Nursing guilt

Last couple of weeks have been quite chaotic - despite you( A) coughing a bit the last Saturday, I insisted we take you to your mommy and me swimming class at the Y since you enjoy it so much. I did and then by Sunday you were running a fever. I dont know if there's a correlation there or not but still I felt guilty. Just like I felt guilty when I breast fed you for only 4 months and now attribute your falling ill every now and then to the fact that you were not exclusively breast fed even for those 4 months. I beat myself about it almost once a month. What should I say - I was a new mom, and you just wouldnt latch, despite lactation consultants and all of that. I got the hospital grade pump and the milk came in, and you drank it but still wouldnt latch. I didnt know about fenugreek and all those home remedies, still I did my best to pump, pump and pump and could exclusively bf for the first 6-7 weeks but then I had to go to work and pumping became harder and the milk was less. Anyways when I used to hear great BF/ nursing stories, esp in the Indian community, I always feel I dont know a mix of guilt, and sadness and a feeling of being a 'loser', Maybe I should have tried more, been more persistent - dont know.

Anyways, he is fine now, and so am I and we are gearing up for Thanksgiving. Thx to excessive grocery shopping at our local grocery store, I had spent 300+ $ in a month and so got a free holiday ham. I am going to try to cook this first time ever, so that will be an adventure. In other news, A has gotten quite the vocablary, still loves space and planets - infact shows off saying things like I am an astronaut and there's no gravity in space ( probably doesnt know what it means, but hey Steve on Blues Clues said it so he loves it).

He also chose to use the 'S'tupid word a few times at a restaurant in front of competi-parent friends of ours whose daughter is a day younger than our son, and oh so well behaved and so oh angelic, blah blah blah. Anyways after ignoring him a few times and having a discussion that this word is for big people he has dropped it. Well signing off for now.

History and all kinds of awesome

Dormant for a while as life moves along.Today, I have only 3 words to say - Yes we can. I am so happy that Obama won - I am not a citizen but he was my choice, as was he the country's choice. Its historic and awesome, because my toddler who is a citizen grows up to be a part of this historical time.Since the last 2 months he has been going I like Obama more than McCain without even knowing what it means, so it was cute when I put on the TV today and he saw Obama on TV and said yeah, Obama( Ok so I taught him to say that today)

And things keep happening

Well the day after I wrote the Disappointed post, I had taken a vacation day to use some time off. I am driving into the mall, and somehow I feel I am going to encounter cops today. I drive on cruise control at the correct speed limit, and as I pull into the mall, a BMW 5 series, that is fairly new - decides to back into my car. Ofcourse she accepted fault, and my car ( older one) had a few paint scrapes though her bumper was damaged. Still totally dampened my mood, and that evening when my husband started telling me I should have gotten her insurance info etc instead of waiting for the accident report, I lost it and started crying on the playground.Anyways, the weekend passed uneventfully, and then my Mom told me she is going to come but for 3 weeks instead of 4/5. Tuesday before labor day weekend, I go pick up my son and the daycare director informs me your son has a 'rash that looks like chickenpox'. I am taken aback, and say no it must be a bug bite, since he plays a lot in our backyard. Then she lifts his shirt and his stomach and back is covered in tiny red spots. Ofcourse, next day I had to Work from home, had planned to take Thursday and Friday off anyways, and yes it was indeed Breakthrough Varicella that is a variant of chickenpox. 2% of kids do have it despite a vaccination and my son was the chosen one! Anyways it was a mild case but we pretty much sat at home the whole weekend.

Highlight of the weekend was to actually go to BabiesRUs and buy a product called Kaboost so that my son can eat on the dining table with us since he no longer wants to sit on the high chair. Its a wonderful product, stable, and although limegreen is encouraging A to eat on the table himself..Anyways am back in the office and muddling through emails and office politics. More later..

Disappointed

Today has been a weird sort of day.All day I have been feeling queasy and uneasy and attributed it to a 10 am drinking of Diet Coke. Still things have been going bad the whole day - had a day full of meetings, my mom whose trip I have been awaiting since July said she cannot come because she has work things in India. Then I am interviewing for another position in my company and oddly they make you go through the pre-screening and interview routine again. The said HR screener, kept saying you are not qualified why dont you look at these here positions when hello, I am performing the same job currently in another project on the same client. Odd Odd, anyways hopefully she will get back to me tomorrow with some good news. The funniest thing is that one of the executives on the project asked me to apply for the position, else I had not even heard about said position.

Finally, I know its been a bad year and all, but still I just found out they didnt give me any raise despite a good rating, just a piddly bonus. Quite depressing but hey should be glad I have a job huh..Its the first time that I am in a position of earning more than my husband because of a career change he has made. Its odd- earlier I used to work because I wanted to, but sometimes the stress gets to me, and I want to take some time off, but now will it be possible without lifestyle changes?

Totally unrelated and very cute, A is now doing something very funny, this evening when we returned home I kind of sat in the car while he played with the controls, and then suddenly touched my face and said 'You Ok, Mama' - it was so cute and so touching. This is what makes motherhood worthwhile I guess after such a day.

You are 25 ! ( months old)

Dearest baby A, boogoo mouse and other cute petnames,

You turned 25 months old on Aug 4th, 2008.You are getting cuter everyday, if thats even possible. You stay the strangest things - like my fingers are hurting, and want me to kiss the boo-boos to make them better.You talk a lot - sentences lik I am gonna make you a hotdog, I like pasta, mmm, I am gonna make your noodles cold for you to heat etc etc.. You love to play with water still.

On a recent San Diego trip, you had so much fun at the fountains at Balboa Park and inspired by this your Masi gave you a water slide/yard thingy.You now love playing in it on weekends.

You wait for your Baba to come from office so you can water the plants with him, play outside on the swing, jump and bounce.You are watching a lot of gymnastics on TV (thanks Beijing Olympics) and want us to make you jump that way :).. easy for you, bad for our backs!You finally got your canines - it was a painful ordeal coupled with the fact that you also came down with a viral fever around the same time and lost some more weight!

On an continuing to embarass mom note, the other day when I arrived to pick you at your daycare, and bend down, you yelled Panty for all to hear.Thankfully only 2 teachers(the young intern kinds) and another kid were left behind to hear it.We now really need to watch our language in front of you. Your other fav slang is Wow and Whoa(thanx Backyardigans!).

Finally, you sure do love your Elmo,you can sing most parts of 'Nani teri morni(old Indian kids song), and you have a penchant for khatta meetha(sweet and sour) foods and are trying to give us more hugs and kisses and even trying to say I love you Mama once !

Be well, my baby boy(for me you will always be the baby)

Parenting

There are so many parenting books, parenting videos, websites etc, but ultimately it comes down to how you want to parent your kid. Co-sleep or family bed or separate rooms, CIO or other methods, stop bottle at 1 or 2 or 3, potty train when to when, etc etc. More choices than anything else when it comes to parenting.

Yesterday was talking to my manager and he is expecting his first baby - and I liked what he told me, we are ready to be parents and I dont think any book can prepare us for that. It really sounds true. Sometimes I look around and compare my son, what he's wearing, how much he knows, what he is good at , what his embarassing behaviors are, and I feel I need to stop. I mean he is not even two years old. This lil guy will blossom into his own person and I should just stop comparing, listening, and let him be a child and I should be there for him, try to spend good quality time with him and then just hope he turns out ok.

I am tired of comparing home size, baby clothes, baby goodies, material crap - so from now on I am going to be what I believe I am the best parent I think I can be and just let things take their stride.

Yeah.. lets see how long that lasts ( I just heard about a 2.5 yr old who knows all the presidents names ;))

Random musings

• Bullet points ahhh - I am a Project manager at heart and love bullet points. Hence a post in bullet point format
• Hand,Foot and what now - Ah, I go to pick A from his daycare around 4 PM at the start of the Memorial Day weekend. I am greeted with a sign saying there are now 5 kids with Hand,Foot and Mouth disease in his daycare and one right in his class. Somehow, something kicks in and I know I am in for a longggggg weekend. You betcha, we get home, he's thrown up all over me and the couch, and goes to sleep after a bath and some milk. Wakes up next morning all fussy with tiny blisters on his hands and 2 on his tongue. Nurse confirms diagnoses on the phone and cheerfully adds it will get worse before it gets better. Nice! Anyways after a long week of working from home and major juggling between me and my husband, he finally returned to school this past Monday. Kudos to my husband for watching him when I absolutely had to be in the office this past Friday. Kudos to the very understanding Moms who are my bosses on the client side as well.
• Get in there and get your hands dirty - I also spent a little of the Memorial day weekend doing gardening, yes wearing gloves and with hubby nearby to remove any earthworms and other creepies but now have some lovely flowers in containers as well as a mint and tomato plant growing outside the home
• Mango madness - Since we were mostly going to be trapped at home the long weekend, we bought a lot of food so that we could grill/BBQ and also bought a whole dozen of mangoes. Since it suddenly grew warm and we couldnt keep up with the mangoes as they got ripe, I mentioned the mango problem to a co-worker. She said she knew an easy recipe for a Mango Pie, and I tried it the past weekend and will make another one tonight. Its easy- no baking involved and with whipping cream, mangoes, graham cracker pie crust and some sugar, can you really go wrong. Yummy !
• Layoffs - So my hubby finally graduated B-school and had managed a position with one of the finance/ratings companies on Wall Street. He has been looking forward towards the change and it sort of was very good coz it meant using his B-school skills and getting out of IT. However he found out that said company had a few layoffs in May ( thanks mortgage crisis), and he has not heard back from HR what it does to his offer. We are crossing our fingers now but hubs is in a mood of doom and gloom. Lets see what happens.
• Sentences - Baby A, turned 23 months old this week so is not really a baby ( though he will always be my baby awww) - yesterday made me proud by singing the whole ABC song, Twinkle Twinkle and Happy Bday flawlessly. He also recognizes all colors now and our favorite game nowadays is to identify new colors. Also A loves You tube but wants to hear a song that catches his fancy over and over again. For now its The Monkey Dance by the Wiggles and an Indian song called 'Ichak Dana Bichak Dana' . Its all cute initially to see his interest in You tube, but I am sure it will get tiring soon !

Alright everyone, signing off now

Terrible twos

A is getting closer to the two year mark and is now beginning to assert his independence, test his limits and do a lot of those things the toddler manuals warn me about ( not that I have read any, just saying). Maybe A is gifted - I mean he does learn everything pretty quickly even his daycare teachers say so, despite us not ever taking the time to teach him much at home..ahh but I digress.

Gifted - so that from 18 months on he started displaying some of the terrible two like behaviour - tantrums and lying down on the floor in the store when not given the balloon, other goodies, gen naughty behaviour like experimenting with 2 glasses and pouring water from one to the other and then finally dumping all on himself or the floor. I thought this behaviour comes on when you are two right. Anyways, yesterday morning as I packed A's daycare lunch, I heard a whimpering sound from upstairs.

S was asleep and A an early 615 type riser was in his room, so I thought maybe he is hurt. I go up and A tries to take my hand and leads me to the books in his room and away from his closet. I turn around to see a brand new Burts Bees Baby Buttermilk lotion completely dumped on my carpet. Nice.. fun way to begin the morning. S comes in, tries to reinforce that A did a bad thing, we try to shout at him in a louder than normal voice, fake tears, some hugs and sorries later, I am now left with a huge lotion stain on my carpet. This in addition to spilled diet coke, coffee, baby spit and other strange marks on my gray carpet. I guess I need to make a date with the Chemdry or whatever they are called man !

Maybe third post's a charm

Couple of months have gone by and yet no time to blog or excuses excuses. So here I am trying again. I was reading another blog post about birthdays and thought would write something down.

But first, a little more about me. These days I have been feeling well ..umm kind of down. First of all I feel like I should work harder, et al so I can give Baby A a better quality of life. Yet last year in Sept I took a sort of hit ( not money-wise but defn career-wise) so I could stop travelling and hence spend more time with Baby A. S is also finishing school this year and switching careers requiring him to work long hours in NYC so i figured this was the best. I loved coming home after a wonderfully satisfying day at work and take Baby A to the slide, cook , eat dinner and do the other routine mommy things. Yet I have been a workaholic all my life. I get bored easily when there isnt too much work. One of my projects I work ended and the other project I am managing is slow, so there is maybe enough work to fill 4 hours in a day for me.

This is borrrrring. I am tired of asking for more work - and I think because I am a hired gun ( consultant), they are not giving me more work so can get rid of me when contract is up. This worries me because this work was a perfect work-life balance , only thing is now the work is lesser and lesser. Anyways enough whining.

So this weekend, I went for a bday party for a two year old. The typical crowd there was mostly early thirties couples, most without kids and most husbands in the investment banking/hedge fund category. It was funny to see the competiti-moms - my son can do this and your daughter cannot do this blah blah. Also interesting was the the bling from new money ( aka hedge fund bonuses). But the most interesting observation I had was that in most parties thrown by Indians, atleast some people choose to dress in Indian outfits. Yet this time around everyone was all hip and modern. I wonder if its an attempt to assimilate. I would think there should be diversity and you would be proud to wear your Indian clothes. But maybe the casual look is much cooler. Not sure. Or is it a difference between suburbanites and city-dwellers.

Finally closing note - there were a lot of moms who were all slim and fit at the party and very careful not to eat the cake since its sugar laden. I was impressed at the same time dismayed with some of them when they didnt know if their child had eaten or not because they were too busy working out before the party. How do some mom's who have 3 kids, great careers manage to still look so good, whereas some of us just manage to pull through with 1 kid ? I wonder..