V's Message to Prabu

Selfless or Selfish?

You must be wondering what a strange post title on mother’s day. I hope I make some sense at the end of this. If not you can chalk this up as one more strange “Suji-ism”.

Happy mother’s day to everyone who acknowledge today:). Finally my age and the fact that I have a 2 year old has caught up with me and the meaning of “Mother” is slowly starting to make sense to me. Mother’s are selfless and selfish at times. Selfish because they would love nothing more than having their kids in front of their eyes as long as they live (no matter how old the kid is) and selfless, well isn’t it obvious, they are willing to keep you in front of their eyes for the rest of your life :). Think about it, would you really put up with this if it wasn’t your son/daughter:

“I wish Jane Doe’s mom was my mom. She’s so cool.”
“I wish my mom would dress a little nicer. She’s embarrassing me.”
“Mom, stop embarrassing me. You can’t just hug/kiss me like that in front of my friends.”

Even though my mom never said, “You will know when you have kids of your own”, I have heard it from others. When they say that, I never understood if they were cursing us or if they were hoping we would understand the shit (ignore the pun) we put them through. I cannot predict how V will be. I am pretty sure he will not be needy when he is 21 and I will definitely embarrass him more than once in coming years. He just has to accept that that’s part of my “Mom Resume” and there is nothing he can do about it.

One thing I realized after all the fights I had/have with my mom, at the end of the day she’s my mom and I love her for that, no strings attached:). And after 2 pretty serious/scary hospital visits of her in last 8 years I have come to appreciate the fact that no matter how different we both are, we both are happy that we are able to see each other and know that we are trying our best to be good :).

And what did my mom get (here comes the selfish part)? Well, I was able to take her to her favorite store and say, “Pick anything you want and do not ask for the price.” It was just our way of showing, you are worth it and you can because we are right behind you trying to make up for things you didn’t get to enjoy so far. The best of all, V telling her that she should get a necklace and not a ring (yes the sales associates would love to have V back in the store ;)).

When Our Plane Danced.....

Mom,dad,V and I landed in Jersey Saturday night. V was a good boy all along the 4 hour plane ride. He got 2 cookies from he air-hostess for being such a good boy (I wish they gave him a Pear instead. He prefers fruits to cookies and chocolates). When the flight took-off from the run way, we went through severe turbulence and the plane started shaking pretty bad. V got little worried. So in an effort to not let him be afraid of planes, mom and I told him that the plane is excited to have him on-board so it’s dancing. The only dance he understands is the Punjabi “Balle-Balle” that his friend does. We said the plane is basically doing a balle-balle for him and if he wanted to join in on the fun. So V raises both his hands and did a balle balle (basically he just threw his hand up in the air few times..lol). When he came to NJ, he couldn’t wait to tell anyone who asked him how he came that he came on a plane that did “balle balle”.

High Expectations?

Since Prabu won't be in NJ on my birthday, we decided to do an early birthday dinner yesterday. I have been thinking of going to Tarbells and so Mr.Husband took me there. One more disappointment. I guess I had higher expectations because I was walking into a restaurant whose Chef won the Iron Chef contest against Kat Cora on Food TV.

I know I shouldn’t have expected the food to be awesome but it felt mediocre to me.
The menu seemed nothing extra-ordinary. Fine, if you cannot have truffles and foie-gras on the menu, but onion rings, roasted chicken with mashed potatoes, Spaghetti with meat balls? Seriously? I ordered Scallops with the tomato compote and maitaki mushrooms and Prabu the Roasted chicken. It was blah. I had better scallops at Meola’s in NJ. We also got their Tumble weed onions with ‘Secret dipping sauce’. Well it’s not as fancy as the name. Onion rings and the secret sauce. Let me tell you what it is: Ketchup, cucumbers, honey mustard, mayo and little sprinkle of may be chili powder. The warm chocolate cake with pistachio icecream was the only delicious thing of the whole meal.

I really do not want to get started on the service. I have said this probably a million times before. If you claim yourself to be a high-end restaurant then do not try to rush me out within an hour on a fricking Monday night. When you place my entrée with one hand while taking away my appetizer on the other – that shows you are just a wannabe high-end place. Please wait till I finish my first course before you fire my next course. Even Applebee’s waits for 2 minutes after the table gets cleared between courses and I don’t even have to pay $30 for roast chicken. May be it’s just me. If I want to just eat whatever I can go to a chain restaurant or a Chinese take-out. When I pick these restaurants, I pick them for an experience. I am not going in to just eat spaghetti or mac & cheese (unless those things have truffles in them;))

The only best part of the dinner, it was in a complex where there were benches outside few feet away from all the stores. Prabu and I sat there after dinner and had a good time just talking.

(C)OB(R)AMA

Thanks to Mr. President's Cobra Stimulus Package, I was very busy at work. I have no worked that hard in my life, neither when I was in school nor at any other jobs I held :). To spare you from the technical talk, let me just say the project is now done and no I am still not off the hook. Annual Enrollment is just around the corner. Since I didn't start this post to bore you with my work, let's get into business now shall we.

I didn't know when March ended and when April started. We did have fun in between though. Madhu, Rajan and Leela visited AZ for Leela's spring break. We had so much fun. Vikram followed Leela where ever she went and it was too cute to see them together. May be I should convince her to come here for every winter :). This picture was taken on the day they were leaving which also happened to be Tamil New Year's (hence the Indian outfit V's sporting). For some reason I love it. The sun light form the window, Leela watching V from the corner of her eye... just too adorable in my book :)



We also spent last weekend at Babbi and Julie's place in Hopi and V had his first Easter egg hunt :).

This month's going to fly. Babbi is visiting us next week. Week after my uncle and aunt are visiting us from Chicago. And then....I will be flying to NJ on May 2nd with V, mom and dad. Woohooo.

Parenting Manual

Every parent knows that their child doesn't come with a manual in hand. So there are like a million and more books written by various "experts" on how to raise that kid of yours with no issues what so ever. I did read 2 of the million books when I was pregnant. Then when V came along, I realized it's not the books on child rearing that help you but what you figure out about your kid and by observing what/how other parents do. At times, even after all the reading, observing and analyzing you just throw in the towel and say, I give up.

Now that V is 2 years and 5 months (tomorrow is his 29th month... on PI day;)) we have slowly started few tantrums here and there. He still is a good kid but likes to see how far he can push our buttons :). We have been going through one of those phases for the last week. Every morning and evening he cries for an hour for no reason. Anything and everything ticks him off. It's like a circle with no opening. He cries because he is hungry and refuses to eat. He doesn't eat because his teeth hurt, throat hurts..... and I probably didn't play the right song on the radio....don't ask.

There are four of us in the house and we still cannot help him at times. I am hoping this too shall pass. We had a similar episode in October of last year that lasted 3 days. I thought he will be over it in three days this time around too but looks like he wants to extend it. Today was total crazy day. I had to work till 4.30am last night and got up at 8.30 again and have been working non-stop(Dang that cobra stimulus), and then took dad for his doctor's appointment(routine check up) where they made us wait for 3 hours to tell us that his blood test results are good. Couldn't you just call me to tell me that instead of making me drive down and wait.

And then started evening drama from V. Laughing and happy for one minute and crying like anything the other minute. I wonder what kind of demons/aliens possess this otherwise fun kid. I tried food, drinks, entertainment, distractions, time-outs, toys and finally threw the "parenting manual" out the window and did something for which I will probably get the "bad mother of the year" award(not that I wasn't nominated before). I took him out for a drive and made him eat some food finally. And guess what he ate. Fries and strawberry Ice-cream. So do I get that award now?

When Kiss went to work....

A casual bed-time conversation between me and V (we speak in Telugu but for your entertainment, let me translate):

Me:Good night. I love you. Mwah..
V:Good night. No kiss
M:Why no kiss?
(V Pretending to remove something from his forehead and putting on the bed)
M: What happened to the kiss? Why did you take it?
V: Kiss went to work
M:It did... What does kiss do at work?
V:Eat Pizza
M: and..
V:standing
M:oh Kiss eats pizza at work while standing
V:Kiss come home and drink juice..
M: Does it come back home to me?
V: No. Good night momma

Darn that 2 year old;).