Swings & Roundabouts

So we had the first scan today, at 12 weeks. I was apprehensive about it for two reasons – any possible anamoly and more importantly, the requisite full bladder. Keeping a litre of water in for more than an hour, when I know my bladder is full is a feat I have never attempted before. My bladder generally works on a ‘see water, will go’ principle. The time I had to sit in a half-day long training with the coffee machine going ‘drip drip drip’ less than two paces behind me was the most torturous thing, bladder-wise, till date.

I downed half litre an hour in advance and kept sipping from a 500 ml bottle the rest of the time in a move to take things easy. As S kept going around in circles (literally) in search of that elusive parking space, I had to hoof it to the Maternity Ultrasound unit. Having so much water sloshing inside me while I was pounding the pavement was painful, let me tell you.

For the first time in the history of my NHS experience, my name was called a mere five minutes after I sat down and wasn’t mangled, chewed and spat out in a way I did not recognise it – another first! Off I went, lay down on the bed and the nice lady with the doofus started prodding me.

‘Ooh a nice full bladder, very good’, was her opening statement.

As I was gritting my teeth tightly at that point, I couldn’t risk any pithy comments.

Next came the dreaded ‘uh oh!’

And I was like ‘what? what? Are there more than one? Wassamatter?’

‘No, no, dear, don’t panic. The baby is just upside down!’

Eh? Sure enough, there the little mite was, showing us her/his bottom. Nice!

So the nice lady tells me to pootle to the loo and do a ‘little wee to the count of 20′ and come back in. ‘No worry, dear, we have got all morning!’ was her parting shot.

I walked in to the loo. How the hell does one do a ‘little wee’ when you have so much liquid inside you that is threatening to do a Niagara if you so much as do a sneeze? It was bloody hard, I tell you, fighting nature.

Back in, take 2. Thankfully the baby had decided to play nice and lie down. But what a difference from Big Bro! P was such a sweetie – he just lay there and let the sonographer do his bit and take piccies. This one seems to be a bit of a drama queen. For the next ten mins, the nice lady kept going ‘ooh don’t you do that, you naughty baby’, ‘come back here!’, ‘oh no you don’t!’, all punctuated with nice deep prods too near my still full bladder.

Finally she got the baby where she wanted and she went out and bellowed for S to come in and join us. As she sat down to show us which is where, the drama queen tried to turn and swim away! Cue another prod. It was a scream to see the lady prodding and the baby posing with a hand on her (got to be a girl!) head, like a tired movie star! It was surreal to see the ickle baby form – with the tiny heart beating like a hammer. Brought back memories of the first time – with P, I was still in the denial stage then and seeing him on the screen was the first step towards accepting that there was a baby in there and he is mine. This time, it was ‘ooh I hope everything is fine’ kind of feeling but wonderful, nonetheless.

P’s opening statement to me at the school gates was ‘did you get the pic of the baby? Where is it?’

Apparently he thought I would be standing there waving the pic like a mad woman. He could hardly contain himself till we came home and I showed him. His face, when confronted with the vague, blurry squiggles was a picture!

‘Is THAT the baby? Really?’ he couldn’t believe it!

He has changed his mind about his choice of a sibling – after weeks of insisting that he wanted a brother only (‘cos girls are slow, Mummy and they squeal!’), he has decided to plump for a sister. And that he is going to be the deciding authority when it comes to naming the baby and buying her stuff – baby cot, buggy, the works. He has even offered to do the nappy change, though I don’t think I will hold him to that!

Ever tried selling one of the stories from Ramayana or Mahabharata to a child today? Especially one raised on a PG or U certificate rating anywhere else but in India? Hair-raising, I tell you. For one, the stories are all way too gory for their bland tastes. Tell them so-on-so chopped the other bloke’s finger or head off and watch young eyes turn into saucers. The whys and whats and loud gasps would take days to stem, leave alone the increased Nightmare Alert.

If your child is not raised on an Indian filmi diet, then the damage is manifold. Stunted far-fetched imagination, refusal to accept outlandish suggestions and the uncanny ability to put their finger on the one point of niggling abnormality are all just a few of the side-effects.

Take Krishna, for example. The whole baby Krishna- Bhoothana story was declared no-no the minute breastfeeding as a concept was introduced. Being an only child, P has led a much sheltered upbringing and the concept of a baby feeding off a lady’s er, chest, brought forth series of shrieks from my young lad. The Kalinga nardhan story also suffered a similar fate, when the gravitational forces (damn the school’s Science week) and the inability of the parents to keep an eye on their child (Krishna, that is) were brought into question.

I actually managed to sneak in a story of Chathrapathi Sivaji during yet another problematic mealtime, in an effort to make him eat his pasta from the corners of the bowl. This did work for a while and then disaster, in the form of Rajini’s super-dooper hit film hit and now the Chathrapathi got mixed up with ‘Vaaji, Vaaji’ and we were back to Square -1.

I am nothing if not persistent. So tried a different tack and told him the story of Ekalavya over breakfast cereal this morning. Buoyed by the fact that I wasn’t met with rapid fire questions that blew holes into the story, I bravely plodded on. Till I came to the part where Drona asks for Ekalavya’s thumb as guru dakshina.

That was when my luck ran out.

“He asked for the boy’s thumb? Why? That is so gross! Did the boy die?”

“Er, no. It was just his thumb.”

“Why did the teacher want it anyway?”

“With the thumb gone, Ekalavya cannot use a bow and arrow anymore and Arjuna would be the champion shooter, that’s why.”

“Eh? So what if he can’t use a bow and arrow or his right hand? He can use his left hand! Or he can use a gun! Pow pow pow! Easy, see?”

Sigh.

My gran and her kind did not know how lucky they were with us, I tell you. Seriously.

My son will grow up to be a great interrogator, am sure. He gets down to the res immediately, no faffing around. Last weekend, I was ten minutes into my weekly phone call with my mum when she mentioned that my dad has now taken this job of becoming a grandpa all over again so seriously, he has decided to go in for some false teeth. Apparently, there was some minor disagreement with a tourist bus and the car he was in somewhere on the Madras-Tirupathy highway re whose right of way it was. The car got pranged and thanks to being badgered by P last summer into wearing his seatbelt, he had it on and escaped with minor injuries – knocked a few of his teeth, hence my mom’s remark.

P was sitting beside me when I was getting these details so he was pretty up-to-date. His dad, however, walked in sleepily when I was asking my mum if dad had lost much blood and typically, went “what? what? what happened?”

Before I could react, P quipped: “Thatha had an accident, Daddy. It’s okay – he’s not dead.” Succinct, I call that.

Later that evening, we spoke to my dad. Before we did, though, P wasn’t too sure of his grandpa’s talking abilities.

“He has lost his teeth, Mummy, how is he going to talk? He is just going to say ‘ba, ba, ba!’”

So when my dad came on the line, he was met with a barrage of rapid-fire questions.

P: “Why were you so careless, Thatha? Why didn’t you wear your seatbelt properly? I can!”
My dad: “er….”
P: “So how many teeth did you loose?”
My dad: “…” (inaudible reply)
P: “Oh that many? You can still talk properly. How is that?”
My dad: “er….”
P: “I know why. It is because even though your teeth have all fallen out, you still caught them all in your hands. I know it. That’s why you can still talk. I know these things.”
My dad: “……”
P: “So how much did the Tooth Fairy give you?”
My dad: “???”
P: (exasperated sigh) “You know the Tooth Fairy gives you gold coins when you loose your teeth? How many coins did you get?”
My dad: “er, I don’t think India is on the Tooth Fairy’s radar, P!”
P: (shocked) “really? That sucks!”
My dad: “!!!”

---

Now that lots of the older children in Year 2 are coming to school with a gappy smile, P has learnt that he too would start losing his teeth one day. Thanks in equal parts to his teachers, fellow students and Disney, he firmly believes that if he hides the fallen tooth under his pillow, the Tooth Fairy would leave him a shiny gold coin (curse you Disney!) the next morning. True to his Chetty origins, he swiftly calculated that he had 20 teeth in his mouth – a veritable gold mine! He even decided how he was going to put his new found wealth to use!Imagine his dismay when he learnt that the Tooth Fairy doesn’t visit kids in India! As we had been murmuring about returning to the homeland possibly once he finishes Infant school, he is quite frantic! He is busy hatching a plan to lose his teeth by the time he finishes Year 2 and net some profit before setting off home. Last I heard, he is still open to ideas! Anyone has a suggestion, please feel free….

---

Conversation this morning ran somewhat like this:S: “Come on, P, hurry up now – wee and brush your teeth quickly!”
P: ……
S: “See you better go to the toilet right now and finish your job. You know your friend is waiting for you!” (He has a play date later on)
P: “What? Where? In the toilet?”
S: *groan*

You know they say “be aware of what you tell your children; it may well come back to bite you in your ass”? Well, it happens to me many a time but the ninny that I am, I keep spinning my web of lies and flounder as my son ties me in knots using the same slimy thread.

For instance, when P was very little, he once asked me why we got married. A thousand replies weaved through my head:
“To shove a thumb up your paternal grandparents noses”
“To have hot, monkey sex at the drop of a hat (or any other apparel)”
“To get away from your maternal grandparents when the GRE route got blocked”
but as none of them were U rated, I decided to plumb for a tamer reply and fed him some jazz somewhere along the lines of a megaserial maa:
“so that we could have you, beta!”

When I had just found I was pregnant, I tried to test P’s reactions in a roundabout way. I did not want to give him any concrete idea about the imminent arrival as he is somewhat of a blabbermouth. So I tried my hand at subtlety and asked him:
“would you like to have a baby brother or a sister, kanna?”

To which, he replied:
“yeah, but I don’t cos you wanted only me and nobody else!” (another web I had spun earlier when he first asked for a sib.)

“Er, what if?”

“Well, then you’d have to get married again!”

“What? Where did you get that?”

“You only said, mummy, that mummies and daddies have to get married to have children. So if I should have a brother or a sister, you should get married again. Daddy would be so upset; he would leave!”

Next time around, I shall stick to the tried-and-tested-truth, shall I?

Oh yeah, I’ve got a bun in the oven – again. Am only at week 9 or thereabouts so am probably jumping the gun in putting the news on my blog (but who reads it but my loyal 4 anyway?!) but then, think of all the lovely posts I am missing – runs, projectile vomiting, nausea and other deep joys that my life is so full of now. So I thought, what the heck.

My son just told me he is bored. “Life is boring” are his exact words.

When a 5 year old chucks that line at you, what the hell do you do?

Any pointers?

(Announcer on the telly: “Name one reason why a woman would marry an ugly man?” — with Family Fortunes theme tune in the background)
P: “Well, daddy, you are ugly!”
P’s poor dad: “What? I am ugly?”
P: “er, well yeah, a bit ugly”
P’s dad: “What do you mean a bit ugly?”
P: “Well you wear glasses!”
P’s dad: “If I am ugly, then you must be too!”
P: “No I am not! I am gorgeous! Ask mummy!” 
From the mouth of babes…. 

My son is five years old and ever since he was 2.5, I have been getting subtle digs from the MIL’s side that have gradually become stronger over the years – about her looking after her grandson without me hovering in the background, cluttering up the picture. Before you ask, yes I have left him in her care during the day, in order to acqueise to her hankering, whilst I have taken care of some odd jobs nearby. So what is the problem? Well, she wants to keep him overnight. This is where I draw the line.

A day and a night away from my son is not something I like to contemplate. Truth be told, it is the stuff my nightmares are made of. I lose my temper, I shout but I have to bind him good night and take him to bed; in the morning, I want to be there when he wakes up and comes searching for me. It still takes a while for him to shake off the sleep and the minutes he still lies on my shoulder, holding on to the last vestiges of sleep are too precious for me to let go of, even for a day.

It took me a while to form a bond with him – though I loved him to bits from the minute I set my eyes on him, it was a while before we both relaxed into our respective roles. In fact, as he becomes older, I find we get along better. And I am loathe to test this hard-won bond with my boy by letting him away for a whole day and a night. That is the second part of my nightmare – if I let him go once, he would go away and would not be my little baby who comes crying for his mummy every morning anymore.

I know I have to let go but not yet. He is just five – I want to baby him for some more years yet. Already, he shows signs of growing out of his babyhood by changing his routine – increasingly, he takes himself to bed and acts like a big boy. There will come a day when he can take care of himself but until that day, I want to enjoy every single moment. And yes, that means not letting him stay overnight away from me for a few more years.

My mum let me and brother go off to our father’s native village with assorted aunts, uncles and grandparents from the time we were four – I cannot imagine sending Pratik off like that! Maybe one day, when he is 12 or 13, maybe, certainly not when he is 5 or 6!

I know S thinks I should relax a bit but he is my only baby and I am not ready to spend a night away from him yet.

Am I being a bit too clingy?

‘Get your Easter bonnets in by Friday, as we will be having the Easter Bonnet Parade later on in the day’, stated the missive from the school. Easter bonnet? What the hell! I had visions of P walking up and down his school, looking like Peter Rabbit. Why in God’s name would these boys wear bonnets in the first place anyway? After all, this is the land where the tiniest smudge of pink isn’t allowed anywhere near a boy (lest he become traumatised or gay in the future?) and here we are talking about decking them out in bonnets. That was when I was firmly steered in the direction of caps, hats and other manly accessories. No easy way out, then.

Giving in, I asked around work for ideas. ‘Make a top hat – make it green so it looks like grass and then put Easter eggs and chickens on it’ suggested one colleague. ‘Or, you could dress up a baseball cap to make it look like a nest and place the eggs, chicks and things on it’, quipped another. Whazisthis? Top hats? Nests with chicks and eggs? When did I die and come back as a Blue Peter presenter?

By now, I was panicking big time and decided to take refuge in that temple of modern materialistic society, Tesco’s. And whoop-dee-doo, right at the entrance there was a massive aisle full of Easter-y things. The firang know how to make money, I tell you. Crepe paper, cardboard, balls of cottons, paints, all in a variety of colours, were stockpiled to the ceiling and harried parents were digging into them like they were manna from heaven. I did not have a clue what materials to procure and ended up getting two of everything. Which turned out to be the one smart thing I did.

Once home, the real battle began. I sat with the bag of goodies spread around me, along with other necessities like scissors, sticky tape and baseball cap and realised I did not have any glue. After a long trek for the same, I was now ready to tackle this thing – or so I thought. That was when I realised having ideas is one thing, execution is something else entirely. I sat looking at the pieces of cardboard, felt and the baseball cap alternatively, hoping the spirit of Martha Stewart would come and join me for a while and make the whole thing a doddle. As that did not transpire, I set about trying to tap into hitherto undiscovered, and possibly non-existent, wells of creativity.

As concocting a top hat from pieces of card were beyond my capabilities, especially without a compass to keep me on the curve and narrow, I decided to plump for the baseball cap / nest idea. My thought process ran somewhat as follows: cover the cap with green felt, send some brown felt through the shredder, glue the resultant strips in artistic disarray all over the now-green cap, plonk assorted bits and pieces of junk all over it and hey, bob’s your uncle.

Remember what I said about thought and execution? Well, read it once again ‘cos, as always, reality and my thoughts had nothing in common. For starters, the green felt refused to stick to the cloth cap, even after I slathered half a gallon of glue on it. I now had an extremely sticky ex-cap and some sodden pieces of green felt. Then, I shoved some brown felt through the shredder, hoping for some lengthy pieces of felt which I could twist to look like twigs. But the shredder decided to make a meal of it and I ended up with some brown felt mince. Pulling my hair out at the roots did not help. Not one bit. So I decided to stop fiddling with technology and cut the darned things into strips using old-fashioned scissors.

That complete, next on the menu was the lawn on which I had to lay my nest. Sticking it didn’t work; stitching it proved lot more difficult. I binned the lot and watched ‘House’ for an hour. Contemplated committing blasphemy during one of the breaks by modelling the nest along the lines of Christ’s crown of thorns. Finally, at 11:00 PM, S hit upon the idea of just laying the (spare piece of) green felt on top of the rudimentary circular cardboard crown base I had made, a la a green lawn and just plonking the nest and its assorted bits on top of it. Typically, I wasn’t sure any idea of his would actually work. But as I sat plaiting the brown strips and strategically placing coloured feather and balls of cotton all over it, it seemed like a neat one after all. After grappling with it for a long and sleepy half an hour, I finally finished my creation. And boy was I one chuffed mummy or what?

P adored it when he saw it the next morning, thereby making it every bit worthwhile. I also got lots of ‘ooh’s and ‘aah’s at work so I think I may have pulled this thing off. I realise now that I got off lucky with the Dressing Up as a Fairy Tale character lark the school sprung on me last month. It was by sheer chance that I realised how seriously the other mums took this when I eavesdropped on a coven of them discussing what their children were going to show up as, the next day. Peter Pan! Tinkerbell!! Dick Whittington!!! Jack (not the Ripper, the other one – him with the Beanstalk)!!!! I would never hear the end of it if I sent my little man to school as his own adorable self. I had a major brainwave when I spotted a white sherwani of his hanging in the cupboard, unused and unloved, and made a golden crown to go with it and sent him off as Prince Charming, armed with a red rose, no less!

When I saw the other mums rolling in with huge bonnets, their girlies fighting their way in through swathes of tissue paper or trying to balance a tray of eggs on their heads, I felt rather proud of myself. I had come through this, hopefully without scarring P for life! And now, I am ready for the next challenge. Produce your own mega serial type saga? Come dressed as an eco-warrier? Discover the cure for AIDS for school science project? Easy peasy!

I am now Super Mummy, P says. I can do anything.
Bring it on!

P is 5 today. Unbelievable! It seems as if it was just yesterday (how cliched does that sound!) that he was a wee baby and I was a mum going crackers. New place, new role, no friends, that was my state. Struggling with the day-to-day things such as breast feeding, mashing up the potatoes and carrots, and just holding it together from one day to the next. As I see my group of blogger friends, the mommy bloggers, the mom blog network and things like that, I can’t help wishing I had the blogosphere five years back. It would have prevented me from dissolving into incomprehensible tears at every point. I somehow might have been a better mum to P, if I had had a creative outlet for all my pent up frustrations.

No use crying over spilt milk, anyways, is there?

Every morning, just a few minutes before 9.00 AM, you would find me dragging self and P up the cardiac hills of Brentwood, to land up in a heap in front of P’s school. We would arrive, breathless, dishevelled and at least in my case, wheezing like an age-old steam engine, while all around me will be the cool mums and dads, dropping their children off and taking off to work, gym or the coffee shop, without breaking a sweat.

Some of the moms are of the yummy-mummy variety – clad in designer togs and killer shoes, flawless makeup and superbly accessorized, they are the epitome of Superwomen. Some are athletic – they even come to school in their cropped, jogging bottoms and trainers to prove how fit they are. Then there are the biz types – pin-stripes, pencil skirts and formal, say bye bye, kiss kiss and off they go.

And then there’s me.