isn't a single decent shot of the birthday girl. :)

By The Water Cooler

2010-10-12T13:07:00.000+05:30

That my friends, is a sneak peek at Parul's second book - By the Water Cooler.

Her blog is one of my favourite reads and I had a lot of laughs reading her first book - Bringing Up Vasu - and am look forward to this one hitting the shelves so that I can rush out and pick up a copy.

Parul has a fun contest going on over at her blog, calling for anecdotes from the workplace.. I really want to participate but my limited creative juices seem to have all but dried up.

Check out the contest details here... and unleash you inner Dilbert.

The Sleep Chronicles

2010-10-04T21:39:00.000+05:30

When Ayaan was about six months old, I sleep trained him. He was a very bad sleeper and refused to nap during the day and at that point, I had tried almost everything else and was running out of options and patience. So I read Ferber and followed his advice to the T. It was harder than was suggested but at ten months, Ayaan was completely trained and sleeping through the night. (The detailed post I wrote about it at the time can be found here).

Of course, I would have preferred to not let him cry it out. But things had come to such a pass that my sanity, his health and our happiness depended on him being able to sleep a reasonable number of hours in a day. But I have often wondered whether it was my fault that things got to be that way. From the day he popped out, he was a baby who would soothe only when he was being carried. I, aided by my mother and mother-in-law at various points of time, spent many uncountable hours walking up and down the house with him. He seemed to have an in-built motion and gravity sensor that made him take umbrage the minute the poor soul carrying him decided to stop pacing or, God forbid, sit down. Everyone said you must not let a little baby cry. At that age, they cannot manipulate you - they are just telling you what they want. Well, in Ayaan's case, he wanted to be carried till my spinal column felt like someone had been at it with a hammer. So that's what I did but somehow that got in the way of him being comfortable with being put down in his cot for a nap...

Anyway, when Tarana was born, I vowed I wouldn't let things get that bad. To start with, things went well. She was sleeping 5-6 hours at a stretch at night by time she was three weeks old and when she did wake, I would feed her and put her down next to me on the bed. She would play for a bit and go back to sleep, after which I would pop her back in her cot. Her napping behaviour was somewhat more erratic but overall, we were getting by and it didn't seem like any drastic measures would be required.

Then when she was six months old, she got sick. And with a stuffy nose, sleeping in a flat position became understandably difficult. So between an exhausted Jai and a fever-ridden me, we took turns sitting up with her asleep on our shoulders. It was just a few days, but it turned out to be habit-forming and she developed an aversion to sleeping in her cot. There were some really horrible night when she would be up for three hours. Actually, Jai and/ or I would be up for three hours at a stretch - she would sleep on our shoulders but get up the minute she was put down in her cot. Her naps totally went to hell. It took ages to rock her into a deep sleep and then she would sleep no more than fifteen or thirty minutes.

Again, things reached breaking point. But I still dithered on taking more drastic steps. Whenever I felt just about ready to throw in the towel and let her cry it out, she would go through a good phase and my resolve would weaken. Then, there was the whole hoo-haa about sleep training possibly causing long-term brain damage. Let's not even get started about the latent guilt about sleep training Ayaan that came bubbling to the surface. But let's just say that it made me even more reluctant to sleep train Tarana and add to that the burden of guilt. Lastly, by the time I was considering this, Tarana was already crawling, sitting up and pulling herself up to stand. I worried that she might get agitated and hurt herself on the sides of her cot...

Given that I was confused about how to correct her behavior, I decided to correct mine. I started going to bed really early - as soon as the kids were in bed, in fact. That effectively dealt with my sleep deprivation so I limped on for another couple of months. But Tarana was still not getting enough uninterrupted sleep so she was pretty cranky in the day. And without any lengthy naps and a grumpy, clingy baby, I found it hard to get any time to get my own stuff done or to spend much quality time with Ayaan.

I finally decided to experiment with a modified sleep training method. In Tarana's case, getting her to sleep wasn't a problem. She was asleep within minutes of being rocked - the issue was getting her to fall into such a deep sleep that she would not wake up when she was put down. To put things into perspective, her eyes would close within 3-4 minutes of being rocked but the last mile of getting her to be a 100% asleep would take anywhere from fifteen to thirty minutes. It was also a pretty elaborate process - first, I would walk and pat her, then I put sit down and keep patting her, then I would stop the patting and just sit and even then, when put into her cot, she would stir and so then some patting was required to get her to settle. Not fun, to say the least.

So I decided to do away with the 100% fast asleep objective. I would rock her to sleep for the initial 3-4 minutes and then put her cot and leave. (This was different from the Ferber method I followed with Ayaan where I put him into his cot fully awake). In this case, she was already very, very sleepy. So she cried only for about 5 minutes on the first day. And except for one occasion when she howled for 10 minutes, the crying never exceeded that. It's been about three weeks now, and she usually cries for under a minute before sleep overwhelms her.

So yes, I am sleep training her. But this is a relatively gentle method that I feel no qualms about. The crying is minimal and she is sleeping much better. She now takes two naps during the day, both lasting between 45 minutes and an hour. And she wakes only once for a feed at night. We are both more rested and she is much less irritable during her waking hours...

On a related note, do/ did any of your babies meet the sleep quotas recommended by the sleep experts? Neither of my kids ever came close to the hours prescribed here. Even now, Tarana sleeps an average of 11 hours in a day, which is quite a long way off from the 14 hours that they say she should be sleeping.

Doctor Mom

2010-09-25T23:19:00.000+05:30

It's been over a month since I wrote about Tarana's w-sitting problem and life has been pretty eventful on that front since then. At her tenth month appointment, our paediatrician recommended that we get her evaluated by a physiotherapist.

Easier said than done, since he didn't strongly recommend anyone and paediatric physiotherapy is a pretty narrow field. The incredibly well-connected Mad Momma came through and got me the name of a reputed therapist. We went to see her and she did a very detailed appraisal. She concluded that the w-sitting was an issue in itself and had also led to something she referred to 'instability of foot', which basically means she is not placing her feet firmly on the floor when she stands and they turn in a little bit. She asked me to get a second opinion from a paediatric orthopedic and he concurred with her diagnosis.

We started the physiotherapy immediately with a plan of three half-hour sessions a week. I had a few initial doubts about the set-up since it is a 45-minute drive from where we live. But then I am currently living the SAHM life and I have a chauffeur-driven car, so I decided I didn't really have a reason to whine about the commute.

The next doubt to assail me was therapists themselves. It turned out that the main physiotherapist (the one who had done the initial evaluation) is a hugely over-scheduled doctor with three clinics spread across Mumbai and most of the actual therapy is done by her assistants. I considered switching doctors but since I had yet to find an alternative, I decided to stick with this practice till I did. It's been over two weeks now and I have come to see that the assistant working with Tarana is very good and the main physiotherapist comes in once every week or so to monitor progress and change things around if necessary. So we are staying put for now.

In the first couple of weeks, we had a lot of trouble getting Tarana to settle down. She would start bawling her head off at the word go. She clung to me and even the physiotherapist so much as looking at her was enough to send her into hysterics. At this point, I was asked a bunch of questions (which required me to rate Tarana on a 5-point scale on her comfort with various things and situations) and was told that the results indicated that Tarana had 'some sensory issues' and was finding it hard to 'balance and regulate herself in new situations'. When I asked the doctor what exactly these sensory issues were, she said that they would have to work with Tarana to identify these issues and work on them accordingly. This vague diagnosis made me extremely uncomfortable but I decided to give them some rope.

In the next session, instead of focussing on the exercises for her posture, the assistant spent most of the time in rubbing her feet with pieces of cloth with varying textures. I went home and thought about this new development and after talking to a few friends who have seen Tarana in action, I came to the conclusion that this sensory issues business was simply not true. I know my baby and her discomfort at those early sessions was nothing more than stranger anxiety. She, like her brother before her, has been shy and wary of new people right from the start. Till date, she gets upset if I hand her over to my maid, who she has known for almost a year now. She is a shy and sensitive baby. That's just her personality.

Anyway, so I spoke to the assistant at the next session and conveyed my discomfort about going down the sensory route. I told her that I was thoroughly unconvinced that Tarana's behaviour was a result of anything other than a slightly elevated level of stranger anxiety. I was all set to walk out if they didn't either agree with me or convince me about the sensory issues. Thankfully, they backed off and are back to focussing on the sitting and standing exercises now. The only change was that we have upped the frequency to six times a week for now till Tarana gets familiar with the therapist. And it has worked to a large extent - she smiles at the therapist when we reach there and the amount she cries is coming down with every session and she actually has fun when she's not busy being upset. There is a marked improvement in her w-sitting as well and she often plonks herself down with at least one leg out in front of her.

To make a larger point, it makes sense to balance out medical advice with instinct and research. Doctors are not omniscient and infallible. It has taken me a while to reach this place.

Over five years ago, I was a brand-new and nervous mother. Our first paediatrician came on his rounds and held forth on range of topics - from how to care for the umbilical stump to what soap to use for the baby - essentially Keeping The Baby Safe and Healthy 101. I hung on his every word and actually whipped out a notepad and took copious notes (yes, I was THAT mother). I felt wholly unprepared to be entrusted with the care of something as seemingly fragile as an infant and the doctor was my lifeline. I religiously took Ayaan in for his monthly check-ups and followed the doctor's advice to the T.

The turning point came when the same paediatrician diagnosed Ayaan with enlarged adenoids. The diagnosis was absolutely correct but he advised a very extreme course on action involving four weeks of antibiotics, and surgery to remove the adenoids if the antibiotics did not work. At first, I mutely accepted his recommendation and started the antibiotics because after all, 'Doctor Knows Best'. By lucky chance, we happened to go for a family wedding where an uncle, a doctor by profession, remarked on the prescription and suggested that that the extended dose seemed wholly over the top. Days later, we were at my mother's place, when Ayaan caught a nasty stomach bug and the Jaipur paediatrician asked if he was on any other medications and, on being told the whole adenoids story, was a lot more specific and vehement than my uncle in his disagreement. Some research on Google further confirmed this and needless to say, we soon found ourselves a new paediatrician.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, that pretty much ended my phase of blind faith in the medical profession. Here's what I believe now:

I may not not know the science as well as the doctor but the flip side to that is that the doctor does not know my children as well as I do.
If I have even the slightest doubt about a course of treatment, it is worth getting a second opinion.
Doctors are not infallible. If they were, two doctors would not diagnose and treat the same set of symptoms differently.
Doctors are not above profit motive, especially if they work in the private sector. A recommendation to operate on a two year old might hide the fact the doctor has inpatient targets at the hospital he is affiliated with. Identifying sensory issues that need work translate into more therapy session and more revenue. Call me a cynic, but doctors are businessmen too.
I have the right to question my doctor. Especially in India, doctors can be somewhat dictatorial in their attitude. I prefer to find doctors who are open to queries and who are willing to take the time to explain stuff to me in layman's terms.
I have Google and doctors in my family on my side - these are quick and easy ways to double-check.
However, if I constantly feel the need to double-check every prescription, I probably need to find a new doctor.
In the end, the decision is mine. Friends and family may give advice, doctors might recommend a certain route. I have no obligation to do anything but what I believe is the best for my children.

Plane madness

2010-09-18T10:56:00.001+05:30

You know your son is still obsessed with planes and air crashes when:

You are curled up in a corner reading your book, while he plays with his ever-increasing store of toy planes. You suddenly tune into his monologue and realise that he is doing an almost-perfect imitation of an airhotess: "This plane is about to crash. Please put on your seat belts. Thank you for flying Jet Airways." And then slams the plane into a nearby wall.

You get suspicious at the unusual silence emanating from his room and walk in to find him perusing an airline safety card (which he decided to appropriate on his last flight for detailed analysis)...

You decide to get him excited about the upcoming family holiday in Mauritius by showing him pictures on Google Images and he barely looks at all the lovely beach and ocean pictures before asking to see a picture of the aeroplane we will go in. He then proceeds to stare at the aeroplane, comment on its size and colours and wonder if it is going to land in the water...

You tell him about the weekend plan to go meet a friend and he decides to make her a present - a 'newspaper' about aeroplane crashes:

This is the artist's explanation:
On Page 101, the first picture is a plane flying in the clouds but the pilot has forgotten to put the wheels back inside. The second is a plane that has crashed its nose into a brick wall.
On page 202, the first plane has crashed because it landed on its nose. The second plane landed on the runway but then crashed into the jungle (the big black thing on the side). And the third plane has landed without the wheels coming out).

New Kid, Old Toys

2010-08-29T12:21:00.000+05:30

As a mother of two kids with a four and a half year age difference, I find myself spending a lot of time and energy on the use (and abuse) of the toys in our house. With Ayaan, this was never a challenge since the toys that came into the house were always specifically for him and he made the transition from rattles to blocks to playdoh in an age appropriate manner. But with Tarana, that option simply does not exist because Ayaan's toys are already in existence, most of them with dire warnings like 'Not suitable for children under 36 months' and 'Contains small parts that may be a choking hazard'.

And, of course, she finds her big brother's toys far more interesting than her own. Paradise for her is finding herself in front of one of his open toy drawers. So the rattles usually lie ignored while she prefers to play with his wooden blocks and toy cars. Supervising her playing, therefore, can be quite a high stress enterprise.

To start with, there is the constant tussle. She is most interested with what Ayaan happens to be playing with at the moment. And she has to only show the slightest interest in a toy for that to become the very toy that Ayaan wants to play with at that very moment. It usually doesn't end well since there is an inevitable struggle that ends with Tarana either getting hurt as Ayaan snatches something from her or pushes her or in Tarana having an indignant tantrum when she is denied the object of her choice.

Then there is the whole choking hazard thing. One has to watch her like a hawk because dangers lie everywhere. One day, the wheels on one of the dinky cars broke off as she was playing with it and had to be taken away from her before she put it in her mouth. Another time, I noticed some greenish liquid dribbling from her mouth and got the fright of my life - thankfully it was just a piece of green chalk that she had popped into her mouth and was most upset to have fished out. (For once Dr. Google was reassuring.) This eagle eye business is doable when Ayaan is entertaining himself but when he wants to me read to him or play something with him, I need to call my maid in to watch Tarana. I wonder, how do mothers without any help manage?

The other problem is that Ayaan is into colouring and crafts in a big way these days. So when he is not building crash scenarios with his ever-growing collection of airplanes, he wants to make something that involves working with one of more of the following: paints, playdoh, glue, scissors and crayons. Tarana is attracted to all of these like a moth to a flame and there are essentially two scenarios that ensue:
1. She gets her into his 'art', ruins it and Ayaan has a meltdown
2. She is intercepted in time and has an immense meltdown

To avoid a potential meltdown on the part of one or both kids, they need to be separated when Ayaan is doing crafts. Between me and the maid, one of us does crafts with Ayaan in his room (with the door closed, because no other place on earth holds the kind of fascination for Tarana that her brother's room does) while the other plays with Tarana in the living room. Again, moms with two kids and no help, what do you do?

There is the matter of the toys themselves. Some of Ayaan's stuff has not been designed to survive the ministrations of the pre-toddler brigade. With him, we only had board books but she has managed to get her poky little hands on a couple of his books and tear the pages before she could be stopped. Ayaan is no saint either and I wonder how long her walker-cum-wagon will survive, given his tendency to convert it into a racing car.

All in all, I am quite looking forward to the days when they can be counted upon to play together without doing any damage to the toys or each other. Because that will be the day I crack open a bottle of tequila, make myself a margarita and snuggle up with a book while they get on with the business of keeping each other entertained.

Redefining Rakshabandhan

2010-08-25T15:52:00.001+05:30

Yesterday was Rakshabandhan. The festival is all about brothers and sisters, so this was the first year that Ayaan could legitimately participate, having a baby sister and all.

All these years, I have never thought twice about the way the festival is traditionally celebrated - the sisters tie rakhis on their brothers, the brothers vow to protect the sisters and the sisters in turn pray for the well-being of their brothers. I simply followed the ritual and tied rakhis on all my brothers and cousin brothers.

But having my own daughter made me stop and think about the inherent chauvinism in the whole process and how that somehow made the whole festival something of an anachronism. In the days in which the festival of Rakshabandhan came to be, women were truly the weaker sex and therefore the presence and protection of the male members of their families (fathers, brothers and husbands) was not something that could be taken lightly.

But centuries on, much has changed, especially in the socio-economic strata that my children and I inhabit. I find it hard to imagine that Tarana will be the weaker sibling, in dire need of her brother's protection. I think they will both go through challenging times and I hope they will retain the love in their hearts that will help to provide help, support, encouragement, protection or whatever else is the need of the hour to each other.

So like many of my friends and acquaintances, I have decided to tweak and update the ritual to make it more contemporary. In our house, rakhi will be about celebrating about the sibling bond and both Ayaan and Tarana will tie a rakhi on each other, with everything else that that entails.

We made a start this year, though Tarana was a rather unwilling participant. She was most upset at having some random thread tied on her wrist and wailed while I guided her finger to put the tilak on Ayaan's forehead. In the middle of all this chaos, no pictures were taken of the actual rakhi-tying since Jai is travelling and I have only one pair of hands.

But I did manage to get some pictures once the rakhis were tied and Tarana had deigned to calm down. Here's the proud boy displaying all his rakhis:

The Winnie The Pooh (his favourite cartoon character) rakhi was from Tarana. The ladybug one was bought for Tarana but the tubelight came on in time to realise that the cute spotted fellows were choking hazards, so I found a plain red thread rakhi for her. The ladybug one was promptly appropriated by Ayaan and I got the junior maid (he calls her didi) to tie it for him. The big yellow one was made in school, along with this card for Tarana:

This is the front of the card - he said that he drew this so that she can learn about shapes :)

This was the inside of the card - a random selection of words he can spell, in a mish-mash of lower and upper case letters.

And this was on the back of the card. The 'TR' is supposed to indicate that that stick figure is indeed Tarana and the sun is shining down on her, with an arrow for emphasis.

I thought it was awfully cute :)

This post wouldn't be complete without a shot of a disgruntled Tarana, eyeing her rakhi suspiciously, so let me sign off with that :)

The Sudden Significance of W

2010-08-12T15:34:00.000+05:30

Tarana took her time to sit without support. At her seventh month check-up, she was still not sitting unsupported. She was crawling and trying very hard to pull herself into a standing position but she would not sit. And then one fine day, she plopped herself down into this position:

For the next couple of weeks, she would sit in this position for short bursts of time before crawling away. But by the time she approached the age of nine months, she could comfortably sit in this position for extended periods of time. She was unable to sit in any other position without support. If you sat her down with her legs out in front, she'd either put her hands down to support herself or crawl away. Either way, she'd be back into her favourite posture within seconds.

At first, I wasn't worried. I thought the way she was sitting was a lot like the vajrasana yoga pose, that is said to be very beneficial for both the body and the mind; so I thought it was kind of cool that she was sitting like this.

But then a friend saw the picture above and said that in kids, that posture is called w-sitting (in any case, it is not really vajrasana since in that your bum is not supposed to touch the floor) and that is not always such a great thing in babies and kids. So I consulted Dr. Google and was alarmed to find that amongst other things, w-sitting can lead to orthopaedic problems and interfere with the development of refined motor skills. (Quotable quote from a friend that must be shared here: Do not consult Dr. Google. He didn't go to med school)

Somewhat freaked out, I brought this up with our regular paediatrician. He did a detailed check-up and evaluated her muscle tone, reflexes, etc; and said that there did not appear to be any problem. He suggested that we wait till her tenth month appointment and prescribed calcium and vitamin D supplements. He mentioned that if there was no improvement, physiotherapy might be required.

I decided to get a second opinion. This doctor also did a detailed check-up and could find nothing wrong. But he did suggest that we get x-rays and blood tests to rule out vitamin D and calcium deficiencies conclusively. These reports have all come back completely normal. He suggested that we consider starting some form of physiotherapy to help Tarana sit properly, before the w-sitting habit became ingrained. He reassured us that it was not a big deal and they would just teach me some exercises to do with her regularly that out to sort her out.

We decided to wait a couple of weeks till we meet our regular doctor and then decide on the course of action. Meanwhile, we keep trying to plop her down with her legs in front, but she won't stay that way over a couple of seconds before manoeuvering herself back into the W. Occasionally one of her legs will come forward while the other stays curled up behind but that's about it. Meanwhile, she is now expertly cruising so it's only the sitting that seems to be a problem.

So anyway, her tenth month appointment is early next week. Let's see what the doctor has to say...

Breastfeeding Fascism

2010-08-04T10:16:00.000+05:30

The other day, I happened across this poster on a wall in the paediatric OPD in a well-known hospital:

For those of you who can't read Hindi, this translates as: Only a woman who is willing to breastfeed a baby shall have the right to be called a mother.

This irritated me on so many levels...

To start with, since when did motherhood become a right that could be given and taken away by some random authority? The last I heard, Mother Nature made it so that we could have babies and no man-made code of morality can claim to strip that away or tell us that the babies we gave birth to cannot call us their mothers. Sure, we may be good or bad mothers, but mothers we will be irrespective. Next, they will be saying that you aren't really a mother if you chose to deliver via an elective c-section. Or if you don't want to give up your career and be a 24-7 mom. Really, who gave anyone the power?

And yes, I agree, they are people who do not deserve to have children - but they are the ones who knowingly harm and neglect their children. I don't believe that choosing not to breastfeed even makes you a bad mother, forget about being one who should relinquish her right to be a mother.

Don't get me wrong, I am HUGELY pro-breastfeeding myself. I fed Ayaan for eleven months, even though it was one of the hardest things I have ever done - pain, endless fussiness, lots of tears (his and mine) and poor weight gain were all part of the package but I kept at it because of a deep belief in it still being the best source of nourishment for him in his first year (his totally rejecting the bottle also had something to do with it). Feeding Tarana has been much easier and at nine and a half months, we are still going strong. Both times, I have chosen to put my career, social life and beauty sleep on temporary hold because this is the one thing I did not want to compromise on.

But, that was my choice. And while I don't necessarily understand and agree with women who don't want to give breastfeeding everything they have got, I accept that that is their choice. And it is not as monstrous a choice as the breastfeeding Nazis make it out to be. So give it a rest, people. The choice to breastfeed is between a mother and a baby and no one else should have the right to interfere and judge. I think women should be provided with all the necessary information and support and then left to make the decision about what is best for their babies and themselves.

In other news, supermodel Gisele Bundchen has been shooting her mouth off and saying that there should be a law that requires women to breastfeed. So what now? Prison time for women who won't??! Because obviously the only thing better for a baby than breastmilk is a mom locked away in the slammer...

This is one issue on which people really need to lighten up. This kind of rabid extremism really gets my goat.

Decorated!

2010-07-20T23:02:00.001+05:30

Sraikh recently posted about the way her boys have plastered their dresser with stickers and wondered whether this made her an indulgent mom. Had I read something like this before I had kids of my own, my answer would have been an unequivocal yes. I have been to many a house where the kids has been allowed to run riot on the walls with crayons and turned my nose up at the 'out-of-control' kids and vowed that I would never let my kids get away with something like this.

When Ayaan decided to first draw on the wall, I lost it. I shouted at him and absolutely forbid him from peppering my walls with his graffiti. Considering that he was bang in the middle of his terrible twos, this was about as effective as telling a dog to stop barking. He chose to express himself on the walls during his nap times and soon the wallpaper behind his bed was a torn, scribbled-over mess. Thankfully, he grew out of this (after much screaming on my part and much more defiance on his part) and we repainted the house and replaced the wallpaper. I also put up a big rectangle of chart paper in his room and he limited himself to doodling on that.

And then about a year ago he discovered a passion for sticking stuff - stickers, his own artwork, stuff he had cut out from magazines, used Post-it notes... maybe it was the pregnancy or maybe I had just matured as a parent, but I decided that it was only fair that he should be allowed some place to express himself. After all, it was his house too and he should be able to put his stamp on it. So I agreed with him that he was allowed to stick on the wardrobe and the door of his room and nowhere else.

So, at any point in the last year, these two pieces of furniture have always been decorated with something or the other. But last week, he decided to really kick it into high gear, with a little help from the maid. Presenting the door to Ayaan's room... or whatever is visible of it, in any case:

I have to admit, I was a little pissed off when I saw this. It's one thing to have four-odd neat rectangles of artwork and some stickers up on the door and quite another to have every inch of it covered with random bits of paper. But he showed it to me with such pride that I didn't have the heart to take him to task for it. Besides, he hadn't broken any rules technically. Moreover, the more I looked at it, the cuter it seemed.

Here are some of the details from his 'door collage':

The letters spelling out his name are my only contribution, stuck on a few months ago. On the top left corner is a picture he cut out of a magazine of snow on some outdoor furniture. He is fascinated by snow and has been asking me when we can go for a holiday to a snowy place. Some day...

In addition to magazines, a lot of his raw material was sourced from his school activity books. Check out the four clippings - each portraying a different stage in the life cycle of a frog...

All the numbers grouped together...

Some brands make their appearance - the circle from the Gems packet and a cutting from his Indigo airlines baggage tag...

From the Lonely Planet magazine; he says he wants to go to this restaurant and eat this food (It's in Goa, I think)...

Lots more from the school activity book

Pretty neat, huh? In the end, I am glad I went with praise over punishment on this one.

Ephemeral Empathy

2010-07-17T22:16:00.000+05:30

Something somewhat scary happened on Tuesday evening. I had stepped out to pick up some groceries and decided to take the kids along. It was just a short walk away and we all needed some fresh air after being cooped up at home all day thanks to the rain. Ayaan was tripping along next to me and Tarana was in a sling.

Having bought the necessary stuff, I walked out of the store and turned half back toward Ayaan and held out my hand for him to hold, in preparation for crossing the road. The next thing I knew I was pitching forward off the pavement and on to the road. I had an instant of deep terror because I was headed for a face-down fall and that would have meant Tarana hitting the road as well. I somehow managed to pull myself back but I fell on my knees instead. Hard. But it felt worse than it was and in spite of torn jeans, badly scraped knees and a few wobbly moments once I managed to stand up, I was able to hobble home. Anyway, I am not complaining. It could have been much worse. Thankfully, Tarana was totally unhurt (thank goodness for the sling because I am not sure I would have been able to keep my grip on her) and there was no oncoming traffic *shudder*

Anyway, this post was supposed to be about Ayaan's reactions to my fall. This is how they went:

Shocked: Mama!!!!!!! (in a loud screech)

Apologetic: I am very, very sorry. Very sorry. (He thought I fell because he didn't take my hand soon enough, so I had to reassure him it wasn't his fault)

Concerned: Is it paining? Is there blood? Show me.

Preachy: It's because you are carrying so many heavy things. I told you not to carry too many things. (He so did not) Next time, carry lesser things.

Distracted: Mama, see that aeroplane! Mama, can big aeroplanes fly higher than small aeroplanes? What about medium aeroplanes? (I gritted my teeth and politely informed him that I was not up to discussing the intricacies of the the correlation between aircraft size and flight capabilities)

Impervious: Mama, let's have a race. Let's see who reaches the gate first. (My teeth were starting to hurt from all the gritting now and I informed him, much less politely, that any kind of speed was out of the question given the pain in my knees)

All of this happened in the five minutes we took to reach home from the scene of my fall!

My Way

2010-07-14T10:41:00.001+05:30

My problem with most parenting theories these days is that they don't take one major factor into consideration - the parent! I think you can be the best parent you can be if the parent in you is aligned with the person you are rather than striving towards some parenting ideal spouted by an expert.

What got me started on this was this article on Babble and in particular this video:

The article says: "Fernald and her colleagues found that the children of mothers who spoke more, used different words for the same object, used different types of words, and spoke in longer phrases to their children at eighteen months, not only had larger vocabularies but were faster at processing words at twenty-four months."

Here's the thing. I can't do this. I cannot keep up this kind of constant ~~chatter~~ communication with my kids. That's just not my personality. I can be as talkative as the next person but I need to balance that with periods of solitude and repose to stay sane. So that is how I am with my kids too. If you were to walk into my house randomly, you could find me playing with them and talking to them, but you could just as likely find me sitting next to them while they played independently and reading a book.

The picture above is from when Ayaan was about three but this kind of thing is a pretty common sight even today. This way, he has the reassurance of my physical presence and knows that he just has to speak up when he wants to engage more directly.

With Tarana too, I usually plonk her down next to a basket of toys and let her get on with it. When she needs a cuddle, she crawls over, gets it and then goes back to playing. When she starts fussing out of boredom, I put my book down, talk to her, get her interested in another toy and then get back to my book.

This is what is comfortable for me. If I had to talk to the kids every waking moment, I would be seriously stressed out!

The article above also seems to draw links between the quantum of communication and vocabularies. I am not sure how competitive Ayaan's vocabulary was at twenty four months but both his teachers (from this year and the last) have mentioned to me that he has one of the best vocabularies in the class.

Again this happened because I did what came naturally to me. I am was a voracious reader myself and so I read to him. A LOT. We started reading as soon as he was steady enough to sit in my lap and it continues. We read at least 4 books on a bad day and this can go up to 10 on a really good one. He has a pretty impressive library for a kid his age and a new book causes much excitement.

So, did I have a point? I guess what I want to say, in the immortal words of Frank Sinatra, is this: And more, much more than this; I did it my way

My Sins Against Gender Stereotype

2010-07-07T22:59:00.000+05:30

This tag has been spreading like a virus and the bug has finally bitten me – I have been tagged by CeeKay and Dipali. The tag requires me to list at least ten things that I have wanted or done that my gender is not supposed to do. So without much further ado, here goes:

1. Cooking is not my scene. I grew up with a working mom, who wasn't much of a cook herself and didn't think that cooking was one of the skills that I needed learn just because I was a girl. So, I have never considered cooking to be an important part of being a wife, a mother or a woman. Sure, if there were no other option, I'd cook. But as long as I can afford to delegate it, I will because I simply don't enjoy it. Of course, as luck would have it, my son loves to 'cook with Mama'. So we (the husband's help is also enlisted) either bake a cake or cook something simple like a pasta on the weekend.

2. I love to drive and hate being in the passenger seat of a car. We do employ a driver but he usually ferries Jai around. I drove myself to work and back through most of both my pregnancies and people thought I was mad, especially since we had a driver. I would love to own and drive an SUV but can't justify the environmental impact.

3. I drink alcohol. And I don't just stick to the 'feminine' stuff like cocktails and wine. I enjoy good whiskey and love to quaff the occasional tequila shot. Though I no longer feel the need to prove my 'capacity', I have been known to drink many of my male friends and colleagues under the table.

4. I am not into jewelry. I usually put on a pair of low-maintenance earrings and then don't change them for months. I wear neckpieces only for weddings and special occasions. I still own only two 'sets' of the heavy stuff, the very same ones that I got as a part of my wedding trousseau.

5. A peek into my wardrobe will reveal way more pants, capris and shorts than saris, salwars and skirts. And no more than three handbags at a time.

6. Look at the picture below. Exhibit A shows the correct way for a lady to cross her legs whilst sitting. But if I am wearing pants, I prefer to sit the Exhibit B way because I find it more comfortable. In skirts, of course, I am forced to revert to the ladylike way. Maybe that's why I own more pants than skirts.

7. I can be one of the guys when I want to. I have, on occasion, checked out the hot chicks with my guy friends. I can swear with the best of them. Explicit jokes don't bother me and with the right people, I enjoy them.

8. My wedding was not the life-defining moment of my life. I did not attempt to lose weight or grow my hair for the occasion. The weddings (we had two, three actually if you count the one in court) were planned almost entirely by our families. I didn't feel any need to input into the venue, the menu, the guest list (other than ensuring that my friends were on it), the decor or the contents of the trousseau. I chose both my wedding outfits from one shop in under an hour. I did not have trial runs for my hair and make-up. Basically, I just went with the flow.

9. I do not do 'damsel in distress'. I pride myself on being able to take care of myself. I can carry my own bags and open my own doors, thank you very much.

10. I don't own much make-up. I currently have three lipsticks, two lip liners and one eye pencil. I also have a eyeshadow set that I was gifted but have no idea how to use so it is languishing on the dressing table and will soon find its way into the dustbin.

I am also supposed to tag 12 other people but almost everyone I read has either already done the tag or has already been tagged. So I am going to skip that part - blue pants don't sound all that bad :)

The Little Ironies of Motherhood

2010-06-28T10:29:00.004+05:30

Your phone will be silent all day, making you wonder if your friends have decided you are now boring Mommy types, not worth even a phone call. Then it will ring (LOUDLY) just when you are putting the baby to bed.
The doorbell will only ring when you are either breastfeeding or bathing the baby.
The little ~~devil~~ angel who has refused to nap through the day falls fast asleep just when people come over to 'meet the baby'
The hyperactive brat you have been complaining about behaves like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth when friends visit, causing them to wonder what the hell you were cribbing about.
After having you driven you batty over a long car drive with endless chatter, the brat will fall into a deep sleep when you are five minutes from home.
Just when you have been bragging to all and sundry about how your baby sleeps through the night, she will turn into a night owl.
The elder sibling, who has been playing independently in his room, will remember your existence and come shouting for you at the exact moment when you are putting the just-rocked-to-sleep baby down in her cot.
The 'On' button on the TV remote probably activates the baby as well. It couldn't just be a coincidence that she wakes up from her nap at the exact moment that you collapse in front of the idiot box.
The expensive toys either lie ignored and neglected at the back of the cupboard or are destroyed in mere days. The cheaper toys hold their interest much longer and the free stuff (sticks, stones, cardboard boxes) is evergreen.
On schooldays, you have to struggle to wake up the brat at 6.45. On holidays, he will be wide awake and bouncing off the walls at 6.30.
The baby who sleeps through loud bangs and shouts on your shoulder wakes at the merest whisper when asleep in her cot.
When you go to office for just a couple of hours to figure out your options post maternity leave, your elder one bawls when you leave and hugs you tight when you come back, saying 'Mama, I missed you sooooooo much'. Two days later, in the throes of a towering rage, he screams, 'I don't like you. You go back to office TODAY!'
Just before leaving for the same trip to office, your younger one proceeds to spit up milk all over your carefully put together ensemble of professional attire that still fits.
Your son will get up to his naughiest shenanigans when you are talking to your boss, causing you to mometarily forget you are on the phone with the person who will write your performance appraisal and scream 'STOP DOING THAT RIGHT NOW'.
The toilet trained kid will have an accident on the day you changed handbags and forgot to put in a change of clothes.
The child who has a meltdown when asked to put away his toys at home morphs into the teacher's helper at school.
The more public a place, the longer the tantrum, compounded by the fact that you can't use your standard tools of trade (ignore, shout, spank, timeout) to deal with it.
The day you plan your first kids-free night out in the longest time, both kids fall sick.
No matter what parenting choice you make, there will be some research done out there that will tell you how your choice/s screwed up your kid.
Though you crave for some peace and quiet, when your wish is granted you worry. Silence means that the kids are up to no good or they are falling sick.
You look forward to the brat's trip to his grandmother's house only to sit around moaning the eerie silence in the house.
Remember when your mother said, 'Wait till you have kids of your own'? And you thought you thought having kids would be an effective way of silencing her. Well, think again. Once you have kids, she'll pamper them silly and when you object, you will be told, 'You don't understand, just wait till you have grandchildren'!!!

I could go on but this is as good a time as any to stop. Any of you mums out there want to take this up as a tag? Itchy, Kiran, Sue, Parul, CeeKay, Mona, Choxbox, Deej... at this this rate, I am going to put all the mothers in my Reader here. So any mommies passing by, feel free to take this up. And do leave a link to the post in the comments section if you do.

Update: Some more irony out there...
Mona mommies up Murphy's law
Parul demonstrates that fatherhood is not without irony
JustAnotherBlogger gives a non-parent angle
Aneela writes about the irony of leaving
CeeKay adds her two cents

Voices in the Sky

2010-06-22T16:38:00.001+05:30

In case you happen to find yourself on an airplane with us, you might want to get yourself a seat well outside earshot of our family.

And not for the reasons you think either. Most people want to keep a good distance from babies in airplanes but Tarana has been quite a sturdy little flyer and hasn't really cried too much on any of the flights we have taken since she was born.

Ayaan too seems to have lost his tendency for loud public temper tantrums. He has also ditched his penchant for violently kicking the seat in front, thereby saving the passengers who have the (mis)fortune of sitting directly from possible damage to their spinal cords. And he has also grown out of his habit of endlessly playing with the stewardess call buttons and the lights.

He now spends most of his flights chatting away merrily with us and therein lies the problem because his chosen line of conversation these days is far from cheerful and is concerned with the inauspicious (especially if you are thousands of feet up in the air) topic of planes crashing.

He has an old, battered plane - the only surviving piece from an entire set that I got him for his fourth birthday. Its wheels snapped off a while ago, much of its paint is peeling and it is missing a back wing but it is the toy of the moment and goes EVERYWHERE with us, including airplane trips.

The first order of business for the brat as soon as he is buckled into his seat is to equip himself with one of those safety information cards usually to be found in the seat pocket and ignored by most passengers. The next twenty minutes is spent in detailed perusal of said document, accompanied by an incessant stream of questions. It goes typically like this:

Mama, why the aunty in this picture sitting like this with her baby?

Why you are not holding Tarana like that?

Mama, in this picture, the plane is standing on grass. Why is it standing on grass?

Mama, why the pilot didn't land this plane in the airport?

Mama, why is shoe picture has a red line on it?

And so the questions continue, too numerous to be comprehensively captured, till the flight takes off.

Once airborne, the next twenty minutes are spent watching the plane’s performance with an eagle eye and giving a running commentary on the same, in a voice loud enough to be heard over the whine of the aircraft’s engine.

Mama, look! The plane is slanting. I think it is going to fall down and crash.
Mama, see! We are in a cloud. I can’t see anything. What if the pilot takes a wrong turn and we crash?

Mama, I think the wing of the plane is going to break. Will we crash?

And so on and so forth. Thankfully, the meal service begins and he has other things to do with his mouth. So we all get a brief respite from the doomsday questions.

Once the meal has been polished off and he has been convinced that a visit to the facilities is necessary, he settles back into his seat and pulls out his toy aeroplane. The next half an hour or so is spent flying his plane around the seat and the tray. Many crash scenarios are played out – the plane landing on its belly, on its wings, on its nose, on its tail….

Then when we get set to land and he is strapped up again, a new set of questions begin focussed on all the perils that a airplane might encounter:

Mama, what if there is SUCH a tall tree that it is as tall as the sky and the plane dashes into it?
Mama, what if a bird bangs into the plane?
Mama, what if the plane lands on a building?
Mama, what if a plane lands in a puddle? A VERY BIG puddle. No, not a pond or a lake. Just a GIANT puddle
Mama, what if there is food on the ground when the aeroplane is going to land? What if there is a bottle of Sprite?
Mama, what if the pilot goes to sleep?

And then thankfully we land safely. And the questions stop, for the moment. We smile apologetically at any and all co-passengers who might have been subjected to this depressing line of questioning and make our way out of the plane

But they are lucky to escape with one hearing. We, on the hand, continue to hear questions and hypothesis about crashing planes through mealtimes and bath-times and drive times and basically ALL the time.

Our balcony has a perfect view of the flight path so we wonder about the likelihood of every passing plane crashing. Then every conceivable surface in the house is subjected to crash landings with his toy plan. And the other day, he spent almost an hour in the balcony with a bucket of water and his toy plane, trying to re-create a water landing!

So like I said, watch out for us on your next flight. And try and sit as far away as you can :)

Weird?

2010-06-16T21:15:00.002+05:30

I routinely express milk and feed it to Tarana from a bottle. The reason for this is to ensure that she is comfortable with the bottle and does not reject it when I go back to work. So far, success has been mixed. She does not reject the bottle entirely, but she does not love it either. She will rarely have more than 2 ounces and then starts playing with the bottle or pushing it away. And if I nurse her immediately afterwards, she happily feeds away, which means she has not had her fill from the bottle. Anyway, I am hoping that when I do go back to work and she has no backup option, she will take full feeds from the bottle. And given that my back-to-work date is currently a moving target (long story, not bloggable), it is quite possible that she won't need much breast milk during the day by the time I actually do rejoin the workforce.

Anyhow, that's not what I intended to write about. This is an anecdote from the early days of expressing. I would express the milk and pop it into the fridge till I was ready to give it to Tarana. At feeding time, I would take it out and stand it in a pot of hot water. Then I would shake it vigorously to ensure that the fat that had got separated from the milk would blend back in. In fact, the opposite would happen - it would coagulate into bigger lumps.

Nonplussed, I went back to my breastfeeding bible and read the fine print on how to prepare a bottle of expressed milk and came across these heretofore ignored sentences: "Shake the milk to redistribute the fat, but not too much. You don't want to make butter or whipped cream."

Really? Butter? This made me curious. Wanting to know more, I typed the following key words into Google - 'breastmilk butter'. The results were not what I expected. Here's a sample...

Recipes a la Breastmilk
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour; 2 tsp baking powder; 1 tsp baking soda; 1/2 cup butter; 3/4 cup sugar; 2 eggs; 1/2 cup breast milk; 1/2 cup plain yogurt ...
www.landmilkhoney.com/recipanr.htm

Can breastmilk be used to make butter? - Yahoo! Answers
Breastmilk recipes?‎ - 16 posts
Other uses for breast milk?‎ - 13 posts
Butter from Human Breast Milk?‎ - 10 posts

Breast Milk Cheese | www.indrani.net
I suppose breast milk yogurt would be really runny. And I thinkbreast milk butter / human yogurt would be possible but you'd need liters ...
www.indrani.net/index.php?q=2006/03/breast_milk...

Breastmilk Butter - 53903 - Recipezaar
Prep time: 5 min - Cook time: 5 min - Calories: 0
Try Recipe Breastmilk Butter - 53903 from Recipezaar.com. This recipe has a 4.40 star rating and has been reviewed 8 times.

And that's only from the first page!

And then I read this article the other day about this woman whom they are calling... wait for it... the Nigella Lawson of breast milk cookery!

My first reaction to all this was something along the lines of 'Ewwwwww' but then I started to wonder if it was really that disgusting to cook with your breast milk. After all, it is just milk and if you can use the milk of another species (cows, buffaloes, goats), then why not your own milk?

And it's not just cooking either. If this website is to be believed, it is good for multiple, non-edible uses as well. Apparently it can cure diaper rashes and pink eye as well as double up as a facial cleanser and make-up remover, amongst other things!

Anyway, I can't really see myself doing any of this stuff and Tarana need not worry about any competing claims on her food source. Nor do those who plan to visit have to worry about the source of dairy in the food or beverages on offer. But I guess it's not as gross as I started out thinking it was.

Marking Thee Son Red

2010-06-13T16:19:00.006+05:30

No, the title is not any mistaken attempt to incorporate Shakespearean English into my blog. It is my attempt at a tongue-in-cheek title for my entry into the Red Marker Blogathon.

Sue is hosting the blogathon and she says "If some word/ phrase/ idiom/ spelling/ syntax/ punctuation incorrectly used drives you up the wall, blog about it"

I have been thinking about writing this particular post ever since she announced the blogathon but it's only while writing the last paragraph that I realised that my post is not technically eligible because this is about pronunciation (one in particular), which does not figure in Sue's list of errors. Anyhow, I shall post nonetheless.

The culprit is this case is none other than my very own son and the word he mispronounces is 'the'. And he says it as 'thee', instead of 'thuh'. Typically, it goes like this:

I want to watch thee Bee Move?

Mama, can I help you with cooking thee pasta?

I am looking for thee box of crayons

Thee milk has fallen on thee floor and I looking for thee cloth to wipe it with.

And so on and so forth. And I wince every time, a thee leaves him mouth. I look at him, arch an eyebrow and say, 'Thee pasta?' His typical response is to look at me rebelliously and repeat 'Thee pasta'. Not one to let such matters rest, I repeat the question somewhat sternly, 'Thee pasta?'. At which point, he sees the steely, stubborn glint in my eye and caves and mutters, 'Thuh pasta'.

I wonder where he picked this up because it is a relatively recent phenomenon.

It could be because his teacher might be pronouncing 'the' in this fashion. I have not had a chance to verify this theory though and am waiting for an opportunity to meet her to do so.

My other theory is that he might have heard the thee pronunciation being used correctly in conversation and decided that this is the way the word is always pronounced. Because (Sue, don't look now, I started a sentence with because) there are sentences in which the thee pronunciation is necessary and correct.

When researching the correct pronunciation of 'the', I learnt something new as well. My own thinking was that one only used the 'thee' pronunciation when one wanted to place special emphasis on the word immediately after it. For example,

It is thee place in town for margaritas

He is thee person to talk to if you want to understand thuh current financial crisis.

What I did not know is that there is another appropriate usage of this pronunciation. We must also say thee instead of thuh if the word that follows starts with a vowel sound. For example:

He moved her deck chair so that it was shaded from thuh sun under thee umbrella

He took thee orange for himself and offered her thee apple

The important thing to remember here is that it is the sound of the first syllable, not the actual letter that requires the change in pronunciation. Therefore,

Thuh university campus is full of greenery (because university sounds like is starts with a Y')

But,

Thee hour hand on thuh clock is on three (because the H is silent)

That ends my grammar lesson for the day.

Thee End :)

In Memory of a House

2010-06-04T17:59:00.009+05:30

On the first of June, my mom handed in the keys to her government-provided house and moved into a private bungalow. Even though I am not there to see the move in person, I am feeling very nostalgic at the thought of never visiting that house again, or rather at the thought of Ayaan never visiting that house again. Because my mom moved into that house when I was still pregnant with him, so that is the only house he has ever known as Patti’s house. And what a house! For a space-starved city kid, it was a dream come true. My Mumbai flat could have easily been accommodated twice over in her front garden and that was not the half of it, because the back garden was even bigger!

I don’t know how much of this house Ayaan will remember as he grows so I am putting this picture post together for posterity…

Ayaan’s first visit there was at the tender age of two months, when I went to spend a couple of months of my maternity leave with my mother. I remember that the bane of my existence used to be the daily power cut that used to happen right in the middle of the hot August mornings. After days of sweating it out with him uncomfortable and clingy in my arms, we set up a folding bed under a low tree and hung some toys on it. The slight breeze was preferable to the suffocating heat inside the house and it kept swinging the toys back and forth, keeping him entertained for most of the duration of the power cut.

As he grew older, the toys had to be on the bed itself, since he would refuse to lie on his back

On his first trip, he also got his first haircut – an event that was held outdoors both from the perspective of the mess and to keep him entertained. It worked...

But when we repeated the same procedure for his mundan when he turned one, we had a screaming fit on our hands. It took the barber, my mother and me thirty minutes of wrestling with him to get it done and it was the longest thirty minutes of my life. (The picture below is the calm before the storm)

That’s why we decided to do Tarana's mundan much earlier, when she was too young to figure out what was going on and protest.

Not surprisingly, his favourite place to hang out was the garden and on hot summer days and cold summer evenings, it was quite a challenge to keep him indoors. Most of the time, when the weather allowed, he was generally mucking around…

But there were times when he took to doing dome ‘serious’ gardening as well. Tending to the potted plants...

watering the grass...

and supervising the other gardeners...

In addition to the plants, the garden was also home to a huge variety of birds – some residents and some visitors. Ayaan flitted between between fascinated by the sparrows who built their nest in the light fixture in the veranda, the peacocks and peahens who paraded through the garden in the mornings and evenings, the owls that came to roost in the bird houses my mom had put up in the trees… He also insisted on personally putting out the bird food every day that he was there…

Ayaan had great fun playing with my dogs. Dog actually since Beanz has never particularly given him the time of the day, except to snap and snarl if he got too close. But Buddy and Ayaan have had great fun together over the years. Or let’s just say Ayaan has had great fun and poor long-suffering Buddy has tolerated his attentions.

For his fourth birthday, he got a ‘swimming pool’ for his birthday so a daily splash in it has been an essential part of the Jaipur experience for him. I hope we can find a spot for it in the new house as well...

Ayaan has spent every single Diwali of his life in that house as well, all five of them. The first Diwali came around when he was still a babe in arms so he was dressed up in ethnic wear and lugged around to view the pooja and the fireworks.

On his second Diwali, he wasn’t overly impressed by the festivities. He didn’t approve of the attire, refused to sit in place for the pooja and found the clothes pegs on the terrace more fascinating than the fireworks show that my mom and maid gamely put up for him.

The third Diwali was less than happy. He picked up a horrible stomach bug and was very weak on Diwali day. He just hung around listlessly and watched us go through the motions.

The fourth Diwali was the first one that Ayaan really got into the spirit of things. He actively participated in the lighting of the fireworks and insisted on being the master of ceremonies at the pooja.

And last year, he went there for his last Diwali in this house. The big difference this time was that I did not accompany or join him but he had a blast anyway. And came back to find that he was no longer an only child :)

He also spent his fourth and fifth birthdays in Jaipur and the big garden was put to good use for his birthday parties.

And so it comes to an end. We shall miss the huge garden with its menagerie of animals (my mom had tortoises and a herd of monkeys paid us a daily visit) and birds.

While we will no longer have a huge garden at our disposal, my mom has moved into a nice, spacious bungalow in a great neighbourhood and I think she will be very happy there. And Ayaan (and Tarana) will make a ton of happy memories there too.

Bullet Point Update

2010-05-31T18:34:00.003+05:30

It's been a busy two weeks in these parts and so much has happened that bullet points seems to be the best way to get this done. So here goes...

It took a while but we are all much better. Thanks for your concern and good wishes.
Ayaan's cough took ages to subside and it still makes an appearance when he has a tantrum but after a month of antibiotics, vitamin syrups and cough medicine, I can finally switch off the phone alarms that reminded me that a dose was due.
Tarana's cough and cold made a reappearance along with a couple of days of low-grade fever but she too is finally in the clear.
We made it to the family wedding in Delhi after all. And my extended family appears to have equipped themselves with some newly acquired diplomacy because I did not have to field a single comment or question about their skinniness.
The wedding was fun but exhausting with the hyperactive brat and the sleep-deprived girl but we all survived.
Ayaan got to be the sarbala and was perched on the horse in front of the bridegroom for the duration of the baraat. Given that I am the only cousin in the extended family on both sides to have produced a boy, he has had quite an extended stint as wedding VIP, having been both page boy and sarbala twice each. A little trip down memory lane…

Tarana looked very cute in the pattu pavadai Indu Aunty sent for her. For the functions other than the wedding itself, she was dressed in frocks since most of the kiddie stores I visited stock ethnic wear only for girls of ages one and above. The ones that did have infant sizes had stuff that looked very uncomfortable so I decided to prioritise comfort over style.

The kids were quite a hit with the relatives. This is the first time that Ayaan grew out of his clinginess and interacted with people. He chattered away non-stop to anyone who would listen and almost gave me a heart attack by going off with my Chacha without telling me – for five horrible minutes, I thought he had got lost! Tarana was popular simply because she was the youngest person present though she chose to favour only male family members, happy to rest her head on their shoulders while the female aunts and cousins had to contend with a violently bawling baby every time they attempted to take her.
There was an AWESOME chaat counter at the wedding buffet with some amazing pani puri. I ate EIGHTEEN! And survived without so much as an upset tummy despite my mom's dire predictions.
We stayed at the Saket Sheraton. This was Ayaan's first experience of a five-star hotel. (We did stay at one in Goa a few years ago but he was too young to have any memory of it). And he LOVED it - the bathtub, the toiletries, room service, breakfast buffet, jam and sauce in little bottles, and every little aspect of our stay there. To start with, he could not get his head around the concept of a hotel - he kept referring to the room as 'our house' and at once point got a look of pure bliss on his face as he proclaimed, 'Mama, I want to stay in this house forever and ever'!
In the midst of the wedding festivities, I managed to squeeze in a trip to the Mad House. There was such a strong sense of deja vu that descended on me, having seen so much of the house in pictures on her blog. The Brat and the Bean were welcoming to extent of wanting Ayaan to share the juice that they happened to be drinking when we entered. And the Bean was very upset when Ayaan did not let her help him pick up the chips he had dropped on the floor. The Brat and Ayaan compared and contrasted their mothers' iPhones. Sadly, it was a very short visit and was over before it began but I am glad I managed to make it.
After the wedding, I headed to Jaipur. This had not been the initial plan but one of my maids was on her annual vacation and the other one asked for a few days off since her daughter-in-law needed some emergency surgery. Not relishing the thought of holding down the fort on my ownsome lonesome, I headed momwards.
Like last year, we celebrated his birthday there. We invited the kids he knows over there and my mom got her back garden decked up with balloons and Disney cut-outs and arranged for a magician to provide entertainment. The boy wanted a flower-shaped cake but then chose a star-shaped cake at the shop.

He behaved like an angel at his party. He was quick with the P&Qs. He insisted on being the one to serve the cake to everyone so he waited for my mom to put the pieces on plates before taking them off and ensuring that no one went without cake. And towards the end of the party, he took it upon himself to help in clearing away the used plates and napkins. I beamed with pride as everyone praised my well-behaved son. Of course, the next day he burst my bubble by having a string of really nasty tantrums.

Another adorable development has been the evolution of Ayaan’s relationship with his great-grandmothers. As a younger and much more hyperactive baby, he didn’t have much time to spare for them since at 85 and 90 years old respectively, they couldn’t quite keep up with him. But of late, he seems to have realised that their limited mobility has its advantages. Without the need or ability to move around too much or have much to do, they form the perfect captive audience. My paternal granny was made to play endless games of Snakes and Ladders with him and my maternal granny was put to work reading to him. He has also become very caring and considerate with them – holding their hand to ‘help’ them walk, serving and feeding them, counting out their medicines. Very cute :)

We got back to Mumbai on Thursday and tomorrow we leave for Bangalore to spend some time with Jai's parents. And after that, I would be quite happy to grow roots in Mumbai for a while, having had more than my fill of packing, unpacking, airport lounges, messed up routines and what not

It Ain't Over

2010-05-09T19:30:00.001+05:30

I know this is getting old but sickness still reigns in these parts. When it rains, it pours, as the cliche goes. And before I had time to breathe a sigh of relief at Ayaan's fever-free state, I was struck down myself.

It started on Monday morning when I woke up to a sore throat. By nighttime, I had a body ache and relatively high fever. And just in case that was not enough, somewhere in the wee hours of the morning, I developed an excruciating ache in my upper left wisdom tooth. Bad enough you say? How about you add to this the fact that all this came to be on the morning that my mom left and Tarana added to the merry mix by waking through the night at an hourly frequency... and believe me, this is just the half of it so read on.

Tuesday passed by in a feverish blur. The toothache was easily sorted with a quick visit to the dentist and a temporary filling, but the fever continued to rise and soon, the mercury levels were well established between 102 and 103. My sore throat also escalated to levels where it was painful to swallow and it felt like someone had been at work in there with some industrial strength sandpaper. Not wanting to subject Tarana to strong medication, I took periodic doses of Crocin and planned to wait out the infection.

By Wednesday, I felt no better and a lot worse and was ready to call in the big meds but before I could think of dragging my sorry self to the doctor, Tarana was found to have a temperature of 101. So, of course, the only doctor we visited that day was the paediatrician. I was told to dose her with Crocin and come back if the fever persisted after 48 hours.

On Thursday, my mom found herself on a flight headed back to Mumbai, having left just three days ago. Jai also took most of the week off. I don't know what I would have done without them. I finally managed to get to the doctor and was finally given some antibiotics, which I also cross-checked with my paediatrician for compatibility with breastfeeding.

Tarana showed no signs of improvement and by Thursday night, her fever spikes were in the high 102s. So we went back to the paediatrician on Friday morning and guess what, she is on antibiotics too and we are all hopefully limping our way back to normalcy.

Oh wait. That's still not all of it. We were told to repeat Ayaan's x-ray again to see if the infection had cleared up. Well, he's still coughing and the x-ray still doesn't look clear in spite of a 10-day dose of antibiotics. So now we have been prescribed some further tests to investigate the issue.

Yeah, I think that covers it all (except Tarana's mild diarrhoea thanks to the cocktail of meds she is imbibing directly and through my breast milk). At least for now but who knows what tomorrow shall bring - along with Ayaan's test results amongst other things...

The Aftermath

2010-05-02T22:34:00.001+05:30

It got worse before it started to get better. We went back to the doctor on Friday morning and all seemed well. But things went downhill once we got back home.

His coughing fits, as predicted by the doctor, worsened but were often accompanied by vomiting, causing him to eject the precious little nutrition we had managed to shovel down his gullet. This made him so weak that he just lay in his bed listlessly and would create a massive fuss to sit up and have even a sip of water. And then the fever started climbing again and touched 101. We called the doctor and he called us back so we went across for the second time that day.

Of course, since messing with my head is the brat’s favourite pastime, he was full of beans the minute we got into the car and by the time we were at the doctor’s office, there was no sign of the lethargic boy from just an hour ago. The doctor checked his vital signs and said he was well enough to go back home. He asked us to feed him frequent, mini-meals of whatever he liked. In fact, he asked Ayaan what was his favourite thing to drink or eat was, and the brat’s eyes sparkled for the first time in days and he grinned mischievously and said, ‘Sprite’. Anyway, Sprite was duly purchased and the course of antibiotics was extended by three days.

Friday night and Saturday were still tough since Ayaan had absolutely no appetite so we tempted him with caramel custard, applesauce and rice-curds-honey, and he condescended to have 5-6 spoons at a time of whatever was on offer. I actually woke him up twice during the night to make him eat a few bites and plagued him to drink sips of water almost every 10 minutes.

Today has, touch wood, been much better. He has been fever-free for 48 hours now. The coughing is less violent and he has not thrown up anything all day today. And while his total food intake today is probably still a quarter of his regular diet, it is huge progress compared to what he has been able to eat and retain in the preceding week. So I hope I am not speaking too soon when I say he seems to have turned a corner.

But such a virulent and drawn-out infection (fever for 9 days) has left its mark. I cannot find the words to adequately describe the amount of weight he has lost but let me try... The circumference of his upper arm now easily fits into the circle made when my thumb and forefinger touch at their tips. His knees and elbows look abnormally big and stick out from his skinny legs and arms. I can count his ribs. And it breaks my heart to carry him because I can climb a flight of stairs without breaking a sweat, a nearly impossible feat a week ago. I actually have to hold back tears every time I look at him. And it does not help that we are headed for a family wedding in a couple of weeks, where I will be subjected to a million comments about how thin he has become

We cancelled our Bangalore trip. Ayaan still had fever on Friday so it just did not make sense to travel the very next day. Both the strain of travel and the exposure to germs seemed highly avoidable. Plus, it would have all been a bit pointless. This illness has made him very clingy and he wants nothing to do with anyone but me. So it is unlikely that he would have been very friendly to the rest of the family. Hopefully, we can go towards the end of his summer holidays.

Hopefully this is the end of this subject and I won’t find myself writing another post on this. A big thanks to everyone who wished Ayaan well in the comments on the last post

Notes From the Brat's Sickbed

2010-04-26T13:13:00.003+05:30

Ayaan gave us quite a scare over the last few days. It started with a cough but come Friday night, his temperature shot up to 104. Paracetamol gave brief snatches of respite but it kept coming back.

We took him to the doctor on Saturday, who said it was a chest infection and started him on some antibiotics. He also advised us to get blood and urine tests to rule out malaria and a chest x-ray to rule out pneumonia. The results came in yesterday - negative for malaria, positive for pneumonia. Pneumonia. Scary Word Number One. I know pneumonia is fairly common and, in many cases, mild and easily treated but in my mind, I always associate it with its scarier symptoms and outcomes. Anyway, the doctor said it was the early onset of pneumonia and the antibiotics we had already started would be able to make things right. And then Dottie sent me this link to walking pneumonia and that pretty much describes what has been happening with Ayaan, and this too makes it sounds less scary.

We asked the doctor about the recurring fever and he said that if it continued to be high, we would have to hospitalise him. Hospitalise. Scary Word Number Two. There's something about the very thought of children in hospital that gives me a sinking feeling in my stomach. The idea of their small bodies in those immense hospital beds and their sunny little personalities in the cold, clinical environs of the hospital doesn't even bear thinking about.

To avoid all these depressing eventualities, I have been monitoring his temperature almost hourly and sponging him down every time it starts getting high, along with the prescribed dose of paracetamol. It usually responds to paracetamol but 6-8 hours later, it starts crossing 102 again. We need to wait and watch today as the antibiotics take 48 hours to take effect but if the fever does not start to break by this evening, we go back to the doctor. Fingers crossed.

Thank God for grandmothers. My mother, on hearing that her precious grandson was sick, dropped everything and took the first flight to Mumbai. It wasn't really necessary but I heaved a sigh of relief when she got here yesterday. I could really do with some downtime, not having got much sleep between the fever watch and the night feedings. The mother-in-law, who happens to be a doctor, too was a great support with medical advice, especially when we saw 104 on the thermometer at 4 a.m and needed some reassurance and tips on how go get the fever down.

Of all the challenges that motherhood has thrown my way, sick kids is the the one I feel most ill-equipped to deal with. To start with, it just breaks my heart to see my bouncy little boy lying listlessly in bed and looking at me with dull eyes. To add to that, there is a feeling of utter helplessness that I can't make it better instantly - because hey, I am the Mama and I should be able to fix this, right? And then at some points, there is a flash of irritation, deeply regretted but undeniable. It happens when the sick brat won't let me leave his sight for even a minute or when he has been coughing non-stop right into my ear and I really have to bite my tongue to keep from saying (to him and the universe), "Enough already!"

The standard advice you get when your kid is sick is to make sure they get enough rest. The problem is that there is no way to get kids to understand this. Their approach to illness is exceedingly short term. When the fever is high, they will lie down listlessly and maybe even sleep, but let the mercury drop even a little and they are ready to take on the world. Telling them that this will make their fever shoot up again is of little use. Ayaan, for example, was threatened and bribed yesterday with everything possible to stay in bed but he managed to pack in a fair amount of activity in the confines of the bed, repurposing some hangers lying nearby into rockets, shouting '3...2...1... LIFT OFF!', leaping through the air with them, landing with a thud and then repeating the process repeatedly...

Sickness makes clingy kids even clingier. Ayaan is happy enough to hang out with Jai and/or my mom when his fever is down. But the minute it starts coming back, no one but Mama will do. Even an attempt by Patti to sponge him simultanoleously or by Dadda to, God forbid, talk to him can set off a major meltdown. It can get a bit stressful because these phases often coincide with when I am needed by Tarana. This feeling of being torn is one of the not-so-nice things of having two kids. The other day, I had put her in her cot fast asleep and gone to tend to a feverish Ayaan. Then just 20 minutes later, she started bawling. I had to make a choice (Jai was travelling) and I decided Ayaan needed me more so I decided to finish putting him to bed before tending to her. It was ten minutes before I was done and she had cried herself back to sleep by then. :(

The boy got smacked. Yes, he's sick. But I was sleep deprived, my patience was wafer thin and he had it coming. At this particular point in time, he didn't have fever and had asked to watch cartoons. The show he wanted to watch had been recorded but it happened to be a re-run he had seen only recently. So he got upset and sought to express his rage by picking up his (full) glass of water and flinging it across the room. Thankfully, it was a steel tumbler but it still drenched everything lying on the bedside table. Like I said, he had it coming and I felt less guilty about this smack then I have felt about smacking him when he has been hale and hearty...

Anyway, that's it for now. Shall update on Ayaan's health.

Update - 27th April: The fever still keeps coming back every 6-8 hours, though it is reducing in intensity and touches between 101 and 102 degrees. The doctor ordered another x-ray, which we took across to him this afternoon. He says the situation has not worsened but has not improved much either. He has added another antibiotic to the already heavy cocktail of medicines (2 antibiotics, paracetamol, expectorant, decongestant, vitamin syrup...) and we need to go and see him everyday till he takes a turn for the better. It's either that or hospitalisation and I prefer the former. The man in question is currently between fever bouts and is bouncing around like a bunny on speed!

Update - 28th April: There's been a marked improvement today. The doctor was pretty positive and the H-word (hospital, in case you are wondering) wasn't mentioned. He said that the phlegm was loosening up so there would be a lot of coughing but that's a good thing. He even said we could go ahead with our plans to travel to Bangalore this weekend. We need to see him again on Friday and then repeat the x-ray a week later to be a 100% sure that everything is back to the way it should be.

Baby Showers Galore

2010-04-22T16:58:00.004+05:30

Itchy tagged me with this award a while ago with this.

I couldn’t have been more surprised because creativity is definitely not one of my strong suits. But she stated a very specific reason for tagging me – my baby shower ideas, which you can find here and here.

This reminded me that there was a much ignored unfinished post languishing in my Drafts – the post on the lovely baby showers that I was privileged to be at the receiving end of last year.

The post on the baby showers was supposed to go up, as would have been ideal, before the baby arrived. But it was still partially written when the delivery date got advanced and the rest, as they say, is postpartum chaos. So I am completing the post, correcting tense and posting it now. Better late than never and all that jazz…

This pregnancy was extra special because of all the extra love, attention and blessings I received for myself and the baby. The big difference from last time was the fact that I have a virtual life beyond my real one and ever since I announced my pregnancy, I have been amazed by the amount of goodwill I have got from readers of the blog, both on and off the blog. Thanks, guys. :)

The other thing that really maxed out this time was the baby showers. I had four absolutely awesome baby showers, each different and unique in its own way. Last time, I just had the traditional baby shower that my mom did. But this time there was that and three more from different group of friends.

The first shower was a lovely mish-mash of Indian and Western traditions. There was a sort of godh-bharai element – a sari was draped around my shoulders, flowers were put in my hair, glass bangles were arranged on my wrists and fruits placed in my lap.

Then all baby girls in attendance fed me some kheer to ensure that the baby would be a girl (it worked!). There was also a lovely cake and lovelier gifts like a handmade blanket, a super-soft Mothercare blanket and a ‘Big Brother’ tee for Ayaan.

The second shower was the traditional Tamilian valai kappu ceremony, or rather, our version of it, that my mom organised in Jaipur. I was decked up in a sari, a huge bunch of flowers in my hair and a flower garland around my neck.

The ceremony required me to pray to a Ganesha made out of turmeric. All the other ladies present came and paid their respect to the idol. Later, it was dissolved in a bowl of water and the water was thrown outside the house, representing the discarding of any evil spirits. Then everyone present put bangles on my wrists. And I got some moolah and some nice gifts like a set of silver rattles for the baby.

The third baby shower was thrown by my office gang. Now ,I had organised three unique and pretty rocking (even if I say so myself) showers within this same gang so these guys were under a lot of pressure to outdo my shower. And they really did. It was a mad, crazy, and definitely more than a little risqué baby shower.

The theme was ‘kindergarten’ and all the women took this opportunity to wear their miniskirts and skinny tees, while the boys came (yes, it was a co-ed shower) in their rattiest shorts. We were all given handkerchiefs and name tags to pin to out chests and lollipops to snack on. Now, this is where any resemblance to the innocent environment of a playschool ended. To start with, there was free flowing ‘big people’s juice’ (what Ayaan calls alcohol) so everyone (except poor old abstaining me) was nicely buzzed.

The first game involved three of the guys standing with balloons under their tees. I was supposed to guess which balloon had a baby inside and then burst the balloon to see if I was right. I was terrible at it and went through the two wrong balloons, with a set of balls and a toy frog in them respectively, before I got to the one with a remarkable ugly baby doll.

The next game was a ‘Sniff and Taste the Diaper’ game. Yeah, gross. But basically, different diapers had different brands of chocolate bars melted into them and the team to guess all right won. That, I hope, will be the last time that I eat something out of a diaper :D

Then everyone divided into groups and performed somewhat R-rated scripts revolving around me and ranging from the moment of conception to Ayaan’s discovery of the birds and the bees. It’s a good thing that I was already in my ninth month because there were moments there that I was laughing so hard that it could just have started off labour!

The cake was hilarious too. It has this woman lying back in the throes of labour with the baby crowning. And in memory of my erstwhile (pre-pregnancy) sins, the lady was holding a glass of wine in one hand…I guess it’s probably obvious why I won’t be posting a picture of that on this otherwise G-rated blog :)

Again, there were many gifts and unknown to me, one of my friends was writing down my responses to each gift. He later announced that there is an old wives' tale (yeah right!) that a woman’s response to her baby shower gifts is what she said at the moment the baby was being conceived. So here’s his list of what I said, printed verbatim from his much embellished notes:

Oh sooo cute (about 50 times)
Awesome!
So sweet ya!
Oh Ayaan can use this!
It's a onesie... (don't ask)
Sweet
Oh it's pink and warm
Oh, Ayaan will definitely love this
Can't get over how small this is
Oh this is very useful

I actually remember saying all of these except No. 7, which I think he just made up :D

And then there was the last, but definitely not the least of my showers thrown by some of my oldest friends. The funny thing was this happened to be on the very next day after the previous shower. Of course, I didn’t know this since I happened to land up at my friend’s place thinking that we were meeting for a small, intimate girls’ afternoon. Surprise!

The theme for this shower was ‘Yummy Mummy’. The girls put a lot of effort into the décor and there were standees and posters of pregnant celebrities, Angelina Jolie and Britney Spears to name a few. And there was one special standee where my face had been plopped onto some famous, pregnant woman’s body. If only I had looked that fit!

There were fun games too. We were made to sample various Gerber pots and guess which vegetable/ food they were. They all tasted uniformly terrible, I have to say, and we all vowed never to shovel the stuff down our kids’ throats. Then we had to check for a list of things in our handbags and the person with the most things won. But the most fun game involved this chart which had pictures of babies (celebrities as well as friends) on it and you had to identify who they were. Good fun, though one of my friends was not amused when I guessed her baby picture as being Salman Khan!

Again, lots more gifts. Buy my favourite gift of all was this caricature of preggo me that my friend got made.

So that, in a very big nutshell, was the story of my four baby showers. A big, heartfelt hug to all my friends for making this such a special pregnancy for me. And thanks for the inadvertent nudge Itchy, or I might have never got this done.

Jaipur Vignettes

2010-04-13T22:22:00.003+05:30

Flying Solo

When I decided to spend Ayaan’s March break with my mom in Jaipur, I considered taking my maid. But then I remembered that my mom had retired and the two of us could manage the kids between us. So I told Jai to go ahead and book tickets just for the three of us.

Life was cruising along just fine till a dinner with friends, about a week before I left. When I happened to mention that I was travelling alone with both the kids, I was told that I was being awfully brave to attempt travelling alone with two kids. Now, that got the alarm bells ringing in my head. Because it is a known fact that when your parenting choices are commended as ‘brave’, it is very likely that you are actually doing something monumentally stupid.

So then I proceeded to get tense. Was I being silly? Should I fork out money for a criminally expensive last-minute air ticket so that my maid can come along and help? I thought about it and decided to take my chances. And I am glad I did because none of the stuff I worried about came to pass.

My biggest worry was that Tarana would bawl her head off. Now, this is normally not something that gets me overly anxious, being a second-time mother and all, but there is something especially nerve-wracking about being the sole adult in charge of a screaming infant in a confined, public space, while other unencumbered adults shoot daggers at you with their eyes. But thankfully, all of her crying did not total up to more than ten minutes and never more than a couple of minutes at a stretch. On the way, I carried a bottle of expressed milk and some pacifiers (which she will only deign to suck at in a desultory manner IF you hold it for her), which were popped into her mouth at the first sign of trouble. And she also napped for about twenty minutes, so all was good on that front. On the way back, I didn’t have a bottle handy (not having carried my trusty breast pump), so I managed to nurse her in short bursts since she finds the nursing cover a huge distraction…

The second major worry revolved around Ayaan having one or more of his famous nuclear meltdowns. But he was remarkably well-behaved. On the way to Jaipur, I could give credit to the cartoon channel on Kingfisher but on our return flight, we were on low-budget Indigo and he was totally cool on that as well. The fact that we bought him a special only-for-the-flight sticker activity book helped too.

Other smaller worries like managing the diaper change (I just took Ayaan along and made him go as well so that I didn’t have to make a separate trip) and managing luggage (handed kids off to mom/ Jai waiting outside before collecting it) were barely blips on the radar. Overall, I was mighty proud of the three of us :-)

De-girled…. and Re-girled

I decided to finish of Tarana’s mundan while I was in Jaipur since I wasn’t quite sure when I would be back. Getting it done there is so much easier since there is guy who comes home and does it. With Ayaan, I waited till he was just over a year old and it was a VERY bad decision. He cried loudly and pitifully through the whole procedure and has to be physically restrained by two people while his head was shaved. It wasn’t that he was in any pain – he was just indignant at being held down against his wishes. At five months, Tarana was quite happy to sit peacefully in my lap through most of the procedure (you can actually see her grinning in the picture below)

and then the finishing touches were put as she rested on my mom’s shoulder.

I had another, somwhat less rational, reason for doing it early. And that has to do with the fact that she is a girl. I wanted to get this bald phase out of the way as soon as possible so that I can get on with the prettifying of her head with clips and suchlike. In fact, I actually had second thought about doing it all, given the lovely crop of hair she was born with. But then everyone says that it improves hair growth and I didn’t want to regret not having done it if she grew up to have fine or sparse hair. So anyway, all’s well that ends well. Other than the fact that she has a pretty substantial bald spot at the back of her head. I fussed over this for a bit but collective wisdom says that this is normal given how much time they spend on their backs and that it grows in eventually so I am cool now.

The other transformation we effected was piercing her ears. After asking around, I figured that you could either get them pierced when they were babies and didn’t really feel much pain. Or wait till they were old enough to want it and didn’t mind the pain. I decided to go with the former because like the clips, I was dying to get started with the earrings (Yes, I really am that shallow :p).

We got it done at one of Jaipur’s oldest and most trusted jewellers. My paediatrician suggested that this was a better option than going to a doctor since these guys were more experienced. The earlobes were pierced with a thin gold wire, which was then tied into a kind of knot. It took all of five minutes and she didn’t cry above 30 second per earlobe. The post-piercing care we followed was also recommended by the jewellers – we applied a paste of turmeric (known to be a natural antiseptic) and ghee for 3-4 days and kept rotating the earring so that it didnlt fuse with the healing skin. And that was it. Now for the picture…

The Busy Brat

Keeping Ayaan’s, often destructive, energy under check is no mean task so, for the sake of everyone’s sanity, we decided to keep him super busy. His daily schedule was something like this:

6.30 – Wake up, milk, feeding the birds in the garden, general floating around
7.30 – Daily dose of cartoons for an hour
8.30 – Breakfast
9.00 – Splashing around in his paddling pool for an hour
10.00 Bath time
11.00 Painting and craft class for two hours
1.30 Lunch
2.30 ‘Quiet time’ for an hour – afternoon naps are a rare commodity these days but this is my way of ensuring that he gets some down time and I get a break
4.00 Book reading class
5.00 Hanging out with the kids at the NGO my mom is involved with
6.30 Back home
8.00 Dinner
9.00 Bedtime

In spite of this packed schedule, he managed to find the time to drive the dogs crazy, break the birds’ water bowl, write on one entire white window pane with a black marker, have many meltdowns, and other such stuff too numerous to mention. And was protected from the worst of my wrath by his grandmother’s love…

My birthday

I turned 34 while I was in Jaipur. I wanted nothing better than a chance to sleep in late and generally relax. But the son had other plans. He told my mother that we must have a party with streamers and cake. And since she can’t deny her precious grandson anything, a birthday party was planned and executed by the two of them. Ayaan went to choose the cake personally. He apparently dismissed all the cartoon character cakes because 'those are only for children' and all the chocolate cakes because 'chocolate is unhealthy and Mama does not like unhealthy things' and chose a square-shaped pineapple cake. And made my mom put up streamers and balloons. The invitees were the kids from my mom's NGO who had a complete ball as pin-the-tail and passing-the-parcel was played and I funded a set of new clothes for them all as return gifts. Nice :)

In other news, we had a monkey invasion. Two monkeys entered the living room and started doing battle. Thankfully they decided to take it outside before anyone or anything was harmed but those were some seriously scary five minutes…

A Picture is Worth Three Stories

2010-03-16T15:02:00.003+05:30

I clicked this picture a couple of weeks ago and then realised it has three post-worthy leads on it so here goes:

1. The Colour

As might be obvious to those in the know, Holi was played. I went for a grand holi party at an ex-boss’s house. We had a great time. The colour was mostly harmless gulaal till an evil friend turned up with this horrid turquoise blue fast colour which took up semi-permanent residence on my scalp, nails and skin. It’s mostly gone now though my nails still have a faint bluish tinge about them.

The last time I went for this same holi party was two years ago and I had liberally partaken of the traditional holi beverage of thandai laced with bhang. And went on a trip I am not sure I ever want to take again. To start with, I kept wondering what the big deal was since I only felt mildly buzzed, which I chose to remedy by imbibing more of the stuff. Bad idea! The stuff hit me hard all of a sudden and it was intense – all the colours suddenly became uncomfortably bright, the sun threatened to set my skin on fire and the music seemed to slow down so that it sounded like one of those obsolete Walkmans running out of battery. I started to feel really sick and caught hold of the friends who I had come with and requested that we go home. They took one look at me and readily agreed. They seated me on a chair in a safe corner and went off to say their goodbyes. They later told me they were away for less than five minutes but for me those were the longest five minutes of my life. I thought I was sitting there for hours and I started to get terribly depressed, thinking that my friends didn’t care. And even thought I was going to just die sitting in the chair there. It was really terrible – I still shudder when I think of those few minutes. Anyway, my friends did finally re-appear and delivered me home where I proceeded to bathe, throw up and fall into a long, dreamless slumber from which I woke up, not much worse for the wear. Never again!

This year, I was not even remotely tempted since I happened to be breastfeeding and there is no way I wanted to expose Tarana to any of that crazy stuff. So I was a designated driver and I had a complete blast. There is a kind of fun you can have only when you are the only sober person in a carful of drunk people. At times, I was laughing so hard I actually considered parking the car on the side of the road till I got the giggles out of my system. Some of the howlers from the drive back just beg to be shared:

‘What good curvature!’ (repeated endlessly in the time is took us to traverse the Bandra-Worli sea link)
‘Why did I carry this paper napkin back from the party?’ Repeated multiple times and interspersed with hysterical laughter.
A friend thought his jaw was locked and that there was an steady stream of imaginary beer dribbling down his chin. So he kept wiping his chin and mumbling unintelligibly
Another friend who alternated between laughing violently and then sobbing inconsolably

Funny and fun times!

2. The Ring

My engagement ring, which I wear on my left hand ring finger, stopped fitting me 6 months into my pregnancy. But I felt weird leaving the finger bare. Now, I am not very big on symbols of marriage – my thali has not seen the light of day after the wedding, I find toe rings excruciatingly uncomfortable, I find sindoor messy and I limit my use of a bindi to when I dress up for a wedding. I don’t wear much jewellery either, barring a pair of earrings, usually chosen to match with just about everything so that I don’t have to change them every day. But my liking for rings has somehow survived my disregard for marriage symbols and my indifference to jewellery. So I wear at least one ring at any point in time.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I didn’t want to blow mega bucks on a ring that would be loose on my hopefully normal-sized fingers in a few months, so I bought this ring while floating around and window shopping in Chennai with Sue, way back in July. It still fits, which should tell you that we are still not anywhere near pre-preggers size in these parts…

3. The Star

This star was awarded to me by Ayaan. I came out of Tarana’s room after putting her down for a nap and he stuck it on to the back of my hand saying, ‘Good job, Mama. You made the baby sleep without any crying’. Apparently, a pair of little ears has been monitoring my sleep struggles with his younger sister, watching my faltering progress and deciding that I needed to be rewarded to keep up the good work!!!

On to the sleep struggles… I thought I had at least the nights sorted out but now she keeps waking up every few hours because she has turned. But this I see just as a phase and I think she will go back to sleeping through most of the night once she has completely mastered turning (one can hope, right?)

The bigger and more longstanding problem has been her naps. She has a problem with taking them on any flat surface that is not my shoulder. If I hold her, she’ll have a full-sized nap but any attempt to put her down, even when she appears to be fast asleep, results in hysterical bawling. I have been trying some version of the Baby Whisperer Pick Up Put Down Method, where I pick up her up when she cries, calm her down and then put her back – repeating the process till she sleeps. But I have met with limited success and even when she does fall asleep, she rarely naps for long. It makes for a very grumpy baby and a totally exhausted mom at the end of the day…

I wonder if Wee Willie Winkie is available for hire in these parts? :)

Judge Mom

2010-03-11T21:34:00.003+05:30

The Plaintiff: Me, also known as Mama

The Defendant: 'Baby' Tarana

The Charges: Growing up too fast

The Evidence:

Exhibit One: The first tooth makes its appearance at four and a half months. To be honest, she was born with a little gum-covered stump, which receded somewhat with the first few weeks. But now it’s a proper full-on tooth that packs in a mean bite when she is done feeding.

Exhibit Two: She turned a couple of weeks ago. And hasn’t stopped turning since. You only have to put her down for a minute and she flips. This has seriously messed up her sleep routine. She had started sleeping an 8-hour stretch in the night but now she’s up every 3-4 hours. The minute she’s in a light phase of sleep, she starts trying to turn and that wakes her up. Not fun!

The Verdict: Guilty as charged

The Sentence: Life with no possibility of parole – sentenced to being Mama’s little baby even when she is old enough to have babies of her own… :)

Seriously though, there is a definite difference in the way I am feeling about Tarana's milestones. With Ayaan, there was undiluted pride and excitement. We were always waiting for the next phase and the next new thing to kick in and ticking it off on the development chart. With Tarana, I haven't so much as peeked at the development chart and when the milestones do arrive, they are greeted with a bittersweet happiness - my last little baby is growing up...