Bobospeak

At 15.5 months, Bobo’s has a few favourite words –

“Ded-ddy”

Told in an excited drawl that suggests that without his daddy in sight, his life bleak

“Ma ma”

Used rarely. Only in times of extreme distress. Such as when Mummy is inside the bathroom and Bobo begins to miss her.

 “thaah tha”

For grand father. Both grand dads get hugely excited when he says it. 

He may  be using it to indicate the IPad too. Since he only sees his thathas and the IPad when we are Skyping. I suspect he thinks the whole package is called ‘tha tha’

 “Tha”

Tamil for give. My efforts at a bilingual education may be taking root (I hope). Used liberally for give and take.

"Poo"

Tamil for flower. Unfortunately also English for the big job. I realised while I had been pointing at flowers and teaching Bobo to say 'poo', our helper had been asking Bobo each time she did a stinky diaper change 'Bobo? Did poo poo?'

We have agreed to change the English poo to 'potty' 

“Go”

Step 1 – toddle over to nearest adult. Step 2 – gesture that you want to be picked up. Step 3 – once safely ensconced, point in direction you want to move towards and say ‘go’

Thank you Bobo for the clear instructions

 “ta”

For ‘star’. Picked up from the book ‘How to catch a Star’. Whose bedtime reading invariably results in Bobo pointing at every star in the book (about twenty) and saying ‘ta’. We thought this was bad till our helper wore a pair of shorts with a motif of row upon row of stars. Bobo excitedly poked her legs and said ‘ta’ for several minutes. She has not worn the shorts since.

“Buh Buh”

To indicate ‘bye bye’ and now extended to any situation from which he is making an exit or would like to make an exit. For instance at  bedtime he gracefully waves like a celebrity and says ‘buh buh’ as he is carried away down the corridor into his bed room. Sometimes he also adds  flying kisses. I think we need to get him dark glasses to complete the celebrity picture.

And his favourite word since he learnt it

“No”

Told in a variety of ways to indicate he does not want something. Accompanied by head bobbing and sometimes, copious tears. Also used when he is self policing. Like when he approaches the pedestal fan which he has been strictly forbidden from touching . Bobo will bring a finger to the fan and then withdraw and tell himself ‘no no’ . Apparently his conscience is yet to have silent conversations with him.

Even as I write this post, I can sense that I have left out many other words – ba (ball), ca (cow), ca (car), buba (bubble) and so on. Bobo has been communicating through yells, shrieks and wild gesturing and sometimes he can feel the woeful inadequacy of the adults he is dealing with in comprehending him. So he is delighted with every new word he learns. I am excited too to see him develop. But as always a part of me wants to hold on to the present. 

How can I not when he says ‘toe toe’ instead of ‘auto’.

Travelling with a Toddling Baby

Right after Bobo’s first birthday, we decided that we were confident enough to travel with him by ourselves. No parents. No helper (this sounds shameful but the reality is that working parents spend only weekends caring for their progeny and confidence levels don’t exactly run high). After much discussion (nothing hectic, nothing too far etc etc), we flew away to Kota Kinabalu in East Malaysia

The packing –

Two large suitcases, one small suitcase, one backpack, one stroller and one baby carrier. D and I occupied half a large suitcase. Toddling babies clearly travel like royalty with innumerable luggage and two caretakers

The flight –

You never quite realize how cramped economy class seats are till you actually take a toddling baby on one. It takes extreme social conditioning to understand why one needs to remain trapped in a 2.5 ft by 3 ft space for 2.5 hours and clearly babies are too young to comprehend this aspect of life.  Air Asia (bless them) gave us front row seats both ways and that made a lot of difference to our travel experience. It gave Bobo a bit more room to play. Considering that the onward journey bordered on his bedtime, he mercifully slept off in our arms. On the return leg, we made full use of strangers who smiled at Bobo and seemed ready to entertain him for a couple of minutes, albeit with us hovering next to him. 

The stay –

The first part of our stay was in a child-friendly resort. They had high chairs, baby cots, stroller-friendly walkways, a special kids menu, a shallow pool, kids club, babysitting service and basically the works. In a different life this would have got me pounding the gates to be let out. Now I was willing to throw large sums of money to avail of these services.

Multiple trips to the pool, beach and one lovely massage later, I was bored. There is only so much you can do in a resort and I was glad we had also planned a three day stop in a downtown hotel, a much more modest affair. The plan was to walk around and take in the sights and sounds of the city. The idea was quite nice, except KK is not an exciting city to walk around in. The promenade was well-built but quite dirty and it rained all evenings, forcing us into malls for entertainment of any sort.

Activities –

East Malaysia is stunningly green and beautiful, what with its rain forests and marine parks. People do the 9-km Mt Kinabalu trek or snorkel around the Tunku Abdul Rahman Marine Park. Luckily with Bobo, we had the perfect excuse to just laze around in the beach and ignore the more strenuous activities which we are anyway not capable of undertaking in our present state of sloth.

We went for an orangutan feeding session on one of the days, which Bobo watched open-mouthed, as did we. We went on the North Borneo Heritage Railway, a charming half day train journey reminiscent of colonial times when liveried waiters scurried around serving yummy breakfast and lunches as the train gently rolled past the landscape. I love train journeys and this one ranked highly in my book.

Eat –

We were reasonably confident that Bobo would not be too fussy when it came to mealtimes. Neither were we. Following a friend’s advice, we did not particularly care if he was not getting a perfectly balanced diet. Of course, considering we were yet to introduce Bobo to the pleasure of loading up on the muffins, pancakes and waffles, it was us we had to worry about on the issue of balanced diets. Bobo pretty much ate fruits, wholewheat bread, cheese, rice, chicken, boiled veggies and fish. He was happy to eat off our plates most times (and vice versa. Especially the yummy kids pasta or the breaded fried fish. I came back with a vastly expanded waistline).

And all that bonding –

Bobo basked in all the attention he was getting, which was of course primarily just our physical presence. We basked in the joy of being next to Bobo 24/7. D and I took turns to babysit Bobo so we could do our own thing too. But most times we were just happy watching him be mesmerized by the sound of a loud bird outside our room or loll around patiently while Bobo examined every lamp post in the long walkways to reach our room.

A good vacation

Things I learnt from one year of being a mom

# I need to get enough sleep. Adequate sleep takes precedence over my child, work, relationships, exercise and food. 

# I am more pro-choice than before. If you are not in a position to love and bring up a child, please don’t bring it into existence. And on a related note, I am all for sex education

# I don’t think I have ever loved anyone or anything as much as I have my child despite having lovely parents and being married to a nice and kind person. I can only assume parental love is a very primal feeling. 

# I need more to my life than just my child. I need adult interaction. I need to do something that gives me a sense of identity. I love being called ‘Mummy’ when I accompany my child to Gymboree. But I would probably feel depressed if I was only called that all the time. 

# Instead of glaring at small babies who are crying, I now feel sorry for them. Babies usually cry for very good reason. 

# I still can’t comfort any child other than my own. And even there, I am not always successful. 

# I am capable of sharing my prime spot in my child’s life with my helper. I am just happy that they bond well as of now. 

# I have become a better worker. I have never felt as eager to get back home as I do now and if that means being focussed and efficient all day long, then so be it 

# I have started prioritising and planning everything I do. I no longer have an infinite stretch of time to loiter at a shopping mall for three hours in the weekend but I do make the time to go out during my lunch breaks every once in a while for retail therapy. 

# I am enjoying simple games like peak-a-boo. Soon I would have shed all my carefully cultivated cynicism. But maybe it is not such a bad thing.

# I cry over movies with even a single scene of a child suffering. I can no longer watch horror movies. This may be a bad thing

# Work is an important part of me and I did not contemplate giving up work after having a child. I used to think women who gave up working after a child were defectors to the cause of feminism. But after having my own child, I can see why motherhood means different things for different people and I have stopped being judgmental about people’s choices. 

# I have started thinking twice before I buy most things. Apparently a spendthrift like me can also be brought to heel at the thought of saving up for her child

# My no. 1 worry used to be about things related to work. Now it is things related to my child. 

# A child is a big challenge emotionally and can test relationships to the utmost. Broken marriages cannot be fixed by a child. If anything, it is likely to be other way around

# This is the most important investment that two people can make together and it can bring them a lot closer if they are in a good place

# The amount of joy in bringing up a child has caught me by surprise. You can have a horrid day at work and come back and see a tiny thing pumping its fists into the air upon seeing you and then nothing else will matter. 

# I needed all the help I could get during my pregnancy and the first year of parenting. This is the first time in my adult life when I have truly needed family to be there for me and I am grateful I could lean on them. 

# People at work can be a lot more supportive than you think. A good boss who can put up with lower productivity for a few months will make all the difference to your decision to continue at the same workplace. 

# A baby is actually easier to manage in the earlier months than later. Except you are so terrified of the job that you find it growing on you only as they grow

# I did not know I was capable of not sleeping through the night for an entire year. 

# I did not know I had married a man who would pick up the baby every time he cried for reasons other than a night feed. This is the one act that has reduced my sleep deprivation in the last year and kept me sane this year. To think this criterion never even featured in the checklist I had made eons ago on desirable characteristics in a potential husband. 

# I used to feel irritated by dads who are not too involved with their kids and let their wife/mother/mother-in-law do most of the work. Now I just feel sorry for them for missing out. 

# Pregnancy is a very lonely state. No matter how helpful the people around you, you are the one literally doing the heavy lifting. Once the child comes out, I actually thought things got better since I had so many people around to look after him. 

# I am happy to listen to advice from everybody on parenting tips and techniques but ultimately the only two people who can decide how to bring up our child is the two of us. (Good luck Bobo!)

# In the darkest part of the night, with a wailing baby in my arms, I have had moments when I have wished for my old life. 

# In the darkest part of the night, with a nursing baby in my arms, I have just felt grateful to have had the chance to be a mother. I am glad I did not listen to myself when I seriously wondered if motherhood was for me. 

Book Update: And the year ends with..

Yet again I seem to have mostly forgotten what I have been reading. This is not a commentary a quality of the books. It is more my memory which is becoming like a sieve with each passing day. The positive side of this is that I can finally reread books without remembering what comes ahead. I am not entirely sure if I have already read Alice Munro’s Runaway but it does not matter because I enjoyed the book thoroughly and if I am doing it the second time without recollection of the first, so much the better. Runaway is a collection of short stories, located yet again somewhere in Northern Canada in small towns. Munro’s characters grip you beautifully and keep you engaged with their little human foibles.  Short stories can sometimes be too short or too brief to capture the stories they tell. Not so with this collection. You read a piece, savour it and feel satisfied.

I discovered two authors this time around both of whom I enjoyed. This has been a stroke of good luck since finding a good author is a lot tougher than it looks. Incidentally both authors were brought to my attention in the Guardian’s Books section. 

I had noted down Alan Furst’s name dutifully in my reading list and found his Dark Star in the library. This is a spy novel set in Poland just before the Second World War. I am no fan of spy novels, yet this one kept me going. Unfortunately I could not finish it before the extended due date and my mood changed and I moved on to other books. Then I went looking for him again and found Spies of Warsaw. Same settings. Clearly Furst specialises in one thing and he is bloody good at it. Spies of Warsaw held my attention a lot better. It traces a French military attaché posted in Warsaw. The attaché though is just an excuse to lovingly dwell into details of what the spy network would have been like back then and you sit there enthralled. One point I especially enjoyed was the author’s casual comment on Allied countries who spy on each other. Everyone knows everyone does it but when you are caught out by your so-called friends, it is embarrassing. Reminded me of U.S. and Germany now! 

The other author Kate Atkinson was in the news for not having made it to the Booker list this year. The library stocked an older novel ‘When will there be good news’. Despite the melodramatic name, the novel itself is quite gripping. A little girl witnesses a horrific incident. Years later, a young teenage babysitter worries about her employer. A policewoman wonders about her marriage while getting obsessed with one of her cases. An ex-policeman is on a questionable journey but is totally sidetracked. All these paths meander, sometimes joining together, sometimes not. It has been a while since I have read a fast paced thriller and I do enjoy my share of them. I am now waiting to go back and find another book by her.

There was Nadeem Aslam’s The Wasted Vigil. Inspired by a post on a friend’s facebook page, I looked for his Maps for Lost Lovers but the library only stocked this. Through its fictional setting, it describes the sad and long period of turmoil that Afghanistan has been going through. Another book that made me feel glad I have the life I have and was not born a woman in a fundamentalist setting. 

Apart from these notable books, I turned to an old favourite P.G. Wodehouse’s A Pelican at Blandings for comfort reading. What an author. What an author.

Also read a book by a ‘chick-lit’ author discovered by mom. Jane Green’s Other Woman chronicles the daughter-in-law and mother-in-law relationship. Like all these things there is a kernel of truth that gets stretched but not to the point where you throw your hands up. 

There was Maria Semple’s This One is Mine. The story revolves around two women. One of whom is married to a very well-off man, has a child, a good home, a good life and yet wants more. The other longs for all these symbols of stability and chases them. The protagonist sounded like an early and unpolished version of the one in Where do you go Bernadette. The latter book I loved. So this one was a slight disappointment. 

Now I recollect reading these books a while ago and forgetting to jot them down in the blog. Chicken, mules and two old fools by Victoria Twead. My mom had recommended it as light reading after spotting it on a blog some time ago. It indeed is, describing a couple who move countries, live in an idyllic location, renovate the house they are living in and make a killing selling it. Sounds like it is your dream come true? Yeah, I felt that way too.

I also read Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Torday. The name sounds light and funny, the book is less so. It starts off wryly enough describing a mid-level fisheries scientist who is roped into the hopeless project of starting salmon fishing in Yemen and the story goes on to tell us if that is actually achieved. There is a slight heaviness to the tone, with funny episodes having an underlying bleakness. Don’t expect laugh out loud and you should be ok.

I am quite satisfied with how 2013 has ended in terms of books. A friend and I were discussing books and she was amazed that I found time to read despite holding a full time job and having a kid. She is quite an avid reader herself, so it was well thought out, serious compliment. I thought about it and told her that reading seems to be the only constant in my life just now what with the baby and changing countries and all. 

So here is hoping I get to read more good books next year. Happy new year all.