Nibbles, who?

I lovvvvvvvvvvvvvvvve Tom and Jerry. I can watch most of the cartoons again and again without feeling bored. In fact, to this day you'll find me in front of the TV if there's a Tom and Jerry show going on ;-). This video "The Little Orphan" is one of my favourites. If you have already watched it, you know Nibbles, the little orphan that comes to Jerry for dinner :-D. And I especially love the Nibbles-pointing-to-its-mouth-licking-its-lips-and-rubbing-its-stomach-to-indicate-that-its-hungry part :-D. So watch out for it :)).

Thanks to YouTube and user CelestialCatnip for the video.

Guess who Nibbles reminds me of these days? :-D.

Dhan Dhana Dhan Goals!

Nope I'm not reviewing any movies here :-D. In fact this is yet another tag. This time I have been tagged by Sumana to list my goals for the next decade :). I feel like I'm back in a "Personality development" class again which I had attended in engineering college before the campus recruitments :-D. Then one of my standard dialogues was "I want to become a manager by the time I'm 30 years old" :-D.

I want to do many things, but realistically speaking here's what I want to achieve in 10 years:

• I want to become a manager by the time I'm 30 years old. Hehehee. Actually I hope to get back to my career again. I have always admired my mom for juggling her family and career so well and would really like to have that in my life. Money is not really the constraint, but the satisfaction of working is something else. Gosh, I sound like a "Miss India" contestant :-D.



• I want to finish GMAT in the next year (yup, despite my boasts after TOEFL, I never finished it. Can't really quote pregnancy as a reason, laziness was more like it ;-) :-D) and finally do that MBA I have been aiming to for quite some time.



• I want to have another baby :-D. Yeah, yeah I cribbed and complained and I keep having second thoughts very frequently about this, but I think every child should have a sibling to grow up with, to fight with and to be friends with :). And though I hate to admit it, it'd be nice to experience the whole pregnancy thing all over again (I'm still not so sure about the motherhood thing :-D).



• I want to move back to India. I don't know whether we actually will. But I want to, oh so much. I'd like my kids to grow up there, visiting grandparents whenever they want and be involved in all functions and festivals with all sorts of relatives. I want them to have the kind of childhood that I had. Maybe thats kinda selfish of me, but well, thats what I want. Probably the real reason is that I want to be able to visit mom and dad whenever I want ;-).



• Well, before we do move, I want to finish travelling all over the west caost of USA. I have seen most of the east coast. Don't know whether I'll be able to trek in the Grand Canyon or roam around day and night in Las Vegas with Snuggles around, but would want to anyways :). I would also like to travel to Europe and Australia within 10 years, and hope I'll be able to.



• I would like to resume learning carnatic music. I left it when I got married, never got a chance to resume it as we moved to US. People here have been pointing me towards a person, so hope to get in touch with her soon (don't really know when what with Snuggles around). Also would like to learn tango, but well that seems like a dream as of now :-D.



• Personally, would like to become more stable emotionally. I am quite easily driven to tears, haven't quite figured out why (perhaps the harmones are to blame :-D). Have to develop a thicker skin ;-). And I have to stop getting frustrated so easily and become more patient. Seems impossible, doesn't it? :-D.



• Last but not least, I want to continue writing this blog of mine. After 10 years, I want it to be going strong. Hopefully you'll get a post on what all I've accomplished in this list ;-).

Snap happy :)

Ano tagged me to pick a picture of the year. The rules being:

"All you have to do is select and upload one photo that you have clicked this year (2007) that is special to you. Could be anything…aesthetic, technical or personal. Also, put in a short note why it is special."

I thought a lot about it. First I thought of a picture of the sea. Next I thought of a sunset. But finally this made sense:




Though it sounds cliched, for me, 2007 has been mostly a bed of roses. Yes there were thorns, the major one of them being me leaving my job in January 2007 which caused me some grievance all over the year, but they were all in the background (just like in the pic). Maybe the leaving job thing was for the good as well. After all, my pregnancy was literally work-tensions free :). Secondly the snap somehow points out that Sri and I are not "two" anymore, but are "three" now with Snigdha :).

I hope 2008 will also be the same way. But if there are more thorns than roses, I won't ask God for the thorns not to be there or to take the thorns away, but will pray for the strength to walk on a thorn knowing that its there and knowing that its going to cause pain. Simply put, to make life a rich experience, roses are plain not enough ;-) :).

Eating my own words..

So why go through this lengthy ordeal?
Why withstand the pregnancy pitfall?
Its because a soft warm baby in my arms
Is finally going to be worth it all..

I think these words are going to come back to haunt me again and again for a long time. Now I think when I first wrote the post, many moms who read it would have had indulgent looks on their faces, the same look that my mom has given me most of the time, that says "You think you know everything, just you wait" :-D. On a parallel note, she also has this other look (plus a wicked grin) that says "Now you know what I went through when I had you" :-D. Well, what I mean by this whole paragraph is that having a baby is not easy, but life certainly doesn't get any better after that.

In fact, life changes, does such a 360 degree turn that leaves you wondering whether this is your life or whether you are suddenly living somebody else's or whether you are in a dream(not really a nightmare but not a sweet dream either). The past couple of weeks have been a set of blurry days and nights full of feeding and changing diapers, where I have felt everything from joy to panic, from depression to outright happiness. I had heard from friends about the sleepless nights/the tiredness etc, but I felt the magnitude of it all only after having Snuggles. Yup, I had under-estimated most of it.

Before I had Snuggles, I was given lectures about post-partum depression in my childbirth class as well as later once she was born, exclusively by a nurse. I kinda had laughed it off. I mean, who could be unhappy with a baby around, right? Wrong! Big time wrong! In just 3 weeks, there have been times where I have felt "Is this all to life? The feeding and the changing?", others where "I'm just nothing but a feeding machine" and yet others where I have really gotten angry with Sri and shouted at him/blamed him for everything (after all it was his sperm :-D). I'm not really depressed, but there have been times when I have felt very much down.

Halt! Gross motherhood reality alert! There was this one night when Snuggles in the middle of the night, after screaming her head off for food, after being fed off my wounded breast, after twisting and turning her head around during the feeding and hurting me more, threw up, spit half the milk out and smiled. I bawled (like a baby :-p). It was so damn frustrating. Sri got a mouth full of scoldings just for patting me on my back as if he understood. He kept reminding me that Snuggles didn't know anything and is just a small innocent baby needing to be fed, while I kept saying "I didn't sign up for this". Things only got better when I realized that I couldn't let a 20-day old get the better of me ;-) :-D. But you know what I mean. Motherhood is a series of such frustrations.

I know I'm lucky. My baby wakes up only twice in the night. She doesn't cry unless she needs a feeding. One of my friends has a baby who needed to be fed every 1.5 hours, even in the night! My friend was saying that she was called "ATM" by all her family, "ATM" standing for "All Time Milk" :-D. We were talking over phone, sharing frustrations, giggling and wondering at the romance novels which paint such a rosy picture of motherhood. I really think a girl ought to read a pregnancy/nursing book before she gets married, so that she knows what she's getting into and gets into it with her eyes wide open! I also have this other friend who had twins and I really admire her now. I wonder what she must have gone through, imagine you console one baby when the other gets up and starts bawling! I repeat, I'm lucky I have Snuggles and only Snuggles. But sometimes I can't help being frustrated. Sadly, this is only the beginning.

I'm also lucky that I have a supportive husband and a supportive family who I can talk to anytime. Post-partum depression happens and worsens when there is nobody you can turn to. I wonder how so many single women handle motherhood. It must get lonely and really tiring. But, women manage and so will I. I wanted to jot my feelings down in a post not to discourage women who want to have babies, but as a reminder of how I am feeling right now. They also say if you put it down in words, it feels all the more better. I'm feeling ok now, but I have already heard of nightmares like how the baby will have fever/will cry for hours after vaccinations (we have the first set coming up). I'm sure thats going to start off my tear ducts too :-p. Still, as I say in my profile, the depressing moments make up memories too :).

And its not as if it has all been bad. There have been times when I laughed out loud about the baby being like a little shark, always eating and saying "feed me" :-D. There have been times when a small smile from her (they say that its just 'gas bubbles" and not genuine smiles) has melted my heart. There have been times when I have sang to her and danced with her in my arms, full filmy style ;-) :). There have been other moments where mom shared her memories about me and Darsh and made me smile. The whole motherhood thing has been a great experience so far with its ups and downs.

On an entirely different note, we had a thottilu shaastra (cradle ceremony) for our Snuggles on the 11th day after she was born and here are some of the captured moments.

The first one is Snuggles all dressed up for the ceremony.




Here's her again after being placed in her bassinet.




Snuggles with her parents and her maternal grandparents..




Lastly, this is us :).




Before I forget, today, on the 24th day after she was born, Snuggles's umbilical stump (the part attached to her belly button after the umbilical cord was cut) fell off (they usually are expected to fall off around this time). The final evidence that she came from within me is gone. Its weird, but I feel somewhat sad :-\..

Yaadein yaad aati hain..

It seems like only yesterday when he was here. Now he's half a world away. I keep thinking he's going to pop out of the kitchen, or I'll suddenly see him in the hall watching TV. But nope, dad left last week. Suddenly he's back to being a voice on the phone. I know I'll see him again in 2 months (I'll be going to India :-D), but well, as usual I can't really help how I feel right now. I know mom feels lonely without him around, but she doesn't really say anything. Again, we knew this was the plan all along.

He was here for about 2 months but I keep recollecting one moment in particular. One night he was putting Snuggles to sleep and he started singing "Bade achche lagthe hein". I, lying down in the same room had an urge to join in and so we both sang together to the baby. The whole thing was almost surreal..

Its strange how moments get converted to being "memories" so soon..

Nagme hain, shikwe hain
Kisse hain, baatein hain
Baatein bhool jaati hain
Yaadein yaad aati hain..