The middle name tag

I have been tagged by Moppet's mom, Sue and Usha.

Getting straight to the point, the three rules to be followed are:
a) The rules must be mentioned in the beginning of the tag.

b) You must list one fact that is somehow relevant to your life for each letter of your middle name. If you don’t have a middle name, use the middle name you would have liked to have had.

c) At the end of your blog post, you need to choose one person for each letter of your middle name to tag. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog. - I am going to ignore this one. Please.

Middle name, yes I have one.

S - Susan, thatz my middle name. 4 out of 6 girls in the family have the same middle name. Just like Moppet's Mom said its not available in a single record except for the baptism certificate but I love it. Only my granny called me/us by that name. By the pattern of it and by some unwritten rule in the mid seventies all 'Chinnamma' and 'Shoshamma' and 'Achamma' could be 'Susan', so out of the 6 girls in the family, 4 of us were Susan. When we used to visit granny during summer holidays, she used to call us by our christened names as those were easy for her(she often wondered loud who would name their kids like my father did). She could shout Susan and 1 of the 4 would atleast respond.

U - Upma. I have hated upma ever since I can remember. Many people have tried tricking me into eating it telling me they make the best upma and I have only been polite to swallow 2 spoon fulls(anything more means I must love you too much). P loves Upma, ofcourse the caveat is "like my mom makes it". An absolute lazy bone when it comes to cooking, I realized Upma can be the quickest & simplest breakfast or evening snack. Ever since the enlightenment, I have tried making Upma for breakfast & evening snacks, only for the tables to turn. He hates it and I eat it telling myself "It isn't bad at all, afterall its the quickest thing to make".

S - sixth standard - That is when Dad bought me my first and only bicycle. I learnt it by myself, in the scorching heat after school. So I probably took the longest too, almost 6-8 months. For the next 4 years the cycle was an integral part of my life. Many school time memories revolve around 7 friends cycling around the small town in Gujarat where I spent my childhood.

A - Anniversary Gift. This is not about mine but mom and dad's.The first gift we ever bought them. I think I must be 10 and my sisters 8 years old. The house used to be a riot most days, most times, between the three of us or my mom and my sisters. It was absolutely given that we were to be treated well with the rod for our mis-behaviour almost everyday. Finally totally exhausted mom came up with a bright plan. 10 paise per well-behaved day. We were given a collection box and we managed to collect Rs 2 or 3 in about 6 months time. As a anniversary gift we bought them a Mother Mary's poster for that money. The excitement of secretly exchanging the 'chillar' for a crisp note, buying a gift and keeping it a secret and gift wrapping it at night was all new and lots of fun.

N - Nana - My maternal grandfather. If anybody were to ask me, what is your earliest memory, the one that comes to my mind is me and my grandfather fishing in the pond near my mom's place. I holding the fishing net at one end of the pond and he at the other end. I was something between 2.5 - 3 years. When I narrated it, I wasn't sure if it was a dream, my fantasy or if it was for real. Many people at my mom's place are amazed at my memory. Though there is a lot more to that sketchy image that I do not remember, it seems we caught a fish and then I and a cousin fought over having the whole thing all alone. I have an elephant's memory yet I forget a lot of small things & huge ones my sisters remember. Such memory leakage!!!

Tag is open to anyone to pick if you haven't done it already.

Peapod at 18

I have been taking mental notes of things the peapod is doing regularly and a few one-offs and then a few antics that take me by total surprise and then when all my notes are done I have no clue if this was always there and not 17-18 month specific.

The peapod though seems like a very quite child from an outsider's view, she is a devil let loose in the house. We are tired of putting things away from her reach. We have slowly started classifying everything starting from the morning newspaper to the 'will' as v.v.important, just important, important, need based, OK kinds. Other than the v.v.important stuff we just let her mess around with the others. A good set of audio cassettes were found completely rampaged by the 2 of them with no scope of fixing them. Once I found both of them sitting around & staring at each other with a lot of papers in between them, it turned out to be my purse, with the money, cards, bills all pulled out and put on the square tile between them, as if admiring the loot before they part with their shares.

She understands almost everything we say. If my mom is narrating something that happened during the day, she will watch my mom for a few secs and then she will enact it out in case I had any doubts. With a full time maid now, she has begun picking up Hindi. Its a complete mallu household here and English words are mostly all instructional as in "No", "Close", "Open" and so on. I heard the 'Bai' pick up a few mallu words like "ba"(come), "po"(go) etc and now yesterday morning the peapod was heard calling out "Aaja Aaja" (come, come) .... So 'Hindi' here you come.

My sister is trying to settle down with a job in a new city and so has left her daughter, the jellybean, with us. With this starts a new chapter in both their lives. Both, the peapod and the jellybean have enjoyed being the sole receiver of attention, individually, for over a year and now they have to share a grandmom, toys, food, drinks, clothes, the occasional loots, bathing time, space with each other. After the initial good behaviour put-on by both, now they are both in their real skins. This includes hitting each other, kicking, waking the other from her sleep, pulling legs(literally) and shouting at each other(this is different from crying). They have their moments when they are playing some stuff or are trying to mimic "Twinkle twinkle..." but sadly very short lived. There are also times when they feed each other but again that ends up with one hurting the other.





The peapod can identify a handful of animals, a few birds, the head, eyes, ears, nose. She enjoys rhymes. I have often seen her drum her fingers on her thighs or the floor whenever a song is on. I love to see her do that. She has a concept of time. I mean she knows I am back at 7pm. She knows her father gets back at 8:30, she knows its the garbage man, she knows its the milk man. All these knocks happen at fixed timmings most days and she knows it and it amazes me. When she knows its her Dada, she runs like someones after her life to the door. I am told she starts pushing the maid towards the door and starts waving bye-byes by her regular time. She will insist on carrying the garbage when the bell rings at the designated time.

Any guest in our house now has a time-out. 10 mins is the time set for the best behaviour that the peapod and the jellybean can pull up togather, soon the cries and screams will have all of them excuse us soon.

At 15 months, now the jellybean can walk freely around the house with both her hands stretched out in front of her. She is very free with her kisses. She will kiss you even when she is crying. The peapod is a absolute miser in this case. The jellybean needs to be carried & cradled to-fro before she dozes off to sleep. The peapod used to sleep on her own if we just laid next to her. But now the peapod needs the same. She needs to be carried for 2 rounds atleast before letting her down on the bed, just for the heck of it and she will sniff and dig around for her comfort position on the bed before dozing off. During the day, when she feels sleepy, she will get a dupatta or a sheet, lie down, spread the cloth over her and will pat herself, which is actually telling us to sing and pat.If the jellybean is sleeping, she will find a piece of cloth to cover her all up and in the process will also end up waking her up.

One thing I have observed in the last 2 months is her anger. She actually grinds her teeth and clenches her fists when she is angry. Sometimes she can be easily distracted, other times she will beat the devil out of you by the time you manage to find sufficiently interesting stuff to distract. With her cousin around, I also have to drill the message in - "No hitting". I don't want to get paranoid about the 2 hurting each other. I did rather have the 2 express their love and learn what is acceptable and what is not, meanwhile everybody else is on their toes and very watchful.

Did you know ....

Pushpa delivered a baby girl(Mummu) on 28th September. Mother and Baby are doing fine.

Congratulations to the proud parents on their first born.

Oh My God!!!!

What do I tell you guys, I am going wide-eyed to starry-eyed and making sure I am not making this up in my dream(Its 1:30 am). To tell you what I saw without beating around the bush just now(if it is a dream, you can hoot at me tommorow), let me take a deep breath (oh I am pretty dramatic that way)...I am featured on India Blogs 1.0. Last time I read that list I just wondered if 'Enigma' would ever make it there. I am thrilled. And also is this the right time to show-off that I have also been featured on blogbharti recently. But its not about Mommyness, parenting or kids but about Cricket , who would have thought :).

So for the vote of thanks, who do I say my thanks to for this, Mom(has no clue what I am talking about), P(He is the only one who reads and if more than 4 lines, skims, unless I force him to summarize and tell me every line, yeah the torture the guy has to go through), siblings (were never interested unless they are informed that they have been mentioned and they mostly use it as a photo album to check the peapod's latest snaps and skims through the text) and a handful of cousins and friends who read and then call me to comment on it:). So that leaves me with you guys. A very big THANK YOU to each one of you for reading me.

Sreesanth no 'santh'

Siddhima has asked me to write about what do I think or make of the pacer Sreesanth's attitude on the field. We have seen the impulsive bowler in full action since his first (or was that the second) match. Be it the jig on the field or the stare or the sweet nothings he was mouthing at Symonds. But that's the way he plays the game. I read some place he saying something to the effect, please do not ask me to behave, I won't be able to play.

I think we are a Nehru-Gandhi clan, where at the end of the day we want our opponents to say 'oh they are the most fair and lovely people' and laugh away in their dressing rooms to how they beat us with mean mental games. The game requires aggression for that matter any sport. Just need to make sure we do not repeat a Zidane and loose focus on the game. We have been rubbed the wrong way by the mighty England and Australians. Aussies are known for their intimidating mannerism on the field. I might as well have a Sreesanth there who can look them in their eye, challenge them, get their wicket and then rub the salt in the wound with a jig. I personally love a Yuvaraj or Sachin(in his hay days) style, who silently would take the bowler to task and have him sweating over a mean guesture but again that does not work everyday. So I surely don't mind a Sreesanth there now. As long as he gets us the crucial wickets I am all game to watch all his jigs.

I think very well of Gandhigiri, don't get me wrong, but in a Twenty20 or a ODI, we do not have enough time to offend them with kind guestures, might as well just make it obvious.

After the peapod

Tagged by Just like that.

Most days we are dead tired, the remaining days are unevenly divided between trying to put the peapod to sleep, mud slinging at each other, giving each other the silent treatment or one dozing off just waiting. So finally when the jackpot is hit, it calls for a long toast. The twinkling eyes, the shhhhh, and light music just creates the right symphony.