My theory on the neverending wish list of my second born #ziva, #second #mine

I am a second born kid. Suresh is one too. This means we both have a sibling older than us. I am really glad because we kind of figure out the reason for why our second born behaves a certain way sometimes. SOMETIMES.

We have been seeing for a while now how Ziva is always asking for something. We have done our absolute level best to ensure that we treat both of them equally. But I think the inequality creeped in anyway when Ziva was born 1 year and 10 months later.

A few days ago, Ziva walked down the stairs after a shower with a shorts and the tshirt and someone who was sitting at our table waiting for lunch called out ‘HI! You are wearing Isaac’s clothes’. She looked down at herself and said as confidently as she could ‘No I am not!’. But the truth was she was! I felt a pang of guilt. I also realized that Ziva had a lot of hand me downs. Not crummy ones but still they were a seconds ... used. I really have no problem with seconds. I personally used to love wearing my cousins and sisters hand me downs. But I think somewhere along, this trade down of items causes a bit of a scar.

To talk about clothes alone, it seems like Ziva has a lot of clothes and Isaac too few. But if you look closely a lot of what Ziva has is mainly hand me downs. Including from cousins. A few months ago when we visited my sister, she took Isaac and Ziva to the hypermart to buy some color books and pencils. (We had left our pencil box and book bag on our flight to Mumbai). Isaac walked in and bought one drawing book and one set of color pencils. My sister asked him if he wanted a fancy pencil box or a bag or anything. He held his drawing book and said, ‘This is all I need’. Ziva on the other hand needed no coaxing. She soon had picked up a pink bag a pencil box, crayons etc.

I honestly find it hard that I raised both of them in the same household, with the same facilities. Yet my little girl had chosen to pick up random stuff that she probably never would use. I think all she wanted was something that someone bought just for her! Not a hand me down, not a second thought. Just for her!

Wearing Isaac's swim clothes

The theory of and downside of hand me downs: If its clothes, they rarely fit properly. They almost are never the color you like. This works very heavily especially if one person is a pink lover and the other a green lover. If toys or other items, they always seem scratched or  used. There is never that pleasure of opening up something new.

Suresh and I have similar stories. Stories of wanting our parents to buy us something. Stories where we adamantly demanded something that was probably unreasonable or unnecessary. Suresh once sat on a tricycle and refused to get off it till his parents had to finally buy it. I remember wearing so many hand me downs and since I was a size smaller, spending many hours tightening skirts and shortening salwar kameez’s that belonged to my sister. I did use this as an opportunity to make them a little extra short and a little extra tight 😉. While I did love her clothes, about the 11^th grade I made a total wardrobe switch and started wearing nothing but T-shirts and Jeans. This reduced the sharing I could do and I stopped the pipeline of hand me downs. Ziva has already started on those lines where she prefers wearing skirts and dresses to pants or shorts 😊. I say smart kid.

Isaac's sweater 

We were recently planning to get a new bicycle for Isaac since he is starting to ride mine now. As we talked about it I saw Zivas expectant look. We kind of held back our decision. In about 1 year and 10 months, Ziva would be using my cycle too. We would wait till that time to buy a cycle they both would share. No more hand me downs. Changing to a world of sharing and equal opportunity.

Creating Memories #kids #childhood

I cannot remember which movie it is! But there was this dialogue about creating memories for our kids. Most of us think that memories are captured in photographs and so we take a million photos. And I think that is a fantastic way to capture memories. But do we think about creating memories. Some of us have a strange gift of keeping to 'memory' mainly the tragic stuff that has happened to us.
I have a huge pandora's box of bad 'memories'.
Some of us think that we need to go places or see things to create memories. But having traveled a bit and seen some of Gods wonderful creation, I am one for things that happened and people that were with me. That is what stays in my memory.
This afternoon, I had two friends come over and as we sat reminiscing about some old memories, I realized that some of them didn't just happen. We created them. There were trips we had planned or gatherings together, that had created some fun times. Memories.

After my friends left, and I sat on the couch to get to work, my eyes caught a few pictures I had taken this past weekend. Sunday has been a long day. We usually had long days on Sunday. But yesterday had started at 5 am and ended for us at 9 pm. By us I mean the kids too. While the afternoon to evening had been particularly boring for the kids, the morning had begun fantastically.

 

I had set up my alarm to 4 am and because I had not slept till midnight the previous two nights I turned off the alarm at 4 and slept till 5 am. At 5 am on Sunday morning we jumped off the bed. Woke the kids up and in 20 minutes got ready and were driving off to Forum Value mall in Whitefield. It was a 5 k run and for the first time we had taken the kids to a registered, organized run. The Purple run - Cause was Alzheimer's awareness.

Suresh and I have run several times over the past 1.5 years. Every time we ran and came home the kids would ask us if it had been fun and from their perspective we were having lots of fun. Finally Ziva started asking when she could come with us. When we saw the invitation for all ages at the Purple Run we registered as a family. For the first time! We reached Forum at 5:35 and pinned on our bibs just in time to click a selfie and start running. Suresh ran with Isaac. Ziva and I paced together. About midway through the run Ziva was in tears and said .. 'Amma next time I want to run only 1K'. We gently kept pushing them towards theirs final destination. Walking, sprinting, jogging and stopping, we reached the goal. As we crossed the finish line a gentleman came closer to look at the bib of the kids. 5K was written in purple. Wow! Good job, he said as he patted Isaac on the head. The exhaustion escaped and Isaac was shy because of the compliment.

We do not know how they will remember this run! But we did seize the opportunity to create a 'good' memory for Isaac and Ziva. Happy dance. :)

Mounika and Josh joining was a sure encouragement. About a kilometer away from the destination Mounika asked me softly if we were pushing them. I said 'maybe' and kept going :). What Mounika had not seen was that before she joined Ziva and me, Ziva had been whining. But the minute she saw Mounika join, she had a happy smile all the rest of the way.

As we came really close the end of the run and people were cheering us to complete it,  Ziva comments ' I hope I get a gold medal ' :) :)