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.

Continued from Resilience In Children.

Children of today need to learn to be resilient. Why? Not because there is going to be a war tomorrow and the child’s survival depends on how resilient he/she is.

In general the world is becoming more and more competitive. Is it just me or does every one notice that more and more children are getting insanely good scores…I don’t know, something like 295.7/300 and still miss out on their dream college? Is it just me or does every one notice that the kids who come to singing competitions (the Indian equivalent of American idol) are getting younger and younger? The other day at my friend’s palace, in SUN TV I saw this 9 year old girl competing with a bunch of other girls (who were also young but at least their ages were in two digits) and the judges pronounced the verdict, ‘Voice needs to mature’. This really made me think. Were the parents and the music teacher pushy or did they really believe that the child could do it? Should the judge appreciate the attitude of this 9 year old child and appreciate her for that or should be open about the comments? What about Kutraleeshwaran? He was simply one of ‘the best’ in long distance swimming. But had to give it up because of lack of sponsorships. There is no dearth in the number of people sponsoring sports persons, but unfortunately in India, if you are a cricket player in the Indian team you make it otherwise, ‘Sorry pal, tough luck’. Oh, don’t forget the spelling bees, geography bees, math olympiads (and what nots). Initially what started out as a fun way to inspire children has now been turned in to an ugly circus show, thanks to sponsors, TV coverage etc.

Coming to the point, children are now in positions where they face far more rejections, than we did as children, at a much early age. So they need to be resilient to handle life and to realize that life is much more than being recognized by ‘the whole wide world’.

To some children resilience comes naturally. Those children who are independent, make friends easily, take leadership roles, persistent at a task without showing frustration can be called resilient. This does not mean that a slow to warm up child is going to have a tough time, because resilience can be conditioned through the child’s experiences and environment.

Model to build resilience

Unconditional love, consistent care, recognize the need for independence, be there for the child, expose the child to other loving people are some of the things we already do and it greatly contributes to increase resilience in children. But I like the way it is broken down in to three categories, makes it simpler:
(Source: http://resilnet.uiuc.edu/library/grotb95b.html#chapter1)

I HAVE
* People around me I trust and who love me, no matter what
* People who set limits for me so I know when to stop before there is danger or trouble
* People who show me how to do things right by the way they do things
* People who want me to learn to do things on my own
* People who help me when I am sick, in danger or need to learn

I AM
* A person people can like and love
* Glad to do nice things for others and show my concern
* Respectful of myself and others
* Willing to be responsible for what I do
* Sure things will be all right

I CAN
* Talk to others about things that frighten me or bother me
* Find ways to solve problems that I face
* Control myself when I feel like doing something not right or dangerous
* Figure out when it is a good time to talk to someone or to take action
* Find someone to help me when I need it

What can parents do? Practical tips.

* Help your child form trust bonds outside their home turf. If there is a good friend or relative who is willing to baby sit your child or take her to the park, do not hesitate and worry yourself with questions like ‘What if my child cries’, ‘Am I troubling this friend?’, ‘Is it really necessary?’.

* Introduce negative events in a positive light. Refer to this post by Mnamma. She has done a wonderful job of introducing death to M and N in a positive light. This is called positive cognitive processing. It teaches them there are some things that cannot be changed, redone. It teaches them sometimes, certain things like death happens, it is the work of nature, there is no one to be blamed for this. It helps them to accept the negative things and see the positive in the negative.

* No matter how little your child is, give her some safe work, that she/he can do by her/himself. In our house, Chula and Mieja help me unload the dishwasher (after I have removed sharp cutlery and glass objects, the dishwasher is all theirs). When Chula was 16 months she used to help me transfer clothes from washer to the dryer (I was in my third trimester and was finding it difficult to squat down in the miniscule space and transfer clothes to the dryer, so it worked great!). If they spill water, I give them a rag cloth and they clean up the water mess (of course, I have to put the finishing touch, but it gives them gratification that they have accomplished something, teaches them to take responsibility for their actions and last but not the least gives me a sense of ‘getting back’ to them!)

* Teach them it is okay to ask for help. Teach them to give their 100% in what they are doing but also teach them that giving 100% is not the same as doing a huge chunk of work all by yourself and suffer.

* Teach them your family’s values. Tell them that as parents you have high expectations on them, but also make them (and yourself) understand that expectations are not a list of to do things for the child. Expectations are just what a parent thinks a child can accomplish, it is a goal for both the parent and the child to achieve as a team. Tell them clearly that you, as a parent, will give as much support and guidance as the child wants/needs to meet the expectations.

* Last but not the least FAITH-RELIGION-SPIRITUALITY. I know some of us haven’t sorted out how to introduce religion to children. Personally I feel it is easier to introduce my own path inclusive of all its traditions and ways of doing things and festivities/celebrations to my children. But if you are not a believer yourself, make them aware that there is a higher power and give them a way to express their spiritual needs. Spirituality and religion are important for resilience. It helps in times of crisis and stress. It also provides coherence, faith, purpose, stability, and a positive attitude.

We all think of children as flowers and treat them like an extremely delicate piece of ice sculpture. We fuss if they skip a meal or two. We feel absolutely helpless when they are sick. Change our entire TV/movie habits so that our children are not exposed inappropriate content. Watch what we talk in their presence. Worry if a new routine (like the mother going back to work/child starting school or day care/siblings) would scar them for the rest of their lives. All parents have an in built reflux that wants to reach out and wipe away all their child’s misery. But are they really that delicate? The truth is children are pretty resilient. Much resilient than what we give them credit for!

I was reading about Dr.Mario Capecchi, co-winner of 2007 Nobel Prize for Medicine. His incredible contribution to genetics is inspiring and brings hope to those who have complicated diseases running in the family. But what really left me speechless and set those wheels in my head turning was his childhood.

Dr.Capecchi was born in 1937 out of wedlock to American born Lucy Ramberg and an Italian airman who was later reported missing in action. His mother was anti-fascist and was sent to the Dachau concentration camp when Mario was just four years old. His mother had expected this to happen at some point of time, so she had liquidated her assets and had left the money with an Italian agricultural family and had made arrangements for the family to take care of her son. Mario still remembers the day ‘they came to take his mother away’. Unfortunately the money ran out in a year and the family could no longer take care of the little boy. This five-year-old child was left in the streets to fend for himself. For four years this child begged, stole and managed to survive on the streets of war ravaged Italy. After the war his mother, who had somehow survived Dachau found him in a hospital, malnourished, all skin and bones and mother and son were reunited. After the boy regained his strength, which took him a year owing to chronic malnourishment, they moved to United States. In the US, the boy was sent to the third grade. But he could not read or write English, Italian was his only means of communication. His teacher came up with a wonderful method of communicating through drawings. What words couldn’t accomplish, a piece of paper and pencil did. The boy slowly learned English, was soon elected the leader of his class, thanks to his street smartness, did his BS in Antioch College, successfully completed his research in biophysics in Harvard and is currently the co-chairman of the department of human genetics in University of Utah.

If asked to list the factors contributing to Mario’s success, I would say resilience, happy childhood till his mother was taken away, his mother’s role in his life, his teacher.

RESILIENCE
I have a few theories on resilience, just my ideas, haven’t found any research data to back it up.

*I personally think children are born with resilience.
*The degree of resilience varies from child to child – the early childhood experiences contribute to this varying degree.
*Resilience is strongly linked with self-confidence.
*His degree of resilience is a strong indicator of supreme intelligence.

As is, it must have been an abnormal experience to be the child of unwed mother in 1937. Also his mother taking an active part in the anti-fascist movement must have definitely thrown a new set of variables in to the equation. To be able to see through times of distress and keep the mind focused on the logistics of what has to be done rather than succumbing to fear – all this in a four/five year old?! To what extent a four year old could have understood and absorbed the complex social and political turmoil? Maybe the child’s innocence must have been a protective factor. Especially in social situations involving his mother’s unwed status.

HAPPY CHILDHOOD
Mario, as a child must have had wonderful, healthy, happy and enriching experience in the first four years of his life. His mother must have made him felt welcome and given him a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment. Those four years on the streets, when everything was working against him, when thousands and thousands of children died because of starvation and violence, the only thing that must have kept this child going must have been the resilience provided by the happy moments in the first four years of his life. Every time he was faced with something terrible, he must have focused on the happy moments, invoked his patronomus and some how managed to survive it.

HIS MOTHER
Mario’s mother must have been one strong lady. Holding a political stand even if it meant going to the concentration camp, surviving Dachau, looking for her son in every hospital in Italy with the hope of finding her son, amazing!

HIS TEACHER
Not but not the least, Mario’s teacher definitely demonstrated a sheer stroke of genius. This must have been one violent kid with deep survival instinct, with the kind of experience that no other third grader in his class would have had, not able to communicate and she did not give up on him. She got through to him by communicating through pictures.

Some interesting links:

About Dr.Capecchi
http://capecchi.genetics.utah.edu/capecchi.html
http://science.monstersandcritics.com/features/article_1363551.php/Profile_Mario_Capecchi_from_street_child_to_Nobel_Prize_winner

About resilience
I was doing a little research on the net and found that teaching children resilience is now becoming a ‘movement’!

http://www.voicesforchildren.ca/report-Nov2003-1.htm
http://resilnet.uiuc.edu/library/grotb95b.html

Tagged by Aargee and Mnamma.

I am the mistress of dreams. I have elaborate dreams that would put even the greatest director/story teller to shame. Well, I get the dreaming gene from my mother. The amazing thing is she remembers her dreams very well for a very long time and she takes her dreams very seriously. “I dreamed about this in the early morning. If it had been in the night, it would have been okay. Since it is early morning I am worried.”* Now a days her frequent dreams** are – I am 2 years old and I am sitting in my paternal grand parents house. She walks from the kitchen and sees me playing peacefully. She sits down next to me and I suddenly morph in to Chula, then all of a sudden I turn in to Chula and Mieja.

At times Chula wakes up in the middle of the crying or she would just toss and turn in her sleep mumbling something or those days she wakes up in the morning and would tell me something totally bizarre like, “Aammmmaaa why did you jump like that. I said no in the sand pit but you went to the swing”, I wonder if dream gene has been successfully passed on.

I remember some of my dreams. Some I don’t even know I have had them. Some I forget as soon as I wake up. But there are five significant dreams.

(1)I am sleeping and suddenly I remember that I have one more engineering exam that I haven’t taken. Getting my degree completion certificate totally depends on it. It is either the ‘Probability and random variables’ paper or ‘Communications’ paper or even worse, both. I panic because its been so long since I had attended the classes. I don’t have text books, class notes or study materials. Even with all those I used to stumble and depend on luck, now what am I going to do. It is a choking, constricting, fearful feeling that almost makes me cry. Then I wake up and find that it was a mean, bad, rotten dream and go back to sleep relieved.

(2)The venue is always the same. My college, just behind the main building, on the way to the Electronics department, right in front of the mechanical department. It is 10.10 AM, every one is in class, I am all by myself and realize that in my hurry to get to class, I had forgotten to wear clothes. I have to run back to the hostel to get dressed. But I am trying to figure out how to do it without any one seeing me. Then the worst thing happens, the class bell sounds, students of all years, of all departments are pouring out of all the buildings and they are all headed my way. I am surrounded, but no one has seen me yet, they are busy discussing among themselves. I am contemplating if I must hide myself behind the three inch thick tree(??) trunk that is on my right. What about the my rump? Nothing to hide that(as if the three inch trunk would hide my full frontal nudity, imagine the logic in that!). Or may be I must pretend that every thing is normal and casually walk to the Electronics department, nodding to a few friends, with a puzzled look about all the excitement. Then I wake up.

(3)I am sleeping and suddenly there is this uncomfortable void in my mouth. I open my mouth to feel the void and all my teeth fall out of my mouth. I am shocked but console myself that technology has improved so much that I can have false teeth and no one will know the difference.

A variation of the dream is, I am at a party. I feel an ache in one of my teeth. So I touch the aching point and ‘phat’ the stupid thing falls off. I feel another tooth pretty loose, so I touch the loose tooth and it falls too. Pretty soon i am standing in the party with a plate full of freshly harvested teeth.

(4)I am walking down the stairs. The stairs is something in a palace, it curves up to the top floor, there is a huge dome on the ceiling, the banisters are made of highly polished oak wood. The steps are of white marble with a rich velvety red carpet. I am wearing something nice and feel on the top of the world. There are a bunch of well dressed people standing and socializing at the foot of the stairs. They notice that I am coming down the stairs and start smiling warmly and talking something nice about me among themselves. I am smiling, waving, nodding, feeling welcome, proud and I am almost at the foot of the stairs, I put my foot down on what I think was a step, but there is nothing there. So I miss my balance and fall down.

The variation of this is I am walking off a cliff and forget that I am already over the edge. So I stop in mid air, realize my stupidity and ploink down. Just like in cartoons.

(5) The whole village is flooded, there is a absolute mayhem. I am standing on some piece of land and watching the water rush by and sounds of water and the cries of people and domestic animals is overwhelming. I see our temple priest rowing a makeshift boat. After a few minutes there is a big tree branch that floats by and there is a big serpent coiled in the tree branch.

The first four dreams I have had since I was in college. I have been clear of these dreams in the past three years. A dream interpreter would say that these dreams signify shame, vulnerability, fear of being exposed, insecurity, doubts about transition.

The fifth dream – I have had it only a couple of times – the fourth week of my pregnancy. It was the exact same dream when I had conceived Chula and it was a replay when I had conceived Mieja. I don’t know about dream interpreter, but one of my dear friends made a bunch of PJ’s out of the dream 🙂 My MIL swears that every time there is a birth announcement in the family she dreams of a snake!

These are just the night time dreams. Day dreams are a completely different story 🙂 I would start off thinking how nice it would be if there is a small breakfast nook in the kitchen -> sometime in the not so distant future, the kids could sit and do their homework and I could keep an eye on them while getting dinner ready -> what if we knock down the wall between the kitchen and dining area and add a island with bar stools around it -> then a set of recesses lights would look great -> may be we could knock down the wall on the left hand side of the house, open office room and make it the formal dining area -> while we are at it, we might add an extra room, loft and kids room upstairs and get the whole house up to shape………. Mind races at the speed of light sometimes even faster 🙂

Good news, yay! I am done with all my tags.

* It is a belief that early morning dreams come true.
** Now a days she wakes up with this dream every single morning! Then she spends an hour looking at my baby pictures, Chula and Mieja’s pictures and videos. This is pretty much her suprabatham.

Quirks tag from Choxbox.

(1)You can call me a digital circuit. I am either ‘1’ or ‘0’. There is absolutely no in between. Every day, every minute I swing from extreme to extreme.

By the frequency of my posts(which is sometimes up to 3/day or once in three weeks J) most of you must have guessed this already.

I either spend every waking moment cleaning the house or let it rot for days together. I either cook 30+ dishes a day or can’t stand the thought of cooking for weeks.

I have either taken care of my body very carefully(regular exercise, regular yoga, no fat, no sugar, just fruits and veggies, low carb, high protein diet to the extent of having power goos and Odwalla protein shakes for a meal) or have dined on a couple of boxes of chocolates.

I either fold clothes with a precise method to the extent of being called obsessive compulsive or leave piles of clean laundry all over the guest bedroom.

You can find me sitting on our couch, sprouting roots, refusing to step out of the house to even look at our own backyard or hiking the Grand Canyon or the Kilimanjaro.

I am either perfectly(purely perspective 🙂 ) groomed or like the whole of last week, walk around with different earrings – a dolphin in my right earand a fish inmy left ear. What started out as an honest mistake, turned in to laziness which made me convince myself that I was making a statement.

I used to remember the most itty bitty details and now, I can’t even remember which is my tooth brush and which is hubby’s brush. Every morning I stare at the brushes for a few minutes and work out a little color coding memory strategy(Red starts with ‘R’, so does R’s name. So Red is R’s brush, therefore yellow is mine. ) If hubby gets a new brush, I am in soup. Soon will come a day when I will have tatoos on my body to remember trivial details like this and you can call me Ghajini.

(2)I have zero money managing skills. My only concept of saving = not spending + having a big wad of money in a purse + looking/counting it from time to time. Every month I put the spare nickels and quarters in a ziplock and think that I am saving a H.U.G.E amount of money. I can’t keep track of the checking, savings, IRA, roth, 401K, retirement, NRI, NRE, custodial accounts. The more the money is split in to multiple accounts, I think they are being lost in the system. I prefer them to be at one place, if possible under my roof, right in front of my eyes. So one fine day if you read about “the crazy lady who kept all her life savings under her bed and counted it every day…” in the newspapers, look no further friends, you have found me!

(3)I love to organize. Even to arrange books on my bookshelf, I make a flow chart of my organizational pattern, then add sub categories, put sub-sub categories, add a child to every sub-sub category……finally end up confused, frustrated and unorganized. But I don’t give up, I start from scratch and can do this for years!.

(4)I can’t say ‘I Love You’ to any one except my children. I feel absolutely funny doing that. I can put it in writing, but I can’t speak those words J:) friend of my father, a dear dear man, 70 years old, lives in the east coast, calls me every month with immense fatherly affection and he always finishes his call with the words, ‘I love you sweetie pie’. I just dread that moment because I go blank, then deliver an embarrassed chuckle and say, ‘Bye uncle, take care’.

(5)I don’t like to tag people. I have done it a couple of times, but eventually stopped doing it because sometimes I feel like I am obligating people! Another reason is, I do my tags after an eternity and by that time every one else in the blogging world is tagged and the tag would have gone stale!

(6)Okay, you all know me pretty well, always shooting for an extra point 🙂 When I give the girls their bath(yes, yes, yes. I switched them from AM baths to PM baths so that I can do it.) I tell them to close their eyes while I apply ‘payatham maavu*’ and inadvertently I close my eyes tightly.

* payatham maavu – Powdered whole moong daal. Usually mixed with turmeric powder and is used bathe little kids.

I was tagged by Poppin and Noon….and here is my post before any one else tags me for it 🙂
I do not have a middle name(who in India does?), so here is something for each letter of Chula dn Mieja’s name. Also I am not tagging any one, don’t beat me up 🙂

The three rules to be followed are:
a) The rules must be mentioned in the beginning of the tag.
b) You must list one fact that is somehow relevant to your life for each letter of your middle name. If you don’t have a middle name, use the middle name you would have liked to have had.
c) At the end of your blog post, you need to choose one person for each letter of your middle name to tag. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

CHULA

C-Chocolate cake hmmmm….yummmm. She takes a bite, smiles so wide that her eyes are all crinckled, rubs her tummy in a circular motion and says ‘hmmmm…yummmm’.

H- Hates it if I am pouting(either because I am focusing on something/making mental plans/my patience is being tested by the two kids ) this is what she does. Makes me sit, sits on my lap, gives me a hug, holds my face in both her hands, pulls the corner of my lips stretching my lips to a smile and says, ‘You be happy amma. You do like this only amma.’

U-Understands Tamil very well, but refuses to speak Tamil.

L-Loves to read books. If there are words/letters printed on a sheet of paper, you have her attention. Does not matter whether it is a children’s book or an uninteresting advertisement flier. She loves to lie down next to me with a book, pull the comforter all over herself. She starts the routine by telling me, ‘(pointing to her book)This is my project, (pointing to my book)this is amma’s project.’ She would read(from memory) her book from cover to cover, toss it aside and cuddle up to me asking, ‘Othay, now what are you doing? How is your project coming? Is this Barty book?(I was reading the Bartimaeus trilogy by J Stroud) Tell me all about it.’

A- Always slow to warm up. But once she settles in to the groove, she wants the fun to not end.

MIEJA

M – Master of mischief.

I – Independence is her middle name. This one wants to eat by herself and I am fighting her because I am scared of the mess. But I am loosing.

E – Easily wakes up from sleep. She is a light sleeper. Even a small noise, she immediately wakes up, stands holding the crib railing, says ‘Ayyo'(her version of Hello) and fishes for a reply. I pull the comforter over my head and pretend that I didn’t hear the ayyo.

J – Jumps(without taking feet from the ground!) and shakes her lil’ tush and dances for the song ‘Vaadi vaadi’ from Tamil movie Sachin. In the middle of the song, the female voice says “Speed eethu mamu”(meaning dance fast), so she has some fast and sassy moves for that particular bit.

A – A shower calms her down pretty quickly. Chula used to be, and still is, a screamer. I have to invent new strategies to get her to shower. But little Mieja is a water person. When she was a new born, she would fall asleep on my/my mother’s legs in the middle of her shower. We used to get very scared, stop and check if she is still breathing. My mom and I were very used to Chula’s screaming that a quite child made our imaginations run wild!

Updated to add: Anitha had also tagged me for this. If any one else had tagged me and I had forgotten to mention, please holler and let me know 🙂

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?

This is nick names tag by the wonderful Tharini.

From Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, 1594:

JULIET:
‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.

Google reveals that, this is Shakespeare’s ‘yidakkaradakkal’.
YI-DA-K-KA-RA-DA-K-KAL, tamil grammer term which signifies the situations when you are pulling some one’s leg by talking highly of them and viceversa. Typical example that was quoted to me in my eigth standard: A king(K1) who is fairly inexperienced in war has recently declared war against a king(K2) who is a war veteran. A Tamil poet, after inspecting K1’s infantry tells him, “Wow, your weapons are all shiny and new, where as K2’s weapons are all coated with blood and mud from the hundreds of wars he has participated in”. K1 gets the hint and decides to go for a diplomatic settlement. The poet points out K1’s lack of experience by sweet words and K2’s chivalry by putting him down.

How much ever my roses smell, believe me they can get unbelievably offensive, all the nicks they have is purely out of love! Most of them are common for both my roses.

Mottai, mottai boss(Both the kids were called this by hubby when we had shaved their head)
Kanna(Hubby, my father, my mother for both the kids)
Pattu, Pattu chellam (My MIL for both the kids)
Chinni pattu, Pattamma, pattani, chinna pattani
Kutti, kuttani, kuttamma
Kannu, kannamma
Kanne, maniye, karpagakiliye
Annakili (Out of the blue called Chula this when she was born and my mom tells me that my great grandma used to call me by this nick!)
Rajaathi
Chellam
Chinaani, chamathaani

Weird it may seem, purely out of 100% love I swear 🙂

Erumai maadu, silly girl (Exclusivley for Chula)
Pettai rowdy, Pisaasu, loose kutti (Mieja special)

The songs are mostly on-the-spot kind of things. Mieja says ‘Agooo’ and I sart singing ‘Agooni, kuttani, woonda pattani’ to the tune of the nursery rhyme that happens to jump to my mind.

Now, the interesting part. Chula has some nick for us.
She used to say ‘Appa, you are a princess’. The poor man tried to make her understand that he is no princess….may be a hulk…. a warrior…. a MAN…something with an ‘Arrrgh’, some one who has no ‘foo-foo’ in him. But she kept persisting that he is a princess. His essense would just revolt every time she called him ‘princess’. After days of struggle one fine night, as he was putting Chula to bed, she said, ‘Appa, you are a princess’ and the poor soul accepted defeat and said, ‘Yes baby. I am a princess. Whatever.’ Now she calls him princess no more! She now calls him ‘Appa-boy!’. Re-enactment of no-boy, arrrgh-man scene takes place every no and then.

Chula calls me ‘kitty cat’. The cool cat I am, it sits well with me. She also calls me ‘Amma-boy’, ‘Amma-girl’ and ‘Silly amma'(especially when I am doing some silly dance for/with her).

Chula calls Mieja as Mieja. She hugs her little sister and goes, ‘Oh, she is such a cute baby sister’.

Mieja does her own share of name calling. Out of pure frustration, especially at the times when I am trying to shovel food in to her mouth, calls me by my name and says ‘NO’. She does not stop with that, she also pushes me away from her, and hold her little palm in my face, just in case I didn’t get the message! Mieja would suddenly drop whatever she is playing with and run to Chula and hug her. Such suddenly surges of affection is accompanied by ‘Assshu daaayaing huhchumaadul’ and the likes of such, which I am sure translates to ‘Oh, you are such a cute big sister’.

But whatever silly name we are called by, we always answer to the call, even if we don’t always agree with the names. 🙂

Updated to add: Memory is still poor, how could I have forgotten this??!
Mieja is also called
‘Vaalu'(Literal translation ‘tail’, means the naughty one ). Even Chula says, ‘Nee seriyana vaalu’.
Kutti monkey
Kozhukattai(means dumpling, owing to her chubbiness)

Both kids have been called chappai mooku(meaning ‘flat nose’. God, it took almost 6 months for their nose to raise!)
Both were called ‘Achunoo’ by my first SIL.