A friend asked for “more photographs” of the little Tiger, and I found myself answering that we don’t have any more. That’s when she – a mother of two – pointed out: “It’s different with the second one, isn’t it? You don’t find yourself going out of your way to record every little movement of his on camera, like you did with the first one, right?” And that set me thinking… Is it, somehow, any less important an event this time?

He was a mystic poet or poet sants of India, whose literature has greatly influenced the Bhakti as well as Sufi movements of India. According to some sources, he was born to a Hindu Brahmin widow and later adopted by childless Muslim weavers – Niru and Nimma – who found him near Lahara Tala lake, adjacent to the holy city of Varanasi… He is also one of the 99 names of God in Islam.

It was simply a coincidence that I was at home that day – I was down with a bad case of sinusitis and had decided to take the day off. So, after I’d packed off Pumpkin to school and had barely sat down to check to my email, when my wife announced that she was feeling contractions, we first thought it was the usual anxiety combined with the “fake” Braxton-Hicks contractions that feel like labour pains but are really not. After all, it was just 3 days ago when we had had the cervical stitch removed, and, even though delivery was imminent any time after that, the expected delivery date was a good two weeks away…

These are just some of the headlines for the 16th of October 2007… Sensex touches 19K in just four sessions… 3 Americans share Economics Nobel… India leads in deaths during childbirth… Tiger is born…

The past couple of months have been among the most demanding I have ever experienced. As you may already know, the wife had developed some complications with our second pregnancy, and was confined to two months of bed rest after undergoing a minor surgical intervention. While we were in the hospital, we did not have too much time to think about what would follow. But, once we returned home, the fun stuff started rolling out, one after another…

As we prepare our house, and ourselves, for the delivery of our second child, I happen to ask a family friend – and a father of two – if he has any advice to share on the subject of “managing two kids simultaneously”. Here’s what he had to say…

Being in those circumstances, we realized even more, just how much we take Life for granted. If we had not realized in time, there would be little a doctor or a hospital could do to help. And, that’s just the medical part. There were dinners to attend, and junk to clear out from the store room, and so many other things that we tend to procrastinate on… always thinking that we will get to it tomorrow… Now, it would all have to wait until after the delivery.

Summer was here. The days were already hot and humid; It would be sweltering in Goa. But we decided to pack our bags and head there, anyway. Most people who know us cannot imagine why we go to Goa every year… sometimes more than once a year! But we do. And, we keep going back, each year. This time, it was a particularly special set of circumstances…

One of my favourite “dad blogs” – MetroDad – yet again, features an interesting insight into parenthood that echoes my own sentiments on the subject. Having married someone from a different community (my wife is Catholic), and being sort of “Agnostic Secular” myself, I often find our family in a similar predicament…

The latest BabyCenter update was promising. The reality, however, was quite different. For the past 10 days, Pumpkin was unwell. At first, it was the flu, accompanied by a bad cough. After five days of paracetamol, Pumpkin was just beginning to recover, when the flu turned into a chest infection!