Tiny toes and the mischief they get into...

After the awe of counting the tiny-infant-toes, the next biggest delight is the moment of actually seeing these tiny feet walk, especially if this is your first child. 

The truth, however is that in between the ohs and the awws, we find ourselves chasing these too-excited feet which have discovered both their ability and freedom. And all of a sudden the laid back and delightful 'awe' is replaced by more of an 'awe' of discovering all that can go wrong. We find these very cute feet sneaking themselves in places we had not imagined they can go. And here we thought that we had overcome the hardest part of parenting - the sleepless nights of infancy. Little did we know, that another trying phase was coming - a phase that is a constant and active chase. And when their excitement and our exhaustion is placed on a graph, they seem to play a perfect tango. 

I remember very vividly when I discovered that if I wanted to prevent hours-of-clean up and food-waste then I needed to have a lock for on my fridge door. This insight came with a hefty cost - a massive clean-up. In this phase of exploration it seems that even if you come from a generation of right-brain-genes carrier, trust me, your child will exhibit all the qualities of being a scientist. They instinctively acquire new knowledge by conducting experiments - Observe, experiment, formulate, test, test again and again and again. And this might be the only time you find yourself not so keen on their scientific-inquiry-impulses. 

Somewhere in this perfect tango, I had realized then that if I did not make an action plan and become pro-active, my children's creative juices and their first taste of self-empowerment will supersede my first taste of 'wow - you can do that' or rather 'oh-oh - not that'. If I could have afforded the luxury of a maid who would clean up all the mess made as a result of their curiosity or the riches enough to replace all the broken items, I think I would have rather enjoyed and laughed with them at their impromptu acts of exploration, as long as their safety wasn't compromised. But since I was in shortage of both privileges, I compromised somewhere in the middle. 

My solutions to handle this madness was simple: a point and shoot camera to witness the disasters, social media network to console, and lots of quicker-picker-upper-dialogues-with-self. Being equipped with all these tools, any one can brave the 'accident' stages of the toddler phase. And at the end of the day, as a survivor, when you put these tiny feet to sleep, you can seal the day with a dose of humour, a tucked-away memory and a seal of a mom's-hug.