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If there is such a thing! Oct 4th, he turned 4 months. In the spirit of elevating the status of most trivial dates to the celebrated events, I wanted to do his four month post. But life intervened, and I haven’t got beyond the first couple of lines yet. For that matter, Kodi’s birthday pictures are still in queue to be posted. Hope to be all caught up this week.
Meanwhile, here’s a preview of what Plane’s been upto this month.
Making laadoos
Hiding
Relishing his first taste of solids
You won’t believe what happened to us just now. I cant believe it myself. I am still on kind of on a high, and I want to write it all down hurriedly before that feeling evaporates.
We were going about our usual morning business. My mom and I in the newly setup kitchen, getting used to the new ergonomics of things being spread in a space smaller than we’re used to. The blender refused to cooperate, and I was helping my mom with it. Kodi was watching Wiggles in the adjoining living room and Plane asleep in the swing.
So there I am blending away masala and deaf to all other sounds. I turn it off and tell my mom it is ready, when Kodi comes running in to the kitchen. Dagag is here, he says. What nonsense! I think to myself. I am slightly alarmed with a thought – maybe he has seen someone else and is mistaking him for my dad. More importantly why would someone intrude here in the middle of a weekday. So I walk out of the kitchen and I see the front door ajar, not fully open, because of the child latch. My panic rises some more. Who opened the door? I was clueless to all this, with both kids in the living room, I suddenly feel unsafe. He is hiding behind, says Kodi. What is wrong with his kid, is the first thought that flashes across my mind. My dad is in Dubai, actually Oman to be precise. He has Eid holidays and he is supposed to be driving out with a couple of friends. He told us so the day before he left and that he’d be unreachable. So what is Kodi talking about?
These thoughts race through my head as I head toward the door, more to close it than anything else. But I had to open it fully, to unlatch from the child lock so I could close it. And I open it and what do I see?
My dad.
Standing there with a camera in his hand, clicking away, backpack on his back. I opened my mouth in shock and said Oh My God about a dozen times and just stood there for a full minute, and then rushed out to give him a hug. My mom came up behind me and almost squealed. We just could not believe what our eyes were showing us.
My dad who took the flight all the way from Dubai to surprise us. My dad who when we spoke a month ago about Eid holidays and I begged him to come visit us in Seattle said it would not be doable. Every phone call, we would update him on Plane’s latest and he’d reply with ‘Oh I wish I could see that’ and I tell him to head over and he’d say, ‘I cant right now, probably not till next year’. Next year is so far away, though, I’d whine. He would say, yep, guess we’ll just have to wait. And that same person was standing before me. It just was not possible.
In the past 15 minutes, as my mom and I are recovering from shock, we peel away the intricacies of plot that went behind it, and discover that both my brothers were involved in the scheme. And so much more that will have to wait to be committed to word.
Right now I am just basking. This is undoubtedly the truest, fullest, most genuine surprise I have ever, ever had in all my life.
A million kala tikas all over this post.
It has been coming for a long long time now. Yesterday, I slapped him across the cheek. First time ever. It went against everything I believed in. I threw out my philosophies of “I will never hit my child” and that hitting will only lead to more hitting. In the past, I have come inches from it, and have managed to swerve away. Yesterday the camel’s back broke. And, after it was done and over with, I expected I might feel relief, regret, remorse…but the good news is I felt nothing. It was a big anti-climax, actually.
The better news is, he felt nothing either. He was surprised, then fake cried, protested and whined, and minutes later he repeated the same offense, watching me, defiance written all over his face. So, yeah, safe to say he won’t be scarred for life. Even safer to say he didn’t even care.
For every awww moment recorded here, there are half a dozen “OMG! Stop that right now!” moments that go unrecorded for lack of words to describe the horrific acts and my confusion as to why he does what he does. Growing up with two brothers though, I know we haven’t even scratched the surface yet. Worse is yet to come.
Which shows how rare the good moments are and why I quickly photograph, publish and make posters out of them. During one not-so-good moment yesterday, he kicked his brother and scratched his face. It was by no means the first time. He’s done worse and each time, he’s got away with a warning, a lecture after he’d quieted down, and a calm, reasonable explanation as to why we don’t hurt people. The timing when he did it yesterday was somewhat unexpected. Only a few minutes before that, we’d been playing garbage truck. I was the truck, he was sitting on my shoulders and ‘driving’, and I was to lift pretend trash cans and put them down, with appropriate sound effects. We were laughing and making a lot of noise and having a good time. So I don’t know at what point this noisy activity translated into destruction, but next thing I know he tried to push and pull Plane who was in my lap from the start. I warned him once. He repeated it again using his legs and hands as weapons. And that was when the smack was delivered.
I think he wanted me to hit him, to see how far I would go. Maybe to him, it was part of the game, and me being the over-analytic mom, am doing two pages worth of post-event report while he has successfully pushed my buttons and moved on to better things.
There are some truths that I am already aware of – he is a boy, barely 3, we put him through crazy changes, he’s still a new brother, he’s experimenting with what all he can get away, he’s got too much energy on his hands and many other valid points. And there are many credits that I have to give him – he loves his brother. I don’t doubt that at all. I can leave the two alone next to each other for short periods of time knowing that he won’t harm the younger one. He has accepted him in a way I wouldn’t expect of someone his age. He gives him a role in all his plays, he cheers for him, he delivers hugs and cuddles unasked for. He’s not gentle by any means, but he loves deeply. That is a given.
But he also thinks of Plane as a pawn. Whatever power struggles he has with me, he knows his trump card is Plane.
For my part, having exhausted all known techniques to acclimatize him to everything that changes, I think I just have to accept facts and be grateful for the one or two heart warming spots in a day. I hope, though, that I don’t make a habit of the smacking..that would be unacceptable under any circumstances.
