Hubby takes on trip and I beat it to death! But I couldn’t help but writing about how the kids reacted.

Hubby did make it a point to tell the two girls in detail that he was going away for 8 days and that the girls must not trouble me. Chula(toddler) was her usual self – ignored him(reasoning – what I don’t hear does not exist). Mieja(infant) blew raspberries on his face and covered him with saliva. He did kiss them good night and tell them that he will be on a plane when they wakeup the next day morning.

Chula( was the first to wake up – she came running to me): Where did daddy go mommy?
(Her lips were turned down, palms turned up, fingers fanned, she kept asking the question again and again.)

Me:Appa has gone to India, to attend his niece’s wedding.

Chula:Yesh mommy. I know. Appa gone in Sindhapures. Appa going to Switzerland, see Ashu. Then appa go to Anna Nadhal to see thatha, patti, P chithi.
(Sindhapures – Singapore airlines. Every since our trip to India in Sigapore airlines plane, it is used as a common generalization to denote airplane. Hubby was going via Hong Kong and Singapore. But she added the Switzerland and visiting Ashu, just for the heck of it. Three weeks back baby Ashu had bid bye bye to Chula and went back to Switzerland on a plane, so any one who travels by plane, according to Chula, goes to Switzerland, meets Ashu and then travels to their final destination! Thatha+patti+P chithi are my parents and my chithi. In India she met them and had a fun time, so thatha, patti and P chithi are one single entity for all practical purposes. Anna Nadhal is Anna Nagar where my parents live. )

Having said all this she went and stood by the window peeping out. When I asked her what she was doing she said that she was playing peek-a-boo with her father. Every evening father and daughters have a ritual, they would go to the back yard, water the plants, kiss the flowers, smell the grass, pluck the vegetables and what not. So in the evening Chula’s internal clock started ticking and she ran to the window every few minutes peeking through it looking for her dad. When I tried telling her that her father was in India, I got the same answer, “Yesh mommy. I know. Appa gone in Sindhapures……meet Ashu…Anna Nadhal…thatha+patti+P chithi.”. She knew that hubby was gone, but didn’t have the concept of time or distance. She was thinking that he will be back by evening as usual! For the 8 days, every male figure she met, she called them daddy.

Today we took the girls to hubby’s office for the family day celebrations. We car pooled from a common place. So I dropped off hubby next to his car, we were planning to drive back home in our respective vehicles. Chula lost it. She thought that her father was leaving her again. She started screaming, kicking and crying out loud for her dad. She cried so hard that she threw up all over herself. Hubby suggested over the cell phone that we pull over and switch Chula to his car and I refused. She surely will throw a bigger fit that I ran away some where and will enact another throw up session. Bottom line she still feels insecure about her father’s trip.

Chula put it in words, poor Mieja couldn’t. She woke and was quite surprised that I changed her diaper. Then she wriggled out of my hold and went around the whole house. She paused in front of every closed door and proceeded to pound it with her little fist uttering, ‘paaa’. She would wait for a minute and continue pounding the door. Every time she heard the door bell ring or a door squeaking open, she would squeal with laughter and run to the front door, squat in front of the door with her lips set in a smile showing off her bunny teeth. She would wait for a minute, then she would get up and slowly walk away.

Toddler goes to day care full time. Infant goes for four half days. They go to day care at 8.30AM. After my class, I go to day care and pick up infant, feed her and put her down for her nap. I make another trip to the day care at 4.00PM to pick up toddler. This is our routine.

Most of the days, toddler is asleep when I pick up infant. Some days she is just rolling around trying to go to sleep. In any case, I don’t want toddler to see me and start crying that she wants to come home too. So, I put a big show. I call ahead, inform the daycare provider that I will be there in 15 minutes, I wait at the door, pick up infant at the door and leave.

I have always wondered what goes on in toddler’s mind? Just before her nap, her baby sister was lying in a crib not more than 5 feet away. She wakes up and the baby isn’t there. Does she even notice this?

Last week, I picked up infant, toddler was rolling around singing, ‘Go to sleep J, go to sleep. Go to sleep M go to sleep’…. basically she was singing a lullaby for the 12 other kids in the day care. I wait at the door and pick up infant. As I was about to close the door, toddler sings, ‘Go home with amma, infant go to home’. She knows!!!!

This post is almost like taking a tag from Poppin’s mom. Contents of this post are purely my views.

Starting with a disclaimer? Eight years of living in the US is finally catching on!

I blog anon because I am naturally more inclined towards being secretive. I like the air of mystery associated me. In general, I never tell any one what I am working on, I finish the stuff and show it off with a ta-da, even if the stuff is absolutely of no interest to any one else other than me. Even simple day to day things like what I cook for lunch or dinner has to be a secret. If hubby walks in and opens the pots and pans on the stove and asks me what I am cooking, I loose it.

Though I would love to show off my babies through pictures and videos, I don’t post baby pictures online because, I am not a very trusting person. I can come up with obscure scenarios involving any good thing! Also I believe that every child is entitled her privacy. I would absolutely hate it if 10 years from now, my children are using MySpace and posting intimate details and family pictures. So I am following what I will be preaching in the future, “If I can blog for 10 years without giving up your identity, so can you”.

Just a general question to co-bloggers who put up baby pictures. Every body draws a line at some point of time. When do you think you will stop posting baby pictures online? No snide secondary meanings associated with this question. Question purely based on curiosity.

If I had my child to raise over again,
I would finger paint more and point fingers less.
I would do less correcting and more connecting.
I would take my eyes off my watch and watch with my eyes.
I would care to know less and know to care more.
I would take more hikes and fly more kites.
I would stop playing serious and seriously play.
I would run through more fields and gaze more at stars.
I would do more hugging and less tugging.
I would be firm less often and affirm more often.
I would build self-esteem first and a house later.
I would teach less about the love of power,
And more about the power of love.

By Diana Loomans

Ain’t this beautiful people? I am taking the “building self-esteem first and a house later” part VERY seriously and slowly letting the house go. The house is clean but not spic and span. Once upon a time I used to wipe the sink and the tub bone dry every time after I used it. Sigh….

I feel that I am lot more relaxed with infant than with toddler. Guess that’s pretty common. No wonder the tamil adage says, “Moothadhu mozhai, iilayadhu kalai”(meaning the second child is lot more confident the first one). Requesting a quick show of hands to let me know how many moms with two kids feel the same way as I do.

I have signed up for two courses this summer. The summer quarter is much shorter (6 weeks) as opposed to the regular quarter (16 weeks). So we meet twice a week, for each course and each session is typically 5 hours. We are covering about four chapters every day. I have to hand over twelve assignments, two group presentations, four tests, conduct four interviews, do four observations on young children, eight hours of community service and write two advocacy letters by the end of July. Sounds pretty do-able under normal circumstances. But throw in two toddlers, a four day language workshop (I have agreed to teach tamil for the Indian Community Center and they require me to take this workshop) and house guests coming weekend, there isn’t much time left for doing all the reading. So I am up till the wee hours of the morning trying to finish my assignments and catching up with my reading. The class starts at 8.00AM, which means that I have to leave home by 7.30AM, which means that I have to wake the kids up at 6.00AM and start the much dreaded feeding session. All this does not leave me much time to sleep. In a way, I am enjoying this time. There are no little hands touching me, I am not needed to kiss a boo-boo just when I am desperately trying to tie my thoughts together! All this blah-blah-blah does not form the stressed part. It is the happy part! I love to multiplex, and push myself absolutely over the edge. Guess I must under value myself and have to have some zillion things going on to prove to myself that I am doing something worthwhile with my time!

The stress comes from the group I am struck with for group presentations. Today was the first meeting. I am not bad mouthing them, but I am this high energy crazy lady and they are relaxed……too relaxed for my comfort. There is a temperament mismatch. One of the professors told us that if one person in the group screws up, then the whole group’s grade gets affected. This is driving me up the wall. This is where my stress is coming from.

Okay, to the ancient part. One of my group mates is a 1988 born guy. The kid is 19 years old. A whole 11 years younger to me!! I felt like telling, “Go hide your face some where cos I am going to start wailing” 🙁 🙁 🙁

I am trying to get Toddler out of our bed and I am in the process of setting up her crib as a toddler bed. So I went to the store to pick up some fitted sheets and a guard rail to go with the new set up. While at it I also picked up some fitted sheets for the infant. Infant sleeps in her crib. She has thrown up in the crib whenever she is extremely congested with cold. Also she has the habit of pulling the sheets to entertain herself till she fell asleep. Me being the lazy person, got pretty tired of laundering sheets and making the bed three times a day and let things slack. Plus, I also started imagining that she threw up when ever I put new sheets on the crib! Long story short, she sleeps on her crib mattress, with nothing between the plastic of the mattress and her skin, hugging her favorite pillow and holding a queen sized comforter that is at least 10 years old. Why the queen comforter? Well it was very cold until very recently, even now it gets cold early in the morning and she just squirms out of her measly blankies. Anyways, digressions apart, the point I am trying to make is, her crib looks yucky.

So I vowed to dress up both the cribs and put some effort in making them look decent. We have a queen bed and two full sized cribs in our small bedroom. That means that I had to squeeze myself through three-inch spaces and set up the crib – new sheets, padding, two throw pillows, pretty blankie, baby sized comforters and a cute little teddy bear. Having done that. I stood back and admired the result of the effort. Looked wonderful, just like a place a baby would sleep in.

When bed time came I sang my usual song, kissed the children good night and moved out of the room. Infant started screaming her head off. Sometimes she does this, but after she cried for a couple of minutes and blew some steam off, she would go right back to sleep. So I dismissed her wails. But the kid kept screaming for more than 10 minutes. So I picked her up, hugged her, consoled her and put her down again. The minute I walked out of the room there was more crying. I tried everything, making sure her diaper was fine, her clothes were comfortable, we cooled the house by switching the A/C, gave her some water…etc. I suspected that she might be coming down with something, but again no. Whenever we carried her and bought her in to the living room, she started squealing with delight and was keen on watching X-Men. So hubby and self concluded that this is just a playful child who is throwing a tantrum because she is not feeling like sleeping. Not wanting to encourage her any more, we put her in the crib and walked away.

By now Toddler was intently observing hubby and self, walking in and out of the room, carrying the infant and (according to her) spending special time with her. So Toddler decided to throw a tantrum. She cried her heart out and came out in to the living room, found out that there wasn’t anything particularly interesting going on told us, “Okay amma, I want good night sleep tight” and went back to bed!

All through this time the infant was standing in her crib, and crying her lungs out. She was going strong and steady for 15 min now. Hubby and self decide to let her cry. 10 more minutes and we hear throw up (Hey, what about my theory about new sheets and throw up?! I am not lazy, I have a vision ). We did the usual soothing, cleaning routine. But nothing calmed her, she bought the roof down when ever we put her down on the crib.

Suddenly it struck me. We put her on the naked crib mattress and thrust the ugly, huge green comforter at her, she clutched it, gurgled and went right back to sleep. So all this fuss was for the stupid comforter.

Boo and Kodi’s mom had left surprise comments about the preferences of a 2.5 year old after reading my post about the car seat fiasco. What do you say about this?

I used to be a legendary sleeper. Once when I was in my tenth standard, my parents left me alone at home and went out for a couple of hours. I did what I did whenever I had some time to spare. I lay down on the couch and started sleeping. My parents came back home and rang the bell…and pounded on the door…continuously…for 15 min…and I was there lying on the couch which was exactly 2 feet away from the door…and I didn’t hear a thing. The neighbors gathered, every one shouted my name. Some were trying to break the door, just like in movies. One went looking for a saw, the grand plan was to saw through the dead bolt. My father was flying in to a rage fueled by embarrassment and my mother was imagining that I might have electrocuted myself or slipped and fell and cracked my skull open and all the other unimaginables. The neighbors were concocting their own stories that involved a teenage girl and academic pressures…even better…. boy issues. Then one of these nimble neighbors, jumped from the patio on to the sun shade, peeked through the window, found me lying down on the couch and proceeded to prod me with a stick. Five minutes of continuous prodding did the trick, I woke up from my slumber and opened the door. The circus had lasted for approximately 30 minutes. This is how I used to sleep. This trend continued well in to college.

Yes, used to, in past tense. After I got married, some one cast and evil eye on my precious ability to sleep and I had to work to sleep. I needed my space, my quite and my blankie. Some time in the middle of the night I would get up disturbed by the rhythmic ticking of the clock and would lay awake for the rest of the night counting how many times hubby rolled over and how many times he ground his teeth. But still I use to make up for it in the early morning, sleep in late and wake up feeling better.

Then came the children. Toddler did not let any one in the house sleep for the first few months of her life. Then the pattern stabilized and I would say things were still better, as she was sleeping in her crib and I had at least my space.

Troubled started when she decided to sleep between hubby and me. I would say hubby is the real culprit. When infant as born I was in a bedroom with the infant, hubby and toddler were in another bedroom. Whenever toddler woke up from her sleep and cried looking for me, hubby used to pick her up and put her next to him and both father and daughter would go back to sleeping peacefully. So when we all moved in to the same room, toddler refused to sleep in her crib. Even if I put her in her crib, she learnt to jump out of the crib. But she went off to sleep by herself, no more sleep time dances and routines. So I compromised.

But this little demon, would toss and turn, slap me on my face, pulled the comforter away from us and pushed it of the bed. She insists that she lay down perpendicular to hubby and self (forming a H pattern) and push us both trying to roll us down from the bed. Hubby has no care in the world, he can sleep with a road engine rolling all over him. But my precious sleep was lost forever. In general I am not the kind of parent who can proudly boast that I have never hit my children. So far infant has escaped the wrath of my fury, but toddler has been on the receiving end a few times now and I have no qualms about it. I don’t hit for no reason, if I do then there is a very very very good reason for it, and mostly its just a one sharp smack on her diapered bottom and if I am really mad on her thighs. 90% of these thigh smackings have been delivered by me in the night when she has mercilessly jolted me out of my dear dear sleep. But she never even knows that I hit her. She has her father’s genes as far as sleeping is concerned.

Only few days back, I commented on Poppin’s blog that every parenting style is different, one has to pick their battles and I have decided not to pick my battle over co-sleeping. Yesterday night I REALLY needed, not wanted, I needed, to sleep. I don’t sleep in the afternoons and I don’t drink coffee or tea (Well, I am not so strict about tea. I do indulge in tea, may be 3-4 times a year. But after every cup of tea, I get very hyper and I can’t sleep for about 3 days) and I was blanking out when I was driving, which scared the hell out of me. And this girl tucked her knees in to her stomach and then plummeted her legs, landing her feet with full impact on my spine. THAT’S IT. I am at the end of the rope now. Now it is war time.

After a sleepless night imagining what will happen if infant also decides to move in with us in our small queen bed, I woke up totally fatigued and craving for sleep. So here I am sitting on my couch, finished a full packet of Swiss chocolates, high on sugar, blogging away.

I have decided to convert the spare crib in to a toddler bed and lure toddler to sleep on HER OWN MAGICAL BED. Will keep you all posted on how that goes.

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 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.