This post is for the quirky little girl who turns six today!
Everyone knows I am a foodie. I love to cook and eat good food. But what is lesser known is how much of a foodie this little girl is. When I come back from trips abroad, her only questions are about what I ate there, especially during the flights. She must be the only person in the world to be so fascinated by airline food!
Her dreams are often about food too. Once she she was very tired and went off to sleep before dinner and the first question she asked when she woke up at 3am was what we had for dinner! I am often seen scurrying about in the kitchen early in the morning because the little Missy has pre-ordered a special breakfast or school lunch the previous night. In the afternoons, she raids the fridge non-stop. I have come down from my bedroom many times to see all types of food stuff wiped clean by the hungry hog, the most notably shocking among them being a whole bottle of pitted olives!
Frustrated by the mess she makes inside and outside the fridge, we recently started locking the fridge and hiding the key. One day, when none of the adults could find the key, she found it for us. You see, finding the fridge unlocked, she was the one who had locked it and "hidden" the key!
Her food choices don't stop to surprise me. Once I made trout and green beans, and she ate up all the green beans and didn't touch the fish, which she was so fond of in Singapore! Once, she sat with RS in Singapore and ate up half of his sarson ka saag (pre-cooked microwaved stuff) and now keeps asking me to make the green stuff RS has. Her latest craze is Himachali karhee. One afternoon, she ate up a huge bowl of karhee that we had kept for dinner by filling her katori over and over again. During this recent trip to Kullu, she had karhee for almost every meal!
Aloka has the sharpest sense of smell I have ever known anyone to have. She smells everything. If I buy her a new dress, she smells it first before looking at it. If I cook something, she smells it first before eating it. Before reading a book, she smells it. Every soap is evaluated by its smell. She has a nice collection of soaps because that's what she likes to buy at stores. Freshly ironed clothes are smelled with pleasure, freshly washed clothes are deeply inhaled. I am not allowed to throw empty packets of detergents because she likes to smell them again and again. With her eyes closed, she can tell which shampoo I am using on her hair because she recognizes the smell. When she gets in a car, she comments on the smell. When she gets in a building, she tells me what the smell reminds her of. She knows when I am wearing a different perfume than my usual. It is hard to hide anything from her thanks to that darn sense of smell.
Her love-hate relationship with her nani has changed into more-love less-hate one in the last few months in India. She spends most of her time in her nani's room, watching TV, playing with her iPad, doing her homework and even sleeping at night. She can recite tables of 1-5 thanks to her nani who used the good old fashioned way of rote learning to teach her what I could not using my newfangled ways. I often hear them laugh like mad over some silly joke that nani has cracked or hear them talking excitedly about a game they play together on mom's iPad. Aloka has figured that as long as she follows most of nani's rules (no eating on the bed, no jumping on the bed, reduced volume of her iPad etc), she can have a lot of fun with her most fun-loving grandma!
But Asha, our house-help, isn't so lucky. She bears the brunt of Aloka's naughtiness in action and words. Now that she can speak Hindi fluently, she practices all her naughty sentences on Asha (e.g. Tu gandi hai Asha Aunty, Mommy dekho Asha Aunty ne mujhay pagal kaha, isko daanto yeh mujhay marti hai etc).
Aloka is fascinated by most young ladies, but mostly by her cousin sister Nishu. She follows her around when she is with her, and when away, talks all the time about her. Nishu is her role model- she wants to dress like her, talk like her, and be like her when she grows up. In any group, Aloka gravitates towards girls of Nishu's age more than she does kids her own age. And her aversion to men is legendary.
In another post about Aloka, I had written that she doesn't walk, she skips. That's still true, but now there is another addition to her list of favorite actions. She can twirl non-stop for as long as 30 minutes without getting dizzy. It's another matter that her grandma gets dizzy just seeing her rotating like a planet gone out of control!
Ever since I remember, I always wanted to be mother to a daughter, a child I could dress and feed and teach and have fun with and mostly, see her enjoy a childhood I missed. Aloka made my dream come true, and how! She is everything I dreamed of and more, a perfect quirky addition to my quirky family. She is truly the second rainbow in my crazy sky!
Related post: http://accidentalceostrategicmom.blogspot.in/2012/03/enchanted.html
Her dreams are often about food too. Once she she was very tired and went off to sleep before dinner and the first question she asked when she woke up at 3am was what we had for dinner! I am often seen scurrying about in the kitchen early in the morning because the little Missy has pre-ordered a special breakfast or school lunch the previous night. In the afternoons, she raids the fridge non-stop. I have come down from my bedroom many times to see all types of food stuff wiped clean by the hungry hog, the most notably shocking among them being a whole bottle of pitted olives!Frustrated by the mess she makes inside and outside the fridge, we recently started locking the fridge and hiding the key. One day, when none of the adults could find the key, she found it for us. You see, finding the fridge unlocked, she was the one who had locked it and "hidden" the key!
Her food choices don't stop to surprise me. Once I made trout and green beans, and she ate up all the green beans and didn't touch the fish, which she was so fond of in Singapore! Once, she sat with RS in Singapore and ate up half of his sarson ka saag (pre-cooked microwaved stuff) and now keeps asking me to make the green stuff RS has. Her latest craze is Himachali karhee. One afternoon, she ate up a huge bowl of karhee that we had kept for dinner by filling her katori over and over again. During this recent trip to Kullu, she had karhee for almost every meal!
Aloka has the sharpest sense of smell I have ever known anyone to have. She smells everything. If I buy her a new dress, she smells it first before looking at it. If I cook something, she smells it first before eating it. Before reading a book, she smells it. Every soap is evaluated by its smell. She has a nice collection of soaps because that's what she likes to buy at stores. Freshly ironed clothes are smelled with pleasure, freshly washed clothes are deeply inhaled. I am not allowed to throw empty packets of detergents because she likes to smell them again and again. With her eyes closed, she can tell which shampoo I am using on her hair because she recognizes the smell. When she gets in a car, she comments on the smell. When she gets in a building, she tells me what the smell reminds her of. She knows when I am wearing a different perfume than my usual. It is hard to hide anything from her thanks to that darn sense of smell. 
Aloka is fascinated by most young ladies, but mostly by her cousin sister Nishu. She follows her around when she is with her, and when away, talks all the time about her. Nishu is her role model- she wants to dress like her, talk like her, and be like her when she grows up. In any group, Aloka gravitates towards girls of Nishu's age more than she does kids her own age. And her aversion to men is legendary.
In another post about Aloka, I had written that she doesn't walk, she skips. That's still true, but now there is another addition to her list of favorite actions. She can twirl non-stop for as long as 30 minutes without getting dizzy. It's another matter that her grandma gets dizzy just seeing her rotating like a planet gone out of control!
Ever since I remember, I always wanted to be mother to a daughter, a child I could dress and feed and teach and have fun with and mostly, see her enjoy a childhood I missed. Aloka made my dream come true, and how! She is everything I dreamed of and more, a perfect quirky addition to my quirky family. She is truly the second rainbow in my crazy sky!Related post: http://accidentalceostrategicmom.blogspot.in/2012/03/enchanted.html
Very nicely written about Aloka. Adorable girl of adorable mom, both are very good human-being and love everyone. Love you both......sonu
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