Archive for September, 2009


Warning: This post may not be for you!!!

Filed under: Being a Mom, Life's Like That by The_Inspired — 2 Comments
September 28, 2009

In which I take the risk and use this space to vent about something that has been bothering me too much that I have to stand on top of the Singapore flyer and shout so that everybody will listen; as if telling the same story to my mom 10 times a day is not enough.

Okay, you men who are reading this, you shall leave now. Either hit the back button to return to where you came from or skip to the previous post and celebrate my 100th post after helping yourself with a drink. And you girls who are not mothers, you shall go too if you do not know me personally or if you do not care.  Now, you mothers who love to read mommy blogs, come closer. I’ll tell you a secret.

I’ve been struggling hard with the weaning process. As much proud that I was and I still am about breastfeeding, weaning has become my biggest thing these days. I had planned to wean him when he becomes 18 months old, even though I actually wanted to nurse until 2 years. At 2 years, I understood that weaning would become difficult and I thought I was smart enough to have planned so well to wean him at 18 months. I thought it was going to be easy-peezy.

When he reached 15 months, I decided that it was time to start the process. I had finally out grown the initial guilt of not having enough milk when Pappu was born and also Pappu had started following a good diet. I was happy about my change of mind and announced to the world that I would wean him soon and I even bought some normal clothes (I was on the boring, no-style nursing clothes till then)in celebration of my decision. I thought babies wean themselves unless we desperately what them to keep nursing!

I do not know what kind of energy my behavior passed on to Pappu, but he suddenly started becoming more demanding of breastfeeding. I can’t even use the word ‘breast milk’ here because he shouldn’t be getting enough milk to fill his appetite. He was just suckling for the sake of fun, or comfort. Actually he nurses himself to sleep. I was the culprit, for I always opened up for him to nurse whenever he felt sleepy so that I wouldn’t have to carry him and walk until he falls asleep on my shoulder.

The next couple of days was tiring for me. I would carry him, walk and sing to him for more than an hour, twice everyday to put him to bed. Other than sleeping time, whenever he demanded nursing, I would shortly tell him that big boys drink from a cup and that he was a great big boy now, and I would do something fun with him. My strategy worked very well. He stopped demanding and  I would let him nurse only once during the day that is before going to bed at night. I was happy at that advancement but I had also started missing the nursing days especially at the end of the day when my breasts were heavy and painful!

Not that it happened for so long. Within 3 days of that schedule, Pappu got a fever and my mommy-guilt raised as much as the temperature did. Without much thoughts, I put him on fully breastfed diet even though he was taking a good enough diet even then. I jumped into action and happily let him nurse for the whole week that he was down, fully expecting him to stop nursing by himself when his temperature was normal again. It was only after that I realized what I had done. He turned into a nurse-aholic* and got addicted to my breasts. All he wanted to do was to nurse and nothing else.

I’m still working hard on it and I have to say that it’s much much harder than how we had progressed before the fever.

*This word may not be found in dictionary

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100: In which I spam the post with my own links

Filed under: Life's Like That by The_Inspired — 3 Comments
September 21, 2009

With all due respect, I removed my old blogs’ posts from this blog because it was only natural for blog posts to stay in their respective homes and not be scattered everywhere. Not that I’m not proud of my old blogs. Even now, I look back at my old posts and it brings a smile. It’s interesting how immature and innocent those posts were. I stopped blogging there when I got pregnant and maintained a personal pregnancy journal which is nothing but short hand notes of what I wanted to remember from the pregnancy. Surely it was not much of a blog.

This blog starts from the moment that actually made me what this blog’s title is about, the birth of my son. The initial posts were the letters I wrote to my son at various milestones and were actually handwritten in my diary. Later I published them into blog posts after I wrote this, an incident which impacted me and I couldn’t help but blog about it. It was that day which unleashed the strong emotions of motherhood in me. It was only after that I realized what motherhood had done to me… Inspired! I strongly believe that motherhood squeezes out of your brain what God had put inside, creativity.

It was one short year ago, that I chose this name for my blog and even to date, it is emotional to me. I had not imagined that I would be writing this 100th post within a year or that I would be participating in NaBloPoMo or that I would be writing the things that I write about now! Some of my posts might have seemed remote to me an year back. The past year changed me more than any other year has done and I’m happy for having this platform to keep those memories alive. I’m sure that this pattern will continue during all the years that are yet to come.

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Where is God?

Filed under: Inspired Living by The_Inspired — 6 Comments
September 18, 2009

It’s interesting how and where people find God. I have seen people finding God in special places like temples and churches, in holy books, in heaven, in the sky, in every-thing, in brains, in hearts or in mind. (Now, what exactly is mind as a location is material for another blog post).

Recently we got into discussion with one of our spiritual friends who was sharing about how he experienced God, that he had learnt from many spiritual mentors and had searched for so many years before finding his answer. And then he went on to explain what he believed. Surprisingly, I didn’t talk back or get irritated by what he was talking, for that was more or less my reaction in the past whenever someone talked to me about spirituality. Rather, I was listening attentively and took mental notes of what he was saying. But whether or not I agree with him was not important to him was it?

It was interesting when I realised how complicated God was to him. He searched for many years and had even cried to his pillow amidst his prayers asking to experience God. He went to many spiritual masters to learn the path to God. I was amazed by his desire to learn, but what made me respect him more was his belief. He had absolute trust in his spiritual mentors and whole heartedly believed whatever he said. I enjoyed the discussion even though his theory that God lies in the upper portion of our heads and that the entrance to God is in between two eye brows and that exactly is why hindus wear ‘bindi‘ and last but not least, that hairline is the path to God (God being compared with the ‘chakra‘ or rotating disc on the vertex of our heads) was NOT appealing to me.

Here’s my take on the subject. I didn’t search for as long as my friend. In fact when I told people that I was searching for God, I was actually searching for evidences that God didn’t exist. But somehow, somewhere down the lane, I found faith. The unknown scintilla that I always believed to have carried with me began to take form and I realised the truth; truth about belief; truth about faith. I understood that faith is the foundation of everything in the world. The whole world is tangible because of faith.

I found God in my own heart; a believing heart. I found God embedded in faith. It was logical and magical at the same time. Every question I had always asked started answering on it’s own. The truth is surprisingly simple. You experience God where you want to, by believing. It is that simple. God is always there, waiting for us to explore, to seek and to find. Why would we experience Him unless we seek? People seek in different ways. For me, it started with belief, which is the simplest and easiest way of doing it.

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In which I totally lose hope…

Filed under: Being a Mom by The_Inspired — 2 Comments
September 17, 2009

… about the d**n great award. This morning when I was busy consumed with myself cleaning up the kitchen, Pappu came in front of me and said ‘bubba’. I was surprised because I had just changed his diaper.

“What is it, baby? Is that your diaper?”

“Bubba Bubba”

“What else is it?”

He touched his tummy and repeated ‘bubba’.

“Are you hungry?”

“…..”. He looked satisfied. (Yes, dear internet, you can bring that knife and stab me. What kind of mother waits for her 16 month old to ‘ask’ before feeding or changing him?)

I quickly fixed up some bread and he sat happily in his high chair to eat. Awwwwww. My son’s growing up.

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Bless and Praise

Filed under: Inspired Living by The_Inspired — 3 Comments
September 16, 2009

Blessing and praising are 2 important actions in life. They express love and gratitude, both of which if shared, comes back to us in abundance. Unfortunately, these are the least remembered actions too. Most of us bless when somebody sneezes and praise, ahh, yes, we praise ourselves and our children more than we praise others in a selfless way.

I’ve been thinking of this for a while and now is the time to make the change. I thought of putting this into action and making it a habit to bless and praise people. I promised Hubby and I promise you, my dear internet world, that I shall say atleast 5 sentences everyday either blessing or praising (or both) somebody other than my immediate family members for the next 21 days.

Why 21 days? Because I believe in the 21 day principle. If you just make yourself do something for 21 days, it becomes a habit. Try it on your own, it works.

I still haven’t decided how to keep track of it, or if it’s important to keep track at all, but I might send tweets of the 5 sentences I say or I might write them down on paper. If they are appealing enough to publish, I shall consolidate them into a blog post. Okay, my ‘bless and praise challenge’ (BPC) starts todayand ends on the 6th of October. Here I go to mark my calendar!

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Another day out in the world

Filed under: Being a Mom, Life's Like That by The_Inspired — 2 Comments
September 11, 2009

We went to this familiar restaurant after a long shopping and seated ourselves comfortably. Just when we were about to order food, Pappu decided that he has had enough. He refused to sit or be in our arms and he wanted to run around. I put him down hoping that he would be having fun with the friendly waiters. He fell down and broke his ego and started throwing a fit.

Hubby and I tried our best to keep others’ comfort at the best and somehow made Pappu sit on the high chair. I started feeding him his food and when Hubby finished eating, we switched places so that Hubby could feed Pappu while I had my dinner. That’s when I noticed the family sitting next to our table who were smiling at us sympathetically. The reason for that smile was evident when I actually overheard their comments about my family that were being exchanged within my earshot.

The woman said, ‘See. He didn’t let his mother eat at all. Now they are taking turns, this is the only way to survive.’

The man said, ‘What a torture!!’. Their 2 kids who must be around 18 years old were joining them.

The woman replied, ‘Some kids are just calm. That is good. But this…….’.

I didn’t want to listen any more. I mean, what? A torture? Oh come on, you should realise that I am sitting so close to you and it’s obvious that you know that I am listening. I quickly changed my attention to my own food and family.

On a completely unrelated note, soon after that family left, my son started behaving and ate all of his food and made friends with all the staffs in the restaurant. Like I said, unrelated!

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Will I ever make it?

Filed under: Being a Mom by The_Inspired — 3 Comments
September 9, 2009

My chances of getting ‘best mom ever’ award are getting thinner. A couple of days back, my son woke up from his afternoon nap and quickly climbed out of the bed. I laid on his bed and during that lazy moment, he looked at me quizzically and said ‘baba’. While I tried to figure out which ‘ba’ he was referring to, he repeated it several times. I tried to help him by mentioning every word that we know in common that had a ‘ba’ in it; baby, bottle, ball, bow wow, bus, pa and many other words that came to my mind. I hoped that he would express assurance to one of the words that I said. But the look in his face didn’t change. I somehow diverted him by raising excitement for the ball.
The next day, he did that again. His father saw it and was convinced that he was just saying that for fun while I was sure that there was something he wanted and that we were not able to find it out. It’s been 3 days since he did it first.
Today while I was arranging his wardrobe, he took a diaper in his hand and said ‘baba’. He surprised me when I asked if he said ‘diaper’. He smiled in acceptance and repeated ‘baba’ in a tone of affirmation. For a moment I considered teaching him to say the right word but then it suddenly occurred to me. I checked his diaper for poop and it was positive. I was embarrassed for having my 16 month old to tell me to change his diaper. I quickly cleaned him up and asked if he could say ‘diaper’. He happily said ‘baba’ and ran to the other room to play.

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16 months

Filed under: Baby's Pages, Being a Mom, With love, Myself by The_Inspired — 3 Comments
September 7, 2009

Dear Pappu,
Yesterday when you saw a friend’s little baby sleeping in his pram, you looked up at me, put your finger to your mouth and said ‘shhhh’. Even though it was not quite a hush, it conveyed the meaning.
You are such a fast learner and you behave so big boy-like in front of younger babies. You are very gentle to them when you pamper them and you shake your head up and down just the way adults do. I can’t help but imagine how you would react when your sibling baby would arrive even though we won’t have another child unless you are a bit grown up.
With older kids though, you are a different personality. You grab toys from other kids’ hands and try to push them away and refuse to share yours. I just keep telling you to share things and promptly return other’s toys but really I don’t bother much about this behavior because I know that it’s just a passing cloud.
You are learning new words everyday. The other day when you heard people clap in another room, you said ‘clap’ while cheering and clapping in your usual style. You repeat most actions that we do. Just today you tried to snap your fingers after me. I should say that you did pretty well.
You call me ‘amma’ sometimes by yourself and mostly on demand. You prefer referring to your dad as amma too may be because it’s easier. I see that you enjoy my company more than before. Who else will be ready to do all the funny things that I do to keep you entertained?
As far as playing favourites is concerned, your favourite people are the ones who can provide most fun at any given point of time. You get along with everyone very well and you make friends easily. Last week I tried to leave you with a babysitter. You enjoyed her company and was playing with her very well when I was with you but once you found that I was trying to leave you alone with her, you decided that you shouldn’t like her.
You seem to have developed a passion for music. You sit quietly and listen to a pianist for as long as 10 minutes which I consider is quite long for your age. You sing along with me and most of the time, you are able to repeat the exact tune of my singing.
You have learnt to express and you have different expressions for just about anything, like kicking the ball, getting your legs massaged or seeing another baby, all in an adult-like manner. Even though you do not talk much, you communicate so well by expressions, symbols and single syllables.
We are in the process of weaning you and the day I made this decision, I don’t know how you found it out, as if to defend your stand, you started being more demanding of nursing. I would wish to say that we both are doing fine with it, except that we are actually having a tough time trying to get used to this.
As I type this, we are on the bed and you are supposedly asleep on me but everytime you hear a car outside on the road, you open your eyes, smile at me and say ‘car’ and fall asleep again. I’m so thankful for this moment, with you on my chest and for being able to witness all this cuteness, so close to my eyes. I’m also thankful that I’m holding my phone right now and that my phone responds to wireless even though my computer doesn’t, so that I can record all these moments before forgetting them…

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Is love immeasurable?

Filed under: Being a Mom, He said; She said by The_Inspired — 3 Comments
September 6, 2009

Is it unusual to ask one’s spouse how much he or she loves them? May be not for reassurance, but for fun? How about a conversation like this?
Woman: On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you love roti?
Man: 6
Woman: on a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you love dosa?
Man: 9
Woman: on a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you love me?
Man: 15
Woman: on a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you love Pappu?
Man: 20
If you were the said woman, what exactly would you feel?
a. Happy that your husband loves you immeasurably (count exceeding the scale actually means immeasurable)
b. Sad that he loves you a little less than he loves your son
c. Proud about the kind of love that your husband possess for your son
d. All of the above

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