The warrior princess diaries - VII

So I finally met bar bewdi Bubblegum who is now in Singapore. She told me about a journal that her mom had kept documenting her childhood and how much she enjoys reading it. Talking to her inspired me all over again to record Xena's antics with more regularity so she can grow up and read all that she did as a baby. I also realised that the last princess diaries update had been in March - five months ago! Thanks to Facebook, I do have the records which I just need to compile for the blog.

• As usual, let's get the hospital stuff out of the way first. Xena is still rejecting solids, and not gaining weight at all. She's probably at the 1st percentile and is going to slip off the charts if she doesn't start eating and gaining weight. We have been meeting her doctor and dietitian, but their plans will only work if the baby opens her mouth, isn't it? She's also started to reject milk, perhaps due to her molars which are sprouting like crazy. In fact, she's even lost a bit of weight. I keep trying out new things, and some days she eats 2 spoons and other days nothing at all. I have tried everything in the book and more. I can't even begin to describe the frustration that comes with trying all kinds of food and all kinds of strategies only to have your baby turn away her face the instance she sees any food approaching her. And yet, she puts all non-food into her mouth instantly. How she knows what is food and what is not is anyone's guess. I guess I just have to keep trying. For now, I think she's thriving purely on photosynthesis. 

• Thankfully, she's doing all right with her milestones. She started walking at the expected time and babbles a lot. She can identify quite a few things - car, bus, ball, duck, dog, iPad, penguin, lion, snake, parrot, etc. No, I don't actually have snakes and penguins walking around in my house; these are her soft toys. Earlier, she'd point and say "Tah!" for 'car'. Also for 'cat'. And 'tree'. And 'sky'. And 'fan'. Yep, they were ALL "Tah!" She can't say the full words yet, but now she says 'baw' for 'ball', 'duh' for 'duck', and 'dodo' for 'dog'.

• Viv comes home around 8 pm, and she's either sleeping or sleepy by then. However, the moment she hears the click of the main door unlocking, she immediately sits up and says, "Papa!" I am jealous. I never get that. She only uses "Mama" as a distress call. When Viv was in Papua New Guinea, she looked for him all the time and everywhere. She thought he was playing a prolonged game of hide-and-seek with her. One day, she even tried to look for him inside the fridge!

• I took her to Hokey Pokey, an indoor playground for babies and kids, and she absolutely loved it. Here's a picture of her in the ball pool.

• Viv has found a brilliant way to make her brush her teeth. He lets her brush his teeth, while he brushes hers. The first time I woke up to see that scene, I couldn't stop laughing.

• She's super duper active and I have a tough time catching up with her. This video was taken just before she started walking. Within 2 minutes, she gets her toy car into two accidents, reads a book, crawls, cruises, claps, walks, babbles, tries to snatch away mamarazzi's camera, and oh, also indicates how tall her papa is.

• She absolutely loves playing peek-a-boo with me using the curtain.

• I'm now using all sorts of funny tactics to get her to eat. Since Viv and I are following the no-TV rule very strictly, I use other distractors. Once I got her to eat breakfast by showing her the same picture of Imran Khan in a Filmfare issue over and over again, and saying, "Look Xena, a baby! Oh look, another baby! Hey, yet another baby!" My apologies to Imran Khan and his family. Then there was this time I literally bribed her into having dinner. I gave her my wallet and with each note she pulled out, she ate a spoonful. But I soon ran out of cash, and asked her if she accepted credit cards, and she didn't. :/

• Why do babies throw everything? Food, toys, everything. To give her credit, I must say that she has established that she is not TOTALLY heartless. Agreed, she is brutal and merciless with her toys, but she does say "Bye!" to their mutilated carcasses before flinging them out of her play yard.

• Xena loves to mimic anything and everything. Here she is, mimicking my mom's fake coughing.
  
  

• Xena thinks I'm a cool/hot (delete as appropriate) chick. I asked her "Where is the bird?" and she immediately pointed at me. But then she took her 'When in doubt, point at Mama' tactic too far. I didn't mind being a bird the first time, but I did draw the line at "Where is the cow?" :/

• Xena loves to turn on switches, whether it's the one to summon the lift or the one that controls a light or a fan. She will insist that I lift her up to the level of the switchboard, and she will turn the switches on and off, all the while looking at the lights and fans to see what has changed because of her actions.

• Here's a collage I made to showcase Xena's teeth - from zero to 7 (clockwise from top left).

The high flier

Here's the full account of Xena's first proper encounter with soap bubbles during her morning walk with papa and mama.

A strange(r) encounter

So last Monday, Xena and I went to the airport to receive her papa who was coming back with the team after a cricket tournament in Papua New Guinea. Viv had no idea we were going to be there, and to make the surprise more fun, I dressed Xena up in similar clothes as mine - a long-sleeved pink top and a short denim skirt. 

We reached the airport a little early so we took a walk around the very beautiful (and my favourite amongst all airports) Changi airport. After we had done a few rounds and she had waved 'buh-bye!' to all the passengers, security staff and cleaners, we went up to see the kinetic rain display. Xena was totally fascinated.


And that's when this lady came up to talk to us.


 "Hey, that's a really nice bag!" She said. "Where did you get it?" It was a traditional handwoven bag given to me by Viv's aunt. "I got it as a gift. It's from India." I said. "Where in India?" Oh wow. "Umm.. Bangalore."


Xena soon got very bored of this conversation and started waving and saying "Buh-bye!" again. The girl (let's call her S) played with Xena for a while and then asked me if I was there to drop someone (I was on the departure level for a closer look at the kinetic rain). So I told her that I was there to receive my husband who was in the Singapore team etc. etc. We started talking about cricket and she told me that she too preferred T20.


Xena was craning her neck to look at the kinetic rain, so I took my phone out to take a picture of it. S offered to take a picture of Xena and me with the kinetic rain as the backdrop. My first thought? OMG this woman is gonna make a mad dash with my phone. I had just lost my phone at the airport a week before, so my anxiety regarding my new phone at the airport was somewhat understandable. So I told myself to not be silly, and gave her the phone to take the picture.


"Hey, you guys are dressed alike!" She said. I was sure the entire team, including the twelfth man, wouldn't notice that (men!) so it was nice to have someone notice it. I warmed up a little more to her.


After she took the picture, we talked a bit more and then parted ways. Before that, she said it was really nice to talk to me (and I felt the same about her too) and asked me if I had a contact number I could give her. Once again, alarms rang in my head but I suppressed them as unnecessary cynicism. We exchanged numbers and said goodbye.


I wondered if I'd ever see her again. I wondered if I had been a fool to give my number to a total stranger. But I also wondered if this was the start to a great friendship. My overactive imagination took me years down the lane when we, two very close friends, sat over tea and laughed about how they had first met. But then I also thought that maybe we would never contact each other. But then you never know, I told myself. It's true that because of Xena's antics, I do end up talking to complete strangers a lot more than before, but no one had asked me for my number before.


The next morning, S sent me a 'Good morning' SMS, telling me that it was nice to meet me. I was busy with Xena so I replied a few hours later. I didn't hear back from her. To be fair to her, my SMS didn't exactly have room to further the conversation. I just wished her good morning and told her it was nice to meet her too.


Last night, Viv, Xena and I were having dinner at Cafe Iguana when my phone rang. It was a friend.  During our conversation, I got a second call and it was S.  I decided to call her back later and continued the conversation with my friend. I called her back a few minutes later, pretty sure that she was going to ask me if I was at Cafe Iguana because she spotted someone who looked like me. Nope. She just said that she couldn't really hear me and she would call me the next day if it was ok. I told her it was ok and asked her what it was about, and she said she wanted to check something with me.


I hung up and started thinking. What could she want to check with me? If I could get that bag for her too? Wow, maybe she really liked the bag. Oh wait, what if she was an insurance agent looking for potential clients? Shut up, Sayesha, why so cynical? Maybe she wanted to catch up over coffee or something? Maybe we would become great friends in time and I would feel really stupid for doubting her intentions. But wait, maybe we would indeed become friends and then she would eventually ask me to lend her a large sum of money? Not necessarily, Sayesha. Not everyone has a hidden agenda. Some people are just genuinely friendly. Goodness, I was going mad. On one hand I felt incredibly stupid for giving her my number and on the other hand I felt that this could be one of those things that could take away our cynicism as humans and make us trust one another a little bit more than we do.


So today, as promised, she called. My phone was in the silent mode as Xena was sleeping, so I missed her call. I called her back as soon as I saw the missed call. She said she wanted to check something with me.


"I told you I have my own business, right?" She asked.


Warning bells. Ring ring ring!


"Err... No, you didn't."


"Oh. Ok. I am trying to have my own business and I'm looking for honest, good people as partners. I had a good feeling about you the other day, so I thought I'd check if you would be interested to invest and have some extra income?"


Silence. Many bells ringing in my head.


"Not at this point, sorry." I said, as firmly and politely as I could.


Thankfully, she didn't press at all. She just thanked me and hung up.


And me? I had this huge thought bubble. With everything and nothing inside.

A thing of the past

So every time I go back to India, I steal something from my 'bachpan box'. Dad has these boxes where he has stored all the memorabilia from our childhood. The last time I was there, I got back a bound collection of Amar Chitra Katha comics, which for some strange reason, he actually allowed me to bring back. Yes, sometimes he says no. He says I can open the boxes and look at the stuff, but I can't take them away with me. I strongly believe that he still thinks of me as a pigtailed tiny tot who can't keep her books properly. I should remind him that I now have a pigtailed (well, almost) tiny tot myself.

A few weeks ago, I was looking for some light reading and found it in my bookshelf. A burst of memories flooded me, as I flipped through the yellowed pages, and examined the tattered front and back covers. Bound in newspaper from the early 80s. Check. Eyes of the 'cover girl' neatly coloured with red ink by the brat that was me. Check. Off-centre bindi. Check. Label with the world's worst handwriting on it. Check. (It is better now. I think.) 'Ghar na naam' on the label (since it was not a school book). Check. (Yes, yes, one of my nicknames is Kuku, given by my dad. Beats me why and when I overwrote 'Cuckoo' on it. Perhaps I felt that it suited me more.)

After I had finished devouring the stories from Indian mythology and history, I turned to the advertisements. I found some absolute gems from the early 80s. Enjoy! And if you have never seen these ads before, get outta my bar now, you're too young to be here! :/

OMG they actually printed the prices of their competitors' products in their ad!

Check out the poor resolution of the graphics.

Camel! My sister and I painted with Camel paints all the time! I think the brand is still around? They may not be calling their paints "bright and gay" anymore though. 

Poppins! Why did they have a strange number like 13 in each pack?

The moment I saw this ad, I thought of Nandini and how she would shake her fist at it. Actually I, too, would shake my fist, but my fist is nothing compared to hers. Click on the picture to read the text, especially the second paragraph.

Gems! M&Ms just don't do it for me.

I hate gum. Chewing gum. Bubblegum. All kinds of gum. But I do remember the craze of the NP 007 gum. 

OMG Amar Chitra Katha records!!

Catch-up #3

Ah, yet another catch-up post. But I need it to bounce back into the bar. Ooh, alliteration. :P

Mom went back to India last week. She stayed with us for a month this time. Though she's stayed longer before, this time I miss her more than I have ever missed her. The house feels empty, and Xena looks for her every day, almost making me cry. The three generations (or 3G) had a great time. This time, there was an overlap between mom's and mom-in-law's trips, and so we decided to have a short getaway in Batam, Indonesia. It was great fun, especially for Xena, who was utterly spoilt by two grandmas at once.

I lost my phone on the day my mom flew off. First time ever. To the valley of lost phones, cabville. Never again will I laugh at people who lose their phones in cabs. At first, I panicked because I thought I'd have to get a new number (hey, don't laugh at me, I'd never lost a phone before!). I was extremely upset because Viv and I got our first mobile lines together when we were not even dating, and our phone numbers are just one digit apart, something that obviously means a lot to us. Luckily, I got a new phone and replacement sim card and my number stays the same, except that I have to add back all my contacts. But that's good in a way, isn't it? Automatic phonebook housekeeping. Clean slate.

Viv and I managed to catch two movies. IN THE THEATRE! (Only those who have babies would know what a big deal this is.) Mom babysat while we watched 'The Dictator' and mom-in-law babysat while we watched 'The Amazing Spider-man'. We chose late-night shows so we'd be out while Xena was sleeping. By the way, did you notice that 'Spider-man' is a hyphenated word? I always thought it was 'Spiderman', until I studied the poster closely. Ooo. Anyway, I found 'The Dictator' hilarious (except for the very appalling mockery they made of childbirth) but I didn't like Spider-man. In the cab back, I counted the number of genres in Hollywood that I cannot watch any more - war movies, horror movies, romantic movies (Titanic and Notting Hill made me gag), animation movies (yeah ok, except for Nemo and Monsters), superhero movies, loud thrillers, teenage flicks, chick flicks, and so on. Yeah, I realise there is nothing much left for me to watch, except some comedies. It's hard to explain why I'm so forgiving of Bollywood movies, but am very reluctant to go watch a Hollywood movie in spite of favourable reviews.

I got the most brutal haircut of my life yesterday. I was trying to explain to the hairdresser that I want it really short, so short that it can't be tied, and he was having a tough time understanding me. Finally, I resorted to Singlish, "So short until cannot tie." and he understood at once. Or so I thought. Actually, I think his interpretation was "So short until cannot see." And he cut and cut and cut, so fast and so brutally, I had no time to react. Well, at least now I look like Xena, what with the same hair length and all. So if you are tired of people saying that your baby looks like your husband, you be the Mohammed and you go to the mountain and you get a haircut that makes YOU look like your baby, and then see what people say. (A lady in the playground said to me today, "Your baby looks exactly like you." I thanked her politely without letting her catch the inner muahahaha-ing.)

Viv is off to Papua New Guinea tomorrow for a cricket tournament. I'm nervous about managing Xena all by myself, and I hope she behaves. As long as she doesn't wake up at 4 am like she has been doing lately, I'll be generally fine.

Before I sign off, I have a threatening message for a blog bewdi. Anshu, I hope you don't think that Bhai does not reply to emails from bewdas and bewdis. I replied to your email the same day with itinerary suggestions for Singapore, but I have not heard back in three weeks. So I am using the bar as a platform to ask you -- Whyyy you no reply me? Bhai will now put supari on your head when you visit. :/

So that's all that has been happening. Coming up in the next post, shots of my first Amar Chitra Katha comic compilation circa 1984.

PS: Any bewdas/bewdis living in KL?

Walking the talk

Xena has started walking by herself!

Emoticonal Quotient part 4

I know. I know! I'm going to pretend that I didn't just abandon the bar for three weeks. But I know. Trust me. I know. I will be back with a longer post soon. Meanwhile, here's the next emoticonal pictionary post. Have fun guessing, bewdas!

[In case you're wondering why the rising sun keeps appearing throughout, it indicates 'ray'. I just couldn't find a suitable emoticon for 're', which appears a LOT in Hindi songs. :P]

At her majesty's service

*Click here to find out about 'opa'. :)

The princess and the pee

It was exactly two weeks from the day Xena had had the dreaded mmr vaccine, known to cause high fever in many babies. Her body felt very warm and when we took her temperature, it was between 38 and 39 degrees. The nurse had told us to monitor her fever and take her to the hospital if it persisted for more than 24 hours. We gave her paracetamol every 4 hours and kept sponging her, but the fever kept coming back after the effects of the paracetamol wore off. Last night, she crossed the 24-hour mark so we decided to go to the hospital. We had just given her a dose of the medicine and her fever had gone off so luckily we did not have to frantically rush. No wonder that I spent 10 minutes deciding what she should wear. Sheesh. I know.

So we reached the Children's Emergency of KK hospital at about 8:00 in the evening. KK hospital is the mothership for both Xena and me, because both of us had got a new lease on our lives here. There was a big sign saying that the wait could be more than 2 hours, so we were glad that we had given her the medicine just before leaving home. The doctor finally saw her at 10:30 pm, and said that he could not ascertain the cause of the fever but he wanted to do a urine test to rule out any bacterial infection. Hmmm... interesting, I thought. How on earth do you get a urine sample from a diaper-wearing baby? You can't just give them a container and say, "Umm... baby, pee. Now." If it was an older kid, it would be easy. You could just order them NOT to pee in the next 5 minutes and they instantly would. We felt rather silly, but we asked the doctor if they could extract the sample from her diaper, and luckily he did not burst out laughing in our faces. He got his nurse to stick a small bag for Xena to pee into, and the diaper went on top of that. Now all we needed to do, he said, was to wait for her to pee, and get back to the nurse once we had the sample. Sounds easy, right? WRONG. When you have a feisty warrior princess like Xena, who rejects food, milk and water left, right and centre, getting 10 ml of pee is a tough task.

So we waited. And we waited. And we waited some more. And then we got really hungry. We went to the McDonald's inside the hopsital and managed to grab dinner just before it closed at midnight. She was still rejecting all fluids so obviously, there was no pee. We even ordered sprite to offer her some in case that would work, but it didn't. After a while, we checked and there was some pee in the bag but not 10 ml, so we waited some more. And the next time we checked, we realised that the few drops had leaked into the diaper so we did not have anything now! We rushed back to the nurse who stuck a new bag and the whole waiting process started again. We managed to make her sleep for a short while, but she kept waking up. Since it was way past her bedtime, she was getting very fussy too. Since it was way past our bedtime too, we were also feeling very dazed. We pleaded, cajoled, but she refused to drink anything. On some level, it was quite funny. Viv and I were laughing at the fact that we had just paid 90 dollars to wait for our baby to give us some pee. The doctor had not given any medicine because she didn't have fever when he had checked.

Around 1:30 am, the doctor called us back and we told him we didn't have any sample for him. He said we could either wait endlessly or just go home and then come back whenever she peed. So Viv and I decided to wait till 2:30 am and if we still didn't have anything, we'd go home. So we waited and waited and waited, and I even sang "O re pee aa", but thankfully only in my head. At about 2:15, she was still refusing to drink, and fussing quite a bit so Viv spoke to her in a stern voice, "Xena, you need to do at least one of three things. Either you pee, or you drink, or you sleep." She must have been really scared by his tone because the very next second, she peed. A lot. It was quite funny. I suppose it was because Viv is generally a gentle and soft-spoken guy, and you know how scary it is when the usually gentle and soft-spoken guys get angry. (I did wonder if we'd have saved many hours of sleep if he'd scolded her earlier.) Anyway, we ran back to the nurse and gave her the sample, expecting them to call us any second since the results were supposed to be on the spot. When they didn't call us for half an hour, we went back and the nurse said that they did suspect some infection and had sent the sample to the lab for the detailed report which takes about an hour. Viv and I were complete zombies by then, but Xena seemed surprisingly upbeat, now that she had done the task assigned to her. She went around waving to everyone and randomly saying "Papa", "Mama" and "Babybaby". She even waved goodbye to patients who were getting discharged, much to everyone's amusement.

At 3:30 am, the doctor called us and said the detailed lab results were clean, so he was just going to give us more fever medicine and something for the runny nose that she had developed while waiting. "Take care, okayyyyy?" He said to Xena, and she chose that very moment to show off how she can repeat some sounds she likes. She looked at him, said "Okayyyy!" and waved goodbye. It was hilarious. She even waved goodbye to the cashier at the pharmacy after we had picked up the medicines.

We reached home past 4 am, complete zombies, but we decided to give her a good scrub before she slept to wash all the germs she may have picked up in the hospital. After the three of us had scrubbed ourselves clean, we managed to put her to sleep, and then we crashed. She had no fever so no medicine was needed. Viv had a match this morning and needed to leave home at 7:30 am and I told him he was mad if he thought he could play the whole day in the sun in that sleep-deprived state, and he should just switch with the 12th man. But Viv being Viv, woke up and was out of the house early in the morning. You know how some great performers need to down a peg or two before they can be their great performer selves? It seems like lack of sleep was Viv's peg or two, because the dude not only played in his usual wicket-keeping position, he also took four catches. (Yes, I felt really bad for having asked him to switch with the 12th man. Eeek.)

Xena woke up at her usual time 7 am, and I managed to wrestle her back to sleep till about 9 am, though I could not go back to sleep myself. She's been ok all of today - no fever, no runny nose, no meds. So there it was, the crazy weekend adventure we had, with 8 hours spent in the hospital, all for the princess to give us some pee.

Touchwood, all's well with Xena now.

Pee's out.

The bookworm reads aloud

Okay, this video is a few weeks old, but my mom recently told me that of all of Xena's videos so far, this one's her favourite. And that's when I thought I should put it up here. :)