Chronicles of Nevin: Rise of the crawler

Nevin making earnest promise to be nice to the bolster.

Continuing occasional documenting of Nevin Shankaran Kumar’s passage of time, or how he abuses his Accha (dad) and Amma (mom).

Well, here’s a great news about Nevin (to long suffering Accha and Amma), the drool phase is sort of over (re: previous instalment on this series). That’s about the only good news. The thing is, Nevin can now sit on his ass on his own without tumbling over like an empty whiskey bottle next to a drunk.

And he has started crawling! Aaaarrrrgh! You can control a house pet, including your alcoholic uncle, but one thing you can never be fully in charge of is a crawling baby (and the terrifying sequel, The Walking Baby [unrated]).

One moment he’d be down there at your feet where you are blocking him from something (the lower rack of your bookcase for example) and you scratch your bum, distracted slightly, and voila! He’s halfway to the kitchen to wreak havoc there.

Nine month’s old last week, Nevin is now increasingly showing the traits of an animal in survival mode – bite anything that you can grab on with your hands. There’d be bits stuff on the floor, but his rule is, if you can’t grab it with your hands, you don’t put it in your mouth.

You see, one of our rooms in the apartment has faulty parquet flooring, you know, those wooden bars held together. One day, again I was distracted by something, maybe hunger while waiting for wife to have the meal first, there he was, found a loose parquet wooden bar and looking at it lustily like we would to a Hershey chocolate bar. Luckily, dad was in time to remove it from his hand, and he revealed another in the other hand!

Yes, that damned teething again. The cannibalistic gnawing mentioned previously has not stopped. Unposted criminal records showed that he had once attempted to gnaw on Amma’s leg, her shoulder, and Accha’s ear, in particular displaying his insatiable greed for the earlobes. Once sitting down with him on the floor, and distracted for a moment, as usual, I suddenly felt something damp on my goddam heel!!! You know what that is.

Standing him up on my lap would be the biggest mistake I would ever commit: he’d immediately reach for the last few strands of hair on my head and try to lead them to freedom! And I’d do it again and again. Yes, when you are a father to an infant, your IQ goes right down the drain and into the sewerage and join many other dad’s runaway IQs.

Speaking of which, in the name of grooming him to become a macho man, I’d engage him in a fight. Yes, a real fight, only we do it like they do in cinema, not really hitting each other. Mano-o-baby. I’d grab hold of him (on the floor), and rabbit-punch his bum (fully protected by disposable napkin) and emit the fight sounds they use back in the 80s in Tamizh and Hindi films.

Aside: There are differences in those sounds. For example, in the 80sTamizh films, if the guy is blocking or just smacking, the sound would be “tub”, “tub” and full-on ass-kicking, “toobuhait!”, a departure from pre-80s “dishyum!”  as Tamizh films were embracing Jackie Fu at that time. For Hindi effect, I use the full-throated male-voiced “Bishyumbhhh”. No, seriously, checkout the Hindi films of that time. End of aside.

Of course, with my vigorous fake punch-throwing, blocking and voice-overs, he’d just try to crawl his way out as if nothing is happening. And I am the one who gets tired. Why can’t he accept this as serious sport, jeez man!

As for feeding, he’s started eating rice cereals with chicken bits or anchovies. Occasionally he gets yummy chocolate rusks, which he really loves, as does his chin and nose. Meal or milk is never an issue with him, unless its ads time on TV.

Yes, you moms and dads know this. They just get hypnotised when the ads are on. He’d be as interested as a cow over medium rare steak when other shows are going on, but when the advertisements are on, he’s hooked. I even tried to take advantage of this situation, the ads segment would be on, and I’d go:

Me: Nevin will stay put for the next twenty minutes while Acha and Amma finally have our dinner.

Nevin:

Me: Correction, Nevin will stay put for the next half an hour because Acha might go for second helping.

Nevin:

Yes! Total hypnosis. When the ad ends and the regular programs begin, he’d be at that room attempting to gnaw the loose parquet piece.