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!