Chronicles of Nevin: Drool, gnaw and headbutt

I hope to make this a series so that I can cut down on the readers who are visiting this blog. Hah! Caught your attention.

Well, you know how new parents are, bragging about their baby, posting pictures after pictures, flooding their friend and family’s Facebook to the point that they actually reach for  a razor blade to sever their vital blood vessel, only to realise that it is Mach 3 Turbo shaving blade.

But, this is a blog, which is a shortened version of Weblog, which means I damn well write whatever pleased me, and I am going to keep it as a chronicle on my son – Nevin Shankaran Kumar. Which also means there will mention of lots of drool and poop.

Humorist Dave Barry once wrote that babies are gigantic drool  machines, and I concur as I wipe the big deposit Nevin left on his dad’s wrist (he tried gnawing on only let it go after hearing his dad’s stern whimpering).

Seriously, where does that gobs of spit come from, they are more than the milk he’s drinking. We’d be watching TV, him on my lap when a sudden moist starts to form on my wrist, or palm or any part of my hand that attracted my soon-to-be carnivorous son.

I did a google search on baby and drool and realised that actually the drool is good for him. It helps to clean the teeth (in his case, the gum) and helps with stomach acid. But with most of the drool all over mom and dad, how is it going to help him?

And then there’s the teething (or gum gnawing as I call it). We got him few of those teething toys but I think it would be a matter of months before he swallows those things. The way he pushes it into the mouth you actually feel sorry for the toy.

Oh, and did I mention about his thick skull.

No I am not insulting him. Apparently he does have skull of steel, just ask my wife. One day while she was playing with him, he fell forward (the neck still weak that time) and “bang!” my wife’s gum was bleeding. And he was unaffected. I myself got many back-headed knocks on my nose, cheek, shoulder and dammit, indifferent, he simply went on with his business of disseminating drool.

Nevin has now started on solid food. Well, not too solid, rice porridge with bits of potato or carrot all blended beyond recognition. He seemed to love it; hopefully it will lessen the drinking of his formula milk, a box which costs about the same as the GDP of Falkland Island.

He’s six month plus now (14^th August),and damn, time does not only fly, it beams by. He has started talking gibberish, as usual, but you know how baby gibberish are – cute and speculative. We would translate them liberally. Like, “He is saying he loves accha (dad),” ; “No, he says he loves amma (mom),” ; “But…okay, dear. Agree with you. You can put down the weapon now. Slowly.”

I recently gave him a hair trim. This is opposing my mom’s insistence (“this is not about religion”, said twice a day praying Hindu lady) that he should be tonsured (thanks Ajay Baskar for that word). Surprise, he came out looking like mini-Bruce Willis (as per the same Ajay’s comment).

He is a bit slow, just started turning over like that roasted chicken you see in at restaurant roasters, when he’s supposed to attempt crawling. But he’s happy go lucky kid as recently demonstrated when after rolling off the mattress we laid for him on the floor, he banged his head backwards on the floor and then went on smiling and attempted to communicate to his feet in extreme close proximity.

So there you go, Nevin at his sixth month. A wonderful journey for parents who wkjiojfdlkjfasf ….oh crap, he drooled on the keyboard..mplkjijojirera;lknlslsdflasjf….

1973 (left) and 2012 (right)