Objective: To potty train Mieja.
Plan: Start on a weekend. She is not even two, so might take approximately the whole of summer.
Note to self: Be PATIENT. She is just a baby.

Operation commenced on: April 5th, Saturday.
Statistics at the end of the first day: The patio had to be washed at the end of the day. We ran out of all the 8 Gerber cloth training underpants. The clothes dryer had to be switched on as the sun wasn’t drying the clothes fast enough.
Mommy mood-o-meter: She is never going to potty train.
Note to self: Be PATIENT. She is just a baby.

Observations on day two: Candidate expressed interest to sit on potty for the sole reason of flushing, using the toilet paper and washing hands. The time she sat on the potty became a joke. It kept decreasing and by the end of the day, the bum would touch the potty seat for just one millionth of a second. She kept repeating the tear-wipe-throw-flush sequence till the toilet paper roll was over. Same with the hand washing. No significant improvement.
Mommy mood-o-meter: With all that paper the toilet is going to get clogged. She is never going to potty train.
Note to self: Be PATIENT. She is just a baby.

Results of observation from day3-present: Here by I present to you all a fully potty trained Mieja….TA-DA.

Every time she has to go, she goes in the pot. But every time she says she has to go, she does not go. On a good day, she says ‘pee-pee’ approximately 45 times out of which she goes 8-10 times. Add the fact that she says baby as ‘peepy’, which I end up thinking is ‘pee-pee’.

KEY NOTE TO JINX MONSTER: KEEP AWAY.

I have no idea how it happened. May be she has been observing her sister do it and was ready all along. The first two days were just initial novelty and then she was on track!

Anyway, she surprised me couple of days back. Both the bathrooms were occupied and she wanted to use the potty. So I strapped a diaper on her and explained that this is an exception. She can do her business in the diaper. She simply refused. She understood what I said, but refused. She said, ‘Peeee Peee. Only in the puuuty’ and with that resolution held on for a few minutes. Then she started running from this bathroom to that, knocking on the door, first demanding the people to come out and then she was in the verge of tears, ‘Peee Peee, peas. Appa peas.’ Poor thing. Finally after what seemed like an eternity in toddler time, she was able to get access to the pot.

Now, I don’t know if I am prepared to handle two girls who are fairly recently potty trained/training. Before every time we step out, we do a potty round. As soon as we reach our destination we do another round. In between that there are numerous false alarms. In the 45 minutes we are in a restaurant, we have to visit the restroom at least four times.

All the words mean hundred in Tamil, English, Spanish, Italian and German.

That is the number of posts in my blog.

Yes, a celebratory post. 100 posts and the other thing I am celebrating, 10 days early though, is my one year blog-anniversary. 2007, April 22 was the date I published my first post.

As I am typing this post, I only have 98 posts in my blog and if I publish this particular post, it will be the 99th post. But today was such a nice day and I couldn’t contain myself. What the heck? I decided to type my 100th post right now and my 99th post a while later.

What was so good about today? I don’t know, some days just have the right feel about them. The kids still took their own sweet time to finish their breakfast and did have their little squabbles, the husband and myself did snap at each other a couple of times. But over all I feel pretty uppity today!

The best part of the day, the kids did some gardening with their dad – all the summer vegetables are now planted. Hubby toiled, gave instructions and managed the little critters pretty efficiently. Chula did followed directions really well. Mieja walked behind hubby and engaged in pulling out the plants that were just planted. Some how we gave her a small, empty watering can and asked her to water the plants. So she walked around all the plants talking to them, ‘Hele, WAADEL. Paant, hele WAADEL’. I just hanged around shooting pictures and videos. So we all did our part

Now to some stats.

Number of posts = 100
Number of comments = 875
Total views = 34,805
Views today = 172
Best day ever = 393 views, Mar 27, 2008, Thurs

Top three posts
Indian Mythology – A Child’s Perspective – 698 views
(Also my very first post and my favorite post.)
Sexualization Of Young Children – 635 views
Surviving Chicken Pox – 561 views

BTW, people who come to my blog using these google search terms, you scare me.
I would elaborate on certain questions I have about these search terms, but thanks to Google(!@#$%^%), I would attract more of these people like a magnet.

Its been a great ride so far guys.

Oh, you know what this means right? Lurkers leave a comment and identify yourself.

One of the courses I am taking this quarter is Child’s Ways Of Knowing and Thinking. Yes, I can interpret why a child is behaving in the way he/she does. So far the joke is on students like us trying to break the psyche of the young child. Out there millions of children are laughing their pants off saying, ‘Yeah, now you can use technical jargon to describe the basis of our behavior. So???? You still can’t do anything about it.’

Anyways, I am digressing. There is this wonderful book called Piaget Primer, that describes using simple cartoon from Peanuts, excerpts from classics like Winnie The Pooh, Phantom Toll Booth, Alice In Wonderland and The Little Prince to describe the way the child thinks. A wonderful book, so if any of you get a chance, do thumb through it.

The book had a piece about classification and this was the cartoon that accompanied it. Had me in splits.

And this piece describes what is happening at home.

And the other day, I picked up Chula from school, she said she drew a picture of me and handed me this. ‘This is you amma. I draw you’ she said with a big smile and gleaming teeth. Presenting me ta-da…..

Never mind if the picture says George Washington

Hello, hello , hello. I just have to take matters in my own hands, otherwise things never get done. Never, like in N.E.V.E.R.

Dear readers, I am 22 months old. My amma often forgets this. She is either stuck at me being 10 months old(and treats me that way, which I totally hate) or thinks that I am already two and a half, nothing in between for her.

I like to think of my self as a mischievous little monkey, like the Kapish in Twinkle or Meera monkey from Karadi Tales. My mischief will not make you mad, but will make you hug me tight and plant kisses on my chubby cheeks. Okay, just not kisses, I also love it you blow raspberries.

A sample of my mischief. The other day I was in the library with appa (father) and akka (elder sister). Appa was checking out some books. Akka was standing next to appa, with a mesmerized look( oh, she always gets that look when she sees books) on her face. I tried calling appa a few times and he continued focusing on checking out the books with an occasional ‘Hm’. I like to be given full attention, so what do I do? Do I roll on the floor and cry. Nah, that is so old school. I just pull Chula’s pants down to her knees and run away. That got your attention, right appa? (Sorry Chula, you were just collateral damage. Don’t take it personally, okay?) Amma couldn’t control her laughter when she heard about this, but she also secretly made a mental note, never to wear sweats when I am around. I could see that in her eyes.

You have all heard about my scream-mication (screaming to communicate). Though, I occasionally scream to inflict the right amount of terror in my parents, I have come a long way. I talk!….full sentences,….and…..*drumroll*…… make conversations over the phone * *. Last week amma was changing my diaper and was talking to patti(grand mom) over the phone. I grabbed the phone from amma and said, ‘Patti, Mieja diapuul. Numeel four diapuul. Mickey moose diapuul.’ (Grand mom, I am wearing number four mickey mouse diaper.)

I am still a very persistent child. I like my mother’s school folder and cell phone. But amma makes a big fuss. Honestly I don’t see why? Amma any ways drops her cellphone, like a 100 times. Whats the big deal if I drop it a couple of times? Regarding her school notes, I was just trying to add a child’s perspective to her assignments on child development. Any ways, she over reacts, as usual, puts the stuff away, carries me, sings and dances and tickles me. This charade goes on for 30 min and I play along. After amma is done I go back to the place where I last found the object that attracted me and look for it. I give amma that famous smile of mine, extend my hands and say, ‘thaaka’(thaanga, which means ‘give’ in english). If I sense that it is that amma means business, I add a ‘peesee’(please) to the ‘thaaka’. It is so irresistible that amma almost caves.

I am a picky eater, just like my sister. But Chula gets easily distracted if amma reads books, but not me. If I says no, then it means N.O. You can sing, dance, read books, switch the TV on, it is still N.O. Amma failed to get the message, so I drilled it home by throwing the bowl of food at the wall couple of times. Now she doesn’t even try.

I love to dance. Especially for ‘thee, thee, thee, chakka joey joey’ or ‘vaadi vaadi cd‘. There is nothing like putting on a skirt and doing my famous dabanguthu moves. My other favorite songs are the Indian rhymes for Indian kids from Karadi tales.

I like singing too. My favorite used to be ‘Jinkuwawe, Jinkuwawe, Jinku-Waaa-Weh’(Jingle bells, jingle bells jingle all the way). Last Christmas Chula sang this song in her school performance (which was conducted in the church close to Chula’s montessori school). I tried joining the chorus, but amma shushed me so hard that I stopped singing. But me being the productive person, that I am, I had to do something. So I picked up an application for membership to The Central Church of Christ from the pew and filled it up. Still waiting to hear from them if I got in to the church.

Sometimes my love for singing transcends the time factor. I wake up at the wee hours of morning (5.00AM) and sing at the top of my voice, ‘Isabella, Isabella, ISABELLA……Alara, Alara, ALARA’* and wake up all the sleepy heads in my house.

Though I like my sister when she gets all dressed up, I hug her and kiss her all over her face, I consider the few minutes before bath time as a special bonding time between us. Amma takes off all my clothes except my diaper, I run to Chula demanding that she strips down to her underpants and we make circles around the house, Chula singing, ‘5 little ducks ran up one day, over the hills and far away…..’ and run behind her shouting, ‘duckie akka, duckie akka.’

Okay, that’s a long time sitting in one place. Got to go and do some mischief. See yaa later.

Runs off singing,

‘Monkeys, we are the monkeys.
We like to sing, we like to jump
We like to romp around……’

* – At Chula’s school, they have a cool routine at circle time. They call every child’s name with music from keyboard starting from the lowest note to the highest note. This introduces the differences in the ‘do-re-mi-fa-so-la-to-do’ notes. Mieja listens to Chula singing this song at home and repeats it often.

Discussion I
Background information: I am now in the process of motivating Chula to eat well. So I picked up books from library on nutrition. The food pyramid, 5 serving of fruits and veggies, 16-24 oz dairy…the whole works.

Me: Do you see what the book says? We have to drink two cups of milk a day. That make your bones happy. Otherwise your bones will break. Ok?
Chula: Ok amma.
Me: (Trying to quiz her) What happens if you drink two cups of milk every day?
Chula: Your bones will break.

Discussion II
Background information: I am driving Chula to school and we pass a recycle truck.

Chula: Amma, is that garbage truck?
Me: Looks just like the garbage truck-huh? Do you see that the truck is green in color? That means that it is a recycle truck. The things that can be recycled goes in to the green recycle truck.
Chula: Ok, green garbage truck.
Me: No kannamma. We don’t put garbage in to this truck. We put things like paper, bottles and milk cans in to this truck. This is a recycle truck. (Quizzing her), what are the things that can be recycled?
Chula: Trucks, green color, garbage, dinosaurs, elephants, lions, my baby sister, diapers… Did you know that my friend D bought a cupcake for lunch? Lunch bag, white car, orange car. I play with R on February too. Crayons, big giant TV …Let us just say that this went on for the whole 7 minute drive to school.

Discussion III
Background information: Hubby is trying to give Chula lesson in oral hygiene.

Hubby: You have to brush your teeth properly. Otherwise you will get poochi(roughly translated to insects) in your mouth.

{From the next day onwards, Chula refuses to open her mouth claiming that she has lady bugs and butterflies in her mouth.}

Chula: I have lady bug in my mouth amma. No brush, no paste. I don’t want no more poochi to get in to my mouth

PS: This happened almost three months ago. Now Chula is an expert in brushing her teeth. She has a bit of starting trouble, but once she starts she does an awesome job.

Discussion IV
Background information: A discussion about (Boo’s) Ashu came up when I was getting the children ready for bed tonight.

Chula: What is Ashu’s thatha’s name?
{I tell her the name.}
Chula: What is Ashu’s patti’s name?
{I tell her the name.}
Then there was a sudden light bulb in my head and I thought that this might be a good way to introduce many to many relationship.
Me: Hey, guess what? Ashu’s thatha and patti are Yaadayaada aunty’s appa and amma.
Chula: Huh?
Me: Yeah!
Chula: No, Ashu’s thatha patti are Yaadayaada aunty’s thatha and patti.
Me: No. No. No. {Begin a complex lecture on relationships and how many people are can be related to many more people}…..
Chula: Amma, stop. I know. Ashu’s patti is Yaadayaada aunty’s amma and Ashu’s thatha is V uncle’s appa.
Me: No
Chula: {Cuts me off my placing her palm on my mouth}, I think it is time to sleep.

Discussion V
Background information: The contents of the lunch box is pretty much the same at the end of the day, a very irritated me.

Me: Chula, what did you do during lunch?
Chula: I was talking to A. {Smiles so wide that her ears are about to fall off her head.}
Me: Talking? You are supposed to eat at lunchtime, not talk.

{Taking time off and counting to 10, to control myself. Hey, some of her teachers were watching, I didn’t want to blow my top in front of them }

Me: {in a sarcastic tone}What did you talk about, that was so important and made you miss your lunch?
Chula: Peace.
Me: Huh?!
Chula: {in a matter of fact tone}World peace amma.

Okay, for the past year I have been reading about bloggers meeting (here, here, here and here). The whole excitement behind such a meet is people who have met online and have formed a mental picture of a person, meeting in person. Then the actual image is cross checked with the mental picture and necessary corrections are made. Some times people hit it off in person too.

We had a different kind of meet yesterday. People who have been friends and are blogging now met at my place for dinner. Yaadayaada, Boo, Sundar, DDMom. Valleyblogzine had to cancel out in the last minute, otherwise we would have been a grand number of six. We hobnobbed and gossiped over blog world happenings over a scrumptious dinner (for which I cannot take any credit!). People offered to bring food and I ended up making just the appetizer and dessert.

The highlights of the meet:

FOOD, FOOD, FOOD – no question about that!

Anju read books to Chula and Mieja. She even took the time to hug and papmer Mieja. She is such an angel.

The minute DDMom’s D entered the house, Chula and Mieja ran to her yelling and screaming.

Mieja threatening all the kids, especially the ones older than her. The kids were building Leggo and Mieja would casually walk by them and knock down whatever they had built. So after some time, the minuet she turned towards the other kids, they started screaming, ‘Mieja is coming… Mieja is coming…’ and started to form a protective ring around their work. If possible they would have built a moat and let a few alligators loose in the moat to keep Mieja away!

Chula tried reaching for something at the bottom of the toy box and landed in to the toy box! Just her little legs were jutting out and she was kicking them wildly and shouted enough to bring the roof down. Hey, no judgements on my mothering qualities, we pulled the little devil out and what is the next thing she does? Repeats the same thing again!

D and Chula decided that sitting inside the toy box is lots of fun. So they dumped the toys out and squeezed in to the toy box and were giggling away to glory. Mieja wanted to be a part of the fun, so she decided to get in to the toy box the only way she knew. Head in first, legs swinging wildly in the air.

A friend’s 10 year old son sang a bajan. All the kids dropped whatever they were doing, sat down and listened patiently to the whole song. D and Chula came in to the group with a toy drum and xylophone respectively, trying to accompany the boy. After their mothers gave them ‘the look’ + waving the index finger + that deep guttural ‘hhmmm’, they dropped the idea.

Mieja, is probably hearing for the very first time a person singing. No, me singing to the children cannot be considered singing. She didn’t bat an eyelid.

Oh, BTW, we are having another meet next week!

When Chula started school, I had these images of a well balanced lunchbox. Every meal would have a serving of fruit, a serving of vegetable and whole grain in some form. Chula was not a peanut butter and jelly kind of girl. I wanted to make her all these fabulous desi food with a western twist so that it isn’t too ethnic for her lunch box, at the same time she wouldn’t turn her nose on the regular desi food. The slide show pictures are pictures I clicked every day I packed her lunch. I had to share all the exciting recipes and my culinary adventures so I promptly opened a separate blog space. Unfortunately that space is sorely neglected

Every day morning this would be the conversation at the UTBT household.

Me: Kanna, What have I packed for lunch?
Chula: Chula names all the stuff I have packed.
Me: What should you do?
Chula: Aachu pannu. (I must eat it all.)
Me: Because……?
Chula: Amma worked hard on my lunch.
Me: And…..?
Chula: You will be so proud of meeeeee!
Me: And…..?
Chula: You will be so happy of meeeeee!
Me: What should you bring back?
ONLY the lunch box.
Me: Should you throw food in garbage to bring back empty lunch box? (I wasn’t giving her ideas. She being MY daughter*, I was just covering my bases to make my statement water tight.)
Chula: No, thank you we don’t do that. We eat the banana flesh and throw ONLY the yellow skin in garbage. We eat cheese and throw only the cover in the garbage.

Same dialogue is repeated one more time in car. This time with specific questions like, What do you do to chapathi? Should you bring it back? Should you throw it in garbage? So on and so forth.

This dialogue also had my chithi(aunt) in splits. She was rolling on the floor laughing because it reminded her about the roadside shows where the person performing the show asks his assistant, ‘Vaa yindha pakkam(Come here)’ , ‘Vandhen(Okay, here I am)’. ‘Ayya yenan vechurukaru? (What does the gentle man have?)’, ‘Panam vechurukaru(He has money)’….

Coming back to the point, at the end of all this yap, yap, yap, yappity, yap, yap, yap, the food came back untouched. I let it slide by for a week. Hey, the child has just started school, may be she will start eating once she settles in. I would pick her up at 3.00PM and feed her the contents of her lunch box in the car.

After couple of weeks I asked her teachers what was going on. They said that she was busy socializing and how much ever they keep reminding her that she MUST eat, she just goes yap, yap, yap, yappity, yap, yap, yap. Also, once she told the teacher that she is ‘SAVING’ her lunch so that she can eat it in the car with her mom (*Please allow me some time to finish rolling my eyes.*) and suggested that I stop feeding her in the car at 3.00PM. Now, this is a child who left home at 8.00AM with just a cup of milk. Yes, she takes two whole hours to drink 8 ounces of milk and there simply is no time or patience in me to make her eat breakfast. (The morning drama is a post by itself!) I cannot not feed her at 3.00PM. At least to save myself from a cranky Chula I have to do that. I told the teacher that this is not an option and the vice simply must be tightened on her at lunchtime. The teacher said that she would do special arrangements.

So dear Chula sat right next to the teacher in a smaller group (lesser the kids lesser the distraction) and sometimes subtle threats like, ‘Do you want to eat or sit in a table by yourself?’, ‘Do you want to eat or go to the infants class to learn how to eat?’ and emotional black mails like ‘Chula, mommy got up at 4.00AM to make this yummy food for you. You are not respecting her work. Please eat.’ were administered.

At the end of all this food patterns are still highly erratic. I have superstitions like:

If I send food in green lunch box, it always comes back untouched.

Oh, she finished her milk in half the time she usually takes, so she will not eat her lunch.

She usually loves this food. I am so confident that she will finish it, so she will decide not to eat it today. (One day cheese pizza came back untouched and I got the shock of my life.)

I equally dread the days she finishes every bit of her lunch because, on those days she would come home and throw up continuously till the next day morning. OMG!

Anyhoooo…. all excitement associated with lunch making and packing has subsided and I have settled in to a boring humdrum.

Mon: Chapathi, string cheese, dry raisins and nuts.
Tues: Mac and cheese with broccoli and carrots, dried blue berries.
Wed: Spinach kuzhi paniyaram.
Thurs: Bagel chips, snap peas, tofu, nuts and dry fruits.
Fri: Idli, fresh green beans, peanuts.

B……O…….R……I……N………….G

PS
* Separate post on how the apple does not fall far from the tree.

45 days. 1080 hours. 64800 minutes. 3888000 seconds.

That’s how much time I had on my hands between the end of my fall 2007 quarter and the beginning of my spring 2008 quarter.

Well… let us say I was going to sleep 10 hours/day….and I was still working part time 12 hours a week…..effectively I had 462 hours. Plus my aunt was going to be visiting for three weeks. Which translates to me not entering the kitchen and not picking up any cleaning accessory of any kind. Plus I decided not to blog, read blogs. So I had undivided 462 hours on my hand.

What can one do with sooo much time?

I could enroll in couple of fast track, 4 days a week, four hours a day classes. Naah….Tooo many things to do at home. So I made a list.

1. Read a whole variety of books to the kids.

2. Read a bunch of books for myself.

3. Take the kids to the snow.
(For a long time now, Chula has been longing for the snow. Not that she has ever been to snow. She read about Curious George’s skiing adventure and since then, she would pick tow rectangular pieces of paper, put them on the floor, stand on it, bend her knees, drag the paper with her feet and walk around the house yelling, ‘Amma I am skeenking. Amma. Look at me.’)

4. Arrange a conference with Chula’s teachers to find out how she is doing at school.

5. Paint the house. I was getting tired of the monochromatic walls. Ugh.

6. Sort out some finance stuff.

7. Take my aunt to LA.
(A Crazy plan was hatched. Over the weekend we would all drive to LA, hubby would come back the next day. The rest of us would stay back for four more days and after sightseeing I would drive us all back. The plan was duly scratched due to extreme weather conditions and the kids running a temparature.)

8. Sort and clear paper and cloth clutter.
(Well, de cluttering along with ‘Talk more Tamil at home’ were kind my new year resolutions.)

9. Arrange the environment in the kids’ room.
(I wanted ‘montessorize’, if I may coin that term, the room. Nothing fancy, but arrange the things they use in a easily accessible manner, hoping they would learn to play more independently.)

10. Register for courses for spring 2008. Order text books from ebay.
(Is some one asking if buying books is a chore? Do you know how expensive text books are?! I watch ebay auctions for a month or so and pick up text books at unbelievable prices. Personal best, bought a $90 book at .99 cents, of course I had to pay $4.00 for shipping.)

Now the break is over and I was revisiting my list. Not bad….not bad at all.

6, 8 and 9 are untouched. God help me.

4 went great.

I just pushed myself and finished 5 yesterday. Yay. Picking colors…. had a tough time doing this. If I had my way, I would have gone with vibrant colors. Hubby threatened that he would not come home. So a quick compromise was reached.

2….err…. sort of. Picked up Namesake, Sister Of My Heart and a whole bunch of child development books from the library. Midnight oil was burned to finish Namesake and Sister Of My Heart. As for the child development books, they have been renewed to the maximum and still sitting at various locations around the house! BTW, I was very impressed with Namesake. Jumpa Lahiri has done an awesome job describing the process of identity formation of an individual from an immigrant family. Will do a separate post on that. Sister Of My Heart….eh….I have to think more about this. I was confused by Mistress of Spices, then a friend said that the whole thing is an allegory. It represents the turmoils of an immigrant and it all made sense. Trying to see if SOMH means something deep.

Reading books to the kids. We would have read atleast 60-70 new books from the library. Every evening after their shower and snack, I would ploink down on the couch for reading time. Mieja would run around and fetch a handful of her favs and park herself on my lap. Chula would nestle herself between me and the couch and we read for at least an hour. Now Chula picks the books she wants to be read, neatly arranges them on the center table, arranges a cushion on the couch(for my back) and calls out to me, ‘Amma reading time. I have everything ready. You sit here, like this. You put Mieja on your lap like this. Okay read now.’

Snow. That was so much fun. Chula was pretty excited. She wore all the ski gear and called herself an ‘astronaut baby’. She made snow man, snow Ganesha boombi daambi yaanai (for some reason this is what she calls Ganesha. I have no clue why! ), rolled around in the snow. We strapped rented ski boots on her, but apparently young kids do not get ski poles. This upset her and she decided if there are no poles, there will be no skiing and kicked the shoes away. Just before we left she did some imaginary skiing with the poles she found in the cabin where we stayed. Father and daughter were walking around with poles in hand screaming, ‘Ski. Ski. Ski. We are skiing.’ As long as she didn’t have to touch snow, Mieja was kind of okay with it. Normally she would have thrown away the boots, cap and mittens. But she was weighed down by the weight of all the stuff. So she decided to sit quietly on a snow tube and managed a smile or two when were dragging her up and down the slopes.

As for 10, managed to enroll in three clases for this quater. Books are bought. Jan 28th was the first day of the quater. Schedules were handed and looks very doable. Provided I continue to get up early every morning and spend time doing assignments instead of blogging and blog surfing. Now that requires some restraint huh?!

Thus ended the break. My aunt has gone back to Boston. Poor woman needs a break from the three-week backbreaking work she did on her ‘vacation’. Now it is just us, the kids, our work and my classes. Life is busy, but good

Okay what will you do if you had 45 days…1080 hours….64800 minutes…..3888000 seconds and no cooking on your hands? Show me your list.

…THE PLANNING…

Me: Hey girl, how old are you?
Chula: I am two. I will be threeeee!!!
Me: Okay, what do you want for your third birthday?
Chula: I want to be a butterfly.
Me: Okay….
Chula: I want cake and candies and ice cream and presents….
Me: Okay….
Chula: I want to come and celebrate me, sing happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, then I blow the candle and eat cake.

Yes! Yes! Yes! This is exactly what I wanted. The quarter would be over, papers done, grades published, with holidays fast approaching I was in the mood to throw a party. Just the thing I wanted to do! And she gave me some thing to work on – BUTTERFLY, her recent fascination, craze, obsession, interest…. She practically had me eating me out of her hand. Except for the ‘presents’ part. This gifting and re-gifting business was eating me up. So I decided to make it a gift free birthday. IF the guests felt awkward about the gift business, suggestions were made to donate the gift amount to a charity or to their library’s giving tree and send the good will as the gift. But Chula now knows that birthdays and gifts go together. She does not care what is inside, but just gets a kick when some one hands her a gift bag. So it was decided that hubby and self buy couple of toys/books, wrap it, display them at the party and bring them back.

With the theme and guest list handed to me, I had venue, food, decoration and cake to care of. After a little research I found this early child development center close to home where they agreed to do some activity for the varied age group children who will be coming to the party. Butterfly easel painting, play dough activity, (paper cut out) butterfly hunt, followed by art activity where the kids made a garden scene with the butterflies they found in the hunt and some circle time/parachute activities for the younger children. The much older kids were to be given ownership of conducting the activities.

I had read a lot about this particular bakery where they bake a mean Guava cake. They infuse few other fruits along with Guava both in to the cake and also in to the icing. By chance I had it in another birthday party and decided Guava cake it is! I picked a butterfly cake picture from the internet and asked this bakery to pretty much copy it. So cake was done.

Food was going to be simple – order pizza, make couple of appetizers and bow tie pasta at home. I also baked some butterfly shaped cookies as return gifts.

…EXECUTION…

Planning done. Supplies bought. Cooking completed. Things packed. Guest arrived. Kids ran wild. Cake cut. Small talk made. My younger one painted every single plain sheet of paper she could get hold of. At any given point of time the older one was found jumping/smiling/running/rolling from various locations! So were the other kids.

…HIGHLIGHTS…

The one birthday I decide no gifts, our family was gifted with the best gift any one could ever wish for. As an added bonus, it was a surprise! What more can one ask for?! Few friends made an audio CD with the voices of their little ones – all wishing my Chula a happy birthday. While the party was in progress, they played it in the CD player for all of us to hear. The puzzle was for me to match the voice with the cutie pie. I spent the day after the party playing and replaying the CD, figuring out the puzzle. It was lots of fun.

There were special wishes for Chula, from you all in ‘Circle Of Happiness’ and in my comment space. Thanks a bunch guys.

Cake was A-mazing. People had thirds and fourths. At 10.00PM, I was sitting on our couch, busily licking the whipped cream from the cake board and was certain that come next morning 10.0AM, I was going to the bakery and get a 6 inch round Guava cake all for myself.

…INTERESTING…

The parents were okay with the ‘no gift’ clause. But the kids were uncomfortable. I was told that the minute they heard the words birthday party uttered, they declared, ‘Wow, I want to go. I want to take a NICE gift for Chula’. Apparently the little ones were not quite happy that there would be no gifts. They insisted that they bring something to give birthday girl and Chula received a Kit Kat, a box of cookies, plenty of birthday cards and a cute little hand painted wooden butterfly!!

…AND SOME PICTURES…

…AND RECIPES…

Cheese on Ritz crackers

This was the inspiration for the next appetizer. I shaped the rolls in to a butterfly shape. What started out as a healthy looking butterfly ended up as not so healthy and not so looking like a butterfly after I baked them and cooled them off. Also the topping was my own creation, 8 tbsp low sourcream, finely chopped green onion, finely chopped red bell pepper.

Bow tie pasta

Ahem…..aaaa….. Hmmmp…..Uuuummmmm…….I don’t know…….Lifting eye brows….Shaking head….looking listlessly at the ceiling……
Never had so much starting trouble since my communication theory paper. Seriously.

I have always considered the my wedding very unromantic and typical. The thought only aggravated after reading all the engagement mush that circulated on the blogs. The Green Sulk Club was formed. For more details about GSC, our history, motto, how to apply for membership and point of contact, please read Tharini’s introduction.

There I was busily sulking away and Dotmom tags me on the engagement story. Quite frankly there isn’t much to write about. The horoscopes matched, my elder SIL dropped by one evening to see me, after the seal of approval was issued, boy meets girl, gets engaged and they get married after eight months. I tried my best to get out of the tag, but DotMom was relentless. She wanted me to write about the most mushiest momemt of our married life. I discussed with the co-members of Green Sulk Club and we decided to take up this tag. Tharini requested I write a little bit about the engagement. So here is the typical south indian engagement story and the mushes after that.

On the D-day (May 21, 1998) R came with my MIL, his two sisters and their husbands. A very cozy affair with 6 people from R’s family and only the immediate family from my side. I was wearing a salwar, which was ‘noted’ and ‘mentioned accidentally’ on a much later date . Some one in the audience suggested that the bride-to-be and the groom-to-be talk privately for a few minutes. I had anticipated this and had cleaned up my room on the earlier part of the day. But the privacy the majority had in mind and managed to give us was, R and self sitting in the living room and the rest of them sitting in the dinning area keeping and eye (and an ear) on us.

R asked me what I think about the wedding and I replied something insane like, ‘If it is okay by my father, I am okay with it.’ (Blaaahhhh, I have never been the person who come up with intelligent answers on the spot. 24 hrs later I would have the best quip, best answer to any question. But the moment would have long gone!). The engagement was to be conducted on May 29, 1998. A few minutes after R and his family stepped out of the house, our telephone line went dead. So our chance of us catching up over the phone went down the drain. During the numerous visits my father made to their house in planning the engagement details, a request was placed to my father, asking his permission to take me with them (R, his two sisters, mother, four nieces and nephews) to the tamil movie Jeans. My father promptly refused saying that it is not appropriate since we weren’t even engaged. God, I don’t know why he did that?!

In the 8 months of post engagement time, there was the biweekly phone calls. But hubby’s voice kind of wanes after sometime and I for the fear of being pronounced as ‘hearing impaired’ if I ask him to speak up every five minutes, settled in to a pattern of ‘Oh – okay – ahha – ooooh’ at periodic intervals. Long story short, I am still discovering all the things I said ‘yes’ to. Hmm, the letter…I must mention the letter. I used to send him pictures through snail mail and one of his snail mail replies was 10 pages, double sided, hand written with about 15 lines per page. That letter is one of its kind, still puts a smile on my face. Now a days it is mostly one line emails – ‘Refinance done’, ‘Are we attending this b’day party?’, ‘pick up diapers from Costco’.

What made it trickier was that hubby reads my blogs and is not too keen about me writing personal details on my blog. After reading my tag posts about My quirks, My dreams, Middle Name Tag etc he commented that off late my posts have become ‘too weird’. I became defensive and of course we had a fight. If he objects personal details about the kids or myself, I could brush it off, but if it is something that involves him, I have to be civil enough to accept his feelings about it. Right?! So I enlisted his help.

Me: R, there is this tag about the most mushiest moment in our 8 years of married life. What do you think it is?
He: Ummm. What do YOU think it is?
Me: I can’t think of any.
He: Ooohooo. You mean we don’t have any? Okay I want it mentioned in bold, big fonts in your blog that, ‘We have two kids and still feel there is not even a single mushy moment in 8 years’.
(Here it is R, it is mentioned. I am a lady of my words.)
Me: Don’t digress. What do you think is the most mushiest moment? I asked you first.
He: What about the time I swept you off your feet when I took you to that French restaurant? Wasn’t that romantic? We ordered soufflé and we had fun. Right?
Me: (Desparately trying to recall the French restaurant) Ummmmm….Okay next.
He: Next–a? What about the top of the Eiffel tower?
Me: Naaaahhh.
He: What about the first time we met?
Me: Che che. (After a minute, my face brightening up). Oh, so WHAT did you think the first time you saw me?
He: No. That moment is gone. Nothing. What about it? You are imagining things that I didn’t say.

Truth is we both had some memories under the ‘romantic’ tab, but they were so different that will make a neutral third party observer to suspect that we are not married to each other.

From my memory, I have few significant instances. The one most, utterly, incredibly nice thing he did for me was hike with me up the Kilimanjaro. I like to travel. If I make plans to visit a place, I like to do a extensive trip under the following two assumptions: (1)The world is going to be destroyed and I simply HAVE to see every inch of this place. (2)Okay the world is not going to be destroyed, but this would be my first and last trip to this place and I simply HAVE to see very inch of it. According to hubby I have the special power to turn a vacation in to a hectic ordeal, after which he needs to take a vacation (without me, of course) to recover from the first vacation. I some how managed to convince him to go for an African safari. For reasons unfathomable I felt we had to do the Kili hike. I put my fundas, convinced hubby and roped him in. Now, hubby likes certain things, relaxed sleep in a warm and cozy bed, his morning coffee, reading his news paper sipping his coffee, simple and healthy but good food, a long jog/run, doing things around the garden, if possible a nice afternoon nap, watch some silly stuff on TV. He is a creature of habit, we are talking about a person who had the same cereal for 4 years, every single day in the morning! He threw all that out of the window. He trained for months, took vaccines, medication for altitude sickness, drank water from streams in which we added chlorine tablets to kill germs, ate what was put on the plate, woke up at insane hours in the morning to start the hike, walked with me enduring my instructions and at times alone, slept in the A-huts along the Marangu route with three layers of clothing to escape the biting cold and frost…..beeeecaaaause, I wanted to do it. All this, for ME.

Right after surgery, I was lying in post-op busily sulking away, filling up my mind with as much negative emotions as possible. The one thought that stabilized me was ‘what hubby would do all alone?’. Then I started thinking that we need to be there for each other which led to the thought that ‘this too shall pass’ -> we may never have children, but we for sure have a purpose in life -> how can I leave without knowing my purpose? Convalescing at home, I would wait all day for him to come back from work and crash on the couch with him. Kind of felt right.

If I am the ship that wants/tends to wander away, he is always the lighthouse. The ship has never thanked the lighthouse(never will in direct words, read between the lines R and thats it ), in fact most of the time thinks that the light house ropes her in from all the wonderful adventures the mystic sea has to offer. Our characters and personalities are as different as the ship and the lighthouse – one in water, ever dancing, going up and down with every wave, always wanting to move and fluid – the other firmly rooted on land, unrelenting, not bothered by the lashing waves, but always there. But they belong to each other.