Two of them now

I am the aunt of a little niece and nephew now. The niece is littler as she’s only two days old. The nephew, on the other hand, is a little old horse, considering he’s been around for 7 months now, traveled all over India, and has currently become very adept at changing TV channels using the remote. He takes that after his mother - my cousin. This couch potato behavior is hereditary I think. (Kaera and Suveer are offsprings of two of my cousins.)

My little niece’s name is Kaera. She’s named after an Irish goddess or fairy or something like that. It means ‘the dark one’ and she has been thus named because she has jet-black, poker straight hair and dark eyes. My nephew is named ‘Suveer’, which is quite far removed from Irish nomenclature.

I haven’t yet seen my niece’s photograph, but I have met Suveer once and he is quite a heartbreaker. He is so, so , SO cute! No wonder my cousin decided to stay at home after the baby. Why would you not want to revel in such cuteness every single second of your life? I told her to give him to me considering she or her husband are not very bright. (Oh for God’s sakes – she used keep calling cabs ‘Tasky! Tasky!’ until she was eight or nine. And then when she came to Bombay, she couldn’t even cross the road properly. I taught her.) She declined the offer very graciously and hit me on the head when I wasn’t looking.

Suveer is such a happy camper! He smiles a whole lot and doesn’t cry when he gets carried off by other people. However, he does tend to be partial to well-dressed, good looking ladies. My sister told me he made an exception in my case.

Oh god! When I held him, it was like holding this really sweet-smelling, animated marshmallow. He’s also quite jumpy and post his visit to his grandparent’s house, he has also learnt to spit at people. (My uncle, his grandfather, gets very weird kicks out of teaching kids things like this.)

Sigh! Babies are the bestest people in the whole world. Closely followed by aunts, of course.