I’ve Got to Stop the Food Wars

I know I shouldn’t but I still keep doing it: I keep fighting with the twins about food.
The parenting books – by western authors, by the way – all say how you should let the child decide how much of what food they to eat. They won’t starve themselves, and they won’t binge on one [...]

Caged Tiger Growling

Before we got the twins, Amit traveled about once a quarter. Now that we have twins, he travels once a month. I wish it had been the other way round.
Because of our insistence – joint and individual – to raise the kids ourselves, at least in these early days, we tend to lead a “relay-race” [...]

Good Girl, Bad Girl

These are the standard phrases we use to praise or admonish the twins. In doing so, I’m sure we’re no different from millions of parents around the world.
I’ve read in parenting books that rather than saying “bad girl,” one should say “that’s a bad thing to do” to more accurately convey that it is the [...]

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

I’m not sure if my account of our trip to Pondicherry to file papers gave the impression of quite how rushed and hectic it was, but it really was. Amit was extremely tense about the whole process going off smoothly and without any further delays. I was only worried about managing the kids and keeping [...]

Strangely Estranged

When we took the twins back to Pondicherry last week, we had every intention of making a short visit to the adoption agency (that is, the orphanage). We had some romantic notion that those people would like to see the twins, see how they’re getting on. We thought it might be nice for the twins [...]

Adoption Update – Filing the Papers in Court

We finally took the first step to legalising the adoption – filing the papers in court in Pondicherry.
Pondicherry is not an easy place to get to, if you’re traveling with little kids. The easiest would be to take an overnight train to Chennai, and from there a car (or bus) to Pondy. But, we had [...]

Swimming

Since the twins love their bath and really enjoy splashing around in their tiny bathtub, I’d been dying to up the stakes and put them in a swimming pool. Amit and I both love to swim, though we haven’t done much of it in recent years. I took to swimming straight after I almost drowned [...]

My Days in the Sun

It is probably a dangerous thing to say, because, strangely enough, I have to admit to a superstitious belief that saying so might change it, but I’m going to risk saying it out loud anyway: I’m in a very happy place in my life right now. After a very, very long time, I realize that [...]

Love Comes Slowly

I used to think that the very first time I held my daughter – I didn’t know then that we’d have twins – I thought there would be some magic. I expected to feel something soft… something tender, maternal, loving…
This was when I knew we’d be adopting. I felt sure that it wouldn’t matter that [...]

Hot and Spicy!

And they love it that way!
But let me start at the beginning. We took the girls out for lunch on Sunday. We went to Eden Park, which has been a long-time favourite for Amit and me. Amit has been an irregular but faithful client for twelve years! It was one of the first restaurants he [...]