Transitions!

I never heard my mom or for that matter any of my cousins back home talk about transitions with kids. But here it is such a big deal, starts with transition from home to daycare at a young age, breast to bottle, bottle to sippy cup, infant seat to toddler seat , pacifier to no pacifier, co-sleeping to sleeping alone, infant room to toddler room and it never seems to end, there is always the next thing waiting to be accomplished. But I guess life is like that- chasing one goal after another. I've always had smooth transitions with Aarush.(I have to do touchwood, kala tikka, bure nazar wala tera mooh kala)

He never cared if it was home or daycare as long as he's fed, burped and cleaned.
Took bottle early on around 4 weeks 'coz i had to go back to work in 6 weeks
Sippy cup is also fine, he figured it out rather fast.
He sleeps in his crib and doesn't have a sound sleep when he co-sleeps with us.
Now comes the big thing. I never thought I would introduce pacifier to my baby, but as things turn out differently, he was so happy and pacified with that piece of silicon and we could rest/sleep/travel long distances without much trouble . So everybody was happy. His doc also confirmed no harm in using it. And I gave in.

I have been wanting to wean Aarush off of pacifier. I stopped it completely during the day about two months ago but have been lazy to do it at nights. It was comfortable for us and him during the middle of night when he wakes up and needs either us or the pacifier. Aarush understands 'Trash' and knows things only go in and not out of trash can. I trashed it by showing him , he whined for a little while, opened the trash can to look for it. With some distraction he forgot about it.
It's been 2 weeks without the pacifier and he is doing great. Smooth transition again. Pacifier definitely helped me with those restless nights and long drives. I wanted to stop it around 12 months but took 15 months. So bye- bye paci!
The next goal-finding a good pre-school!

Sleep

Aarush started sleeping through the night only after he turned 6 months old. Although there were no feedings at night I still had to wake up to pacify him or sometimes bring him to our bed or just hold, rock him and put him back into his crib. I keep getting a lot of email newsletters from babycenter, WTE, Graco..etc.., on how that is a bad way of establishing sleep routine and how baby should soothe himself back to sleep. Kiran always says for the first baby 'Love overcomes logic' and I comfortably ignored the emails and would continue to wake up in the middle of night to soothe my baby. Off late it's becoming too difficult for me to manage with 5 hrs of interrupted sleep. Just when I thought I shouldn't continue this, I get this email about 'crying it out' method which my doc and colleagues also suggested I should implement. So we started out one weekend and I just couldn't take that crying and would give up and pick him. But last night we stayed strong on our decision and let him cry it out. Poor baby cried for almost 1/2 hour so loud as if the roof was falling down and at one point I thought the neighbors would come in. I almost gave up and was going to pick him, there was silence. He finally went back to sleep in sitting position. We went to his crib after sometime to put him in proper position and cover him in a blanket. Last night was the first and they say it would take 2 more nights for him to learn, God only should give me the strength. This morning I picked him up as soon as I woke up, showered a million kisses and put him on our bed with Kiran and guess what? dad and baby went into a cozy sleep and woke up only at 8:40 AM( Hello it's Friday -still a working day???).
PS: Aarush's crib is in our bedroom and a couple of feet away from our bed , ya all this drama was going on in the same room.

Thank you Highchair!

First off, thank you to whoever invented a wonderful idea called highchair.

Dinner time is usually chaos at our home. Both Kiran and I will be hungry and need food to refuel our energy tanks to play with Aarush. So after all the cutting, cooking and just when we get ready to eat Aarush cannot take the mystery of whatever that is we are eating and comes to us hanging at our feet, standing up, falling and hurting himself. One of us would pick him and put him on our lap, the curious george that he is, will not sit still and want to touch the food on Mom or Dad's plate. He messes with the food and rubs that messy hand all over his face. One time when Kiran had very hot rice on his plate and brave guy decided to touch it and cried. So all in all, it was a chaos and we couldn't eat dinner together,  one of us had to watch and play with him so the other person could eat. This continued until the highchair came into picture. Now we put him in his high chair beside the dining table, strap him, throw some finger-foods, toys and he is one happy man.
Dinner = Family time now:)

The messy part still continues though...