The warrior princess diaries - IV

So Shub reminded me that it has been a while since I posted any updates on Xena's health. (Yes yes I know I know. The bar is increasingly becoming a reminder-based system, and all posts are baby-related. Blame Xena, not me.)

• So here are some updates from the last few follow-ups Xena had at the hospital. The brain scan showed that the bleed is now smaller but it's still there. They will scan again in two months to check the size. Her heart scan showed that the 'unnatural hole' that the doctors had hoped would have closed has still not closed. They will scan again in a year's time to check on it. Her weight gain is quite slow; she is gaining about half of what regular babies gain each month. As she was very premature and had very low birth weight, some other developmental delays may occur, such as the timeline for crawling, sitting without support, etc. Let's see.

• Before her heart scan, the doctor asked me, "Pacifier ready? Milk ready?" I nodded, wondering how much she was going to cry. To our surprise, not only did she not cry at all, she even held the doctor's hand and tried to guide the sensor as if saying, "Offo, this is how you do it!" The doctor and the nurse were amused to no end.

• At her last blood test, the nurse was examining her hand to find a vein when she said, "Wow. So many!" I looked at her hand to see what she was talking about and saw them - poke marks from all the blood tests she had had in her ICU days. I think I counted about 19 in total on both hands. :(

• Every single time she went to the hopsital, the doctors and nurses referred to her as 'he'. Sheesh. Even when she was in a PINK bodysuit! Double sheesh. So for her vaccination appointment, I made her wear a romper with words that said it loud and clear - Baby Girl.

• Xena had fever after her vaccination. It was the first time she was unwell at home. It's really really scary when babies get fever. Viv and I were up sponging her, giving her paracetamol and taking her temperature every now and then. Fortunately, she was totally fine by morning and showed all signs of her usual cheerful self.

• Xena outgrew two outfits. Finally. I cannot tell you how thrilled I was.

• Mom has gone back and suddenly the house seems odd. I have had my parents or in-laws at home with me since January, so it seems everything has suddenly gone quiet. Xena and I do try to make as much noise as possible though. For example, we danced to Ra.One's 'Chammak chhallo' today!

• There was a problem with Mom's ticket and she jokingly asked Xena to 'fix it'. Next thing we know, her departure was postponed by a week. YEAY! I told her that our little 'travel agent' had 'fixed it' and kept a nice bonus for herself -- an extra week with grandma! When I told my sister, she was horrified. "Here I am, hoping to make Aishu the President of USA, and you're calling Xena a travel agent???"

• I found some home remedies on google for Mom and Dad, and Mom was so impressed. "Yeah, I have an MBBS from Google University." I told her. From that day, Mom started calling me 'Doctor' and Xena 'compounder' from that day! (You can only imagine my sister's horror when she heard this.)

• I had a wonderful heart-melting moment last week. I woke up, stretched and turned to look at Xena who had been sleeping next to me, and she had also just woken up and was stretching in exactly the same way!

• Speaking of waking up, Xena thinks my nose is a knob that she needs to turn at 6 am every day "in order to wake mommy up".

• She has discovered that she can hold both feet with her hands and 'shows off' at every opportunity she can get.

• She has learnt to pull her own hair in frustration. I suppose she figured that she had pulled almost everything off Mommy's head already, so it was time to move on to 'blacker' pastures. Luckily, she doesn't have much on her head at the moment. And I know you guys are going to ask me what I did to frustrate her thus, so here it is -- I was singing. Happy now? Hmmmph!

• I caught her doing crunches! All right, who called her fat??

• She has started a new trick of giving 'taal' by beating her palm on my hand, as if she is singing some major Indian classical piece.

• Remember how our moms used to say, "You will understand when you have your own kids." at every opportunity they got, and we never took it seriously? Well, from experience, it's true. You start to see the world and your life in a completely new light once you have a kid. And the biggest change that I have noticed is that even though I had always been terribly close to Mom, now I appreciate her so so SO much more.

A bundle of laughs

Xena's 12-step guide to project management

On speaking terms

After a week of trying to teach Xena to say the preferred "Mama" and "Papa", this is the result. She said "Amma" and "Baba" in the same, erm, "sentence".

What can you do, the gundi wants her own terms.



Behind-the-scenes / The-making-of video

My word!

Check out the first set of tiles I got in a game of Words With Friends. :D

The warrior princess diaries - III

No no no, I haven't completely forgotten about the bar. It has been at the back of my mind along with the 383846458292846585 other things I have promised myself I would do something about as soon as Xena gives me some time. And here I am.

• My dad is now here to see baby Xena. Which also means that he and my mom will leave soon. She has been here for almost two months, and Dad always gets here towards the tail-end of her visits because his third kid -- his garden -- cannot be left unattended for more than two weeks. Hmmph! I was totally getting used to chai and gupshup with mom and Xena (just to be clear -- no chai for Xena, gupshup only).

• Speaking of my dad, he has gone nuts. Coconuts to be precise. He has a cough so he has quarantined himself for a few days before he can play with Xena, so he spends his time on the beach picking up coconuts to plant in his backyard! There are now four very large coconuts next to his suitcase that he looks lovingly at every day, while Mom shakes her head in disbelief. (Okay, it's very strange to be blogging about him knowing that he will be on this very computer in a few hours reading this and saying, "Arre you blogged about me??")

• Dad also said that he is extremely amused that his 'wild, carefree and happy-go-lucky daughter' is now 'a responsible mother'. (His words, not mine.)

• I do know what he means though. Sometimes I myself can't believe that Viv and I are parents. Maybe it was because of all that we went through or the fact that she came to us two months earlier than expected, but sometimes we just look at her and ask each other, "Oh my goodness, did we really make this one?" But then there are moments when I totally feel like a mother, like when she sees me and gives a sudden smile, or when I am making the bed and I see her tiny pillow tucked between Viv's and mine, or when I wake up in the middle of the night to get a glass of water and see her stroller in a corner of the dining room, or when I am folding her laundry and I hold up a tiny sock, totally amazed.

• Oh. Em. Gee. Dad cracked what I believe is his first ever Bollywood joke! That too involving Xena! "Xena isi ka naam hai." He declared.

• The very musical Xena woke me up this morning by reaching out and strumming my lips as if they were guitar strings. Seriously, there is no better alarm clock than a baby who wants to play at 6 in the morning every day.

• I read that babies laugh hysterically if you rip paper in front of them. I verified this successfully. Xena laughed so loudly my mom actually got a little scared and asked me to stop. Unfortunately, it was a one-time offer only. She refused to repeat it in the same way when Viv got home. I have since torn up 373855839320274 newspapers but all I get from her is a "My mommy has gone completely bonkers" look.

• Xena went to Pizza Hut! Her first outing to an air-conditioned public place (well, excluding the hospital, of course). Well, she didn't do much other than napping and throwing up (well, there has to be some drama. And that's how she marks her territory. Been there done that. Literally.) but it was a big step for our confidence in taking her out more. One of the waitresses there recognised us and said, "Oh my goodness, you had a bayyy-beee!"

• I am beginning to believe that throwing up on her outfits is her way of telling me that she doesn't approve of what I make her wear. Ahem.

• My mom has come up with this ingenious way of vomit management. Since Xena tends to throw up right after a feed when we're burping her, Mom just hands her a small plastic container and makes her sit up. It's hilarious to see her actually holding the container herself and waiting for (a) the burp, or (b) the throwing-up.

• She is generally a lively kid and grins very widely when she's happy (which is most of the time). In fact, sometimes I forget that she's not a regular baby and still needs special care. She had a follow-up visit with the hernia surgeon who thinks that further surgery will most probably not be required. Touchwood. We are seeing the cardiologist next month about the hole in her heart. Fingers crossed that all goes well.

• She continues to amaze me with the list of what disturbs her sleep. I was channel surfing with her sleeping on my lap when I switched to a channel that was showing 'India - A Love Story'. It's a Brazillian TV show, where Brazillian actors play Indians and these "Indians" are shown to be wearing sherwanis and maang tikaas when they go to buy vegetables. Sheesh. But that's another story. So the title song of this show is 'Beedi jalai le'! (Trust me. I am not making this up.) and it stars Himesh Reshammiya (ok I made that up.) So Xena slept through Sunidhi Chauhan yelling "Beedi jalai le!!" at the top of her voice, but woke up because I cracked a knuckle.

• I read that now is about the time when she will start recognising her own name and responding to it. Oh my goodness. She has like one thousand names, 999 of them courtesy of my mom. No, I cannot disclose any of them, as your kid may be in school with my kid some day and I will not want my kid coming home to me in tears because someone told everyone at school about the embarrassing nicknames that her grandma gave her.

• She is finally big enough to fit into the very pretty lehenga-choli that Shub got for her, and here's a picture of my dancing queen.

Picture perfect

I was holding Xena and strolling along the beach yesterday when Clueless took this lovely picture of us that I absolutely had to stick on the bar's notice board.

Love how we are mere specks amidst nature's grandeur. :)

A nose for trouble

MTV is shocking.

Shocking shocking shocking.

I got a big shock the other day, and I thought I should warn all of you out there who may unknowingly switch on the TV and see what I saw, and hear what I heard. And I think Xena did too. Oh the horror.

Lock your doors and windows. Hide your kids.

He is back.

(And no, he is not better.)

V-oil-a!

Sometimes the funniest compliments come from the most unusual sources. Come to think of it, they probably never meant it as a compliment but we extracted one anyway. I remember being super thrilled when the bouncer at a casino entrance in Malaysia demanded to see proof of age before he let me in. Muahahaha! Today something similar happened.

I had taken Xena to the hospital for her follow-up with the surgeon. I also dropped by the hospital's pharmacy to pick up a bottle of MCT oil, as Xena's current bottle is running low. MCT (Medium-chain triglyceride) oil is something that helps in quick weight gain. As Xena's birth weight was very low, MCT oil had been prescribed by her doctors to help her put on weight quickly. However, you can't simply pick up a bottle of MCT oil in the pharmacy and head to the cashier; you have to order it through the pharmacist.

Me - Hi, I'd like to order a bottle of MCT oil.

Pharmacist - Sure, ma'am. For yourself or baby?

:D :D :D :D :D

A small wish

Every year, I try to plan or be part of something special for Viv's birthday -- sometimes a triple surprise, sometimes a kidnapping, and sometimes just some silly poetry. This year, things have just been so hectic with Xena that I couldn't think of anything elaborate. Add to that the fact that Viv is away on work in Amsterdam.

So I decided to outsource it to Xena. (Child labour?)

Mom and I had secretly bought a 'I <3 Dad' t-shirt last week, and kept it hidden till Viv had flown off. So for his birthday, I clicked a picture of Xena in the t-shirt and sent it with a birthday wish to Viv from Xena's gmail account (of course she has one!). Needless to say, it made his day! :D