If ever, in the near or the distant future, any of you get a chance to work with me, especially if it involves something artistic, brain storming and doing something creative, run for your lives. Don’t say that you didn’t know, because you have been warned!

Be it picking curio shelves or picking curtains, I get all crazy. First I come up with a mental image. Then I put it down on paper – I either draw it or photoshop it, then I go around all the shops looking for it. The more I find that what I have in mind is not available anywhere, the more obsessed I get with what I cannot have. Then I come back to the table make some compromises, change the design a bit and go shopping again. After a million trips and a zillion changes, I realize what I have in mind is still not available anywhere. At this point of time, I give up shopping for it and, here comes the real headache, I roll up my sleeves and decide to make it myself. In the process the people around me and the people who interact with me go nuts.

I applied every ounce of my usual craziness to infant’s birthday cake. I was desperately looking for a theme and nothing unique came on to me. Hubby simply couldn’t understand the fuss behind all this. His logic is very simple. Cake = something we eat. So it has to taste great, who cares how it looks. Also he is oblivious to all the theme fundas I put. He noticed that the girls and I wore pink only after his elder sister pointed it out to him and this was about two weeks after the party! So I was on my own in picking the theme.

Suddenly a week before the party, the light in my head went on. Remember how toddler calls herself ‘Toddler Shortcake’ and infant ‘Infant Dumpling’ – after the Strawberry Shortcake and Apple Dumpling? Plus, I really liked the concept of spelling happy birthday with wooden alphabet blocks. This is her first birthday, so there has to be the number 1 some where in the cake. So this would be the rough draft.

To get the theme going I need to have plates, table covers, party caps and balloons to match with the cake. Finding accessories to go with the cake was a challenge. I wasn’t able to find any Strawberry Short Cake stuff. So chances of finding Apple dumpling products was even bleak. After visiting couple of stores and extensive web searching, the only thing I liked was this.

So after I put eveything together, tweaked the cake design a little bit and came up with this. THIS, I decided will be infant’s cake.

Now, if I could get Charm City Cakes to make the cake! (Have you watched their shows? I am a big fan.) I would have made cold calls to 20 different bakeries. Most of the bakers weren’t willing to do it even if I was willing to pay by the hour! Finally, the bakery section of a local grocery store agreed to take up the order out of pity, only because I had put in so much effort. They had couple of conditions. They said they will not draw the picture of Apple dumpling and we both agreed to scan the picture and print it out on edible rice paper and then stick it to the cake. The second condition was that, they cannot gurantee that the cake will look like the picture. I had to go with them as I was running out of time.

This was the final result.

I wasn’t too happy about how it looked, but for what it was worth, it tasted YUM.

Note to self: Get proficient in cake decoration before toddler’s third birthday.

Around election time, in India, politicians fuss about building temples and reseravtion policies. In the US it is the abortion issue. It is right there next to troops in Iraq and before gay marriage. The abortion issue gets dusted up, the presidential candidates are expected to express their opinion every time there is a debate and these politicians carefully pick a stand that would work well with their own political agenda. Just because a person argues that he is pro-life it does not mean that he/she is such a loving caring human being who cannot stand a life being taken away. Every one has an ulterior motive. It is as simple as that. But why don’t you all go play with something else, instead of playing God with someone else’ life.

Let me give you a quick summary.
Pro-choice: for abortions
Pro-life: against abortions
Types of abortions. Partial birth abortion is the one in which an alive fetus is pulled out through the birth canal and its brain is sucked out with a vacuum. The other method is where they inject the heart of the fetus with Potassium Chloride, terminate the life and then pull it out.
1996 – Republicans asked to ban the partial birth abortion, but president Clinton decided that the ban does not make allowance for the mother’s health. He said that the physician must be the judge of what procedure must be used, it is not for the court or the congress to decide.
In 2003 president Bush approved the partial birth abortions ban.

The idea is to make abortions tougher and finally, and at some point of time, ban it completely. In some states like South Carolina they have made it optional that the woman watch ultra sound videos and pictures of the fetus before the abortion. This is to impress on the humanity of the fetus aka, emotional blackmail. “You want an abortion? Cool, let us first see what kiddo is up to then we can go ahead and kill him, if you still feel so. Hey do you see how great that kick was, may be the kid will grow up to be a soccer star some day. Awww, he is waving at you. Ain’t that cute? Okay, now let us discuss if you still want to proceed with the abortion?” According the pro-life people, this law is a milder version of their original request. They wanted that the ultrasound viewing has to be mandatory before an abortion procedure. I mean where do these people get off? I have gone through three D&E procedures. At least in my case the fetus was not a viable fetus, there was no heart beat. It was still tough. No body has any business impressing any kind of humanity in to a mother who has made the tough decision to abort. There might be genuine scenarios like the baby being diagnosed with a birth defect such as Down’s syndrome. Or may be the mother is a rape victim and simply does not want to keep the child. Or may be the baby’s physical development is not normal?
Or the mother is mentally/physically incompetent to have the baby? If at all for some vague reason the mother is an absolute physco who wants to have an abortion for fun, phlueese let her have one, not for her sake, but for that poor child’s sake.

There are so many loop holes to this whole pro-life scenario.The AFP procedure that tests for genetic abnormalities like Downs is and can be done only around 16 weeks. Why even go through with this charade, if you are pushing for banning late term abortions? What is the sadistic pleasure one derives by saying that the kid is not normal and is clearly going to suffer for the rest of its life and the force the mother to bring the kid in to this world?

Now congress, courts and pro-life activists being the smarty pants they are discuss about what options the woman might have. Actually it is not option’S’. It is singular. The woman has only one option – to deliver the child. After birth the woman can either keep the child or give it away. Then they go about painting rosy pictures of orphaned children growing up happily, chasing butterflies, in orphanages and foster homes. I have heard enough of blood curdling stories about foster care abuse to believe these people.

And how does the government care for a new mother? It gives her 6 weeks of paid vacation and then magnanimously says that she can take 12-16 more weeks of unpaid vacation. If you are a single mother, oh you are screwed and if your baby is a special needs baby, you are doubly, royally screwed.

All this bunch of baloney from the same pro-life people who were involved in massive arson, 1700 acts of violence against abortion clinics resulting in the death of 5 health care providers and 18 bombings against abortion clinics. Now what exactly does pro-life mean? Just because they are doing something that you believe to be bad, they don’t deserve to live? So you can choose who lives and whom dies, but a pregnant woman cannot make that decision about her baby? Sounds quite unfair.

Choice has to be in the hands of the woman and her health care provider. Every person has his/her own faith or believes. Let us keep those value systems to ourselves. We have to learn to co-exist believing in our own value systems and also respecting believes of others. If we start deciding for others and start stuffing others with our values, we are engaging in an act of violence.

PS: There was this very well written article in the Mercury News. Do read it of you get a chance. My post might contain shades of the author’s opinions. Purely a case of thinking along the same lines.

The author talks about how this might affect assisted reproductive procedures like invitro. I hadn’t thought about this angle.

I read this post by Tharini and was surprised that it sounded very similar to what is happening on home turf. I started on a comment, but as the comment was getting as big as a post, I decided to do a copycat and a little more post.

Infant used to wake up at 3.00AM, which was the time she picked out to poop. The room was so full of stink and I used to get up and change her fearing that I might suffocate to death by inhaling the vapour! This trend continued till she was 6 months. Now a days she has decide to poop at 5.30AM and when ever I am in a hurry to go out. The more pressed I am for time, the messier and bigger the poop. Couple of times I had to postpone my appointment to give her a bath.

Toddler and infant sleep together, infant in her crib and toddler on the bed. I lay them down and kiss them good night. They discuss world issues and parent torture techniques for some time and fall asleep. They both want the hall way light on when they sleep. Infant sings herself to sleep only in the afternoon.

Infant crawls to hubby, clutches his legs and as soon as he lifts her, she opens her mouth and bites his cheeks with her toothless mouth. Her way of kissing him. Hubby must start watching out for those four sharp teeth coming out. The two of the four are on her upper canine, she looks like countess dracula.

I stared infant on solids at four months. With toddler I waited till she was 5 months and struck to Gerber. Same way, once in a while I didn’t mind infant tasting regular milk(before the 12 month deadline) and candy. With toddler I was very very strict with what I put in to her tummy!

Infant was very fussy about sitting in car seat. My parents used to sit next to her and entertain her. My biggest fear was driving around town with a screaming child, but magically she decided to behave once my parents left. She clutches her feet and talk to her toes and keeps herself busy the whole time she is in the car seat. A week back, for some reason I put her in toddler’s front facing carseat instead of her rear facing carseat. She was quite thrilled by the change. Ever since she has been looking at toddler’s front facing carseat with lust.

Whenever I switch on upbeat music, infant bites her lower lips and starts shaking her head to the rhythm. Stage two is moving the whole upper body from side to side like a pendulum. It looks just like one of those Chettiar bommais you see in golu.

I make the kids say good morning Ganesha and few other Goddess’s names as soon as they wake up in the morning. Since toddler is named after a Goddess, she thinks there is a God/Goddess after every single person on earth. She asks me to show her, for example Goddess Rita or Goddess Molly. I am running out o Gods and Goddesses.

Toddler makes up lots of songs to the tune of her favorite nursery rhymes. Even simple statements like can we go sit in the car seat gets made up in to a song, “Can we sit in car seat? Can we sit in car seat? My dear amma, my dear amma. Can we go home now, can we go home now, my dear amma, my dear amma” (Tune: Are you thumbkin song/Are you sleeping song?) Sometimes I am speechless by her ability to fill a tune with words. Both self and her day care provider make up silly songs all the time. I really don’t know if she makes it all by herself or if she picked it up from me/ day care.

Toddler calls herself “Toddler shortcake” (after Strawberry shortcake) and infant “infant dumpling”(after Apple Dumpling, Strawberry shortcake’s sister). I am amma baby and hubby is appa dumpling.

When I read toddler a book, if she sees two of the same kind, say two elephants, she immediately says, “Amma this is toddler elephant, this is infant elephant”.

Poppin tagged me…what seems like a … few years back. I was a little tied up, so couldn’t blog. Here is the list of 8 things about me. BTW, why only 8 things? Considering my self-obsession I found it difficult to come up with just 8 🙂

1. I am a better mom when there are people around.
2. When I get mad, I stop communicating and then I start starving myself. The idea is to let the person whom I am mad at figure out that I am mad and also feel guilty that I am starving. Has never, ever, not even once worked on hubby – the person whom I get mad at like million times a day. He used to be clueless, now a days he does not care.
3. I love to cook, it is a major stress reliever for me. I get kicks out of making many, many, many fancy dishes for company. But I hate it if hubby asks for something as simple as hot water.
4. I believe in instant gratification.
5. Be it a movie or a sitcom, I have watch from the very beginning to the very end. I can’t stand it even if I miss one second of the movie/sitcom.
6. I come up with ideas, be it topics for my blog or menu for a party or a trip planning, in the shower. There is nothing like hot water on your face to get the creative juices flowing.
7. Few things I cannot stand – hair on face, sand on feet, any one touching my ears or hair.
8. When I get sick, I tell people not to fuss about me, but I get mad if they don’t.

I tag Boo, Sundar, Krishnapriya, the-joy-of-my-life-and-other-things and Miniyamma

I can explain the long absence folks. Infant turned one last week, so we were celebrating with umpteen cake cuttings and we partied the whole week like crazy. Toddler bunked day care, we went out to Jungle, played the whole morning, had a quite afternoon, went to the temple in the evening, cut a cake and ordered pizza for dinner. Boo, Baby Boo, Big Boo and Mr.Big Boo joined us and helped us celebrate. I had baked cupcakes for all the three kids and they all cut their cupcakes with a vengeance. We did a webcast of the cake cutting for my parents, it was fun.

The next day we had a cake cutting and goody bag distribution at toddler and infant’s day care. All the kids had cake and vanilla-chocolate chip icecream.

Last Saturday, we had a big bash with all our friends. We had rented a community building in a park, we had about 50 adults and 20 kids attend the party. We had an entertainer who did face painting, balloon animals and a small magic show. We ordered pizza. I made appetizers, pastas and baked some cookies. I had really put my heart and soul in to every detail like goody bag, cake, hall decoration. I started to work after the kids were in bed and stayed up till 4.00AM every day for the past week – this is to implement the ideas I had sketched out. Time spent on conceiving the ideas – quite a lot, I was practically thinking about this 24X7 for the past couple of months!

We still have the religious celebrations on her star birthday, coming up in two weeks. I have the guest list and menu ready. I will be doing my crazy dance once more and after that we are all done with infant’s first birthday.

For me there has been no questions or doubts about how my children’s birthdays must be celebrated. A BIG BASH IT IS. Sure, it is mostly for me, the kid does not enjoy it a bit, but who cares? Hey, I spend 363 days of the year as a cook, janitor, housekeeper, mother, playmate, teacher, disciplinarian, nurse, constantly working in the background without any compliments. Don’t I deserve two days in limelight? It is not like I just stand there and expect people to oooh and awww me, frankly I work quite hard for it. It feels good to get compliments. It makes me happy.

Also, after becoming a mother, I hardly find time to express myself creatively, the way I see it these parties are a perfect outlet for my imagination. I put in lots of thought about what I cook, how the dish has to be presented, party theme, take home gifts, entertainment etc. I like doing it, I do it. Since it is quite taxing on the purse and a huge strain on the marriage(I snap A LOT at hubby and after every party I am quite surprised that the marriage survived it!), I have decided to celebrate every other year. Birthdays 1,3,5,7 big bash. Birthdays 2,4,6 quite ones at home. After 7, toddler and infant might come up their own ideas for celebrating their birthdays, I would go along with their wishes feeling very sad about missing my adrenaline rush and the good old times I controlled every single detail in their lives.

-You loose your innocence when you have a child. All of a sudden the world becomes a much more dangerous place.
–Jon Stewart in an inteview in PBS

Am sure most parents feel the same way, but every time I hear some one say this, it is an extra validation that I am not a crazy lady!

Any one seen the tamil movie Tenali? Kamal tells his shrink that he is scared of anything and every thing. It starts with, “Yellam sivamayam endru solvargal. Aanaal yenakku yellam bayamayam” (Meaning: People say that God is everywhere, but for me I only see fear in anything I see) and he gives a list of everything under the sun. I am pretty much in the same boat.

I fear so much for my girls and news like the Virginia Tech shootings are not helping in any way. I can no longer watch movies like Life is beautiful, which by the way is a wonderful movie and no one could have taken a better war movie, conveying the impact of war, without even one scene of violence in it. But sometimes you don’t have to show bloodshed and gory details. You show scenes like the father and son been taken to a concentration camp on the day of the little one’s birthday and the viewer’s heart is in a vice. Any way the point is, I watch a movie like Life is Beautiful and start imagining, which is quite vivid by any standard, self and kids in such a situation. What would I do if toddler and infant don’t co-operate like the kid in the movie? I am thinking, “May be each kid is different and I must adopt a different technique with toddler and infant” and by the time I realize that it is just a figment of my imagination and snap out of it, I have stressed myself out more than necessary.

So touchy feely movies, especially the ones in which kids are involved, are pretty much out for me. Same is the case with books, anyways I have hardly read anything other than Brown bear and Cat in a hat in a long time, so that’s okay. The other day I was flipping channels and happen to catch a glimpse of a sitcom. In the sitcom, an intruder enters a house and kills the mom, though the details were pretty graphic, I was still doing okay. But the mom collapses near the baby’s crib and the baby wakes up and starts crying. Something about the image of a helpless baby crying messed me up completely. I was dreaming about it again and again and it took me a quite a long time to shake myself out of it. Then I hear from my neighbors that there was a break-in in the neighborhood when we were in India. That’s it, my dreams return. As of yesterday we have a new security system installed at home.

I used to trust people blindly. I can write a book about the number of times I have been taken for a ride. After becoming a mother, I think everything with my girls in mind. I am having trust issues, I am so frightened to leave my girls alone with anyone but a few close friends and close family. So far concentration camps and torture seems to be the #1 fear, closely followed by kidnapping and child molestation. Slowly I am trying to affect the people around me too, recently scared the hell out of a friend telling her about an imaginary kidnapping scenario. The reason for this post is the hope that talking things out loud might ease my imagination a little bit. So if any one feels the same way as me, please do leave comments that way I would feel happy that I have company. If any one feels that I am being a fuss bag, please do leave reassuring comments, that way I can work on myself. Ideally it will be perfect if I can find someone to top my story, but I feel like I have hit rock bottom, so I guess it is hard.

Toddler knows the days of the week in Tamil and English. Along came her birthday, since then it was Sun, Mon, Tues, Wed, Thurs, Fri, Sat and birthday. Then Valentine’s Day was added to it. Last Friday she heard about Mother’s Day and it has been promptly added to the list. So now there are 10 days in a week!

Her day care provider had taught her to wish me happy Mother’s Day. When I went to pick her up, her day care provider prompted her to wish me. Toddler gave a silly smile and ran away. After she came home she hugged her little sister and wished her Happy Mother’s Day. She went on and on for almost an hour!

I was reading my textbook and found the chapter about children at play to be very interesting.

The authors are talking about how to arrange the environment for children to play. They call each activity area as a learning center. They also explain how the toys develop the child physically, cognitively and socially. Typically when we look at toys, due to the way we are raised, subconsciously we classify them in to “girl toys” and “boy toys”, at least that’s what I do. Some times I consciously avoid cooking sets and pink princesses stuff and pick up the so-called boy-toys to make sure that my girls are not subjected to gender stereotypes. But after reading this chapter I learnt that every kid must have an opportunity to explore all kinds of toys because every toy has its own significance.

Blocks: Develop motor skills, enhance imagination, increases skills in abstract representations(lays ground work for reading and writing skills), lays ground for early mathematical skills(they realize that two square blocks can be arranged to be the same as one rectangular block…etc). A must from toddlerhood.

Dramatic Play Area: Very important for young children. Children imitate the actions of the grown ups in their lives. When they take on roles and use materials to pretend they learn to symbolize day to day living. The term dramatic play area might sound intimidating, but it can be as simple as playing doctor with your child, using a teddy bear as the patient or playing tea time.

Toddler likes to sit in the backyard and play with sand and small pebbles. She tells me that she is mixing concrete like Bob The Builder. I am still high on caffeine from the 200 gallons of pretend tea she made for me yesterday. Of course she picks up any pointy thing and starts playing doctor with infant as her patient. Infant pretends every small speck of dirt on the floor is food and eats it.

I try to ease toddler’s anxiety about doctor visits by playing doctor with her and showing Elmo Goes To The Doctor. She does wonderfully at home, but she goes to the doctor’s office and invariably kicks him in the crotch! We are still working on it!

Sensory Play: Even if you don’t provide an outlet, the kids somehow manage to find a way to explore with their senses. Day cares and childcare centers have things like sand boxes and water tables. But you can bring sensory experience to your children with a little bit of tolerance to mess. I preach, but I suck at practice. I shudder at the thought of play dough or sand in my house! (Note to self: Got to let go!)

A bucket of water, chapathi dough, flour, sand, blowing bubbles, finger paints, play dough.

Toddler has taken to watering the plants. She picks up the small watering can I bought for her, steps on every vegetable hubby planted with lots of love and care and makes sure that every weed in the garden is watered. A week back she painted infants shaved, bald head pink and blue and told me that she put lispick* for infant. Infant is making severe attempts to drink cleaning detergent, this is her ultimate sensory goal for now. Infant also has an eye on the beautiful, white wonder seat filled with water called THE POTTY. I can see the love in her eyes.

Manipulative Toys: Puzzles, beads, legos. They give hand-eye co-ordination. Prepares them for writing, teaches concepts of colors, shapes, teaches problem solving.

Art/Writing/Library: This we all know. Read to your child every day. Encourage children to put their emotions in to writing and drawing. This gives them a positive outlet to their feelings. As a part of art supplies show them works of great artists and encourage them to think.

The authors also classify every toy as open-ended and close-ended toys. Close ended toys like puzzles have only one purpose and there is only one way to play with them. Either you get it right or you get it wrong. Open-ended toys like building blocks, where there is no right or wrong way to do them. Open-ended toys teach children to think out of the box and close-ended toys teach them that certain things in life cannot be changed, teaches them conformity.

So moms, when you pick up a toy put some thinking in to it unless the toy is a gift to annoy the parent. In that case just go for the loudest toy that cannot be turned off!

*lispick – lipstick

PS: The book I am referring to is “Who Am I In The Lives Of Children?” By Stepahine Feeney, Doris Christensen and Eva Moravcik.

I read this and thought “Aww, this is so cute”.

Well, couple of days back toddler was playing with infant. Toddler sneezed and as I turn my head she pointed to her little sister’s head and said, “Amma I am blessing infant”. I was shocked. Do they have some kind of secret club that we parents don’t know about?! May be they also have a secret handshake, password, meet periodically in the blog-o-sphere or in a chat room to share their funny stories of how they drove their parents up the wall and plan on their next ‘move’. This explains why all babies fuss to eat, why they all decide to act up just that moment we parents think, “Okay finally I have gotten a grip of how things work”, why they always sleep when we want them to be awake and why they are awake when we desperately wish that they go to sleep.

PS: On a totally unrelated note, I am just adding it because of the cuteness factor. Infant likes to ring the doorbell when Iam entering the house. I have her perched on my hip and I am fumbling with the keys and she would lean over and press the doorbell with her wee little index finger and let out a squeal of laughter hearing the bell ring. Toddler looked at it and said, “Amma, infant is belling”

One of the things motherhood has given me is poor memory. There seems to be no definitive scientific data that says that pregnancy causes memory loss. People just say that a pregnant mother is tired and her mind is full of other things and it is okay to forget a few things.

For the past three years I have been waiting for my memory to return to its usual glory, but looks like my forgetfulness has nothing to do with pregnancy or kids!

I forget people’s names. I forget what I am saying in the middle of the sentence. Sometimes I dial a phone number and forget whose number I dialed and then I hold the phone trying to guess the person’s name from the voice I hear. Considering how bad I am at recognizing voices over the phone, that is always a sham. I have forgotten diapers, forgotten wipes, few times I have forgotten to carry toddler’s milk (when she was drinking milk and I had the strength and time force her to drink milk), few weeks back I forgot to take infant’s oatmeal cereal and had to do some quick fix to save the situation. I make a trip to grocery store and forget what I am supposed to buy. So I make a list of things I need and forget to take the list. In our recent trip India I forgot so many things so many times that I had “memory police” all around me. Anywhere I am supposed to leave, my MIL will update me what exactly needs to be done and what I am supposed to carry. Either MIL or SILs will call me every now and them to make sure that I haven’t forgotten what ever I was supposed to remember.

Yesterday was the tops. We called friends home for tea. They came, we talked for couple of hours and they left. Few minutes after they left I remember that I forgot give them tea 🙁