Baton handover

After a long time at the top spot, the baton for Sid’s most obsessed object, is passed on from the COW to the TRAIN.

It started when FIL took Sid on a couple of metro rides and Sid was haunted with the metro train since then. Adding to that, we have been travelling frequently on trains to Coimbatore. Sid spends most of his free time watching various sort of trains on Youtube these days. While it was amusing and interesting initially, it has become frustrating for the dad and mom these days. The dad, wearing spectacles, is paranoid about the possibility of Sid having to wear one early on, and is preaching a lot these days about how Sid should abstain from laptop or TV. And the mom is tearing her hair trying to implement this rule.

And when you do not want Sid to do something, you can be assured he would absolutely end up doing that. So, for hours, he just stares at the laptop watching the videos.. I tried hiding the laptop but he explores through every inch of every room looking for the laptop and urging me to search as well. And when he does not find it, he gives the LOUD SCREAM treatment that completely unnerves me and I end up screaming at him or giving up my resolve! And since my screaming results in more LOUD SCREAMs from him, I finally give up and just play the videos so he leaves me in peace.

Once, when the search proved futile, he brought the ipod to me and asked me to play on it! And when I said there is no charge, he brought the charger and asked me to charge the ipod! So yes, there is no escape.

After two hours of this struggle, when I finally give up, is when dad walks in, and lectures the poor mom on why this is bad for the kid’s eyes! Phew! Sid, meanwhile, is very busy and not sensing the tension between mom and dad, is excitedly looking at the rajdhanis and shatabdis and the express and metro trains!

 

The restaurant experience..

I’m sure every parent will swear on how the restaurant going experience has changed after the kid(s). So am I an exception.. no! Last week, hubby & I went to have an evening chaat without Sid, and we realized that we’re actually managing to have a conversation with no interruption..Why didn’t I make use of the years before Sid and talk all I had to.. I guess I never knew what was going to hit me even though I had seen others going through it.
Sid, not surprisingly, creates a mayhem when we are in a restaurant. Once, we were so exhausted by his antics even before the food arrived, that we decided we should just get the food packed.. just as we approached the waiter to tell about our choice, the waiter volunteered.. “Sir? so you want to pack the food..?” I guess even he understood what was in our mind just watching Sid play havoc.
Have I learnt my lesson after all the troublesome incidents, you’d think yes.. but no, I have not with the pretence of continuing to enjoy life irrespective of kid, hectic work, etc. The word enjoyment is purely subjective and depends on perspective. This is just like a vacation you plan to an exotic place to relieve you of all stress, and come back even more stressed because of all the planning, packing, etc. But, does one learn, no!
Sid loves exploring whenever we go out for a dinner. We usually opt for a table with a couch, so he can dabble on it a bit without having us worrying he’ll fall off if it had been a chair. Frequently he tries climbing onto the dinner table, and wards off the salt, pepper containers to create more space for himself.. sometimes a vase or a flower becomes his victim, so we promptly hand over the vase to the waiter clearly indicating that we are simply not interested in the paraphernalia. Then he moves on his attention to the plates, spoons & forks and beats the plate kindly with the spoon or the fork to explore the kind of sound that could potentially arise from this activity. At this point, there is a high probability that we have come to the attention of all the people in the restaurant, and mostly the restaurant manager has blacklisted us, and allotted men to specifically keep a keen eye on our table, lest something break.
Sometimes Sid insists on shuffling from my side to hubby’s side with the sole intention of stress-testing our patience and also to make us better human beings. If we hold onto him tight to not allow it, he tries to sneak in from under the table. By now, my appetite wavering and patience stretching thin, I keep throwing glances at the waiter beseeching for FOOD..
Once it so happened that Sid was at his best, but finally we were done and were leaving the place, when many people in the adjacent tables gave us a smile, some sympathetic and some maybe a sigh of relief that they can now eat peacefully. They were just a bit short of clapping their hands.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve tried a few things to let me have a peaceful dinner, and sometimes they come handy.
1) Always have a glass of milk with me, so I manage him till the food arrives and then seal his mouth with the milk so hubby and I can both eat together and not wait for one to finish while the food gets cold. This is the brahmastra.
2) Keep distracting his attention to the various things in the restaurant. Sometimes I ask him to tell the colors of several objects around, or ask him to count the number of lights, etc… Disclaimer: This works for not more than 2-3 minutes but worth it while it lasts.
3) Make a villain out of the waiter. By now Sid knows this strategy so well..that if he thinks he is doing something that’s going to get me angry, he just says.. ‘amma, uncle thittuva’ or ‘amma, uncle adi’. (as in..uncle will scold or beat)
4) Play silly games with him.. I keep playing ‘dosai vathu’ with him so many times.. that the last time I overheard him saying.. ‘dosai vathu.. ammaku oru vai, appakku oru vai.. indha uncleku oru vai, andha uncleku oru vai, indha auntyku oru vai, andha aunyku oru vai’ feeding everyone in the resturant with his specially prepared imaginary dosas.
5) Order something that he can also eat and make a BIG deal out of it. Now he is thankfully old enough to eat some of what we order. I don’t give him any of the oily stuff from the restaurant yet, so usually I stick to soup or bread for him. So, he gets all excited..and keeps saying ..‘thoop’, meanwhile I gobble a few lumps of food.

If you can think of anything else that works for you, PLEASE tell me!

Meanwhile I’m going to continue enjoying(?) dinner at a restaurant.

 

Silly stuff

Sid and I play a lot of silly, stupid games.

The ammadhu appadhu game: When my ironwali comes to hand over the ironed clothes, Sid gets very excited, and as I pick each one from the bundle he goes ‘Ammadhu’ or ‘Appadhu’, God knows what thrill he derives from identifying our clothes. Mostly he gets it right, but sometimes it’s hilarious when he’d just look at one of his tiny pants and say ‘Ammadhu’! This game or whatever it is has become such a favorite of ours, that we play it when I hang the clothes, fold the clothes, you get the picture!

Bubble game: He loves to watch me wash my face with the soap lather. He goes ‘bow, bow’ until I blow bubbles for him from the lather and then he laughs uncontrollably seeing my funny face with all the soap.

Idhuuuuu game: I try to teach him the body parts. So I go ..chidhu, idhu eyes, idhu nose, etc..finally I go.. idhuuuuuu neck and tickle him.. it has become such a favorite with him, that sometimes he’d just come over to me and say idhuuuuu and wait for me to tickle him running all over the house.

Spring game: Sid and I pull the opposite ends of a recoiling spring. Both of us stretch it as much as we can, (well, its mostly me, he likes to stand in one place and make me run around the house) and then after a few seconds, he would let go off the spring, making it hit me (trust me, sometimes it really pains!) and then he’d burst out laughing. I keep telling hubby, he is like this Anjali paapa, who beats the mom and laughs.

Just sounds so silly even writing about these, but somehow when I get home from work I look forward to these silly, stupid moments. They make my day and hopefully his too!