5 Months!

Dearest Athiboy, 

I think I have finally started feeling that time is flying, because you seem to be growing quite fast, becoming all the more cute and irresistible every passing day.

Yayyyy! This month is a Double Dhamkka, as you've achieved two milestones. Firstly, you have FOUND YOUR VOICE. You have realised that you've a voice and keep showing that to us by constantly shrieking with excitement. Generally, 3pm-4pm is your shriek hour. You're at your best at this time, constantly shrieking with joy, kicking your legs and laughing.

Secondly, after what felt like ages for us, but actually has been only 5 months, you ROLLED OVER. You've been desperately trying to roll over by turning to your sides for the last 1 week and finally, 3 days ago, you pulled it off. And guess what, the first time you did it, nobody saw you. I had fed you and put you in the bed to play, and had gone over to do something outside signalling V to keep an eye on you. He was busy with a work call and once that got over, he turned around to see you banging your face into the bedspread, dripping a mouthful of drool on my phone, and almost started shouting at me for leaving you that way unattended. It took him a couple of moments to realise that you'd indeed rolled over on your own. Well, great job kid! I'm impressed by your determination and how you didn't give up trying  continuously for one whole week before you actually rolled over.  

You sweat a lot. So much sweat that the cloth in which we lay you down always get wet where your back touches it. Given the Chennai summers, these days, you are most often moved into either of the air-conditioned rooms of the house and almost refuse to sleep when you don't have enough air.

As much as you loved thooli last month, you've absolutely ditched it now, main reason being it's in the Hall, and not in one of the air-conditioned bedrooms. You've grown to sleep either in the carseat-cum-rocker and mostly sleep only while listening to songs. This month's new favourite songs being Chellamma Chellamma and Amaidhiyaana Nadhiyinile. If you're half asleep and there's a change of song, you immediately open your eyes and kick your legs to listen on what's going to be played next. And once you realise it's just another of your usual songs, you slowly drift off to sleep.

Your nap times range from anywhere between 20 minutes to 40 minutes at the most, except for one big nap, either late afternoon / early evening. Its one nap I totally enjoy (for my own selfish reasons), because I lay you over me, and hug you around and both of us enjoy a good sleep for 1-2 hours. Sometimes, I try to put you down thinking you are in deep sleep, but the moment your body touches the bed, you start stretching, twisting and turning & wake up in 10-15 minutes.

You have been introduced to the world's magic potion called "water". Though the first week was more of making weird faces and spitting, you have slowly started to like it. You happily gulp down a couple of millilitres, after a heavy shrieking session. 

You're mostly a happy-go-lucky kid, and your cries for food or attention has always been subtle. One of the reasons being, there are always people around you who jump in to pacify on your slightest whim. However, this month we put our first surprise visit to the Paed one evening, because you cried non-stop for 20 minutes scaring your Thatha so much so that he literally dragged us to take you to the doc right away. But by the time we stepped out of the house you stopped crying and acted all chamathu in front of the doctor, making us wonder why did we take you there. Turns out you had colic, which could've caused a stomach ache, making you cry in pain. You occasionally throw in that high decibel-closed eyes cries when waking up from sleep, but with people lifting, patting and talking to you, you slowly open your eyes. Once the eyes open and scan the surroundings, the cry changes to smile almost instantaneously. 

If there's one good thing about the COVID lockdown, it has be the Work-from-home option for V. He's lucky enough to see you grow, and spend a good amount of time with you. He's your terrace partner. Almost 3-4 days a week, he takes you out to the terrace in the evenings. Walking around with you over his shoulders, occasionally stopping by near the Murungamaram and watching you get all excited as the leaves sway with the wind. You love playing with your sleeping dad in the mornings. Every morning, the routine goes like, I wake up, you wake up; I feed you, you half sleep, I put you down next your dad asking him to keep an eye on you. And guess what he does? He doesn't even open his eyes (of course, he wants extra sleep) but instead gives a finger of his in your hands. You hold that tight, play around with it, try to put it in your mouth (but mostly fail to), laugh and talk to it, while your dad conveniently stays in sleep all the while (if you ask him, he might deny this saying he wasn't sleeping, but just keeping his eyes closed).

In these 5 months, I have seen myself change so much. My love for you has definitely grown over this time. From the initial days when neither of us understood what the other person wants, I've grown to understand you slowly. Its sometimes a guessing game, where occasionally I do fail, but most times, I succeed in guessing what exactly bothers you, be it sleep or hunger or just some human touch. 

As much as I love my job and have been desperate to get back ever since the start of my maternity leave, I've started feeling a little concerned that we'll not be able to spend so much time like this together anymore. I think the separation anxiety has kicked in for me. But no matter what, I will always love you Bul. Hope you do too! 

Love,

Amma

Gardening - A Beginner's Journey!

If there's one thing that me and V have been consistently doing in our life after marriage, it has to be the gardening. 

Our terrace garden journey started out one fine weekend, when we randomly did a Google search to find out a nursery nearby. Luckily for us, we found that there was this placed called Indra Terrace Garden near our home. It was pleasant surprise to see such a place in Chennai. It was a home with a small office space in the ground floor, the house in the first floor and the garden in the terrace. And man, what a garden! It had everything from spinaches to chillies, drumstick to bitter guords, tomatoes, mint, marigolds, every inch of the terrace filled with so many bags, pots & shelves of plants. All this grown without any fertilizers or pesticides. We instantly knew we had hit the jackpot, coming to the right place. 

The owner was also kind enough to give us various ideas and details on how and where to start and also an insight on how he managed to do all this despite of him being a full-time employee in a company. 

Our journey began with spinach (amaranth a.k.a Mola keerai) For anyone interested in starting a terrace garden, I'd advise them to begin with this spinach variety. Its almost a foolproof green with a 100% yield. In the 3 years since we started this terrace garden, we'd have taken atleast 3 yields every time we sowed the seeds. Of course we did have 2-3 failures in between, attributable mainly to due our lack of proper care and unable to spot the pest attack early. 

To grow spinach in the terrace, you can use anything from an old paint bucket, or water can or a pot or a tarp grow bag. The height of the bag should be atleast 1.5ft tall (this is sufficient as the roots of the plant aren't going to be too deep). The most important thing for growing any plant is the "soil composition"(potting mix). If you don't get that right, you may not see the desired results. The preferred composition for spinach would be 45% cocopeat, 45% compost, 10% red soil. 

Prepare the potting mix and then sprinkle the seeds onto it and give the soil a good mix. Ensure you only sprinkle the water carefully across the bag and not pour it, because the initial sprouts would be tiny and may fall off / pushed down when you pour water.  

First Sprouts

Make sure you keep checking the plant when you water it everyday. This way you can spot out pest attacks in the early stages. Because once it the pest attacks start, they spread across multiple bags pretty quickly and before you can think of what to do your entire lot would be gone. Most often the pest attack on spinaches can be controlled by spraying neem oil mixed with water. 

By the end of 15-20 days the plants would be ready for harvest. You can either pull off the entire spinach (together with the root) off the bag or cut off the stem a couple of inches above the soil - this way the leaves will grow again and you can take another 2 yields from the same set. I'd personally recommend the latter.

Put in a handful of compost atleast monthly once and also spray Panchagavya fortnightly to ensure the plant grows well.

A picture from my insta, as I'm unable to find the original picture

Once you're done with the all the harvests, let the soil barren for a week (do water it regularly though) and keep mixing the soil to ensure that it doesn't become hard. Make sure to add a handful of compost before you start your next batch.

My two cents for someone who would want to start their own garden - 

• Start small
• Care and spend time with the plants
• Don't hesitate to get your hands dirty or get upset with the smell of the neem oil / Panchagavya (the smell is surely nauseating), you can always wash your hands once the work is done. 
• Don't fear to experiment. You may fail quite a few times, but don't give up. Analyse what could've gone wrong and think / read / ask for corrective measures. There are lots of online forums, and videos which would help you. 

Lastly, the joy of seeing the efforts your toil as a flower blooms or a vegetable pops out is priceless. You'll also learn to appreciate the effort a farmer puts in to grow the food on your plate and make you feel grateful for them.