THE WEEK THAT WAS | 2018 – Week 1: January 1-7
I wanted to do an instagram post about this but I made the mistake of writing the text in a word document instead and it turned out to be too long even to continue in comments. So now it’s a blog post . And even though this week was very routine, it was significant in so many ways. Let me get right on to the highlights of this week:
SLEEP
I am in two minds about talking about Laddoo’s sleep (or the lack of it) because, and I don’t know how this happens, even if I give the slightest hint of a somewhat decent sleep, it somehow gets jinxed and my tiny little bubble bursts. Maybe I should hold off on talking about sleep altogether, like, not even when she starts sleeping through the night, which I’m sure will happen sometime within the next sixteen years. But we will cross that bridge when we get to it. For now, in the hopes of jinxing the jinx, I’m going to talk about how horrible her sleep routine is and why I am unable to live my life because apparently the universe doesn’t want me to do things that I like because WHY ELSE WOULD THE BABY’S SLEEP BE SO MESSED UP?????
Breathes. Pauses.
Anyway, at almost 16 months old, I still haven’t figured her sleep routine out and I take no blame for that. As with everything I have done so far as a parent, this too has been mostly baby-led primarily because there is no way I can force this child to fall asleep when she’s nowhere close to sleepy. Believe me; I’ve tried. Sometimes for as long as two hours at the end of which all I had was a baby who was ready to jump around the house (is there a thing called a breastmilk high? I think there is, and if there isn’t, there totally should be!) and a Mamma who was ready to tear her hair out but settled for giving her maid the silent treatment.
Around two weeks ago, it seemed like her routine was changing and she was graduating to one slightly long nap a day (around 1.5-2 hours) and I breathed a bit because having that long a stretch of baby-duties-free time meant that my mind could actually relax. But two days of single long naps later, she was back to two naps a day. And even though I am grateful that she’s at least napping, this unpredictability in her schedule is throwing my planning off completely because, well, it seems like I cannot plan AT ALL because I don’t know if the baby is going to sleep at a certain time or argue on the phone with her imaginary friend.
My year has begun with prayers for a predictable schedule even if it means just one nap of an hour a day. I’ll take that as long as I know when it’s going to happen and how long she’s going to stay asleep.
SPEECH
Her babbles have entertained me and you all for many months now and it’s fascinating to hear her catch new words and try to repeat them, and watch her try to make sense out of her words with her expressions and hand gestures. She’s imitating me a lot, which means I can expect her to start procrastinating soon.
Oh wait, she sprouted two teeth at the beginning of October and we haven’t seen another tooth since, so I guess she’s right on track there as well.
Now, even though my child isn’t ready for structured activities yet, she’s definitely ready for conversations. So I try to talk to her as much as I can. Why try, you ask? Well, because I have to wait for her to take a pause from talking so she can listen to me.
But the cutest thing she has picked up from listening to me is “Oh ho,” and “Ah ha,” and she says that in a tune. I have been trying to catch it on camera, but I’ve barely been successful so far.
The newest word in her limited vocabulary this week is, “aise,” and in addition to saying “ka ka” when we ask her what sound a crow makes, she now goes, “hmmmmm, hmmmmm” when we ask her what sound a pigeon makes.
Other words/things she can recognise and point to, in addition to Mamma, Papa, fan, and TV, are: Christmas Tree, Doggy (her toy Alpha Pup), Teddy Bear, Elephant, her water sipper, and of course, Peppa.
PERSONALITY
She’s the complete opposite of her anti social mother. Well, I am anti social only in the sense that I am not comfortable making small talk with random people on the street. In fact, I sometimes turn the other way when from afar I spot a person I may know because I don’t have the energy to fake genuineness in the questions I will have to ask them, pretend to be interested in knowing how they are doing, or the patience to answer questions they ask. I’ll most probably walk in the other direction or pretend to not notice them just because I want to be alone for a while
But this little girl says, actually says the word ‘Hi’ to EVERYONE she sees – the security at the mall, the server at the restaurant, the guy at the front desk at EVERY store in the mall. And that’s not it. She won’t just say hi, she’ll also blow them a kiss and give them the biggest smile. This week, one of the ladies in our building came home for something and while she was talking to me, this one went, ‘Hi’ and waved out to her, and we had to hold our conversation to talk to her.
PLAYTIME & BOOKS
This week we went really big with our pretend play. As a mom who is all about #keepinitreal, you have no idea how much it pains me to say that we had to fake stuff this week. When she started having conversations by holding objects close to her ear and pretending that it was a phone, we realised she was ready to take this to the next level. She was ready for a home and a kitchen when she could pretend to cook and whatnot.
We started with buying a small kitchen for her and the set up the tent house that we had received as a birthday gift from one of her uncles. We put the kitchen inside the house, and a few toy animals outside and madam had a whole farm house for herself. She’s living the good life, I’m telling you.
Of course, the pot and pan got strewn around, we can’t find the omlette since after the first day we opened it, the orange is in one of the tea cups, but, but… there is some silver lining to this. She learnt how to stack the plates in one of the shelves, how to hook the spatula and spoons, and how have pretend chai with the slurp sound. So it wasn’t a total waste.
This week she also showed more interest in her books but that lasts only as long as I don’t interfere. If I let her be, she will look at multiple books and I don’t have to worry about her for a good 10 minutes at least. But the minute I try to get involved and point to things or to talk about what we can see, what colours are on the page, she moves on to something else.
In that respect, I think she’s just like I am. I don’t like to be disturbed when I’m reading either. In fact, if looks could kill, too many people wouldn’t be on the earth anymore because they made the grave sin of talking to me when I was clearly in another world.
But the highlight of the week – for her – has to be how much she loved being in a toy car; the ones at the mall that are remote controlled. She smiled and laughed so much and it totally didn’t surprise us when she screamed her lungs out when it was time to get out. She wailed so bad that I was surprised no one thought that we were hurting her. We had to distract her, and once again, just like it would have helped her Mamma, a book made her happy. We got her Peppa’s “Oink Oink” book – the one that comes with a button that grunts when it is pressed and that has kept her busy and her mind off the toy car since then.
And the highlight of the week for us was to hear her laughter and giggles. On Sunday afternoon, my husband and I decided to play with her. Originally, we wanted to see how she would react if she saw us cuddling. But then we decided to hide under the covers. She was in the living room and we called out to her. A few moments later we could her the sound of her paayal and we hid immediately. We knew she’d figured out that we were under the blanket and when we peeped out from under it, her laughter was the best sound I’d heard that week. And then she climbed on the bed and cuddled with us. ❤️️❤️️❤️️
OTHER STUFF THAT HAPPENED THIS WEEK
- For the first time ever, we planned a photoshoot with Laddoo at home (with my husband as the photographer) for a product review. We co-ordinated clothes and diapers with our bedding and I must say it wasn’t as easy and effortless as it looks because babies have a way of being perfectly happy and giggly before a photoshoot and then not being in the mood exactly 2 seconds before you want them to smile for the camera. Post coming up next.
- Laddoo learned to relax. She rolled around on our bed but didn’t try to get off or get up, she just lay there and chilled. Apparently it is a major milestone when babies realise that they can stay still and relax. Is that how lazy bones are made?
- Papa was home on 2 week days – first, on New Year’s Day when we went out for lunch, and then on Wednesday because Mumbai had a great start to the year by seeing riots.
- Enjoyed spaghetti.
- We started our new comic series.
- Two lunch dates this week with Mamma and Papa.
ON SOCIAL MEDIA
This week, I also became active on my writer account Mrs. Writes-a-Latte (Blog | Instagram | Twitter) and did a lot of handlettering and blogging.
I started an A-Z Weekly 100 Words Challenge – Week 1 – A for Avoid
I also wrote a short story called A Good Listener? This is based on the characters of a book I am working on with my sister, titled ‘High School Never Ends.’
That’s all for now.
Will post again soon!
Being Mamma Bear 
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