Talking in Tamil
Chula: Mom, Dad, look at that car.
Me: Chula, dhayavu seidhu Tamil-le pesen. (Meaning: Please talk in Tamil)
Chula: Amaa, Appa, look at that car.

Drawing
She makes me draw hippo, giraffe, antelope, cockatoo…etc. I consider my self an artist and I have a few Tanjore paintings under my belt, but come on, all these on a doodle board? How can I show difference between antelope and gazelle on a doodle board.
(Chula looks at my drawing and shakes her head disapprovingly.)
Chula: Ammmmaaaa, I said giraffe.
Me: Chuuuuula, this is a giraffe.
Chula: Are you sure?

Barney
She asks me to put Barney and the times I oblige, I like to limit it to one episode. Even if it is a back to back video recording I stop after one episode. All this assuming that she does not know the difference between telecast and recording.
(Me switching on Barney)
Me: Chula, remember one Barney, okay?
Chula(pointing to VCR): Amma, you put this, this has 1,2,3,4 Barney.

DirectionsHer sense of directionis improving! If I turn right from our street, she asks me, ‘Amma, kovil(Meaning: temple)’. If I turn left sh asks, ‘Amma Target?’. So if I say that we are going to target and make an U-turn for a quick stop at the library she starts water works and wails, ‘Amma, no go home. Go only Target.’

My hood
While driving I pointed out to the buildings around our house and told the kids, ‘See, this is a fire station, this is a post office, this is a library, this is Target, this is bus stop. We have all these in our neighborhood. We also have parks, hospitals and temple in our neighborhood.’ I happened to be in the intersection in front of the library at that time. So every time we drive by the library, she screams at the top of her voice, ‘Amma, look this is my neibohud’.

Every thing has a name
She plays with the closet door in our bedroom and the sliding door just hangs from the railings on top. Hooks that are used to hang the door on the railing are kind of tricky. They come of easily and the doors are heavy. So every time she goes close, I warn her, ‘Kannamma, that is dangerous. No’. The other day, she was playing with the night bulb and I told her ‘Kannamma, that is dangerous. No’. She said, ‘No Amma. (Pointing to closet door) This is dangerous’. So we have a closet door called dangerous!

Okay and Too
She has picked up Okay from me. If I ask her to do something she says, ‘Amma, I chew, chew swallow bread and then drink waadel(water). Okay?’ Every sentence ends with ‘okay’ or ‘too’. ‘I go to market too. S aunty come to my house too.’

Rubber duckie and donut
This is what she calls her right and left butt cheeks repectively! Ha! Ha! Ha!. She was pointing to her nose and was calling it her head and goofing around. When she pointed to her ear, I teasingly said, ‘Yeah, that is a donut’, she said, ‘No amma. (Pointing to bottom) This is my donut and this is rubber duckie. Okay?’

Helping me socialize
When I come to pick her up from school, she screams to all the other kids in the sand pit, ‘My mammy come. My mammy come. Brendan this is MY mammy, Reese this is MY mammy, Victolila(Victoria) this is MY mammy, Skylar this is MY mammy….’ If the kids are busy playing, she walks to them, taps them on their shoulder says, ‘Excuussee mee, I said this is my mammy. My mammy come. I go home with baby sister. Her name is Mieja.’ Then she come to me and says, ‘Mammy say bye bye to babies’. I can’t say a common bye, I have to call each kid by name and say bye, if they are busy playing, she expects me to walk to them, say excuse me (this is very important, she is very particular about my manners) and say bye. Also I have to say, ‘Bye Bye, Oreo, I love you.’, to the school’s pet rabbit.

One of those days, last week I swung from 1 to 0. There I was sitting at school and discussing in class, voicing my opinion, getting my papers back, beaming over the fact that the professor put her hands on my shoulders and said, ‘I am so happy that you are in this class. You have some great ideas. I loved your papers. Can I have a copy of it for reference and can I use it for my other classes?’. Naturally, I was in cloud nine. I come home, pick up the kids and look at them from this huge self created pedestal only to fall face down, break my nose and end up crying all curled up in fetal position.

None other than the great Mieja is capable of waving this kind of magic. Well, she screams. This has been going on for quite some time now. Screaming is how she communicates and I have to interpret the scream in to – ‘I want water’, ‘I want water in pink cup’, ‘I want the white straw also, don’t give me just the cup’, ‘My sister is touching me’, ‘My sister is looking at me’, ‘My sister is looking at that toy that I might want to play few hours from now’……etc. There is no pointing, no action, just a plain, high pitched screams. I have to interpret what the scream means, which is purely trial and error, and by the time I get an idea of what she wants, she screams again to let me know that ‘What took you soooo long dud? Now I don’t want it any more’. It is not easy.

Initially the screams bothered me, but I thought it was funny. When the day care provider told me that Mieja screamed so much that the children at day care complained that it was too noisy to sleep and didn’t sleep – thought it was kind of cute.

Then I was concerned but I was patient. If, I guessed that she is screaming for water, I kneel next to her with a cup of water, hand it to her and tell her, ‘Amma thanni venum, please’ (meaning: Amma can I have some water please). So that she will learn to communicate using words. Has absolutely no effect on her. Some times made me wonder if her hearing and speech is in order. Well the kid passed the new born hearing screening, she does respond to her name, when some one standing 25 feet away from her speak the word Barney she immediately points to the TV, when I say A-M-M-A, she repeats it. So she can hear (**Sigh of relief**) and can talk (**double sigh of relief**).

Last week, was bad as in B.A.D. From 4.00PM to 7.30PM it was screaming every 45 seconds. At some point of time, she closed both her ears with both her hands and was screaming as if she has a headache hearing her own screams. I just couldn’t take it. I tried distracting. She didn’t want to read books, she didn’t want to be left alone, she didn’t want to be with us, she didn’t want to be held, she didn’t want to dance, she didn’t want to listen to her favorite songs, she didn’t even want to watch TV. And with another child to tend to there is only so much I can do.

Chula was carefully absorbing all this like a sponge and an hour in to this madness, started screaming to get attention. A one minute lecture about using words and not succumbing to peer pressure did the trick and thankfully she stopped screaming. But she was very keenly observing my reaction to the screams and started imitating me – she did the grinding the teeth, rubbing the fore head with both the hands, closed her eyes and shook her head disapprovingly, went to her sister and said ‘N.O…S.C.R.E.A.M.I.N.G…. I.T…. I.S… N.O.T….. F.U.N.N.Y’ enunciating every syllable very clearly. She did all my routines better than me myself. Then she came to me and asked me with a curious expression, ‘Well, amma, is Mieja going to get a time out?’. I didn’t give Mieja a time out although I seriously considered hitting her with an intention to cause her pain and fear.

I was going mad. As with any good mother the bad guilt took over – Is she in pain? Is she desperately trying to tell me something and I am so dense and not getting it? What was I doing wrong? May be I must have read to her more. May be I must have talked to her more. May be I must not have had her in the first place because I was clearly not doing justice to both my children. May be I must have had some one from India staying with me because I don’t seem to be doing so well on my own. What kind of mother was I even to think of hitting her with the intention of hurting her?

In the middle of all this mess, dinner time arrived. After an hour I was sitting with a plate half full. Only because she spit the other half on my face. Then I did something I have never done with Chula and something I would have never done normally. I changed her diaper and put the child down in her crib without getting some food in to her. People who know me know that me giving up on the children’s food is a BIG thing for me. Thankfully she willing curled up in her crib. I spoke to her for a while about how this nonstop screaming is affecting and upsetting me. She has to use words or at least point to things. I had tears streaming from eyes as I was talking to her. I don’t know if she understood but was at least calm and made eye contact. Then she squeezed her left hand through the crib railings and put her palm on my teary cheek, with her right thumb safely tucked in to her mouth.

One week update: She is trying to communicate.
Cuukie – Thokki(Lift me)
Wayye – water
Awwa – Agua(Water in Spanish)
Affane – Elephant
Taakkie – Doggie, sometimes for any animal or bird.
Tukiee – Duckie
Haanswish – What’s this? (Please don’t ask me the connection. She points to pictures and says haanswish. Even now it is a wild guess that haanswish translates to What’s this.)
Peen – Plane
Atthhi – nethi(Means forehead in tamil)
Aishhhee – icecream
Oon – Moon
Mine – This was probably the first word in her vocabulary. Her day care provider says that, she picks up a random toy, walks to every child in her day care, thrusts this toy in to their face with a fierce ‘MINE’.

Chula observed that I am enunciating words to Mieja and is trying to do the same. The kids were sitting at the dining table, I was getting their dinners ready. Mieja pointed to something and said ‘haanswish’, before I could respond, Chula chimed in enunciating the words ‘B A L L’, ‘C L O W N’…etc and read the whole book to Mieja!

She is trying to repeat what ever I am telling her.
Me(Pointing to stop sign): Kannamma, that is a stop sign. That’s why we are stopping.
Mieja: Saap shaish

Sometimes Mieja screams and then puts her right index finger in to her mouth and says ‘Shhh-shhh-shhh’.

Hope the streak continues.

Day: Oct 15 2007

Two little butterflies sitting in the Sun,
One flew away and then there was one,
Butterfly butterfly happy all day
Butterfly butterfly fly fly away

What is this song?
This is a song from Barney. This was the song that I was mentally singing as I was driving Chula to the first day of her S.C.H.O.O.L. Yes, she is officially now in Pre-K.

What was playing in the car?
The song Vaadi Vaadi Vaadi from tamil movie Sachin. Chula and Mieja like the ‘dabbanguthu’. I am okay with it because I think the lyrics are okay and I must admit this song has taken our houshold by storm! If you make an unannounced trip to our home any time between 5PM-6PM, you will hear this song blaring from the laptop and the crazy mom and the two kids dancing to this song.

What was she wearing?
Her new blue denim capri from, flower embroidery over the right thigh. Pink turtle neck shirt. Purple fleece jacket. White sneakers. Two adorable pony tails.

What was she most excited about?
Her lunch bag. Shocking pink in color. She was holding on to it and was giggling every time she touched it. I think the lunch box was her primary incentive to go to ‘Montessoly school’.

What did she eat for breakfast?
Puffins cereal with milk.

What was she going to eat for lunch?
Grilled cheese sandwich – her favorite, watermelon – her absolute fav, carrots – hmmmm we are working to get it in the fav list.

All the above she requested for lunch when I was talking to her the previous day about school, the new routine, new lunch routine etc.

End of the day, only water melon was polished off, the rest was shoved in to her mouth in the parking lot.

Where is she schooling? Why this school?
A wonderful Montessori school close to home. Its been around for 15 years. I really liked it.

A friend asked me, ‘So did you analyze the pros and cons of all the schools in the Bay Area and finally picked the best of the best?’. I did analyze (and at times over analyze) lots of schools and listed pros and cons, but the intention was not to pick the best of the best. I toured this particular montessori and loved it, kind of love at first sight. I thought that my kids will thrive in this kind of environment. So listing the pros and cons of other schools was more for justifying my decision to hubby and myself.

Apart from the usual Montessori concepts I have seen implemented in other Montessori schools, they have some practical concepts like
‘Peace Table’ – if kids have an argument, a teacher takes them to a corner and
teaches them how to talk it out.
The kids are taught to be responsible for the environment. The school itself does not use diapers or any disposable things. So if you bring a child in with a diaper, the diaper is substituted with a cloth nappy by the teacher at the class room entrance.
Every kid is assigned a chore – clean up outdoor toys area, mediating sand box disputes, feeding the school pet etc.
Not to waste resources – They start with food. Be it the class snack or the lunch the kids bring, the kids are taught how to respect the food that is put on their table. (This is one of our families values. So this alone was enough to impress me.)

I also saw these concepts working! When I was touring the school, it was snack time. This little three year old boy, picked up his place mat, picked up a banana and before slicing it for his snack, went around asking all his classmates, ‘This is a big banana. I can’t finish it all. I don’t want to waste the rest. Will you share half a banana with me?’. And it was not an isolated incident. I saw a little girl asking if some one would share a slice of bread with her. I mentally gave these little kids a huge hug. I took Chula for a school visit, she was playing in the sand box and another child snatched the toy shovel from her hands. Chula started crying, would not accept any but a ‘YELLOW’ shovel. A little girl came to her and said, ‘Don’t be upset. You can talk to B and tell him not to snatch. If you want only a yellow shovel, you can have mine. I am more or less done with it.’ The she went to B and said, ‘That is not a nice thing, she new here and you can’t upset her on her first day.’ I have seen these little warriors armed with appropriate weapons cleaning/feeding/organizing the toys/instructing other kids to leave their shoes in an order…etc.

How is Chula taking to school?
I expected her to be head over heels excited on the day of the visit. Kind of hesitant on the first week, adamant that she hates the new place and wants to go back to the old place in the second week and settle down in the third week. Wham, bham, smack on target so far. End of week one and she now says, ‘I no want to go to Montessoly school. I only want M(her day care provider) school. Amma, you send Mieja to Montessoly with Appa’. 🙂

The day before first day of school.
Chula and self sat down and packed the things she needs to take to school. I let her pick out what clothes, blankets she wants to keep in her cubby at school. Also showed her her new lunch bag, lunch box, nap time pillow. She kept asking, ‘All this for meeee? Oh, thanq thanq thanq Amma. I like pretty new pink shoes’.

I felt like crying. There was this huge lump in my throat. I kept visualizing this child to go to a new environment and applying all she learnt about survival in her day care to the new school. She is going to make new bonds and meet new people. Her brain is going to be working hard in writing and rewriting new schemas. When put in to words all this sounded like a lot of work and more like an adult thing. But my barely three year old is going to do this! Made me very proud! A mother thingy.

The one thing that was more difficult than picking out the school itself
Finding school accessories. All I wanted was a cutsey kiddie lunch bag, nice fun back pack, pillow and a blanket. Why does every single kids product has to have a commercial cartoon character on it? It was ‘Jojo’ the elephant, ‘Thomas’ the train engine, ‘Barbie’ goes to school, ‘Dora’ the explorer, ‘Hello Kitty’, ‘Disney’ princesses. Phlueese, something without a ‘name’. I had no choice in the one store I went and not much time to raid lots of stores. So I picked out a regular adult throw pillow, plain fleece blanket, plastic containers for food and plain rubbermaid sipper water bottle. I scratched the back pack idea and decided to recycle an lunch bag that was lying around.

What I found most disturbing?
I was touring a school and was asking if they have regular monthly visits – from firemen, cops, music presentations etc to stimulate the child and she said, ‘No. We try to limit that kind of stimulation. Long time back, homes gave children stability and schools provided the stimulation and excitement. But in present days with the busy working schedule of parents, single parent family life style and many many more factors, schools provide the children the stability and familiarity they need. So we have only two presentations a year.’ Sadly true.

This is pretty much a summary of what Mieja is doing at 15 months.

Wants me to be exclusive – Mieja was always side lined because when there is an older child in the house that tends to happen. But this one is no shrinking violet. She knows her way around things. She knows how to get the things she wants and when to pick her battles. If she wants to be carried, she will first scan the room to see what I am doing. If it looks like it is hard to get my attention, she will look who else is around, then analyze who is more likely to lift her, will run to them, wrap her little arms around their knees, lift her heels from the ground and say “Ummm”. By no means it is a request, the “Ummm” is a command. If I am the only adult at home and I am doing something with Chula, she will wait till I am done with Chula and will come running to me and sit in my lap/ask to be carried. At that time if Chula comes back to sit next to me or even stand with in three feet of me, Mieja gets mad. She will point her chubby fingers at Chula and will complain. The next step will be pulling Chula’s hair or pushing her away. Finally if nothing works, if I try to convince her that both of them can sit in my lap, Mieja gets up and walks away. Sometimes she engages herself in something, but at times she is REALLY mad, she would plop down against a wall and give me a cold stare. *Shudder*.

Action – She actions for a bunch of nursery rhymes. She can recognize Wheels on the bus tune anywhere. If she hears Barney tunes some where, she squeals with laughter. If she catches me picking up the remote, she drops whatever she is doing, runs to the TV and jumps up and down – of course with both feet planted firmly to the ground, because she thinks I ma going to switch on Barney. Chula has taught her to say ‘Barney’(Oh it was cute. I was sitting at a tire shop to replace the hopelessly damaged tire of my Honda Odessy. Mieja was on my lap and Chula was standing with ‘Family Fun’ magazine. She picked Mieja’s right pointer and placed it on Barney’s picture and said, “Mieja yidhu Barney. Sollu Barney.” And Mieja repeated “Baayee”. Aww I smacked myself for not carrying a camera 24X7. )

Dance – The last CD I burnt at home was Ghajini. Usually it is some nursery rhymes or Hindi varnamala or Kadri’s sax that plays in my car and I am so lazy that I would rather listen to the same CD for months together than invest 30 seconds in to changing it. I tried catching up on Shivaji songs and it is a huge hit with Mieja. Especially ‘thee thee’. She stood by the laptop looking at it intently, shaking just her butt, till the song got over.

The happy helper – If I open the dishwasher, she will come running to help me unload it. There must be no time lag between she handing over the dish and me picking it up. If she senses a millionth of second delay, then she licks the dish. Every time she hands me something or I give her something she says ‘Thenth thoo’. The dishwasher was a trip down nostalgia lane. Chula used to do the exact same.

Words – Few other words she says, amma(ofcourse), appppaaa, thaaath(thatha for grandpa), thaapi(patti for grandmother) and aththa(akka for elder sister).

Hi – If she is looking for me, after she find me, she smiles a wide smile waves her left hand and says a soft ‘hiiiii’.

Misc – Last Tuesday the sisters had a huge falling out over a container of moisturizing cream. Mieja butted in and started snatching the cream and Chula started screaming. I got tired of explaining sharing and I bribed Chula with chapathi dough and roller. I was curious what Mieja wanted to do with the cream. She put it on the center table, pumped a small bit in to her left plam(!), rubbed both the hands together and massaged it in to her head. That she repeated for a zillion times. Then walked around with the nozzle in her mouth, holding both her hands behind her back. After 20 minutes of this she decided to come and snatch the chapathi dough from Chula. I separated the fighting siblings and gave Mieja another ball of dough and asked her to roll it and Mieja said “RRRrrrrr”, apparently she is a bit confused with hr Rs and Ls. She thought I asked her to roar. So she held the dough in her left hand and “RRRrrrrr”ed it every time I said roll.

This one wants to eat by herself, sleep by herself, walk by herself. May be soon she would want to drive by herself!

If she sees me with a diaper bag, she religiously drops whatever she is doing, opens the shoe closet, grabs her shoes and sit down on the entry way with her feet stretched and shoes to her chest. Once I put her shoes on and open the door, she is the first one to run out and on the way to the car she sabotages all our plants.

This is a very philosophical discussion. Some say that sound is defined as the vibration of air as picked up by a human ear. Since there is no one to receive the vibrations there is no noise. Some say that there is a noise irrespective of a person being present or not.

My take on this is, is this even a discussion? Of course there is a noise. In tamil there is an adage, ‘Poonai kannai moodinal ulagam irundu poidadthu’. (Word for word translation: If a cat closes it eyes, the world does not go dark. What it means: Just because you block yourself out of something, it doesn’t mean that it does not exist).

In case you are all wondering why all this sudden spark on philosophy, it was something Mieja did. She is totally in to playing peek-a-boo. I kind of started the peek-a-boo thing for her. She was about 6 or so months, was able to sit in her high chair. But she used to hate it if I left her in her high chair by herself. Even if I had to grab a paper towel from the kitchen, she used to scream her head off. So I would walk to the kitchen door and say peek-a-boo, then would hide behind the kitchen wall, do peek-a-boo a few times, then quickly grab my paper towel or whatever that I was looking for and come back to her. According to her I was just playing with her, I was never gone. It is now a favorite game of hers. She would look at me, give me her most enticing smile, walk to the nearest corner, every now and then checking if I am still looking at her, disappear around the corner, then pop her head out and say ‘Ummm’. Some times she would pitter patter to the kitchen, stand clutching the doorframe and would sway her whole body from one feet to another simultaneously nodding her head from side to side. It is her version of peek-a-boo.

Three weeks back, I was washing my hands on the bathroom sink, she came running in to the bathroom, ran past me in to the standing shower stall, climbed in to it, clutched the corner and was playing peek-a-boo with me. Well the funny part was that, the shower stall was completely glass! So I laughed and said, “Mieja, I can still see you even if you think you are hiding.” She was just having a ball, she didn’t care.

But I started thinking about what was going on in her mind, does she even realize that if she can see me through the glass, I can see her too. The thought process then leaped on to ‘how much children learn and how fast they learn’, then to ‘how exactly that connection takes place in their brain’, then to the trees falling in Godforsaken places and finally ended up constructing a post around the bits and pieces that sparked in my mind. Okay it was not exactly a spark, more like dim sputtering light bulb.

Tharini’s post has affected me in many levels. I just couldn’t stop with a short comment.

First of all, her post is a window in to my thoughts. Second of all, though I feel the same way, I could have never put it down as eloquently as Tharini. Thirdly, I am not alone – that gives me a lot of strength to face the day to day battles.

This is something I have gone through with Chula, still do every now and then. Hubby and self even fear her in some ways. We have complained to each other about the pain of dealing with her when she is throwing a tantrum. She has been called feisty, rebellious, adamant, stubborn, opiniated and few other names in those lines by the people in our lives. I too believed that she is a stubborn child. When we are in the heat of the moment, when she is screaming at the top of her voice and behaving unreasonably all I want to do is lash out so bad that she is scared to behave the way she does. But a month back, sitting in a class discussing how to deal with toddler meltdowns, it came to me – I am creating a self fulfilling prophecy. By believing that she is stubborn, all my actions are based on that assumption and it only kept adding to the stubborn streak in Chula.

Another problem I had and still have though I am consciously trying to wean myself off it is individuating from Chula. For a long long time I thought and treated her as an extension of myself. You yearn to have a child, after such long time you are blessed with a child, you have such visions – the perfect diet, the perfect schedule, the perfect activities, the perfect toys, the perfect clothes, perfect, perfect, perfect. Well, striving towards such perfection only lead to tears and heart ache – both mine and Chula’s. I always assumed that I knew what was the best for her. When she deviated from my perfect plans, my whole world came crashing down.

Then Mieja came along. I have wondered if hubby and self were too quick to have the second one and by doing that, placed this enormous burden of being the big sister, being the responsible one on Chula’s shoulders. But in many ways my little Mieja has been Chula’s saviour and a real eye opener to me. With two little kids, I found that I can be involved in their lives only to a certain extent. If I sat with Chula perfecting everything to my liking and micromanaging her life, litle Mieja would be left all alone. In fact that was exactly what happened in the first 6 months of Mieja’s life.

In Chula’s first 18 months of life, not a single day had passed without me some how getting in to her system, her recommended amount of nutrition. I had personally seen to it. I had followed it even when we were travelling – of course she always threw up most of it after all the effort I had put in. Also she had never missed her nap time. If Chula protested, I used to get agitated that I am going through so much stress for her sake and she does not understand or appreciate it. As a comment to one of my posts Poppin’s mom mentioned that what we ARE as parents has more far reaching effects than what we DO as parents. It is so true. Controlling Chula’s life and perfecting it was stressful. I was this horrible schedule monster. At the end of all this, Chula might grow up to be dependent, unsure of herself and with a poor self esteem as a result of what I am and what I do will be completely lost. (Poppin’s mom that was a very profound statement. As I am writing this post I am seeing the statement in a very different light and all of a sudden all the layers and hidden meanings are unraveling!)

After Mieja’s birth I discovered that I don’t have the energy to maintain two such schedules! Also came the realization that it is not just enough that if a parent is involved in their children’s lives, but a parent must also know when to get involved.

I never had problems individuating from Mieja. I have never held her responsible for the expectations I place on her. May be I am experienced the second time around. Or I know that this is my last child and I either live up this moment or loose it forever. Or I realize that in the big scheme of events its okay if certain small things don’t fall in place. Or may be I am and will always see her a baby and am ready to cast aside the little stuff. Or may be just the lack of time. Or a combination of all the above. I don’t know.

Now a days I don’t sweat the small stuff. I don’t loose it if Chula does not finish her food to the last bit. I am totally against wasting food. So, I box it up, telling her that it is her food and that she must finish it later. The remains will turn up on her plate later the same day. Whenever there is a tantrum, I sit down hugging her, wait for her to cry it out and then talk to her. Most of the time, just the sitting down with her and hugging her itself does the trick. May be it makes her feel worthy and respected – I don’t know what goes on in her mind. Few of the times when the hugging is not enough and she is still sobbing, I tell her that I do not understand crying and that she needs to use her words to get her point across. She is just 33 months and is not able to do that. So I help her with prompts, ‘Are you sad?’, ‘Do you know why?’, ’What can I do to make you feel better? ’, ‘Do you know why amma said {this} and did {this} ?’, ‘Are you still sad?’…etc. I do this even in public places. I have sat down on street pavements, in the mall, parks, parking lots, public restrooms, amusement parks and today at the beach. There are times none of this works. In those times, I just walk away with Mieja in my arms (I know that Chula’s will definitely try whacking Mieja just to get to me and something holding this little bundle gives a sense of fulfilment ) because at those times I know for a fact that I will do more damage to Chula by being with her.

Am I doing the right thing? Only time can tell.

I am looking for a preschool for Chula. I remembered going through the same routine not very long ago, when I was looking for a day care for Chula. I was looking at my personal logs/emails on how Chula settled in day care and it was a trip down memory lane!

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Chula started a day care on Vijayadasami(Oct 2nd 2006). She is 21 months. It is a Spanish day care, home based, walking distance from home. There are 14 children including Chula. But all the 14 are not there at the same time. The good thing is that the children are in different age groups. So Chula will learn to cope up with children of all ages. Also the day care is busy all the time, so she is engaged in one way or another.

After one month of meticulous searching, I finally learnt a lesson – there will never be a place that I am completely satisfied with, no one can take care of my baby like I do. So the one with least cons will be the best place. Hubby and I took her on the first day. We had a big speech on the lines of ‘Amma and appa love you. We are not abandaning you, we will come back to get you….blah,blah,blah’. But the minute she saw the broom in the backyard, she wiggled away from us, didn’t even bother to give us a second look, she started raking leaves with the broom. Few minutes later she looked in our general direction, we got ready to deliver our speech. But she was looking past us at a ball behind us. She picked up the ball and ran away. I waited in my car, outside the day care for about 30 min and pushed off after confirming that she was alright. We never had a chance to give our speech. Just tore my heart to see that she didn’t need us any more.I went to pick her up after an hour. I could hear her screaming “amma, amma” at the top of her voice. It was lunch time and she didn’t want to eat from any one but me and hence the screaming. As soon as lunch time started she kept pulling her day care provider(M) and dragged her to the door, pointed to the door and kept repeating ‘amma’ itseems. Also when ever M tried giving her snack, she pushed it away and said ‘amma’ itseems! Yes, my baby still needs me. Yippee, yipee yay, yay! Wait a minute, what if she doesn’t eat at all?!!! I have to worry about something or I can’t sleep.

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Two weeks since Chula started day care, she is still getting used to the day care. The first two days she was quite enthused because she was in denial that we have left her some where. Then she realized that it is going to be a regular affair, there is a lot of screaming and crying. She is getting nightmares; she is getting get up screaming in the middle of her sleep, “amma, vannach, school all done, amma vannach, school bye bye”(Amma has come, bye bye to school). She is in day care only for three hours and she cries non-stop for the whole time! She pulls the day care provider to the door and says ‘amma, amma’ itseems.

She does not sit down anywhere in the day care. By sitting down she is acknowledging that she belongs there for half a day, so is up on her feet all 3 hrs! In fact her place for all the three hours is next to the door, against the wall. She has her lunch bag in one hand and her blanket on the other hand, she never takes her jacket off. When M tries to take her bag or her jacket off, she says, “No, no, amma vannach, school bye bye, me bye bye”(No amma is going to come and I am ready to go home, so don’t take my stuff away.). Can you believe it?

Today M said that, she disrupted kids who were sleeping. M is very nice, patient and gentle, but also concerned that Chula is not happy. Her exact words are, “Well, may be she is not happy. It tears my heart to see that she is crying so much and she is not eating anything. May be it is a little too soon for her. Let us give it one more week and take it from there”. I got a feeling that Chula is very close to getting kicked out of day care.

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Now, after three weeks she does not cry all the time, only when we drop her off. When I go to pick her up she cries a fake cry, her way of letting me know that she is not cool with us leaving her at some place! Finally after 3 weeks she sat down yesterday it seems. Big break through. M and self almost hugged each other and danced around in joy. Couple of days before that, she allowed her bag to be taken away from her. So looks like we have broken her will. But she still keeps her jacket on, blanket close to her, refuses to eat (not even a sip water) or go to sleep. She has cereal in the morning and by the time I bring her home, she is so tired that she dozes off and has her next round of food at 6.00PM. Hopefully she will start eating and sleeping there.

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4 weeks from the start date, Chula loves her day care. She keeps saying school, school. She is puzzled why we don’t take her there on Sat and Sun. She eats there and sleeps for couple of hours. She loves the bean burrito her day care provider makes. She asks for ‘peans’ all the time.

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Its been 10 months now. She calls M ‘mommy’ when I am not around. I am a little green about that, but…….what can I do? Also she speaks fluent Spanish and English. Tamil has gone down the drain though 🙁

About M, though I thought I settled, I couldn’t have picked a better place or person to take care of Chula. M has a masters in Math from Mexico. She worked as a high school math teacher. After coming to US, she raised three of her kids. Now she is majoring in Child development and Child Psychology, hoping to teach Early Childhood Eucation classes in a college/unniversity some time in the future.

It is now time to pluck this little flower and replant it in a new environment. Sad, but has to be done. Replanting depends on how potty trainning goes. So any tips on PT?!

I am in the middle of switching pediatricians. Well, the old doctor was close to the place where we lived 1.5 years back and I have been lazy and putting off changing pediatricians for soooo long. Eventually I decided to get it done. Also the old pediatrician was getting too busy to spend a decent amount of time during the appointments. Most of the time when I call him for an appointment for cold or rashes or fever, his standard response used to be,“Oh, don’t worry, you don’t have to come, there is a bug going on. Just give them plenty of fluids and they will be okay” What kind of response is this? The rash turned out to be chicken pox and the cold had already turned in to a nasty ear infection.

Any ways, found this new pediatrician close to where I live. Hubby’s cousin and another friend vouched for Dr.P. Yesterday was the first appointment with the doctor – just getting to know the doctor. I was briefing the doctor about how Chula and Mieja don’t drink milk, they are okay with yogurt, but they have a strict “NO MILK” policy and that they are on antacids for acid reflux. The doc tells me, “Wait a minute. May be they are allergic to milk. May be it makes them feel uneasy, that’s why they don’t want milk. May be milk is causing acid reflux, gas and fussiness. Acid reflux is just a symptom. Zantac treats the symptom. We must find the cause and treat it. Let us try Lactaid. Since it does not have Lactose, may be they will do okay. If not let us try Soy ”.

So in the UTBT household, we will be experimenting with organic Lactaid, Soy and the likes of it. Funny, how I never thought of this possibility. Even now I find it hard to come to terms with the possibility of lactose intolerance in Chula and Mieja. When I was young, I was exactly like them, I used to throw up every single meal and drive my mother up the wall. Some how when I turned 8 I grew out of it. Any how, keeping fingers crossed to a throw-up-free future, where everything in the house smells like….ahhh…not-throw-up!

Kids are doing okay I guess. Mieja has started on her next round of cold, which I am getting used to, so no big deal. I will do a special post(may be some kavadi and karagattam too) to celebrate the day she has been cold free for at least 2-3 weeks. Chula…I don’t even know where to begin! Well she is still complaining that her ‘tummy is hurting’, especially when she is being disciplined.

I am just wondering, apart from experience, how does one pick on the kid really being sick? Last week, Chula’s day care provider told me that Chula was sitting by herself in a corner the whole day and was not interested in doing anything. So I took her to the doctor. The doctor on call, after chiding me, (“If you are coming in with two children, both under three, you must bring some one along with you. Do not come alone.” Yeah doctor, now if you point me in the direction of the spare adult, I am all set.) pronounced that Chula is perfectly okay, may be tiredness and little of the stomach virus, but nothing to be concerned about. But this little girl is up for at least three hours in the night, it is either 12 midnight – 3.00AM or 2.00AM – 5.00AM, she screams, cries, asks to be taken to the bed with me, the minute I settle her down in the bed, screams that she needs to go to her ‘white crib’…you get the idea, I am sleep walking from the crib to the bed and back, carrying Chula. Instances like this makes me think that she is in pain.

But get a load of this:

I am cooking, Chula tugs my shirt, her lips are all pouted.

Chula: Mommy, I am sad.
Me: Why Kannamma?
Chula: Mommy, I am scared.
Me: You are sad and scared? Why?
Chula: Because my tummy is hurting.
Me: I am sorry that you are sad. I am sorry that your tummy is hurting. Is there something I can do to make you feel better?
Chula: Yeah…
Me: What Kannamma?
Chula: Can you put Barney?
Me: !!Speechless!!

…and this….

We are in the library, we are coming down in the elevator.

Chula: Mommy, mommy, what number must I press?
Me:Press 1, because we need to go to the first floor.
(And I bend down to pick up Mieja, meanwhile Chula not only presses 1, but also the alarm!)
Me: CHULA?! What did you do?
Chula, takes a scared look at me and falls on the elevator floor clutching her tummy.
Chula: Mommy, my tummy is hurting.

So I am really confused if she is still sick or major-ly capitalizing on our attention. Do I assume that she is all right and go about the routine or play nurse? Here I was sitting an dismissing Chula’s throwing up and aversion towards food as her regular stints, concluding that it is her acid reflux that is acting up and doubling her regular antacid, but it so turned out that she had a stomach thing after all! So if some one has a dose of veritaserum, please feel free to mail it to me.

One thing is for sure. Thanks to the night stints, she is developing a vicious circle, awake in the night, too tired in the day, sleeping during lunch time and throwing tantrums while she is supposed to play. Ahhhh….

Sorry for the long absence. Thanks to all those who sent concerned emails and comments. I had my finals in the last week of July. Then house guests – my aunt visited (I totally took advantage of her being here, camped on the couch and made her do all the cooking and cleaning!). Just after she left, Chula and Mieja fell sick – common cold, but lots and lots of throwing up. Even before the Chula recovered from the cold, she came down with a stomach thing. She was throwing up even water. She is still on non-dairy, bland food and she is already on round two of cold. Yep, she is moving on! I am just keeping my fingers crossed that Mieja doesn’t pick up the stomach bug. It wasn’t just work, I did get my share of fun in the middle of all this! Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – read it from cover to cover! I would have liked to revise The Half Blood Prince before I read Deathly Hallows, but, hey, I am not complaining. 🙂