Rhymesters

You realise you are the mom of two pre-schoolers when you hum nursery rhymes and list nursery rhymes among your favorite music. And you think the Tom and Jerry show is just as interesting as an action-packed movie. I have learnt to accept Popeye, Scooby Doo and Bob the Builder and not look at them with scorn as I would have six years back.
The moment I switch on the PC, both plead: Amma paattu (music/rhyme). Mira is more specific: Amma paatu eeya (idu = put) And I love listening to it along with them. The rhymes DVD is also my best weapon to keep them still for at least 20 minutes.
And today I have come to work leaving the kids in their dad's care. If he survives the onslaught, he will come pick me up from work in the evening and we will all go for a Kerala festival (a belated Onam get-together for the Chennai diaspora) called Aavanipoovarangu 2007 at St. George's school. They have some 12 'life-like' caparisoned elephants like at the Thrissur pooram. Seems the Chennai police didnt want real elephants imported from Kerala at a crowded venue - they cant have the pachyderms running amuck and crushing a couple of humans to death.

Thumbelina & Rumpelstilskin

Mira loves to preen in front of the mirror when she has a new dress on. Here is she wearing a skirt blouse her grandma got her.















She also loves to pose for camera, even if she had just been crying for something. Here's her with a tear glistening under her eye.


















Sometimes she looks like a tomboy. Which is why we generally remember to keep a black spot on her forehead.
The two have their fighting fits, but Big Bro is always the first to come running when she slips and falls. Or hand over her bottle of milk before taking his. My obstetrician had told me that the lesser the age gap, the better the bonding - that after a while they wouldnt need us parents and will depend on each other for companionship.

Right now their body weight is almost on a par - 10.8 kg and 10.4 kg. It wont be long before Mira overtakes. And right now they look so puny they remind me of two fairy tale characters - Thumbelina and Rumpelstilskin!

lil big people

... the state of things at home. (not to mention the sound effects provided by the clanking of steel vessels being dropped on the floor)

As I was telling a colleague on googlechat, I am ready to be admitted to a lunatic asylum. Mira is at home and to make matters worse Ash has a week's holidays at school.
Asked boss for leave for today and tomorrow. V will babysit on Saturday, Monday and Tuesday (a holiday for him being Gandhiji's bday but a 'working' holiday for me). Wednesday remains a question mark.
A maid is arriving with my mom from Kerala next thursday since there are no train tickets for an earlier date. She is an old candidate who backtracked at the last minute in our earlier hunt for a maid two months back. She had said that her son didnt want her to go, though later she came saying she was willing to come for a higher salary. I am told that she cant peel onions since she is allergic to it. And onion being a basic ingredient for most of our sidedishes, it looks like I have to play assistant chef throughout. But any help sounds good enuf right now. Only Thursday seems a long way off...

Until then I have to try and retain my sanity.

Poxed

The dr. has confirmed it is chicken pox for Mira though the blisters have formed scabs now. V has taken the cp vaccine, at last, on the dr's advice. Been prodding him the past 2 weeks but he had been putting it off.
The dr. said Ash is not likely to get it now as he must have been exposed to the virus around the same time, and anyway he would have immunity since he was vaccinated. We suspect that Mira got it from our friend's place than from her school.
Chicken pox seem to be doing the rounds in the city now. Two of my colleagues had it last month. But Tamilians look upon the disease as being possessed by a god, Amman. And they have some strange rituals associated with it. Relatives flock to the place to be possessed too. A neighbour's flat had its doors wide open when their kids all had CP. Otherwise they always kept it padlocked! A way of giving the disease to anybody who goes past. Only, I ran to the hosp then (Feb 2007) to get Mira vaccinated.
I am worried if my inlaws got infected while they were here.

Omens

I should have known that somthing was to go wrong when I burnt a hole in a dress the other day while ironing it. I shouldnt be believing in omens but then we Indians generally do, whatever our religion. And burning a dress is considered a bad omen like breaking a mirror or a glass. No use trying to say that I was careless since I knew that the iron box needed to be serviced.
Mira seems to have chicken pox, I discovered after she returned from school. Looks pretty mild considering that she was vaccinated last year. The blisters, some on her bum and on her arm, have almost dried. Some are as small as tiny pimples. Surprisingly we did not notice it earlier with all the hullaballoo at home. I vaguely remember seeing one on her buttock the other day and thought I should examine it later, only I forgot.
We need to take her the paed to check if she needs to take any medicines. She seems a bit irritable. She probably got it when we went visiting a family friend two weeks back, and who got pox a week after that.
Ash has fever too. Looks like we are going to play host to the varicella zoster virus for some weeks.
I have already had a round of the pox and of shingles, so I can be counted out.

Maidless days

The maid just called to say her hubby has cancer. She was crying over the phone. Asked us to look for a new maid.
Sad. I liked that poor man though I have spoken to him only on the phone. He was soft-spoken and always spoke like an innocent kid. I think that was the root of their financial troubles - a simpleton he was often cheated in all the business deals he got into.
I am on leave until Thursday since there is a lull on the work front. A frantic search is on for a new maid. No agencies, just word-of-mouth.
V's parents left yesterday night. Mummy wanted to take Ash along but V was against it. Taking him alone doesnt solve the problem - Mira is here and somebody has to be here to take care of her. If no maid appears in the horizon end of this week I might have to leave both kids with our parents.
V is thinking of the day care option, Mira's playschool has a day care till 6ish. That means I will have to leave their lunch and tea before I leave for work. Ash will have to be herded off to the creche after school. The hitch is that both of us dont reach home by 6 pm.

The bash

A Minnie mouse strawberry cake, a dinner of mutton biriyani and mutton fry at Savera, a 4-star hotel on Radhakrishna salai, a few guests and a feverish Mira constituted the party.
Mira was running a temperature - she generally brings home the flu bug on fridays - and bit tired for the party. We had two unexpected guests, who joined us for dinner too. A couple of folks we had planned to call had taken ill/their kids had exams. V called four of our next door neighbours at the last hour - his way of preventing people from buying bday gifts. But yet, one of them took time in coming - they ran to a shop to buy a dress for Mira.
Mira's offwhite frock with some cute pink flowers had been a gift from her aunt. We cut the cake with the nursery rhymes in the background, and preceded by a prayer by V's papa.
Dinner was good. Well, the guests liked it. Poli and kozhukattai were served as starters, on the house. There was this grand old lady dressed in traditional Chettiar style, making polis and kolukattais at the entrance to Malgudi restaurant, to give that very Chettinadu ambience for the restaurant. I think I find the restaurant interesting because of its name - I had been so enthralled when I read R.K. Narayan's Guide and his description of the fictional village of Malgudi.
Mira fell asleep on the way home.

HAPPY B'DAY Mira

Mira's birthday today. I tried to get her for a photo session before she left for play school with a box of candies, but it wasnt a satisfactory shoot. She was more interested in sitting on my lap.
Will upload pics by tomorrow. Busy days at work, and crazy days at home in the absence of the maid.

Crisis again!

The maid is going home today evening as there is an emergency at her place. Her husband needs an operation for a bowel-related problem. Secondly, her property and house in a god- forsaken region of Kerala is being sold and she needs to be there. The fact that she might not be able to come until they find an alternative settlement and if her husband needs her continued care makes things a bit worrisome on our babycare scene.
IF things are manageable she says she will come in a week's time or else try to send a substitute. I hope either works. But nothing like her when it comes to looking after the kids and cooking us wholesome meals. And she never takes offence when we tell how she should go about things/ how tidy we want things to be etc. Most Malloo maids think that they know best about everything and doesnt take advice kindly.
Things are just going to go haywire from tomorrow, and I have guests till Sunday night. I am counting on the kids' paternal grandparents to look after them today and tomorrow. Saturday V is there and Sunday me too. And next week, I plan to take a few days' leave as there is a lull in the work scene then. What I will do after, if I dont find a nanny soon enough, I do not know.

Two beaches and us

A proper weekend holiday - Saturday being Lord Ganesha's birthday and a closed holiday for my organisation - meant that we could laze at home and rest our wearied souls. On Sunday morning, both of us took Mira alone to church (Ash was asleep) - to get the Lord's blessings for the birthday girl.
With my parents-in-law in town, we wanted to go somewhere for an outing other than the malls. Chennai doesnt have too many sight-seeing options and our visitors would not have enjoyed an archaelogical or cultural tour of the city, so we resisted taking the ECR road to Mahabs.
So after a late lunch, we readied ourselves (except the kids, who needed adult assistance) for an early trip to the sea at Marina. The Marina beach is one of Chennai's star attractions and there is always a huge crowd on Sundays. But for once we didnt have to fight for car parking space - the fact that it was still sunny and a cricket match relayed live on TV kept people at home.


The kids had a jolly ride on the merry-go-round. Ash so loved it that he kept whining for more even after we left the beach.



I took him out into the sea and let the seawaters wash our feet. And he peed into the water! It is a long time since I did that - I mean, stand on the seashore, not pee into seawater!. The sea at Marina is not as rough as the one at Besant Nagar or Mahabs. Except maybe when the tsunami came in Dec 2004 and the sea crossed the road and the waters went right up to the magnificent white edifice of the Police headquarters. The government is gearing up for a Marina beautification plan.


We then headed to the Shrine of St. Mary in Besant Nagar. There are two churches in the compound. A service was on at the church above, so we only visited the shrine and chapel. I told my son to pray for a cure of his eczema. Ash went up to the altar, showed his hands and neck and other joints which itch him most to the figure of Mother Mary and prayed something in his own language. I only heard the last part of it: 'Ants biting me...' (which is how he explains itching). The St. Mary of the Velankanni churches is known as Arogya Mary or Our Lady of Health, providing a cure for illnesses and afflictions of the body and mind.
We then walked to the Elliots beach.

And watched kids take rollerskating lessons in front of the Planet Yumm restaurant complex. Ash persuaded V to take him on a carousel again, while the rest of us munched boiled peanuts and corn. None of us wanted to walk in the sand again or down to the waters. There was not a whiff of breeze but luckily it wasnt too sultry or hot a day.

Sculpture tree

A tree in Palghat (Palakkad), Kerala... looks authentic, though it came as a junk mail. Though I do not know where exactly it is.

Blog hospitality

A blog is like a home. Your home of inner thoughts, asides, dreams, rants... You like fellow bloggers visiting your online home and leaving a compliment each. And at the same time you like to pay them a return visit and compliment them too or share a thought with them.
Or you visit them first and leave a comment. But when they dont reciprocate in kind, you feel disappointed. Or just lose interest in them.
But some are so way above you that you worship their blogs and itch to leave a comment in them, no matter whether they condescend to take a look at your poor blog or not.
- so thought me while taking a quick shower before heading to work. My idle mind starts weaving thoughts and ideas while in the shower, in the bus/auto or while taking a stroll through the corridors in office. Of course there are other occasions when I dont know what I am going to write next or how my ideas are going to take shape. The pen guided me as I wrote; now the keyboard guides me and the monitor gives inspiration. Strange how things have changed in less than a decade.

p.s. Ash is down with the flu and didnt go to school past 2 days. The maid and Mira were a bit sick too. The virus is very much in the air. It must be the change of weather - from a rainy week last week, Chennai is back to its steamy hot self. And V is getting an AC fitted in the guest bedroom today in anticipation of his parents' impending visit.

Mutton soup for the mommy soul

I was on a mutton soup binge till today. And thank God, it is finally over.
The last I was put on a regular mutton soup diet was in the post-partum Ayurvedic care period that is almost a ritual in Kerala - most women recovering from childbirth endure it, whether they like it or not. I didnt, but I didnt want to anger my mother-in-law who put me on a daily diet of Ayurvedic kashayams and arishtams and lehyams, mutton soup and an hour-long bath, administered by a professional bather, in boiling water that scalded my skin no end. I didnt mind all the attention and pampering but I dreaded the 7-day bath. I guess that is when women in Kerala really learn to shed their inhibitions. It was supposed to strengthen the body and prevent any backache. However, I ended up with a recurrent backache and a 'mummy tummy'.
I am going off track... What I was trying to say was that I had to finish up this soup prepared for the kids - so that they'd put on some weight - because a couple of days after the broth was prepared, V ruled that it was no longer fit for kids' consumption. He is against anything that is kept in the fridge for more than 2 days. There was no use telling him that the soup was stored in the freezer, and that a small quantity alone was taken each day for seasoning and feeding. He sniffed it like a police labrador in search of a hidden bomb at the railway station and judged that it is high time we drained it down the sink.
And so, I took up the challenge of finishing it without his knowledge. Me and the maid take turns in finishing anything that has been in the fridge for over two days. Any wonder if my sugar and cholesterol levels are shooting up? Finishing babyfood leftovers has been the root cause of my health problems. For the past 3 years I have been consuming leftover Cerelac, formula milk, creamless cream biscuits (they just lick the cream off the biscuits) etc. etc. A high-fat, high-calorie diet I can do without.
I know Indian mothers generally do that, but what about others? Would you rather drain an untouched bowl of soup in the sink than get in the soup with your doctor?

My English songbird

That's "London Bridge is falling down".
From just "Twinkle, twinkle..", Mira has progressed to new rhymes, though she sings them in her own words, incomprehensible to adults - same like Ash. They only borrow the tune from the original!

***
Schools in Kerala observe the week following Gandhi Jayanti, Mahatma Gandhi's birthday, which falls on October 2, as sevana-vaaram or a week for sprucing up the campus. Students excidedly clean the campus - sweeping, digging, picking weeds etc - taking a break from their strenuous lessons.
Sevana-vaaram has also come to connote any rigorous cleaning process at home. Yeserday was one such day for us at home. I cleaned up the kitchen shelves while V cleaned the lights and fans - and managed to break the blade of a wall-mounting fan. Since he broke it himself, there was no harangue in the aftermath.
The maid and the kids, who contribute to 70 per cent of the mess around the house (the maid's share can be put at 25%) were by and large spectators to the clean-up. The kids of course tried to butt in. If it weren't for them, we'd have finished the chores in half the time.
End note: Church wasnt in yesterday's tour itinerary since I returned late from work on Saturday. And anyway we had attended the morning mass commemmorating the nativity of St. Mary on Sept. 8th, when we broke the week-long non-veg fast (nombu). We have been observing the fast for some years now.
And this year I tried to observe the 15-day pure-veg fast in the first half of August, but in vain. Half way through it I ate some chicken fried rice V brought home one night. It is difficult to observe a fast when you are the only person at home doing it and when you dont have great will power. The September 1-7 fast is easier because V takes it too, and no dead fowls or dead fish or red meat enters the house in the interregnum.

Death of a professor

My professor and guide for MPhil passed away yesterday. He was suffering from intestinal cancer for over a year.
Sad to say, I never found time to visit him and his family in the last 7 years. The last I went to their place was to invite for my wedding, I think. I am ashamed of myself.
Maybe I should get V to drive down to his place on a Sunday with the kids.

Daily hurdle

IT is like the calm after a storm once the kids leave for school in the morning, I was telling V after the duo finally got out of the house suited and booted. I guess all parents of young children feel the same way.
Getting Ash to get out of bed in the morning is a feat. He is a Kumbakarna (the legendary Asura prince who slept for ages, a la Rip Van Winkle) once he is asleep. Even if we manage to rustle him out of bed by 8.30 am, he keeps his eyes shut and pulls down the mosquito net again saying: "Achacha is sick... Achacha fever".
So next we sprinkle some water on his eyes and face. Or I switch on the rhymes CD - he listens for a while and by then, is willing to be taken for a toothbrushing session. In a matter of half an hour, we (the maid, V and me divide the tasks) get him (and his sister) to bathe, poo, get dressed, take their milk, pray and leave. With some luck, we force feed some of the breakfast too. Ash has a starting trouble, but once he gets into the business of eating it is not too difficult to force a dosa or two down his throat.
Ash takes a left turn, while Mira turns right at the gate - to reach their schools, that is.
Why are today's kids so stubborn and tantrum-oriented? I read an article yesterday which said that additives in junk food and soft drinks make even normal kids hyperactive.

Teacher's day out!

Today is Teacher's Day, the birth anniversary of India's scholar-President S. Radhakrishnan. A great statesman, he happens to be like Nehru one of my national heroes. They might have been philanderers but as statesmen, they were par excellence.

I wouldnt have remembered the day's significance if Ash hadnt returned home from school 5 minutes after he left for school. The school authorities had not mentioned that it was going to be a holiday, so we packed him off to school as usual.

But Teacher's Day is not meant to be a holiday, but just a day when teachers can relax in staffrooms or watch as students conducted mock classes.

I once masqueraded as a teacher, in a sari of my mom's, when I was in Class 8, I think, in the Indian school I studied in Dar. I first went to a kindergarten class and sweated my session running behind lil brats who scooted this way and that. By the time I had finished a couple of classes, my sari, safely fastened with a dozen pins at all possible spots, was giving trouble and my hairdo was coming apart.

I think I decided then itself that teaching wasnt my cup of tea and decided on a not-too-interactive profession. Coming from a family in the teaching profession - my parents, an aunt, an uncle - and from a State where many an average person opt to become teachers or nurses (considering that one doesnt have to the leave the home state to find a job), me and my brother had chosen careers unheard of in my sleepy village - a journalist and an economist!

It's birthday time!

So reminds Babycentre in its newsletter for this mom of a 23-month-old.
It goes on: How exciting for all of you, as another milestone is reached. As your child attends parties and has his own party, you'll need all the help you can get! If your child is being a party-pooper and not sharing, don't panic. It's all part of the learning process. The experts advise you not to let sharing become a parent-child battleground. Let your toddler work out his sharing issues.

We are already gearing up for a big bash this year, to make up for the low-key celebration on Mira's 1st birthday last year. My inlaws are coming from Kerala, while my parents are in two minds about coming - the mosquitoes and lack of space in a small apartment being the deterrents. But I think at least my mother would attempt to come.
V still hasnt decided if he wants a big party calling all our neighbours or just our immediate friends and family circle in the city - the latter would mean we can hold it in the flat itself, the former would mean we'll have to use the terrace or the car porch. Only, I hope, we have a gala function for her this time round.
I have been feeling a bit guilty about the way circumstances have prevented special celebrations for her. V has told me that I stop harping about it, and give Mira the feeling that she was less important in the scheme of things. There I havent said it, right?
Unlike Ash, who was born in the classy MMM (the ambience of the place and the patient-doctor relations had made the pregnancy a fun experience save for my gestational diabetes), Mira was born at the modest Mehta's clinic 10 days ahead of her d-day.

At 2 months, on my brother's wedding day.

The midwife had been the same doctor who had been there for much of my previous treatment and pregnancy - in fact she had been the one who had announced that the strip had turned pink, and I had hugged her in my excitement. Dr. Nandita always put up a gruff and stern exterior but I have always felt very comfortable and safe with her. I regret that we could not buy her a box of sweets after Mira was born (since V went off on a Bangkok trip a week after she was born, and I never got round to going to her later).

At 6 months
Mira's first snap was taken a week after she was born, after she was brought home. But she had the privilege of having her maternal and paternal grandmas caring for her in the hospital room and for a while at home.
But I never thought I was going to give birth to a pretty little thing. I think we had fewer expectations when I was expecting Mira than when I was Ash.


And even as friends and family try to discern who she resembles most - me, V, my mom (top) or V's mom (above) - Mira continues to be in a state of flux - ever changing and mercurial.

Old Toys

What we got at the seconds sale in the church after the service.

This is the first time we are getting any seconds stuff for the kids. I guess yard sales and junk clearance are not popular here but anyway we found it had lots of takers though most of the folks coming to the St. Peter's & Paul's church are very well-off. The proceeds from the sale went to an old age home.
We got these for the kids since I find it is a waste of money getting them anything new - the interest span in any toy is limited to an hour at the most, and the toys suffer the worst forms of persecution at their hands.
Ash loved them but Mira was frightened of the scorpion and chameleon.

***

There was an Onam celebration at church but we came off before the games and the feast. The speeches by a Syrian Chrisitian IAS couple, the chief guests at the function, were good. It was also the church's first birthday as an independent entity - it was a chapel until then - so we were treated to idli-vada-sambar-chutney after the mass, sponsored by a parishioner.

The kids hadnt come with us, so we took the opportunity to go ring-shopping for V, since he wanted an old ring of his exchanged for a new one. We trudged half a dozen shops but V didnt find the ideal ring - from just a plain gold ring when we started our odyssey, he had narrrowed his search to a nav-ratna (9 semi-precious gems) ring.

Didnt realise men could be such fastidious shoppers. Thought only women would take 4 hours to hunt for a sari or a piece of jewellery!

My son

Ash is growing out of our wings slowly. Yesterday, Vinod tried to cuddle him after lunch - he comes home for lunch as his office is close by - and the little punk said: "Appa, I need to sleep. You go to office" (though not in as many words). Once upon a time, V had to curl up with him on the couch if he was to sleep, but here is a big grown-up boy, all of three years, wanting not be disturbed as he watched a bit of TV and went to sleep.
And it also upsets him when we spank him for being naughty/bullying Mira - such as sinking all his teeth into her skin. Even if we just scold him harshly. There was a time when he didnt give a damn but the way he curls out his lower lip and starts sobbing now, we have no option but to forget our anger and hug him and tell him that he shouldnt hit/bite his lil sister. There are time when he likes Mira but within him, he has this animosity towards her. For having taken the attention of his parents away from him, when he was just one-and-a-half.
But he is still our special child. Born after fours years of desperation and hope and pain. We had watched him grow - through the monthly ultrasounds at IRM - centimetre by centimetre. Each limb, each organ, each heart beat. As he opened his eyes in the womb, or swam in the amniotic fluid and kicked at me - Ash had been terribly active in the belly, a lot more than Mira.
And I did not know until the anaestetist told me - a spinal anaesthesia in a C-section meant I could hear what was going around - that it was a boy, the moment after I heard him cry. And as I was wheeled out an hour later, a nurse cried out: "Mary, Mary, behold your son!" (She always liked calling me by my middle name). And there he was, turning his head to look at me curiously from the baby warmer that nestled him. I say, he looked at me open-eyed, not squinting at light like most newborns. But I was too tired and in pain to fondle him and just gave him a tired glance; anyway they brought him to my room soon after.

But I dont think I will ever forget that look of curiosity when he saw me first. I should have known he was going to be naughty.
His birth had been an occasion for celebration. V had treated all the obstetricians and nurses, our neighbours and friends and colleagues with a box of mysore pa each. In comparison, Mira had been a low-budget baby altogether...
Though I wonder if Ash will realise how special he is to us.