brushy brushy baby

Honestly , I am not very particular about dental hygiene ....call it a bed-tea connoisseur's whim or laziness...but I brush my teeth once a day and that too since I have to .

But we don't let our mistakes and bad habits reflect on our kids; do we ?

So i started brushing Tish's teeth last week ...I was a bit skeptical since she didn't take well to bulb syringe and other fancy instruments that I have regularly pulled out to make things easier . I bought a finger toothbrush and approached her and with great deal of hesitation and inserted it in her mouth .

Huh ! she took to it immemdiately .

I guess its because her other teeth are sprouting and she wants her teeth brushed and brushed and brushed ... once i am done brushing she cries as she wants to continue doing it .

Seems this girl is not going to follow the dental laziness route like her mama

Those cute little pearls

And the baby has four small teeth now .....

crawling

The problem with most of the people in society is that they are always worried about others. Which is fine , really , as long as the worry is not based on comparisons.

 I hate comparisons...I have hated them all my life and have often done the opposite of what I was supposed to only because a comparison was made. That's why I decided early that I am never going to subject my kids to it ...no matter what .

But then...ah! the society .

After Tish recovered from a bout of dengue ...we kind of knew that she would meet her milestones on the later side.Which to me was fine since I am never bother about that milestone competition anyway ....but it irked me to no end when relatives would pop up with stupid questions like  , " Why doesn't Tish crawl yet ? My grandson has started running at 9 months ..." Well lady good for you !Please scoot out of my house and run around your said grandson.

So on her 9th month "birthday " , I was pleasantly surpised to  see Tish trying to crawl to a toy to claim it ..in my excitement ..I placed the toy here and there just to see her try to catch it while the lady in question got irritated with her mommies behavior and decided it wasn't worth all that work anyway .

Its a funny crawl..its like  how a serpent moves , supporting her body on her stomach ..whats called "pet ke bal chalna "....so long as she is mobile ...at least she would have fun .

Though the worry mongers have changed their  questions to "why does she crawl in such a strange manner ?My grandson used to ..... "

Flute Cut -Yo!

So it was that time again ....time to get Tish's hair cut .

Now before someone plans to get my goat... i didn't follow any customary mundan or take her to a temple for her first haircut ...she has hair like her momma that grows in all directions so I asked my MIL what should we do about it ...While the hairbands looked cute... the hair would still protrude from every nook and corner as if shouting ..look at me ! look at me !.
My MIL is a cool lady ..she said , " Apply your commonsense lady ,when hair grows, we cut it ."
What about Mundan,shagun etc..
" Aaj Eid hai ...must be a good day , ask your husband to cut her hair ..."

So that was her first haircut .

This time around though , it was difficult...The lady  is adept at throwing  her hands around and moves her head very swiftly ...the papa of the lady wanted to do the honours again since last time everyone went "aaawwww....kitna cute haircut hai kahaan se karwaya ".

So hubby started cutting her hair while i brought out my bansuri (I kid you not) and started playing to her ...she held her head straight and just looked and looked at me (and the flute ) and her haircut was a cakewalk ...
except for a few jiggy-jaggy hair which hubby could make no sense of and was too scared to cut since it seemed it was very near to the scalp.

So that's what its now ...flute cut ...seems next time I would have to bring out my veena .

All those chemicals

Its funny how becoming a mommy changes you as a shopper... earlier you would buy stuff thats latest,branded ..go to high end salons and purchase whatever those ladies would schlepp down your shoulder.You just didn't seem to mind. Life was all glitzy doo and you were a part of a seemingly-never-ending-soiree.
Not now.
Suddenly as a new mommy, you become aware of the dreaded word chemicals. you start searching for organic produce, look into ingredients of erstwhile innocous stuff like detergents, baby shampoos and pronounce them all scary. Then you scoot around the town to look for something which seems less vicious ..you go frantic with sanitizing and sterilizing .Some of us double sterilize and wash clothes with antibacterial detergents followed by dettol wash and go bonkers when babies still fall sick.
What's the solution , eh?
While i know my opinion might also be wrong , but I seriously believe a little bit of dirt is far less scary than a fistful of chemicals..so i try to go as natural as possible...use soap nuts/mild detergents for wash..sterilize but dont go overboard...try to use cloth diapers whenever possible . This idea may not be foolproof but at least my mind is at rest.
And i always read the ingredients..that way i get scary shocked to realize even some mouth wipes may contain parbens so i use washcloths instead...Its easy, and you end up realising that best things in life are usually very cheap.

grab the moment

This babycenter site is one big source of information ...and tension for new mums....is everything right with my bubba? the site says he should be sitting/crawling/walking by now ...why isn't he ? etc etc

The site said Tish should be grabbing things by now...but she didn't even show any interest in them...the only thing she wanted to bite were her own hands..I was a bit worried so I asked the doc but he laughed and said that I should stop worrying and it would come slowly by six months, and he disconnected the phone muttering something under his breath which sounded very much like "paranoid mums".

But today morning,when I placed her in her rocker I heard loud " brrrrrrrm" "brrrrrrm". I slipped into the drawing room only to find her trying to grab the toys on her rocker. They were a bit far so she was trying to scold them or probably call them;thus the sound ..when she wasn't able to,she got irritated and started shrieking. Amused, I strapped her rocker a bit high so that the toys came nearer...she was suddenly ecstasic and started munching on the toys like they were some delicacy.

In the evening when I returned from the office, a harrowed MIL recounted the events of the day. Apparently, our DD had shrieked and shrieked all day till everything was brought to her so that she could take her pick and munch the most colorful stuff....

Time to bring out the teethers.....

Oh my sleeping Child

The one who coined "sleeping like a baby " never knew what it was like getting a baby to sleep. I mean, you would think , that cute little angel would play , gurgle and fall asleep on its own , right?

Wrong.

Severely  wrong in my case.
If I go by Tracy Hogg" the baby whisperer" , Tish darling is a cross between grumpy and spirited baby . The endeavours that you have to make to get her to sleep are nothing short of gym acrobatics.

Initially ,she wouldnt sleep till you held her in your lap. Then some dedshana picked her up in his lap and roamed around trying to get her to sleep, so she got accustomed to that .
Soon she got a paalna( a swing ?) and started sleeping within minutes of rocking her to sleep. We were relieved .

But then I had to go and undo it all by picking her up once and dancing around the room . So that's what it takes to get her to sleep now. NOTHING ELSE WORKS.
And the song in the background has to be "babli badmaash hai " or "barbadiyan meethi lage aazadiayan "( sheeesh! so much for my attempts to get her to like chopin/beethoven).

If you think thats a fun way, imagine dancing at 3 am in the night to "babli badmaash hai " or " laila tujhe loot legi " with a grumpy child in your lap who starts crying as soon as you miss a single step. Nautankiii saalaa..................
And my friend says she ferberized her kid ...
I am ready to dance the rest of my like to "laila tujhe loot legi " but leaving my child to cry it out seems way too harsh.
So dear friends, if you dont want to see me dancing to these crude songs ...please either tell me "this too shall pass" or another way to get my kid zzzzzs .

Meanwhile , badtameez dil and ghagra via-arga aren't bad to dance to .

Monthly Milestones: Tish turns two

At the risk of sounding cliched(where's that accent aigu sign key when I need it ?) , I must say time flies. Today Tish is two months old. Here's the story so far :

25th Feb : Tish transmigrates from elysian fields to her transitory earthly habitation ( aka Max hospital noida)

28th Feb : Tish gets a grand welcome home in typical Indian style with Tilak and Thali .

3rd March : Tish's first traditional function ( called sonder in Kashmiri) is held. Tish sleeps through the whole function clinging to her papa like a monkey but still manages to get overstimulated, leading to whole-night-bouts-of-crying .

April,Ist week : Tish gets bored of smiling in her sleep and smiles at a human ( her granny ).

April , 1st week :Tish starts answering her granny with oohs and aahs ( Ma's still waiting for her smile ...grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!)

April ,2nd week : Tish takes pity on her Ma and smiles at her ( though Ma is still confused whether the smile was directed towards her or the nearby wall).

April , 2nd week : Tish learns a weird on-the-back crawl , where she manages to move herself from one place to another by pushing her bottom ( I seriously dont know what that's called)

April,3rd week :Tish turns two..................................



 

The Pacifier paradox

The day Tish turned a week old( technically, the night ) , she cried and cried and cried herself to sleep .
She cried 6 hours non-stop , where her frenzied parents tried everything from feeding,burping,changing, applying aeosphetida,crying along with her ...but nothing worked.
Next day someone dropped in at home ( you know, one of those people who have an opinion on everything under the sun)and suggested using a pacifier.
"Our cousin uses it , and her baby is the most well -behaved baby you ever saw"
Not bothered about well -behaving ( I never was well -behaved,why expect it from my child?)but seriously short on a shut-eye, I asked my hubby to get the miracle pacifier.

What he brought in looked like a colorful nipple.
"This is exactly whose idea of a pacifier? Is my child so dumb that she will take it for a breast?" I wondered aloud.
So when the witching hour arrived and baby started to wail, the pacifier was dutifully put into the her mouth and we closed our eyes, waiting for dreamland to engulf us.
All I could hear was gulp,gulp gulp.
I opened my eyes and looked at our baby. She looked like an angry waif who had been gagged forcefully ... I could almost swear that she would have cried ,if her tear ducts would have been functional.

"This dosen't look right " I said
" Don't feel guilty , she just needs to suck on something. That calms her.Thats why its called pacifier."

I looked at our baby, the anger in her eyes escalated;she spat the pacifier out and cried at the top of her voice.

" I told you she can't be fooled." I said drily, but that angry and helpless look kept hovering in my mind.

Next night ,even though my mind protested, we tried with the pacifier again and succeded.

In the morning, I woke up with a bad dream where I had gagged my child and she was crying for help while I  slept unawares.
That was when I  decided that the spurious nipple would never again go into my daughter's mouth . If she needs to be calmed, we will find another way .

Meanwhile, the said cousin visited our place.The way she kept putting pacifier back into her kid's  mouth made me feel like it would be better if she surgeried it to his face.

Everyone sees a successful mother in her, whose child is never in the lap and never cries.
What I see is a child devoid of his mother's arms' security,  his emotions curbed with a fake boob.

My child clings to me.If that's bad behaviour, I don't care . Like I said earlier,I wasn't very well-behaved but my mum loved me anyway. I will do the same.

She cries . I am human enough to understand that sometimes she might cry of boredom, but most of the times its for a reason.So I try to understand what's ailing her

Anyway, the good news is that she has learnt to self -soothe herself. She puts her whole hand in her mouth for a few seconds. So I think the war against pacifier can be continued.
 

Your Baby!!!!

Those few moments are brandished in my memory ...
I am lying on the operation table in a foetal position...chanting some kind of mantra in fear wondering how painful the dreaded injection to spine will be ...seems it's done and I am now flat on my back.
The  shadows around me are shouting to each other while I concentrate on the harsh lights above.. I can't feel any pain so the injection must have started taking effect..
My doc's shouting instructions to people around her..it must have begun ..
It seems just a few seconds later that I see someone rushing from the corner of my eye towards  my left  with a baby ...It can't be mine ..I think ...Its just been a minute , hasn't it?
The baby is being rushed towards a table where they force a water jet through her and she cries a hoarse wail .

And I am wondering whose child is she.
Split second later , a cherub is waved over my head
"Your baby ", someone says.
I am speechless.
They are waiting for my reaction .
"Is it a boy or a girl ?" I muster.
" See for yourself" and they remove the coverlet.
"Oh ! Its a girl" I hear myself say , and then I am lost in some kind of stupor.

Throughout that stupor I am thinking ...
" Now I am a mommy ...and I have a daughter..a new best friend ...I am so fortunate...we will share everything ...we will gang up against everyone...we will develop our secret language...we will play our own games...we will....."