The calm is our house is once again punctured by Seema’s shrieks of “No Charlieeeee” as heavy thuds of her chasing Charlie around the house reverberates throughout our abode. She's chasing him for about to pee in the house or he's biting on a shoe or he has a piece of the kid's books or homework. It’s been almost 10-15 years since maybe Sidharth was 5 or 6 that such scenes have unfolded at our house. It’s been exactly 1 week since Charlie waked into our home, and our lives have been turned upside down on its head. And how!!!

I’ve been banished from my bedroom to sleep, if I get any, on the couch to keep him company through the night. Seema takes over the early morning walks, and the kids have their turns whenever they get breaks from their virtual online learning. We are forever walking around the house, in a state of high alert,  with Clorox wipes, paper towels, and mops to clean up after any puddles of pee or piles of poo that he may have ejected as per his whim. One of the curtains has been ripped out, and an expensive rug has been pooped on and mauled, the rest of the rugs have had copious dosed of urinification and have been tattered around the edges, the coffee table is getting chomped on at the ends, Sidharth’s homework has been shredded and chomped on (now I realize “The dog ate my homework” excuse is a real thing), our biological clocks have been upended by the incorrigible Mr. Charlie. But it has been great fun. We have been reliving the age when the kids were growing up as this little fella accords all the experiences we had when Sid and Alaya were growing up and the flood of memories of their mischief, tantrums, and actions come flooding back to me.

Alaya has taken on the mantle of the discipliner and Sid has been playing the diminutive lackey to the canine family member. It doesn’t seem to be working with Charlie though. He seems to have a mind of his own and does precisely whatever he sets his mind to. He seems to have lost weight since we got him home last week. Maybe that’s due to his increased level of activity at our home, is how we’d like to think about it. He had his first visit to the vet this week and everything checked out OK. He seemed to be the star at the doctor’s place and the nurse told us that he kept getting passed around for everyone to pet him. Seema has been trying to convert him from a heart of America MAGA hamburger loving meat-eating puppy to idli dosa curd rice consuming Indian pet, who’ll end up working at NASA!!!

By and large, this has been a fun experience thus far. We’d hardly see the kids since they are holed up in their rooms all day, doing what is anybody’s wild guess, after they finish virtual schools. At least now they get out during breaks to tend to Charlie's needs and occasionally play with him as well. It's someone that the entire family can bond around and can agree to love and spoil unabashedly. Even when Charlie has behaved at his absolute worst and we admonish him for it, he turns his big droopy eyes with the “What did I do now?” expression, and then it’s impossible to stay mad at him anymore.