Pain and everything that goes with it!

I have been suffering from a severe wrist pain the past few days, so robi has been tying my hand up for me every day in a crepe bandage. luckily work is slow for me this week, so not much typing. The pain is most severe when my wrist bends. The other day K did some circus sitting on my lap in the car causing my wrist to bend backwards nicely, which made me yell out in pain. My poor baby got quite a shock - so I had to explain "ouch - ammakka vethana" (amma's got pain).

Karan has been so sweet and sensitive since then. Everytime he walks past me and sees my bandaged hand he says amma "nena" (his version of the word "pain") and kisses my bandaged hand. The first day he didn't exactly understand the concept of pain though. He just knew in some way that his amma was in discomfort. He would kiss my hand and then say "kalan nena" pointing to his wrist so that I would kiss him back.

On the third day, it suddenly hit him i think what "nena" really meant - cos he pointed to his cut lip (he fell down the other day and cut his lip quite badly) and said "kalan nena". I am soooo glad he's figured that one out - cos now (i hope) he will be able to tell us whenever he is in pain, so so that we dont have to guess what is wrong with him when he cries without there being any obvious reason.

For the first time i enjoyed being sick cos i have got so much sympathy from my son! i wonder if he will still be so sensitive when he grows up - my guess is that he wont, but only time will tell!

Appacha and Amminja have come and gone!

K had a blast with his Appacha and Amminja (grandpa and grandma) the past 5 days. As all visits of Appacha and Amminja, things were hectic and I feel I didnt' get to spend enough time with them. But I think K did and that anyway is primarily why they come to visit nowadays. Appacha and Amminja were quite impressed with K's vocabulary and skills. They used to pick him everyday early from the creche and take him home. infact i'm sure he must be feeling quite miserable today cos he's been in the creche so long today. anyway the good thing is that 2 days holiday is coming up, and he will have enough time to recover from the exciting appacha -aminja days and get back to his normal routine.

He woke up today and before opening his eyes he first said "appacha" and then "amminja" and didn't believe us when we told him that they had left town. he then proceeded to walk around the house and check whether they had in fact left. He specially checked the treadmill and had quite a forlorn look when he discovered that his appacha wasn't on it. (he must have thought "now that appacha's gone, i wonder when this thing will next get used!")

I hope Appacha and Amminja come more often to visit K - although I personnally prefer visiting them in Kerala - cos then i'm on holiday and therefore more relaxed. But K sure had a blast showing appacha and amminja his house, his park, his creche, his toys and his skills and generally hanging out with them.....suddenly hit me hard that i no longer have grandparents, which is really quite sad, cos no-one can quite dote on you the way grandparents can!

Baby talk!

Karan's vocabulary has increased quite a lot these days and I wanted to list down here for posterity some of K's commonly used "words".

For favourite foods
cheej - for cheese

paata- for pasta and also for pata (malayalam for cockroach)

ich - for fish (which quite morbidly also happens to be his favourite animal to watch. he once was looking at virtual fish which my brother downloaded for him and wanted to feed the fish he was eating to the virtual fish)

atta - f0r motta (egg in mallu, which he always accompanies with the action of banging his head - he always has an almost "motta thala" - bald head and i think that was the inspiration for the said action to depict what he is asking for. motta is his favourite food and he insists on greeting my maid everyone morning with this.)

For animals
G - for giraffe (why do you people have such long names for animals)

ippo - for hippopotamus (see ibid)

aana - for elephant (this is actually the mallu word for elephant and he says it beautifully)

abwa - for dog (derived from the sound the dog makes - as in bow bow.)

poocha - mallu for cat. (this is also the only word k knows both malayalam and english for...although he says caat in a very mally drawl giving away his mallu lineage to any passerby.

For favourite places
ammacha or aju - why ofcourse for ammacha and "aju's" (anju's) house!

eech or cheech - for the beach

ub - for tub (all water bodies are favourite hang out places for k)

taaji- for magic hat, his creche, although i dont know if i can term it as one of his favourite places, he is quite enthu these days to go there.

for modes of transport
caa - for car ofcourse

uch -for bus (if you haven't got baby talk yet, we are having a little trouble with the letter "s" and permutations of that darned letter)

oto - for auto rickshaws

byche - guess what for?

scooter - very nicely i might add ( he is slowly beginning to identify the difference between a byche and a scooter)

chi - for plane (dont ask me, i have no idea where that came from)

for favourite songs
atatata - for happy birthday to you. (he keeps mentioning different people's names and we are supposed to sing happy birthday to whomever he has picked, which is sometimes hard cos he picks about 3 people in 3 breaths!

uch - for wheels of the bus and hush little baby, and he shakes his head violently if you start off on the wrong one.

ba ba - for ba ba black sheep, although if said to my mother, he means "robert barns, fellow mine!"

ka ka - for kake kake ( a mallu song about a "ka ka" - crow)

for exclamations
yeah! (always said with both hands raised and usually used when a visit to the beach has been mentioned.)

ooh gad (this is my personal favourite. it took me some time to figure out what this was - but when the phone suddenly rang the other day and he got a bit startled he used the term and i figured out that he was saying oh god! with a very yank accident! obviously he has picked this phrase up from his mother who keeps calling the lords name in vain, specially when her first born has made a major mess on the floor or has climbed up somewhere dangerously high! i laughed so hard when i figured out that he kept repeating it to make me laugh some more. i guess parents are the only ones who say and do things to make their kids laugh - it works vice versa too)

We're going home for easter!

Robs, K and I are going to kerala for the easter weekend. Needless to say things are awfully hectic in office before leaving and I shouldn't even be blogging....

But K is really excited and for his sake I wanted to record here that we are going to meet appacha and amminja (grandpa and grandma) and ammacha (rohit) and ech (beks) at a cheech (beach)! yeah!

and then we'll be off to see the other appacha and amminja for easter! yeah!

Daddy's Day Off

Yesterday Robi took the day off....well he technically had an excuse - that he lost his glasses to the sea gods on sunday...hmm. but he sure had a gala time. watched movie after movie and read a lot (yes i know what you're thinking - movies? books? without glasses?) and by the time i got back home, there were atleast a dozen empty dishes and glasses of various items that were left around different parts ofthe house.

Anyway, that got me thinking about how mum's never get a day off . when we do decide to take a day off work that would be when we think we haven't been spending enough time with the kiddo, and naturally the day would consist of waking up in the morning to rush around getting food ready for the baby, followed by a half hour at the potty once baby's up (cos today is finally a day I have time to potty train him) and the rest of the day would be filled with singing "ba ba black sheep" and reading "Bubbles goes to school" no less than 13 times, getting our hairs pulled, finding new and improved ways to con your son that you are just behind him when he's going up the slide (karan has developed this dirty habit of insisting that i climb the thing behind him - not cos he's scared or anything, but cos he thinks its fun - little does he know that a 29 year old woman weighing over 65 kilos doesn't look as cute climbing a slide as a toddler does) and ofcourse worrying about the small amounts of food that he is eating.

i really cant remember the last time i took a day off to have a marathon session of sleeping or watching movies or reading books uninterrupted - the only when i get to do all that is when i am down with some illness, which is either severe or communicable and karan would therefore have to go to the creche.

when i mentioned this to robi he actually said "but the question is why would you want to do that?" i had to force myself not to pull my arm off and throw it at him!

so i raise my coffee mug to all those mummy's out there who never get to take a day off for themselves!

I am like a major dud or something. It took me nearly 10 whole minutes to figure out how i can create a new post. anyway now i'm here, i wanted to explain that unlike what i said in my last post, the reason i have decided to have a blog and blog more often is not to meet strangers and share experiences (ofcourse if that happens, well and good), but to put down things that happen in my life in a journal - as a child i enjoyed keeping a diary, but the headache of actually preserving a diary is too much, and in this Internet age to actually locate paper and write stuff (when you can type stuff) was too much and hence the compelling reason to use a blog.

I suspect assume that most of the stuff i write here is going to be about my son (atleast till we have another kid).

robi (my husband) and i got Karan a mouth organon friday, and boy you should have seen him when we showed him how it worked (i mean we showed him that it is possible to make music from this thing, although neither of us can actually make music with it). he was absolutely thrilled to bits, and I am very proud to say that he figured out how to work it in less than 3 minutes- including the "blow-in, blow-out to make different sounds" bit. so now we have a very enthusiastic mouth organist toddler on our hands. on saturday, when robi was nursing a terrible hangover, i had to distract karan while snatching away the mouth organ from him...

yesterday robi and i had a date at a tepanyaki restaurant -we enjoyed sushi for the first time. the rest ofthe lunch was unfortunately a bit of a blur cos i had this A-Mazing caiproska (best cocktail ever!) with lots of ice and lots of lemon rather fast and it took me about an hour to come down to earth after that.

then we all went to the beach in the evening, just after the heat had subsided and just before sunset, which is the best time to go, cos its still light though its not hot and the water was warm and lovely! karan had a complete blast (as always). after splashing around in the water for quite sometime, he rolled in the mud. i think he must, through all that, have said "lalalalala"with quite a degree of volume for about half hour straight (only pausing for breath). appuchach built sandcastles and k promptly smashed them down. it was incredibly funny watching k trying to bury his little feet in sand and saying "enthiye" (where is it?)

we were just about to leave when ammacha, aju and some other strangers (read kavithachech and her friend demetrius) landed up. this was too thrilling, cos k has never ever been to the beach with this ammacha. so it was back to the water again with aju!

needless to say, i had no trouble putting k to sleep last night!