Diaper wipes

Changing diapers is a normal routine for any parents when they have a baby. My parents were very liberal with diaper wipes during the initial weeks. They didn't care how many they used. During those times when they were little lax, i will rock my legs here & there without care and then they need to spend more time cleaning my legs. so their main goal was not to get myself soiled in the dirty stuff. Dad asked one of the visiting friend about the norm for the number of wipes for a regular diaper change. When he found out that it was three wipes for a change, he silently wondered whether i was special in that case because it was nothing compared to how much they were using.

Anyway after three months if you take a look at the same subject i think i am not special! Most of the the time it will be three wipes and even few times they may feel comfortable with just two. hm... But today it is a different story! To put it in plain words, it was a RIOT! Early morning when mom was feeding me, she noticed the rumbling sound and it is nothing unusual to her! After feeding me she called upon my dad to do his part of the bargain:) When she handed me to dad, after noticing the yellow thingy on the  sides of diaper and a little bit on the dress he made sure that he held me carefully without touching any of the fresh warm poo... UCK UCK babies have a cute way of describing things! When he started walking few drops of poo fell on the comforter and only that time the adults realized the RIOT i have done!!! See, i don't plan for these things and in my defense i don't have any control over these faculties! I don't have a choice with the food i eat as well as pick a time to do my business. Everything comes with a flow! Dad used insane number of wipes to clean the mess and today i felt SPECIAL :) 

Picture people

(This is not the crab dress. No i didn't mess the dress! Mom wanted to take pictures with a different dress)

(Cute boy with his family!)

I visited a professional photo studio to take my pictures for the first time today. Though it is not the first time for my parents to visit a studio, i know that my visit to the studio is completely for different reasons than theirs if you know what i mean!  Dad took off from work in the afternoon even though we had our appointment only at 5 PM. Getting off from work was not to get me ready but to get everybody out to the studio in time. That includes mommy in pretty looking saree that matched with  grandma and a clean shaven dad! The ladies took a lot of time to get ready while dad was not sure whether to wear a formal dress or the usual tshirt/jean combo that he enjoys! Mom wanted him to wear a full slack but dad thought it didn't suit him well as it didn't hide his excess amount of body fat properly :) Finally he ended up with mom's favorite tshirt and everybody was happy! Mom was looking very pretty in the pink saree(her mother-in-law gave it to her for Diwali that was just before her wedding). She claims that she wore the saree by herself but dad suspects the other way. Usually he will help her out but now a days its her mom! I wore a cute crab dress that Meenu athai gave and i had one more as backup just in case if i mess up or should i say if the adults didn't do a proper job with the diapers!

We showed up a little late (nothing surprising there) and everything went very well. The lady who took our pictures briefed us about the studio membership details and the adults decided that it would be fit to enroll in it as they figured out that they will take cute portraits at regular intervals. of course the portraits with be cute only because of my presence! Dad was asking the lady about digital copies of the image and when he found out that they cost exorbitantly high, he made a mental note that he should scan the pictures later to keep a digital copy in Picasa web albums. Now mom is in the hunt for picture frames and then it will be places for them in the house as already all the walls inside our place has one or other thing in them!!!

Shower - Mom/Dad?

Aya will be leaving to India in a week and all the adults were very busy as ever! She was cooking lot of dishes and  freezing them up so that parents could have them for a couple of weeks after she leaves. Knowledge transfer was also going on in full swing starting from things such as cutting nails, showering, things to look for and the nitty-gritty details in taking good care of me. Aya showered me daily and the parents were mere spectators till this day. Mostly dad will act as first assistant during the shower by helping aya with mundane things like checking water temperature, putting liquid soap as requested etc...  Dad says mom is the second assistant but he knows that she will mostly do nothing :) She will look at the three of us daily as if watching some interesting show!

This week both mom & dad took turns to shower me once with aya's guidance as one of them have to continue with the job from next week. It was a easy decision for aya to select the successor. I don't like when they wash my face and i wiggle around with a frown! Mom had difficulty keeping me in place sometimes while showering me. As everybody felt that this will only increase over time it was decided dad will shower me while mom will dress me up after shower. 50:50 rule - Difficult 50 for dad and easy 50 for  mom :)

Passport

I got my AMERICAN passport last week. Did you notice the CAPS & BOLD formatting in the previous sentence? Just wanted to make sure that everybody notices it since it is something that a lot of people including my parents who are trying to get hold of :) Dad had my passport application in the things that needed attention for a long time. When he saw somewhere in the Internet, that the cost of passport application is going to increase along with few other stuff, he sprang into action immediately. He gathered all the required documents and we headed to the post office the next day which was the last date when the old fee structure was valid. There was some confusion about how to take my picture and we went to CVS to make passport size prints of my existing picture. The lady in the post office mentioned that the picture background was slightly dark and she needs to take a picture again there. She was pleasantly surprised that the first one she took itself came well. She said that was something unusual for some one like me since it is difficult to make the babies look at the camera. In most cases babies will look here & there or close there eyes or sleep or do something that will lead to many more takes!

Now let me show of my analytical skills... My dad got his passport in his late teens while my dad's dad got his passport in his late thirties... I think i am getting things what my dad had when he was in his twenties and his dad in his forties... roughly two decades disappear when one jumps from one generation to the next! if this is the case then i should apply for a passport my kid in 10 yrs :) Is my logic right? I am not sure about other things but at least this goes well with my passport!!!

Patio Garden - Update

The plants outgrew the small pots that my parents had them and it was high time to clean the patio.My charm can only help to a limit! (for more details, read this) Leaving tulsi, mint, table rose and one of the tomato plant that was in the biggest pot all other plants were uprooted from their pots and found their way to the trash. Now the patio looks much healthier compared to last week as there were more dying, withered plants than the good ones.
When dad & aya picked up different varieties of tomato plants from the nursery 2 months ago they didn't even bother to look up at the small tag present in each pot that has details about the plant. To them all tomatoes are the usual big ones that are used in cooking (like naathu thakkali or bangalore thakkali). That is the case probably in Chennai or in Karaikudi :) Only when tomatoes started coming up, to their surprise they found out that one of the plant was salad tomatoes. And only that plant was thriving with lot of tomatoes. They got 4 zip-log bags full of salad tomatoes, roughly 4 lbs!

Mom will get angry if you ask her to have salad but dad is not like that. He eats salads now and then in Mcdonalds or in Chick-fill-a but even then salad tomatoes comes last in his choice of preferred salad items. Dad even tried making a salad with cucumbers & home grown tomatoes but he couldn't have it more than once. Aya didn't want to mash the small tomatoes and use them in cooking as she thought that will make the cute salad tomatoes look like the big naathu thakkalis. I think she wanted somebody to have them in their salads as it was intended to :)

When Jen aunt stayed in our place for a night while driving to NY, parents gave her one zip-log full of salad tomatoes to pass it to periappa. He told them that the tomatoes were tasty and he added them in many of his salads. Dad took the remaining tomatoes to his workplace and left them in the kitchen. Everything disappeared in an hour and few people even thanked him for the delicious tomatoes. I have to remind the adults next summer to buy the correct variety of tomato!!!

ing ing ing, ick ick ick

I think my parents listened to what i said about non living things, particularly my dad. Mom was complacent that i will follow the generic baby manual where by default a baby first smiles looking at their moms. So she didn't make a mental note of my previous post But dad knows that he needs to work hard and he started doing the time tested "ங் ங் ங், க் க் க் " pattern.  At first i didn't quite grab it but after some time i was able to follow the pattern, identify and recognize it. Once i did it, it was matter of seconds for me to understand that its with me that they are trying hard to communicate and they got my attention. Once they got my attention, i try to talk back but mostly it is the flashes of smiles that makes them super delighted.

My talk usually comes as coos & ooohs and the adults get very happy even with that level of communication skills!  I smiled couple of times with dad and dad alone and it put pressure on poor mommy. Once dad left to work, amma was going on with  ""ங் ங் ங், க் க் க்" whenever i was awake. After some time she found out the trick. If i am in the living room, all the non living things that are around the surrounding gets my attention in one way or another quickly and makes difficult for them to make me follow them! Next day onwards i started flashing my smiles at everyone even in the absence of the keywords! But still if you work with ங் க், you will get my attention quickly and may be rewarded with a little longer smile :)

Thank you card

This was taken on Day 2 at the hospital. Parents liked this photo so much that they ordered 25 'Thank you' cards of the same for sending it to family/friends. After few weeks dad decided to dispatch the cards and he started writing down the list of family members and their addresses. He thought 25 cards will be sufficient for their immediate family members and few of his close friends. Oh Boy, he is very poor in doing estimates! He had to order few more cards from Walmart to make sure that everybody in the family gets one. very big family you know :)

Each card had a hand written message from me. Just kidding :) He wrote as if i am writing to them. The difficult part in this episode is to find out how i need to address each and everyone in the family! for some of them, he needed to call and check with appatha!

As he got tired with all of these activities which he had earlier thought was simple & straight forward, he cut down the number of friends he wanted to mail the card. He sent the card to Guru whom he called now & then for asking help during the entire pregnancy starting from the very early days and to Meena Mani who organized the baby shower. To all others who got back to him, he sent a thank you email with a link to my pictures. That email didn't have this picture and hence this post!