A Tag

So, Parul and Inexplicably both tagged me to write about the 5 things that I love about being a Mom. I'm going to keep this one short, and I won't be tagging anyone else about it, if that's okay with you guys, mostly because I'm usually so late on these things that all the other mommy bloggers I know have already done the tag about six posts ago :-).

But here goes, since you asked. The five big reasons why I love being a mom, in no particular order:

1. Having the cutest, most lovable person in the world to cuddle up with at the end of the day, no matter what.

2. Having someone around who can always lift my modd, and make me laugh by simply making a funny face, or nonchalantly farting at all the right moments, dozens of other things.

3. Rediscovering the best things in the world again - including the little ladybird in the grass, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, ice-cream, and many other things.

4. Having my own personal entertainer. Being her own personal entertainer. It's all very entertaining. Except when it's not, which is usually when she decides 'It's 4 a.m. Time to wake up and have some fun with Mama!'.

5. The knowledge that you can really change for the better. I've been a blissfully ignorant child, a clueless moody teenager, an overly competitive performance-oriented career woman - and I think I'm far more balanced overall, and certainly quite happy. Part of it is the effect of the pregnancy and postpartum hormones wearing off ; but part is a very conscious effort to be the kind of mom that Peanut could be proud of. Well, right now she would still be proud of me even if my chosen profession was that of Axe Murderer, but eventually, she will grow up and know better, and for that future Peanut, I paraphrase Jack Nicholson from As Good As It Gets and say 'She makes me want to be a better person' .

And that's it! Yay, I did it! Completed a post in one go!

Okay, Peanut is clawing at my face now. Bye.

So much to write about! Oh Dear!

Where do I begin? Should I just start off from somewhere near the beginning? Or might it be better to just put down the key highlights and then choose to elaborate on them? 

- My cousin Mini has got married! The wedding was last week, and we had the most awesome sangeet at my mother's place. The sangeet itself was very different from the typical 'ladies sangeet' affair - but we had the mehendi-walaas, the chudi-waala and us - the dance-waalas! Yep, we pretty much boogied the night away and the best part was that everyone was on the dance floor, right from little Peanut and her cousin Nikki to my grandmother. 

Mini is marrying a rather wonderful Australian man named Russell - a dirt-biking microbiologist, if you can wrap your mind around that mind-boggling combination. As I told him when they were finally leaving for Australia, I'm just so glad that two such wonderful people have found each other. Russell's family - his parents, brother and sister-in-law - had come down for the wedding here, and I must say they are rather good sports. I want to elaborate on this later, but basically, since they wanted to experience the 'true Indian wedding', we had a band arranged for a little 'baraat'. And despite our warnings, the silly band-men started asking the Australians for money while they danced. Except for the fact that they chose to do this by twirling their fingers around the head of the groom - to signify that it was in his 'blessing' - but the twirling-finger action was misconstrued by the hapless foreigners to mean that they were being asked to spin around - which they just good-naturedly wrote off to some strange Indian tradition. Therefore, we had a situation where there were in the baraat, there were:

* increasingly frustrated band-waale, trying hard to get their request for a tip across through their twirling hand-signal and other assorted means...

* increasingly puzzled and dizzy spinning-round-and-round Australians who were beginning to wonder if they had to spin all the way to the wedding venue...

* increasingly shameless my-family-members who were laughing too hard and were too busy taking pictures, to actually think about explaining to the people in our charge that they should probably stop spinning. 

Yeah, Mini - I know you weren't too amused, but wait till you see the videos. Ha ha ha ha hah ah ha ha haha ....

- Then there have been other various things which I should write about later, including: 

- How Vijay and I actually performed at the sangeet - with - wait for it - this song. Govinda and Raveena, we did you proud. (Not! We practiced a total of 3 hours two days before, and little Peanut was quite traumatized watching us...) But we did it anyway, and it was great fun!

-My nicking little 5-month old Nikki while trying to helpfully trim her nails and going through horrible guilt for a whole day

- Peanut's two new cousins landing up from America and her excitement at meeting them, manifesting itself in her pretending to be a dog at 2 a.m. and screaming 'Bhau-bhau' at them around a hundred times.

- An awesome conversation I had with an eight-year-old in the park yesterday, which made a whole lot more sense than some of my recent conversations with adults!

Okay, but for now, I have to go and wake up a jet-lagged family for a 4 o'clock lunch. 

Did I mention I love Saturdays?