I said NO to my baby

When he picked up a brown-blue polka dot pajama today. I told him that was a girly dress and that he can pick up something else he likes but he was not even interested in looking at any other. Maybe he loved the pattern! Anyhow, remembered this when I came across this blog: http://nerdyapplebottom.com/2010/11/02/my-son-is-gay/comment-page-312/#comment-20011 . Feeling guilty about having said no earlier.

As promised, here is the link to Halloween pics and few other shots. Enjoy!
http://picasaweb.google.com/namanms09/1012Months#

Wish you all a very happy Diwali (belated). Hope you had a blast!

Zindagi rocks!!

Don't worry. No similarities with the Sushmita Sen tear-jerker here!! That one had an extra g I think, I am not sure now. Anyways just used that for want of a better title, that's all.

Things have changed quite a bit since my last post.Oh yes, they have. For starters, we are now independent parents!! What I mean by that is - after almost a year of having help around - first my parents, next my in-laws, each for about 5.5 months, we are back to being on our own. Not entirely on our own of course.

- We now have a nanny to look after Naman during the day. She is a 50 odd year old chatty, inherently lazy, Gujarati aunty, one who is ever so ready with tips, advice, news of some kind (weather forecast for the day/week, 10% sale in this store on this item etc kind of news). Of course you cannot expect the same kind of commitment from her as you expect from grand-parents but she does her job reasonably well.

The first few days after my in-laws left were traumatic for everyone at home. Naman was at his clingy, fussy best (or worst). Can't blame the little guy though. He was missing his grand-parents a lot during the day. We resorted to working from home alternate days and on those days, we had to play hide and seek with him to get any work done. It was not fun at all, trust me. It took a while for him (and us) to warm up to auntyji and normalcy to be restored in our lives. Glad to say that we are now a fully functioning unit. One that is heavily routine-based. Our week-day routine looks something like this:
wake up in the morning when Naman wakes up - anywhere between 6:30-7:15. He has his coconut oil massage right after he wakes up. Then it is playtime/book time with dad while mom hurries through making tea, washing Naman's bottles, preparing Naman's breakfast and lunch, our lunch boxes and Naman's milk bottles for the day. This usually takes about 30-45 minutes.
8:00: Breakfast time for Naman. A job in itself. Starts with his dad feeding him, sometime later I take over while hubby has his breakfast and gets ready for the day.
8:20: nanny arrives for the day. 10-15 minutes of chit-chat later, I am forced to remind her the reason why she is here. Then she takes over.
8:45-9:Hubby is ready to leave for the day.
Another 10-15 minutes of cleaning up/finishing touches and I am off to get ready and off to work by 9:30.
Rest of the day Naman is care of Auntyji. I get to watch and hear them through out the day thanks to the nanny cameras (web-cam) we have installed in each of our rooms. Crazy?? Not so much, given that my peace of mind when at work totally, absolutely depends on this.
4:45 pm - Hubby is back from work and Auntyji takes off. Usually, Naman wakes up from his afternoon nap around 5. Hubby then feeds him some snacks. Then they get ready for a walk(weather Gods have been merciful so far) and meet me in the park on my way back from work.We are back home by 6:15. Dad - son play time again. Mom in the kitchen cooking dinner/washing. Hubby's constant complaint is that I don't spend enough time with Naman. He offers to cook/clean while I play with him but I prefer this way. Well, in my defense, I do try to cook in such a way that I don't have to spend more than an hour in the kitchen everyday.
7:30: Family is at the dinner-table.
By 8:15 we are all done. General goofing around till 8:40 or so and then it is Naman's bath time.
By 9:15 Naman says good-night and I am done putting him to sleep by 9:45 or so.

Then its back to office work for about 2 hours with TV running in the background. Our little guy still wakes up once every 2-3 hours in the night. So, we have divided the night into shifts now. Till 2 or 3 am, it is hubby's turn, mine after that. Between us, we manage to get around 5 hours of sleep on an average.

Early on in the parenting game, we realised that maintaining a schedule is one of the key things for ourselves and the baby. Babies thrive on schedules. When they are very young, that is one of the ways they learn to understand time of the day. That and sunlight of course. And of course, schedules go a long way in preserving our sanity as well. Naman now understands the concept of day and night. He knows now that day time he will have Aunty for company and night time it is his pappa and mamma. If one of the week-days, we work from home, he refuses to go to Aunty. His concept of time is screwed up then. We are trying to make him understand weekday/weekend concept. But I don't think he is quite there yet. It is amazing how they learn associations. Well honestly, it is incredibly fun and satisfying to see him grow up. The things we adults take for granted, the most trivial of things - walking, talking, he looks up to us for all these and we are his heroes because we can do all these awesome stuff. However crazy/busy our life has become, however tired we feel at the end of the day, hearing him babble and laugh makes every strain of stress vanish. I know that I am sounding very very corny right now but there are no other words to express what his smile can do to us. It is life-giving.

On another front, I am now back in the weight game - after almost 18 months. Not fun at all :( I am left with around 10 pounds of extra baggage over my pre-pregnancy weight. I am now in a weird size limbo. Maternity clothes are way too loose and pre-pregnancy clothes don't fit. I have not shopped in a while because of this. I had a very healthy pregnancy and was happy that I had my weight in control, totally not giving in to any cravings and binging. Well, I was mentally prepared, you see. But come post-partum period, boy, I was raging-mad hungry all the time - hunger pangs like I never known before, literally 24X7. I was totally unprepared for this hunger storm and was thrown off by it. In my curiosity to find out if my hunger-pangs were abnormal, I learnt that new moms who are nursing actually feel 2x more hungrier than during pregnancy time. And so binge, I did! To my pleasant surprise, I found that I was actually losing a healthy amount of weight even with all the binging, thanks to all the fat being devoured by my little champ. Eat away my baby :) Oh how happy that made me! But alas, after 10 months of post-partum guilt-free binging, I am now back to watching my diet and what not. That sucks! And to top it all, I have developed a major sweet-tooth (pregnancy side-effect) which I find the hardest to control :( Well, as with pretty much everything else, self-discipline is the key and I am confident I will reach my target before the end of the year. Amen!

I think I have rambled on and on. Enough for one post I think, though I do have lots of thoughts and updates to pen.
Oh, by the way, hope you all had a fun-filled Halloween weekend. We had lots of fun. Keep tuned in for some pics of a certain tiger-cub :D

Bye for now!

What would you do?

This happens quite a lot with me. The other day, 2 colleagues (quite senior to me) of mine were discussing a configuration problem at work. They were in the cubicle adjoining to mine and I could hear them quite clearly. It so happened that I had previously worked on a similar issue with successful results. What you have done in this situation? Butt in their conversation and tell them - "Hey guys, you know what I have done this before, allow me to show you how" or would you keep to yourself and think"Oh! that is not a big deal, they will figure it out in no time"? Call me timid or shy or whatever but I just could not get myself to do the former. Well, I have done something on those lines before - but when only the matter of concern is something in which I have a reasonable amount of knowledge and / or expertise not something I have done in passing. Would it have mattered if they were not seniors but my peers? I think so, yes. But that's just me.

A duh! moment

Post dinner, Naman usually slouches on his Grandpa's lap reading books and listening to stories. Last night, the story was - "who will bell the cat":

Once upon a time, there was a cat. It was a menace to the mice living around.......the mice decided to bell the cat......they had to find a wire, so they got it from the net (at this point my mind went - whoa!! net, really? Let me see how he explains this one... ) they had stolen - you know the one which the hunter uses? (Ah! that "net" and I go back to eating my food)........but now they had a bigger problem - who will bell the cat?......Many a times, things are easier said than done.

Story time complete, time to play with amma and pappa now! :)

A letter to my son

My dearest Naman,

Some of these are promises, some advice, but actually, these are just a few thoughts I want to share with you as a mom who is super excited about seeing you grow up into a self-respecting, happy and healthy individual.

- I will never ever raise my hands on you. This is a promise. I loathe with all my heart, those that strike another human being. This detestable action is nothing but the mark of shortcomings of the person inflicting it. There is nothing that a kind word of advice will not do that a slap on your face will accomplish. I firmly believe this. I refuse to believe that beating/hitting is a part of discipline. It is physical abuse, period. If anything, it gives rise to fear. And I want you to grow up to be a young man unbridled with fear of any kind, least of all, fear of your mom. I would want you to take a course of action knowing that you are doing the right thing rather than with the fear of what I, your dad or anybody else would say.

- Respect: Now here is another word which is grossly misunderstood in our Indian culture. In my opinion, respect and love are inseparable emotions. And more importantly, it is ALWAYS 2 sided. Asking questions, answering back, disagreeing with another's (whatever their age may be) point of view - none of these are tantamount to showing disrespect.

- I will strive to never answer any of your questions with - "Because I said so". Logic and reasoning should win the day. Oh! arguments - I believe we will have our share of them. There will be difference in how we see things, more often than not. I will try my best to explain my point of view, listen to yours and promise to correct mine if yours is more reasonable/practical and I would expect the same from you! I can see that this is not always going to be easy - especially for me - but I will give it my best shot.

- I want to be your best friend and confidant.I would want you to think of me whenever you feel the need to share something with somebody. Be it a problem at school/work or a crush or a heart-break - anything at all, you come to me without hesitation and with no fear of being rebuked or reprimanded. That's what I wish our relation to be - best friends.

With lots of love,
Amma.

Bachpan ke din bhi kya din the

Albert Einstein once said "Imagination is more important than knowledge". I don't know about that but it certainly is way more fun. Do you remember the times when your imagination worked over-time giving shape to some kick-ass ideas and concepts? I have a good laugh even now when I look back on the silly ideas of those times.

1. Back in those days when biology and anatomy were still alien words to me, I had formulated a theory on how we grow tall -Here goes: The food we eat travels downwards in our body (of course gravity did not have to do anything with this!). When we have consumed enough and there is no more space, the pressure on our feet enables our body to expand magically as if somebody was pulling us from both ends. Imagine how tall we would have all been!

2. Back in those times when the shape of the world (not earth) was not even a question, my brother and I would "line up" all the countries we knew (thanks to our cricket loving dad). So in our world, Zimbabwe was the "last" country and Australia was the "first" and so on.

3. I discovered this not very long ago. We used to shout "timple" ("ti" as in tie and "mple" as in temple) when we played chase and catch games (joot ata, lock and key etc). This was typically used when somebody needed a break from running. Had no idea what this meant and did not care at that time. Turned out to be an abbreviation for "time please" - time pl.

4. Remember mugging the tables in those kg classes? When the whole class used to chant in one single breath - "one one za one, one two za two....two ten za twenty"...? The "za" like sound there was of no concern to me and in my mind, I associated it with the "=" sign because of the way we write this: 2 x 10 = 20. Learnt later that what we were actually trying to say was "two ones are two... two tens are twenty".

5. ICE PICE - This is another classic. We used to play hide and seek. Folks called it ice-pice and so did I. In reality, it stands for eye-spies :)

I can remember only these many for now, but I am sure there are many more hidden in the crevices of my mind. It was a fun exercise never the less. I like to think that I am not the only one with these many misunderstandings to account for. I tag all the readers of this post to list 5 or more such misconceptions, silliness etc etc you may have had as a kid or even as a grown-up. Unleash your "bachpanapan" and let's have some good laugh!

Cheers!

Bitter truth

All this time, I had faith. Not in the corrupt system but in basic human sense of ethics and morality. I have heard folks complain about trust issues - oh, in India getting this done would take ages, oh, in India you cant dream of doing this without getting duped or bribing or facing zillions of obstacles at every step - but pooh poohed such claims all along, branding the owners of such sentiments as firangi-lovers, paranoids and what not. What was I thinking? What did I base my confidence on? True, I am an Indian, have lived in India for the better part of my life. But am I qualified to comment on or repudiate such claims? Do I have experience in dealing with the "system" out there? The answer is a BIG NO! I will not go into the painful details but I will say this - for the past one month, we have been facing one nightmarish issue after another regarding an investment in Bangalore, right at the last minute. I feel so let down, I have no words for it. I hope I have not misled anyone based on my misplaced confidence.

On a related note, this experience makes me re-consider my whole "we will go back to India" stand. I can mentally prepare for the bad traffic conditions, power-cuts, water problems et al, prior experience prepares you for these things. What scares me is the thought that we would need to start worrying about things we take for granted here - like times when I need gas connection, telephone connection, have electricity issues and other basic necessities. I am not used to fighting with the system for such mundane needs. I am spoiled by how smooth and seamlessly such things get done here, in this part of the world. I have always maintained that there are pros and cons of living in either San Jose or Bangalore, Its just that right now, to my mind, the cons of living in Bangalore seem to outweigh any other parameter big time.

A nostalgic friday

I was at work, trying to get my work done as early as possible and I see this e-mail in my inbox. It was about a picassa album link for VVSHS (my high school) alumni meet photos. Oh good, I can see them later at home, I thought. But no, curiosity got the better of me and I had to see the photos right then. Curiosity about what, you ask? To get a glimpse of my teachers of course. Surely, I did get to see all of my teachers and I have to say this - how well they have aged!! I don't know why but going through those photos made my heart beat faster. Even after all these years - seems like a lifetime now, it is amazing how they have the same impact on you. Seeing them there, blissfully sitting among the students against the hauntingly familiar school yard as the backdrop, I was transported to those good old days. Myriad of emotions gush through me - respect and gratitude for the teachers who have created lasting, indelible memories. These are people I have some of the fondest memories of.
Oh! to go back to those days of arguing with teachers for an extra 1/2 a mark. I remember, our monthly tests had 1/4th total marks (of final exam) for each subject. So math, science, social studies, english and kannada were f0r 25 marks and Sanskrit was for 31.5 (because in the final exam, it was for 125, well not 1/4th exactly). Half the class used to have 30.5 in sanskrit. If by chance you fall in the other half, even if you land a 30, you try your best to find loopholes in the correction (the great AV at his funniest saying "ardha markle en agthada, thogo hogli") and get that 1/2 mark by hook or crook. I remember how I used to suck at drawing India map. This one time our social studies question paper had only 4 questions, each of them needed the map to be drawn. I ended up with 4/25 on that paper and my crying knew no end for days to come. The fact that 11 was the highest was no consolation what so ever. The best part was of course the school timing - 12 pm to 5:30 pm. No need to wake up early in the morning! Saturday though was 7:30 to 11:30 and I ended up bunking most of them ;). I have rattled on and I can go on for pages but I think I will stop here.

Naman's corner: To say that he is a brat is an understatement. The sweet, innocent baby is fast turning out to be a master manipulator. Not yet 6 months, he just has to have his way in everything. He is still trying hard to crawl but I think it will take some time before he gets there. His interest to sit on his own has diminished, he now wants to stand up and pulls himself up all the time. He also tries to move on his butt when we try to make him sit. In short, you spend an hour or 2 handling him and you get a nice work out :) Oh and his dad got him a new friend - "my pal scout". It is basically a toy puppy which can be programmed to talk. It is cute but it cannot pronounce the name Naman. So we chose his nickame as "champ". Scout sings some rhymes, chants "I love you champ" and stuff like that. Naman doesn't get these still, all he wants is the pup's nose and to lick it all over.

What's in a name

Disclaimer: This post is neither a rant nor am I voicing my regret here. Few of my thoughts.
My son's name is Naman Mahesh Siddheshwar. Anything missing here? Nothing, I suppose. To anybody who knows my husband's name, this name - Naman, son of Mahesh Siddheshwar sounds perfectly normal. To me however, the question is more of a why not than a why? Why do we not have mother's name as a part of the child's name. "Father is the head of the family" is a fact of the past, at least in most of the modern families. In today's world of mom-dad equality, why is it that we continue to uphold this practice? I had always imagined that my kid(s) would break away from this naming ritual. Alas, when opportunity presented itself, I succumbed. No pressure, no opposition, just plain chickened out. Fear of what the elders and people in general might say. And so here I am, mom of my husband's son.

Baby's day out

We have been to restaurant, temple and a party with Naman but never really been "out" before today. It has always been house - car - destination (usually indoor) journey for him. But thanks be to the weather Gods, we ventured out for a walk today. Now, who can resist taking a brisk walk on a warm, sunny day with brilliant clear, blue skies. As it happened, even dear Amma who is usually averse to being outdoors tagged along. All in all, it was a pleasant afternoon. Ended up going to Starbucks, downed couple of frappuccinos and pumpkin bread. Refreshing indeed!


Going by the way Naman has taken to the car seat and his behavior today, we think he is going to be an outdoorsy kind. We certainly hope so. Can't wait for summer already :)

Mom alert

The other day I had an awakening of sorts. Started with me thinking about something that was bothering me. Then shrugged it off my mind with a note that I will ask mom about it later. There it was!! How many times have I or we, if I may speak for many of us, not done this? Ask mom about it later, oh mom will know what to do about it.... How good it feels to put your mind at rest that way. Well, I have someone now who will look up to me for help, guidance, advice and what not. Am I ready for such a HUGE responsibility? Ofcourse there is no looking back. I only wish and sincerely hope that I be a strong and sensible mom and may only the best of senses guide me in guiding my little one.