Aspirations?

A casual conversation with Jr.

Me : What do you want to become when you grow old?
Jr.: (puts finger on her chin and thinks...)
Me : It is okay. Take your time. Don't say something because it is the last thing you did or see. Think and tell me what you want to become (of course hoping all the time that she would say "want to be just like daddy, wear a smock and work in a fab"..)
Jr.: I am thinking.. don't rush me!!
Me : Okay. I will wait!
Jr.: (comes back to living room after 5 mins). Daddy... I know what I want to be when I grow up.
Me : What ? What? Come here, sit on my lap and tell me.. I am all ears.
Jr.: I want to be "pregnant"!
Me : (stunned silence) Why?
Jr.: So I can have a baby! like mommy..
Me : Takes a full two minutes to recover from the shock.. (clears throat and launches into a monologue). Kuttyma, you WILL be pregnant when you grow up. Every girl who managed to grew up, on your dad and moms side of the family, went on to become pregnant and have kids. So the probability of you getting pregnant and having babies is very high! But before that, you have to finish elementary school, then go to middle school, high school, then college, then go to work like mommy and THEN get pregnant!
Jr.: Okay daddy! But why should I go to work at IBM?
Me : (I never mentioned IBM in the monologue) Well, only if you work, you will have money and only if you have money, you can buy diapers for the baby! Otherwise she will poop all over you!
Jr.: (after some more thinking) Okay daddy!

There were two points on the monologue that struck me as odd.

The first one was that I was just trying to send the message to get an education first. The job is not a pre-requisite to getting pregnant (neither is an education for that matter!). It was more of an instinctive thing I said because of the percentage of working mothers in our families and to let her know that there has to be some economic security before having kids.

The second point was that there was no mention of men and the getting pregnant part etc. That was a godsend! Now, on the off chance that the @#%$#$$ that is eventually going to get married to my daughter and get her pregnant, eventually reading this post.....

a. "YOU" there, are a #@%$@$$ till you prove yourselves otherwise! Granted my daughter is only five at the time of writing this post, but what did you expect? I have fully morphed into a combination of my father and father-in-law! I am in short "just an ordinary daddy" by now, and it has only been five freaking years! God knows what I will morph into when I am fifty plus years old!

b. Chances of me arranging a wedding twenty years from now are slim. However you can redeem yourself when Jr. gives you a "good husband" certificate on her first Quarterly Marriage report.

As usual, I digress. The message to the dude is, well... "I have no say in what my daughter does when she grows up, but hopefully by the time you read this post, we would have raised her to be a responsible woman who knows how to make important decisions".. and of course "I will be watching you!"

Kids.... aaaaarrrrrghhhhhhh!

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Party wear

We went to a company party. We were supposed to dress "business casual".. so while dad got the entire family all dressed up based on the "business" word, the rest of the folk at the party were focussed on the "casual"!

Dad did move a few eyes when he walked in wearing his tuxedo. It was quite a feat, trying to fit into an outfit after six years. Came home and had stomach cramps. After all, you cannot hold your tummy in pants a full two inches smaller than your current waist size, that too for two full hours. By the time we put on seat belts in the van on our way back, the pant buttons were off!

We did have a great photo shoot though!

My darlings were thrilled to dress up as usual!!

The tux episode has sparked a renewed interest to actually do some physical exercise, eat more salad and less ghee fried jeera rice, buttered up tortillas, etc. and basically fit into that tux without the extra effort by end of this year!

Hmmm... only time will tell!

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Love

When you just come and hug your sister instead of posing for the photo like you were asked to do..

It turns it into a Kodak .. err. Canon moment!

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Hype, Hype, More Hype

First, a Belated

"Happy Valentines Day"

to all of you!

To a desi family, Valentine's day is as important as Halloween, President's day or MLK Day. The socio-cultural tie is missing, but the same goes for Republic day or Independence day for most of today's generation for countries which got indendence before their parents were born. In short, we celebrate Valentine's day very seriously!!!! Serious enough to make Mr. Valentine proud!

Thanks to this little custom, and its hidden implications of love, we managed to create a baby six years ago and repeated the feat three years ago. Being an engineer who has a tendency to graph things in his head, I extrapolated the line and was agahst! The next data point on the "Baby as a function of year" graph was 2008!

This thought was still resonating in daddy's head when something happened. A virus hitherto unknown to daddy's body, played havoc with his respiratory system earlier this week. He was pretty much bed ridden, just him and his little virus.

Now this post is more about Valentine's day hype and the cards that were purchased, filled out and sent to all of Jr.'s classmates. I am sure at this point that there is a Hallmark Lobby in Congress!

Valentine cards : US :: Diwali Firecrackers : India

Fun for the kids, but not for the parents and definitely not good for the environment!

Today it was Daddy's day out. Mom and the cousin family decided to get daddy out in the open to get some fresh air! Where else but the new combo Toysrus-Babysrus opening day in San Jose!!

Here are some pictures!

They had a huge discount sale, characters dressed up to greet the kids, freebies at the door....

There was a spiderman also, but the line to take a photo with the spiderman was at least 200 kids strong, so we skipped that photo.

Now for the hype part! Dora decided to go on lunch break just as our kids got their photo-op turn. We had to wait for 30 minutes to take a picture with "Dora the explorer" and as people in the head of the line, tell all passers by that the line was for "Dora". Toysrus should have paid us for being their informers!

The funny thing was that Dora was pretty much blind and a helper walked Dora to her designated spot! The kids were all screaming and we had less than 30 seconds to take "one picture per family!" and move on so other kids could have their picture taken!

Unfreaking believable! The queue at Thirupathi came to mind!

What we do for our kids happiness!!! The list keeps going...

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Love at best

Two things that will stay in my mind this weekend and possibly stay there for some time...

Even if they don't, we have this blog to remind us, don't we?

First conversation:

We were busy at home Saturday in the living room

Jr. Screaming from bathroom : Daaaaaaaaaaaaaady! Done!
Me : You said you were going pee-pee!
Jr.: It is pee-pee!
Me : So why do you need me? Wipe yourself!
Jr.: (more yelling).. Daaaaadddy, come daaaaady!

Sometimes she surprises me by saying pee-pee and does more than pee-pee!) Must be that, I say to myself. Go there and see it is only #1, do the wiping anyways.

Me : You went only pee-pee. So why are you calling me? Don't you know we are busy?
Jr.: I love you daddy. That is why I want you to do everything for me!
Me : !!!!!!!!!!!

Earlier tonight the little one was sniffling. I knew San was going to apply Vicks Vaporub on the little one.

Little one came running to me after some time when she heard my sneeze.

LO : Daddy, I want to put vicks!
Me : Didn't mom put vicks on you?
LO : No, daddy, I want to put vicks for you!
Me : (seeing that she has some vicks on her finger) Okay!
LO : Rubs the vicks on my nose and says "I love you!"
Me : (Worried that she has left the vicks bottle open, yell out to San in the other room) Did you give her the vicks?
San: No, I already rubbed the vicks on her and the bottle is up on the shelf!
Me : (to LO) Kanna (darling), where did you get that vicks from?
LO : From MY nose, daddy!
Me : !!!!!!!!!!

For a second, didn't not know what to say. Then saw her long face when she realized that I was probably upset. So I quickly gave her a big hug and kiss. It was not the right time to have the "Don't share the vicks from your nose!" conversation.

My kids definitely have their own way of showing their love!

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