Some more snippets.

Puttachi completed five months today. Its been a while since I did an update on her, so here goes.

* Puttachi bites. And hard. She wants to chew on everything. Everything finds its way to her mouth. If she is lying on her tummy and doesn't have anything else in hand, she licks whatever she is lying on.
Her favourite object to gnaw on is the human hand. If she finds one within reach, she pounces on it just like - just like the predator pounces on the prey in those National Geographic shows. And she gnaws on it like the predator eating off the prey. With equal fervour.

* She dives. And how! Wherever she is, whatever she is doing, her roving eye finds an object, she sets her heart on getting it. In the movie "The Greatest Game ever played", when this champion golfer is taking a shot, everything else vanishes - the trees, the spectators, everything except he and the hole. This kid is like that. When she wants something, only that object seems to exist in the world. She doesn't care about space, distance, height, anything. She just dives. Or if she is on the floor, she pushes her head down, or her knees, or her toes and tries her hardest to move forward and get it. I don't think it will be long before she starts moving forward. And then, Heavens save me.
And oh, why did she want the object that she has set her heart on? For the sole purpose of putting it into her mouth.

* She had the second haircut of her life. We started cutting her hair when she was asleep, but she woke up before we could complete it. So I broke the "NO-TV-for-Puttachi" rule, and switched on the TV. She sat and stared at the screen transfixed, and we finished the job. Now I know why moms put their kids before the TV. For a moment's peace. I have started rethinking my "No-TV-for-Puttachi" rule.

* Shortly after my plea for help, asking you for advice on how to make Puttachi sleep, her sleep habits improved beautifully. "Putting her to sleep" became a non-necessity. If it was her naptime, she just drifted off to sleep while taking her feed. That's it. That simple. But now, suddenly, she is a tad older. And that makes her very distracted. She finishes her feed and cries. Now, its back to square one, trying to "put her to bed". But her night-time sleep habits continue to remain very good.

* She is mine and S~'s daughter all right. She loves her food. After Ragi didn't agree with her, I started her on Nestum - plain rice cereal. I then started adding little somethings to it - Mosambi juice, Dal water, mashed carrot - she loves it. She gobbles it up with pleasure, with the appropriate satisfied noises. It is beautiful and so satisfying to watch her. I can't wait until she is older so that I can give her regular food!

* I can see her personality actually developing. Very active and restless, very curious and enthusiastic, fun-loving, vociferous. with strong likes and dislikes. of course, I don't want to label her, but its fun attributing certain characteristics to her.

* Pictures in books excite her, and as I have already said, music does too. Hail Hariprasad Chourasia for having the ability to calm her at a moment's notice!

* She is such a delight. Just as I think she cannot get any prettier or any more delightful, she does. [Alert! Doting mom!]

* People are cruel. When Puttachi was a new-born and looked like an alien, everybody said that she looked just like me. Now that she has blossomed into a cutie, everybody gushes about how much she looks like S~. Hmph.

200

This is my 200th post. I didn't realize when 100 passed by, and so I thought I would make a big deal about 200.

200. Never thought I could write so much. When I first started this blog, I did so doubtfully, thinking - what will I write about? Apparently, I do have a lot to say.

Coincidentally, it has been nearly two years since I started blogging regularly.

It's been a ball - thanks, all of you - you kept me going. Your encouragement, your comments, and your friendship! So, thank you, to you and you and you.

It has been lovely knowing you all, meeting some of you in person, and getting to know some others better through email/phone. I have met many interesting and like-minded people through the blog, and that I count as one of the greatest advantages of blogging. I will not be exaggerating if I say that right now, I am more regularly in touch with my blog friends than I am with my "other" friends.

Blogging under my real name, and having all my friends and family and family's friends and friends' families read my blog, makes things difficult at times - I cannot spew out everything that's on my mind. But I wouldn't have it any other way. This suits me just fine.

Blogging has another major hazard. Many of my friends keep track of me through this blog, and when I write or call them and ask, "Hey, what's up, been a long time".. they say, "Oh yeah, sorry, I know what you have been up to, because of your blog, and I didn't realize that I haven't kept you updated."

So, you, and I mean YOU. Please close this page (after you have read till the end), open your inbox, and send me a mail. And yes, I mean you. Thank you.

Cheers!

Of Nobel laureates..

So, it turns out that Leonid Hurwicz, the Economics Nobel laureate is known to my Dad's maternal uncle, and he has even had dinner at my dad's cousin's place. That is probably the closest I have come to knowing a Nobel laureate.

Unless, of course, one of you in the future becomes a Nobel laureate. Then I can open my blog (if it still exists and if I remember the url), and show people your comments and say, "Oh, s/he was my blogger pal!" And if I win a Nobel, you can go ahead and flaunt my name, I will not mind.

Ok, back to Nobel laureates. Actually, coming to think of it, I kind of know another Nobel laureate. Or rather, a Nobel laureate's home. My school was adjacent to C.V.Raman's compound (now all you North-Bangaloreans know where I did my schooling!). My classmate in primary school, let's call her Sma, lived in the outhouse in that compound. C.V.Raman's large house, situated in the middle of that huge compound, was uninhabited,, and always locked.

Now this compound contained a variety of trees - jackfruit, mango, silk-cotton, tamarind, and many more - it was actually a mini forest. A beautiful green place in the midst of busy Malleshwaram - we all envied Sma.

I would go to Sma's home to play sometimes, after school or on the weekends. Sometimes our games took us to the main house. We would play in the wide, sweeping portico, with the thick columns and pillars. We would go round the house and try to peep in at the windows. Once, looking at my enthusiasm, Sma's father got the key, opened the doors and let me look inside. It was large, spacious, with a high roof - a typical old-style home. The furniture was heavy, luxurious. The sofas had long, curved handles and printed cushioned seats. CV Raman's armchair was very heavy, dusty, and broken. His writing table was large and foreboding. I sat on his chair, sat at his table, and felt very important indeed.

The memory of that house still gives me the creeps, for some strange reason. It was obviously once a very beautiful and elegant and house, but it seemed to be falling apart - dusty, musty, and echoing with our hushed voices.

So there ends my tryst with Nobel laureates.

My sis and I had once chalked up a plan on "How to win a Nobel". We listed the categories and contemplated upon which Nobel it would be easiest to win. We first struck out Physics, and then went Chemistry. Medicine fell next. Economics wasn't even in the reckoning, as we had no idea what it even meant. All that was left was Literature and Peace.

Literature shouldn't be so difficult - just write a few books and you are good to go. But Peace, we decided, was the easiest. All we had to do was preach peace with zest, and we would be awarded the Nobel. (We were just 11 and 7, please!)

I still have a fascination for the Nobel, and am in awe of Nobel laureates. I am sure some of you are out there rubbing shoulders with Nobel laureates. When my sis got an admit to Stanford, somebody told her that in that University, if she stood in the cafeteria line, the guy in front of her and the one behind her would be Nobel laureates. I don't think that has happened to her - yet.

So, do tell me - have you met/interacted with Nobel laureates? If yes, who, when, how, where?

WTH!

The maid's daughter is six months pregnant. And the foetus is male. And how did she find out? The doctor who conducted her scan told her. Yes.

And me? The ultrasound clinics I went to had large posters with foreboding red lettering which warned me that "Foetal sex determination is illegal and a punishable offence". I had to sign declarations that I wouldn't ask the doctor to reveal the sex of the foetus, and the doctor had to sign in the report that s/he hasn't disclosed the sex of the foetus to me. And this is when I was ready, to welcome with open arms, either sex, be it a boy or a girl.

And the doctor reveals the sex of the foetus to the maid's daughter, she from that class of society, who are more likely than us to treat girls as burdens, and would tend to abort female foetuses. And as I gather, the doctor offered the information just like that. No money seems to have exchanged hands.

Did he offer the information because the foetus is male? Would he have done the same if it was female? But if he had the reputation of revealing the sex of the foetus, wouldn't his silence indicate that it is a female foetus?

In fact, when I was expecting, the same maid asked me if the doctor did not tell me the sex of the foetus, and that in her village, they "take a photo" and tell them the sex of the foetus. But this scan was done right here, in Bangalore. Where is this clinic? "There", with a vague wave of the hand is all the information we get from the maid about the whereabouts of this place.

This tells me how widespread sex determination is. And we scream ourselves hoarse about female foeticide.

Update on Jan 8th: The girl delivered the baby yesterday... and it turned out to be a girl!

Arranged Marriages

Someone came to my blog looking for "How to check out a guy in arranged marriage". Poor girl, she probably found only this - A taxonomy of marriages.

She won't get further help from me, coz I didn't have to go through the motions of an arranged marriage. So let's help other Googlers - if you had an arranged marriage, do tell me how you "checked out" the boy or the girl. If you are single and looking at an arranged marriage, tell me how you intend to decide. If you don't fall into either category, but would still like to contribute your mite, you are very welcome. The comments section is open.

Attachment

I read this news about a dark-haired Czech couple who had DNA tests conducted to quell rumours about their blond-haired daughter. But as the tests revealed, the baby was not theirs. They went to the hospital to find that there had been a mix-up, and another couple had their daughter. So now, the parents have decided to SWAP their babies after TEN months of caring for the wrong baby.

How heart-wrenching it must be for them! As I always tend to do (bad habit), I tried putting myself in that situation. If it turned out that there had been a hospital mix-up and Puttachi was not my biological daughter, what would I do? Give her up? NO WAY! But then the girl out there was my biological daughter, the one I had carried in my tummy for 9 months! Would I not want her too? I would, I am sure. I would willingly look after both the babies. But of course, so would the other mom! What a horrible situation.

My heart goes out to those parents. By agreeing to swap daughters, they have perhaps done the logical and practical (in the long run) thing. But I cannot bear to imagine the heartache that they must be going through.

I just realized how unimportant a "blood" relation is, when it comes to children. Would I have loved Puttachi even an iota less than I do now, if she hadn't been my biological daughter? I don't think so. My love couldn't have been any less. Then, by inference, it hardly matters whether you have a biological child or whether you adopt a child! So why go through 9 months of pregnancy and increase the population of the world, when you can do everybody a world of good and adopt a child and give her a good home? Is it that "our flesh and blood" is so important?

I would love to hear what you have got to say.

Shoe Woes

The Mad Momma mentioned somewhere on her blog that she has over a 100 pairs of shoes. A 100 pairs of shoes! Now the first thing that came into my head was not where she keeps them or how she maintains them, but this: that she has actually liked a 100 pairs of shoes enough to buy them.

Why doesn't that happen to me? At last count, I own probably, 8 pairs of shoes, and that includes walking shoes and hawai chappals. Why is it that some shoes go looking for people, and nothing seems to be right for me even if I move heaven and earth to find them?

Not that I am asking for anything wonderful.

All I want in my shoes, in no particular order:
1) Sturdiness - obviously, if I pay good money for it, I want it to last.
2) Style - and why not?
3) Have a Soft and flexible sole - After my ligament tear, hard soles give me an ache in the leg.
4) Flat, no heels - same reason as number 4.
5) Back-strap - I am a vigorous walker, and slippers without a back-strap tend to fly off my feet. Go on, Laugh!
6) The Right size - you won't believe how many perfect shoes I haven't bought because they don't stock them in my size.

Am I asking for too much?

More often than not, I find myself compromising on one of the above aspects, just so that I can have something to walk in. For this very reason, I hate to go shoe-shopping, coz I tend to get depressed. Really.

S is wonderful at getting me shoes to wear. He accompanies me patiently to any number of shops, says "Come on, let's try just one more shop!" when I say that I have had enough, and doesn't rest until I've found shoes that I like. If you have seen me in nice shoes in the past three years, it is entirely due to him.

It was on one such shoe-searching expedition that I found the shoe of my dreams. It was a Woodlands shoe - perfect in all respects. Then, what happened, you ask? Well, shortly after that, because I was expecting Puttachi, my feet expanded, and later in the pregnancy, they swelled up a bit, and I couldn't wear the shoes any longer. If you are wondering why I can't wear them now, the answer is that when your feet expand during pregnancy, they don't really return to their original size. Really. Look it up if you want.

So now those shoes are a tight fit. I knew it was too good to last :(

Got a new pair last evening - again thanks to the persistence of S. I was going around in a temporary, ugly pair of soft slippers (compromised on backstrap and style) which I had bought before Puttachi was born, because those were the only ones that were comfortable. Before I could start cribbing again about the ugliness of those slippers, S dragged me off to a shoe shop and wonder of wonders, I found something that I liked, immediately. But even an optimist like me becomes pessimistic when it comes to shoes. I am already wondering when the strap will snap.

Sigh. Please tell me I am not alone!

Song Tag

I Love Lucy tagged me to disclose which "our song" is.

Do S and I have a song? Yes we do. And how well both of us remember the song! That night, dark, silent, warm...a sense of expectation and anticipation.... S was holding my hand....waiting... and waiting.... and suddenly, from out of the silence, burst forth the song - the sweetest we had heard.... the one we had waited for, for so long... so long.......

But the anticlimax was that the moment he heard that song, S let go of my hand and went off in the direction of the song. Can't blame him though, I would have done the same had I been mobile.

Ok, ok, I know you already guessed what I am talking about - I am talking about the day Puttachi was born - and the song? Her cry of course!

*Ducking to avoid rotten eggs and tomatoes* Please excuse me, and indulge me a bit! We are brand new parents!

Hmm... and to prove that we do have a life besides Puttachi, here it is - The songs that I consider "our songs" are Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd, and Wonderful Tonight by Eric Clapton.

Please note the use of the word "I" and not "we" in the previous sentence. I am sure S will read this and ask me, "Really? Are those "our songs"? Why?"

That brings us to the second part of the tag - Why these are our songs. I will leave that for tomorrow (Tomorrow never comes). I have already spoken too much, and speaking more can be hazardous to my health. That's what comes from blogging in your real name and having all your friends and family read your blog.

And now. the interesting part - I tag - Ano, Madhu, Poppin's Mom, Devaki, Abhipraya, Shyam, and Shark. Chitra(Same Old Anon) , C (stop gazing at Lake Burley Griffin and comment, lazy bum!) and R(you long-haired charmer, I know you are reading this!), please write yours in the comments section - Do you guys have "a song", which is it, and why? Go!

Cancer Survivors

If you can read Kannada, please check out the Oct 11th 2007 "Sudha" (in the stands today). The cover page article is "Cancer Geddavaru" (Those who won over Cancer) by my mom Brinda N.Rao. You can also read it online on http://sudhaezine.com (You will have to register, though).

My mom battled and survived cancer about six years ago. It was a very difficult phase for all of us - and I cannot believe how beautifully my mom has emerged from that crisis. More active than before, and full of life as usual, she has continued her radio programs, given music concerts, and continued with writing and taking translation assignments.

She attributes her optimism during the treatment, and her positive attitude now, to timely counselling by Dr.Brinda Sitaram, the leading psycho-oncologist in India. The article is about Dr.Brinda, her institute COPER(Center of Psycho-Oncology for Education and Research), other cancer survivors, and my mom's own story.

Feedback welcome.

Change of Name

The Little One will henceforth be known as Puttachi.

"Puttachi" in Kannada essentially means the same as "The Little One". "Putta" means "Little", and "Achi" is something that is added out of love. And since this is what I usually call her in real life, it makes a lot more sense to use it here too. Anyway, "The Little One" was getting cumbersome, and many of you were asking for a nickname too, so here it is.

Well, I had never intended to blog about my baby, so I hadn't bothered to think up a nice nickname for her... but as it turns out, I can't stop blogging about her (heh heh)... so I thought it was time for a new name. Better late than never, what say?

Loudspeakers and the police.

So it is that time of the year when Ganesha pandals are put up and a lot of ruckus is made in his name.

As usual, a function is going on about a kilometer from my parents' home, where I am staying now. The music was so loud that I could not hear myself speak.

As usual, calls were made to the police. Not one, not two, but a dozen. And not just by us, by many of our neighbours.

As usual, it was of no use. [Ok, this is slightly unfair of me. There have been times when the police have gone and switched off the music or lowered the volume].

Anyway, today, this is what happened:

7:30 pm - Call made to local police station, they say they would dispatch a Cheetah (police patrol mobike) immediately.

7:45 pm - No change in situation, another call made. Policeman says that the association has already taken permission and they cannot do anything. When asked whether the permission includes blaring loudspeakers at unspeakable decibels, there is no satisfactory answer. They say that the Cheetah has gone elsewhere, they would dispatch it as soon as it gets back.

8:00 pm - No change in situation. My dad personally goes to where the function is going on, and makes a request to the organizers to lower the volume. They say they will, and dad comes back.

8:05 pm - No change in situation. Just as I put my baby down on the crib, Himesh starts howling, and my baby wakes up bawling.

8:10 pm - My parents decide to call 1-0-0. It is busy. Yes. 100. Busy. This wasn't an emergency, so it is okay. What if there had been a burglar in the backyard? What would I do? "Please wait, Burglar Uncle, 1-0-0 is busy. Let me search the directory for other emergency numbers". How on earth can 100 be busy? Are they nuts? Shouldn't they have enough lines to cover any and all calls originating in this burgeoning city?

8:15 pm - My parents call the DG's office. Policeman answers politely, says he understands, and that permissions don't mean that they can play music so loudly, and says that he will dispatch a Hoysala (Police Patrol 4-wheeler) immediately.

8:45 pm - No change in situation.

9:00 pm - My baby still bawling, I call the local police station. As I start to complain, the policeman says, "Some people are having some entertainment, why should so many of you call and complain". My BP rises. "Can you hear a baby crying? She cannot fall asleep because of the noise. If some people want entertainment, why should others suffer? What are you police for? Please do something!" Policeman's tone changes. "Oh baby not sleeping? Tch Tch... will dispatch a Cheetah immediately". I recognize the tone. Indulgent. I hang up, without much hope.

9:15 pm - No change in situation. Call again to the local police station. Same reply. Wonder how many Cheetahs are bounding about this area, if they are to be believed.

9:45 pm - Put on loud, soothing music to cover the other noise. The baby falls asleep, more out of exhaustion than anything else.

10:00 pm - No change in situation. Another call to police station. Aren't loudspeakers banned after 10 pm? Ah yes, madam, we will dispatch a Cheetah right away.

10:30 pm - Volume slightly lessened.

11:00 pm - Function concluded, and then silence. Golden, golden silence.

Please draw your own conclusions. I'm off to bed.

Erlangen

When I was a toddler, I lived with my parents in Erlangen, Germany, for a year. I obviously don't remember much of my stay, but the snaps taken then show me as a little kid with a mop of thick black hair, and cheeks the size and colour of apples. The indoor snaps usually show me eating or drinking something, and the outdoor snaps show me covered from top to toe in warm clothes, with only my cheeks popping out.

Aside 1: The mop of hair remains, but where did those cheeks go, do you ask? I used to wonder too, but now I know. They were in hibernation, and now they have come back and attached themselves to my baby's face.

Aside 2: Georg Simon Ohm - he of the Resistance fame - was born in Erlangen, and that's why he came back twenty years later to haunt me when I studied Electrical Engineering.

Well, though I am technically not supposed to remember anything about my stay in Erlangen, being very little, the point is that I do. I remember:

• Looking down from the window of our 19th storey apartment.
• Feeding bread crumbs to swans in the lake near our home.
• Playing with my Indo-German friend An in her water-filled inflatable tub, and crying when asked to get out because it was time to go home.
• Wanting to eat the beads on An's rubber band, because they looked like peppermints (Greedy pig right from childhood, yes).
• Feeling out of place at a children's gathering because all the kids spoke only German.
• Sitting on my mom's lap and eating something while she showed me pictures in a book.

Most other memories have probably come from snaps, so I won't add them here. These are the memories I am sure I remember without external aid. I remember these perhaps because all of them must have induced extreme (at that time) emotions in me - happiness, greed, loss, loneliness...

Ok, so why on earth did I start talking about Erlangen out of the blue? Well, I was looking at the Sitemeter of my blog and clicked on "Who's on", and found a reader from Erlangen. And that, I can tell you, gave me quite a thrill. I later realized that it was a "siemens.de" domain, so it could well be possible that my reader wasn't really sitting in Erlangen, s/he could have been elsewhere reading my blog through a server situated in Erlangen. So, anyway, if that reader is you, put your hand up, please, delurk, and let me know. JFK, as we would say in college - Just For Kicks. Thank you.

Hair.

What do you get when you cross a

Guard(Courtesy)
with a
Cockatoo? (Courtesy)

Answer:


My baby's hair.

The sound of a baby's laughter.

As soft as velvet.
As bubbly as a brook.

Comforting.
Elevating.

Brings a smile on any face.
Induces hope in any heart.

The sweetest sound on Earth.

Champ Mom

Lindsay Davenport won the Bali Classic Tournament on Sunday.

What's so special about that, do you ask?

She won this just three months after she gave birth to a baby.

Let me face it. She had a baby after I did, and she went out there and won an international tournament yesterday.

I am ashamed. If Lindsay can win a tournament, I should at least be able to climb a flight of stairs without panting.

I need to start my fitness regimen. Now. On second thoughts, not now, considering that it is 11 o clock at night.

Tomorrow.

Do I see a smug look on S' face?

Water, water, everywhere....

It has been pouring non-stop for the past couple of days. But even I was taken aback when this photo jumped out at me from the front page of the newspaper today. Hosur road flooded with water, and these people are moving about in coracles. Coracles! On the roads of the Software City's IT hub!!

Everything else apart, the first question that popped into my head was - Where did they get these coracles?

Bangalore does not have any rivers in its immediate vicinity, other than Vrishabhavati [1], (in which no one in their right mind would willingly go riding on coracles), and I don't think any coracles go about on Bangalore's lakes either. Then, where did these coracles come from?

Did some enterprising businessman start transporting coracles to these IT offices the moment it started raining? Or wonder of wonders, have companies started storing coracles?

Maybe companies have included this in their disaster management plans, something like - 20 coracles should be stored in the basement to ferry employees when the roads get flooded during the monsoons.

Who knows?

On another note, two nights ago, after attending to the Little One when she woke up for her night feed, I felt hungry and popped in at the kitchen for a drink of warm milk. As I sat sipping the comforting liquid, I watched the rain. I saw gallons and gallons of rain water flowing down the road. Some of it will seep underground and groundwater will be replenished. Yes. But how about the other water? So much water going down the drain - literally. How much opportunity there is for rainwater harvesting!

Fact: Bangalore receives about 970 mm of rainfall every year. The number of rainy days is close to 60 (over a period of eight months). 54 percent of the rainfall is due to the south-west monsoon. Rainfall in Bangalore can be expected to arrive on time, and without fail. Due to these extremely favourable conditions, rainwater harvesting is a viable solution to the city's rainwater harvesting problems. In fact, it has been estimated that over 40 percent of Bangalore's water requirements can be fulfilled by Rainwater Harvesting.

Fact: A 100 square meter rooftop can yield upto 90,000 liters of water annually.

Fact: Bangalore is the first city (in India) to include rainwater harvesting in its byelaws. The law says that “ every building with a plinth area of exceeding 100 sq mtrs and built on a site measuring not less than 200 sq mtrs shall have one or more Rain Water Harvesting structures having a minimum total capacity as detailed in Schedule”. This specification also means that adapting rainwater harvesting costs less than one percent of the total cost of the construction.

A lot of information can be got from the Rainwater Club.

[1] Vrishabhavati was a beautiful river, which is now the sewage and effluent canal for the city.

More snippets

* The Little One rolled over on Sunday, at exactly 3.5 months. And now all she does is roll over. Any time is roll-over time, because of which -
- Diaper accidents have now turned into diaper disasters.
- Diaper-changing is next to impossible - I have to tie her down!
- No longer can I leave her lying on elevated surfaces - I have to be on my toes all the time!
- After she is on her tummy for a while, she tires of it and starts whimpering - when I put her back on her back, she promptly rolls over like a spring and whimpers again.
- When she wakes up for her night feed, she rolls over and waits for me to wake up. When I do hear her and wake up, I see a head struggling to keep itself upright, with a cute little sleepy face smiling delightedly at me from about half a foot away. Makes my night, each night!

* She loves her rattle - and when I say Love, I mean LOVE.
- She loves to hold it and rattle it, and keeps hitting her forehead head in the process.
- She protests when it is taken away from her.
- If it is rattled when she is playful, she stares at it and gurgles and smiles.
- If it is rattled when she is restless, she turns hyper-active.
- If it is rattled when she is crying uncontrollably, she stops crying.
- When she is calm and peaceful and sleepy, rattling the rattle makes her fall asleep. (Really!)

* She attended her first concert this weekend - by Smt. Aditi Upadhya, the wonderful lady who taught me music many years ago. We entered a little late, and The Little One sat quite attentively at first. I almost thought I could sit through till the end - but then she conducted some noisy diaper business, and grew restless - we had to leave before she screamed and disturbed the others. :(

* I take her out on walks regularly - she loves it.

* Ragi didn't agree with her - or maybe her system is not yet ready for it. Semi-solids have been put off for a while.

* Her sleep has improved a lot - thanks for asking. Your tips on my Help! post helped a lot, I really appreciate all your inputs. The crying-when-sleepy-syndrome has gone down considerably. But her naps are still very very short. I can hardly get any work done during the day.

* She seems to be a Shakespeare fan. She keeps saying "King Li-yah".

Cerelac

I love Cerelac. I was fed Cerelac as a kid, and I am sure I dipped my spoon into my sis PeeVee's bowl when she was being fed Cerelac, but my happiest Cerelac days came much later.

Whem my cousin K1 reached the Cerelac-eating age, I would hang around during his feed-times, half for the joy of seeing the adorable fellow eat, and half in the expectation that he would leave some in the bowl, so that I could lay claim over that. And sure enough, he wouldn't eat all of it (thank you, K1), and I would lick the bowl clean.

When his brother K2 was born, I was a little older, and much cleverer. My aunt V and mom had roped me in to "help" feed K2, perhaps to keep me busy. I would receive instructions to prepare Cerelac for him. I would go to the kitchen, prepare Cerelac under somebody's guidance, and then take the bowl to my aunt for her to feed the little K2. Once they were sure I could do it on my own, they allowed me to do it without supervision a few times. Here's where I worked my plan. If they had asked me to prepare two spoons of Cerelac, I would prepare 3 spoons. The logic being, obviously, that K2 would waste more, and I would get more to eat.

I am not sure if my aunt V worried about why K2 had started eating less (she wouldn't, she is hardly the worrying kind), but if she did worry, and changed his feed in any way, I apologize for the lacuna, if any, in K2's nutritional input. But considering that he is now a strapping six-foot plus sportsman, I think it hardly mattered!

Anyway, after that, there was quite a gap before the next kid was born in the family, and I grew Cerelac-hungry. Once, when I was well into my teens, I poured out my tale of Cerelac craving to my sis P, and was quite surprised to see that she loved Cerelac too! We mentioned it to our parents, and they, sweet people that they are, gave us some money and asked us to go and buy Cerelac for ourselves. Ohmigosh! A full tin of Cerelac just for us! Both of us ran back home, mixed some Cerelac with milk, dug into it, found it bland, added sugar, and ah, bliss! That cured my Cerelac cravings - for the present. But a couple of years later, another cousin V was born, and sure enough, I ate his Cerelac too.

Now, just think, I have my own baby and I have full control over what I can do with her food - so I couldn't wait until I could start her on Cerelac. But the Doc advised me to start her on processed Ragi. I was shocked. What about Cerelac? Yeah, yeah, I know, Ragi is much more nutritious, and home-made stuff is always better, and the Little One is slurping up her Ragi, cooing and flailing her limbs in pleasure. But what about Cerelac?

Well, whatever it is, I am waiting for an opportunity to bring Cerelac home... errr.. for myself.

Babies test your patience...

.... And that's why Nature made them irresistible!

A baby is ....

.... An Alimentary Canal with a loud voice at one end and absolutely no responsibility at the other.

What a perfect definition! I found it in the Absolutely Useless Dictionary.

One more of my favourites, from the same place:

Sweater - Something you put on when your mother gets cold.

I am sure the Little One will agree to that wholeheartedly! I never know how to dress her, I just dress her like I would have dressed in that weather, just a little warmer. Sigh. I wish there was a babybodycomfortometer.

Visit the Absolutely Useless Dictionary at your own risk. You will have many many wonderful hours of laughter, but it is addictive, and then don't blame me!

Also read: The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce