A Quiet Evening at Home!

Last evening started out great. We’ve been short-handed in the domestic staff department for the last several days, as seems to be the norm this year, as our live-in help had to rush off to her village for a family emergency. And between A’s manic work schedule and mine and then coping with three lively children at home, life has been pretty hectic. So yesterday when all three of the kids seemed sleepy by 7, we were pleasantly surprised. A put them to bed and was thrilled when all three were knocked out by 8.

He came down in a triumphant mood, looking forward to us sharing a drink and getting some downtime together, maybe watching a nice movie or something. Only to be brought down with a crash when I said I had a conference call scheduled for 9 pm. Not to mention I had some pending work to finish off before then. Anyway, I wasn’t about to refuse a drink so I sipped on a tall glass of Amarula as we both laptopped away in companionable silence. Then of course came the conference call, and it was past ten by the time we went up to bed. We watched an episode of The Lucy Show which was hilarious, and during the second one began our nightly routine of dozing off by turns. Suddenly a loud shrieking sound jolted us both out of our stupor. No, it wasn’t Lucy, caterwauling away, it was Bojjandi, yelling for ‘mama, mama…’

A rushed to the kids’ bedroom, hoping to quiet him down before he woke the other two. After half an hour, he came back, defeated, saying, “He keeps asking for mama”. I wearily crawled out of bed to the kids room. First thing I did was lift the poor li’l guy out of his crib and give him a big cuddle, assuming he’d had a night terror episode. Then I sang to him sotto voce, his favourite lullaby, ‘Taarammaiyaa..’ After a good ten-fifteen minutes, he finally seemed to have quietened down to a sleepy state so I put him down in his crib and patted his back for a while. I thought he was finally asleep and decided to sneak out of the room.

I had barely put my hand on the door handle, when a sleepy yet anxious, “Mamaa?” came from the crib. Back I went again and patted away, crooning to him from time to time while my arm got numb from being draped over his crib in a funny position. I thought he was finally asleep and decided to sneak out of the room. I had barely…you know the rest! This happened a good three four times over and I decided my arms were getting punished for no fault of theirs.

I picked up Bojji and brought him back to our room, hoping he’d fall asleep on the spare mattress that’s become a perennial installation thanks to the kids. I tried lying down next to him for a while and patting him, hugging him close…No luck. Then I gave up and called A to the task. He tried…He gave up. We switched off all the lights and tried again…Finally, finally, I thought I understood Bojjandi’s problem. He had been very fussy at mealtimes, as he tends to be these days, now that he’s nearing his terrible twos, and had not eaten much. And given that this strongwilled baby has given up milk for the last month since we decided to wean him off the bottle, he was starving.

A trekked wearily down three flights of stairs to make a ‘dam sannejj’( jam sandwich) at past midnight. This, needless to say, was not what he had had in mind when dreaming of midnight feasts!He came back up and I started feeding Bojjandi a small bit at a time. He eagerly opened his mouth for each bite and I felt a little like a mama bird feeding a vociferously hungry baby bird. After four-five bites, Bojjandi had found his stride again, so he peacefully leaned his round, chubby little body into A’s, resting his head on A’s stomach. He’d slowly chew each bite and then sit back up and lean towards me for the next bite.

A and I were sprawled on the mattress, Bojjandi wedged between us and a bedside lamp illuminating the room, watching as his face went back from being screwed up full of angst to peaceful and smiley with his hunger dissipating. And suddenly, despite the flurried and frenzied hour or so we’d just spent, these moments seemed so very poignant and precious. The joy of being able to understand what your child wants and to provide it at exactly the right time. The joy of watching him go from being agitated to calm and peaceful. The exquisite happiness of feeling your child just curl up into your body with the certainty of unconditional acceptance and ownership. And the peace that steals over a parent’s soul when he or she watch their child going trustfully to sleep, the curly eyelashes fluttering shut as the small body gives in to the overwhelming demands of Morpheus.

Of course, the fact that he woke up at his usual time of 6 am this morning, while our middle-aged bodies had not even half finished their quota of sleep made all that less poignant!!

Kids' Eating Habits

Recently in the US, two cookbooks that have found a roaring market are both about the concept of sneaking vegetables into children's food by disguising them - put pureed spinach into brownies and chocolate pie, put sweet potatoes into a cheese sandwich...So the basic premise is, kids will only like foods full of starch, fat and sugar so the only way you can make it a little better is by hiding pureed vegetables in those same starchy, fatty, sugary treats and re-cooking them umpteen times until all semblance of taste, texture and nutrition is drained from the vegetables.

Frankly, I disagree, and much to my relief, so does a pioneering paediatrician who did her research way back in 1928 ( the link to the article on her in Slate - http://www.slate.com/id/2155816/). Her thesis was that supplied with a variety of healthy foods, kids are naturally programmed and smart enough to pick things that offer a complete and healthy diet. Now, obviously, if all you're going to offer them is potato chips, brownies and cookies to choose from...

I honestly believe that good food habits are something that need to be inculcated from the beginning. The basics, like limiting candy, sugar and flour. Making sure they get vegetables and fruit into their diet from the time they start eating solids. Restricting the availability of chips, colas and the like.

So far it hasn't been an issue despite any amount of peer pressure. Yes, of course my son loves chips and asks for them periodically, but we just don't stock them at home. Same with colas, chocolates and candy. Now he's allowed to drink a glass of coke, but only at parties ( typically because most birthday parties nowadays are hosted at Pizza Hut or McDonalds where juice isn't available as an option). He loves soup and salad and asks for them on a regular basis. In fact, of late he's been showing signs of interest in cooking, and came up with a soup recipe over the weekend which we had to choke down(thankfully only a small quantity - the soup consisted of glucose biscuits soaked in water with Boost on top!). So I asked him to help me in making Stone soup (recipe to be found on my food blog), and he loved both helping me and the soup that 'I made myself', as he claimed. My 17 month old daughter loves her fruit and veggies and spent a gloriously messy evening fishing all the veggies out of the soup and feeding herself yesterday. So far, her idea of sneaking food is to help herself to curds from the fridge.

There are so many different types of cuisine and so many recipes are available freely on the net that it shouldn't be that difficult to find some way to cook a vegetable that your child will like, while still retaining the taste and flavour of the vegetable. I think if we start with the premise that kids will like vegetables and fruit rather than the opposite, then we don't need to do all this 'disguising' and 'sneaking'. Maybe the concept was based on the authors' own dislike for vegetables and fruit?

New Definitions

Little A went through a major milestone over Diwali weekend. So far he has never had the patience to sit through a full movie at a theatre, including Ice Age 2 which was a pain for me because I wanted to see the second half of Ice Age 2. This weekend we took him to watch Om Shanti Om, and the sweet little guy sat through the whole thing, happily crunching through a small box of popcorn. Whenever something came on that I wouldn't like him to watch, I'd ask him not to look and he complied easily, turning his back on the screen for as long as we told him.

Movie over, we went to the food court for lunch. Little A came up with some new dish he wanted, called Chicken meroti! We tried to figure out what it was - is it chicken mein roti ( chicken inside a roti)...nope, it was something he claimed to have heard about. Stumped, we finally decided to get a chicken kathi roll and hope for the best. Luckily it worked - our friend liked the taste and worked his way through it, generously offering bites to his dad and me.

I had to turn his offer down, as I'm vegetarian. Little A couldn't understand the concept, so I told him I eat only vegetables and fruit, no meat or fish. Then he wanted to know why. I didn't want to get into a philosophical discussion with him so I finally said I didn't like the taste, only to be told, "Try my meroti. It's delicious - you'll love it!" Had to tackle that minefield tactfully!

Then little A ponders for a while and says, "Mamma, I'm a meateatarian. In fact, I'm a chicketarian!"