28 April, 2020

Stories

They both love stories!
Cuckoo and Baba, they both do!

I love telling them one, and love reading one with them, and when they were little, loved reading for them.
Cuckoo picked up reading, thanks to our random story-reading and story-telling sessions. Every night it would be a small book. And then slowly, before I knew she could read. I hope she reads more and more and keeps it up, forever.

Baba on the other hand, started to read quite late. He reads, the way a small kid would.
He is 9, but I still find him small. I still see, the lil baby that the nurse put on my chest soon after his birth.

Baba, is the inquisitive one, the creative one, blends his story and drawing together and creates magic.
Cuckoo, is the quieter one, and keeps the stories to herself.

But they both love stories, especially their birthday stories.
I reserve the story-telling of their birth, for their birthdays.

It is precious to me, so has to be narrated on a special day.
This year, with the lock down and me being stuck here in UK, I missed telling Baba his birthday story.

Before these precious stories fade away, I want to put them down in black n white so that you both know what a journey it was.

Luv,
Mumma

Happy to you

I sing: "Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday dear Mummu, Happy Birthday to you "

Mummu sings: "Happy to you, Happy to you, Happy to you, Happy to you"

I say: Happy Birthday my Mummu

She says: Happy to you (with loads of smiles)



1 Year old boy

To my dear Sunny boy,


It still feels like a 'dream' that you are here. Not only you are here, you are a year old. Well, it sounds too filmy, but its true. Everything about you is adorable. For a mum, every child of hers is adorable. I think n feel the same way about Chiku didi, I feel the adorableness for you too. How could I differentiate? Well that explaination goes in another blog/letter. This one is especially for you. You are ONE now. A big boy, soon you will be on your own, fighting and playing with everyone around you, and I would so miss having you as a lil baby.




I love everything about you. The way your hair has grown, a bit scanty but so adorably curly at the bottom. Pair of most beautiful, lovely eyes. I love your lips too, they sometimes look like heart shaped and no wonder I keep kissing you. Your cheeks remind me of chikoos, so lovely to give you 'thuki'.




Thuki is something that you so adorably do. Both you and chiku are so affectionate(Amen!!! don't know how long that would last. I just hope you guys grow up to be Best of friends). Though affectionate, you are not so liberal or lavish with your thuki's. Now let me tell you what thuki is or rather how you do thuki?




  1. You would look at me(or Chiku or daddy or amma)


  2. give a smile, stretch out your tongue out of your mouth


  3. Smile with your tongue sticking out. The Naughty smile!!! you would gurgle.


  4. Then bring yourself close to whoevers cheeks and lick away to glory


  5. And if the other person lets out a loud laugh, you would do it again and again


Thuki is not the only adorable thing that you do. Looking at you sharing your food, makes me wish and hope that you stay this young forever. When Amma gives you grapes and says "baba, give to amma" you so promptly pluck the grapes off, and shove it in ammas mouth. Well thats not it, you would just continue to feed Amma, till she shuts her mouth tightly. And amma generally would burst out laughing.


When you don't want something, you would just throw it off. If you are standing in your crib, one of your ritualistic game is to throw all your toys off your crib. If you are standing infront of an open refrigerator or cupboard, all the contents has to be thrown out. It doesn't matter if the contents are heavy or light. We have realised, that though you look so tini tiny(you justweigh 8.5 kgs and I am waiting for you to put on royally, now and not later) you have all the power in the world. You can push half a bucket water, you can lift few of the toys bag, you can push the dinning chair and certainly pull chiku didis hair with so much force that she would cry.


At the same time, I cannot deny that you adore your chiku didi. You have to follow her wherever she goes. There is no place else you rather be than besides your didi. Its such a blessing to watch both of you play. Chiku would call you and you would go running to her and hug her and give her thuki. Pure Affection!!!


Chiku didi equally loves you. She keeps saying "our baba is so cute na mumma" especially when you are fast asleep :). She is the one who sorts of scolds and coaxs you to sometimes not do certain things and sometimes to do certain things. Together, you guys can totally mess up amma's house (like the way you did it yday, the entire content of the sofa was on the floor and the colors and crayons on the floor and tiles).


I want to just put you in clay and make a mould out of you, Your lovely face, your cute feet, your small palms n fingers. The way you curl your fingers to call the pigeon (come come come) anyone would fall in love with you.


You are 'YOU', though now there is such a stark resemblance between you and chiku. But still you are YOU. And sometimes you remind me of Appaji, especially when you wouldn't eat anything sour ( the list of your 'don;t likes' is huge, bananas, oranges, grapes, soggy biscuits). You and Chiku didi still love Chappatis. And I hope you continue to love it and I hope someday I do learn to make chappatis just like amma does.


The first word and the only word that you say is 'Amma'. Its so cute when you go around calling amma and sometimes when she is in the bathroom, you stand outside the bathroom door, keep banging and calling out "Amma amma". Poor amma, doesn't get time to even peacefully go to bathroom without this nagging thought at the back of her mind that you would be standing at the door. We all are waiting when you would start saying mumma and daddy.


While bathing, You have this fun thing about putting your head under the running water and doing ho ho ho. Sometimes you try and put your head in bucket which is half filled with water. Putting your hand in commode is like the most fun thing that you want to do. The 2 places that you would want to be is 1. in the bathroom and 2. in the balcony.


THe only thing that annoys me to the core, it used to when you were born and continues to even now. Your crying, well actually it is more of wailing than crying. You would cry in your sleep. Thats the most scariest, cos when you would wake up, you would cry non-stop for a good 15 mins. We have come around to your crying thing, trying to feed you more seems to be the answer to all the problems.


The day of your birthday was very very precious. Though we didn't have a grand celebration, we still managed a family celebration, with amma, mama, Chiku didi, u me n daddy. I made pizzas and fruit salad. Daddy brought dutch truffle cake, the only thing pending is your gift. Instead you gave us a precious gift, you chose that day to walk all over the house. Right from the time you got up to the time you slept, you were happily walking n walking n walking.


And on the occassion of your birthday, I want to say 'Happy birthday my darling baby'. I hope and pray that you grow up to a stud of a man, and have both humility and handsomeness in you. I hope that you grow up to be a man of honor and of your words. I hope that you have many friends, and each of them would look upto you as his/her best friend. ButI hope your bestest friend be me. I hope that you grow up and give me a ride to the market or to shop and never ever frown. I hope that you have your faith, where faith should be and love that would guide you and make you strong. I hope that never ever would I find it difficult to figure you out. I hope that you forever have good health and be a cheerful person.


And I hope one day when you read this, you would be happy, happier, happiest.


Luv


Mumma






You decided to pull your antics on your birthday.

Teary Eyed

...somethings well actually very few things...these days make me really teary!!! This is one of them!!

Yesterday, I reached home late (traffic jams at shil phata are horrendous!!). As I walked in I was greeted by a pair of hands (Champ!!) who wanted to be picked up and another pair of hands and eyes which were concentrating on completing their studies (Cuckoo, playing teacher teacher!!!).

I hugged and kissed and moved on to do my daily chores. As I sat down with warm food to feed the lil brats, there was a down pour of stories to be foretold ( I love listening to the constant rambling!!). So the brat was busy explaining what all his lovely drawings meant which included an Alien Generator(machine that builds/creates Alien), Cuckoo on the other hand insisted she wanted to continue with her teacher-teacher game with baba. That's strange!! as Cuckoo is the one with a large number of stories, ending with WHY-a-certain-person-does-something? eg., Why do big people fight? Why are you sad? Why can't we do this? why can't we do that?

Amma had her share of story to tell. Apparently, this morning - amma left some utensils unwashed in the sink and headed to the bathroom. In the meantime, Cuckoo saw that amma was struggling to do her chores. So cuckoo with her baby hands finished washing the utensils the way a baby could, left them for drying on the kitchen platform. She then headed to do another task. Whilst Amma sat down to rest for few mins, Cuckoo served her breakfast of rotis and bhaajis and water.
Amma was choked!

So was I, when I heard what cuckoo had to say "Mumma you do so much work, I thought I would help you."

My dearest Cuckoo,
Although, I am proud of what you did today - I would rather, you lead a carefree way of going about your life - like a child does. Only hoping to play, to eat chocolates, to have fun with friends etc.
I would want you to be a child first - a small baby butterfly.
Happy Birthday in advance baby!!!
Have a great year ahead!!!

God Bless!!
Luv,
Mumma




I am

gucha (gussa)!!!!

Says my lil baba!! And when the 6.5 years old lil man is gussa you better ask him "why?"

Here we are, so happily heading for shopping and after a longggggggggggg time look forward to the happy times ahead!!!

And here is baba who started off on a crib session!!
You cann't ignore when he talks like that!! Makes a sullen face, hands crossed across his chest and tears welling in his eyes, looking down and talking and again repeats "I am gucha" (I go awwwwwwww so cute at the same time I can't encourage crib sessions all the time !!)

So I kiss him and hug him and ask him lovingly"Why baba?? why are you gucha baba?"

He replies : "because because when I was in senior Kg and cuckoo was in 4th std, she gave me lot of work and called me a waiter. No, I was in Junior Kg and Cuckoo was in 3rd std she gave me lot of work and called me a waiter."

Before I could burst out laughing, with a very controlled tone I had to tell Baba :" but you are NOT a waiter na baba. So why get upset?"

I kiss baba on his forehead and remind him that we will be playing UNO once we go back home and also having dinner at Indigo - we will order for Chicken lollypop and ice cream. Then he forgets all about the incident.

However, I can't help and laugh out loud about the incident.

Cutie baba!!!

Luv Mum