There has to be some excitement in life..right?

Now that the stitches have come off from the cut in the forehead from last week, life had become kind of boring so Betu decided to make it exciting by swallowing a Re 1 coin today afternoon.

We called up the doc and he said not to worry if Betu is not feeling any discomfort. And that it should come out in 2-3 days in the poop. We asked him if scan is required or not. He asked us to come and show him if we want to. So off we went.

As we entered the room, I told the doc that Betu just has to see you once a week and we both laughed. Then he proceeded to have one on one with Betu:

Doc: What did you have?
Betu: Coin *giggles*

Doc: What denomination?
Betu: 1 re *grins wide*

Doc: How was the taste? Was it nice?
Betu: Meetha tha *again giggles* (it was sweet)

Me: *rolling my eyes*

Doc: How old are you?
Betu: 5 years *still grinning ear to ear*

Doc: If you had been 2-3 yrs old I can still imagine. I didn't expect this from you at this age.
Betu: *keeps looking at the doc with the widest grin plastered on his face*

Me: Itne saalon se maine isko bacha kar rakha tha jab yeh chhota tha, par ab ho hi gaya.
Doc: Hmm..to tabki kasar ab poori kar raha hai :)

And then he proceeded to check betu. After he was done he turned to us and explained where all are the possibilities of the coin getting stuck and in which of those areas it gets a little dangerous and how they take it out from there. After examining thoroughly he asked us to give him soft diet so that no constipation happens and prescribed isabgol to be given at night along with a very mild laxative to keep the stools soft.

So now its a wait and watch game for us. It might take 2-3 days for it to pop-out and till then he will be called as a "living piggybank" as Itchy called him when I was talking to her about this incident :)

Shaitani dimmag!

Yesterday morning I went for my bath after Hubby had given Betu his bath.

The moment I reached the bath mugs I let out a big gasp. WHy? Because this is what the sight was...
Can you guess what it is in the those bath mugs? No? Look closely and see whats similar in both the things. Yeah..may be you are getting an idea now :)

Those are his pair of socks. The ones that he was wearing when he went for his bath. Both socks have been duly thrown into each mug.

Sigh...main kya karoon is ladke ka??

Hair cut!

Although this post is about a hair cut which usually is a regular affair unlike this time when Anirudh decided to take matters in his own hands.

If you are guessing what has happened I am sure all of you are thinking what it is. Yes he snipped off a lock of his hair one afternoon when he was home with his Dadi and Ma-Pa were away at work.

Little did he know that saving these cut up lock of hair to show off as an achievement would actually backfire on him. Because when he showed me the cut up hair I got angry! And he in a very heartbroken tone and a crestfallen face said "Maine to socha tha ki aap bologe good boy. Maine apne aap hair cut kara". I could only smile and hug him then. On asking why did he do so we were answered simply "woh baal bahut udh rahe the na isliye maine cut kar diye". I just sighed and have told him no more such activities to be undertaken which he seems to have agreed but only time will tell.

And it was not so long ago when a friend was talking about a similar incident with her boy and I had heaved a sigh of relief that Anirudh has done nothing like that. I guess I did it a bit too soon!


~~ Keep Smiling! ~~

Sent on my BlackBerry®.

Naughty Anirudh!

The idea was to paint on paper but I guess he was bored of doing the routine stuff! I came to the living room, where I had left him to do his paintings, on hearing him singing "Dhinga laka dhinga laka...". The way he was singing it was enough for me to realise that things were NOT NORMAL and come rushing there. And this is what I saw.

When he saw that he was caught, he started to giggle and teasingly kept doing his tribal dance with a smile on his face that said "Ab kya fayeda. Ab to maine paint kar liya!" (Whats the point now. I'm already done with it!)

Sent on my BlackBerry® from Hutch

Modern day Maakhan Chor!

10 mins ago I caught him climbing up on the kitchen slab and taking a packet of chocolate chip cookies from the cupboard. Here are the proofs:

Taking out the packet of cookies!

Got it!

Time to escape now!

Mission Accomplished!

He didn't see me till he turned towards the door and squealed when he did! It was such a mixed expression on his face. He was laughing but also a little shocked that I had caught him!

He's soooo funny!

Just now, 30 seconds ago, I scolded him when I turned around from the comp to see he had emptied his CD case and strewn over all the DVDs over the bed. I was furious. And he got a big scolding from me for doing that. When I scolded him he said "par aapne to bola tha ki main wahan rakh loon" (But you had told me that I can keep them there). And then I remembered that a minute ago he had asked me if he can keep the CD case on the bed and I had said OK for that. So I told him I had said that to keep the case as it is and not take out the DVDs. So I told him sternly again to put the DVDs back in the case. The moment I turned back my head to look at the monitor to carry on what I was doing I hear him say to himself "Kitni Mumma daanti hai!" (Mumma scolds so much). I had to control my laughter lest he gets easy. :D

And just now he came to showing me the case saying he has put all the DVDs back inside. And as I asked him to show it to me by opening he immediately ran away with the case saying "nahi..." (no..) which means he has not put the DVDs back in each slot but has just zipped the case by dumping them inside and now doesn't want me to see that lest to get another big scolding. Oh boy! He's becoming such a brat day by day!

Contuper or a computer?

Whenever Anirudh speaks in a hurry he will always call a computer as "Contuper" :D And the moment he calls it a "Contuper", I say "What?" and he will say the word slowly and correctly as "Com-pu-ter"! So basically he fumbles with the pronunciation when he says it too fast and which happens too often.

But somehow I just can't laughing at this word that he has coined :D

And there are times when he just pretends to not hear what I'm saying. So if I will say anything he will go "Kya?". I will say it again and he will repeat "Kya?" and the third time when I will repeat it, he will cup his hands near his ears and say "Mujhe sunayee nahi de raha! Kya?" and I'm ready to run after him to give a nice little spanking!

First couple of times when he tried to play this trick on me he succeeded well enough. But lately I've figured out when he's playing a trick on me :)

Hurting himself goes way back....

In my last post I had written down few incidents that happened in the recent days when Anirudh managed to get hurt and on his own without any need for any interventions from anything or anyone :P

I recently remembered the first incident when he hurt himself and he was just 3 weeks young! Can you believe it? But you better!! I guess you will when you read what happened. Me and MIL, who was here for my delivery and post that to help me taking care of him me being a first time mommy, were sorting out clothes and stuff that we need to carry. In about a few days time we all were to travel to Jaipur where his Dadu was eagerly waiting for him and also the place where we would be doing his namkaran ceremony.

Anyhow, so as we are sorting the stuff we need to carry in one corner of the room and Betu is lying on the bed in the very same room, we hear his shrill cry! Me and Mummy both turn around to see what happened and we just saw him lying there and crying. So I went over to him to see maybe he has peed or pooped as he was a total panditji in that respect. He liked to be cleaned up that very minute the deed is done. But no, it wasn't that. He's wailing and has his arms over his head towards the sides. So as I try to pick him up I notice he was crying because he had caught his own hair in his tightly closed fist and now when he was trying to get his hands down, he was unknowingly pulling his own hair and thus the wails! :D

So you see, hurting himself goes way back in the history.

There's something seriously wrong somehwere!

It has been 10 days since Anirudh has been getting dangerously hurt himself! How he's managing to do it is beyond me!

September 2, 2007 :
We are leaving from Appa's house and he rolls down 8-9 steps. I'm shrieking more than he is looking at him going down the stairs. He has been up and down those stairs at least 100 of times uneventfully (thank God). But it happened..what I had been dreading all the time! Luckily he didn't get hurt except for a few bruises on his right leg. I was more shocked than he was. I needed more calming-down than he did.

September 2, 2007:
We are DH's Mausi-Mausaji's house and Anirudh is playing around having fun with his Yashu Bua. Then he goes to watch a DVD on her laptop and sits down on the chair. We left him for not more than 5 mins and we hear a crashing sound. The chair had toppled over and he had cut his tongue by his own teeth with blood oozing out. WE immediately put sugar and ice there and it stops withing minutes.

September 6, 2007:
Despite us telling Anirudh not to climb our glass top side tables, he just doesn't listen. It was around 9 AM and I've gone to the loo and I hear a crashing, glass breaking sound and wails of Anirudh. I hurriedly run out to see the side table has fallen sideways and the glass is broken and Betu is standing there between those pieces of glass and crying. I was aghast and immediately scooped up Betu and make him sit in a different room and looking at his body to see if he got hurt from the glass breakage while trying to calm him down at the same time. Luckily nothing..not even a scratch! The glass on the table top was 1 CM thick so thankfully it didn't shatter into tiny pieces but just in 4-5 pieces. So that kind of saved him from getting hurt.

September 8, 2007:
I'm in Kitchen, DH was shaving and we hear this clink and then crash. We both run and see Betu is holding remains of what were 2 glasses with glass pieces shattered around his feet. Again we scoop him out and as he is minutely examined for no injuries and when we ask him what happened he said "Main to cheers kar raha tha!" He had noticed us doing cheers and clinking our glasses and he was trying to do the same thing on his own but I guess he used too much force. We just rolled our eyes and calmed him and asked him to not do it again.

September 10, 2007:
Don't remember what me or DH were doing but suddenly we hear Anirudh's wailing sound and we rush to see he was trying to climb or god knows what with the broken side table and he hurt his right eyebrow badly because of that. He got a little bump on the center of his forehead too. Even after putting loads of ice-pack the bump just refused to flatten out.

September 13, 2007 (i.e today):
Myself and Anirudh were having a pillow fight and he suddenly runs toe the living room where his Richie Rich cartoon was showing and suddenly I hear his big shriek! I ran, DH ran and DH scooped him up with blood flowing out from his lower lip as if someone had opened the water tap. I immediately rushed to take out ice and some sugar (sugar supposedly helps in stopping the blood) and we put both there on the injured inside of the lip. But it took about a minute for the blood to stop flowing out and then we noticed it was a 3-4mm gash in the inside lip. We sprinkled Ferrum Phos powder on the gash too. He was again trying to do something with that broken-top side table and hit his face right on it.

Me and DH got so angry...not at him so much as on ourselves. And now we have put away that broken-top side table in the store but it feels so bad that why in the hell did we delay it so much. We should have kept it away then itself when the first incident happened.

So looking at so many accidents in the past 10 days is really scaring me out and I'm thinking like those old aunts on the lines of "his stars are not good these days". And I'm praying no more suchincidents to happen in the near future. Really praying hard!

Play-Doh and his clay models!

Anirudh has been fond of clay models ever since we introduced them to him. He got his first set of 'play-dohs' and the activity table along with from his Nanu as his first b'day gift. However, it was only when he was quarter to 2 that I assembled it and let him play with the doughs. He just loved them.

We however would keep an eye to ensure he doesn't eat them them. He never did eat them though. Nor even showed any tendencies to do so anyways. But who knew he would make a small ball of it and put it inside his nostrils! *rolling my eyes*. Yes he did that. And when he felt uneasy after putting it inside his nose, he came to me pointing to his nose. I as usual thought he is pointing at the booger inside the nose, so I just wiped it and sent him away. He came again after few seconds and pointed to his nose again. I again wiped it and sent him away. However, this time I happened to see something pinkish in the tissue that I had used to wipe it. Its a habit that I usually look at the tissue after I wipe his nosey :P But this habit turned up useful that eventful day. So I called him back to see what made that pink thing appear. And when I looked inside his nose, I could see the small piece of bright pink stuck way inside his nostril.

We, myself and DH, got nervous and tried hard for him to blow his nose. He tried but it didn't help. I tried to put pressure in the top of his nose thinking maybe it will push that piece down but it wasn't helping. I wanted to try pulling it out with the hairpin but he was squirming so much that we decided not to lest we hurt him. So with nothing working we called his pead (it was a Sunday) apologised for calling him on a Sunday and told him the whole situation. He told us to take him to the emergency at the nursing home. Hearing the word 'emergency' made us even more nervous despite us knowing what the meaning of emergency section is. Parents that we are! :D

So we got ready and just before going out I just made him try to blow his nopes once again! And when he did, it came out "plop" in the tissue. *Whew*..what a relief it was. That day itself all the doughs were packed up and kept away for a few days. Yes only for few days because he would insist so much for them that we gave in but made sure someone would play with him whenever it was 'play doh' time. However, soon we noticed that his bronchitis allergy would get aggravated every time he would play with them continuously day after day. So eventually they were all packed or given away.

Recently my sister who lives in Germany sent some other kinds and much smaller in quantity. So we let him play with them after a long lone time. He LOVED them again! And he made these cute (err...maybe not cute) little models from them:

The Monster!

The Dinosaur

The monster he made totally on his own. But with Dino I had to help him out in making the legs and the trimmings on the back.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Edited to add : The 'Monster' was not supposed to be a monster in the first place. He was trying to copy a goat from one of his books. But when he completed it he said "Mumma, yeh to goat nahi hai. Yeh to monster hai!" :D

Talking like an adult!

On Sunday, one of our neighbour and his son Mitr dropped by for few minutes. Mitr is about 4 months younger than Anirudh. So Anirudh and Mitr started to play with the jigsaw puzzles and were having a gala time. Whatever one would do other would repeat. Be it talking, or throwing or stacking..just about anything. When I offered a cookie to Mitr, Anirudh wanted one too. And this is when I had asked Betu if he wants one just minutes before Mitr came with his dad and Betu had flatly refused saying "Yeh achha nahi hai!".

July 22, 2007 : Mitr and Anirudh playing with Jigsaw Puzzles

Anyhow, so after cookie time when I asked them if they want water. This time Mitr said no and Betu said yes. So Mitr changed his stance immediately and said he wants water too. :D

I noticed a small injury near the left eye of Mitr and I asked him "Yeh kaise lagee?" and he said "Kabir ne maara". I assumed it must be one of his school friends. Immediately Anirudh pipes in "Dawai kha lena. Theek ho jayegi." And then Betu took Mitr back to the play area holding his arm.

What amused me the most was that 10 minutes before Mitr came, Betu was in completely angry mood, wailing continuously and getting angry at my as I was not allowing him to suck his lower lip (he has this bad habit of sucking his lower lip since he was an infant and I'm still struggling to get him get over this habit as its spoiling his teeth). And the moment he sees a playmate he is all happy and chirpy.

So many times I feel there are mood switches somewhere hidden on these kids. I'm still trying to find where they are on Anirudh. :D

Mixed emotions!

I can't help gushing over just about everything that he does or says - a typical mom you might say. And I worry "Kahin meri nazar nahi lag jaye!". I know some of you might say what old fashioned woman thinking of nazar etc. But yes, I also used to think of others in this manner before we had our Betu. But now sometimes I also think on those lines. Call me old fashioned but sorry..can't help it.

I was just reminiscing today's events and I felt so contented, so happy and so very everything looking at my little baby. Err..little baby might be a little too far fetched since he's actually a big boy now...at least the baby looks are gone and I miss those baby looks.

Anyhow, before I move away from the topic which I happens almost all the times I start to write, let me come back to what I wanted to say. Today morning when I said 'Bye' to him when I went for work and told him "Mumma shaam ko aayegi Betu ko lene ke liye" he says "Jab aap shaam ko aayoge na, tab main aapko pyaree karunga!" I was so overwhelmed and thought what more could I ask for! :D

But in the evening, after coming home he was testing my patience way too much. Throwing things here and there, banging at the doors with whatever he could lay his hands on, rolling on the floor, and when I picked him up to calm him down by cuddling he tried to poke his fingers in my eyes, pulled my cheeks hard saying his usual "Cheeku Mumma!", pulled at my clothes and just about everything. I had to do more of "Calm down" to self than to him. This whole wild situation lasted for about 15 mins. One might say just 15 mins but hey, when kids behave like this, 15 mins look way too long! And then I was thinking where was my sweet little child from the morning?

Anyhow after some stern warnings and cuddling and trying out everything I had him under control in about 20 odd minutes. *whew* Then another task started. We had to go and get our passport pictures clicked as well as the mini family picture to give at his pre-nursery school. When I opened his cupboard and took out the T-shirt, he decided he doesn't want to wear it. He went and got out the lone full sleeves t-shirt with Superman on it which I presumably forgot to pack away with his winter clothes. He was hell bent on wearing that sweatshirt in this sweaty sweltering weather. Getting him to wear the one I wanted was getting almost impossible so I had to bribe him saying I will get you a balloon. Usually this works but today, he was not to be coaxed into things easily. So I forcefully put on the t-shirt and then started the shrill cries as if hell had broken loose.

I'm sure my neighbours must be thinking I torture him way too much as for the past some time, months rather, he starts wailing at the drop of the hat.

Anyhow, we somehow managed to get him into the car with his own will and off we went. Once at the studio he refused to smile. *Rolling my eyes*. Somehow a faint smile appeared and we had to settle with that shot. When we left after an hour later from the studio I was thinking "Sigh..another task completed!"

As soon as we were on the way, I looked at my watch..it was 8:30 PM. And I thought, the moment one task ends, starts another - the task of cooking dinner as our cook will be gone by the time we would reach home. But the task turned to be an enjoyable one just because of betu! Yes, the same betu who was making me so mad just an hour or so ago.

While I was cooking he comes and says "Mumma main aapki help karoon?" Aww..I was so totally floored by his statement. Instead of saying no I told him to spread the newspaper in the bedroom as I decided to eat in the bedroom as only our bedroom has the AC. He happily went hopping and got it spread. Once done he again came to me and asked "Mumma, khaana ban gaya?" When I said "Bas abhi ban jayega", he again asks me "Mumma main ab kya karoon?" So I gave him the three plates along with the spoons and he so happily goes to the bedroom to lay them out. Then he comes back and says "Mumma, katori to de do! Daal kisme khayenge?" Every time he offered his helping hand I couldn't help thanking god for giving me such an adorable little baby!

Once I had served all the food in the bowls to take to the bedroom he chimes up "Come on Mumma!"...a phrase which I heard him using the first time! I'm sure he must have picked it up from the school. The tone he said it in was just so sweet to hear. And that's when I wondered that 2 hours ago there was this brat making me want to tear my hair out and now here's a child who wants to help mumma and is so excited by the simple thing as having dinner in the bedroom with Mumma-Papa!

So with its ups and downs of betu's behaviour, its the ups that keep me going! Its these ups which make me forget all the downs and makes me thank God for giving me such an adorable baby! "I love you beta!"

My little monkey!

If you have read my earlier post which I wrote just a few minutes ago, you will know that just a while ago I sent him to his Papa so that he can play. While they are playing, he suddenly holds on to the curtain and swings clutching it tightly between his hands and legs. Me and DH both are like ":O" but also get amused how easily he can swing holding on the curtains. But at the same time we told him not to do again as the pelmets will not be strong enough and might come out and fall over him. And that surely can be dangerous.

But he truly is our little monkey. When he was less than a year old, I taught him to do a kind of a somersault with me. This is how we do it

• We stand face to face.
• He holds my hands..umm..no its other way round. I hold his hands tightly
• He then starts climbing on me with my knees a little bent to make it easier for him.
• He climbs on me till his feet are on my tummy and then he swings backwards!

He loves it and I love it too! I have a video of him doing that. Will try to post it here so that you can see how we actually do it.

Lot of people used to tell me, he will twist his shoulders or get a sprain somewhere but I had read and seen that the bodies of kids his age are quite flexible so I don't worry about it.