Vandhuttomla - Part 2

She can now go on all fours and rock. It is cute to see this yaanai pose. It all started by lasting for a microsecond, then a second, then a few seconds and now she keeps rocking until she gets bored or she slips down by herself as the distance between hands and knees increase due to rocking. J paati sings “aaanai aanai” rhymes for her and she enjoys that. Here is the full version

ஆனை ஆனை, அழகர் ஆனை

அரசரும் சொக்கரும் ஏறும் ஆனை

கட்டிக் கரும்பை முறிக்கும் ஆனை

காவேரி ஆத்தைக் கலக்கும் ஆனை

ஆனை வந்துதாம் தோப்புல

அரசெலை வந்துதாம் ஆத்துல

நம்ம ஆனைக்கு பட்டம் கட்டி

ஊராள் ஆனைக்கு சுட்டி கட்டி

நம்ம ஆனை வா வா

ஊராள் ஆனை போ போ

குட்டி யானைக்கு கொம்பு மொளச்சுது

பட்டணம் எல்லாம் பாக்க வாங்கோ

She is yet to crawl, but from the yaanai pose throws her body to the front and moves. Because she can move faster on her tummy, she always prefers that. The other day she tried to sit on her own by turning on the sides and firmly pressing the palms on the ground, but she missed her balance and fell down. She tried it again a couple of days later, this time she was almost close to sitting, but fell down again. So, she isn’t trying nowadays. She can however sit for a few minutes without support if we make her to. But K paati asks me not to do that because it can create a hunch for the babies it seems. She can say “Ma, ma, ma, ma, Ya, ya, ya and a few other blabbers which are hard to decipher”. But she wouldn’t say it if we request her to. She says it by and to herself when she is busily playing. I used her bath tub once and she loved splashing the water and had great fun. But I have temporarily stopped it due to the sudden weather change in Chennai and have planned to resume when the weather is back to normal. Chittu now knows her surroundings pretty well, can clearly recognize faces. When she sees me, she throws her hands and thaavifies towards me irrespective of whoever she is with. Whenever I leave her for a few hours with mami or J paati and return, I should lift her immediately. She won’t even give me time to wash my hands and feet. She would cry her heart out by the time I wash and come. Similarly when S returns from office and says a HI to her from the entrance, she would give her best smile to him. She plays happily and is herself when she is in our house or in J paati’s house. If she goes to S perippa’s house in the first floor, she doesn’t cry but is not as playful as she normally is. If she goes to S’s chithi’s house in our same building, she cries uncontrollably and makes them bring her back to us and calms down as soon as she sees me or S or K paati. Same thing with C maami’s house (J paati’s neighbor) too. C maami and her daughter-in-law felt so bad about this, because during the initial 4 months, she used to spend time in their house atleast an hour a day without any hitch.

Chittu is also learning to spend time alone with J paati in my absence. I’m kind of training her on this and went for the movie Vaanam, a wedding reception and a birthday party leaving her with her paati. Earlier Chittu used to smile for anything and everything. But now, her smiles have reduced. She smiles only when she feels like. When I ask J paati, she says “Neeyum naanum edhukkeduthaalum chumma sirikkaromaa? Adhuvum valarradhu” Sigh! My little girl has already started growing! Good news is that thumb sucking habit has also reduced considerably. We’ve made it a practice to go to Shirdi Sai Baba temple every Thursday for night 9.15 pm haarathi. It gives a sense of peace and serenity and makes our mind cool and calm. I really enjoy this and wait for Thursday to come. Also, we went o Adyar Ananthapadmanabhaswamy temple on a Friday evening and Chittu had good fun in that trip. We’ve got the settlement for S’s ancestral property. This has been pending for quite sometime and finally things fell in place. Needless to say, we call it Chittu’s luck. But a lot of tension and mental pressure went behind this and it pained a lot when rounds of discussion were done amongst S, his brother and sisters. We learnt the lesson that “When it comes to money or property, there is no space for the term brother or sister” in a harder way. But All is well that ends well and finally everything happened smoothly and now everybody is happy.

Chittu’s 6^th month review was done on 14^th May 2011. She was given Hepatitis B (HBV) 2^nd course vaccination. But weight gain was 40 gms lesser than the expected. My leave was approved until 31^st May and because I was going to start work, Dr.S asked us to give Ragi porridge with milk and sugar, mango milkshake, boiled vegetables and idly. She even asked us to give curd rice and rasam rice. When I told her that we will do annaprasana in July, she was not willing to agree and asked us to start immediately. So, for the time being I have said a YES to her, but will be giving rice only after annaprasana, which we have planned in Guruvayoor on July 17th. Praying to Lord Guruvayoorappan that everything goes on well. Chittu took the prescribed supplementary food pretty well.

It rained heavily on 1^st June evening and Chittu was down with fever on 2^nd morning. She had 100˚F temperature. I gave her two doses of Crocin at 7 AM and 11 AM and took her to Dr. S at 2 PM. She said it is an air borne viral infection due to sudden weather change and asked me to continue with Crocin and because Chittu had slight cold prescribed T-minic oral drops and Nasoclear nasal drops. She also asked me to come immediately if temperature crosses 101 as some babies might throw fits. So, I gave Chittu a dose of Crocinall 3 medicines at 5.30 PM. At 10 the temperature shot up to 101 and I was scared. Also, she had pooed a number of times (the consistency was normal however) and the entire area was reddish in color. So repeated Crocin, applied rash cream and put her to sleep. But poor baby couldn’t sleep at all and we were awake till 3 in the morning. I checked temperature again and this time around it was normal, but to rule out any further risk, gave her a mild dose of Crocin after which both of us slept slowly. It was June 3^rd and P akka’s engagement was happening in Pudhukottai. Congratulations P akka! So all of them including S were going in a van from Chennai. I had already decided that I wouldn’t travel with Chittu during the day as it could be hectic. At 6 AM, V athai, athimber, P akka, Sonu & her family dropped in at our place. They picked S, B athai and her son M anna, M athai and her son V anna and started. K paati was also going to a wedding in Thiruvanmiyur. We got up and waved them all good bye and went back to sleep. So it was me and Chittu only. I woke up at 9 and checked her temperature, it was just 0.02˚ above normal. So I gave her a reduced dose of Crocin and immediately she puked the medicine with the milk. I cleaned her up, she was tired but active and playing. I gave her porridge at 11, checked the temperature, it was normal. After allowing her to play for around 15 minutes, gave her T-minic, she puked again and all the porridge came out. I didn’t know what to do. By then mami came home. She asked me to get ready, do my Friday pooja and go to work and said she will take care of Chittu and she put her  to sleep. I went to office at around 2 in the afternoon and within an hr mami called and said Chittu puked even water. I was worried. I called up Dr. S, but she was leaving the clinic and asked me to come to her home at 7. There, she prescribed Domstal and asked me to give it half an hour before food. I gave two doses of that and Chittu is no longer puking. She is much better now, but gets tired very soon, is active and playful, doesn’t like the taste of anything except water and wants more and more of it. So, that is the story of sickness and Chittu is in a quick recovery mode now.

Updates from my end, I bought a new Scooty Pep+ (Mauve) new mobile Nokia X3 (both these are sponsored by J paati…Thanks ma!) I joined work on June 1^st. My office location is changing to a farther place and so looks like the new project that I am going to be assigned to would force me to shift my residence. I’ll go by the tide as it takes me, so let us see. As of now, I don’t have a desk, PC, phone extension, I’m not allocated to any project, I am going to the old location only (which is hardly 20 mins drive from home) and spending hardly 2-3 hours in office. Mami is coming to cook in the mornings too from last Monday, so things have become a little easier for me. It is a difficult task to have the baby and cook and pack and clean. But now I have more time to spend with Chittu and I am happy! :D

Hopefully from now on, I will have enough time to update this site frequently as I used to before. Yet to blog hop and get updates from others’ site.

Vandhuttomla - Part 1

We have a lot of updates from the Chittu household in a very short while of 1.5 months. Things happened so fast that by the time we realized one, the other happened without giving me time to blog about it. We have gone through a few ups and downs, achieved important milestones and so this is going to be a long post. Thanks a lot Anon & Anu for enquiring – you now know that we are still alive and kicking J

Picking from where I left, me, S & Chittu went to PS uncle’s house and the Narayaneeyam function was a grand success. All of us prayed to Lord Guruvayoorappan that PS uncle’s daughter is blessed with a healthy & beautiful baby. PS uncle took us to Parthasarathy perumaL temple – Chittu’s first divyadesam visit. Brahmotsavam was going on there and we were fortunate enough to see Mohini alankaaram.  They were banging big drums during the procession and I had close Chittu’s ears as the decibel level was too high. Swamy had wounds all over his face – tradition says that it is because he was the charioteer for Arjuna during the Kurukshetra war and had borne the scars of many arrows which hit him during the course. Last I had seen Mohini alankaaram was almost a decade back in Srirangam during Vaikunta Ekadasi time. This one brought back a lot of those memories to me. As we entered the main gopuram, on the inner side above the dhwajasthambam there is an idol of Lord Krishna doing Geethopadesam to Arjuna and next to this there is a lion who is none other than Lord Narasimha himself who had manifested in the form of lion as he wanted to listen to the Bhagavad Gita. PS uncle told us that this is a very important structure to be seen before seeing the main diety - Parthasarathy otherwise known as Venkatakrishnan, with his family (his wife Rukmani, brothers Balarama & Satyaki, son Pradyumna, grandson Anirudha) Because of PS uncle’s influence we were lucky enough to have darshan just outside the garbagraha and it was an ecstatic experience to see the Lord in such close quarters. Then we proceeded to see Thayar and Andal. The Yoga Narasimhar in this temple is highly powerful and I have had firsthand experience on this. A couple of years back when I was having serious troubles in my project, I sincerely prayed to HIM and Whoa!!! Within the next couple of days, the root cause of my issues resigned and moved on to another company. It turned out to be good for both of us. This time around, S was on cross roads and was highly concerned about his career, so we wanted to pray to this Yoga Narasimhar again to show us the right path. But unfortunately the sannidhi was closed. But we were firm enough to return the next day again and get HIS darshan and fervently prayed to HIM. We also read Prahlada Charithram and Narasimhavataram from Narayaneeyam. The result also turned out to be fruitful and S is happy now with the new project.

V athai came to our house in the 3^rd week of April and spent a few days with us to take rest as she was recovering from angioplasty. But the busy a(u)nt that she is, it was highly difficult to make her sit in one place and relax. Chittu also spent a good time with athai and bonded well with her. Maami has been coming for the past 2 months now and touch wood! She has gelled well with Chittu and that is a big time relief for me. J paati & thatha visit us almost every day on their way back to home from work. S mama drops in whenever he finds time. Recently he bought Chittu a beautiful green frock and a Chicco roller. She enjoys the roller and the music that comes from it. Sometime during the middle of last month, May 18 to be precise, it was a BIG BLACK day for S mama and a terrible day for all of us. S mama was completely dejected and I went with Chittu the following weekend and she completely lit up his face and lifted his spirits. The gloomy mood changed to a playful one and all of us felt peaceful. That is the miracle that a kid can do and we feel really gifted to have Chittu J

Coming to the food – Still porridge with milk and sugar rules and Buttermilk kanji is always secondary rather tertiary. The irony is - she loves plain buttermilk. S used to have buttermilk before going to bed and when he gives few drops, she drinks it happily and expresses that she likes the taste with a “chap chap” sound. She likes tender coconut & Sweet lime juice only if it is sweet. Slight salty / sour taste is a direct reject. She would simply refuse to open her mouth. Or if she feels paavam for me for holding the bottle / spoon for such a long time hoping she would take it in, she would swallow and spit immediately and give a sheepish grin. And all that I can do is smile back and hug her. I haven’t tried banana yet as I am concerned with how she will be able to swallow it inspite of all the smashing and crushing. Also, haven’t tried watermelon juice as I couldn’t get a fresh piece. Dr.S is completely against tinned food, so No Cerelac, No Nestum, No Nan or any other formula for Chittu.

Chittu is fond of paper, plastic covers, clothes, jasmines & anything tiny which an adult would ignore as unwanted on the floor. PERIOD! It so happened that S gave her an invitation which had come by post and told her “Idhula enna irukkunu padichu sollu Chittu” Then he got a call and got busy with it. Few minutes later when I came to the living room from the kitchen I saw S sitting on the sofa and talking over the phone. Little missy was silently lying down on the floor and having the invite in her mouth. She had soaked it in saliva and had nibbled the corners and was chewing away those bits of paper happily. Immediately I removed them all and got her mouth cleaned thoroughly, when S jokingly commented “Unna padichu solla sonnaa nee kadichu sollriyaa?” J The other day, I was sitting next to her on the floor and having my tea. Suddenly I saw her taking something from the floor and put it in her mouth. I rushed to her and checked her mouth, but couldn’t find anything. I checked till her throat, nothing could be found there too. I was confused. The very next second “PLOP” came a teaspoon of porridge from her mouth and amidst that was a small jasmine flower which had fallen down. Phew!! She even scratches the mosaic flooring thinking something edible has stuck onto it. Now that she has indicated us many a times that she has mastered the art of “porukki pottufying” we have learnt to be extra cautious and monitoring her always. Whatever we give her in hand, it automatically goes to the mouth. Her way of recognizing objects is to first touch and then lick them. Babies….huh! But out of practice, now we know that if the speed of her movement increases and she shows some kind of eagerness in her face, then she is moving towards an attractive target which she has found and which she wants to taste. And if there is absolute silence when she is awake, she is happily chewing away something.

This happened one Sunday morning in the first week of May. There was no power for hours together on Saturday night and the fan was running on inverter. So we asked K paati to come to our room and sleep so that we can optimize the usage of fans and use it for longer hours uninterruptedly. Chittu slept between both of us and S slept on the floor. K paati got up early in the morning and went to the hall to carry on her regular chores. So it was only me and Chittu in the cot. S got up a little later and saw that both of us were in deep sleep and that one side of the cot was open so he piled a few pillows on Chittu’s other side and went to brush & have his morning coffee and paper. All of a sudden I heard Chittu’s sharp cry like she was in deep pain. Immediately I checked by my side, she was not there. My heart skipped a beat and I saw, she had fell down from the cot. Instantly I picked her up, pacified her, soothed her and in 5 minutes she was back to normal and smiled faintly too. Later that day she had porridge, milk, did all her usual activities and everything was completely alright. But both me and S felt miserable and guilty as parents, for we were careless and made her fall down. I was in tears and couldn’t control myself for almost an hour. We did a reactive analysis on how this had happened inspite of piling those pillows. Finally came to know that, there was a small gap between the head of the cot and the first pillow. Chittu had sneaked through that gap and fallen down. Poor girl, it should have hurt a lot. It served as a lesson to both of us and we vowed not to take any chance or make even the slightest mistake as far as Chittu is concerned. We are extremely sorry kannamma!

To be continued....

We are home!!!

Yes, we are home now! Everything went on as planned. Thatha went for a seminar on IQ, EQ and SQ on 10^th April morning and came back around 11. I kept threatening him (jokingly) that I am going to record the fact (in blog) that he didn’t spend ample time with Chittu on the last day. Sentimentally, J paati did not want us to take photographs that day and Chittu also slept soon after bath and got up only when we were about to start. We started from there at around 2 PM after yamagandam and reached here around 3. S perimma and B athai took the traditional haarathi and invited us. The house was decorated to welcome Chittu. Thanks to B athai’s idea and appa’s efforts. Everyone was so happy to see Chittu. P akka and S perippa were around and playing full time. S’s Chithi who lives in the same apartment as ours, her son, daughter and grandsons came in later to see us. Again a fresh spell of new clothes were showered on Chittu. Other visitors included C athimber, his mom and M anna.

We kind of settled down and Chittu slept at 11 PM that day. By God’s grace and with T paati’s help we have got a maami who will be taking care of Chittu. She would come in by 9 in the morning and leave by 6.30 in the evening after preparing dinner for us. Though I will be joining office in June only, I have asked the maami to come from now itself so that Chittu gets accustomed with her in the next 1.5 months. I am still in search of a cook who can prepare our lunch, but no luck on that yet. It is tough to manage kitchen and Chittu in the morning. S is having a great time with his daughter. They play happily with each other and it is a pleasant sight to watch daddy-daughter having their exclusive time in the morning, evening and night.

The very next day we came here (11^th April), Chittu started adeptly moving on the floor. As usual when I rushed with my handycam, she simply refused to move. The colorful non-toxic rubber toys and the camel are her attraction factor. Now after a week, she is moving extensively and even posed for the camera. Last Saturday, with her dark pink colored piggy bank, she moved round the sofa and came to the place she started. A anna came home with V aunty and S papa. He had brought his Nikon D5000 portrait camera and clicked N number of pictures of Chittu and all of us. It was so lovely to see mottai S papa and Chittu together. The photographs have come out beautifully. We met them again at Gangotri, South Boag road a couple of days later. It was planned all of a sudden when A anna called on Friday evening and asked if we could join them. So we got ready quickly and went there. This was the first time we took Chittu in an auto. Both ways up and down, she slept and promptly got up after we got down. M athai and her naughty son V anna are here from Pondicherry for vacation. V anna doing his 2^nd standard, keeps going behind Chittu, plays with her and wants to carry her all the time. Just that I am worried that he is such a small boy and he shouldn’t drop her. So we place Chittu on his lap when he sits down but a strict NO NO to carry and walk around. He has a tinge of fear factor with me (rather only me) so he listens to what I say out of that fear.

In between Vishu came and went. On the Vishu day (14^th April) we started at 8 in the morning and went to Rama Bhakta Samaj. Thatha is a regular visitor there and was also a part of group who were reading complete Ramayanam in 9 days (called Navaaham) which started from the Rama Navami day on 12^th April. During this Navaaham, Thatha wanted me to bring Chittu to the samaajam. So we went there and I put Chittu in front of Sri Rama there. She rolled over and moved there much to the delight of people reading Ramayanam. We offered dry grapes and cashews for the Bhagavathaas and from there went to J paati’s house. Chittu spent a good time with J paati, thatha and S mama. J paati had got a beautiful dark purple coloured frock for Chittu and it looked so damn cute on her. In the little time we spent there, even T paati and C maami managed to take Chittu to their house for sometime. Chittu found it difficult again to move in the vitrified flooring. So J paati placed a cotton saree on the floor and made Chittu move on that. Once she mastered the act on the saree, we shifted her to the floor and she did an excellent job there too. Late in the evening, we went to V athai’s house to see her as she was recovering after her angioplasty. There again A anna took a lot of pictures again

Our 5^th month review is done on Saturday. No vaccination. This time again Chittu has gained borderline weight only. Dr.S has given a go ahead to introduce boiled rice porridge (with little sugar & milk or little salt, jeera powder & buttermilk) banana, hand crushed watermelon and sweet lime juice as supplementary food. We have started with the kanji – gave sugar and milk one for the first two days and Chittu took it well. She is ok with buttermilk and salt. Looks like she doesn’t like it as much as the other one. Once she tolerates kanji, will have to try others too. Fingers crossed that she should take them all in smooth stride. Later that day we went to meet SC papa, our family friend A uncle and L aunty’s son. He is 3 days elder to Chittu. Poor baby, has a born cataract and surgery is the only option to get this cured. Our sincere prayers with him for the surgery to go on well and the marathon post-operative care. We will be going for Narayaneeyam parayanam on 22^nd in PS uncle’s house. So more on that in the next post

ThaNNeer, ThaNNeer!

Chittu had her Pentaxim vaccination – 3^rd course & OPV today. I was surprised for she did not cry even for a microsecond.  Dr was happy as Chittu was highly co-operative. Her eyes are clear now and there is no redness at all. She has gained 670 gms in 37 days. Doctor calls it “borderline” but OK. Mostly she would be suggesting supplement food by next month. As summer has started showing its ugly face, Dr. S has asked us to give two paalaadais of plain water to Chittu twice or thrice a day. No bottle, she should be fed by a spoon only. So this is the first addition to her existing diet and that is the reason for this title. As soon as we came back from the clinic, I gave her one palaadai of water and Chittu took it well. We have been given an "Immunization and Health Record" during our first visit. It had space to write our names, address & telephone numbers. I wrote them using a Gel pen and someone placed a book on top of it by mistake before it dried. So all the letters got smudged up and looked like a mess. So I bought some beautiful stickers and stuck them on the mess and made it look beautiful. Dr. S and Sister N kept smiling at my work and commented "Cute!" Heee heee for the very first time I was appreciated for something during my daughter's pediatric visit. Wow!

Chittu has a lot of hair, but off late, she is having hair fall problem especially on the back side. Not only this, she is having thumb sucking habit too. Thumb in the sense, it is sometimes thumb, sometimes two fingers, sometimes all fingers!! But Dr. S said, both of these are usual at this stage. If this persists after another year, it should be a cause of concern. Chittu talks a lot and sometime last week, she started grunting. I was slightly worried because she was grunting all throughout the day. Then J paati said, it could be her way of expressing extreme happiness and eagerness to converse.  Looks like IT IS. Today we purchased a couple of big sized quick dry and 6 gms coin for Chittu. In all the shops she was happily chitchatting with strangers. In Big Bazaar, there was this foreigner guy who was playing with her. She clutched his finger tight and refused to relax her hold and kept smiling at him. With great difficulty we forced her to leave him.

Last weekend K Paati accompanied S and came over to visit Chittu. Her PoP is removed and she is doing physiotherapy. As promised last time, she did hold Chittu for a few minutes but her hands started paining and she was forced to place the baby down. We have a maid who comes in the morning to wash Chittu’s clothes. She pays a visit in the evening too and neatly folds all dried clothes and keeps them in a bucket. I would later arrange them in Chittu’s shelf. One evening I forgot to do my work & the next morning when S mama was konjfying Chittu, he saw the bucket half full and made her sit on the cushion of clothes. She enjoyed it and put her hands comfortably outside the bucket and posed for the snaps which I clicked away.

For the Women’s day, I participated in the Funny Foto Contest in Chennaimoms and Hurray!! I won the contest. Today, I received the gift from them. It was a white ceramic coffee mug with Chittu’s photograph in it. I was completely delighted to see it and everyone at home are so happy because this is the first photo of hers to be printed on something. Rest all are either uploaded in Picasa / in the form of .JPG files only. Thanks to all my CMOM friends who voted for me and to Bhavani & her team for making my day.

I end this post by earmarking a few things for my future reference (would keep adding them as I find something new)

1.       My Print

2.       ITasveer

3.       Studio K

4.       Books for kids

5.       Semmozhi poonga

6.       Nageswara rao Park

7.       Panagal Park

8.       Natesan Park

9.       Vanilla Place

10.     KartWheel

11.     Hansel & Greetel

12.     Bamboola