My six-year-old has a crush! :-)

Another milestone. Munchkin's first self-professed crush! He's six. She's five-and-something and his classmate. He's known her since last year but didn't pay much attention to her. The Sports Day Marching Parade changed everything. He was leading it and she was marching beside him, holding up the placard with the name of their class on it.

For a while now, Munchkin has had his life planned out. He has to study hard (not that he likes it too much) and get into a good college, get a good job, get married, have a kid or two whom he wants his grandmother to raise (because their mother will be !) Not me, his grandmother, please note. Erm...right. Grandma will be past eighty then, but he's sure she'll still be just as pretty as she is now.

So anyway, it took me a while to coax it out of him but here are the cute details. Her name is Shalika. Why does he like her? "She's nice." What else? "She's brown, like me. Almost everyone else in our class is so fair." (He says that without prejudice...it's just a difference in appearance, nothing else. At least he doesn't seem to be obsessed with fairness like the rest of the country.)

That's good. What does he like about her? "She says such funny things and makes me laugh." Like what? "I'm not sure. I don't understand everything she says. When she speaks in English, she speaks very fast so I don't always follow. But she's funny." And then his brown skin turns the faintest shade of pink and his eyes look like there are stars in them. Not bad, I think. He just likes her for who she is. And Sports Day happened more than two weeks back. As first crushes go, that's a long enough time, at least for a six-year-old.

I'm enjoying this moment when he announces: "I wish I could marry her!" Cough! Splutter!
"Marry her?"
"Yes. I like her. But I have to grow up and get a good job first," he says solemnly.

I don't know what to say. My mind goes back to the first time I saw such stars in his eyes, although that lasted around 3 days. It was the first day of school last year. I went to pick him up and he was standing in line, beaming. As we walked back to the car, he whispered. "Have you seen my teacher? She's so nice."

"Yes, she seems nice. She's pretty, too."
He didn't respond to the pretty part.
"What's her name?"
His face fell. "I didn't ask."
"Well, why don't you find out tomorrow?"
"What should I say?" he asked nervously. So I told him.

When I picked him up the next day, the first thing he said was: "Chetna. Her name is Chetna." And he was beaming from ear to ear. Oh how he loved that teacher. She liked him, too. When we met her at at PTA meeting soon after his first cryopexy last July - he'd missed 3 weeks of school - she hugged him and said: "I missed you. There was nobody to keep me on my toes." (Which was her way of saying that there was nobody else as naughty as he is! But she liked him a lot, that was obvious.)

Three months later, this wonderful teacher coming to school after she was diagnosed with a problem in her spine. He misses her terribly, often saying: "I wish my Chetna ma'am would come back. School is not fun anymore."

He doesn't like his new teacher that much and I must admit, I don't see her making an effort either. But the school year is almost ending, and I can only hope that he will get a nice teacher in the first grade.

"Mamma?" he says, jerking me back from my reverie.
"Yes, baby?"
"You and Papa were classmates too, right?"
"Yes, we were."
"That's nice," he says and closes eyes. I'm thankful he went to sleep that easily, but I lie awake for a long time after that. :-)

This is my life, and sometimes, I can't even remember what it was like before he was born. Thank you, Poppet. And yes, you can rant all you like when you feel I embarrassed you by writing all this. But hey, what are parents for? ;-)

Stage Fright? What's that?

A few nights back when I was patting Munchkin to sleep, he me out of my sleep-deprived stupor by asking me: "Mamma, why are some people afraid to go on stage?"

"Everybody gets a little scared when they're on stage," I replied, hoping the answer would suffice.

"I don't get scared," he said with an air of genuine hurt. "I like going on stage."

He had a point. The kid has zero stage fright. And he was this way since he was two-and-a-half years old. His first 'stage appearance' was in August 2004 when our apartment complex welfare association announced a fancy dress event for children. I didn't want to send him in the ubiquitous /Nehru/doctor/lawyer/farmer/rock star costume so I thought a bit. Then it hit me. The movie Munnabhai MBBS had come out a few months ago and was a huge hit. It follows the hilarious attempts of a thug to join medical school and become a doctor in a bid to reconcile with his parents.

So I bought him a toy stethoscope, a white shirt that passed for a lab coat, and stuck the note "Munnabhai MBBS" on this front pocket, complete with band-aid, just like in the movie's posters. (see pic) He also learned a few lines of the title track. When he walked out in front of the audience, he looked a little overwhelmed. He's forgotten his lines, I thought, completely forgetting how young he was. But he looked at everyone slowly, then his face broke into a huge grin. He pulled the free end of the stethoscope high above his head and sang his lines. The applause felt like magic to me. My little kid had just given his first performance and couldn't stop smiling!
A few months later, there was a similar contest at the Montessori he attended. I decided to recycle the costume. And this time, the Gangsta MD carried audience with him. Then there was a problem. The little brat was enjoying the attention so much, he didn't want to come off the stage. Finally, his teacher scooped him up and carried him away. He was still beaming and waving to the audience. I was embarrassed, but only just.

All this subsequent trysts with the arclights were equally confident. He was the only solo performer at the annual day celebrations. He started his poem and found the mike wasn't working. So he tapped it and announced: Papa, the mike isn't working. As luck would have it, the microphone decided to function just as junior made the declaration, so the entire auditorium heard him and laughed. The performer smiled back and non-plussed, continued his poem.

He also won top honors for his turn as Noddy, and then recited a rather complicated poem for his next annual day...this was just 10 days after emerging from a stint in the hospital for really high fever. I still have those pictures on my softboard at the office. Last November, he shaved his head to be Mahatma Gandhi.

For the school's annual day this time, he was chosen to be part of the group welcoming parents. was the second E in the 'Welcome' squad, so he had to wait while everybody said their bit in turns. We got the DVD from the school a few days ago and were not surprised to see the little thespian beaming at the audience, looking all around quite happily, trying out various 'looks' (squinting his eyes at the lights, making funny faces at the lights, and whatnot) while the others spoke. He had no idea this was being taped and looked suitably embarrassed when he saw the DVD. We had a good laugh, though.

Munchkin repeated his question: "Why do people get scared on stage?"

"Well, it can be scary: there are so many people looking at you. You wonder if you'll forget your lines, or if you'll make a mistake, or if they won't like you," I tried to explain, and wondered if I was going to scare him off. I still get the butterflies if I have to address more than three people in a room.

"So what if you make a mistake? Everybody makes mistakes. I like going on stage, Mamma," he announced and proceeded to close his eyes and go to sleep. It's times like this that I can't believe he's only six years old.

Poster © Vinod Chopra Productions

We have new teeth - a whole new row, actually!

I should have written about this almost a month back. Munchkin's best friend -- 8 year old -- had belatedly lost his first tooth and got a bonanza from the tooth fairy. That's when I decided to check if any of my own little brat's teeth had begun to get loose. And surprise, surprise: his two lower front teeth were loose. I lost track of the development when he fell ill - as did the rest of the family.

The day he went to school after that, my mother asked me if I'd seen his new teeth. New teeth? What new teeth? His front teeth are just beginning to get loose, I said. She gave me an old-fashioned look and summoned the brat to come over and open his mouth wide. And sure enough, around 2mm behind his lower front teeth, serrated edge of a wide tooth had just broken the surface of his gums. And boy was it wide! It's almost the size of both is front teeth. I had visions of him looking like Roger Rabbit or Bugs Bunny in a couple of months!

Two weeks later, I inspected the teeth again, and this time, there was a second tooth struggling to emerge. Only this one was at an angle to its partner. That meant crooked lower front teeth. Like my husband's. This time, I had visions of the zeroes on the bill when we'd have to get him braces to even out the dental drama.

I still can't figure out why the new teeth are emerging 2mm behind the front row. I have to keep checking whether he's brushed his teeth properly because he effectively has two rows of teeth, one behind the other. Weird...But hey, this is a weird kid: he never crawled when he should have. His leg would get stuck under his tummy and he'd call for assistance to get himself disentangled.

Plus, he learnt to walk on his own - without any support - when he was 10.5 months old. And even then he couldn't stand up on his own to begin walking. That's when he started to crawl: because he could get to a wall and use the support to stand himself up and then walk. A couple of months later, he managed to stand up on his own one day, while building a tower of stacking blocks. And promptly looked around to see if his achievement had been noted. It had...Mommy was crying and laughing at the same time. Satisfied, he plonked the final block on the top of the tower and fell back on his bottom with a thud and beamed!

Now, excuse me while I go start the tooth fairy fund. We live in inflationary times, you know.