Life is full of decisions - questions, comments, concerns - comments that need to be followed-up with questions…things like the one below…stuff you don’t want to know more about…
The toddler declared to me this evening, “We don’t eat poopies, mommy! We don’t eat boogers! We eat food!”
I was driving the now almost-3-years-old little one to his day care this morning when he exclaims, “Mommy, XXXX is black!” about a dark-skinned classmate. I was a little surprised at the tone of that, and recognizing a theme for a lecture, asked him, “so, what color are you?”.
He looks down at his shirt for only a moment before he triumphantly answers back, “I am striped!”.
It is kinda not right to call this baby stuff anymore - have you seen him recently? (I promise to put up his picture in his Halloween costume this evening). He went as Buzz Lightyear, his favorite Space Ranger. This was Neel’s first ever trick-or-treating, so mommy was a little curious to see how her shy boy would fare in the kid-eat-kid-for-candy world of Halloween.
Not too shabby, really!
He did start of initially by mumbling “trickatreat” from behind his mommy before grabbing the candy and taking off after another mumbled “thankyou”. As the candy started collecting in his little pumpkin pail, he started getting bolder and into the thick of things. He was screaming, “To infinity and beyond!” like Buzz Lightyear and his “trickatreat” (that is how is says it, all one word) was a little more audible than before.
We managed to tour around the block for about an hour before I convinced him we needed to turn back. He was so excited about his candy, he could have gone on the entire night :) It was a fun experience - even funnier was how tightly he clutched his pail to himself every time some trick-or-treaters rang our doorbell - he was afraid mommy might give his candy away…Heh!
Believe me, this is for all those women (including me) who soldiered on armed with their massive breastpump bags - trying to ooze a little bit of IQ at a time for their children in the privacy of cars, bathroom stalls and new mother rooms (for a few lucky ones, like me). This is also for those who want to tease us - “nyah, nyah, nyah - my baby’s smarter because I brestfed him”. Yay! aparrently that was not the point!
Can you imagine how much guilt you offload off of a new mom who is trying to reconcile her career, her non-baby-oriented-life and the guilt of not being able to do something so simple for her baby?
Now, don’t get me wrong - I am not against breast-feeding considering how many advantages there are to it - the baby’s health, the mother’s health, the whole bonding experience. I loved it and I missed it when it was over. It is just that I don’t appreciate people beating thos moms who are unlucky enough to not have the facilities to keep doing it over their head with guilt sticks for being unable to breastfeed for longer.
The column starts off with people complaining that kids these days are brats and (oh! horrors!) their parents are letting them get away with it. Get this, parents even want to go outside of the house with their kids…Waaah!
Josephine Charlton, a public relations consultant in West Hollywood, Calif., says she loves children but feels they are becoming public nuisances nonetheless. Her local Whole Foods has been overrun by “breeders” with an oversized sense of entitlement, she says, museums are now inappropriately clogged with strollers, and even first-class travel has morphed into “Romper Room” in the air.
So, to want to expose your children to culture by taking them to a place like a museum is considered overrunning it now? Hey lady, here is a newsflash - we “breeders” pay for the museum upkeep as much as you do and what etiquette requires that there be absolute silence in a museum or for that matter in a Whole Foods Market?
Now, I have traveled around with my son - I have been to restaurants, on airplanes - all sorts of things. He can be awesome sometimes and dump all the salt on that table other times. I try my best to calm him down, but a little help is appreciated in moments like that. For example, in the packed sardine can that was the airplane we were flying on, I would have appreicated a little baby room where my tot could safely run a little bit or stretch his legs out without bothering anyone. I prefer to go to places where there are baby-areas that let my son vent all he wants before the tired, little guy wants sit down calmly again. It is really that easy!
I am not asking for millions in government-grants to create child-friendly places, but think about this - how much money is spent in making all places handi-capped accessible? Couldn’t we have asked the handi-capped to stay home? Why not extend the same kind of courtesy to our future citizens and do them the favor of a little kid-friendly area in shops where they can scream to their hearts’ content while the parents end up spending tons of money in your establishment? win-win, right? Instead of that, I see vile people like the woman above who actually thinks children are some kind of a disease and would rather complain than lift a finger to help.
There are a lot of good points made in the column, so read it all…
Here is more fun stuff in the reader responses -
When I go to a restaurant, movie or other public places, I do not want to hear crying babies, and children. I want peace and quiet!
Carol, Pearce, Ariz.
Sure, Carol - that is exactly why people leave their homes and go out - to find peace and quiet in public places.
It has been a while since I put up any baby updates, so here is one of the little demon :)…
He is all of 16-1/2 months now and is soon to be promoted to the toddler class in his daycare. One more thing - I am leaving to India with him for a 2-week wedding trip this October 28th, so we will be celebrating his first Diwali there.
Before I forget, Happy Dasara to you all!
Last update - I have just been offered a dinner on my arrival to Mumbai on the 30th of October and a blogger meet by Yaz - I am holding the Mumbai-wallahs (that means you, Ravi!) to the promise of at least a meet…
Yep, after all those vivaldi CDs, Baby Mozarts, Baby Bachs and the entire array of music of both the classical and the kiddie variety, my son has decided his favorite song is “Hotel California” by the Eagles. My husband says he shows real good taste in music for a 9-month-old, but I am really baffled by it all. Neel (my son) refuses to go to sleep unless we play this song before bedtime. It soothes him the best next to my holding him.
Consider this - Neel is old enough to get stranger anxiety. He is a little scared around strangers. My husband wanted to get him used to others, so he took him to a friend’s place. Apparently, the little one just kept crying, sobbing real bad through the visit. After about 15 minutes, my husband couldn’t take it anymore and played “Hotel California” in the friends’ CD player. It was magic, how it calmed the baby and soothed him enough that he was actually quite happy and playing with the people around by the time I showed up there. Interesting choice in music, my baby’s got!
Here is someone who I wish would get sterilized for life - This great mother gave birth and within an hour threw her baby out of a moving car onto the street along with his umbilical cord still attached, wrapped in a plastic bag. I wouldn’t want to force another baby on this woman or even force her to a life of abstinence. All I ask is for her uterus to be removed so she cannot repeat stunts like this again.
Hey, a hysterectomy works great for birth control, especially if you are as empathetic a mother as in this case!
(p.s. I do understand that per the article, and the police testimony, we are still not sure if it was the mother who threw the baby out - I still stand by my words. If she cannot stay away from people who abuse her, she has no right to expose her babies to abusers).
Update: Guess what! Turns out that the so-called rescue lady was the baby’s mother and she made up the entire baby-thrown-from-car incident. If she had to go to these lengths inspite of Florida’s safe harbor law (within the infant’s first three days, you can leave him at any hospital or fire station - no questions asked), she still deserves to be sterilized!
Neel is turning out to be one vocal baby - he lets you know with different tones of voice, every mood of his. (I wonder where he could have got this incessant desire to blab from!) He loves listening to people talk to him on the phone - he even responds with appropriate “mmm”s at intervals. When I call him up, he actually recognizes my voice and starts smiling, or so I am told. I called him two days ago from work and our conversation was pretty typical (you know, I go, “Hi Neel!” and he says “mmmmm!”) except for a little while where he didn’t say anything. I was wondering if he was still on the phone when he goes, “mmmmmmaaa, ammmmaa, amma!”. If I hadn’t been at work, that would have had me crying so hard :)
So many things in this list sound cliched, it is really interesting why we don’t them more often. It took seeing my son practice these day in and day out that made me think how easy and how awesome it is to be like him -
Express yourself - with my son, you are never in a doubt where you stand with him. When he sees the people he likes, his eyes, his face and his entire being lights up. He shows in no uncertain way that you have made him very happy just by being there and looking at him. He is also not afraid to ask for attention. He wants a hug? You see his arms spread wide and when you hold him he will smother you in a tight embrace.
He makes me think of all the times I was afraid of showing emotion thinking I will be hurt or when I was sulking at something and refused to show how happy I really was to see someone. This also brings me to the next thing -
Don’t hold a grudge - He doesn’t sulk - he doesn’t remember a grudge long enough to hold it. He can be crying hard because of something you did, but the minute you tickle him or do something crazy he forgets all and starts laughing. How often is it that we waste precious moments because we are too caught up in proving points to others by sulking or being angry and petty over unimportant things.
Don’t give up - I keep wondering at what point in our lives do we lose that spirit of not giving up till we master something. If you count the number of times my son fell down before he finally managed to crawl around, it was heartbreaking as a mom for me. He didn’t care. He tried pushups till he made his little arms and legs strong enough till they could support his weight, he then tried to crawl only to figure out he couldn’t balance himself. He fell forward so many times his nose turned red. None of these setbacks meant he was giving up. Now he is on his way to standing up by holding on to the sofa - he is almost ready to walk - once he figures out how to balance himself on his pudgy feet…after about another 100 or so falls I guess.
Explore - There is a reason behind all that determination of his to learn how to crawl and walk. He is extremely curious. He wants to see everything - touch, feel (and lick) everything. There is no satisfying his appetite for new things. Everything is a new challenge to be dissected and understood completely. When I see that, I wonder at point do we lose that curiosity and settle for monotonous apathy in our lives. How exciting it would be to be exploring relentlessly and learning as much as we can about everything through our lives!
There have been two in the news lately - one sad and one happy. I am just thrilled to pieces on the story about the world’s smallest baby who survived after being born with less weight than a coke can (imagine that!). She was 9.4 inches tall, which was less than half of what my son was at birth and he was early by 2 weeks himself. I am glad we have the technology to make miracles happen and help keep the life within a tiny being that would have had no chance a few years ago.
It also kind of makes you wonder how some people will move heaven and earth to keep a 26-week-old-pregnancy baby alive while some will do the same and more to have the right to kill an even older child since the baby is still in the mother’s womb.
As for the sad story about the expectant mom strangled so another woman could cut out her baby and pretend it was her own, it was awful. I can so see the fancies, fears, wishes and hopes the pregnant lady must have harbored in her heart for little girl, it breaks my heart to think she was killed before she could even see her baby. It is nice to see the baby is doing well after being brought into the world in such a heinous fashion, but I really feel for the mom who is not here anymore. I went through my entire pregnancy trying to imagine what my baby would be like and what it would be like the first time I saw him. I feel for anyone who had to miss out on it.
Now that you have all seen that adorable little tyke in the picture below, let me tell you how it was after he came to be. It was a pretty hurried labor - My doctor had checked me up on Monday and told me I was not ready in any way whatsoever to give birth. I started having cramps on Tuesday and by Wednesday night, the cramps became pretty rhythmic - every ten minutes. My husband and I went to the hospital early morning Thursday and they sent us back saying I was still not ready and needed another day or so.
I decided to stay home take it easy for the daya nd my husband left to work. At 2:30 in the afternoon I had gotten tired of timing the contractions so I decided I would go to bed when hell, sorry, my water broke. I needed to get to the hospital at once, but my husband was at work in a meeting 20 minutes away, so I simply got dressed and drove to the hospital with my in-laws. Once there it was the usual pandemonium and cacophony of pains, deep-breaths, screaming for my husband and ultimately the welcome hush brought to you courtesy of “Epidural”. I swear, all the people on my floor must have heaved a sigh of relief after all the ruckus I made.
At about 7:00, I started throwing up (yeah, I am the queen of throwing up - my hangovers suck!) and the nurses realized it was time to push - there was three hours of that interrupted occasionally by cell-phone calls to my husband from people at work asking for help - I am not making this up, he was taking calls while holding my feet and helping me push - he had to tell them he was in the middle of his wife’s frigging delivery before they would hang up. Well, it was about 10:20 already and the doctor had had it with me. She told me it was two more pushes - my son had to come out or she was cutting me up for a caesarian.
Next push, the little head was out enough to be vaccuumed out, which was when we discovered he had wrapped the umbilical cord around his neck that was preventing him from coming out. Of course, it seems like a little thing now, but it freaked me out then to realize how close we had come to choking the poor little one before we finally got him out.
That though folks, was just the beginning. It was the beginning of a two-week-long nightmare that to me was punctuated by sleep, feeding baby, trying to eat while feeding baby, trying to sleep while feeding baby, trying to feed baby while trying to feed baby…oops, where was I again? But then that was the reality of those days - the little bundle of joy did only three things - eat, sleep and poop - and did them on an hourly basis. 24/7. Even the most patient, mommy-like people can get exasperated by all this.
Husbands, if you have any compassion at all, please do not piss off your women during this time. Try to do everything they ask you to do - no more, no less. Remember that there is a lot of hormonal fluctuation going on and emotionally and physically it is a roller-coaster ride that only a woman who has been through this can truly imagine. Another piece of advice would be - don’t take anything personal. Seriously, you might start wondering why she hates you so much but it is not really you - it is the hormones talking. Remember the voices talking through the girl in Exorcist? Kinda like that. Take the baby away from her for a few hours a day - let her rest - it might help save your marriage.
