Water baby!

cant take a picture in the pool, so here is u rocking the bath

Hiya! Since we moved to the new house, the highlight of our sunday has been our visits to the pool at the leisure center. Mostly of the time we go with Sofia and Aunty Sonia. Today though it was just you and me. Baring the first 5-10 mins of our first day in the pool, you have loved every minute of it. You are a lil water-baby aren't you. Your Abba and i both don't swim ....so we are having to learn now to catch up with out water baby.

And you know what, i had been trying to teach you how to jump into the pool from several days. But last week you just followed a few older kids jumping and were elated when you land in the water with big splash. What fun ! Today you carried on jumping to the pool, and being thrown around in the water....It just such fun watching you having a blast in the pool. I am hoping to take some lessons from next month, i hope your Abba and Ammi learn swimming before you are pro and order us around in the water...muwhhhhh!!!!

Lil music buff!!

My rock star baby, you seem to be developing a wonderful sense of music and tunes as you grow. I frequently find you humming a-bc-d..., twinkle twinkle, hickory hickory. And at the nursery you love to wheels-on-the-bus..song with all the actions. It amazes me , how with such few words you still pick up the tunes of these songs. And you dance in joy when the FRIENDS title track plays or the henry-hugglemonster title song. How i love dance-jumping or jump-dancing with you.

We were in Bath day before, and you were the first one who pointed us to a street musician playing quietly in one of the corners. So we took your pram near him, so you could listen to him playing on his guitar and singing. You loved it all....in fact you were spell bound when he sang a Bob Dylan classic..Here are some pictures. And when the kind singer offered the lil rockstar his guitar to 'touch' you pounced on it like it belong to you. That was followed by dramatic crying session of about 5mins....I hope the grown up you is as passionate about music as the two year old you is!

The musician !

All of us enjoying some music

"i got a guitar"

"...and i would love to play"

"...but they won't let me"

Mumma!

The CEO of big corporation called PepsiCo, and one of the most powerful women of our time in a recent article says "you can't have it all". Made me think, why not? Off course i am no CEO, so i wont claim to have the CEO's perspective, i don't even work at the moment. Doing a PhD isn't quite like working 9-5, it like working working 24X7X365. There is no 'free' time because your 'ideas' go with you wherever you go. Yet i can say i feel supremely fulfilled. And dare i say, i feel like i have it all. Sure i struggle sometimes, errr...always...to be a good mother to you, and then i struggle hard to do justice to my own work and then to everything else life demands, and to live in a way that is enjoyable.  But is the mommy me separate from the student me? No, both my roles reinforce each other. For instance when i am reading something ridiculously good, especially about living ethically, incorporating values of justice and respect in children, it influences the mommy-me. It makes me think how in our daily lives we could incorporate those values.  And again being with you has taught me (and is teaching everyday) the virtue of me patience, of communication, of 'thinking outside the box'...Being your mommy has made so much better also at my job. That's amazing to feel so 'whole'...so together!

Someone asked me about 'sacrifices you make as a mother'. If years later i become a Bollywood-style 'Ma' and tell you how much i have sacrificed for you, plz call that a bluff. My motherhood experience so far has all been about choices- easy choices like the choice to become a mommy, to breastfeed you, to spend time with you. And difficult choices like having to put you at a day nursery when you were hardly 6 months old, or move my fieldwork from Delhi to Assam so you could stay with your grans and i so could i or to let you go watch TV a bit longer that you meant to just so i can finish this blog post ;-) Never have i 'not thought about myself'. I always have, because if i am not happy with my choices i will be an unhappy person and an not a mommy you will like to be around. And the fact that you are dangling on my shoulder watching me types and muttering in gibberish tells me we we are ok.

PS This post is dedicated to your Nasreen Mami who is bringing into this world your first cousin brother or sister....Yey !! May she have all the fun you and I have together. Wink-wink*

(B)ookworm!

Hi lil  Mr ookworm!! How you love your ook. Don't u? It is just amazing to see a lil person could be so smitten by Books. It just makes me so happy to think about all the books we can read to each other, and all stories we can tell each other. Can wait!!  You have got at least 10 books by now. And i can tell you love want to know everything that is in there...You put my finger on various things and get me to say what it is. Sometime you say ...o-car or a-p-p-a (apple) or k-a-k (cake) or ba-ba (banana) when you see those pictures.