My flower blooms on!

26th Feb was important for us! Not because Mohit was to visit his knee Doctor today to get a final verdict on when his surgery should happen. It was special because Navya was going to perform for the first time on the stage. Her school had a sports day and she was one of the participants  Well, actually all the kids were participating in whatever small way.

We had an early start to the day and she looked her boyish best in the sports kit that the school had made compulsory for that day. We were to be seated by 10:30 am and hoped that Navya's act came before Mohit had to leave for his doctors appointment. We were told Navya was a part of a special March past by the toddlers of the school. But Mohit wasn't going to be lucky enough and like all programs in India, the Sports Day also started late.

In the scorching heat, the function began with two tiny tots running with an artificial flame. It was cuteness personified but my eyes were set on the forthcoming march past. Soon it was the toddler class that marched in with all sorts of banners and placards announcing the benefits of good health and happy living. And there my little star came, cheeks flushed because of the heat but walking smoothly on the chalked line as instructed by the teachers. Following the line to the end, she didn't deter even looking at the sidelines littered with balloons. The turns were taken at exact 90 degrees not to miss the chalked line. It was plain simple 'left right' happening for my baby but to me it was a glorious dance. It was pure sweetness and I have no words to express what i felt. For everyone else, it was a group of kids walking through the lawn but for me it was a proud moment when the little darling I adore did an activity independently.

Soon i was on a messaging spree to Mohit telling him in as many as 12 messages about what Navya had done. Sinfully, I was missing what was happening during the function since I was completely mesmerized since Navya had walked off. When i finally looked up, the tiny tots were doing some dances that symbolised nature, plants, animals etc. Various classes were coming one by one, extremely cute and adorable, the little ones looked. Somewhere far off I spotted a line of kids headed by Navya's mentor. I wondered what was her class doing next to the stage again. Before I could do any calculations, that line of kids came walking on the stage and the second one was Navya. She was wearing a costume of a flower and occupied centre stage. Soon some music started playing and the kids broke into a dance.

My baby was dancing now. The kid in the bumblebee costume next to her was crying. So was the last kid in the butterfly dress. Navya was intently looking at her teacher who was trying to remind the kids of the steps. She twisted, she waved, she swayed to the left and then to the right and she went round and round in circles. I realised i was standing up and trying to put on the video camera in my phone. After fumbling a bit, I managed it trying to capture that moment through my eyes and to save it forever for everyone at home to see.

All of two and a half minutes, I wanted the act to last a lifetime. I was proud, I was happy, I was ecstatic.
In that moment, I realised how parents of school toppers and various achievers must be feeling; when I was over the moon with my daughter performing a simple dance. In that brief span of time, I had felt proud, teary and also happy to be a mother. It was that rare spell when you feel nothing else matters now but being a mother makes it all worth the while. I re-lived Navya's 2 and half years in a jiffy. The little flower I gave birth to was blooming for me, making me smile and making life worth living. 

Honey, you are getting a sidekick!

From the happy trio to the ecstatic foursome soon!

For me and the husband, its been mostly a case of 'been there, done that' and we hardly noticed that I was pregnant till the baby bump became quite obvious. The only bone of contention for me has been preparing Navya to be the 'big sister' soon. She certainly isn't playing the part very well since she has already started taking over everything that we decide is for the forthcoming 'chota baby'. From the sleeping bag to the blanket to the tiny booties to the rattles, she now wants everything that she has outgrown in the past 2 years.

Nevertheless the effort is on to prepare her. So what exactly is it that I am doing to make her a big sister to her awaited sibling? Here's a rundown on some of my recent efforts:

1. I ordered 5 books on the arrival of a second baby, handling a sibling, preparing your first child for a sibling, welcoming a baby in the house and every possible title that would put to rest her uneasiness about the baby. She decided to ignore all 5 books.
2. A frantic rush to toilet train her started with the onset of 2013. From rushing her to the potty seat every now and then to getting my pajamas dirty with kiddy poo-poo, I am weathering it all. The cold hasn't helped much and it seems extremely unlikely that she will be toilet trained completely by the time the little one comes. On the brighter side, they can sit on a double potty seat perhaps!
3. Asking her to kiss the baby bump is perhaps the sweetest attempt from her end. She does manage a kiss for the baby bump once a week but that perhaps is more because of her fascination towards bare skin than anything else.
4. Her Mamu-Mami gifting her a cute doll of an infant was a stroke of a genius. Complete with a pram, a baby carrier, feeding bottles and a high chair. This baby kit has certainly given her some insight into the things to come.
5. Diapering the barbies and the teddies and the doggies has been another task we have been up to. To acquaint her with how the baby will mess her bed, I regularly show her why a little baby is diapered. While the Barbie is too lean, it is generally her total contingent of soft toys that finish of the diapers that come at Rs.15 a piece.
6. We now have names for all her dolls and soft toys. From Julie to Agastya to Celina to Joey, we have random names for everything that looks similar to anything that has legs and a face. Sometimes the clay models we make are also christened to inform her that the new baby will also have a name.
7. The most important thing that we have miserably failed in is getting her to sleep in her bed. She continues to sleep in our bed and unless we hit gold in the next month, it is either 4 people on one bed or Mohit hits the guest room.

So while it is 7 months down and 2 more to go, the panic button has just been pressed. Everything I didn't realise in the past 28 weeks is now rushing to me. From a baby shower to maternity shoot to overeating and pampering, now I want to do it all. Trying to live the 9 months of pregnancy in the 2 that are pending now...And yes, of course preparing Navya to have her very own sidekick...That is the main agenda as of now. Tips Welcome!

The night it rained and the day it dripped everywhere!

Call it a woman's hunch or over-reacting as most men think of it. But when Mohit told me that he was going to be away for a night on a work trip to Bhubaneshwar, I knew i will find those 48 hours extremely difficult to manage in the house. I tried to convert the overnight trip into a day hop but only got scolded in return and the 'Can't-you-run-this-place-without-me?' look. Run I did, in the literal sense.

The anxious hours of running a new house without the master of the house in the game started off well with most of the pack of workers turning up on duty. On the downside, it just meant extra work hours of my unproductiveness.  More people to keep a check over, more chores to assign, more calls to make to finalise designs and more reporting to do. When me and my pizza settled down at 9:30 pm, the furniture guys had finally left after pounding my head and every piece of wood in the house and the kid had just slept. But that's when someone else decided to turn up and that too in full glory. It was the Rain Gods knocking on heavens door.

The rains came and just kept coming. I wandered like a mad woman in the house checking for nooks and corners of leaks. I found a slightly flooded basement and small puddles in some entrances. Some firefighting and extra hours of reporting to the master later, midnight came with lesser rain. i felt assured that the rains wont do any damage to my house now. We were on a task to face the first rains of the new house and looked like we would survive well.

I guess it poured all night because i finally dozed at 2 am. I put my foot down from the bed at 8 am and SMS'd the Master: Me and the house survived the rain. And that was when I noticed the wet socks by my bedside and Navya's shoe floating around. I jolted up and my mind was now working overtime. Finally I got the courage to inspect the bedroom and realised we were in 2 inches of water. Me, the bed, the heater, the carpets and everything else. What happened later was pure firefighting. But we did survive. The basement was a little flooded too but we did survive. We swept more water from the first floor to the ground floor than what the God sent down on us that night but we did manage to survive.

P.S I also now preach that the floor wiper is perhaps the most handy tool any house should have.
P.S.2 Is unproductiveness a word?

The most unproductive job on the planet

Everyday someone asks me how far has the house come along? And I tell them we are settled and functional but still a month to go. Then again, the second question that comes is what do I do all day? My answer is always the same; I have the most unproductive job on earth. And time just flies away in this non-productive state of mine. How, you ask? 

All day long, I watch over plumbers, carpenters, masons and electricians. They ask for inputs, I give them my piece of mind, but they do what they want to. I request them to follow instructions but they do what they want to. I scold them when later the job is not satisfactory but they still do what they want to. I am just a stationary factor in their lives currently who appears out of nowhere in each room and just chooses to watch them. That's how unproductive my job is.

I simply watch as the workers go about doing their chores. I try to impose authority by telling them who is boss but they still go about doing their chores. I spend hours just watching them like a shadow but they still go about doing their chores.

At the end of a standard unproductive day, I inspect who did what and report to the Master of the house. The Master who had earlier given everyone a daily to-do also receives hourly and sometimes bi-hourly telephonic reports and queries on the job. Sometimes I also report through emails. Perhaps that is when I become productive. All that heavy reporting. Apart from this, if you ask me, I do nothing at all the whole day! I simply stand and stare as the rest of the world does their productive jobs....

A Lazy R