Big day for me as Rohan turns 2.5 today!!! As I ponder on these years of my life, I see how my life as changed, how he has taught me so many things that I knew I had in me, but simply were never challenged.
I have seen that as tired as I am at the end of the day I still have the strength to rock Rohan in my arms just before he sleeps. I realize that school buses and fire trucks and ambulances now excite me. Yeah! Thanks to Rohan every time we drive he points them out and gets really really happy and so do I! I realize that my patience quotient has increased exponentially!!!! I realize that everyday I am a little bit more in love with him! And no matter what, I always find a way to do a little more than I can, just for him!!! Talk about motherhood - I have got it all.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Thursday, August 28, 2008
What has Parenting taught me?
A lot of my friends who don't have kids yet have asked me - so what is it to have a kid. Really what is it? To me, it was a lot of fun and a life changing monumental phenomenon and now of course, I can't imagine my life without R. Friends who know me and A, know that we love to travel, we had a pretty much swinging life style we would take off to places, travel, hike, bike, party and most importantly play tennis. We have moved six times in our seven years of marriage (that has gotta be something right?). We backpacked in Europe, led a student life, lived on fast foods and our moves would be just boxes and boxes of books and clothes (Ohh let me not forget my shoes!) Every time we moved A would frown a little, as I packed my shoes and ask me so when are you really going to wear this pair. Through post doc salary, guest houses, dorm like apartments and our old beaten car, we saw the world and loved every minute of our pre-R days and of course we are loving every second of parenting as well just in a very very different way.
The most important thing my little one has taught me is to be patient, I cannot do things at my own pace now, it has to be his pace or really no pace at all, because he has the ability to stop my whole world. R has had a very strong personality right from day one. He somehow decided he wasn't going to take a bottle and he never did; tons of therapists, all the advices from friends and well wishers and me reading 'n' number of books didn't help one bit; he decided he was not going to crawl until he was 10 months old and he didn't; he decided he wanted to walk exactly when he was 12 months old and he did. We couldn't believe that he was walking solid in 2 days, he was so cautious that he hardly fell, he did a magnificent balancing act on his one year birthday by climbing a step up and down on our patio and impressed everyone at his birthday party.
He has also helped me acquire a lot of absolutely useless knowledge about pregnancy/infants/ and now toddlers. I have also mastered completely useless skills like wearing socks on R when is upside down or sometimes running or climbing, balancing R in one hand and putting on my work makeup, feeding R and having my breakfast/dinner at the same time, singing, dancing and entertaining R while cooking something healthy for him etc etc... I have developed a split personality these days, some days I am happy going to work and having my peace and quiet for 8 hours and then I have days when R hugs me and says "Bish Bish" which means "sit" in Marathi and wants me to play with him - Working Mother syndrome I call it. I have really never known what's best for us (me and Rohan), being together 24*7 or being apart and spending quality time together. Monday mornings are specially tough because R gets used to us for 2 days and I cannot wait to go back to work for some rest! :)
That's my little guy folks, put us through a world of things; I can't believe my swaddled little bundle of 7 pounds is 35 inches tall, runs and climbs everything in sight, talks and talks and talks, sings, wiggles his way out of our arms and blows us multiple kisses....Ohh they do really grow up fast!
The most important thing my little one has taught me is to be patient, I cannot do things at my own pace now, it has to be his pace or really no pace at all, because he has the ability to stop my whole world. R has had a very strong personality right from day one. He somehow decided he wasn't going to take a bottle and he never did; tons of therapists, all the advices from friends and well wishers and me reading 'n' number of books didn't help one bit; he decided he was not going to crawl until he was 10 months old and he didn't; he decided he wanted to walk exactly when he was 12 months old and he did. We couldn't believe that he was walking solid in 2 days, he was so cautious that he hardly fell, he did a magnificent balancing act on his one year birthday by climbing a step up and down on our patio and impressed everyone at his birthday party.
He has also helped me acquire a lot of absolutely useless knowledge about pregnancy/infants/ and now toddlers. I have also mastered completely useless skills like wearing socks on R when is upside down or sometimes running or climbing, balancing R in one hand and putting on my work makeup, feeding R and having my breakfast/dinner at the same time, singing, dancing and entertaining R while cooking something healthy for him etc etc... I have developed a split personality these days, some days I am happy going to work and having my peace and quiet for 8 hours and then I have days when R hugs me and says "Bish Bish" which means "sit" in Marathi and wants me to play with him - Working Mother syndrome I call it. I have really never known what's best for us (me and Rohan), being together 24*7 or being apart and spending quality time together. Monday mornings are specially tough because R gets used to us for 2 days and I cannot wait to go back to work for some rest! :)
That's my little guy folks, put us through a world of things; I can't believe my swaddled little bundle of 7 pounds is 35 inches tall, runs and climbs everything in sight, talks and talks and talks, sings, wiggles his way out of our arms and blows us multiple kisses....Ohh they do really grow up fast!
Spinach Tikkis (Patties)
I had to find a easy way for Rohan to eat spinach, it had to be a finger food, tasty and healthy. My mother is big into tikkis (patties), she can make tikkis out of anything. So I thought what would she do to make us eat spinach and this is what I came up with.
Ingredients:
Fresh spinach
Gram flour (Besan)
Whole wheat flour
Cumin seeds
Salt
Garlic
Saute fresh baby spinach on olive oil (any oil is fine, clarified butter will make it tastier) crush 2-3 buds of garlic in it. Let it cool. Add besan (protein) + whole wheat flour (carb). Knead it (sauted spinach will leave some water, use that to knead the dough)- add salt to taste. Once kneaded make little balls and place them on very little oil in a cast iron pan/non stick pan. With a flat spatula even them out so they look more flat than round. The tikkis came out yummy and I thought they were super healthy. Rohan ate 3 of them just as a snack. I gave him for lunch in his sandwich and he loved it. Now if I serve him Palak Paneer he tries to pick it up with his fingers like the tikkis and he obviously can't; I guess the green color throws him off!
Ingredients:
Fresh spinach
Gram flour (Besan)
Whole wheat flour
Cumin seeds
Salt
Garlic
Saute fresh baby spinach on olive oil (any oil is fine, clarified butter will make it tastier) crush 2-3 buds of garlic in it. Let it cool. Add besan (protein) + whole wheat flour (carb). Knead it (sauted spinach will leave some water, use that to knead the dough)- add salt to taste. Once kneaded make little balls and place them on very little oil in a cast iron pan/non stick pan. With a flat spatula even them out so they look more flat than round. The tikkis came out yummy and I thought they were super healthy. Rohan ate 3 of them just as a snack. I gave him for lunch in his sandwich and he loved it. Now if I serve him Palak Paneer he tries to pick it up with his fingers like the tikkis and he obviously can't; I guess the green color throws him off!
Rohan @ 19 months
We had a long three day weekend (Rohan's school being closed for teacher planning day last Friday) and initially we thought it would be very difficult to entertain Rohan at home. But we did just fine. We visited the FSU Marine lab on Friday which is about an hour away from us. A friend of mine is doing her PhD in Geochemistry and she wanted to go and install her instruments at the lab. Last week all her instruments were blown away by the storm. We decided to go with her. The Marine lab was so much fun. It reminded me a lot of TIFR, the same salty smell, scientists and lots of different experiments.
Saturday we went for the end of summer party at a friend's house. These guys have two storeyed house with open stairs in the living room. Rohan these days is obsessed about stairs and he and a few other kid s spent all the time on the stairs with me or Amod hanging on to Rohan and our dear life. At 7 pm Rohan is all like a energizer bunny hopping all over and Amod comes and tells me "I am really tired, lets go home"!!!
Rohan also loves music. We have to have some music on when he is in the car. As soon as he sits in he says "on on" which means start the music. As of now he really likes abba. Thank God we did not listen to friends and did not start with baby music. Else I would be pulling my hair sitting in traffic listening over and over to the same Baby CDs. He likes any new hindi stuff too, I am going to try some soft rock maybe Bryan adams and go to hard rock and see if he minds.:)
He has about 70-80 words now and tries to repeat everything we say. He plays coy most of the time. He has this cute shy smile as if telling us ohhh I know I am not supposed to do a lot of things but I am going to do them anyway. As soon as I say "Amod tyala pakad" the kid starts running. He gets basic pakda pakdi stuff. He is also smart to trick us and change direction every once in a while. We run from the living room to kitchen to dinning and back to living which is a fairly big round. He eats pretty well, cottage cheese (cheeeez) and strawberry cream dahi (dachi) being his favorites. Likes most pastas, brown rice, pitas and of course how can we forget batati, refuses to say batata. Pankha (Fan) is pannntha. Now he chooses his spoons he knows where they are so makes me or Amod pick him up and choose the color, style etc.
Saturday we went for the end of summer party at a friend's house. These guys have two storeyed house with open stairs in the living room. Rohan these days is obsessed about stairs and he and a few other kid s spent all the time on the stairs with me or Amod hanging on to Rohan and our dear life. At 7 pm Rohan is all like a energizer bunny hopping all over and Amod comes and tells me "I am really tired, lets go home"!!!
Rohan also loves music. We have to have some music on when he is in the car. As soon as he sits in he says "on on" which means start the music. As of now he really likes abba. Thank God we did not listen to friends and did not start with baby music. Else I would be pulling my hair sitting in traffic listening over and over to the same Baby CDs. He likes any new hindi stuff too, I am going to try some soft rock maybe Bryan adams and go to hard rock and see if he minds.:)
He has about 70-80 words now and tries to repeat everything we say. He plays coy most of the time. He has this cute shy smile as if telling us ohhh I know I am not supposed to do a lot of things but I am going to do them anyway. As soon as I say "Amod tyala pakad" the kid starts running. He gets basic pakda pakdi stuff. He is also smart to trick us and change direction every once in a while. We run from the living room to kitchen to dinning and back to living which is a fairly big round. He eats pretty well, cottage cheese (cheeeez) and strawberry cream dahi (dachi) being his favorites. Likes most pastas, brown rice, pitas and of course how can we forget batati, refuses to say batata. Pankha (Fan) is pannntha. Now he chooses his spoons he knows where they are so makes me or Amod pick him up and choose the color, style etc.
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