parenting – Dua Senku

About a week or two ago, a good friend of mine messaged me on Whatsapp to catch up on things. During our conversation, he asked if I had stopped blogging as he had not seen new posts in a while. That same week, another friend asked me if I had lost my way after going to the moon or overshot and ended up going beyond it, in a reference to my last post back in July, “To moon and beyond“. A few days back, my wife wondered aloud as to what happened to my blog and if I had run out of interest with it.

I think I told all of them something along the lines of, yes, I have stopped for the time being but it is just temporary, a mere pause. It is not that I had nothing to say. On the contrary, as always I had a lot to say about any number of things. The fact is, since my last post I have been tied up with one activity or the other. I just could not set aside time in an effective manner to put my thoughts down into a post. My wife can attest to that, considering that she takes the brunt of listening to me articulating my thoughts on anything that I fancied about.

When I posted for the very first time (“Ahh…that first post“) on this site back in April, I was sure that I will post something worth reading, at least once a week. I suppose like everything else in life, on hindsight it was a nice goal to have but a difficult one to keep, what with all the things that I had committed myself to or contrived myself to be involved in. This of course is on top of trying to be a doting father, loving husband, a filial son and much more, all of which are in no particular order by the way.

So, I decided to set some time aside from what seems to have become the new daily grind for me and give my wife a respite from my thoughtfully melodious voice. I converted the energy usually expended on sound, while voicing out my thoughts, to the mostly kinetic kind with a smattering of sound, by typing out this post. As I was tapping away on the keyboard, I recalled something I learned the hard way, working as a software engineer and later on as a manager, managing deliveries. Time, is precious and more importantly finite. One had to manage time wisely, lest the project fails to be delivered as expected. Time was one thing that I will not be able to conjure in tiny amounts, let alone in abundance, to rescue my project.

: Souce: Pexels

Similarly, when looking at the bigger picture of life, the one resource that we all have, regardless of how wealthy or less wealthy we are, is time. How successful or unsuccessful we end up, depends very much on how well and efficiently we use the God-given precious resource called time. Over time I realised what has been working well for me thus far, was to simply reflect on what I wanted in life, figure out what I had to do, prioritise them, determine how much of time I was going to spend on each of them and then as Nike is fond of reminding us, just do it.

Along the way, it is absolutely important to periodically review how we are faring in order to make necessary changes. After all, what was important a few months ago, may no longer be important or the top priority, today. By not reviewing and restrategising as needed, we may be wasting the very thing that we are trying to save and use wisely, time.

It is equally important that while doing all of this, we bear in mind that we also have to juggle the various roles we play in life, from that of a child to our parents, a partner to our significant other, a parent to our child or as a Uber driver to the masses, just to name a few. As time is finite, if we don’t strive to spend it wisely, we may never get the chance to play the roles that we want to, let alone as well as we would like to. Sadly, by the time we are ready to play our role, the other party may have moved on with time.

My own journey in life over the past one to two years has been pretty interesting, from my point of view. I made certain decisions and acted upon those decisions. These are decisions and actions that I certainly would never thought I would do 10 years ago or even as recent as 5 years ago. As I mentioned above, it is very interesting how perception about what is important in life, changes over time. This is especially true when looking at it from the perspective of how precious time is and even more, when we realise that we don’t know how much more of it we have left with us.

For a start, I made a choice with regards to my career. A decision to leave what most if not all that I spoke with for advice, considered as a good job with a good MNC, to do something on my own. Along the way, what I want to do has remained the same but how I am going about achieving it has evolved. Then there was a new and important role that I found myself taking up. The role of a father to a wonderful little man with a big personality, who has changed the lives of my wife and mine, drastically but for the better. Sixteen months on, in the role of a father, I have no regrets in making the choices that allowed me to play this role as I have done thus far.

Being a parent myself, was a gentle reminder of how I may not have paid as much attention to my own relationship as a son to my parents or even as a partner in life to my wife, in recent times. The realisation that time rarely is on our side, has made me rethink and allocate how I spend time with my parents, wife and family. The arrival of my son after years of waiting was also a reminder of the amazing ways my maker is present in my life. I took it as a sign to prioritise my time to review my relationship with God and do what is needed to deepen my understanding of my faith further.

Coming back to my keyboard and post, I think it is about time I put the final touches and wrap it up. To my dear readers, especially those who had enquired over the past three months, I will definitely come up with more posts, more frequently. With so many things going on out there, there will always be something or the other that needs to be talked about. Now that I am done with this post, I better get started on the next item on my list and play whatever role is needed to accomplish it. After all, time and tide waits for no one, does it not? Oh….. and just in case you are wondering, no, I am not a Uber driver driving people to their destination, at least, not yet.

Entertaining children especially babies, is a very demanding and challenging job. It is one job that has to be done with extreme care, loads of creativity and disregard of self-consciousness, at least in my mind that is. Before our son entered our lives, my wife and I never imagined that entertaining a child would be as complex and intimidating as it turned out to be initially. Now, we have done our share of entertaining babies and children of our friends and relatives, in the past. During those stints, we pretty much figured out what we had to do, depending on the situation and we never felt that it was difficult or taxing. Afterall, we always had the benefit of return to sender, as I had mentioned in an earlier post (Babyland – Episode 2).

Reality of course, has a way of hitting in a manner that you least expect, right when you are already reeling from one revelation after another on what being a parent is about (see series of older posts from Episode 1 to 3 on Babyland). It became clear that we had to be cautious while entertaining our baby and be as creative as possible to keep him engaged. Through this all, we had to be ready to do embarrassing things at any time to entertain him successfully.

Now, many months ago a friend gave my son an electronic book of nursery rhymes. My son liked it very much as it played out various nursery rhymes as he turned the pages of that plastic book. The book had a light that lit up when pages are turned and colourful buttons that played certain tunes or called out the colour of the button. From the description of the toy, it seems to be a perfectly safe, entertaining and more importantly, educational toy. What could possibly go wrong when baby plays with that colourful musical book of nursery rhymes?

One night, I found out the dangers such an innocent looking toy could pose to a baby that plays intently with it. My son was sitting on the floor beside me when he picked up the book of nursery rhyme and laid it in front of him. He then knelt and flipped through the pages randomly one at a time, not really waiting for any rhyme to end. As this was norma, I continued with whatever it was that I was doing. All of a sudden, he cried out loud in pain. I quickly turned to see what happened and could not see anything out of the ordinary. He was still kneeling with his hands on the book. It took a few more seconds of him wailing out loudly before I realised that he had his finger pinned between the pages of the book, while he was kneeling on top of the book.

That is when I learned a lesson that even the most safe looking toy, is a potential hazard to the baby if not properly used. Of course, I can’t protect baby from everything that may come by him but I learned to analyse toys from all angles and assess how best to keep the toy safe, both, for and from the baby. As for the book of nursery rhymes, I taught him to always sit down and place the book in front of him. Whenever he forgets and starts kneeling, I gently remind him to sit down and keep his book in front of him. That works for now, at least with books.

Caution aside, baby’s meal time made us realise the importance of being creative. Before the presence of our baby, I never understood why among some couples, one tries to avoid being the one who had to feed the child. Some would volunteer to do diaper changing duties instead, just to avoid being the one to feed the child. Then I realised, when it comes to his meal time, keeping him entertained and occupied long enough to finish his food, was very important, which is where creativity played a vital role.

In the early days, feeding him was as simple as having him lie on our thighs while we fed him but it became challenging as he grew up. My wife and I wanted to avoid using gadgets to keep him occupied while he was being fed, as we didn’t want him getting hooked up to gadgets until it was really necessary. So, we had to be creative. I re-acquainted myself with nursery rhymes that I had mostly forgotten and learned up new ones.

More often than not though, I ended up inserting my own lyrics or created new ones. For instance, my version of “Old McDonald had a farm”, has all sorts of fowls in it besides the usual chicken and duck. Along the way, the same farm, added some wild animals in it, such as a monkey, an elephant, a wolf and a lion. The easily adjustable list of animals in the farm helped me keep him seated long enough, with manageable tantrums, in order to complete his meals. That aside, due to my extreme creativity with nursery rhymes, my wife decided that I will not be the one helping him with nursery rhymes when he goes to the nursery or kindergarten. I have chosen to not argue with that decision.

Besides all that, we also had to get used to being ready to do embarrassing things in the name of entertaining the baby. Things, that we would normally avoid, especially in public. For starters, talking gibberish or any non-understandable language, in public would be something one would avoid. However, in the presence of a baby, that is totally acceptable and nobody would look at you as if you have lost your marbles. Rather, most would give the look that says, “Ah, so cute”.

Then there is the singing or humming, especially of nursery rhymes in public. Without the presence of the baby, I am pretty certain, that someone would have kindly told me to just stick to being a bathroom singer. If it was a talent show, baby’s presence alone might earn me a reprieve to stay, at least for another episode. I am pretty certain that having baby around us, is a “Get out of jail card” to do anything embarrassing in the name of entertaining a baby. The same action I believe, would have rewarded me with at least a stinking egg, at any other time.

Fortunately, being cautious, extremely creative and prepared to do embarrassing things in public, generally results in a happy and content baby or at least as happy and content as a baby can be. As taxing and challenging a job it might be, to entertain baby that is, my wife and I are pretty sure that it brings about its own set of rewards. A happily well-fed, laughing and smiling baby, at any time of the day is definitely reward enough to keep being cautious, insanely creative and ever-ready to do embarrassing things anywhere.

P.S.: Featured image was sourced from Pexels

Tag: parenting

Time and tide waits for no one

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