Okay, now to Chula’s quirks, tagged by Tharini. I made a list, like I always do for anything and everything and the quirks went on and on and on. I have short listed five.

1. She prefers that my thali(mangal sutra) does not show. In the early mornings, just after I have woken up or if I am rough housing with the children and my thali is outside my shirt, she come to me and says, ‘Amma, you do like this(putting my thali in my shirt). Here, you have your chain like this only. Okay?’.

2. She has a fixed bed time routine.
*Brushing teeth,
*Washing face,
*Diapering(diapers only during night, she says, ‘This is my thoochi thaachi(meaning sleep time) diaper amma. No underpants.’),
*Climbing in to the crib by herself,
*Check if the ABCD flat sheet is in the crib, lie down and hug red teddy bear, covered with safari animals quilt(the animals must face out and the quilt HAS to be upside down), Then be covered with her favorite pink blankie (‘now you put pinkie like this amma’),
*Me singing ‘I love you love me’ song from Barney, me singing ‘a laa thee, you laa thee’ (the same I love you Barney song, the way Mieja sings it),
*Kiss on the face,
*Sing songs for Mieja, kiss mieja goodnight(even if I had already done this for Mieja or if Mieja is already fast asleep, I still have to do a repeat performance),
*Me saying ‘Good night sleep____’, she chimes in ‘tight. Don’t let the beb bugs bite.’,
*Me walking out saying ‘Hasta Manyana’(see you tomorrow in spanish),
She chimes ‘bye amma’.

*waiting to catch my breath*.

If one small thing in the above mentioned routine changes, then hell hath no fury like a little Chula scorned!

3. She hates it if some one leaves. She has almost never said goodbyes to people. But as far as things and places go, she has to say bye-bye otherwise there is no closure. She says ‘bye-bye zoo’, ‘bye-bye park’, ‘bye-bye paste’(She has to say this to her empty tube of paste and has to throw the paste in to garbage container herself. Otherwise she will be rolling on the floor crying ‘I want yellow paste. I no want pink paste. Pink paste is for Mieja. I want yellow duckie paste’)

4. She associates lots of things with their color instead of what the thing actually is. My white crib, Mieja’s brown crib, appa’s orange car, amma’s white car, orange Montessori school (I have no idea why the school is orange), white straw, brown cake. Sometimes if she does not know the object then it is just ‘I want purple’ and by the time I figure out what purple things she is requesting->asking->demanding->rolling-on-the-floor-crying….God help me!

5. After she saw her friend A (the Fremont A twin), wearing a bandaid on his boo-boo, she demands a bandaid on her real, imaginary and likely boo-boos. I obliged for a few days and then laid down the ultimatum that there will be band aids no more. So she treasures the very last band aid she got, which was 10 days back! It is on her knee, she takes good care of it and gives me precise instructions. When I am pulling a pair of pants on her, it is ‘You do it carefully amma, no pants on band aid. You do slowly and safely like this, okay?’. When I am giving her oil massage/applying cream/giving her bath it is, ‘No, no, no. Not on my band aid, okay? You put oil like this and then you do jump on band aid like this and do like this, okay?( rubbing her thighs, then taking her hands from her legs, placing hands below knee and rubbing from below knee to ankle)’. What is with kids and bandaid?