Colours...

It's funny how life changes once you get married. I had almost forgotten how much I loved colours until about 2 months back when I signed up for a beginner's Acrylic painting class. And then the flood gates opened and it all came back to me. The magic of colours. Shades. Tones. Tints. The play of lights and shadows. The movement of colours in a painting. Transparency. Opacity. The pain of mixing purples. Grey scales. Watercolour paper. Palette knives. The feel of thick acrylics on my fingertips. The joy of having paint stuck under my fingernails and the joy in ruining my only pair of comfortable jeans with dabs of paint. And strange as it may sound, the joy in knowing that those dabs are never going to come off :) But like I said, life happens. First the cooking and laundry and dishwashing happens.  Then the diapers and feeding happens. And then the bedtimes and 'brush your teeth-RIGHT NOW!!' happens. And suddenly, one fine day it dawns upon you that you haven't so much as picked up a paint brush or palette knife in years.

But, I am glad to be back. And I'm glad to be married to a 'minimalist' who doesn't crib about the paint tubes and brushes and palette and paper and scissors and foam sheets and glitter glue and gesso and gloss medium and hair dryer strewn around...

Paranormal Activity...

Living with 4 year olds, especially caring considerate independent "big girl" 4 year olds, sometimes feels like living in a haunted house. With the spook being scared of the dark herself, and the whole house gleaming with night lamps, we sometimes see shadows moving around, floor boards creaking, the water running in the sink. Sometimes, I hear a voice, almost bordering at a cry, call out to me a few times, but when I answer, an I-can't-take-it-anymore, deafening silence is thrown at me. Now I know that the silence is mini-me having resolved her wrestling match with her quilt. Sometimes in the wee hours of the morning, we are woken up, rather rudely, with a kick in the gut or a head bang or sometimes even a not-so-subtle slap in the face only to find a dwarf-ish figure fast asleep. And we try to think when exactly did this Lilliput get here and we haven't got a clue. She's so quiet, and such a smooth operator, we never know when she comes or goes. On some days, around dawn, I would get a strong feeling that there's someone in the room. Like someone's staring at me. I open my eyes hoping to end a nightmare and expecting to see nothing. But, there it is. A shadow moving at the foot-end of my cot, crawling into bed and under my quilt. With some good fortune, I have grown up to be someone who neither believes in ghosts nor God. And that's probably why I haven't ended up like that guy in some horror movie who walked through a graveyard at night, heard some coins jingle in his pocket, thought it was the ghost's anklets and died of a heart attack (funny movie, that one!!) . And soon I might write a thesis on 'The Types of Silences that Operate in a Typical Household and How To Identify Them' ;)

Yay!! Happy birthday Fluff :)

Fluff is a year old. Yay!! And Mr. M has a problem with only 3 people having met Fluff.

Oh! and mini me forgot about the book. She hasn't talked about it and I don't think she wants it anymore :)

Hugs and words always work...

Never knew that a fun, bead shopping trip to a local craft store could teach me some very important things about parenting!! We went there to get beads for her math work. We went for beads. But, we the artists can never go in with a list, shop, and leave. We feel compelled to browse. We get ideas. We jot those ideas in a notebook (we always have a notebook in our bag!!). Stuff the notebook in the bag. Get back home.  After a few days we replace the notebook with another notebook (what do you mean 'why'?? We just do! that's all!)   Then the original notebook (like the 5163 other original notebooks) moves on from the bag to the dining table (needless to say we never have a clue how it got there). Then in a few days the book gets so sick and tired of being pushed and shoved that it moves residence to under the dining table.  Not the best place. Lesson learnt. So, move to the book shelf (nope! a book shelf is never a good place for these special notebooks and nope! this one is not going to stay there for long either...). After a few days or maybe weeks, it will find it's way to the shoe rack and then to the coat pocket (it's a pocket book silly :))and then to the bedside table, the window-sill, the underbed storage and at last to it's final destination- the invisible notebook-eating monster's tummy from whence it will reappear after a few years and follow the same pathway unless I am so overwhelmed at finding it that I actually decide to consolidate all my ideas into one big notebook (there are a bunch of 'one' big notebooks too) and recycle the 'original' one.

So, getting back to the point, we went bead shopping, saw some other stuff, jotted down ideas, saw a colouring book, took it (another trick is to never take a shopping basket/trolley at any store other than the grocery store. There is only so much one can hold in one's hand). Then, as I was paying up, mini me saw another book. She obviously wanted it. Her cousin has it. Hmmm... I had to draw the line somewhere. I said, "No".  She said, "why?".  I said, "Because we don't buy everything we see". And then she said the cutest thing ever. She said, " But Amma!  I didn't see it! Now can you buy it for me?".  I so wanted to but it for her but I still said no. She cried and it broke my heart to see her crying over a book that cost 3 bucks.

Mini me doesn't do that very often. She very very rarely throws a tantrum for things she wants us to buy for her. Many a times we have given in to her demands. And this time around I would just have bought her the book gladly. But she gave me the wrong reason. She had to learn that we don't go out and buy everything that other people have. Neither do we buy everything we see and like in a store. And she knows that now.  It just cost me half an hour of my life, tons of hugs and kisses and a lot of patience.  But it was more than worth it. She saw it.  She got the point. And she suggested we went home, sorted her stuff, give away some that she isn't using, make some space for her new book on the book shelf and then go to the book store and get something that she likes. Not something she wants just because she saw it at somebody's place.

Now I know I made the right choice and for once I am proud of my parenting skills :) Now, that's a rarity too.


P.S. It helps to give tons of examples from our own lives too ;)

A Miracle!!

I am thrilled. Excited. Elated. Full of energy. I feel like Eliza Dolittle singing 'I could've danced all night'!! The reason? Oh! I have a pretty darned good reason to feel this happy. I want to scream it out from the mountain tops. You will not believe what happened this morning! Jr. H brushed her teeth. And that's not all. She not only brushed her teeth, but she did it on her own. With paste. In precisely 5 minutes. She did not swallow the paste. And here's the best part...all this without one drop of tear! No 'silence'. No wrestling. No bloodshed. No head injuries or hospitalizations. No blackmails. No threats. None of that. Just pure plain old peace. Non-violence. It's amazing how the quality of my entire day depends on a four year old brushing her teeth!

When kids become teenagers...

Nope! Mine isn't a teenager. Yet. She has a 'good' (and that is what I call wishful thinking) 9 years to go before that.  But she's being nice to me. She's letting me have a sneak peek at what she will be like in her teens.  Most parents might miss taking the hint but not me! Oh no! I get it so totally and clearly that all of my recreational reading is only about kids and how to live with them.

As you know or might have guessed, my daughter turned 4 a few months ago. And there is reason why they call it the 'fearsome fours'.  To me it feels like her birthday was the official declaration of war in my house!

And Mr. M is now our official mediator. I guess he has a strong affinity to 'M' words.  He is the one that intervenes when push comes to shove and might progress to head injury and hospitalization as a result of trying to brush our teeth. He is also of great help when Jr.H insists that she will go to school in her underwear.  He is the one who checks on us when there is maddening silence in the house, the silence not from us being quiet but from us screaming so hard that our voices go above and beyond the frequencies that humans are capable of detecting. Now being able to distinguish between those two types of silences is a very special talent and it takes a lot of practice.

The only problem we have is Mr. M's part time (and needless to say, less important)occupation like his day job which keeps him away from home for a good 8 hours in a day. Take away the time that Jr. H spends at school and we are still left to fend for ourselves and protect ourselves from each other for what seems like eternity but actually amounts to about 4 hours. So, for the sake of those 4 hours, I started reading a very interesting book that many other survivors had recommended. And guess what I found. She is EXACTLY like me!!!

Bringing up Kids...

Remember the time when you were told that having kids would change your life? I read somewhere that that statement has been awarded the 'Understatement of a Lifetime Award'. Oh wait! Or is it just that I have been thinking it so much that I have started seeing it written everywhere. Maybe it's just my mind playing tricks on me. But I sure know that there ought to be such an award and that thing about kids and how they 'CHANGE' your lives surely is the most deserving canditate.

Change your life indeed! I think all those people were just being kind to this poor round fat clumsy woman with swollen ankles and constant backpain that was me.  Nobody wants to scare a poor pregnant woman out of her wits. It's not like they can tell you at your most miserable state that it's about to get so much worse that pregnancy will seem like heaven to you.

And I anyway believe that change is a very broad term. For example, it's a 'change' if majority of the books on your library hold list have the word 'kids' or 'babies' in the title.  It is also a 'change' if you are talking to your child in the car when in reality you are driving all alone.  It's a 'change' if you drive with your windows rolled down in the peak of winter just to remind yourself that you are indeed alone in the car!  A 'change' is also when you instinctively pick up the booster seat at the movies when the only people you are with are all adults. A 'change' is also when the first thing you worry about when you wake up is breakfast for the little one and the last thing you worry about before bedtime is breakfast for the little one. Also, hearing a war cry first thing in the morning and last thing at night might fall under this category.  It's 'change' if you are suddenly feeling guilty about going on a romantic dinner date with the man you loved enough to marry. I know! Tell me about THAT! Now 'that' is material enough for another million and a half blog posts, don't you think?

Anyway, the point is that maybe, just maybe, what people actually meant is that kids take control of your life rather than change it. They dictate where you go, what you do, when you eat, when you sleep, how much you eat, how much you sleep, what you say, who you meet, what you cook, when you brush your teeth, when you take a bath... I am stopping here only to be polite to you and to keep my poor little post from  getting an R rating!!!