It’s been a year, for the stars, you and your nearly 3 weeks older cousin, hasn’t it?
A year to mark, the first of the tally-count of yearning, to simply see you.
A year, a whole year of watching you grow, gurgle, giggle, glow! A year, dearest dearest Dhruv, A YEAR!
We meet almost each day though, through smiles, songs, squeals and sillinesses. The kind that Achammas and Grandbetas make their very own, for we’re exempt, aren’t we, from keeping rules-schmooles!!!
I wish I were holding you right now, instead of sending you these word-hugs to tell you how much I love you! How much I wish…. No no, Achamma won’t just wish, she shall make it happen… She’ll sing “Just you wait ‘enry ‘iggins, Just you wait” (Pssst… Your mom and I watched it a long time ago, together, and laughed so hard – let’s watch too, sometime, with your siblings, the N gals! Naina is going to roll her eyes I know 😂)
Darling Dhruv, here’s wishing you a happy happy FIRST! And here’s my wish:
The stars in my eyes Glow all the brighter Because you’re YOU!
May the naughty sparkle in your eyes always shine 🤩
May the innocent smiles you give so easily, never fade!
May your gurgling laughter ever bubble Lending wings to happinesses…
Your tiny chubby fists Hold our hearts!
Make us breathless, make us love you all the more!
May each day be a confetti burst of all you wishes With laughter and tears, sometimes Smiles and sounds Friends and family Birds, trees and animals Books and stories, and warm sloppy hugs and kisses And an ever happy wagging tail That’s Bowie’s!
The shy smile Eyes not quite Meeting yours Soft spoken And a wisdom, Other-worldly, That shows itself In her deep gaze Her words Her stories Her infinite imagination.
I’ve wondered, over the years, What it must feel like To be as filled With stories, as she is.
The quietest of writers (Loudest of thoughts though ❣️) Gifted yarn weaver Magic in the warp, weft and weave; Her mind, her soul, Must be a kaleidoscope- Each shift of perception A wondrous narrative; Each strand of thought Yet one more possibility; Each shift, maybe poignant Maybe delightful…
Whatever it be, What it always is To me, Is a revelation, Shared in all humility. Grace. Benediction. Is a revelation, Of the iceberg’s tip One that will meld, And melt. And stain the vast ocean, Indelibly. When she warms to the words.
She has, she’s made Me pause, hold my breath Fascinated by the magic She casts, absorbed as I read, Felt in the goosebumps That last, and reflect in reminiscence.
She’s a universe. A galaxy, if you will. A constellation fashioned at her whim, In the stardust of her quill, In the quantum of creativity That will always amaze.
Please know, M For me, you’re already perfect May it come to be That you know it too!
Happy birthday, dearest Malavika! Wishing you pixie dust and the warm glow of never fading embers of love!
20 April, 2021, Day#20 of #Napowrimo, celebrating a dear one, someone who was in my class, in 6th, and who’s now someone I’d be proud to know as a peer. Someone whose writing will never ever stop making me feel proud, whose innate honesty and questing heart and mind will always have my respect! She blogs here – LINK.
May that smile never fade! (This one’s really rare, no?) 🤩
Her angelic face Belies the sass Sweet Seven (only!) Is she, but oh my! Spice and Sass, Teen-wise, she already has!
“Errm… Ammumma? How can I be a Youtuber?”
Is her latest quest.
Ammumz is open-mouthed In awe and annoyance (some But glad, all the same She has sass on her tongue Something she needed So much Once upon an aeons-ago time…
Gladder yet That the now-sassy Ammumz Finally has a sassy Granddottie!
19 April, 2021, Day#19 of #Napowrimo 2021 celebrates, nearly three weeks on, Naina’s birthday (28 March 🙂 )
Blog Tradition here, that the kids and their kids have a space on their special day! However, Naina’s birthday was a busy busy time and this rambler saved the words for the S 🙂
The art is her inspired 🤗 Her doodles are expressive and epic at times. She has stories for everything she draws! Her stories… Sigh. Soon she’ll be hosting a blog here, I hope! I can’t wait!
I made the mandala for she’s our universe while being in an alternate universe of her own with her imagination! She added a few elements of her own because she wanted to collaborate 😀 but the selfish Ammumz wouldn’t let her touch the mandala. Therefore, here’s a hamster looking cute, a bunny and an owl looking at the mandala, she said! I love love love her spirited responses these days, after I’m done being flabbergasted, of course!
If you’re a regular here, part of that infinitesimal number, because I need to be a better host 😛 , you know by now where we are heading. This time, too, you are important, almost as important to the Bahut Achcha Achcha that this blog celebrates 🙂
My lion cub (indeed I do refer to him as such, even now, though he is a puli – lion – through and through!) now has cubs of his own, and there is no greater sight than that of him and his partner with their cubs 🙂 Cubs, plural, you ask? Yep, that’s how the ball rolls in our family. Offspring are just so, be it the fur kind, or the human kind 🙂 Between his last birthday to this one, he and his lovely partner have two! Achcha, bahut Achcha!! 🙂 I know you know that is as cheesy as it gets, but that’s the way this blog works. Cheesier the better, for us, all around 😛
Today is his day – 3 August; the Blog Tradition here is one that has survived, amongst many troubles this year, and as with my other bachchus, this one now takes its due place here! And how! From being the Ammakutty, and never smiling as an infant, never being comfortable with anyone other than the closest family, he’s a metaphor for all things joyful, funny, friendly and out and out helpful! Also, he is now a parent.
People speak, and share, all the time, of how being a parent shall not change who they are, deep inside, and maybe it is true to a certain extent – but parenting as such brings out the best resourceful YOU, IMHO. Most often, young parents (especially the Indian variety 😛 ) have the support of extended family during that time – a bit before the arrival of the wee one to a lot later. This year has been a roller coaster that isn’t giving up giving us a ride we never asked for. But, we are on it, and ride we must, isn’t it? And so it came to be that they welcomed Dhruv into our Love, without the least hesitation of going it by themselves, since help from extended family was hindered by the pandemic! So helpless,were we, yet prouder than even at how these two young parents did a beautiful job of it! Each day is a blessing, to be taken one at a time, is it not? I have learned so much of that, from both of you, Ash and Neets ❤
When Bowie, the first baby arrived, in October, last year, the excitement was so palpable – daily stories, the cutest videos of this entirely adorable pupper and them two parents! A few months down to June, 2020, Bowie is now the Elder, with a wee one to join him – Dhruv! Their Achcha and their Amma be the best too! Today, watching them all while virtually cutting the cake, I could not help but wish I could hold them all in this ginormous squishy hug! Dhruv, with his cooing and wee smiles, Ash and Neeti looking so good together 🙂 Bowie wasn’t there, unfortunately, but we’ll catch up with him in the evening 🙂
Ashwin, my dearest Chots, you are wished dearly and infinitely, this day – you are blessed, you are cherished and loved, loved so very much! Please know that, every single moment, even if sometimes I forget to tell you so 🙂 These be my wishes, dearest dearest Chotu
For every cloud that that blankets you, I’ll pray for cleansing rain, dissolving your nuggets of pain, bit by tiny bit, so that all that’s left is you, your love and sweetness and the falling rain…
For every moonbeam that reaches down to you, that you cannot see, I’ll wish it ribbon-like, to trail and wind about you, unravelling the magic that never leaves…
And when you ask, without them pesky words, I’ll simply point to the stars, in the darkest darkness, and tell you, that the fire there, is never distant; That’s what I carry as benediction, as faith, as a constant unfailing reminder… Of love, maybe unexpressed, but ever enveloping.
Happy birthday, ende chotukkutta ❤ you Daddy Cool!!
3 August, 2020, the redefining year 🙂
The Years, Before, the Blog Tradition held these:
A few footnotes ( from the previous year’s blog!):
This one from here in 2012, and damn, that is what, 8 years back?! Woah. I am rather proud of myself, and will not hesitate to say it, today, for me
… double bonanza – of double birthday wishes, because it’s always time, to do the right thing! It’s the 28th of March, Her Day – Naina is six this day (still 28th in India 🙂 as I write this in, all the way across the South Indian Ocean, from a city that is on the shore of the South Pacific Ocean, Sydney, to be precise!)
It’s the first birthday of hers that I am missing, owing to the fact that I am far away, and perhaps even if I were closer, it might have been due to the current stay-at-home lockdown, owing to the health crisis that the world at large faces, wherever they be.
What do I say, of her, whom I’ve probably spoken of, endlessly, in pictures and words? That she’s her own lovely person? Articulate, creative, bubbly, slightly bossy, and at the same time a pushover too! She makes me realize, each day, each moment I spend with her, that life holds such promise, such delight, should we just look at the rainbow, instead of hunting for that elusive pot of gold, at the end; that having fun is what life is about, and not boring stuff like solving problems, and doing homework! 😛
It has been a few months now, that she has become a rather fluent reader! I am not quite sure how that happend, but I sure am pretty chuffed that she discovered the magic that lies in the pages of a book, in the words that form in sounds letters make, and meaning dawns, along with a surge of joy that whooshes with the wondrous wave of understanding them! She’s perhaps one of the youngest confident readers I know, and I thank whatever powers that be, that she discovered it early enough, without even having been coaxed into it! Must be the genes of her parents, which in turn… ahem!! 😀 I cannot not take credit for that even no? A sample below, from January, 2019. She was in Class 1.
I could go on and on… but I’ll let what I wrote on her fifth birthday, last year, speak for me, for it says all I want to this year too, and then some! Happy sixth, Naina darling! You shall ever be the shining star on my horizon, night or day, and I love you with all of my heart and soul! Stay blessed. Stay awesome! ❤
Her Fifth Birthday – A very Woke One!
A random selection of pictures above, from today, when they stayed home and had a cosy time!
Onward now to the blog I had written over a few months, for last year 🙂
28 March, 2019.
That morning of 28th March five years ago, was, seemingly, another, usual one, but I’d like to think of that update I posted on Facebook as part of my #magicalmornings as the indicator that it was also to be the most special one – the morning when Love whooshed in with the wee little baby gifted to us – Little Naina, who, right now, ain’t so little no more, having just turned five, growing by leaps and bounds, but, at the heart of it all, still that same baby gathered into our fold of uncompromising and fierce affection!
Grandchildren aren’t just an adorable lot of young people who make you feel good. Very often I’ve thought they’re that chance we have at getting parenting right, with copious amounts of love, laughter and LIFE with all its quirks and questions! The parents have the conn (in submarine speak, Denzel Washington ishtyle), but we get to execute our little games and plans, in cahoots with them grand kids.
And is she grand or what!! Both she and her sister are! (At some point literacy and curiosity are going to come together, to read what Ammumma monkey has been writing all these years, and I already sense ruffled feathers when the First of the N sisters and the Second of the N sisters decide to compare notes, of the blogs 😛 )
Continued on 12 April, ’19 – her Dad’s birthday 😀 – because that finicky monster within will not let me proceed to his blog, without finishing what I started, and also because I got to, duh. It’s Naina’s day too 😀 )
On the note of the kids comparing notes, I have ceased to wonder how these babies grow so fast, and I have moved on to thanking the powers that be that they are happy, healthy, growing with kindness and patience (the grown ups they know have it, the second one, they’re well, picking up, let’s say? 😛 ), growing as kids do, with questions, insouciance, mischief, and lots of love. Loads and loads of love that simply grows each day, as much as and sometimes more than they do. That’s the constant 🙂
Case in point, this Ammumma has discovered she’s just a petulant kid too, on occasion, when she has these sessions with Naina! Things escalate (buzzword of the day, check!) and these two, grandottie and Ammumma, and then, bam! Pyrotechnics, all over the place 😛 Like I mean, she throws these orders around, and tells me to never visit her again, that I can walk on them railway tracks ALL the way back to Thrissur…. And me saying FINE! Let your parents come, and I’LL GO! Cripes, thinking back cracks me up and at the same time squeezes my heart, so filled with love, laughter and poignancy, am I 🙂 Of course, a little time later, she sneaks into my lap and tells me, Sorry Ammumma, it’s just that sometimes I’m so ANGRYYYY! I say sorry too, and we hug, long and hard… It gives me redemption, this, for all those times I couldn’t say sorry, or allow my kids to say all of those things, and that is huge. Every such occasion, and believe me, for all the love and laughter and merry making we share, we have our such moments, these little little meltdowns, which actually give both of us a lot of release of pent up stuff!!
Learning lessons each day, we are. May we always do that. And may this carry over into other spheres, for both of us. 🙂
Naina, I guess you and I are soulmates (I hope you do not gag when you discover this years on 😛 ) – there’s this way somehow that we get on the same wavelength (what it says of her mental age and mine is … ahem, rather complimentary for both of us, as I see it 😛 😛 ) – I know we’d have recognized each other, and we still shall, no matter where our souls go next ❤ (Naira, if/when she reads this, at this point, is going to go rather mad, but let’s sail that ocean a bit later 😛 ) I mean, yesterday, when we went out, just Naina and I, to Payyanur town, to Oliver Brown (that’s a shop 😛 ) to get a cake for Arjun, she needed to go, you know GO 😀 I suggested the roadside, but she politely refused saying it’s so Gandaaa 😀 Then she insisted I drive home really fast like Arjun did, because I have to catch a su-suuu 😛 😀 What do I tell you of the uproarious laughter that accompanied us all the way, and I mean all ALL the way home! It’s still a miracle that the su-suuu didn’t leak out with all the laughter! No accidents, of any sort happened that day, rest assured!
Contd., on 2 August, 2019
The writer’s block has decided to let me have a window, rather symbolically, this, and pun intended and all that, on my laptop, 😛 😛 to finish Naina’s long overdue blog, four months on – just to prove that each day is a lovely birthday!
So here goes, darling Ickle Naina (not so much ickle but the icklest you’ll always be, for me! ❤ )
Post 27 April, I can say with all my heart, I love you 3000 and more, and always will! This one is for you, my darling – and it’s never too late to celebrate you, or early either!
God bless, always!
28 March, 2020, a whole year of posting this too!
For 2019 and 2020
I love you 3000 my darlingest Naina!
Her Birthday blogs:
ONE-2015 (LINK) TWO-2016 (LINK) THREE-2017 (LINK) FOUR – 2018 (LINK)
And, yes, i love to limerick || Have tried to master the trick || Of the a a b b a rhyme || 'Tis a joy truly sublime || When a verse comes out slick and quick!
A Quest on Overdrive ... :) 