Pink, blue, flowers & animals..

S and I have been trying to stay away from the stereotypical pink vs. blue thing for our boy. The pink vs. blue mania extends not just to clothes but all the way to crib sheets, blankets, bouncers, sippy cups and what-not. And it is very hard to not get sucked into this stereotype. Last week, we went with my sister-in-law to buy a bouncer for little G. The only bouncer that was comfortable and met all our requirements was a beige-brown color with a couple of pink flowers.

"Are you sure you want to buy this? It has some pink in it", said my SIL.

I shrugged, "This is the only one that looks comfy and it doesn't have any other colors".

"But your kid might curse you later when he sees the photos with the pink flowered bouncer."

S started looking a bit doubtful as he imagined his son cursing him in later life. He looked at an appropriately blue bouncer which wasn't as comfortable as this one. After about 10 minutes of much convincing and wrangling, we settled on the beige one. After we got back home, we ruminated on how easily we could've bought something that was not comfortable just because of the "right" color!

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In the US, boy babies have a very limited selection of clothes - striped or plain shirts/onesies with either an animal on it or wordings like "Silly monkey" or  "Wild thing".  The colors are nothing to talk about - dull brown, yellow, blue (of course), green (if particularly lucky). While all the girl infants of this world are carted around in cute, frilly frocks with polka dots & flowers in bright colors, my boy goes around wearing a shirt that says "Cat's meow". I honestly don't know what "Cat's meow" means. I think the makers ran out of cute things to say for boys and made something up. Hopefully, G won't have to wear shirts with "Dog's bark" or "Cow's moo". If boys' stuff doesn't have animals on it, it will have cars. I guess someone decided that the male gender can't have anything to do with the finer things of life like flowers or artsy stuff.

S accurately ( but politically incorrectly) points out that G isn't exactly going to care about all this anyway. According to him, this is just the feminine craving in me to buy cute things. Hmph. I don't know about that but it definitely makes S's life easier as far as shopping goes.

This is the BEST-est post in the world

Observation #1:


Come Father's day or Mother's day, stores are full of "Best mom/dad in the world" paraphernalia. There are variations of the word "Best" like "Awesomest", "Amazing", "Unique" etc...in the balloons, cups, jewelry boxes, greeting cards that the stores peddle. I am all for cute stuff and I do hope one day G will present me with one of these. Call me picky but I have started disliking the "Bestest in the world" phrase. How can only one mom be the best in the entire world? Who are we comparing moms with? Every mom is probably the best for her kid but to claim the "bestest, awesomest" status amongst all the moms of the world sounds rather irritating. I feel like the words have lost their meaning.

Rant #2:

There's no dearth of bad news in today's media. There's always someone dead, raped, missing, mutilated, killed, terrorized or brutalized. And when the family of these people talk to the media, they always talk of the "warm, lively, full-of-life, won't-hurt-a-single-fly, helpful, brilliant" victim. I know we're all supposed to talk well of the dead and I do sympathize with all these victims but I wish people would come up with really thoughtful things to say. Either 

a) Everyone in the world is a clone

b) the victim, in reality, was such a sucky person that the family finds refuge in cliches

I guess I should really stop ranting. But hey, I am a sleep deprived new mom and this is what happens when you're awake at all odd hours of the night. I think I've earned the right to rant (for the time being)..:)

the one where I manage to laugh despite serious post-partum pain

RS lent me Dave Barry's "I'll mature when I am dead" a few days before my due date to while away time. Aside from P.G. Wodehouse, he is t.h.e funniest, wittiest author I've ever read.

Let me just make two points:

- An author who can make a woman laugh hysterically just 2 hours after a marathon 31 hour labor/delivery is worth his salt. If anyone had even merely suggested that I loosen up and take a humorous view of things that day, I would have punched them in the face. That is how exhausted and sore I was.
- An author who can make sleep-deprived, exhausted, new parents loosen up @ 3 AM in the morning (after dealing with baby's 2 hour crying jag) is really worth reading.

Hats off to Dave Barry! Not that he needs my endorsement or approval - he is a Pulitzer Prize winning author. S & I have developed a comfy routine where we read Dave Barry late at night or during the wee hours of the morning after putting the little one to sleep.

As an aside, I also read Chetan Bhagat's "Five Point Someone" alongside Dave Barry. And the contrast was glaring. Granted these are two authors writing different genres, Chetan Bhagat still seemed to fall terribly short in language, style and story-telling. "3 Idiots" seemed a better version of "Five point someone". I started on "2 states" but it seemed to drag on slowly. So for now, I've cracked open "Boogers Are My Beat" by Barry. I am laughing already...

Baby

After 10 months of joy,worries, excitement,anxiety, discomforts, anticipation, baby G is here at last! He arrived safely in this world after 31 hours of hard labor. It is hard to believe that it has been 7 days already since he made his entry!

S & I are slowly settling down into parenthood in these early days. I am sure it is going to be a fun, adventure-filled journey as baby g grows!  And I am starting to enjoy a few things I missed a l.o.t. during these past 10 months -

- savoring a cup of hot, normal strength coffee. I've been sustaining on extremely low strength coffee (by that, I really mean low, low strength) during the entire pregnancy
- sleeping on my stomach. Yaay for that!
- being able to just bend down and see my feet..:)

Ahh, simple pleasures!