A view of the future

If trying on grown up undergarments is bad, it gets worse...

(the secret video.. shows a door for almost a minute, but that is what secret video's are all about. Listen to the soundtrack for hilarious dialogues)

All this reference to babies has to do with peer pressure. Let me explain. Everytime, one of her classmates announces a baby brother or sister, or we go to see newborn babies of office colleagues, there is peer pressure on the real mommy in the house!

Typical conversation in the last few weeks:

Jr. : Mommy, can I have a baby?
Mom : No. when you grow up and become a big girl, maybe.
Jr. : When I am 10 years old?
Mom : aaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrghhh!

Jr. : Mommy, when is your tummy going to get big?
Mom : Not unless I eat a lot and put on weight..
Jr. : When will there be a baby in the tummy?
Mom : !! What part of No don't you understand?
Jr. : But, Mrs. xyz (a teacher in her school) is having a baby! and she already has kids..
Mom : Enakku maamiyaare vendam di, nee podum!(I dont need a mother in law here. You are enough to drive me up a wall!)

Add to these, the embrassasment of Jr. asking any women we know "do you have a baby in your tummy?" and they feel like strangling her! I bet this alone keeps the women who have recently put on some weight from visiting hour house!

In a fit of what can only be called 50% rage and 50% exasperation, mommy was heard cursing the little one yesterday.

Here is as close a literal translation as possible:

"I am cursing from the bottom of my heart, that you also have kids, who are exactly like you, and they trouble you, just like you trouble me! Only then you will know what I am going through now!"

On further investigation, found out that this curse runs in San's family and generation after generation, the moms curse their girls along these lines and the grandmoms smile, knowing that their curse came true!

Who knew?!

In any event, it is too late now. The curse has been passed on to one more generation.

ps. The MIL driving one up the wall reference, is more of a cultural thing. San gets along real swell with my mum.

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Internet savvy

These days when I either remember my dad giving me the "in those days, I used to walk 50 miles home everyday carrying 50 kgs of rice on top of my head!" speech or when I give Jr. the "in those days, we used to bike 5 miles to class every day carrying 5 kgs of books on my back!" speech,

there is a realization that she will probably give her kids a little monologue along the "in those days, we had to surf 50 websites in 5 minutes" and there is a good chance that her kids will be going "in those days, we had to surf 500 links in 5 seconds!"

It is not about how long and how heavy anymore! It is how much, how fast!

A different world awaits us..

In case I haven't made the point yet with the video, Jr. can turn on the computer, open IE, go do google searches for websites or images, find my blog and read it, go to Youtube through my blog, watch videos and watch linked videos on Youtube, play online games!! etc. etc. It is very scary that she is 5 years a few months old.

Seriously thinking of putting some parental controls on the computer (need to find out if Youtube has some kind of parent guard so that she doesnt end up watching or reading something nasty)!

The world is changing constantly and these days one rarely disagrees with that statement. Somehow, generation after generation, parents feel that their children are pushing the envelope and they are not prepared enough to handle the challenges their kids dish out to them! My parents must have challenged theirs with their love for city life, compared to their parents who lived in villages.

We(myself, my brother and sister) tested our parents enough and more, and for the most part (now thinking back to those days), they were growing up with us and they still are when they see us live our life the way we do and raise kids the way we do!

Now it is our turn to grow up, and be tested by the little ones. We might not comprehend their world a few years from now, no matter how many advanced degrees we have, tech. savvy we are, etc.

Their world is different, and they will bring us challenges!

Just hope that I remember to read this post and keep my sanity and learn to let go, when Jr. and the little one push the envelope of their times...

ps. In case you didn't catch the sound in the video, the little one wants to see daddy flying, every day! She never gets her request because Jr. does what she wants anyways.. that, is another post in itself!

The times, they are a changing!

Within 24 hours of posting the massage video, the little one is on a violent throwing up spree! This after a great play session, earlier in the day, with her elder sister and cousins.

She has probably caught some stomach bug and there is a good chance it will go around the house faster than a bag of potato chips. Only time will tell!

So, what is with the title?

Under normal circumstances, the video would have been correlated to the sickness and I would have got orders to shut the blog down.

This time however, there was no such comment from the wife and MIL. It was a refreshing change, to see the throwing up being attributed to the little micro-organisms.

To celebrate this change in the household, here is another video of the little one...

Time to hit the Airborne, Walborne, Riteborne or whatever brandname fizzy tablet, the local drug store dishes out to boost my body with 30,000% the daily dose of anti-cold-flu vitamins, including but not limited to A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H...Z, A1-A256, B1-B26, .. and all the other essential herbal, mineral, vital, nutritional supplements to prepare for the upcoming (or already arrived) flu season!

Here is a stock tip from Dr. Narayanohe. Buy companies that make synthetic vitamin C. You might have a healthy benefit!

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Video Blogs made easy

Now that Blogger has introduced the instant video uploader (like the photo uploader), I am giving it a shot now.. I will fail in my duty as a technologist if I do not attempt to use cool stuff that gets unleashed on drooling engineers. So here goes..

Hope this works. By the way, after my wife sees this video, this feature might become moot for this blog! My first video blog in pre Youtube days took 3 hours to make and upload. With Youtube, it was 5-10 minutes.

Now it is 2 mins!!

Tell me if you like this..

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Tantrums 101

Had promised a video of combo #1 earlier..(a special tantrum thrown by baby at random).

This is not that video. This is combo #2.

Let me explain.

The little one did not cooperate with Mommy during her nail cutting attempts.

She(the little one), was smart enough to follow mommy, find out the secret hiding place where the nailclipper was kept, and got them, just as mommy went on to do other things over a busy weekend.

Feeling something along the lines of the crow that stole the Vadai from the old grandma (TOYWAP, this is from the Tamizh equivalent to Aesop's fables!), she was perched on the couch attempting to cut her own knees, fingers, feet or anything that was close enough to her nails, when she spotted "Secret Video Daddy"!

SVD, feeling the same thing a National geographic photographer feels when he is about to videotape a poor Gazelle just when it is being ambushed by a lioness, was in two minds. Do I continue the video? or do I stop and go pull those clippers out of her hands before she injures herself! SVD decided to do both, at the cost of the video not being secret anymore and the possibility of incurring mommy's wrath on being irresponsible and proving it to the world on video! He kept rolling the tape and tried to use

1. sweet talk
2. scolding
3. threats

and when all failed, resorted to calling in the marines, a.k.a. Jr., who has a strange hold on her little sister. Sometimes, Jr. is able to get things out of the little one's hands when the adults have failed. Last week she got daddy's tea glass from the baby, just when she was going to drop it on the concrete in the backyard, looked at the adults and said "see, that was easy. all you have to do is ask nicely!". If you read carefully, I said "sometimes". Today was not Jr.'s day. She pulled out the clippers on the pretext of asking nicely and the little one promptly went on to combo #1...

SVD does not think the world is ready to see Combo #1! That will have to wait.

SVD also thinks he has no chance of controlling these girls by the time they become teenagers. He is wondering if he will be alive to see them reach their teens at this rate!

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