The curly hair girl turned 6 - Yippee!!

My little girl with curly hair, a shy smile and with not a wicked bone turned 6 last month. What a roller coaster ride it has been. Infact after the chattambi, we realize what an angel you are or were at his age. Just look at you now, your face, yes it is an angelic face (even if I may say so) but that is not what I was getting at, it feels like the cat went all over you. You have claw marks. I try to keep up with his nails and twisting his ears and a whack now and then but each attempt has a 50% chance of driving the point home since sometimes he looses the plot and starts pinching me thinking we are playing. While we continue to whack him, talk to him, get him to understand, you continue to wrestle him when you know you can not come out of it unscathed. Sometimes I am frustrated with you for not having any kind of a reflex. You really need to go for some class that teach reflexes. Forget all that colouring, singing, dancing classes, if you have to put up with your lil bro you need reflex. You should know to dodge a punch. Its the least. You sit right there in his face when he is busy beating the daylights out of you and then cry and then when we whack the chattambi, you are sympathetic for that monkey and even say "Its ok he is small na".


The other day in the car when you were angry for something and I could not understand what was it, I yelled and you said I hate you mumma. ha ha, it made me smile. You are just six, and we have the whole single digits and the teens to make through. I hope I will still smile when you say that when you are a teen. When accusations fly high and are more precisely targeted I hope I can still smile at it.

I hope I can get you out of the "read for me" rant and convert it into a "I Love reading" thing. Yeah the difference is HUGE. We can both read our respective books at peace just before we switch off the lights and then I can move on to read on my Galaxy. While I might move you to reading I still have to read to the little monster who is so full of questions and ask each atleast a dozen times. Who is this? What is he doing? hmm ...what is he doing? ...hmm what is he doing? ...Yawwwnnnnn.

Secondly, I hope we will all move towards our own beds. I am totally frustrated with both of you making war cries every time the light needs to be switched off and you both are crying for mumma to come to bed and lie in between you two. There are days when all I want is to hug you both and smell you guys but there are also days I want to catch that random program on TV or flip a magazine or maybe just read a little more. I don't want to hit the sack at 9:30pm every single day. I am not the one going to school. What time I go to bed is immaterial. For the sake of my sanity I hope by the next year atleast you'll have your own room with a cupboard, one for each. Clothes are flowing out of the chest of drawers we bought to put both your teeny tiny clothes in when Chattambi was born and stuffing uniforms and party dress and outdoor clothes into one little drawer isn't helping any more.

You are an absolute delight as a daughter. You make me totally nervous because you seem to look up to me a lot. You are ready to absorb all I have to offer. I am no saint and nor am I yet the person I would like to be. I tend to loose my temper and I am sorry you have seen a lot of it. You have often asked me why did God have to give you curly hair and not silky straight hair and I always tell you, you were marked differently with your curls. As you grow I hope you will learn that is the truth and if you don't then latter we can try straightening as well :). You have kept the whole family on their toes with excitement thinking about your own birthday dawn. Your growing pains again are giving my hands hand aches. You want me to massage in a particular manner, sometimes heavy. sometime light and you wouldn't even doze off after half-an-hour of massaging. You are growing tall my darling. I can already see both of us talking eye-to-eye in the very near future. You love hearing the story of your birth where I narrate about how you went off snoring just when it was time to get out. The doctors would come check the heart beat and feed mumma some ice and then I could feel your bum moving and hands and legs kicking and all the nurses would gather and there you would go off snoring again. You were out in your own sweet time. No hurry and no worries. You are shy by nature and you never go hammer and tongs behind anyone even if they were breaking your stuff and feeding the dogs. You just withdraw. I hope you develop some kind of an assertive trait and don't let people walk all over you without getting offensive. I realize that is my job to nurture you and then I also realize you have your own nature too and your personality will evolve slowly.

Peapod and Chattambi antics

Peapod-ism
On 9/11, TLC was airing a program about ground zero in the evening. They were running footage of smoke emanating from the twin towers. We had a question/answer round of what, how and why with the peapod. She went back to her regular stuff and then just when we were getting ready for bed, peapod asks me - Why did the plane hit the building, could the pilot not see?
I know. How do you explain that? I just left it at - it was an accident. How do you explain to an innocent 5 year old that mean twisted men killed themselves and thousands of people on purpose.
The other day in one of her usual meltdowns the peapod calls me useless. Yes, to be precise she tells me "you are useless". I was taken back. I asked her where she heard such language. Pat comes the answer, "I heard you say that". You can imagine me cringing. zabaan sambhal ke lady.
A friend's wedding is just around the corner and I was telling the hubby about it. The hubby casually mentioned he might not be able to make it on that date. I don't even think if peapod was in the room. The said friend met us on our way home and said she will come back for a formal invite but told us to block our calendars in advance. The peapod replied that We ALL might not come but I will come. How cheeky is that?
Yesterday, the peapod went down to play with her friend. While her friend did not go down immediately but there was an another 3yr old girl who wanted to play with her. She wasn't interested. I watched the little girl pursue the peapod to play with her and the peapod kept running away. When the peapod was back I asked her why she wouldn't play with the little girl. She tells me "She might catch my cough, so". Such a saint!!
Also my little girl lost her first tooth this weekend. It feels like sand slipping through my fingures. Reminds me of that song from Mamma Mia.... Yeah I know its not time yet but I love drama :)

Chattambi
ta itu is tazhe Ittu (threw down) in his baby language. It is his favourite phrase and activity for the last 2-3 months. He usually throws his toys down and then comes and gets me by pulling my hands towards the balcony. Ask him who threw and he will name the peapod. If its in the morning he will name Dada. Once we start picking stuff up, he thinks its a game and throws stuff right back - down that is. Its normal these days to find stuff that we didn't go down for back on the balcony. People are so used to stuff lying just below our balcony that they throw it right back.
We moved to this rental place when the peapod was 2 I guess and she hasn't drawn a line on the wall but the chattambi is another story. He has strewn lines on many walls and he does it while checking if we are looking. Sometimes he is painting in the other room and he would latter ask me 'who did this'. Cheeky aint it? And if we ask him he will very conviniently name the peapod. And if that wasn't enough he will also remind us to whack her. His naughtiness is just amazing.
He loves to dance and he will entertain anybody with a jig everytime anybody asks for it. He loves the latest Airtel add and comes running from wherever he is in the house to do a step or two.
He is quite theatrical. As in he makes very cute comical faces. He is very naughty but gets away because of his cute baby acts. He can pretend cry, pretend hide and pretend to be sad. Such skills so young.
He loves books. He loves them all around. He keeps looking at them at length. Infact I have never seen the peapod sit with books the way he does but then she doesn't tear and destroy either. But he keeps looking at pages with pics of dogs and gorillas thoughtfully and then try to stand on four like them and lie over them and then finally in an attempt to get them as close to him, he tears the pages right off. Something in me tells me he would love a dog for company. But that is just a thought and hope it stays right there and does not get me to bring one on a whim. I have never had a dog and I dont think I have it me to tend to one. It was just a random thought.

The Peapod and Chattambi

Its been so long that I dont know where to begin and what to write. Since this blog was suppose to be a journal of my kids and everyone around us let me begin with the latest addition to the family. My other sister(not the jellybean's mom) delivered a beautiful baby boy on June 2nd. Oh yeah, we girls have been on a roll :) what can I say. So we have a baby for every year since 2006 to 2011 except 2007. We drew a blank at 2007 since the peapod and jellybean managed to squeeze into the same year. We just queued up like ants one after the other. And the next best is this sister moved to Pune to live close to us. Its getting too exhausting to come up with blog names for all these kids. I am getting tempted to use real names. I still havent figured a blog name for my second born and I think I am going with 'Chattambi', which is what we call him at home and he calls himself so too at times which is the malayalam equivalent of a brat. So with the basic settled lets move on.

The best part ofcourse was the little boy who went from being a baby in my arms to a full fledged toddler who can now manage to get under tables and beds and get out of it too and climbing beds and side tables and comfortabling getting off them as well. I haven't been closely monitoring his milestones, he has just been an active child and he already calls me Mumma and can also say Dada and Taataa and an another dozen things like cocolate, manam(wellam for water), papatti(chappati),pal(milk), kal(leg), ball, Ammacha (for ammachi) and Joe(the peapod). He has about 8 teeth already and is ever ready to grab anything edible.

He is 19months and is keeping us on our toes every waking moment. When he is right in front of our eyes, he is in our face. He is either trying to grab the electric kettle while its on, playing with the toaster cable, sometimes found climbing our delicate glass coffee table. If he is silent that is all the more trouble. That means he has layed his hands on something forbidden and is enjoying the time away from the limelight. He is trouble spelled twice in CAPS,if you get what I mean. Our current open kitchen with no trollies is heaven to him. I am only screaming - I am actually not sure why - because that doesnt deter the little cretin from anything. He kicks his ball amazingly well for his age I think. He builds up his run-up and kicks like he is scoring a goal. He is not into a lot of crying business. He is easily distracted and I have travelled with him in every kind of transport since he was 4 months I think. He is pretty cool. He loves to be on the go. Coming to the sibling equation, they are only screaming and fighting ALL THE TIME. I dont see any hope there. He is always and I say always bent on arm twisting the peapod. There are times she loses her patience with him and hits him back and all I can hear is shouts and screams. You settle one and before I turn my back he is sitting on top of her book, board or throwing her stuff off the balcony ad grinning. He goes picking fights with her where none exists. He has earned his nickname in every right. The peapod can scream till the world ends but he acts like he hasn't heard a sound. And then he is not just that, he also has a sweet side to him with kids younger than him. My heart melts everytime I see him kiss the new baby. Its got to an extent we can not click the baby without him in the frame. He is always kissing him or find a sheet/blanket to wrap him.

I finally leave you with a few snaps - I know that is why you come here. The last pic is the new baby in the family.