Hello and Goodbye

Growth is relative. Perception of growth needs a base for comparision. I know the kids have grown when I chance upon an old photograph or pair of onesies or the newborn diaper. Otherwise they are still little. And I know the Lima beans that Manav planted has grown as well but at a faster rate when I see the beans hanging from the branches. Every morning Manav wakes up and checks the growth and says the same thing
"Mommy Mommy come look, there are more"
"Mommy the spiders have built a web on the other plant" pointing to the hibiscus shrub and sure enough there is a barely noticeable spider web there.
"Mommy I am making the flower straight" trying to tug the sun facing tilted yellow gerbera towards him.

Everything is so green, you can hardly see the beans until you look closer

The boys have gotten comfortable with falling asleep on their own in their room. Manav does show up on our bedside sometimes but instead of climbing up between us he says

"Mommy, my hands are so cold. Can you come tuck me please?" rubbing his palms on my cheek

and another day

"Mommy, why is Arnav here?"

"He has been coughing too much" I reply

"Oh ok" and goes back to his room

and again

"Mommy I need to go to bathroom"

I nudged Caunteya and told him to take Manav to the bathroom. Caunteya takes him back to his room and puts him to bed. Next I see the bathroom light on and Manav on the potty. He is really on his own now.

"Can you tuck me in please? My legs are always out of the blanket" is a common statement most of the time.

And when he wakes up in the morning he checks with us

"Did I sleep all by myself?"

and feels very content when there is an affirmative from us.

Today when I kissed him goodnight he said

"See you tomorrow then"

and Caunteya tells me, Manav told him earlier

"Papa, I hope I don't come to your room today. It is a weekday" We have a pact that we can sleep in each others' room only in the weekends.

Arnav has been sucked into all this growing-up game. I cannot imagine Manav at 2 years 9 months sleeping all by himself. But then Manav donned the big-brother cape also at a tender age. So all's fair. What is not fair is this hollow feeling that while falling asleep they no longer need us by their side.

The other day Manav got up from his potty with an aghast look.

"Mommy I got susu from my bum. Girls do that. How did it happen to me? I am a boy" He was almost teary. They share a bathroom at school so guess he got the idea from there.

"Maybe it was not susu, it was your poopy. Remember your tummy was hurting" I tried to placate him.

I know this is getting kind of gross but I had to mention as Manav was really very very concerned with this unusual occurrence.

We didn't end up buying that 16 inches bike for Manav. He needs to put on a couple of more inches to be able to manage that bike. Thankfully we got an used 14 inches bike so now both boys ride their "Big Boys Bikes". Today I told them to ride the bike inside the house as I was busy packing and couldn't take them out. They marked all the boxes area as "construction site", loosely packed articles as "stop signs" and the kitchen as "one way" etc and played for a while. Arnav got stuck someplace and Manav came over to help. He said

"Arnav try your best to control the corners. When you come near corners you go past them, not bump into them." with great stress on the words "past" and "bump". He also showed off a live demo of how he deals with corners. It was very precise and neatly executed audio and video.

Since the past couple of days Manav and Arnav have been busy making rhyming words. During one such creative session at the breakfast table Arnav said

"Have you ever seen a racket wearing a jacket?"

and Manav added

"Have you ever seen plants wearing pants?"

"Have you ever seen a door sitting on the floor?"

and many more which I cannot remember now. This is in lines of the silly songs that they hear so often. But the above are their own.

We are all caught up in the upcoming move on Saturday. Then there is the much awaited Memorial Day vacation in the weekend after. There is promise of lots of fun. But first we have to get past the move. And we will since the boys have been a lot of help in packing. They counted and labelled the candy jars with the number of candies appropriately. They took out stuff from the semi-packed boxes and tried getting into the same boxes multiple times. They have so far packed and unpacked their box of cars at least 20 times. They have expressed delight in moving to a house with "backyard" but in the same breath have expressed sadness to have to drive down to meet their friends here. Manav said

"When we pass by this house we will" and sang out in the tune of 'wheels of the bus'

"Wave Hello to our old House,

Our old house, our old house

Wave Hello to our old house

And then say Goodbye"

Yes, Hello and Goodbye are the two sides of the same coin. Goodbye for now.