Dec 20, 2010

Two busy weekends and a fashion tantrum

Whew, what a hectic 9 days! Two weekends filled to the brim with baby functions - two thread-tying ceremonies, a baptism and two birthday parties! And now time to look forward to the Christmas holidays starting off with my niece's first birthday on the 24th. Lots of fun!

Yesterday was my nephew's first birthday and we were busy decorating the hall early in the morning. Then it was time for all of us to be ready and I started off by getting our toddler (yes the mudbaby himself, see it here) ready. After his bath, I helped him put on his diaper and trousers and he sat up on the bed and began to look around for his shirt.

Now here I have to be honest - the shirt was not new; it was a hand-me-down from his elder brother. It was a half-sleeved shirt that I thought was cute because it was striped and looked like an adult's shirt. In my defense, it is a pretty good color that looked good on our kid. So what did our son do? He took one look at the shirt and asked me (in Malayalam, translated for everyone's benefit), "Is that Achan's?" I said, "No, it's yours, let's put it on." And the kid goes "Naaaaaaaah, don't want it" at the top of his voice!

I didn't have another outfit for him (lesson for the future), so it is a good thing that he still weighs under 15kg or there might've been a problem. I asked him to take a look in the mirror after the titanic struggle. He stopped yelling and lifted his head up just enough to look at the mirror ... emitted another roar and fell back on to the bed!

And here I thought that only girls are fussy about their outfits! Our elder son has never cribbed about the outfits that I pick out for him and occasionally when he picks one that I feel don't go together, he changes it readily. Come to think of it, his Dad does the same too! :-) Fortunately, two-year-olds are very easy to distract, so we had the disgruntled toddler involved in something else within 5 minutes. Thereafter he yelled only when we didn't let him within touching distance of the birthday cake....

My son, the fashion-conscious toddler...in one of his favorite outfits! Ahem, that T-shirt reads "Mommy's Secret Agent" and not "Mommy's Secret Age" as it seems to!


Dec 9, 2010

December madness and a glimpse into the past

I don't know about you, but December usually sees me in a frenzy of decluttering and reorganizing wherever I am in the world. Somehow, the proximity of a new year makes me want to tear up old things, shove some things into oblivion and reorganize things to an inch. I feel it is almost prompted by my subconscious, because I have never circled December 1 on my calendars in red to prompt me, ever. But the thing sort of creeps up on me, noiselessly, surreptitiously.

For example, take this year. In the first week of December, I was putting away my clothes in my wardrobe and I noticed a dress that I hadn't worn in about a year - 15 minutes later, a few dresses had been picked out and bagged up ready for recycling (also known as sewing dishrags). This week the urge has already manifested itself as rearranging our second bedroom and heaving the cots about single-handedly. Today, I went through a stash of old notebooks/journals/diaries. I sorted them into  three piles, put away one for safekeeping, another for reference and completion and burned those in the third.

As I was going through my old journals, I came across several "me's", a 25-year-old me, a newly-wed me, a new-mom-be-me, a new-mom me and so forth. The 25-year-old me certainly had lots of activities, fun, interactions with a whole bunch of people and lots of "alone" time to think about everything and write about them. But I also saw a frequent pattern of her being in the dumps about some little thing or the other - frankly, they seem quite trivial to me now.

Nowadays I am regularly swept off my feet with all the things I have to do (like a December "spring" clean!) and anyone who has young children know, I rarely get any time to be by myself now and most human interactions other than with my immediate family are via phone, email or blog! But I am so much more content now, rarely get down in the dumps any more and have daily doses of pure, unalloyed joy which I frequently take time to savor. It can be just a hug n' kiss with an "I love you, baby" from our toddler, enthusiasm and "Oh, thank you for making my favorite dish today" from our elder son or a surprise book from my hubby who has raided the bookstore for a much-awaited book the day it was released. I now understand that life doesn't need to spectacular in order to be wonderful...

Oh yes, there is much to be said about being 25, but I am happy being 35 too!

3 Movie Reviews in 1: Nanpakal..., Romancham, and Pranaya Vilasam

1. Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam (Siesta) Lijo Jose Pellissery's movies are an acquired taste. Each movie is different and probably appeal ...