P75: My Son, The Super Parent

After long months of bullying, my wife and mother to our 3-year old toddler son Advait, debuts on my parenting blog.

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My son, The Super Parent

My son is doing a near-perfect job of parenting. He gave birth to me, three years back on July 22^nd. After a 16-hour painful and irritable labour, when my bloated belly was finally hacked, I shivered for 30 mins flat in excitement. Thereafter, there has been many moments of cheap thrills and shrills. During labour, my father stayed hidden behind The Financial Times, my mother communicated with God in gibberish, my sister denounced the world and went off to the Chicago zoo for comfort and my husband kept insisting that he is confident, I will be freed soon,  though my vagina.

I have some real defining moments of being born as a Mother.  That Sunday was special. The second day of Ramadan. Most in my town were waiting for the call of the maghrib prayers, to quench their 15-hour long thirst. The doctors stitching me up were chatting about food, firni to be precise and the elaborate Iftar feast, waiting at home. Amidst all the chatter, I was born to a sharp, dominating and temperamental son, who truly believed the sun shone from his bite-size bums. I didn’t cry. He did. I was just relieved.

He is a good parent though. He has strengthened my roots and untangled my wings, often caught in the junk of my childhood conditioning. He has taught me to extend myself beyond my skin. I have been toughened with sleepless nights, leaking breasts, brain-numbing hunger and a dislodged tail-bone. I have been softened with wise repartees, disarmed with a pair of fluttering eyelashes and caged with unconditional love, that I once believed I could find in a pot-smoking boy in suburban Kolkata.

He is my shining mirror. He holds himself up to me, couple of times a day. I see my wrinkles in him and the wisdom I have acquired in the last three years. He is my Heckler-Supremo, who kicks my wide ass, every time I slack. He is my zen master, who teaches me to bow in gratitude to the universe, each night as he dozes off to sleep on my pillow. He is my personal Franz Kafka, who has answered most of my existential questions, before I could really frame them in words. He is my angel-investor who believes in the power of me.

My son, the super-parent.

Me, the lucky bugger, who has endless entitlements, a room flooded with toys and a home buoyant on love, although the bank accounts often run dry.

Thank you, Advait.

 

Advaita is the oldest extant sub-school of Vedanta, which preaches the non-duality of the soul. The word refers to one’s recognition or discovery of his/her “True Self”.

 

P69: New Age Slavery

Welcome to the end of the road.

Stark as it may seem, I can emphatically proclaim that the real challenges of parenthood do not start when the child is lump of cuddly lard where one may have to spend sleepless nights rocking the newborn. The real challenge starts when the child is 2 years plus and develops character. And ego.

My Cubby Cat is 2 years 6 months and I have noticed a sharp understanding of what he wants or does not want; what he likes and more importantly, what he dislikes. You could be a very good negotiator professionally, but all your skills come to nought when you have to negotiate with your bonsai child / children.

Scene 1:

Advait, my son, is fighting his sleep. His eye lids are droopy, laden with sleep but he does not want to sleep. Any amount of winding him down, playing lullabies, mood lighting does not help. He sits on the sofa, head cocked to one side, and he orders, “Michael Jackson moonwalk”.

Father puts on Billie Jean live in Munich. Son watching MJ glide from one end of the stage to the other.

Son places a new order,“Aeroplane fly fly”.

Father switches to Celine Dion song ‘Am Alive’.

The song dies a premature death because Advait then wants to dance to ‘original King Julius’ (of Madagascar) singing, “I want to move it move it”.

I sit beside him, hapless, licking my hurt ego, as I navigate from one folder to the other, playing him stuff he wants to watch.

Scene 2:

Advait wakes up in the middle of the night, starts bawling and screams “milky”. I pick him up to take him to the kitchen to make him some warm milk, when he starts giving me fresh instructions.

“Living room”

Daddy starts trudging to the living room.

Advait shrieks, “No living room. Gullu room”. Gullu is a nick that he likes.

Daddy is just about to step into Gullu Room, when Advait emphatically orders, “Milky Milky”.

I start taking him to the kitchen again.

Advait re-negotiates, “No kitchen, I want to sleepu”.

Daddy takes him back to the bedroom, having tried growling, cajoling and rocking him.

In 10 seconds, Advait lulls back to sleep. No ‘milky’ required.

Welcome to new-age-slavery. Our life now is filled with many such moments.

P54: Catch-o-meter

That was something my dad used to call me when I was really young and inquisitive. Catch-o-meter. When my parents would be discussing something, I would listen to them intently and try to pick on their mannerisms, intonation and often new words.

I already see a younger version of a “catch-o-meter” in my cubby cat. He tries, with his limited syllables, to catch on to new words and repeat them. It is perhaps, a very sweet phase of his growing up as he is stretching his vocabulary and adding newer sounds that he can associate objects to.

He knows cars, buses, birds, dogs and cats, leaves, trees, butterflies, tiger, piglet, fish, sun, moon, ball, kick, goal and his all-time favourite ‘star’. He is picking newer words by the day! He claps for himself when he gets a word right and eggs his parents to clap for him. He revels in the recognition. The word ingrains itself in my little one’s RAM.

He is the ‘catch-o-meter’. Just a stronger word of caution to me (and less to my wife) to be less colourful while talking. My almost-20-month son is a human sponge. And I wouldn’t want him saying things that I wouldn’t want him to. Not just yet.

P33: Se7en

I am not in attendance to see how the man-cub is coming along. He and his mother are back home. And I am living in forced bachelorhood. However, I am abreast of what and how he is up to. Daily updates, photos and phone calls keep me happy. Every night, I sleep next to his sleeping suit and a soft toy of his. I miss him incredibly. I sit through entire albums of him since his birth. The left shoulder of my tee shirts are not drool marked, and I miss that. I do not come back from work early to take him out for a spin. I am counting days to his arrival back home, here with me.

I am told that he has developed quite an attitude (not surprised since kids these days come pre-programmed). His antics are as funny as they are alarming. At 7 months plus, it seems, he has acquired a sense of attention or rather attention-seeking. With 2 sets of grand parents fawning over him day in day out, little wonder that. He now lunges at things that the wants. And when he gets his hands on the thing he wants, it is usually thrown away in 7 minutes. He does the same with his set of (familiar) toys. If the toy is returned, he happily chucks it out again. Game? Maybe, yes. Quite the lower back exercise for adults.

My wife tells me that he now clenches his fist and growls! Hilarious! Till about 4 weeks back, I couldn’t imagine my son doing something like that. Enfant terrible! We shall find out in the years to come. For now, I cannot get the image of a cuddly piece of pastry trying on some attitude and growling like a cub!

Well, he is my Cubby cat, after all!

P31: High 5 and Low 5

He now knows who is who. He is 5.

Clearly, his faculty of association is developing. You can tell from his expressions and body movements when he see his mother in a room full of strangers or how he wants to settle in daddy’s chest. He also has his social moods, regaling men and women alike with his smile while uttering his strange syllables. I can clearly see how he uses his ‘charm’ on the women-folk. One trip to Carrefour had 4-5 Filipina salesgirls cooing over him as he kept smiling and making eye-contact. God to see, he is well on his way, already.

While on association, did I mention that he clearly has roles cut-out for us. When he sees the mother, he lets out a wail that means that he is looking for comfort. Whenever he sees me,  he pushes his stomach and waist up in the air as a ‘pick-me-up’ sign. So, mum’s food and dad’s entertainment.

Also noticing since he was 5 that he gets bored easily. We figure that out when he throws away his favourite toy or will not look at his preferred daddy-loony-dance! So, prepare yourself to run out toys, cartoons, coloured cartons, rattlers and teethers, and strange iPad apps.

P30: Spring-head

I know I have been away from my blog and that makes me feel like a bad parent. On the contrary, I have been a rather involved father. Hence the lack of time to write posts. I must say that numerous times I have written posts in my head but I guess that is not good enough. Need an app that takes thoughts out of head and puts them to electronic ink.

I left off writing when my man-cub was 4 plus. He was primarily a ‘hammer-head’ then. Would use his head in a sway and crash; wherever that would land him. Quite like an aggressive giraffe, albeit runted. He needed neck support when picked up or while in somebody’s lap.

He is 6 now. And he has gone from ‘hammer-head’ to ‘spring-head’. Remember those toys on your dad’s car dash that had a spring to their neck? Each movement or the gentle rumbling of the engine used to make those toys’ heads bob. Well, that is exactly what he does now. Bobs his head, whenever he is not horizontal.

My man-cub now tries to balance himself and is doing a fabulous job at that. He is inquisitive and curious With his head bobbing about, he manages to use it wherever he wants to. He could be following his mother, walking across the room or craning his head to see what song has been played, Mr Spring-Head is seeing the world through his eyes.

Wish I could get a recording of that! What a watch that would be!

P29: Tennis Ball

I just realised something; hence the early morning post.

It is 0430 hours. I amble to the bathroom, groggy with sleep. Strangely I was reminded of my childhood when I would buy tennis balls. I know smack of tennis but I liked tennis balls. Apart from their appearance, it was the texture that I loved.

And the tennis ball texture currently matches the ‘touch and feel’ of my son’s head. No wonder I always have a hand on his head!

Mmmm! 🙂

P28: Butler Butler Burning Bright

My baby boy is now 13 weeks i.e. 3 months and a week old. Since I was meeting him after a long month, I noticed a few changes about him.

He has developed stronger muscles to hoist himself up when rested on his tummy. He looks all happy as he shows off his new strength to me, looking like a pocket body-builder. Do remember though, that the child will tire out easily.

His neck has become stronger, as a result of which, he is a lot more comfortable turning his head from side to side.

He also has become, what I call, a Human Hammer Head. He uses his head to butt around when he is held. The last I saw anything like that were the shy giraffes at Nairobi as they jostled for food at the feeding ‘machan’. It is funny when he does that but, however it is a test of reflexes.

I do have a nagging fear that he likes watching TV, especially the soppy soaps that gets aired in afternoons. I am not sure who to blame for that! 😉

Here are a few other observations I made:

The mother’s role has increased manifold – the child understands that food, comfort, succour and sleep all come from the same source. My wife jokes that she is more of a commodity than mother to the child!

What this development basically means that the father is reduced to being a butler. But being a useful butler is a great help. So pay your respects to Nestor and do what is the calling of the hour. The butler needs to be handy with the following:

• Nappy
• Feeding bottle
• Top up feed (helpful for growth spurts)
• Bib to wipe that drool after a feed.
• And anything else that the wife might need (from a hair clip to handing her mobile to her)

It is easy to be logged out as a father here, but I make sure I make myself useful by calming the child, or lulling him to sleep. This gives my wife the necessary down time that she needs. Imagine being at the beck and call of a wriggling three-month old, at all times! Feeding him; getting him to sleep – now multiply that into 24 hours. So that is pretty much what my wife is doing.

Statutory warning: you might find more of a mother and less of a wife. Please do not panic. That is the sign of an involved mother. I try to spend as much time as I can with her. When my cub sleeps, we talk to each other, thereby utilising some time that we get to ourselves. Those are moments when we go back to being friends and husband-wife!

The other thing to do is to introduce the child into your lifestyle. In other words, a quick trip to your favourite diner or breakfast with family is a good idea. We have been careful not to expose the child to areas with a lot of noise – and so his shopping mall debut is still pending.

And his trip to Carrefour is not going to happen soon!

Cheerio!

 

P27: Meeting My Cubby-Cat

I have been quiet for sometime. The reason was a forced vacation from being a father. watching your child grow via photos is not really ‘being daddy’. But then, all those pathetic days and nights were erased in a swipe when my cub looked at me and gave me a huge smile as I called out to him. I took him in my arms and kissed his cheeks.

His familiar smell, his breathing and his clutching my tee-shirt calmed me no end. He probably understood my heartbeat next to his and my voice as I called out to him incessantly just to see him smile.

Bliss!

P26: Turns 2 months today!

 

Advait turns 2 months today.

Been thinking of the run-up to get him out in this mortal world. Right now we are 3 hours apart; I am in Dubai and he in New Delhi with his mother and grand-parents.

Thinking of his first outing in his car-seat. His first reaction to the stroller. His blissful reaction after he has ‘pooped’ in his diapers. His strange expressions that constantly entertained us.

I remember when we took him for his vaccination. There were 2 shots that were administered to his legs. I was dreading this outing, clearly because I cannot take in the sight of a needle going into such tender flesh. Once there in the clinic, his mother held his hands and I held his legs. It was a little atypical feeling. brave disposition as I held his legs during his first vaccination. With each jab, he let out a couple to squeals and then he just quieted down, as if comforted by our words. I think he was very brave. I am sure, I must have brought the hospital down when I had that as a child; and as have many.

Now I see him through daily photos that are sent to my BlackBerry. He is growing up and becoming strong. And I cant wait to hold him close to my chest and hear his cawing. I have been told that he loves talking. Well, I have lots to tell him too. Waiting for the day when I shall see him in 3 weeks time.