20 months!!!

Jan 19'th, 2011 Aarush turned 20 months 'young'.

Seriously,where has the time gone? I can't believe in the next 4 months my baby is going to be a 2 year old boy. We would speak in years and come out of months!

Letz see what the boy is upto:

# He almost understands everything that we speak, but only says a few precious words and a lot of babbling.!
# His cruel mamma made him realize what a dark room is when he climbed on the TV stand and started to shake it.

# I still would like him to have layers and layers of fat!

# Sleep is okay, just that we say CRIB= YOUR BED he says YOUR BED = MY BED

# Fav fruits: keeps changing from blueberries to strawberries to apple to grapes to water melon to sometimes orange.

# Fav food => Food that's tasty- Husband says thatz his blood right there!

#Fav activity =>Climbing up on anything higher than ground level.

#Fascination/ fav toy=>From pressure cookers to slowing going into cars and trucks or may be both!

#Personality =>Friendly, waves to strangers all the time even when not asked for!
#Trait=>All the expressions with those big bright eyes!( anti-jinx, anti-jinx and more anti-jinx)
#Mobility=>Gets the highest degree, I couldn't take a decent picture or couldn't make him stand still!

Lessons to 20 month old Mamma:
Freak out less and enjoy the boy's childhood before he outgrows the " I want mamma, only mamma" stage!

Eating out!

How to survive eating out at a restaurant with an active toddler?
( Don't you think I am writing more of "How -to's" these days?Motherhood surely makes you wise!!!)

1.Order the food in advance and tell them it is not a "to-go" order but you don't want to keep his highness waiting.
2.As his highness gets busy checking out his high chair, the appetizer, waiters and other random people at the restaurant, this is the time you eat! -eat as fast as people who starved for the past 1 month eat.
3.Now, don't even bother to talk in between, concentrate on finishing the food.
4.Look for warning signs for time-up's.
5. Warning 1. His highness takes the stainless steel spoon and bangs the delicate porcelain plates.
    Warning 2. Now takes the fork and knife and repeats #1.
    Warning 3. You get stares from other people at the restaurant.
    Warning 4. He decides to stand on the highchair.
    Warning 5. Enough of warnings, stop eating and take his highness for a restaurant tour.
While one of us pays the bill, the other keeps him involved/entertained. Now, how long do you think it took us to eat and get out of the restaurant? A total of just 20 minutes!!! Thanks to Aarush for not letting us waste time on useless things like eating high calorie restaurant food :d    

P.S: Next time Kiran and I are eating out during lunch time while Aarush is in the loving care of his daycare lady;)

Motherhood

Signs that motherhood overtakes everything else in life!!!

• You can't stop from singing "pat-a-cake pat-a cake  or  a Chandamama raave...." even while you are driving A-L-O-N-E.
• You can tell the diaper is dirty from a 2 mile distance;)
• You smile/laugh/cry to yourself, thinking about the 'oh-sooo-cute!' stuff your kid is into.
• You look at your kid's pic at least once, while at work.
• You can't stop from buying stuff for your kid though you went to shop- just for YOURSELF.
• You take pics- a lot of pics-- a hell lot of pics of not yourself but his highness's.
• Your conversation to any other living human-being involves "Kids", yup! even in a high level management meeting.( Now, Imagine if the other human-being is also a mom).
• You fight sleep to update the baby blog :d
• You start 'anti-jinxing' everything.

Mommy's Birthday

No matter whose birthday it is, I get to wear new clothes:d

14 months !

Dear Aarush,
Today you turned 14 months old -that's one year and 2 months. There is a kind of sadness that you will be soon out of the baby phase and a kind of excitement/anxiety to see you hit new milestones and grow into a young man. For some reason I wanted to see your first picture today, the one your dad took when you were just born. You looked like this

and today you look like this

I freaked out and was overwhelmed for the first few weeks of your birth. I wouldn't let anybody hold you too hard or too light. I was over protective. I  called you "Chitti chilaka", "Nanna", "Kannaya"  and by all other silly names. You were the most easy baby, you were never too cranky, easy to feed, easy to be burped, not many split ups, no major health deals and I never had or can remember any transition problems with you and I thank god for it.  You are my precious first child and I learn't to be a mom.
I will be writing more of these letters randomly or whenever my hormones hit the emotional chord.
For now, Happy 14 months son!

Love,
Mom.

Keeping Cool

I love kids and I really do. I loved kids from when I was a kid myself. I played, pampered, fed and took care of them…my cousin's kids in case you are wondering.

I normally don't loose my cool when handling Aarush and don't even mind him making the house messy or doesn't sleep all night or cries or throw a fit or wants me to hold him all day.
But after a long day at work, come home -cook, give him a bath and just when I am ready to feed him he refuses to eat or eats very less. I consider the options of  'this may not be his fav' or 'he may not be hungry' and prepare another meal or another time -nope he doesn't want it either. I distract him with random things and feed him, this works sometimes but now he's outgrown all the silly things I distract him with. And then my friends, I loose it and scream at him and poor guy puts this 'Papam' face twisting his mouth in that 'I am hurt and ready to cry' way and I try to keep that serious 'I am Angry at you' face but feel deeply sorry for what I've done. After which I decide not to worry about anything..he doesn't eat- he'll eat when hungry or he'll have milk or that fruit or this snack. This serene and patient phase goes on for some days and again on one of those 'bad/tired/my baby is so skinny days' I loose it again:( . Kiran insists on putting him in the high chair and make him realise 'high chair= eating food time' and I tried doing that just one day and I had to clean the carpet, the whole high chair full of split food. May be I should try this more often until he gets it. The one day I remember him eating to  my hearts content was when our community lawn mowers came in and doing their job, he was busy figuring out and I was busy/happy feeding him taking advantage of his new found entertainment. Wish I could call them everyday and night to mow the lawn;) His pediatrician says he's doing good and very active and tells me not to worry and he'll know when he's full. But I just can't get over " I want my baby to be fat & chubby"deal.

I so wanted to appreciate my cousin 'Padmaja' for her patience with little Nishanth. He is an absolute darling. Hez well ahead for his age and the only disppointing fact is he doesn't eat at all. He shuts his mouth so tight that  an ant can't get inside, She manages to feed him with never ending stories and fun things and doesn't mind even if that ordeal takes hours. I would freak out if I was her and god bless her patience and give me some.

Toddlerism

This post is to help all the ignorant souls trying to figure out what toddler-ism is all about? read on and enlighten yourselves.
To me, the word "infant" rhymes with innocence, baby like, cooing, smiles and all such sweet things.
and "Toddler" for some reason rhymes with naughtiness, tantrums,imitation, monkey like,babbling,destruction, exploring,curious,fast learning,intense mobility,gawking, smiling more often and on and on and on...
And here's some proof to what I had to say.....

Mom Lets start with a fresh load of laundry
Toddler: Let me pick out and press them for you mom

Mom: Hey baby, play with this new toy I bought you
Toddler: Silly mom, why do you waste money when I am happy and content with dish washer and utensils

Mom: How do you like this park?
Toddler: Do we seriously have to drive this far?I just need some sand and mud to play with!

Mom: Lets have some fresh and fun bath time
Toddler: I like it better being inside the bucket than outside.

Toddler: Don't you think I look cute and adorable in my new PJ's
Mom: Well, can't deny that!!!!

that's my toddler for you.

Go Mommy Go!

I finished my first 5k walk/run last saturday and Aarush was there to cheer me up. So,what does he get in return?He gets to wear my free T-shirt from the race.

Mommy's boy

Aarush was totally a dad's boy until last week. But over the last few days he just spots me and comes run-crawling towards me.
Oh after all the midnight feedings, diaper changes and what not, the reward of motherhood is finally here- my baby wants his mommy.

After about 5 minutes I am into the kitchen my pup follows me, hanging at my feet wants me to pick him up and show things around. And en-route to kitchen he makes stop at the trash-can and the wires behind the TV{ why is bad stuff so attractive?). And now, my little inspector can find the smallest of dirt hidden in the deepest corner and tests by only tasting it:(( which means few more additions to my task list, clean every possible corner of the home, baby proof and install that gate on the stairs.

Shifting gears, I was also thinking about 'How to find a child's interest?'
Is it only these...
1.Introduce him to every activity that you can possibly think of and see if he is interested in any of them.
2.Impacted interest -> doc's kid- might want to become a doc etc..,
3.He discovers and pursues it by himself. [ easy for everyone:)]

More of my monster's mischief later,
-D

Summer and stay@home Mom

Yesterday almost felt like summer, it was a perfect 61°F, sunny with a light breeze. And on the top of it, I had a day off for MLK day(Kiran's work place observes no holiday:((. It was all play- no work/daycare for mommy & son. We started off by waking up really late @ 8:30 Am and stay giggling in the bed for some more time. We played for a bit, ate cereal and it was Aarush's nap time, he slept from 10:45 to almost 12:00 noon. I tried to wrap up things in the mean time, the usual cleaning & cooking. Aarush had a nice massage followed by warm bath( he loves his bath so much that the moment I take him out he cries and wants to go back into the tub) and we were all set to get out and get sun soaked. We first went to the mall, it was a beautiful beautiful day, everybody were taking advantage of the weather. Aarush absolutely enjoyed the walk and shopping, he never cried and was all anxious looking around the stores and people around, I took him to as many as 7 stores without any problem. He dozed off at the 7'th store and had a good nap during my grocery shopping after that. We came back home around 5:00 PM and little guy was still active and wanted to play. I was exhausted after all the lifting & fixing car seat in that giant stroller, walking around the mall pushing the stroller, grocery shopping with his car seat on the top of shopping cart, making a good 3 round trips to carry all the stuff I got from car to our apartment which is on second floor. Oh wait I am not done yet, I still had to cook dinner and clean. I had no energy left by then, finally fed Aarush and we both went straight to sleep @ 10:00 PM only to wake up at 6:00 in the morning.

But all in all it was a great day, I could see how happy he was and more than him I was very happy for it was like a summer, stay at home, productive and fun filled day.

PS: Is it possible to have summer holidays@work?

Happy 6'th month Birthday Aarush!

Aarush turned 6 months 'young' yesterday. I consider 6months a milestone and thought of writing down the progress we made in the journey so far,

I am doing okay managing a baby, home and job.(Yay to that!)

My patience levels increased dramatically

I couldn't breastfeed my baby for more than 5.5 months.

I didn’t yet get to sleep for 6 hours @ a stretch, max is 4 hrs

I now have a human being depending on me :)

I think I can claim to be an expert at diaper changing [I’ve had enough of splashes to get till here ;)]

We don’t use alarms anymore

Aarush is a low-maintenance baby(Thank god for that!)

Aarush had the smoothest transition from home->daycare

I still want to retire and be a stay-home-mom by choice!

I get a comfort/assurance feeling when Aarush responds exactly the same way to his daycare lady as he does to me.

The smile my guy throws when I go pick him up from daycare is priceless

I don’t compare Aarush with other kids(makes me not to worry when he hits a milestone too early or a little late)

I feel a secret pride when I look at my baby.

I want to make every effort to raise Aarush the way our parents did.

I love being a MOM and look forward to the day my baby thinks 'his Mom is the greatest ;);)'

Aarush is a blessing and I pray for my family's well being 24/7.

Here's to 6 months of new life & motherhood!

Aarush & Ace Mom;)

Choosing baby names involve lot of research especially if you are in the lookout for that special divine name nobody has and as such. I always wanted to name my baby with something that takes both Kiran's and my name like if you can believe, I even thought of the name 'Kidee'(Kiran + Deepu). We shortlisted Aditya -meaning Sun while Aarush meant 'First ray of sun' which technically is light and so are Kiran-Deepika , so go ahead and call us the '(En)Lighteners';).

There ofcourse is a secret reason behind naming him after the alphabet A for I became Aarush's mom or A's mom -reads as Ace mom;). Here's to Aarush and Ace mom.