The Mind of an Almost-Three-Year-Old

May 8, 2009

Gurgaon, India

I have been fascinated for a long time about how Currin's mind works. I think I wrote about this in my first blog, but every day, I am increasingly fascinated at his line of questions, which really indicate how his mind works.

He asks me questions that I really don't know the answer to. Like, "Mommy, why do we scratch when we have an itch?" Or, "Mommy, is God a person? Who is his wife?" He has also been asking me why I still love him after he does bad things. These seem like pretty mature questions to me!

By the way, the words he chooses are also funny to me. Like he uses the word "after" a lot. For example, "Mommy, after I do bad things, why you still love me?" Or, "After I take a nap, and then we'll go to Charlie's house."

Tonight, we were reading a Diego book, and Diego was using night goggles. Currin told me we use goggles to see in the swimming pool. I had brought him and Charlie each a pair of goggles last month when we were in Goa. He put them on for a nanosecond before insisting I take them off, but he obviously remembered the word. It is still so interesting to me the way he pulls together things from various parts of his life and connects them.

The other day, we were talking about Grandpa Red, and it's tough to talk about that subject without eventually saying that Grandpa Red is actually "dead". You can avoid that word for a long time, but when the answer for every question is "why?", you eventually come to an explanatory dead end (no pun intended).

The way this came up was that I said Grandpa Red used to say that I was born talking, and Currin wanted to know what that meant. After I explained it to him, he couldn't understand how I could actually have been talking at birth, so I explained that Grandpa had been joking. So he said, "Grandpa Red is funny. After I go home to the US, I will tell Grandpa Red he's funny."

Anyway, after explaining the whole thing, Currin said, "I wish I had my Grandpa Red back." I nearly cried right then and there. I wish I had him back, too.

Currin's way of talking is really pretty cute. He is very deliberate with his words, and there is a slight pause between nearly all of them, almost like someone who has just learned to read who is reading out loud. They definitely know the words, but there is just a little space between them.

He still doesn't say his R's quite right, which is a problem because of his name. Whenever people ask his name, he always answers, but no one ever understands him because it sounds like "Kuh-wun". Now he has taken to spelling it, but he usually forgets the "i". "What's your name?" "Kuh-wun. C-U-R-R-N, Kuh-wun." It's very cute.

His L's were quite late, too, but he mostly has those now. They are quite Indian-sounding actually. He curls his tongue upward to say them and maybe points the tip a little bit, so it is a very pointy-sounding L. Every so often, after I picked him up from school, we would go out to lunch together, and then he'd start saying, "Let's go for lunch" with that cute pause and pointy "L". Really sweet.

His accent is definitely getting pretty Indian. Most of it doesn't bother me. Like he says "feeling" a lot. For example, "I'm feeling cold," instead of just "I'm cold". Or he says, "It's orange in color", instead of just "It's orange." Or he says, "I'm taking a rest, Mommy." But there are some things that I really cannot take. Like the v/w thing. Man, that bugs me. Sometimes he says "wary" instead of "very", and I knew I was in trouble last week when he said "Grandma Wicky". Ugh... He is also saying "t" instead of "th", like "ting" instead of "thing". In my logical head, I am not wary vorried because I know his accent will even out when we spend any time in the US. But in my "for the moment" head, I have to say it annoys me. I nearly headed to the airport when he said someone's stomach was "paining" them.

He is a good kid actually. Well, 95% of the time. He is so loving, and that makes me really proud. We are a very touchy/feely/kissy kind of family, and I really love that, but he hasn't quite learned that you can't just kiss everyone. He has been kissing other people's babies and stuff, and he really gets upset when the older ones move away from him or don't want to kiss or hug back. I don't know the age to start holding back on things like kissing him on the lips or letting him be naked or whatever. For now, I'm not worried.

He also still carries his security blanket, which has been dubbed "blankie". It's just a cloth diaper, and we have had at least a hundred of them over the last three years. When he started sucking his thumb (at four months), he just sort of picked that thing up. (He was a big spit-up baby, so I always had one sitting on his lap to clean up accidents, and he just took a liking to it.) He used to seek comfort from it when he hurt himself, and he is mostly over that. But he will still carry it all day every day if we let him. This is another thing where I'm not quite sure when to cut it off. Interestingly, he only sucks his thumb when he has the blankie.

I'm not sure who said that a kid has to suck his thumb until he's five before dental problems creep up, but Currin's teeth are certainly messed up from sucking his thumb. His top teeth protrude out, and his lower teeth invert in a "V" shape right where his thumb goes. I don't know how this changes over time or whether his permanent teeth will still bear that shape. I am guessing he'll need braces anyway, so I don't worry too much about it. I really don't care how much he sucks his thumb, except for his teeth. But people in India hate that.

I find that interesting because they let their kids do all sorts of stupid shit and run around and control the household. But if Currin, or even Maya, so much as gets his hand close to his mouth, some Indian is pulling it away from him. I think it's none of their business.

Currin's hair was quite curly when he was little. He HATED haircuts until he was over 2 1/2 years old. We did everything to distract him, but he would scream and cry. It was awful. Actually, I used to cut it myself until he got too wiggly. Now, he is pretty OK with it. A couple of months ago, I took him to get his hair cut and also got him a foot massage. He LOVES foot massages. He'd always say, "Do a 'ssage, do a 'ssage" (like the last syllable of "massage"). I think Sameer's mom started him on it. The good news is that he also think it's fun to give them. Anyway, the foot massage/haircut trick worked like a champ, and ever since then, he has been pretty OK getting a haircut.

He has gotten to be a pretty bad hitter, which I am not happy about. I'm actually not sure what to do about it. I am wondering at what age a parent's ability to punish actually has an impact on a child, because it definitely does not happen at age 2. At the end of the day, if he says "no", there is not much I can do about it. I have tried all kinds of stuff, but the thing he hates most is when I lock myself in the bathroom, almost like giving myself a time-out. It is far more torturous for him not to be able to come to me than it is for him to be in the bathroom or other time-out location himself.

I have realized, though, why people with kids can pretty much only hang out with other people with kids. At least when Currin hits someone, the other parents can understand that I'm really not a horrible parent; it's just that kids hit. And bite. Fortunately, he has not been a horrible biter (although he has been known to do it). But last winter, a vampire child at his school bit him so badly that even now, five months later, he still has a giant scar. I am glad that for whatever reason, things don't bother me as much as they used to. I didn't get mad or upset that it had happened because I understood that there was little the teacher could have done to stop it. Those things take only a split second.

The only down side was that he got pretty sick after that. And at his Annual Day (which was just a day or two later), he walked off stage in the middle of "Shoo Fly" and threw up on the side of the stage. Poor kid.

If I had to describe him with just one word, it would probably be "curious". He is really hungry for learning things. He loves to know why and how things work, and it is a genuine curiosity. If he asks "why?", he really means it. And if I try to blow him off or give him some shortcut answer, he tells me, "Mommy, use your words and tell me."

He is quite a small kid, based on the charts. In the two years since we moved to India, I think he has gained maybe 3 pounds. But he is quite coordinated, really good at making baskets, hitting a soft baseball with a bat, playing "tennis" with racquets. He also like to jump off stuff, and he plays "fall down on the cushions" (pull all the cushions of the couch, stack them in front of the ottoman, and fall off the ottoman onto them). But he is also quite cautious. For example, he still sleeps in his Pack'n'Play, and even though he could easily jump out of it, he only does that when his stool is there. He is also quite cautious around the pool. All of this is just fine with me.

OK, I should go to bed now. I have not been sleeping much lately, and it is catching up with me. Good night.

Signing off from the couch in Gurgaon.

Remembering Currin's Milestones

April 14, 2009
Goa, India

One of the things I am kicking myself for now is that I never really wrote things down when Currin was small. I have been total crap at keeping his baby book up – I’m not sure I have even looked at it since we moved to India! Most of the big ones, I have banked in my head, but some day they will go away, so I want to make sure I write them down.

Currin was born on May 18, 2006. My water broke at 6:15 that morning. I had no contractions until we were coming down the elevator to go the hospital around 7 a.m. (We had to stop in the Embassy House store – Embassy House was the name of our apartment complex there – to buy some honey, since Indians give their babies honey before anything else at birth. We only faked that mostly because it’s on the “no-no” list of things to give babies. Gives them botulism or something…)

Anyway, my contractions started at 7 a.m., we got to the hospital at around 7:30 a.m., and Currin was born at 8:50 a.m. It was shockingly fast – no time for drugs, which is a real shame because having a baby is pretty darn painful.

We watched the American Idol finale in the hospital (I love that show, although I never started watching it until I moved overseas.) I think it was the year Taylor Hicks won (I assume no one will know who that is – he was a weird choice and I don’t imagine will ever go very far. Sorry if you read this, Taylor. Or was it Fantasia who won that year? I have to look it up.)

He was born in Beijing, and we had a very good experience there (except the giant cockroach on the ceiling one night). Beijing United was a great hospital, the birth was smooth and quick, and there were fortunately no complications. After he was born, the doctors handed him to us, and he laid on my chest while Sameer and I looked at him and cried. I am crying even now, writing this – what a miracle. Truly a miracle.

We had no idea whether he was a girl or a boy – no one had looked on his way out. So after a minute or so of admiring him together, I finally said, “What is it?!” Someone looked under the blanket he was wrapped in, spotted the evidence, and said, “It’s a boy!” We really didn’t care one way or the other. But I had known for certain he was a boy.

I always knew we would have a boy first actually. Sameer is the only boy out of eight first cousins on his mom’s side, and given that “golden boy” status, I always figured we would have a boy first (although I would love to have had a girl, just on principle).

Right before we had gotten pregnant, I had had a dream that I got pregnant and it was a boy. (In that dream, Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher had also gotten pregnant, so I was wrong on that front. But not on ours!) And – this is surely TMI – but with Currin, I knew the instant we conceived. I actually said to Sameer, “I think we just made a baby.” I just knew. (Interestingly, we spent New Year’s going into 2005 in Goa, here at the same property where I am sitting now. And when the clock struck midnight and Sameer kissed me, he said to me, “Let’s make a baby this year.” We didn’t decide to think about trying until later in the year, but it is still interesting how that thought process came about.)

I have no idea when Currin rolled over. I’m thinking maybe four months, but I don’t remember that one. I am sure I was sitting there with him when it happened, though. (Poor Maya – I have found her on her tummy several times, so I know she has done it, but I have not seen it happen! It’s not a regular occurrence, though, which is quite OK with me. I rather like her staying in one place!)

He definitely started sitting up (wobbly-ish) between six and seven months, and he was quite comfortable with it at seven months.

We went home for Christmas in December of 2006, and when we got onto the plane in China en route to the US, I reached into his mouth for some reason and felt that his first tooth had popped through! One of his bottom two. So he would have been about seven months old.

That was our first Christmas in the US, and although Santa did come, Currin was far more interested in the paper than the presents. He was very strong in the legs and liked to “pretend” walk. He also loved sitting on the floor with me behind him bouncing a ball against the wall and watching it bounce back to us. He would giggle for as long as I would sit there doing it!

Currin’s first word was “book”. He was about ten months old, and he said it while on his changing table. He just looked at me while lying on his back and said “book” (very matter-of-factly, with a funny “k” from the very back of his throat). And he smiled mischievously, like he knew something cool had just happened. I said, “Did you say ‘book’?” And he said it again. He has been talking ever since. (My dad always said I was born talking, so maybe this is genetic!)

He was a rather later crawler – that also started around 10 months. Again, I was quite happy about that. To me, there is no greater curse than having a very mobile child before the age where they can understand “no” or really have any idea about what’s right or wrong.

He walked shortly after we moved to India, when he was about 13 months old. His first steps were in Sameer’s parents’ bedroom in Delhi. (Of course, they attributed it to our having moved to India.) And I stopped breastfeeding him around the same time. He was always a good eater and sleeper. I had only been giving him one feed a day for quite some time, so when I stopped – quite by chance, not at all planned consciously – he was totally fine. I just one day didn’t do it, and then also didn’t the next day. And then the next day, I realized I must have weaned him.

I am just now reminding myself of the “sign” for milk. I did lots of sign language with Currin. He loved it, and so did I. I have started with “mommy” with Maya (I need to learn “brother”). I always did “daddy” with Currin, and he said “dada” way before “mama”. So I’m going to give myself one now!

Currin started play school at 20 months in Gurgaon at a school called Pumpkin House. He still goes there and quite likes it. Not a lot of momentous things have come out of it to be honest, but he likes it, and because there is little else to do with your kids in India, schools sounds like a good idea much earlier than it might have at home.

The head mistress of the school is a crotchety old bitch, but the teachers are really nice and have always taken a liking to him. Just this month, he has moved into a new class upstairs, where the “big kids” go. I can’t believe he will be starting “nursery” in another year. (That is a big deal in India – pre-kindergarten. Getting your kids into school here is very, very difficult and competitive even at this young age. Parents feel so rejected when their kids don’t get into their school of choice, although I hope most kids are completely unaware of what’s going on.)

Sameer and I are already having a debate about where to send Currin. Sameer would like to send him to the American Embassy School, which is in Delhi and quite a hike. I can’t get out of my American mentality that I really don’t care where my 4-year-old goes to school. My friend Kristin is sending her daughter to an Indian school in Gurgaon this year as a 4-year-old, so I am curious to see how that goes! I would be fine doing that – my biggest concern is Currin’s increasingly Indian accent! I think he has started mixing up v’s and w’s, and that will drive me completely insane! (He already points with his palm up and arm in the right direction, sort of like Vanna White, rather than using his “pointer” like Americans!)

OK, signing off prematurely, still from the bathroom floor. Flying back to Delhi tonight. More memories to come. (Uploaded May 8, 2009, from Gurgaon, but written April 14, 2009)

Blog Kickoff from Goa

April 14, 2009
Goa, India

I have been considering writing a blog for quite a long time now. Actually, I’ve been considering starting a journal, but I figured if I’m going to write it, I should put it online so my mom (and anyone else who might be interested) can read it.

My biggest reason for writing it is to capture the moments. I can see after three years with kids how memories fade, and that thought makes me sad. So I’m going to put them down here. And I am looking into software that will turn it into a book – not a book for publishing, but a coffee table book for our own house that we can pass on to our kids when we are downsizing and want to get rid of old junk. My dad tried that tactic unsuccessfully for years – to get me to take back all the crap that was mine, but I never did it. I got stuck with it in the end anyway, so I’m not sure it really mattered. He probably liked having it around, in a packrat/reminiscent kind of way.

I’m not sure what I’ll write in this blog, but I know a lot of it will be about my kids. That officially makes me one of the people I probably used to make fun of before kids, someone who has kids and then only talks about their kids. I don’t really think I am that one-dimensional, but I do think that kids make for damn good entertainment. And I want to look back on this blog years from now and be able to remember all of the things that I might otherwise have forgotten. If you knew me in a former life when I was much more career-driven than I am now, this blog might make you wonder what happened to me. And in actuality, I’m not sure myself. A friend of mine, someone with older kids, once told me that after a working woman has kids, she has to become comfortable with being uncomfortable. She has to know that the thoughts about working almost never go away, and that that will be a constant source of tension throughout a mother’s adult life. (OK, some fathers, too, but I’m being a bit gender-traditional right now.) She said once you think you have it all figured out, if that ever happens, then something new happens and makes today’s right answer tomorrow’s wrong one. So I am definitely living with that tension and finding lots of ways to keep myself busy, despite not working. I would probably shrivel up and die otherwise. I must say I admire women who always knew they wanted to have children and stay home with them, and I still believe it is the most important job there is.

I have also decided that I am not going to censor this blog for concern about who will read it (maybe a little bit). If you read it and find it offensive, then I won’t make you keep reading it. If you read it and find out new things about me that you didn’t know before, things that make you like me more or less, I guess that is the danger (or upshot) of having a blog that other people read.

As I write this, I am sitting on the bathroom floor of our hotel room at the Park Hyatt in Goa, India. It is a really, really great hotel property, probably our favorite in the world (Sameer’s and mine). I am sitting on the bathroom floor because we only got one hotel room for the four of us for the first time. I thought it would be a disaster because Maya really sleeps only by herself, and I wasn’t sure it would work. But it has actually been OK. We thought about bringing Neena with us (our nanny, I guess you could call her), but we would have had to get an extra room for her, and although the Park Hyatt is a superb property, cost-effectiveness is not one of its strong points. So I have escaped to the bathroom to write this, pack up our remaining luggage, and let the kids sleep alone. (It seems to be working. I haven’t heard either of them for a while.)

We traveled here with our friends the Coltons, who have a daughter about five months younger than Currin. That is an absolute godsend. The kids play together, which gives us some time, as well. We also made friends with another little girl on the property, whose family was traveling alone, and I suspect that her parents were thankful she had made some friends her own age to play with!

Debbie and I traveled to Goa alone with the kids, as our poor husbands had to work and we wanted to skip town. The flight was a little bit of a nightmare. Maya does not travel nearly as well as Currin used to. (I try hard not to compare them, and I hope not to on things like “Currin is smarter” or “Maya is prettier” – those are much meaner. Those were just examples, by the way!) This meant that Maya cried for probably two-thirds of our flight here, while Debbie mothered Currin! I have actually really enjoyed traveling with her because of the relationship we have not only with each other, but also with each other’s kids. It’s almost like just having two communal mothers around. I am not one of those moms who gets upset when other people discipline my kid, so if she sees him doing something wrong, she tells him (and I with her daughter, as well). And that works really nicely.

On the first night we were here husbandless, we let Charlie (her daughter) and Currin play by themselves. Currin had stripped down to nothing (he loves to be naked, and I am pretty sure he’s still at the age where that’s cute rather than scary), and Charlie was in a diaper and a shirt, I think. They were in the bathroom being quiet (but not so quiet so as to cue that they were up to something) and playing nicely. They told us they were pretending to shower.

When they walked out of the shower into our line of vision, they were covered in soap (that I brought to India from the US – baby soap). They had “washed” their hair and most of the rest of themselves – without water, though. When I came into the bathroom to see what else they had done, I found the entire bathtub was also covered in soap. They had used the entire bottle of it. So we just filled up the tub and let them take the most bubbly bubble bath in the history of bubble bathdom.

Adam and Sameer both came here on Friday, and that was a nice change – not only because it makes the family vacation a “family” vacation, but also because we could outsource some of the momming to the dads! They are both quite happy to be delegated to in that way, and Debbie and I were able to spend an hour or so at the beach during naptime while the dads stayed in. And yesterday, I went myself, which was – even though only 45 minutes – SO therapeutic. (I sent Debbie down there today while Charlie is napping. I was going to be in the room anyway – we have interconnecting rooms – so I figured she should get to enjoy some alone time, too! Both hubbies had to leave yesterday for work, and we decided to stay an extra day because we found out today was a school holiday anyway. So we will have the kids alone on the flight again. I am praying they will sleep, but I am sure they won’t.)

Currin, much like me when I was little, is pretty scared of the water. From birth, he didn’t like baths and has been very cautious around water. But for some reason, in the last couple of days of this vacation, he got a bit more brave and decided he’d like to go with me in the big pool. It’s quite possibly because Charlie was doing it, so maybe he felt like it was OK. (This is a good strategy, unless Charlie suddenly starts smoking or something.) But today, he decided he wanted to go to the beach, and his bravery was clearly limited to the pool. He was very scared of the water creeping up the sand toward him, even though he was never closer than maybe 30 feet from the water.

Maya is an actual water bug. She has loved baths from day one, and she loves the pool also. Yesterday, I had her in the big pool with me (while Debbie had both Currin and Charlie – poor thing!). She stuck her face right into the water, and when I lifted her up out of it, she started yelling at me until I let her put it back in. Unbelievable. I have been giving her showers with me, and the hotel has those rain-forest showers. I just stick her right under the whole thing, and she is totally fine.

So there. Maya – I (more of a water kid) / Currin – I (better traveler). I will officially start keeping score and giving them both complexes about who has more points. (I am kidding, in case that was not evident.)

For some reason, I have been very bothered during this trip about whether to have a third child. The truth is that I would really like a larger family. I struggle because I don’t really like being pregnant, and I might want to go back to work at some point. But I am trying to make this decision based on the long term, rather than the short. In other words, everyone knows that having kids is difficult, especially when you have multiple kids! But when they are older and need you less – once you make it past the tough part of them being little kids – it’s a different story.

At the same time, I hate thinking of Currin or Maya has one-third, or maybe even one-quarter, of our children. Can I give all of them enough time (I’m not worried about love – there is plenty of that to go around)? Will they grow as individuals and be able to participate in all of the things they would like to explore? Will we have to buy a bus to tote them all around to their various lessons and sports practices?

But I also realize that when kids grow up with siblings, they rarely know the difference. It usually is about “mommy guilt” more than seriously damaging one’s kids. (Like when I stopped breastfeeding Currin … he was totally fine, and only I noticed.) Sameer is quite certain he would like more, so I am guessing we will probably take the plunge. But watch this space.

For some reason, when I was on the beach with Debbie, I sort of clarified it all by saying … I want to have more kids and I want a career (that I have control over). So why don’t I just have some more kids and then go and work with Sameer? It doesn’t seem very difficult really. I think I just like to have some stress over something. I really do thrive on that.

On the up side, my bronchitis, which I have had for almost two months in Delhi (called “allergic bronchitis” and due to the lovely air quality in our fair city) is so much better here. I have hardly coughed, have had only one coughing "fit", and my lung pain is almost completely gone. Currin’s allergic cough (which scares me so much because I’m afraid it could be early signs of asthma, although the doctor is not convinced) has also been much better here; he has had it for three months. I only nebulized him half of the days we were here (and I didn’t take any medicine at all). When he is very active – jumping or running around – it gets quite bad. But here, it has been mostly OK. To that end, I’m really glad we were able to get out of town. And I am hoping – REALLY hoping – that it goes away when we are in the US for the summer. Otherwise, I’m going to be quite concerned for his long-term prognosis.

On another matter, I have not worn my glasses since we got to Goa (and I am not wearing them now because I can’t find them – I really thought I knew where I put them). I have also not used the computer (and rarely my Blackberry), so it has been quite OK. But lately I have been getting quite bad eye/headaches so have been wearing them all the time and feel a lot better. Right now, they are sort of bugging me. Getting old sucks.

I have also realized on this vacation that I am maybe getting to that age where even if I were at my ideal weight and went to the gym… at some point, women just stop looking good in bathing suits. That’s a real bummer. But I am feeling pretty motivated to start working out again. My baby weight is gone (and then some – phew!), but I feel (read “am”) very flabby these days! (And Currin has been pointing out that I have long boobs and my butt does “like this” (wiggle your hands around like flab shaking to get the visual), so I think I should seriously hit the gym soon!)

Currin’s growing vocabulary and accompanying curiosity are one of the big reasons I want to start this blog. He says things that amaze me every day. I know all parents are like that. He loves putting things together from various parts of his life and from hearing things from various places. For example, we say a prayer every night. We used to say one of two “stock” prayers (“Now I lay me down to sleep” or “Angel of God, my guardian dear”). But lately we have been saying “special” prayers, which is just me free-forming to say thanks for what happened that day or ask for blessings for certain people. I usually start it by saying, “Dear God, it’s Mommy.” He heard the word “dear” and said, “Like ‘doe a deer, a female deer’”. (He really likes “The Sound of Music” and especially that song – in fact, he likes most anything that involves songs or dancing.)

Or a few weeks ago, he had to go to school in a costume, and I had to have him be my prop. So we dressed him up as a dog and I named him “Petey”. He wanted to know what rhymed with Petey, and the only word I could come up with was “seedy”, so he said, “Like ABCD?” He is really interested in words and sounds and rhyming words and opposites, a little phonics freak like I was, so I try to teach him as much as I can – only to the point where he enjoys it, though, never like “real” tutoring or something like that. This all started with him from a very early age. I remember soon after we moved to India – so when he was just over a year old – I taught him what “ice” was, and he pointed to my “eyes”. So observant with words. It really is cool.

Well, I suppose this should be the close of my first blog entry. (I am typing it in Word because I can’t get online for some reason.) I am nearing the end of page 4. Imagine me too wordy… I think writing will make me feel good. I love to do it. It gets things off my chest. It’s quick for me. And I really am looking forward to having a log of “us”. This has been a great vacation, and very doable with only a 2 ½-hour domestic flight here. I feel relaxed and have a tan, and I always feel better with a tan (skin cancer, be damned).

Signing off from the bathroom floor in Goa…