Yes, that’s what we did last night. Oh wait, but a flood in singapore? In a high rise building? It wasn’t even in the news? It could not have been. Here goes the story.

I rushed out of the house last evening in a hurry carrying my son and a huge bag (which I always do) because I was getting late for a business conference which was across the city. I briefly stopped before leaving to check the gas stove if it’s off because leaving the gas stove on while going out is my worst nightmare that had been cooking up in my mind among all other ‘what if’s.

When we returned back after midnight, all we wanted to do was sleep. As we approached the door, we noticed water seeping out of our front door. Actually it was quite a lot of water. I let out a curse word, and another and another. I haven’t used curse words in the past 3-4 years. Then I immediately set to action. One of my ‘what if’s kept flashing in my mind. What if I leave the tap open?

Leaving the tap open is common but what if I leave it open when the drain is blocked? The drain was blocked 2 days back but we didn’t have proper equipment so we put the work off for the weekend.

I opened the door to find more than an inch of water everywhere. Luckily there wasn’t much stuff lying on the floor except for my electronic weighing scale and the internet modem. And it was pretty evident that so much more water had drained well out of the door. Hubby and I started working before we knew what we were doing. Our 2 yr old son refused to get down on the floor and spent some time in his high chair watching all the action. Later we sent him to bed when we realised that we’d have situation under control soon. Two hours and exchange of some hot and angry words later, Hubby and I had drained most water out and went to bed with a thin sheet of water in the living room but all of the 3 bed rooms were clean.

We woke up in the morning to see all of the water having magically disappeared. I would have thought it was all a dream except for the super clean house and the cleaning stuff lying here and there.

Later in the morning I was singing son’s brushing song while attempting to brush his teeth. Hubby stood in front of me and laughed.

What did YOU do?

And I realized that he mentioned what I was singing. It goes like this:

And while I’m brushing my teeth and having so much fun,
I never let the water run!
I never let the water run!

Some time in between, he digged his favourite shirt from the dirty laundry basket and insisted that he wear it. Guess what I did? I let him wear it.

And then he wanted to wear the pants that are rather loose for him and keeps coming below his diaper. I let him do that too.

This was followed by several activities that were performed while I just watched. Then he hanged my camcorder bag around his neck and wanted to go out. By this time I was already fed up and wanted fresh air too. So I took him out for a walk. As soon as we were near the next block, he returned the bag to me and didn’t want to carry it any more.

I called my friend to the play ground so that I can sit in the play ground bench for a while. She was running behind Pappu and advising him what to do when he was playing football with other kids’ balls without their consent and climbing on their big cycles. I wanted peace so I just pretended that I didn’t see anything.

Not that these are big things but everytime he did these things before, the outcome was different. I never told him ‘no’ but I made up my own custom ways of telling him what he should rather do. And he would listen to whatever I say and follow my advice.

That day was different for both of us…

But yesterday I again had to skip posting. I had a hectic day and by evening, when son was taking his afternoon nap and soon after which I had to rush for a major conference, I had developed a back ache. I’m still recovering from it, considered skipping the blog post today too, but the little bit of determination had me doing this post, before rushing for another appointment.

The Lighthouse

Oil Pastels on linen

Behind this post title:  I’m doing another NaBloPoMo this month. Ah! That said, I’ve made a commitment and there’s no looking back. I’ve been thinking about this for a while and the decision was made just a few minutes back.

I was considering if I’d be able to keep up with the commitment in terms of time, because if there’s one thing that changed since the previous NaBloPoMo month, it would be that I’m using every second of my ‘me’ time for painting. The second would be, the business is going faster making me busier for the time being. Nevertheless, I am doing the daily blogging but I’m not going to apologize if I’m posting only photos on some or most of the days of this month.

And, my son is growing up faster and is giving me enough short stories just like the above to write about. It’s a good thing, because I don’t have to truncate these stories endlessly so that they will fit my 140 characters twitter status.

I’ve never considered myself as a mommy blogger, but this month might even make me one!

When did he grow up so much?

Anyway, I don’t have any particular reason because the concept of ‘not having enough time’ doesn’t even exist. I just didn’t want to write even though I had quite a lot to write. My childhood habits are still taking over every now and then. The habits that I totally ignore these days and let it do whatever funny stuff it wants to.

I have always had so much to do. I could paint well, I could sing and dance pretty good, recently I started writing too. And then I had to read continuously for 3 days in a stretch without caring much for food and sleep. Oh yeah, I really did that when I start reading any novels. I just had to complete it before putting it down. And there were times when I couldn’t breathe without listening to music. All of my so-called habits had designed my life. I’m an addict.

My hobbies are like my alter egos. Every now and then, one of my hobbies take over and pull me into it completely.I forget everything else and I don’t even struggle my way out. People used to say that this is the factor that pulls me down. I was under that impression too, until recently when I decided that I need freedom; freedom of choice, freedom of decision, freedom of time, freedom of money and freedom of hobbies. When my heart flows for something, I give it my fullest potential. But I can’t afford to think, I’ve been painting nicely these days, so I need to force myself to paint until I become a master of painting. If I find my interest shifting from painting to writing one day, I’d rather start writing when my passion is completely into it, rather than forcing myself to write when I really don’t want to.

I’m probably one of those very few addicts that are proud of their addiction.

No, I was not suffering from a blogger’s block. Could someone be having a writer’s block when they have so much to write about?

I could have written about how wonderful my son is and how he is learning to ride his tricycle.

I could have written about how he responds to all my positive speaking madness all these months and he behaves like an angel, that when he sees the yellow alarm button in the lift, he smiles and and never attempts to touch it anymore even though I never said “No” to him.

I could have written about how happy I am about our new prayer routine holding each others’ hands every night in bed and even communicating our dreams regularly.

Or I could have written about how lousy I felt on diwali day morning when hubby and son were still asleep and that I wrote a post about how I missed diwali in India and then hubby remarked that my post passed a negative energy to him talking only about what I do not have right now and I immediately took that post down without any explanations to my dear readers.

I could have written about how we went shopping to one of the busiest places in singapore and I had to change son’s poopy diaper sitting in the most uncomfortable position and his toddler butt doesn’t clean the way it used to when he was a new born that I convinced myself that I would wash him well when we reach home and I passed his diaperless body to hubby, attempting to put on his diaper. I could have definitely added how hubby got poop on his new formal shirt and how his angry and disgusted face suggested to me that he might cry in front of anyone and how I rolled on the floor laughing.

I could have written about how I usually record my ideas as voice message in my phone and how one night just when my son and hubby had slept, I got a flush of follow up ideas to my “where is god” post and how I also felt lazy to get up from bed and that I whispered into my phone those wonderful ideas. Oh yeah, I should have added that I wanted to listen to my ideas now and all I could hear was strong ‘S’ ‘S’ ‘S’ sounds with the hum of the fan in the background. I have no idea what I had been thinking that night!

I could have written about how my posts are getting longer and longer these days and that I have to admit that I hate reading long blog posts.

Too many things to write about. May be I was just thinking too much that I found it difficult to settle in front of the computer. May be I should start another NaBloPoMo. May be.

Okay, you men who are reading this, you shall leave now. Either hit the back button to return to where you came from or skip to the previous post and celebrate my 100th post after helping yourself with a drink. And you girls who are not mothers, you shall go too if you do not know me personally or if you do not care.  Now, you mothers who love to read mommy blogs, come closer. I’ll tell you a secret.

I’ve been struggling hard with the weaning process. As much proud that I was and I still am about breastfeeding, weaning has become my biggest thing these days. I had planned to wean him when he becomes 18 months old, even though I actually wanted to nurse until 2 years. At 2 years, I understood that weaning would become difficult and I thought I was smart enough to have planned so well to wean him at 18 months. I thought it was going to be easy-peezy.

When he reached 15 months, I decided that it was time to start the process. I had finally out grown the initial guilt of not having enough milk when Pappu was born and also Pappu had started following a good diet. I was happy about my change of mind and announced to the world that I would wean him soon and I even bought some normal clothes (I was on the boring, no-style nursing clothes till then)in celebration of my decision. I thought babies wean themselves unless we desperately what them to keep nursing!

I do not know what kind of energy my behavior passed on to Pappu, but he suddenly started becoming more demanding of breastfeeding. I can’t even use the word ‘breast milk’ here because he shouldn’t be getting enough milk to fill his appetite. He was just suckling for the sake of fun, or comfort. Actually he nurses himself to sleep. I was the culprit, for I always opened up for him to nurse whenever he felt sleepy so that I wouldn’t have to carry him and walk until he falls asleep on my shoulder.

The next couple of days was tiring for me. I would carry him, walk and sing to him for more than an hour, twice everyday to put him to bed. Other than sleeping time, whenever he demanded nursing, I would shortly tell him that big boys drink from a cup and that he was a great big boy now, and I would do something fun with him. My strategy worked very well. He stopped demanding and  I would let him nurse only once during the day that is before going to bed at night. I was happy at that advancement but I had also started missing the nursing days especially at the end of the day when my breasts were heavy and painful!

Not that it happened for so long. Within 3 days of that schedule, Pappu got a fever and my mommy-guilt raised as much as the temperature did. Without much thoughts, I put him on fully breastfed diet even though he was taking a good enough diet even then. I jumped into action and happily let him nurse for the whole week that he was down, fully expecting him to stop nursing by himself when his temperature was normal again. It was only after that I realized what I had done. He turned into a nurse-aholic* and got addicted to my breasts. All he wanted to do was to nurse and nothing else.

I’m still working hard on it and I have to say that it’s much much harder than how we had progressed before the fever.

*This word may not be found in dictionary

This blog starts from the moment that actually made me what this blog’s title is about, the birth of my son. The initial posts were the letters I wrote to my son at various milestones and were actually handwritten in my diary. Later I published them into blog posts after I wrote this, an incident which impacted me and I couldn’t help but blog about it. It was that day which unleashed the strong emotions of motherhood in me. It was only after that I realized what motherhood had done to me… Inspired! I strongly believe that motherhood squeezes out of your brain what God had put inside, creativity.

It was one short year ago, that I chose this name for my blog and even to date, it is emotional to me. I had not imagined that I would be writing this 100th post within a year or that I would be participating in NaBloPoMo or that I would be writing the things that I write about now! Some of my posts might have seemed remote to me an year back. The past year changed me more than any other year has done and I’m happy for having this platform to keep those memories alive. I’m sure that this pattern will continue during all the years that are yet to come.

Hubby and I tried our best to keep others’ comfort at the best and somehow made Pappu sit on the high chair. I started feeding him his food and when Hubby finished eating, we switched places so that Hubby could feed Pappu while I had my dinner. That’s when I noticed the family sitting next to our table who were smiling at us sympathetically. The reason for that smile was evident when I actually overheard their comments about my family that were being exchanged within my earshot.

The woman said, ‘See. He didn’t let his mother eat at all. Now they are taking turns, this is the only way to survive.’

The man said, ‘What a torture!!’. Their 2 kids who must be around 18 years old were joining them.

The woman replied, ‘Some kids are just calm. That is good. But this…….’.

I didn’t want to listen any more. I mean, what? A torture? Oh come on, you should realise that I am sitting so close to you and it’s obvious that you know that I am listening. I quickly changed my attention to my own food and family.

On a completely unrelated note, soon after that family left, my son started behaving and ate all of his food and made friends with all the staffs in the restaurant. Like I said, unrelated!