Today I sat in my baby’s room, nursing him, while I looked over my eldest son’s math homework (and pretended to remember how to add fractions and prayed I was making sense). My daughter was busy changing into her 6th outfit for a birthday she was going to and coming to show me, while my other son lay on the floor, face down and whaling like the world was ending.
I was resisting the urge to pierce my ear drums when it hit me. I have a two-year old again! I seem to have blocked the other 2 times I had two-year olds (as people block out traumatic times in their lives), but I found solace in the fact that this, too, shall pass.
They won’t be stubborn, screaming, irrational, dramatic little people for ever.
B is 2 years and 4 months old and in the last 3 weeks (surprisingly coinciding with the birth of my fourth son and the travel of his nanny) he has turned into a little opinionated, loud (VERY loud) stubborn, and I’m afraid to say, sometimes rude, little child.
I did well to get my 2 eldest through this phase, but I cannot for the life of me remember how! Granted I didn’t have a new-born when they decided to have their “terrible twos.” Read more…
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Two months back, I went home to attend the wedding of a cousin. This was my first visit home since I came to the Garden City seven months ago. Also, the first time my one-year old Little One (hereafter referred to as LO) was going to get a taste of his Mom’s place – the heat, the relatives, the food – in no particular order.
Hubby and I had qualms on how LO was going to take the trip. For one thing, we were going to undertake the 530 km journey by car. To minimise any untoward incidents, we had already decided to make it an overnight trip, so that LO would be asleep for most of the journey.
The last time we made such a trip, he had fallen prey to a vicious cold and it took him almost a month to get over it. And he was just 7 months old at the time. Now that he was a sturdy 14-month old, we thought we would have things easier this time. Read more…
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Where I live in India, you hear a lot of criticism or praise about whether you are a stay-at-home-mom (SAHM) or a working-mom (WM) or even if you convert from one to the other.
It has been almost ten months since I became a SAHM, but I still receive judgments about my decision. Just check out these conversations…
Conversation # 1
Me: Wait a minute, why should you say sorry because I left my job? I am actually enjoying it…
Person X: No, No, I am still sorry that it had to happen this way…
Me: What? You insist that I should receive your apologies? Fine. Thank you. Oh well, it’s not like anyone died or anything.
Conversation # 2
Person Y: You lost it? I know, hard times… Economic recession, right?!
Me: I DID NOT LOSE my job. I just quit because that’s what I wanted and that’s what I chose to do. Read more…
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A recent book, Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mother, about the Chinese-American method of raising children, almost caused a hurricane in the parenting world. Many were quick to defend their own parenting styles, some supported the author, Prof. Amy Chua, and yet ,others maintained their peace.
Parenting styles are so varied in different cultures. For instance, in my homeland, India, we don’t think much about teaching our kids a thing or two with a stick handy. It is supposed to be for their ‘own good’.
In schools, they may be subjected to the ‘cane treatment’ if they haven’t done their homework, for talking in class or for general misbehaviour. At home, their parents may give them a slap or two if they disobey. Even the elders in the family have every right to chastise the kids of the house. Read more…
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In July of 2005, my husband and I purchased our first home. The idea to purchase a home came to us four months earlier when we became pregnant with our daughter and were living in a one-bedroom apartment at the time. I wanted to move before the baby arrived because our apartment was small, and I thought we would need more space.
Although it wasn’t necessary to purchase a house (after all, we could have rented a two-bedroom apartment for about $1300/month), we saw the home prices around us rising and rising, year after year, and we felt as though we would never be able to afford a home if we didn’t get into the market at that moment. Well, obviously, we were wrong. Hindsight is 20-20, right?
Before we began looking for a home, my husband and I sat down and crunched the numbers. We concluded that we would be able to afford a home that cost about $250,000. We began going to open houses and were incredibly disappointed. The homes we could afford were in terrible shape and needed tons of work, and the ones we liked were WAY out of our price range.
It seemed a little strange and unfair to us that two college-educated working adults could not afford a decent home in a blue-collar town. My husband had his doubts about purchasing a home at that time. He didn’t think the home prices accurately represented the home values. Instead of listening to his concerns, I came up with an idea that I thought was brilliant. Read more…
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Great Grandmother
That fact that I am here today to write this post, or rather, that I am even walking the face of this earth, is actually a miracle. A miracle that occurred three generations ago, when a little lady persevered with her son’s life. This post is a tribute to that wonderful woman who was my great-grandmother.
In an age where having 10-12 kids was considered the norm, my maternal grandfather was an only child. And, not by choice either.
My great-grandparents had completed over 16 years of married life before their one and only son was born. Living in a little town called Thrissur in the royal state of Cochin, they had tried just about every treatment that was available to them in India in the early 20th century, somewhere in the 1920s.
It was around then that an acquaintance told them about a big hospital in Madirashi (later called Madras and today known as Chennai), where they had had success in treating infertility. My great-grandparents must have been pretty well off then (history, a.k.a my aunts from whom I learned this story, are not particularly clear on that point), for they decided to go to Madras to pursue the new treatment there.
Unlike today, in those days if a couple did not have children, it was thought that maybe God had cursed them and things were left at that. Read more…
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Today I sat in my baby’s room, nursing him, while I looked over my eldest son’s math homework (and pretended to remember how to add fractions and prayed I was making sense). My daughter was busy changing into her 6th outfit for a birthday she was going to and coming to show me, while my other son lay on the floor, face down and whaling like the world was ending.
