Chubbocks, Puddi and Bojjandi grow up!

I thought I was not the maternal type. I thought I was hardboiled. Kids were always going to be something I had in the future, not me-now. For the first several days after my eldest was born, I didn’t feel that gush of love and protectiveness everyone talks about. And I worried about not being mom-material, even after having become a mom. The biological act of giving birth isn’t enough to turn you into a mom. My three-weeks-early, underweight, spindly looking baby reminded me of a lizard with its limbs splayed out.

I don’t quite recall when I went from biological mom to emotional mom, the transition just crept up on me in the act of taking care of that little lizard and helping it thrive, grinning back inadvertently to its toothless gas-smile, speaking babygibberish, singing family cradle songs as old as my grandmother to lull the creature to sleep.

Once that switch turned on, it was hard to bear the many transitions that sent the baby further and further from me. It took me six months to be ready to relinquish the precious bundle to a caregiver and get back to work. Even then, I worked halfdays for three years so I could spend more time with my son. This was completely unexpected for the career-driven women I thought of myself as.

The baby first slept in a cradle that we hung over the bed – a tradition that goes back centuries to our villages – in a sling fashioned out of a soft old saree. It protected the baby from draughts and dust and snuggled him as easily as the womb. It also assuaged my fears about crib death, though several nights I’d get up with a start worried whether the baby was still breathing. I’d put my head in one side of the sling and our dog Jacky in the other, to check whether the baby was fine.

Living in a duplex with our bedrooms on the upper floor meant that many nights when we were downstairs watching a late night movie, we’d rock him to sleep in the living room rocking chair and then put him to bed in a squishy beanbag until we were ready to go upstairs – baby monitors didn’t work that well across multiple floors.

As the baby grew older, we needed to transition him to a bed of his own. We bought a crib from an embassy sale, because I was very concerned about the possibility of toxic paint in local furniture. It was superbly designed and adjustable with the growing length of the baby. My son lay in his crib within arm’s reach and I often slept holding his tiny hand through the bars of the crib – my security blanket. As he outgrew the bed, I still wasn’t ready for him to move to a separate room. We made a bed for him on the floor of our bedroom, surrounded by baby gates I had bought at an embassy sale, to ensure he couldn’t crawl off and go under the bed. Often, as my husband was putting the baby to sleep, he’d fall asleep himself, imprisoned in the baby gates.

By the time we had a second baby coming along, we realised that the kids would have to sleep in a separate room. My son doesn’t take to change easy so we had to explain the reason for the change to him multiple times over the months leading up to the baby’s arrival. In order to make it easier, I told him we’d turn it into a Jungle room. Pregnant, tired, weighed down by the baby, I spent days wielding paintbrushes across the walls of the bedroom, painting motifs he’d enjoy. At times I was so exhausted I could barely lift my arm up, but it was something I just had to do. Now I wonder whether that was my way of easing the transition for myself, easing the pangs of separation I was feeling in advance by creating happy pictures of the result. We named each and every one of the animals – Proudy the peacock, Sher Khan, Babar the elephant, Bambi the deer, Baloo the bear and Kapi the monkey.

My daughter slept in the crib from the time she was three months old, in a room she shared with my son. My son had a full-sized bed of his own by now, but early morning he’d climb into the crib to chat with his infant sister, his face soft with love for her or hide there to jump out and surprise me. I still spent many nights wandering over to the kids’ room to check if they were ok. We could hear the kids if they called, and call they did, often.

My three kids spent years in that bedroom, outgrowing their cribs and getting into full-sized beds. My eldest fell out of bed one morning and managed to break his arm – a green bone fracture, the doctor called it. The two older ones would crawl into the youngest’s crib every morning and the three would party together till we woke up. We brought in and outgrew many rituals, including bedtime stories, bedtime lullabies and Gunkahs (good night kiss and hugs). We celebrated many birthdays with early morning singing of the family birthday song and family bear hugs. Gradually the room started to overflow with their bedtime books, stuffed toys and other memorabilia.

Last year we decided that the kids were outgrowing the room. We began a renovation process that stretched like a rubber band, outsourcing our sleep to my parents’ house, where the three kids still shared one room. Three days ago, we moved into the new rooms. My daughter has her own room and eagerly moved in to sleep on her own for the first time in her life, and my sons share a separate room. I wander through their rooms at night, checking if they are fine, checking if the room is too hot or too cold, pulling a cover over them, checking if the outside doors are locked.

Though it’s the same house, and our rooms are all on the same floor, adjoining each others, somehow this feels like a big transition, a big break. Their stuffed toys are relegated to the old kids room, and I don’t know if they’ll make their way back. The animals on the wall have been abandoned on another floor…

Are your children your strength or your Achilles heel?

‘To be, or not to be, that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them:…’

If you ask parents, the first thing most are likely to tell you is that they are the best thing that life ever handed their way and that their life would have been immeasurably poorer if it hadn’t included these kids. I feel exactly the same way about my brats.

However, once you have become a parent, does that make you take better decisions or worse ones? Does it lead you to stand for what is right, fight for doing the right thing not only in your personal life but across all spheres of life, or does it lead to your cowering and hunkering down in order to protect them?

As an example, let’s think of Nazi Germany. In that country, at the time that Hitler was rising to power, let’s say you knew what the system was doing to Jews. Would being a parent change your decision on what you decided to do and in which direction? Would you raise your voice and fight against this oppression, because you want your children to learn to stand up against what is wrong? Or would you stay quiet and tell your kids to be quiet because that way you can keep your nose clean and your children out of trouble? Would the possibility of adverse consequences make you more or less likely to do the right thing? If it’s the latter, how would you reconcile your conscience with your actions?

Should you bring up your children in the belief that life is unfair, life is unjust and they should suck it up or should you teach them to do the right thing and keep tilting at windmills? In a system which rarely takes the side of that which is right, there’s a pragmatist and an idealist fighting inside you. Which one should you root for and why?

I’ve recently been going through a dilemma in which I have to weigh my idealistic instincts against my protective/ pragmatic instincts. And there is a huge amount of family pressure to tow the pragmatic line, simply because life with 3 kids, 2 dogs, ageing parents and EMIs is too full and too limited in terms of time and resources to allow one to take on the system which can’t be guaranteed to do the right thing, get embroiled in legal action or face hostile neighbours. The family pressure comes with the best intent, and past experience of having had to suffer the unfairness of life. I get it. There may be nothing to be gained by flinging our puny selves against a wall. The rational part of me gets it.

But the emotional part of me, the one that is my voice, resents it immensely. I feel like I’m compromising with the truth in order to buy peace. But it’s external peace because then I’m not going to be at peace with myself. I’m not going to respect myself. I’m not going to be the same me, but a dull, cowed down, beaten sort of me. The next time, it’s easier to not even try to think about the right thing but just march quietly down the path of least resistance. The next time, it’s clear from the beginning what the path is. The next time, it’s easier to do the wrong thing…

And I’m not sure if this is the example to set kids who are going to go forth into an ever-more complex and unfair world. I’m not sure I’m cut out to be a parent if that ultimately results in becoming a lesser human being than I was before I had to worry about consequences.

If on the one side, parenting brings joy, it also lays heavy responsibilities on us. Teach your children the right values, we’re always told. The best upbringing is one which makes your children into good human beings. What is a good human being – one who stands up for the right thing or one who keeps quiet to keep the peace? Values come from the parents, we’re told. Which is the right set of values? It’s easy to know what the right thing is in an academic discussion. But when push comes to shove in this uncertain world, how you act determines what values you are passing on to your kids.

A boy and his dog

Roohi and Jacky were adult dogs by the time Chubbocks came into our lives. Roohi had always been a little afraid of and snappish at little kids, so she stayed far away from him on most occasions, and later, when he was around 3 or 4, even nipped his feet if he got too close. Jacky, on the other hand, adored Chubbocks and adopted him as soon as the baby came home.

While we had had grand plans for sanitizing Chubbocks’s baby environment, Jacky was having none of it. He made our room his own and refused to budge. Every night, he would poke his handsome, giant shaggy head into the cloth cradle that was Chubbocks’s first bed to ensure the baby was safely ensconced inside before settling down himself. On one occasion, when Ajji had taken Chubbocks out for a nap so I could catch some rest away from the tetchy baby, Jacky was absolutely frantic when he couldn’t spot the baby in the cradle and worriedly roamed the house until he saw him in Ajji’s lap. He took a deep whiff of the baby smell to reassure himself before settling at Ajji’s feet like a guardian.

Having said that, Chubbocks had never shown any particular interest in dogs. Then one day we went out for a picnic in the colony park next to our house and met a friendly, shaggy, black and white stray whom he immediately befriended and named Buster after the dog in Enid Blyton’s Five Findouters, before he discovered she was female. Soon, I found that he had become friends with and knew the names of practically every dog on campus - the pets and the adopted strays. Chubbocks stayed friends with Buster and was pestering us to get her inoculations and neutering done, when we discovered she was pregnant.

There were some neighbours who were concerned about the fact that she was about to have pups and wanted to get her thrown out of the complex. We weren’t having any of that, and immediately brought her home to live in our yard in the daytime and in the house at night. Buster soon proved that she had been someone’s abandoned pet, due to her beautiful house trained manners.

Eventually, she went on to give birth to 8 pups on our windowsill. Unfortunately she rolled over on one in the process, and a nearby flowerpot rolled over onto another so only 6 pups survived. Over the next few days, it was a delight to watch the kids’ tender expressions as they spent their days glued to the windowsill, watching the little puppies suckle, whine and gradually open their eyes to the world around them. It seemed as if the kids were lit by a magic light from inside as they watched the magic of life unfold.

We managed to get one male puppy placed. The rest would have to take their chances living in our gated complex, though we got them all vaccinated and sterilized. Then Aman begged us that he wanted to adopt the remaining male puppy. A was very reluctant, since he felt it would be an added burden as we have very busy lives. But having watched Roohi and Jacky integrate themselves into our lives, I couldn’t deny Chubbocks the chance to bring up a dog. So Licky, the pup entered our homes and hearts.

He was a very cute and yet masterful little pup, one of the more active and assertive ones from the little. Very cute, his white face was framed by two symmetrical brown patches over each of his eyes. He seemed highly intelligent as he started to get trained quite early, and Chubbocks while initially lazy, took to his role as a dog-parent quite quickly. The first few months were spent trying to train the excitable puppy into proper pooping and peeing habits.

Initially, every time we took Licky outside, he would get off the leash and run off or run back home. Many leather leashes were chewed up and we went through a variety of leashes before hitting on one which worked for the pup’s comfort and ours equally. Chubbocks read up on dog training, coaxed by us, and soon would take him on multiple walks a day, leading him carefully on his leash. These walks also became a bonding ritual as either his dad or I would accompany him, as there were several larger and more aggressive dogs ready to attack. The sharp corners of our wooden center table were gnawed into soft curves by the naughty little dog.

Every time Chubbocks came in from outside, Licky would be ready to welcome his loving master by yelping shrilly, licking any part of him he could reach and fawning all over his feet. Meanwhile Chubbocks, who had turned into a boy that was embarrassed to hug his parents properly even in the privacy of the home would lean over Licky and croon love names and pet names and fondle and pet him without the slightest self-consciousness. Every visitor to the house had to be ceremonially introduced to Licky by a Chubbocks whose face radiated a mixture of pride, overwhelming love and almost disbelief in his luck at having this lovely puppy. He also ensured he was responsible for feeding the pup at night and would clean his bowl before putting in the mix of veggies, eggs and rotis and Pedigree that formed the pup’s diet.

Licky used to know by instinct when Chubbocks was coming from school and would stand by the door, ready to welcome him. And every once in a while, Licky would go absolutely mad, hurling himself over chairs. Jumping over center tables and rushing about the house in a total frenzy, while Aman watched and laughed helplessly. If we ever put him out into the backyard, he would climb up on the windowsill of the family room and leap up and down and whine until we let him back inside, only to whine to go out again, almost immediately. I had trained Licky to sit and Chubbocks taught him to shake hands, beaming with delight and amazement each time the pup responded. In the winter, Licky settled into his small basket and Chubbocks would lovingly ensure the pup was well covered up by a blanket, before he went to bed.

We had been discussing that it was about time Licky started sleeping in the kids’ room – so far he had been sleeping on the ground floor so that the housekeeper could let him out into the yard for an early morning ablution, while we slept on the 2^nd floor of the house. And then – tragedy struck. One night when A and I were out and the children asleep, Licky ate up a rat which had eaten rat poison.

When we saw him the next morning, he was jerking convulsively, and the housekeeper revealed that she had seen him eat the rat but as he vomited right away, she thought nothing of it and hadn’t bothered to inform us. Chubbocks and I rushed the pup to our vet nearby and sat outside and prayed. I refused to give into the scary thoughts going through my head and Chubbocks clutched my hand hard. We were both discussing the fact that we needed to buy a new pack of Pedigree for young dogs and a new leash when the vet came out of his OT and said it was all over. The poison had spread to the poor little pup's brain.

I have never heard anything as heartrending as the howl of anguish Chubbocks let out before he fell onto the floor. It couldn't be over just like that! He was a very nice little doggie, adored not only by his family but all of Chubbocks' friends. Licky had been with us less than a year. For his upcoming birthday, Chubbocks had been planning to get him a meat cake and a new dog bowl. He was utterly and completely distraught, shattered by this senseless tragedy and almost unable to speak through his sobs for the rest of the day. It was an utterly disheartening day in which we barely made it through the motions, cremating our wonderful little Licky and coming back to a house that seemed so much quieter and more listless.

For months afterwards, Chubbocks moped around the house, a shadow of his former self. Each and every thing would remind him of Licky, including walking around our complex, and remind him of the loss that he had suffered. While the other two were also affected deeply, Licky had been Chubbocks’s dog from the first moment. It was Chubbocks' first love and he had given his whole heart to the little puppy, and in turn the puppy had trusted and adored him with his whole heart. The two had been friends, playmates, dog and master and soulmates for the brief time they had spent together. Eventually, we packed away a memory box of the little dog who had illuminated our lives for a brief, shining instant - a book he had chewed up, his latest leash, his water bowl and his food bowl - and put them away from sight, though not out of our hearts. We hadn't even managed to get a photograph of Licky, since he used to move so fast, he was a blur in all of them.

Later, a friend asked if she could gift Chubbocks a dog, but he said he would prefer to adopt one of Licky’s siblings who lived around the neighbourhood. Playey, the runt of the litter and a truly untrainable yet nice little dog came into our homes. Nominally she is Chubbocks’s dog, but I never see the kind of wholehearted interest, play or adoration shining out of  his eyes for her. Losing Licky was a very hard blow and in his deepest heart, he has still not gotten over the loss. There’s a part of his heart that I feel has closed – if not forever, for a very long time – and won’t reopen for any other dog. One can only hope that Licky in his heaven knows how much he meant to one little boy and his family. 

Traditions

I come from a classic south Indian brahmin family, so traditions, for us, were mainly cultural or religious. The festivals we celebrated, the food that we typically ate at home, the way we celebrated festivals etc were all deeply rooted in my parents' background. The only traditions I can remember outside of those were celebrating Christmas and moonlight dinners.

My dad loved the idea of Christmas so when I was about 6 or so, we began celebrating the festival, with a tree fakes up from anything - a palm tree hung with sparkles, a glittering green paper outline of the shape glued to the wall...and he'd slip Christmas presents under our pillows. Goes with his Santa-like urge to constantly do things for other people. And waay back when I was still a toddler, we lived in a house with a gigantic veranda in Bangalore. On full moon nights, my parents would set out dinner on the veranda and give me 'kai-thutthu' - make little morsels of the food and give them to me one by one. The three of us would sit out and enjoy the cool, mysterious light of the moon and the fresh Bangalore breeze for hours.

My family now is as far from traditional as we can get. With North, south, hindu and muslim cobbled together and English as the lingua franca, coupled with two adults neither of whom is religious, and yet intent on balancing all the various aspects of our identity, it's a little hard to know what traditions to follow. And yet, I feel that traditions are important - both cultural traditions and family ones. They give you a sense of rootedness and belonging and a whole set of in-jokes that help bind siblings together years after they have moved to different continents.

So I figured we'd borrow and invent whatever traditions made sense to us. So here's what we do: Cultural traditions include Golu at dussehra ( have blogged about it before) and celebrating Christmas. Religious traditions include going without onions/ garlic/ eggs during Dussehra and most Hindu festivals, making modak on Ganesh Chathurthi and telling the kids the Ganesha/ moon story at bedtime. Making Krishna's footsteps and poha-dahi, butter and lots of sweets for Janmashthami. Seviyan on Eid.

Other traditions is where we really let ourselves go and have fun. So we have a birthday tradition - the birthday person wears a crown and we all sing a silly song to the tune of Holi-holiday by Boney M. On A's birthday, I always make chhole-bhaturey at home since it's his favourite dish. The birthday person gets a dinner out with the family to a restaurant of their choice ( I'm hoping the kids palate moved beyond fastfood quick!!!) and to choose the breakfast menu. And come winter, we have many...going to Mughal gardens to see the gorgeous flowers. Going to Diva for fondue. A picnic in Lodhi Gardens...

Traveling with kids

So we started the vacation on a fraught note. A and I had been having a huge fight related to itso 

our prep was more than a little last minute. I had been unsuccessfully fighting off a viral for two

weeks and was pre-exhausted for the vacation. On the other hand, given the life I lead, that’s par 

for the course. Our train tickets didn’t come through, so we decided to drive through. The friend '

who was to accompany us on this jaunt had to drop out since her back doesn’t permit long car 

journeys. So we set off, plus the kids’ common best friend, packed into the car bought for road 

trips like sardines.

Honestly I wasn’t sure how we would weather the journey. Chubbocks gets car sick and is a notoriously poor traveler, so we usually dose him with an anti-vomiting medicine and leave him free on the back seat armed with a stack of old newspapers, barf bags. The three younger ones were settled on the middle seat, feet propped on the suitcase stuffed between their seat and ours, and an assortment of snacks, books and juices for company. We made remarkable time on the onward journey.

The days at the camp flew by, wading into the icy-cold Ganga river, playing on the rocks and learning to make them skip across the water, kayaking, doing the Flying Fox and valley traverse, singing around the evening bonfire or just lying on the camp bed in the tent in the stiflingly hot afternoons, lulled into a state of somnolescence.

The journey back was something we were reasonably comfortable with, given the onward journey. At most it’ll take an hour or so longer we thought. WRONG!! First of all, every single person who has visited Rishikesh that weekend seemed to have decided to start the journey back that day. Added to that the impossibly narrow roads of the small towns through which the route goes, the staccato, band-aid nature of the so-called highways in UP - in which a good road is built for about a kilometer at which point it turns into 3 levels of road, none of them tarred and most with boulders, massive pits and unexpected turnoffs - expressly for the purpose of torture-testing for a car and its tires (seriously, it could be a business proposition!), your cursing vocabulary or the limits of human endurance! It took 6 hours to cover the first 100 km!

We had planned to stop for a latish lunch around 4 pm at a midway point where we had spotted a Haldirams and other eateries. Instead, thanks to the excruciating pace of the journey, we reached the place only at 7 pm that evening. Meanwhile, post an 8:30 am breakfast, the kids had sustained themselves on a couple packs of Britannia fruit cake and a pack of chips. They had even eschewed juice and water once we explained that we didn’t know where we would be able to stop or find a clean loo. To our pure joy, surprise and respect, the kids behaved like unfledged angels on the entire 11 hour marathon journey! Not once were there yells, moans of being bored, questions about ‘are we there yet?’ There were occasional queries about when we were reaching the midway point since mice has taken over all our stomachs. The rest of the time, they were busy playing with each other, singing funny songs, riddling, reading…at some point, they all slept off using each other as pillows. Puddi curled up like a cat between the seat and the suitcase. Bojjandi used her hip as his pillow. And R used Bojjandi’s hip as his headrest, while Chubbocks colonized the back seat.

It’s actually given me a new love and joy in the kids to find that they were resilient enough to adjust to such a long journey with such little trouble. Looking forward to more road trips now!

The Last Farewell

In the wake of my mother in law's passing, I was thinking about what I'd like done when I die. Leaving a clear set of instructions here for that day.

1. Harvest any organs that may still be useful after hopefully a lifetime of riotous living and donate them.
2. Cremate me in an electric crematorium so I can leave less of a carbon footprint, and please don't put my ashes in that poor Ganga - she's polluted enough as it is! Bury them in my garden or something.
3. Don't have any long mourning or rituals etc - I may get bored and leave.
4. Throw a big, mad, fun party, ideally a cocktail party. But don't serve sickly sweet cocktails- make them inventive and spicy and fun.
5. Tell everyone to dress upto the nines - you know how much I love fashion.
6. Play some raucous rock and Hindi movie tunes and get everyone there to shake a leg and let loose - I love a good dancing evening.
7. Hopefully one or two people will trip over their own feet and fall down, much like I do.
8.Serve great, creative food.
9. Have good conversations, laugh as loudly as you can, sing a song or two...

Auf wiedersehen!

I Remember Ajji

If you saw her, she would look nothing out of the ordinary. Your average south Indian, traditional, religious-minded old lady. Short – barely 5 feet tall, all skin and bone thanks to her constant fasts for the wellbeing of someone or other in the family but with gorgeous bone structure that kept her looking lovely and graceful well into her eighties. Clad in a traditional cotton saree, usually in a faded colour, with the typical diamond nosepin and earrings adding their discreet sheen to her face. Thrifty to the core, someone who’d walk two miles rather than spend the money on bus or auto fare. She looked like your average south Indian grandmother, and for many years, that’s all I thought she was, my loving but somewhat boring, somewhat distant granny.

As a child, I never understood how affectionate she was inside, though one takes for granted that one is loved by the family in general. I used to find it very boring to go to her place, where there were no kids around and not much to do apart from read. There were always cats and kittens around her house, and she used to feed then kitchen scraps – the cream skimmed off the milk, curd rice, bits of bread left over from grandpa’s breakfast…She used to love those old cats and when I was a child, I saw her petting them till they purred with satisfaction but hugs and kisses to me and my sister or our other cousins were rare. Her south Indian upbringing didn’t allow for lavish gestures and hugs and ‘I love you’s, so she showed her love for us by cooking the most incredible dishes – simple and yet deliciously laced with her affection so that they tasted extraordinary.

I didn’t have a lot to speak with her about as I grew to be a teenager – her usual advice at the end of my stay used to be ‘be good and obey your parents’ – not very conducive to the rebel in the family! Her love of fun used to show itself in muted ways – the way her eyes would light up when she saw a nice garden, or her shy laugh when I cracked a joke. She had this old-fashioned thing about laughing or smiling so hard that her teeth showed J so she would part-cover her mouth when she laughed. I still cringe at the memory of my 18^th summer – my mom told her I was a good dancer so ajji wanted to see that. The trouble was that I am good at dancing at parties – you know, completely unstructured, arms flailing, but it looks alright in a dimly lit room with loud music. In the cold harsh light of a Bangalore afternoon, with no music (no music system) except for my discordant humming, no one except a doting grandmom would have appreciated it – and she did!

She came from an extremely traditional, orthodox family – family legend has it she once fainted while passing by a butcher’s shop, and she used to refuse to buy watermelon because it was red like meat. She never ate ‘outside’ food except at family weddings, she never had anything but a lemonade or coffee when she visited anyone because travelling to their place had defiled her ‘madi’ state. Whenever she and grandpa cam and stayed with us, I used to get a little tense because I was never sure about all the rules to be followed, though she’d never have dreamt of telling me anything – it wasn’t her style to complain or try to change other people, she just followed her rules as best she could.

Given that background, it is incredible to what extent she adapted with changing times. When I and A were getting married, after her initial reluctance, she came around and later her biggest regret was that she had not attended the wedding. Despite her aversion to eating out anywhere, especially in a home that cooks eggs and occasionally non-veg, she would come over and eat whatever I had cooked with relish. She’d come out with us to a restaurant and enjoy sipping some juice and being part of the occasion. I remember watching Taare Zameen Par and the colorized Mughal-e-Azam with her – she loved them both. She enjoyed celebrating festivals with us whenever she visited Delhi, and one of my cherished photos of her is one where she is cuddling my two year old son and both of them are watching Deepavali fireworks with identical looks of wonder on their faces. I had written a blog post about her cooking, especially her Uppittu – self-effacing to the core, she felt shy instead of proud and wondered how I had found so much to say about this everyday dish, and managed to even leave a comment on my blog.

She and grandpa came to stay with my parents when my eldest son was born, and she was just incredible. From bathing the baby or helping mom to bathe him to helping whip up all the special food that a new mother has to eat, from giving me the world’s best oil massages to rocking the baby to sleep for hours, she did it all with enthusiasm. Chubbocks was a very cranky baby and would barely sleep. One afternoon, I woke up after a rare nap of almost three hours wondering where the baby was. I found him fast asleep on ajji’s lap – he’d been sleeping there the entire time, and she hadn’t even moved a muscle, intent on letting me get my rest.

It was with my children that I saw her really unwind and have fun, with all the playfulness of her nature. She would hug and kiss them, play games, tell them stories, listen to their prattle with unfeigned enthusiasm, chatter away with them, bathe them and generally revel in being with them. Since she no longer had to be the grandmother, she could be this delightful older playmate for them, and she loved seeing their photos, watching videos of them…It was during these times, after I too had become a mother that I got to know her as a person, not just grandma, and she was truly an amazing woman.

Her sense of fun and enjoyment that became apparent to me only as I grew older and able to look past the image. Through her reminisces about her childhood, I learnt that she had been quite a tomboy in her youth, climbing trees and sneaking off to learn how to cycle. Carrying that streak to her adulthood, adventurous and enterprising, she had gone off on bus trips, crisscrossing the entire south and all the pilgrimage places of the north all by herself in the 1950s, when her kids were still quite young. She had climbed up to Vaishnodevi on foot at the age of 68, gone to Tezpur by herself to visit my uncle when his first child was expected. Though she was extremely religious, she had a sense of humour and didn’t mind me poking fun at her ‘ekadasi’ fasts by calling them bhukadasi. She kept herself well-informed about current events by watching TV and reading the newspaper cover to cover. Watching a cricket match with her was hilarious – you didn’t know whom to watch and whose commentary to listen to – the TV one or hers. She was so extremely ticklish that I could make her scream just by pretending to tickle her from a distance! She never forgot an anniversary or birthday and would always call me up on those days, speaking hurriedly to save money on the long distance call.

Her frail physique and mild manner hid a very independent and self-reliant nature. She and grandpa lived on their own, and even after grandpa passed away, she lived on her own until last year when she developed a back problem, doing her banking, going to the doctor and the temple and market by herself. When grandpa became increasingly difficult to handle with Azheimer’s, she insisted on looking after him till his last day, though she herself was in her 80s. Mom remembers that two years ago, when they were staying in Bangalore, they mentioned to grandma that they were going to come pick her up that evening to come stay with them as there was a music programme she would enjoy in their neighbourhood. Thrifty and independent, she packed her bag and criss-crossed Bangalore in two buses to land up at their place by afternoon by herself, at the age of 86! She really was one of the last few of the old, hardy stock that South Indians used to be from – I don’t know if any of my generation would count among that.

I can’t believe she’s gone forever and that she won’t be around almost like a benediction in my life. I hope she knew that I admired her enormously, though she would self-deprecatingly say “I don’t see why’. I hope she knew how much I loved her and enjoyed having her in my life. I hope she’s at peace wherever she is now – I don’t know anyone who deserves that more.

 

 

Parenting Styles

I didn’t really know how hard this parenting gig was going to be when I blithely signed up for it. I mean, I’ve raised puppies and survived a younger sister, how hard could it be, right? And then, the serial hobbyist in me woke up to the possibilities of this new project in my life, and I bought all the books from What to expect when expecting, the toddler years and Dr Spock to Dr Miriam Stoppard, How to talk so kids will listen. Later, Po Bronson’s Nurture Shock and Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers were added to my bursting child-rearing library and there was a wealth of information and recommendations, though some of them clashed with others, and even more of them clashed with my desire or vision of myself as a parent.

Frankly, I came to parenthood reluctantly. I wasn’t ready to give up my inner (or outer) child and become a calm, rational adult at all times, especially one who was expected to be a role model of the kind of behavior I wanted from kids. I wanted to continue having my tantrums as and when required. But there were some things I was clear on from the start. I have a horror of spoilt kids – right from Duryodhana in the Mahabharata who’s like the poster boy of kid-spoilage. I can’t bear the specimens of desi kids I see running amuck in fastfood restaurants and dashing into you as you carefully stagger to your table juggling overfull glasses of liquids and ill-balanced dishes full of stain-prone food, making the two yard course to the table like the hurdles at the Olympics. I hate seeing a family of 1 or 2 kids eternally accompanied by the nanny whose unfortunate job it is to keep the wailing baby outside the restaurant while the parents and left-over, non-weepy kid gorge inside. By and large, I disapprove of the very rambly routine followed by many desi parents at social events, where kids stay up all hours while getting crankier and crankier, until everyone is silently pleading with themselves for the kids and their keepers to leave. And the countless late-night or age-inappropriate movies where I see parents filing in with kids – don’t get me started. Really, is watching that movie so damn important that you have to subject the rest of us to the incessant popcorn, Pepsi and loo demands of your child, or that you have to subject a 6 year old to a movie about fratricide (Race)???

On the other hand, I didn’t want a routine so strict that I would feel stifled by it. I didn’t want to be like a strict parent of a school classmate whose usual rejoinder to anything that sounded even the least bit fun was ‘Ye hamare ghar mein not allowed hai’! I didn’t want kids so bound by routine that their routine would ball-and-chain us either to the house, the same routine wherever we were, or a set of things central to the routine that we would be doomed to lug around the world. I wanted kids who were adaptable, fun, curious, independent and yet well-behaved, well-mannered. Yes, I dreamed of puppets who had buttons for ‘sleep’, ‘eat’, ‘behave’ and ‘be charming’. Well, that was a good daydream while it lasted!

Over the years, I realized that the advice in the books was mostly being disregarded by me as I went my way, for my convenience. I figured that I was really not the most maternal person in the world. In fact, sometime last year, I told A that I’m a bad mother. And then I started to wonder, if I think of myself as a bad mother, that means I have certain expectations of my role as a mother that I’m not fulfilling. What are those?

I wasn’t being an active parent, I was quite happy to let them play by themselves, use the kitchen utensils as toys or musical instruments while I got on with cooking or whatever. I was really at peace curled up with a book while they banged their toys around or raced through the house on their tricycles. Worse, my life doesn’t revolve around my kids – I have no qualms telling them to pipe down if I’m on the phone and they want to start a conversation at that moment. I have a reasonably active social life which involves them staying at home, and frankly I enjoy working full time, traveling out of the city on work or even just to get away from home for a break, all by myself. I don’t spend all my time away from them thinking or worrying about them. While they have a schedule, it's not iron-clad, especially on weekends or holidays. Speaking on the defensive, I do quite a few things with them, from bedtime stories and sing-alongs to picnics in the park, cooking together and so on. But my entire being isn’t taken up by my role as a parent, and that seemed to be the fundamental difference between a good and bad parent. At some level, the fact that I no longer even felt guilty about those things made me feel worse about my ability as a parent.

Then, very recently, I came across this book called Bringing up bebe. It’s an account of an American mom who lives in France and catalogues the very different approach to parenting that she sees there. As per the book, French parents first and foremost do not believe in feeling guilty about every activity they perform that does not revolve around kids – the recognize that parents continue to be people, first and foremost, and they need other activities apart from child rearing in their lives. So whether it’s work, socializing or a break and time away from the kids, there’s no guilt or need to feel guilt about it. Secondly, their approach to parenting is about integrating the children into their life and socializing them, rather than create a separate social milieu built around the children’s convenience and fancies. They teach their kids to adjust, rather than adjusting themselves to fit the child’s worldview. They have no problem telling a child to wait for attention, if they’re busy, rather than springing to attention like a toy soldier. They don’t believe everything a child says or does is worthy of a response, applause or praise…Third, they don’t believe in ‘spoiling’ their child – they inculcate manners and courtesy from the beginning, don’t overload them with toys and what-have-you, do not make special menus for children but teach them to appreciate good food like any adult would. Most importantly, they do believe in a healthy sense of independence, responsibility and freedom. So once the rules are set, there’s plenty of room for free play, curiosity; the kids are taught to play by themselves and amuse themselves…

Suddenly, a light switched on in my brain. I thought – all the parenting books I have so far are from America, by American authors! They have a very different approach to parenting, and that’s why I have been thinking of myself as a bad parent. When I looked at the French style of parenting, suddenly it all clicked into place for me. It was a complete epiphany. It also made me think a little bit about how we new-gen parents approach the whole parenting thing – a little too seriously, sometimes, and perhaps a little too much reliance one external wisdom, at the beginning. It’s become like a project or a sense of purpose for which we were seeking, and suddenly, in our quest to excel, we become hyper, start reading parenting books from other cultures, and adopting them blindly. Anthropologist Meredith Small says, "The cultural milieu, then, is a powerful and barely studied force that molds how we parent." Transplanting those parenting codes to a different cultural mileu, without understanding the cultural context, is like learning a foreign language from the dictionary! That was true of me at least – while I didn’t adopt the parenting style, I certainly started judging myself by those styles and finding myself lacking.

I’m feeling a lot more at ease with my parenting style  - I’ve always been a Francophile, so if my parenting style is a little French, good for me, non? Now if only I could emulate Parisian chic, my life would be – as zey say – fantastique!

PS. The new book I’m reading: How Eskimos keep their babies warm – Parenting wisdom from around the world. May as well expand my knowledge base, eh? Hasta la vista!!

Puddi - reading trouble

I'm getting a little worried about Puddi and her reading ability. To put it into context, she is a very bright child, very active, pretty articulate and enjoys writing long, long letters or stories. But put her in front of a book and it becomes a test of patience for both her and me. She doesn't seem to recognise words when they recur from one page to another, she struggles over what I would consider simple words and most worrying of all, she doesn't seem to enjoy the experience. Her resistance is very passive-aggressive but real for all that. he is distracted, doesn't remember from one moment to the next what line she is on...

I don't really know what to make of it. In our house, we are surrounded, not to say invaded, by books of all kinds. I pretty much always have my nose in half a dozen books, Chubbocks is a big reader and A used to be before work pressure got to him. We have a pretty huge selection of children's reading material of all levels too.

What psyches me more, is whether I'm making too big a deal out of it, because my scale is all wrenched out of shape. Chubbocks is an advanced reader for his age and started being a fluent reader by age 5, if I remember correctly - he's now finished all the Harry Potters, the Percy Jacksons and several of the classics and is way ahead of his reading age. Bojjandi too seems to be raching ahead and recently finished reading two full books. More, he is avidly into the experience and whatever he is doing, if there is any object with letters on it - newspaper, carton of juice, packet of tea - he is busy piecing the phonetic sounds of the letters together and making sense of them. he can even read words that I would consider rather advanced for his age, like favourite or dinosaur. At night when we read bedtime stories to the kids, he is often peering over our shoulders to try and read them by himself. My nephew R, too, is a very advanced reader - last summer when I visited him, he raced through The Magic Faraway tree in one afternoon, at just five and a half years old.

Given that, I don't know if I'm making a big deal out of nothing for poor Puddi - for all I know, she may be going at an average speed for her age? Or she may have some sort of learning disability when it comes to letters and needs to get help? Either way, I think it's time to stop worrying and take some action. Planning to meet her teacher next week at school and discuss the issue.

Jackie - Oh

Jackie appeared in our house quite by divine intervention. His mom Roohi was owned by our domestic help, and when she fell pregnant all too early, my sister decided to take charge of her health. Eventually after Roohi gave birth to Jackie and his 7 siblings, our help decided to gift us one of the pups and we picked the one living male of the litter. It still seems like yesterday that all of these tiny little bundles of fur and shrill yaps were crawling all over our house, piddling everywhere and attacking poor Roohi with ravenous cries any time she so much as stuck her nose out of doors. Jackie, though the eldest and biggest, was also the snooziest of the lot. He seemed to spend all of his time sleeping in the cloth-lined cardboard box that was his first home. There were Julie – eventually adopted by our other domestic help; Mooshi – thus named because her tail was bitten off by a rat when she was newborn, and several others whose names I can no longer recall. Liquid-eyed, soft, snowy-white, wriggly little creatures who could fit into our palm, and who spent the day perilously snoozing on top of each other.

Once Jackie moved into our house, he began demonstrating his personality despite his innate snooziness. He used to love to curl up in the scant space that my dad, staunchly south Indian, insisted on leaving between the bed and the wall. I used to worry lest someone should move the bed all the way back, squishing the poor guy – thankfully that didn’t happen. As he started teething, he also developed a bit of a temper and hated being left home alone. In revenge he bit off corners of our rubber slippers – for years we wore shoes ‘designed by Jackie Oh’ – and on one memorable occasion, ate through the leg of one of our sofa chairs and a rosewood whatnot. I discovered these depradations in horror, as the first one home, and quickly set to work with Cherry Blossom Brown so we could conceal the crime from our parents.

Over time, Jackie grew bigger and bigger – 21 kilos at his peak, and 4 feet from tip to tail – quite a feat for a pup born of two Spitz parents. Our ex-army vet figured out that he was a Samoyed – go figure! He was also extremely emotional, though less demonstrative in his younger days. I still remember the hunger strike he went on when we left him behind at the old house for 3 days while we were busy settling the new one – we had to make an emergency rescue. He was also pretty smart, quite apart from learning tricks like shaking hands and ‘shitting down’ on command ( our domestic help was Bengali so his English pronunciation was a bit off; we discovered to our amusement that Jackie never understood it when we said ‘sit down’ but ‘shit down’ worked like a charm!). He was an amazing communicator, especially with Dad who grew to understand his myriad moods very well. Our vet who was very fond of him, used to call him a real gentleman – he would be super-patient whenever we took him to the vet for his checkups and so on.  He also rarely attacked a dog smaller than him even when he was attacked, but woe betide a large dog that got across him, Jackie wouldn’t give any quarter.

When Chubbocks was born, we went to stay at my parents house, as per custom. Jackie was supposed to stay in the living room, but no sooner had Chubbocks crossed the threshold, than Jackie adopted him. He insisted on sleeping in our room. If Chubbocks started crying, Jackie would stand worriedly by his crib, trying to figure out how to soothe the little guy. Chubbocks used to sleep in an old-fashion cloth sling, hung above our bed. Every night, before going to bed, Jackie made it a point to peep in, front paws resting on our bed so he could get the required height boost, and poke his nose in to check if Chubbocks was inside, before curling up to sleep himself. In fact, any time Jackie went out of the room, he would come back and check on Chubbocks like a mother hen. Once, my grandmother decided to keep Chubbocks with her since he was a cranky baby, and let me get some sleep in the afternoon. Jackie came into my room from somewhere, peeped into the sling and became frantic at not seeing the baby. He paced back and forth worriedly, until I realized what the matter was. I told him, “Chubbocks is with Ajji in her room.” Immediately, Jackie made a beeline for Ajji’s room, sniffed her lap to ensure the baby was there, and only then could he relax.

Not knowing very much about dogs, we had no clue about establishing hierarchy and so on. I’m not sure he ever thought of any of us as his master, more as his two-legged equals. He was incredibly protective of dad and my sister though. Once when dad was out walking him, I caught up to them from behind. Just as I was planning to pounce, yell and startle dad (yes, I’m still pretty juvenile that way), Jackie turned around and lunged for me with his teeth! Suffice it to say I got startled, not to mention a rent in my new jeans! Another time, Jackie, who was a big, strong specimen, was dragging dad along and dad tripped and fell. A passerby came up to try and help dad, but Jackie wasn’t about to allow any stranger near dad, so the passerby had to retire hurt.

He loved eating, that was his big vice. Sweets were an especial weakness, and whenever he heard a mithai box being opened, he would materialize instantly from wherever he was. In fact, once when wehad gotten up and gone to the door to see of diwali guests, we returned to find an entire plate of sweets swallowed up! Biscuits too were a favourite, though he was picky there – he would only eat Parle G – and Mum took to buying cheap local biscuits for my sister and I so she could afford his Parle G habit.

It was one of the worst days of my life when we had to take the decision to put him to sleep – he had multiorgan failure, and while not in a coma, he hadn’t eaten in four-five days. He could barely register our presence and his labored breathing was dreadful to hear. Dad and I were almost forced into it by our vet, who said it didn’t make sense to put it off any longer. He was well over 16 years old, after all. And so we bade farewell to this amazing large-hearted soul who had shared so much with us, unstinting with his love and affection, undemanding yet always there for comfort, to share all our moments happy and sad…I hope he always has someone to pet him wherever he is, and give him his daily ration of biscuits and lots of hugs…

Lost and found

We had a frightening incident yesterday. I was lying prone on the sofa, recovering from a viral that had haunted me all weekend; plus I'd slogged in the kitchen yesterday morning cooking an Italian feast for dad's birthday. The kids were at the park with the help; then the ladies arrived back, with Puddi but no Bojj. They said Bojj had gone to my parents home - they live about 5 houses away.

A and I were reading peacably when he decided to call dad to check on something. "They're not answering", he said. That's quite common when they are out in the garden with the kids so we assumed that's what had happened. One minute later, our blood froze when we heard mom and dad calling out to us and walking in, sans Bojji. "We were out walking", they began. In less time than it takes to write this, I had done a standing jump to the front door and was running down to their house, heart in mouth. WHERE WAS BOJJI?

I reached their house and saw a placid Bojjandi climbing up the inside of their gate to the top. He was clearly planning to climb down the other side and come home. "What happened? Are you safe?" I yelled incoherently, clasping him to me. "Budhmani ( the new maid) just left me here and ajji thatha are not home. I was calling to her but she didn't come. Sho I wash coming home."

The maid had left Bojjandi inside their gate, rung their bell and bolted the gate from outside, not bothering to check whether or not they had taken him inside. Thankfully we live in a gated complex which is quite secure and they live just down the street. But my blood still runs cold at the thought of that poor 4 year old child forlornly wandering in their garden. What astounds me is that when I found him - about 10 minutes after he'd been unceremoniously left there - he wasn't crying, wasn't wailing, wasn't showing any signs of fear. Instead, after sussing out the situation, he had decided the best course of action was to come home and proceeded to carry out the scheme!!!It's a day later, I'm still agonized and feeling guilty over what happened, but most of all so in awe of Bojjandi and cucumber-cool brain!!!

The Just Married Please Excuse bloggers contest

As usual, a little bit late to the party. Actually, I find that when I'm less busy, I tend to sink into a morass of laziness and find it too difficult to do anything, really, whereas when I'm forced to multitask and work 24/7, I get a lot more things done - like blogging, or contributing to a friend's contest, for instance. Of course, meanwhile I have meandered quite off-topic, haven't I? So back to Y's contest, based on her hilarious new book, Just Married, Please Excuse.


Actually, we had so much drama for so many years before we actually got married that I think our married life is actually pretty tame by comparison. But just before we got married, after opposing the concept for several years, my parents finally came around, just about a month before A and I were to take off for INSEAD in France. And they obviously wanted to meet A's parents and discuss arrangements. We decided to do it on neutral ground and halfway between the two parental homes, which were really far apart - for those who know Delhi, A's parents lived in the Univ area and mine live in Gurgaon! So we decided on IIC as a venue. His parents, mine and A and me were to converge there after A and I finished work one evening. I was quite nervous as to how this meeting would go off, whether they would hate each other at first sight...let's say I was like the anxious mother of a potential bride in an arranged marriage seeing-the-girl situation.


That cold winter day, I had worn a very chic black and white wool dress to work. While I was out for a meeting, as I stepped out of the car, I felt a super-cold draught of air riding up my back. 'Wow, really cold day!', I thought to myself in typical late-bloomer/ tubelight style. Then suddenly it dawned on me. The hip to neck zip of the dress had parted way, all the way!!! My entire back, including..err, innerwear, was on display! Thankfully I had also grabbed a matching cape that morning so I slung it around my back, Jayalalitha style and marched regally to the meeting. By dint of moving slowly and carefully as if I had a ramrod up my a**, I managed the meeting without the client realising that anything was wrong with me apart from an unusual stiffness.

I hunted frantically for safety pins back at office but in these modern days of western wear, nobody was wearing anything like a mangalsutra with a chain of safety pins slung on it. How I missed sari-clad women that day! It was already going on afternoon on a really busy day, so I couldn't slink off and buy a new outfit so I dialled mom and told her to schlep an outfit for me when she arrived at IIC that evening.

As it happened, A's parents, mine and A and I converged upon IIC at the exact same time. By this time, the discomfort of officially meeting my inlaws with my back hanging out of my dress was too high to be borne. Muttering a hasty hello, I grabbed the pack of clothes from mom and disappeared in the direction of the rest room, leaving it to poor A, who hadn't even officially met my parents yet, to manage all the awkwardness of introductions and greetings. What my parents in law thought of me disappearing, in a chic dress, and reappearing in a demure salwar kameez, courtesy Mom, I can only imagine! Must have been a rude shock for them later, methinks :)

My parents, sister and I are very fond of pranks, puns, jokes and so on. Shortly after A and I got married, we moved to my parents place to stay for a few days. The first night, as dad left our room after seeing that we had everything we needed, I called after him, "Good night. Sudarimasu!" That was our elongated family version of 'Sweet dreams'. A looked at me, puzzled, and asked what I was saying. I told him it was Japanese for 'sleep well'. He was maha impressed by my family's ability to assimilate foreign languages into our daily routine :)

Within ten days of marriage, A and I were living in a suitcase-sized apartment in Fontainebleau and enjoying the experience. It was a very social campus, and everyone either threw dinenr parties or attended them every night. A few dinner parties chez nous later, A felt rather apologetic about the fact that we didn't serve non-veg, since veg moi was the chef on offer. He finally decided the situation was too embarassing and decided to cook some chicken.

Having first sourced the recipe from his mom, he considerately asked me to stay away and chill in the bedroom while he took over the kitchen/ living room - he knew I might feel sick at the sight of raw meat. A few minutes later, he dashed in. "Do you know what's cumin? And what does cloves mean? Do we have any? What is cinnamon - is it a vegetable?" I took pity on him and offered to lay out all the necessary spices for him, and then retired to my solitary splendour.

About fifteen minutes later, when my eyes and sinuses were on fire from the smells emanating from the kitchen, he dashed in again. "Mom said to cook the onions till they turn brown. What share of brown - should they be light brown like sand or dark brown like chocolate?" I ran to the kitchen, took one look at the pan and collapsed. There were onion cinders at the bottom of the pan!!!

Having said that, with a little help and an inspired addition of yoghurt by me, the chicken dish actually turned out to be delicious and is still remembered by our friends. (I have to say this else A may kill me!)

Sometime later, when we were back in India, we attended an art exhibition at the Habitat center, and A really liked some paintings by an artist called Dhananjay. Since we had decided to start collecting art in a modest way, we made the artist an offer in his visitor’s book and left – the painting would only be delivered after the exhibition was over. Some days later, the artist called and said he’d come over and deliver the painting that evening.

He turned up clutching two paintings under his arm, and we started talking about this, that and the other. Then he turned to us earnestly and said, “I’m going to show you two paintings from my collection. Yeh pyaar hai. Isko aap separate mat karna. Is pyaar ko aap ikhatte rakhna.”

A and I rose up in each other’s estimation as people capable of having a somewhat metaphysical discussion on the nature of love with an artist, and this conversation continued for a few minutes more before it dawned on us. The artist happened to be Bengali, and what he was really saying to us was, “This is a pair of paintings. Please keep the pair together!”

Chubbocks is 9

How time marches on. It seems like yesterday that I was freaking out at having gotten pregnant, obviously without any planning ( in fact A and I joke about it being an immaculate conception given how stressed both of us were with new jobs at the time, but that's really not material for a mommy blog, now is it?). I think Dad had figured it out much before it dawned on either of us. And now he's 9. Almost a teenager, and by the behaviour, sometimes I think he's in his early teen years already.

When I look at old photos of his, I almost can't recognise the chubby-cheeked character who peers out, I'm so used to his gangly, bony form with its jeans falling off the non-existent backside.

But despite his terrible temper - inherited, I shan't say from which side of the family - and occasional tantrums, he is for the most part a really simple little kid. A couple of years ago, he commented that we couldn't get him a Wii or Playstation 'because we don't live in an apartment or a hotel. If we did we could afford it", and has hardly ever pestered us about it. He is a fashion disaster in the making, so eager to go out and play that he wears his jeans back to front and Tshirts inside out and doesn't even notice, and whinges to be allowed to wear his battered crocs because they are 'so comfortable'. He begs and pleads to be allowed to download a new computer game that costs about a dollar and then doesn't even bother to ask for a proper birthday present.
I find that quite amazing, given that I read about kids decked out in designer labels from head to toe, or overhear them compare their father's car brands and rag each other about it.

For Chubbocks, all is well in his world as long as he gets his quota of screen time and a stack of books to read. He still insists that we read out a story to him each night, though his reading level is advanced enough for him to have finished the Harry Potter series already. He's developed a really good sense of humour and creates little riddles and jokes all the time. He's known as the little encyclopedia in school because of the facts he has at his command about any topic. And he's the evolving elder brother, sometimes bossing over ( or trying to boss over) his siblings, and yet super-protective of them, always ready to intervene with us when we're getting upset with them.

I think we're in for a few challenges going forward though. The first signs of rebellion and angst are already in, as evidenced by his tantrums. He's no longer content to obey instantly, or unquestioningly. There are times when he insists something is true/ he's done something correctly despite all evidence to the contrary. He's unfortunately a very bright and talented child - unfortunate because things come so easy to him that he hasn't needed to work hard at them, and being patient or persevering doesn't come naturally to him as it does to Puddi.

He's also going through a phase where he feels more controls being put upon him - more homework, more expectations in terms of behaviour at home and at school - whereas he sees his siblings get a freer rein. In his mind, there are no distinctions between him and them so he's getting very angsty about it. We've seen more tantrums, some instances of defiance and many hyper-emotional moments - "This is the worst day of my life, I wish I was never born" type. I was hoping we had a little time before we got to it. I've lived through my adolescence and let's just say, I don't wish myself in my parents shoes!

Anyway, I guess we'll get through - everyone does. Meanwhile I'm just going to enjoy the good moments, of which there are many!