raising the pets of your children

i am a mother of twin 6 year old girls. their birth changed our lives completely. all parents out there understand what i mean. remember those days when you could sleep and wake up as late as you wanted. you didn't have to spell out swear words to your friends. never cleaned up anyone else's room. and aaaah those long uninterrupted showers! this is not whining . NO. its just counting some differences when being alone meant being alone. being a parent of more than one child means that even if you feel lonely, you never are ALONE :) which can be a blessing or a misery depending on how you take it :)
but all jokes aside, parenthood brings joys that re not comparable with anything in this whole world. the smiles, the hugs, the kisses, and the sleepy faces of your children are so much more mushy than the holding hands and hugging your boyfriend  (yeah yeah i am a Muslim woman from Pakistan remember !). well all the parents know that too.

i had heard that the early years of being a mother are the hardest. well my experience says THAT IS SO NOT TRUE! who said that the first few months or years were difficult. Ok, so i was sleep deprived. Yess i didn't find time to shower daily. I fed twins so yeah i felt like a cow feeding one from the right and other from the left.... but that was still easier to what parenting of 6 year olds is now. i mean is it 6 years of sleep depriviation? or last few years of playing a referee for the 2? or just the fact that as kids grow up its not just about changing nappies, feeding and putting them to sleep. it becomes so much more than that! its a mind job 24/ : character development, manners and behavior understanding, desire control, self image, body image, what to watch and not to watch, what to play, when and where. dengue. typhoid. flu. K & N chicken phobia. sleep pattern and don't even get me started with the dinner table. but fine. i find my way to ease through that too. but perhaps the thing that pushes me off the edge is their over the top passion for animals (and birds. and critters !!! )
so when they were young, i got them a handful of those colorful florescent blue and pink chicks. who died within a week and the kids were heart broken. so me and my husband decided to get something that will last longer. stupid enough , we got them goldfish in a bowl. now no one tells you how dirty these fish can get if you don't change the water in the bowl daily! yeah! so apart from changing nappies i was changing the fishbowl water too! somehow in winters the fish died after being with us for 2 months or so. apparently the are sensitive to cold and heat both! and also die of over and under feeding. we killed 3 (unintentionally) with all these methods. well the list of pets giving up on us has just started . so next we got them 2 turtles. our intentions were neat. as its a known fact that turtles live longer than most of the other things on the planet, i anticipated big turtles as we grew older :P sadly the turtles are too stupid and like to hide under ovens in winters. and they can die like that. so that is what happened to them.
then we got a beautiful Persian cat . she was a true beauty and really sweet too. but i felt really bad for her as the kids were pulling her literally. then some pups came to live with us but had to be given away. then some more chicks. turtles again. chicks again. a fruit bug in a glass jar, that they named Toto lasted almost a week. 27 lady bugs in a plastic jar that lasted 3 days. and finally when they turned 5 we got them Desi (organic) chicks and they didn't die till we cooked them and they made delicious Qorma. we got another batch and got a nice shelter made for them. sadly they caught some disease and died in summers one by one. all 25. to deal with the children's emotional trauma we got a pair of rabbits.one was eaten by a cat as the bunny made a hole and cam out of the cage! and now we have 2 kittens; Simba and Tulip. but the story has not ended. AS my husband started showing signs of being allergic to these kittens and now we have to let them go and the bargain with the kids is 25 chicks! yess!!! so the bottom line here is that we are not raising two kids only, but their pets as well! jee! the kids are kids, they'll play , have fun, get scratched or something . but its ME who will be screaming after the kids to wash an sanitize, and also cleaning the mess after the pets, feeding them and cleaning them also, and all just in the name of love.
ah.... the things we do for love.
i hear my girls singing My Little Ponies now all the time as they are in love with the show. and i am dreading their next pet request! farming seems like a good business sometimes, at least there will be an abundance of all kinds of farm animals :P

to know thyself...kee jaana main kaun?

being bilingual in the urban and rapidly modernizing Pakistan is not just fashionable but is a norm now. last week at my daughter's parent-teacher meeting, the topic of Urdu treated as an inferior language in the school was brought up (by me of course). and quickly other parents started bringing in their concerns. ironically most of these parents were like me, who had a good command over English. Those parents who did not say much about the topic were either the ones who were busy texting on their phones OR the ones who secretly want English to be forced upon their kids and regard it as a symbol of success or something. so in my head i had divided the class room of my 1st grader in 3 groups of parents. 1: those who didn't care. 2: those who spoke English well and realized the importance of the mother tongue (or pseudo pretenders and protectors of culture). and 3: those who had a tough time in life because of their lack of command over this other language. my concern of the treatment of Urdu in schools is not just the way they treat the language, or the attitude of  most "madern" people towards it, but its what this attitude and treatment symbolize. i am not a very patriotic, or Urdu speaking, or a purist of any kind. i am perhaps an example of the changing and globalizing world around me. but what i am proud of is the fact that i am who i am . i am proud to be this culturally confused mixture of east and west. my sentences comprise of both English and Urdu ; i am comfortable wearing shalwar kameez dupatta or a swimsuit as required ; i can eat left over paratha and egg in the morning and then go out for Nutella crepes and coffee with my friends; i enjoy the punjabi sleezy comedy stage shows as much as i enjoy How I Met Your Mother or Californication. and i respect each of these beautiful nouns and verbs and various aspects of my life , as much as any other. i dont want my children to associate speaking Urdu with the servants, helpers and uneducated people! i want them to speak, read, write, understand and respect the language as they respect family. in my opinion Urdu, English, pizza, daal roti, and all these miscellaneous multi cultural , bi lingual, co existing elements of this south Asian contemporary urbanized cultural environment , are what shaping us and our children , the way a family shapes a person. you learn your manners from your Dad, the rules from your Mom, the way to secretly get things in the house from your big sister, smoking from your brother, access to porn from cousins and so on and so forth. and all these relations have a special place in your life that is irreplaceable by any other. similarly Urdu symbolizes our heritage, our history and culture. by treating it as just one "subject" in school , and speaking with the staff and maids in this language is the attitude which can bring the value of this beautiful language down . lets not do that . and let this parent of ours live on healthily and with a lot of respect , as it deserves :) .
sochtay raho aur chill kero.

Amber Hammad