No 'Fooding' on the bed

I thought i should put in a couple of Sammu's favourite dialogues and songs from these days:

We have recently started to teach her that it is not good to eat on the bed. I am guilty of eating on the bed at times - so that is why this is such a late and difficult lesson. So Rajesh has been trying to get her to stop this. He told her that there should be no eating on the bed, which she has converted to 'No "fooding" on the bed'! We don't know how she picked up this 'fooding' thing but it's very amusing and she declares it each time to all of us when she wants to have food on the bed!

The next is a made up song - she has these small 4 or 5 piece puzzles, simple animal ones that she has just begun to fit very well. So she fits the dog, the cat, the goat and the horse and then sings this song:

'Dog-u friend-u, Cat-u friend-u,
Horsey-friend-u, Aaadu-friend-u,
Ellam friend-u......
and then ends with some humming..

Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.'

She will warn you quite clearly - this song should not be sung when the puzzle is being assembled, only after. And the humming should come only at the end of the song. It's very amusing to see her stand next to the puzzles and sing this!!

A month gone by already

I just realized it's been a month since my last post. Already 1/12th of this new year is gone! So much has happened in the last one month. My daughter went back to playschool without a fuss, attended her pre-school interviews, got through, started sleeping peacefully and I was about to heave a sigh of relief when we got back to square one since yesterday.

She has started to cry when going to school, yet again. Much crying, tantruming, wailing, bribes of bits of chocolate, bourbon biscuits, fruit chews, episodes of vomitting all over again. I don't know what has trigerred this fresh episode. The one upside of it all seems to be that - oh no - i am not going to say anything, else that upside will also vanish today.

Next week is going to be a major milestone, we are going for her mottai. This is her first one, we have already explained that it will be temporary and she will grow new hair. But she has started saying she doesn't want new hair and she likes her old hair a lot ;-).

Work is hectic, i continue to swing this way and that way between understanding that i absolutely have to work, feeling desperately locked in this position and yet unable to do much more. Let's see what time will bring.

A New Ye ar and a great weekend (mostly)

We welcomed this new year at home, as we always do. But we were in bed this time and trying to get Sammu to sleep. We had decided to spend the night at my mother's house, because i didn't want to leave her alone on New Year's Eve but we ended up doing that anyway because R and I were engaged in a battle of wills with Sammu and she finally slept only by 11 45 PM.

So we were very happy when the new year dawned, not because it was a new year and all that, but because we had succeeded in making our daughter sleep :-)
Small battle won, major wars remaining.

Cooking wise, I had a really good time on the first day of this year. I made Pongal-Vada Sambar for breakfast which made all at home very happy. My mother enjoyed her breakast and that's saying something. My daughter was all too happy to see the vadas as well - Rajesh must have missed the chutney but he didn't say anything.

I ended up making muffins for Sammu's snacks this week, another wonderful recipe from http://www.divinetaste.com and added walnuts and dates to the recipe instead of blueberries. The muffins were awesome, soft and moist and the taste of dates and walnuts together was incredible, even if i do say so myself. I also made pasta for dinner which is not a typical dinner at my home, so it was pretty special.

I do have some resolutions for this year - chief of them being to charge my cell phone regularly and to answer and return all calls!!! But the others are all too serious and I don't want to make anyone gloomy by sharing those.

Have a wonderful new year and hope you enjoy it!!!

The end of a year

So here we are then at the end of the year again. Time to retrospect and introspect some. For me, it's been an unusual year - the year that saw my sister get married, my daughter move from a baby to a little girl, a year of surprises, some of them good and some of them not so good. My husband gave me a shock when he said some time back that this was probably the year that we had our maximum number of fights. I found it surprising when he said that and yet when I look back, I realise it's true. It's been a stressful year because we had to take so many tough decisions, our little one was becoming increasingly opinionated and we had to use all our patience to handle her. Our patience (at least mine) used to run out completely when it came to any others...

This is becoming a rambling post - one without much of a point..

Anyway here's wishing you all a very Happy New Year and let's hope 2012 brings more interesting things!

A Christmas Party and other updates

Sammu had great fun this last weekend. There was a Christmas party at school and all parents, siblings, relatives of the child were invited as well. So we all went, R, me and R's mother. Sammu was very happy and proceeded to play with all the toys set out in school as well as participate very happily in all the activities intiated by the teacher. I'm sure she felt this was the 'right' way to go to school - with her family sitting around her!!

It's been a roller coaster of a ride the last couple of months with her, what with us deciding to wean her and her refusing to settle down in school and also having numerous sleep problems. May be all of these problems are related? I'm not sure. But she was a cranky and fussy kid through most of the time, given to throwing instant tantrums, crying at the drop of a hat for anything and falling asleep only after struggling against us and sleep for at least 2 hours.

Now we seem to have rounded a corner. At least with the weaning and sleep bit. She doesn't fight so much to sleep - meaning she doesn't fight over 2 hours, although we still have a bit of a struggle for about 45 minutes to 1 hour. I am also over most of my exhaustion and I'm able to expend that extra bit of energy and ensure she sleeps at a fairly decent hour.

I made a plum cake from http://www.divinetaste.com for the potluck at her Christmas party. It came out well and vanished from the plates of most parents and kids immediately. My own kid of course refused the plum cake at school, she said quite clearly that she didn't want a brown cake and she wanted the white one with the cream. Sigh.... but i guess that happens.

Here's a picture from the party - trying to count on her fingers as she sings a rhyme about counting...

The end of a beautiful experience?

I have finally started to wean my daughter. For the last couple of nights, possibly the first of such nights since she was born, my daughter has gone to sleep without nursing. It's a bittersweet feeling. It's been 25 and a half months now and our nursing experience has had it's own highs and lows. At times, it's made me feel incapable, furious, frustrated, peaceful, relaxed and so contented.

When she was born, I was very worried. I did not trust that my body would be able to sustain her and feared that it would let me down yet again. So my first target was to nurse for at least a month. Then we slowly revised this - I nursed her through 1 month, through six weeks, through 3 months and so on until today. I was so anxious that I would have to stop when I went back to work. But with the help of the Medela pump that i bought and a very understanding husband (who ferried me back and forth to home and work for lunch until she was around 8-9 months old, we sustained. It also helped that she had always been a great nursling - she was perfect with her latch right from the beginning and she was always very enthusiastic to feed. My mom was another source of huge support, she patiently listened to all that i said regarding bottle feeding my baby.. the numerous instructions I had on giving her only solids when I was away and avoiding formula. The silent support and non-criticism she offered when I was unable to express sufficient milk for a feed for my daughter and was still unwilling to give her formula...

My daughter starting talking really early and this slowly became a slight embarassment for me with respect to feeding. She would tell me clearly, let's go to the room, I want 'amma te paal'! Then I convinced her that this should be a secret between us and she started pointing to the room and speaking in a hushed whisper (stage whisper though!), saying 'Ragasiyam, yaar kitayum solla kudadhu, come, let's go!'.

The last couple of nights have been tough, especially so yesterday because she asked me why I wouldn't feed her. She kept telling me that the milk tasted very nice and she liked feeding and asked me why I wouldn't feed her. We managed to get through with a lot of cuddling and distraction and I hope that it's going to work. But at the same time, it makes me a little sad.

Inclusivity - An Elusive Concept

Have you heard of the term inclusivity? Do you know what it means? We are trying to start a women's forum in my company and our aim is to bring as women-inclusive a work culture as possible.

According to a quick google search i did, this is the definition of inclusivity:
"(Social Welfare) (Sociology) (Government, Politics & Diplomacy) the fact or policy of not excluding members or participants on the grounds of gender, race, class, sexuality, disability, etc." How does this apply to a work culture? It means that at work, you cannot be passed over for a promotion as a woman, just because your boss feels you are more likely to get married soon, have a child soon, or are pregnant or already have a young child. This is the big picture. But there are also tinier details where inclusivity comes in. Like the cases where your team decides to go for a team dinner. Most women I know cannot stay the whole stretch of time required for a team dinner. Transport and safety issues in India ensure that they need to complete the dinner by 9 PM while the rest of the team stays back for another couple of hours and enjoys each other's company. Just by being female, you are excluded from this team building exercise.

Inclusivity implies an understanding of each other's differences and building a work culture that thrives on this understanding. What other common scenarios can you think of where inclusivity is required?