Anvith's Baby Blog

Trip to Mahabs & Pondicherry - Day 1

2012-02-02T10:42:00.009+05:30

Hubby woke up at 6 and headed to the beach for photo shoot of sunrise at Bengal sea and I was nicely cuddling Anvith and sleeping on bed. We were supposed to leave resort at 9AM for local sightseeing after finishing breakfast but got delayed by an hour and could start only at 10AM. Naveen, Anvith and me did a quick visit to sea shore and clicked some photos before my friend's family joined us. You can see a tourist spot called "Shore temple" at the private beach of the resort. Few pictures below -

Just before we headed for local sightseeing

At private beach of the resort we stayed

You can see shore temple at the backside

Group photo with shore temple at backside

We headed out of the resort at 10AM and our first stop was shore temple. There was no entry to the temple premise from the resort area and we had to drive around 1 km and take entrance tickets. The temple was pretty small but was has very beautiful sculpture work. There was a huge crowd at that spot, lot of foreigners and also kids from some school picnics. We spent around 45 mins there. It was too hot and humid weather and we all were sweating badly. By the time we came out of that place, we were feeling so thirsty and decided to eat some Amul ice creams to cool ourselves. It was just the first place we covered but we were damn tired already. Few photos taken at the shore temple -

Our next stop was at Arjuna's penance which was again just 1-2km from shore temple. This was again a very good place to visit but it was a huge spot. To see the entire place, one needs to climb on the rocks etc and with small kids and the noon sun on top, we just decided to see only the front easily accessible portion of the unit. There was one spot with elephant sculptures at the backside and by looking at that I remembered about my visit to the same place when I was just 6 years old. It was in 1987, our family (dad, mom, sis and me) along with dad's collegue's family had made a trip to coimbatore, mahabs and some more place. I have vivid memories of that trip since I was just 6 at that time. We were a group of 10-12 people with 4-5 kids and it was a very memorable trip. Sometime in future, I want to make a blog post of that trip from whatever I remember and will scan those photots and upload. Following is the spot in which me and my sis were holding hands and gave pose for a photo. I so wish I had it right now to post it here but the photos are in udupi currently. Anyway, below is the photo taken last week and other photos taken in the spot -

By the time we came out of this place we were totally drained. We had one more place to visit called "five rathas" which is a monolithic rock architecture of the time of Paandava's but we decided to skip this place since we were tired and also running out of time since we had to get back to hotel and checkout and head to pondicherry which is around 100km from Mahabs. We checked out of the hotel at 12.30 and headed to Pondicherry and soon as we got into the cab, all of us fell asleep. We had not had lunch and decided to have in Pondi. But by the time we reached Pondi, driver had to get another round of permit and had to go to tindivanam bypass road which meant another 1 hr extra time before we get inside the city to have lunch. When all this was done and we found some hotel for lunch it was 3.45PM and I had started having vomitting sensation due to staying hungry for a very long time and had a bad headache too. Upon that the meals was closed and we only had dosa's and upmas for lunch but somehow I just couldn't eat any of them beyond 2-3 spoons. I generally get this nausea feeling if I don't take meals on time and wont be able to eat food beyond regular times if I am on empty stomach. I wanted to have fruit juice but that was also not available. Luckily kids had chapathi and milk and finished their lunch. I wanted to head to resort soon but we again did some shopping in the closeby area. I bought a pink short and Naveen some 3/4th to wear in the beach. We also bought some T-shirts for Anvith. We wanted to spend the evening in the beach side but again that day, when we reached the resort it was about to get dark.

We stayed at the beach in the dark for an hour. Anvith was refusing to get into water nor get his feet on the sand. He is a very big cleanliness freak and missed out of lot of things during the entire trip. He never once got into water in the beach nor ran on the sand wearing no chappals, nor got into the pool at the resort, nor played in the sprinkler. We tried a lot to persue him to do this but the fellow kept on saying "dress will become chichi (dirty)" and refused to join us and cried non-stop when we forced him to.

That night we had dinner at the resort (St James). The food was good but the service was hopeless. We had to wait 20 mins for giving the order and it took another 30 mins for the dishes to arrive. But kids had a lot of fun at the beach facing open top restaurant and so we didn't mind having to wait long. It's always fun to watch kids playing around all excited and curious inspite of being tired.

Leaving with some more photos -

More to come soon :)

Trip to Mahabs and Pondicherry - Day 0

2012-02-01T14:04:00.007+05:30

With the excitement of the trip and the morning chores to prepare and pack breakfast and lunch for dad and son, I hardly could sleep previous night for more than 2-3 hours. By 6.30 we all were ready. First thing Anvith said when he got up was "Pondicherry popuna...itte malla car barpunu.." (we are going to pondicherry, now big car will come). He was all excited and co-operated so well to take bath, get dressed etc. The cab reached half an hour later than planned and it look another 20 mins to adjust the luggage etc and to finally start. We left our home at around 7.30AM planning to reach Mahabalipuram atleast by 4PM.

Journey was fun since we traveled as group but it was longer than we planned. Since we were traveling by tourist car, the driver had to get some permit at KA-TN boundary and there was a huge queue for it. It took 1 hour to get the permit after which we stopped for 1 hr for breakfast at Krishnagiri and then another hour for lunch at Vellore and some small 10-15 mins break 3-4 times. Finally when we reached our resort it was 6.15PM and it was about to become dark. We wanted to go to the beach which was just 100mtrs from our resort but by the time we were done with unloading and getting fresh, it had become dark. We came out of our rooms at 7 and spent some time at the pool waiting for my friend's family to join. After 15 mins we all met and decided to do some shopping in the close by street. There were lot of clothes shops who were selling very nice tops, skirts, shorts etc. We initially thought they might be expensive since usually foreigners are their major customers but when we decided to drop by and check some dresses, we realized it was damn cheap. Almost same and some are even lesser than the ones we get in Jayanagar shopping complex. My friend bought a long skirt and I bought a top and a half pant cum skirt (shopkeeper said some name for this costume and I forgot). We both decided to wear them for the next day.

After an hour of shopping, we dropped at the sea-shore and just spend sometime there listening to the music of the waves and looking at the stars and moon while the kids played in the sand. There were some boats in the shore and Anvith kept of telling he wants to go in the Boat. We then headed to Adyar Anand Bhavan for dinner and had a very good dinner inside their garden. They had ample open space with good lawns and the kids were busy playing and we watching them. We spent a long time there after dinner, recoding the videos of kids playing around and clicking photos. We make some plans for next day and decided to head out of the resort for local sightseeing at 8.30AM. Then headed back to our resort at 10.30PM and had a nice sleep. The resort was very nice and the rooms were spacious and clean.

Few photos from first day outing -

Just started our journey

Trip excitement :)

daddy-sonny pair on a tractor

after a heavy lunch at vellore

happy kids

Curious kiddo

having fun at pool side

kids waiting while mommy's are shopping inside

Kids having fun after dinner

dinner time

at the beach
at the beach

Trip to Mahabalipuram and Pondicherry - Planning

2012-01-31T09:44:00.004+05:30

We are just back from 4 days trip to Mahabalipuram and Pondicherry made over last long weekend. It was super fun-filled and a very relaxing time we had and most enjoyable too. There are too many things I want to note down and hence I am going to split the posts. This post is going to talk about how we started planning for the trip.

3 weeks back I was checking my holiday list and saw that 26th Jan (Republic day) was falling on Thursday. It had a been quite some time, we had gone for any trips as a family and decided to make some plans. I decided to apply for leave on Friday and checked with Naveen who was also willing to put leave. So we had 4 days in hand and the place had to be decided. Pondicherry had been on my mind from past few months and January was the best time to visit since it wont be too hot there. But when I did research about this place, I found there isn't much to visit there for 4 days and then I found Mahabalupuram was close by and can be covered too. So I decided to visit Mahabs and Pondi. While I was still thinking about this place, I got a call from my best friend M. We both were best friends since my college (+2) and have done lot of mischief together (want to post about it sometime). 4 years back, around same time we both made a trip to Ooty along with our hubbies and it was a great memorable trip. My hubby and hers share same frequency and became friends easily. I asked her if she wants to join for Pondi trip and she was willing to. She too has a kid who is 9 months younger than Anvith and we thought the kids can have some good time together. Last time we both families traveled as a couple and this time with a kid. Then I told my hubby about the trip and my friends family joining and he was also excited about it. He never says no for such trips since he gets opportunity for some good photo shooting. So we confirmed on the dates and I started looking for resorts.

We wanted to choose a beach resort and also got some 30% off from cleartrip and booked for 1 night@Mahabs and 2nights@Pondi. It was a little expensive but really worth. We shed around 22K just for the rooms for 2 families. The rooms were booked, the route was decided and we planned to travel by our car since both me and Naveen wanted to get our hands on the wheels of Blore-Krishnagiri road which was too good for driving. I started packing 4-5 days before the start date and I realized I had too much of luggage since I had to carry lot of clothes, swim suite, beach toys etc for Anvith and lot of dresses for me too. Anvith had developed cough since few days and needed to use nebulizer machine everyday and that had to be carried too. I called up my friend to check how much luggage she is having and she too said she has too many. I discussed with hubby and we felt our car might not accommodate so much of luggage. Hubby spoke with my friends hubby P and they both decided to rent a big car Qualis. It would be better for kids too since it has ample space. P took care of booking the cab and everything was decided.

3 days before the booking I called the resort@Pondi to confirm our reservations done they told there was only 1 room booking under my name. I had booked 1 room via cleartip and another via travelocity since cleartrip had only 1 room available. The resort folks said they see only the booking done via cleartip and not the one done via travelocity and told me to check with the folks at travelocity. Immediately I called their call centre who upon checking told me that they were not able to book the room there since the resort had some bulk booking. I literally shouted at them saying why did they confirm my booking and charged my card and just 3 days before they are doing this way. They didn't have an answer and tried consoling me saying they will give a room in different resort. I was pissed off and told him I was traveling with 2 families and already booked 1 room which was confirmed and there is no point if they give me another resort. They told they will try if they can do something and told me to call after 24hrs. When I called them the next day, they didn't confirm my booking and told me they want more time. Only 1 more day was left for us to leave and the resort booking was not confirmed. I called them and yelled at them again and explained we had a toddler's with us and also threatened to write bad reviews about their website etc and they said they want me to co-operate with them. I was loosing my patience and just disconnected the call. In the evening, my hubby decided to call and talk to them again and surprisingly when he called they said they sorted out the issue with the resort and the room was booked for us now. I was relieved. Though I did the booking 3 weeks before our travel, the room booking was confirmed at resort only on previous day. It was a lot of tension I went through but at last everything went fine. Wednesday night we finished all packing, bought stuffs needed etc and went to bed looking forward to the next 4 days. I hardly could sleep for 2-3 hrs due to the excitement.

More to come in later post. Just leaving a pic here of me and my best friend M which taken at our resort in Pondi on our last day -

Kids day in office

2012-01-25T13:52:00.005+05:30

We had kids day celebration at my client place last week and I wanted to take Anvith there. None of my current team members are having a kid and so were not invited. I was thinking twice whether to go for the event or not. Then checked with my friend who had left our team and joined another company for the same client, was also willing to take her kid. We both decided to attend the event. The event as such was so boring esp for younger kids. There was a huge crowd and lot of noise. The elder kids enjoyed the magic show but younger kids didn't understand it much. There was some circle game etc but Anvith did not want to join. There was a guy in mickey mouse costume and that's probably the only thing what Anvith liked. The event was just for half day and post lunch we were just hanging around in the campus. It was Anvith's nap time and he had started becoming cranky. Nevertheless, he was all excited when we entered video games room. All in all, it was a good day for Anvith and he kept on telling he wants to go to Amma's office everyday ;) but was a super tiring day for me since I had to carry him a lot thought the day. A collage of photos below -

Fun time with bubbles and Fettuccine

2012-01-12T09:58:00.006+05:30

We had bought a bubble solution few months ago and it was just lying on top of the fridge top all the while. Yesterday morning Anvith suddenly noticed it and wanted to make bubbles. Since it was weekday, morning was a busy time and I just gave it to him and went ahead with kitchen work. This fellow tried blowing but was not able to make any good bubbles. After a while, he gave up and asked me to come and make bubbles for him. I joined him and started making bubbles and Anvith was trying to burst them. He was having so much fun. We were getting delayed to start to work but I decided to ignore the clock for a chance. After a few minutes, hubby also joined with his camera and almost 30-45 mins we had so much fun playing with the bubbles. It was one of the best mornings we had. Some photos to share -

Yesterday evening I was preparing Fettuccine and Anvith wanted to eat a few before I mixed the sauce. He just loved eating it raw and was looking funny eating it. Few photos

Anvith and his dad on a cleaning spree

2012-01-09T10:14:00.000+05:30

Hubby decided to do some window cleaning yesterday and wanted to involve Anvith. Anvith observed his dad for a while on how to spray the soap water and use the cleaning stick and decided to try himself. Below are the pics taken while both of them were at their job.

While the dad and son were busy with the cleaning, mom was away for a lunch-cum-bowling with her friends -

2011 A reminiscence

2012-01-05T10:53:00.001+05:30

Good things happened:

Took lot of small vacations – Some of them with family, some just with hubby and some with friends. We went to Mysore, Kodikanal, Yercaud, Melkote, St. Mary’s Island
Went to hometown more frequently. After Anvith was born, our trips to Udupi to meet my parents and in-laws had dropped down drastically since Anvith was too small to travel overnight in bus. This year we felt he was good enough to start travel and found that he even enjoyed the journey.
We went to movie theaters after what I feel like a decade (didn’t go for almost 3 years ever since I became pregnant). Have seen around 3-4 movies in cinema theaters this year. Plan to increase it next year and want to take Anvith along with us.
Visited USA on an official trip for a month which was my long term dream. Did manage to visit quite a few places around there like LA, SFO, Santa Cruz, SJ, Solvang etc
Met my friends more often this year and also had some outings together with both side families. I have always enjoyed group outings and I cherished the time spent
Became much better at parenting (still have lots to learn though) compared to previous year. Was able to dedicate quality time for Anvith on most of the days and also able to manage office and household chores better.
Anvith got better adjusted to his daycare routine and our mornings were much better as he was less fussy.
He started walking in the beginning of the year and has a much better control now. Yet to see him running though.

Bad things happened:

Early this year Anvith had a fall from his small car and had a cut under his chin and got stitches.
We had planned to go to Singapore/Malaysia trip this year but somehow never made it.
Had plans to take hubby along with me to US but his boss was not ready to give him leaves nor allow WFH from another country. So had to drop the idea at last minute.
Most of my colleagues who had become good friends with me left company. We were a very good group and losing them was a big void for me personally as well as professionally.
Turned 30 this year. Was kinda feeling low for a while thinking the best times of my life is over but soon got over it. Didn’t receive any gift for my b’day from hubby L
Was away from Anvith for around 3 months out of 1 full year including his day care shutdown in April/Dassuera and while I was onsite.
Put on some weight since we ate a lot outside, at least 2-3 times a week. Luckily was able to shed some of the weight while I was at US but was not able to reach the number what I wanted.

Plan for 2012:

Go for a long vacation preferably make the trip to Singapore/Malaysia soon.
Stop eating out as much as possible. Since cannot avoid completely, want to reduce eating out just for once in a week and whenever possible go for healthier options than junk foods (The top of the list would be stop visiting MacDonald’s!)
Exercise often and mix up yoga & cardio both
Want to start taking lunch box to office
Walk to office from home at least 2 times a week
Get rid of non-stick pans and aluminum vessels at home as they are bad for health and adopt a healthy cooking.
Plan for more outings. Want to go for long drives, picnics at least twice a month.
Devote enough time for family and say strict NO to late night office work. Looks like there will some tough times at office which need overtime but I just don’t want to compromise on family time. If it gets too much, have also plans to change my project or job.

Anvith's Updates

2011-12-20T03:56:00.002+05:30

Anvith has been doing a lot of new things of late which I had never seen him doing when in Bangalore. When my mom updates me these things, I get surprised and so is Naveen. Few things want to note down here -

- He says his name is Pratham. If we call him by Anvith or Gunda (his pet name at home), he gets annoyed and says he is not anvith nor gunda and he is Pratham. Actually, Pratham is my sister's kid's name and Anvith loves him a lot but its still a mystery to us why he loves calling himself Pratham. Does he hate the name we kept ? I hope not!

- When me or Naveen calls him, he speaks for a while on the phone and then says "I have a call now" and goes to a bedroom. When my mom told this, we were shocked. He is trying to imitate Naveen who generally has calls on weekdays late evenings who generally says he has a call and goes to bedroom to attend the call. We never knew Anvith observed all this and now imitating his dad!

- He has started saying "Don't touch me". He hates being touched. No one speaks in english with him at home or in grandparent's home. We think he would have heard it in his day care but surprised that he is using it now almost after 2 months of not going to day care.

- Anvith knows "A to Z" & "1 to 10" and can identify body parts when asked in English. This one is a major thing for us since most of the schools here ask these things when try for admission. When I left him in Udupi, he only knew "A B C D E FG". I had told my dad to teach him the alphabets and numbers, who in deed taught Avnith the alphabets every day for an hour.

-Anvith loves fruit juices now. Every time he goes out with Ajja, he asks my dad to give him apple juice, musambi juice etc.

More to come later.

Men Vs Women

2011-12-14T04:12:00.000+05:30

Another 2 weeks left and then I am back with my family in Bangalore and I just can't wait to meet them. I never knew I would miss them this bad when I accepted my overseas trip for a month. I thought 1 month was too short and the time will run super fast and before I get the heat of missing them, I will already be there with them...but I was wrong. I have been missing Anvith ever since I left him in Udupi and the urge to meet him, just hold him and shower him with kisses is just becoming more and more. Days are passing too slow and I wish I can fast forward this time for 2 weeks from now.

Anyway, coming back to the subject. To make up for this family separation of about a month, I have been planning to book some long vacation for 3 of us once I am back to India. I had been thinking of visiting Malaysia/Singapore from more than 6 months now and when we planned earlier, we just couldn't proceed with booking due to some reason. But now my urge to go there has become too strong and I really want to make this trip come true before Anvith turns 3 or as a b'day gift to him and anniversary gift to hubby, both of which are less than 2-3 months away from now. This onsite visit to US, also gave me a chance to accumulate some money to cover all expenses for this trip and I really wanted to make this happen. I cut down my shopping list for myself so that I have just enough money for the trip.

While I was thinking about this trip, I forgot to know what is my hubby having in his mind. Yesterday while talking, he expressed that he wants to buy a 7D DSLR (which has been his dream from more than a year now) and amazon was running some good deal and we could save a huge money if bought here in US than in India. He also wanted some lense and battery along with the DSLR. When I evaluated the cost, this was hitting almost the same number as my Singapore trip.

I was kinda shocked when I heard this and all my dream of going for vacation has come to a standstill. I though feel that a vacation is a good time and can get all 3 of us good relaxing time together especially after the 1 month seperation, hubby feels buying the camera fulfills his long lasting dream (which looks like a waste of money for me though!). I just couldn't say No to him when he asked for this because I know having it matters a lot to him and he never generally asks for anything for him and when he asked this time, somehow I couldn't say No.I was really surprised to see how different men and women think when they are given a chance to spend huge money. Women settle for things which give benefit to everyone at home and look beyond materialistic things but men tend to own a hi-fi gadget or similar stuff more of material-oriented for themselves. I have seen this with my other friend's families too and I keep wondering about this difference.

Whats the name ?

2011-12-13T11:36:00.000+05:30

Conversation with Anvith -

Me: What is Amma's name ?
Anvith: ashatha

Me: what is Appa's name ?
Anvith: nayeen

Me: What is Ajja's name ?
Anvith: lama chanda (for Ramachandra)

Me: What is kudonji (another) Ajja's name ?
Anvith: naashimma (Narasimha)

Me: What is mamama's name ?
Anvith: jayati (Jayanti)

Me: What is dodda's name ?
Anvith: nimmala (Nirmala)

Me: What is gunda's name or what is your name ?
Anvith: annith

Exploration Day @ Day care

2011-12-07T03:17:00.001+05:30

We had "Exploration Day" celebrations at Anvith's day care 3-4 months ago. The agenda was for parents to know what all activities or teachings have happened at school in the past quarter and to know how well their kids are learning the stuff taught there. It was also a chance for parents to directly interact with the teachers and get our queries answered etc. There were also some assessment reports which they shared with us regarding Anvith's development at play school. I was pleased to see his progress card (though I felt the kids are too young to be subjected to the assesments at this age since they are less than 3) But we had to go by the school norms and so we too received his assessment sheets. He was good in almost all the areas except "sharing". He never shares his stuff with others and they rated him as needs improvement in that area. All others were "good" or "very good". So it was a major task for us to teach Anvith about sharing. Though we have not started anything on this as yet especially since I was way too busy after that day with my office stuff but I do plan to work on that part once I am back to home.

Anyway, the "Exploration day" was a really well organized event at his school. They had kept lots of stuff in a room which they had used for their daily classes and the parents had to take their kids infront of each item and randomly ask what those stuff are and the kids were supposed to answer. When we entered by looking at the pictures/items there, we thought probably Anvith will not answer anything since he never mentions those words at home but we were surprised when he was answering almost everything which we pointed to or asked him to show. Me and Naveen exchanged looks quite often with amazement to see our baby was growing so fast! Few pics to share -

Anvith at Malpe beach

2011-12-06T05:34:00.005+05:30

Dad-son are having lot of fun time at Udupi and going around lot of places. Yesterday they went to Malpe beach and Anvith again had lots of fun. Some photos here. Last photo is taken at Naveen's parents house when Anvith was playing with a stick for quite some time -

Anvith visits Udupi utsava

2011-12-05T22:27:00.005+05:30

Naveen took Anvith to a exhibition called "Udupi utsava" over the weekend after a much demand from him. Ever since he saw the add for the exhibition coming in local TV channel, he has been pestering my parents on taking him there. Last year when we had visited there, this fellow did not want to come out of that place. He was literally just begging to get in there, crying loudly, grabbing attention of lot of eyes around us. On his much insist, we took him again 2nd time and that was also pretty much the same. He loved the crowd, the colored lights and the decoration and most of the rides for younger kids. He was just so happy all the time. I was really surprised when I heard from my mom, that he immediately recognized the exhibition when the ad was showing up on TV. Seeing his enthu to go, Naveen decided to take him there over the weekend and Anvith just loved it again but luckily did not fuss so much while coming back (since he had a new toy in his hand and was excited to play with it at home)

Few photos from that place -

Anvith says...

2011-12-03T11:23:00.004+05:30

Thanks to the technologies like Tata Photon and the google video chat and Internet, I just saw Anvith, Naveen and my parents and spoke to them for almost an hour. I am so thankful that I am born in this generation to see use such technologies which really brings me closer to my family even when I am thousands of miles away. I just saw Anvith who gave me lots of kisses, danced for me, sang a song, told rhymes and jumped with joy when he saw me on his Appa's laptop - what more can I ask when I am so far away from him. It was almost a month since I had seen him and I feel a lot better now. Anyway, just wanted to jot down some conversations we had. Actually I feel he has learnt a lot of things which I never taught him. I am really amazed.

Me: Amma elliddale ?
Anvith: Amma amelika dalli iddale (america)

Me: Anvith america ge barthiya ?
Anvith: Illa, alli tumba chali untu...thale mele ice bilthade (Its too cold there and snow falls on head - I am sure my parents told him so)

Me: Baabu ge yentha beku illinda ? (What do you want from here ?)
Anvith: Yellow car, yellow bus, yellow shirt, yellow pant, yellow shoes

Me: Bere yentha beku ? (What else ?)
Anvith: cholates (chocolates)

Me: Eshtu ? (How many(
Anvith: Two

Anvith: Amma, bega ba aytha ? (Amma, come early okay ? Repeats this 3-4 times after every 5 mins)
Me: Okay baabu. Amma bega barthale (Amma will come early okay)

Me: Good night baabu
Anvith: Amma, thathi maadu (Amma go and sleep)
Anvith: Gunight amma, I lul you (Good night amma, I love you- and passes flying kisses to me)
Me go Awwww...

I so feel I need to record all these but not really sure if gtalk or yahoo video allows such features yet...If I could, I would just rewind and watch it everyday for hours!

Miss you my baby so much...counting days to come and see you....Just 20 more days left!

Waiting for Amma

2011-11-24T04:23:00.003+05:30

Naveen had gone to visit Anvith over the last weekend and took few photos. One of the photos, brought back lot of emotions in me and conveyed lot of unsaid words from Anvith to me. It just brought tears to my eyes.

Here is the photo and I feel this is what he is going on in his mind when this photo was clicked -
"I don't want this uyaale or see-saw or slide, nor do I want to come to park to play... All I want is to be with Amma, she holding me tightly and never letting me go away. Amma, come early."

Missing you lots my baby. I promise I will be back soon.

Travel to USA

2011-11-17T10:52:00.003+05:30

One of my very long time dream is coming true now. I am traveling to US tonight for 6 weeks on office work. I have been dreaming to visit this country from what I remember since my high school days. I don't know what fascinated me about this country...but I had been longing for a visit to US. The urge was more once I was married. I wanted to move to US for a few years before having a kid. But Naveen did not have this interest and was not all for it. But he did not stop me when I had a chance to visit Canada for 6 months. It was 4 years ago. Time passed and in my recent project, I got a chance to visit this country. All I wanted to visit was for short term and the requirement matched exactly to what I wanted.

Last time when I left India to visit Canada, it was all easy. Though I did miss Naveen a lot, I knew he would take good care of himself. This time its totally different. I was a lot worried about Anvith if he will be ready to stay away from me for such a long duration. In the past, I have been away from him for a max of 2 weeks, not more. But this time it will be almost 2 months and even if I want to, I cannot come in between. But I did not want to let go of this chance in my career. I left Anvith at my parent's place 2 weeks back. I wanted to see how he adjusts there before leaving and TOUCHWOOD, he is enjoying there. He has this "I want amma" bouts but its more only after I just finished talking to him on the phone or in his sleeps or if ajja, raises his voice at him for something. Otherwise, he is a sweet kid. When I ask him on phone if he wants to come to Bangalore, his instant answer is "No" and he says "Amma, you come to Udupi". In spite of all this, I do feel guilty at times for leaving him away from me but then Naveen consoles me saying its just few weeks and I will all be fine.

In a way, this 6 weeks break is giving all 3 of us, some time for ourselves. I plan to spend the weekends roaming around the city with one of my old and a good friend S (who is specially flying from some other state to meet me in California) and spend some time with my BIL's family and meet some new people. Naveen plans to spend a lot of time on photo shoot and carpentry work. Anvith getting pampered by his grand parents. So everybody has something good in this.

Just a few hrs are left for me to fly and I am all excited about this. Hoping to post about my experience there as much as possible. So keep watching this space :)

Yellow Yellow Dirty Fellow...

2011-11-14T22:05:00.004+05:30

I am sure you all are wondering what the post is all about looking at the title. This post is about Anvith's obsession to Yellow color and hence the title. It's been around 4-5 months, Anvith started recognizing colors (not all but most of them) and had a clear preference to yellow color out of all. Be it yellow car, yellow bus, yellow dress or yellow toy...just anything. He just loves yellow. When I say "Yellow Yellow who is dirty fellow", he doesn't hesitate to say "Anvith is daty fellow" and smiles and then I say "I love my dirty fellow". Here are few incidences I want to quote which shows how much this fellow is obsessed with yellow -

- Every morning after his bath, I keep one dress for him ready on the bed. As soon he comes, he sees it and if it is not yellow color, he goes and opens the wardrobe, picks a yellow dress (he searches in the nook and corner if he doesn't find in front of him) and brings it back and shows it and asks to put it on him.

- If somehow we make him wear any other color dress and after a while if he sees his yellow shirt anywhere else ie either in washing machine or suitcase or lying on the floor or in his school bag (extra pair I keep for his daycare), he brings it and shows it asking to put it on him. I tell him, whatever he is wearing currently is good and we will wear yellow tomorrow. Fellow gets disappointed. He starts searching all over his dress for a spot of dirt or ink or a hole or any such thing and comes to me or his appa and says "This shirt has become chichchi (dirty), Can I wear the yellow dress". Finally we agree and let him wear his yellow dress.

- We had gone to Kodaikanal around 2 months back and I had forgotten to pack any yellow shirt for him. Next morning after bath, this kiddo was not ready to settle down with any of the shirts I bought and was demanding one of the yellow shirt. He was crying so much and luckily I found one cream sweater which I had packed and he was ready to wear it. Lesson learnt: Always pack enough yellow dresses for Anvith.

- One of my best friend who recently visited us had bought Anvith a yellow shirt knowing that he likes yellow. Ever since Anvith has seen this shirt, he is just crazy about it. It is a different yellow, not just plain yellow (like Kareena kapoor's add...not black, just black!). He has around 6-7 yellow shirts and this one, which my friend brought is always the clear winner. Anvith is in Udupi from past 10 days (this time I packed enough yellow shirts for him) and he wears this yellow shirt my friend brought every day (yes, every single day). All other yellow shirts are not even touched. He wears this shirt full day and takes it off in the night when he wears night dress. Morning, my mom washes it and dries it. At 10AM, he is done with bath and if any other shirt is brought he asks to give his yellow shirt.

- This is one of the best incident, Naveen and me laughed a lot over it today. Anvith attended a wedding yesterday along with my parents. The wedding was in Mangalore and needed 1.5-2 hrs journey from my parent's place. As usual, after bath he got into his yellow shirt. My mom had packed a "red colored sherwani with gold glitterings" for him so that he can wear it once they reached the wedding hall. When they reached, mom showed this dress to him (thinking he will love the glitterings and will be ready to wear) and tried removing his yellow dress. The fellow was not ready. Even when forced he started crying loudly saying he wants the yellow dress and doesnt want the sherwani. Later my dad, tried to change his attention but nothing worked. Finally, everyone decided to give up and the kid ended up being in yellow T-shirt and a red short through out the wedding (it was a high class wedding and all were in a elegant dress). I am sure when everyone see's the family snap in the wedding, Anvith is going to bring a smile on everyone's face :)

Now every time we go for shopping and we see a yellow shirt, we just end up buying it for Anvith. We are enjoying this phase and sure this wont last too long (but will be remembered forever) but sometimes, I feel c'mon there are so many other colors which look very good on him but he wont let us put it on him.

BTW, I am sure you all want to know the shirt which my friend bought for Anvith which he is just crazy about and wont depart from it anytime is this -

I really dont know if I should say a big thank you to her or warn her not to get any more yellow shirts ;-) (Soms, JK)

I'm alive

2011-10-31T10:45:00.003+05:30

Yes, I am alive, hale & healthy but super busy with life and hence the absence of posts and comments on your posts. Hubby's bday came and gone, my b'day came and gone (I have turned 30 and but still a 20'ish at heart :), BTW this is my first post as 30 something!), diwali came and gone. Lot of things happened in past few weeks, some good and some bad. Office work has been crazy since all my team mates have left this job and all of a sudden, issues have started coming and I have to handle single handed and its giving a tough time! Next 2-3 months are going to be very hectic and I so hope, I will be able to balance my personal & professional life smoothly, without compromising on anything.

Bad news is there were 2 deaths in closed ones family. My best friend lost her 3 months old premature born baby. It came to me as a shock. I had visited her and the baby just 10 days ago before I got the news and the baby looked well. It was very difficult to keep myself for few days after I heard the news. I just cant imagine the pain my friend is going through. There was another death of one of my relatives. My dad's cousin who was around 45-50 years old passed away coming under a running train. It was also absolute shock to me and I just can't imagine anyone having death this way. He was a mentor to me who gave me lot of inspirations and confidence during my initial life in college days. It had been a few years since I had seen or spoken to him, but I truly admired him a lot. I wish both the families get enough strength to cope up with this loss in their lives. Please pray for them.

Happy birthday dear Hubby

2011-10-12T15:38:00.004+05:30

Dear Hubby

What plans I had to celebrate your b'day big time and what we ended up with ? I really feel so bad that this bday just didn't go even 1% of how I wanted it to be.

No gifts, no flowers, no cake, no sweets, not even a hug :(

I wanted to buy a gift for you last week when I was in Udupi but Anvith was down with Viral fever and I just couldn't go out. After we came back, I was down with viral fever and yesterday on your b'day it went to a peak and I was not able to open my eyes let alone getting up from bed due to high fever. So many people called you to wish and there I was just lying in bed. I think I was probably one of the last person to wish you along with Anvith :(:(:( I wanted to atleast prepare some sweets at home but you ended up doing the cooking so that I can get full rest. It was so sweet of you to do all that without even letting me know. You took care of packing Anvith's lunch box, getting him ready to school, giving me coffee and brought bread for me from bakery and took my hand and brought me down to the hall so that I don't loose my balance while getting down the stairs! All this on your b'day, when I should have been the one to pamper you but ended up being pampered by you (though I did enjoy the care you showed me and felt I can fall sick again and again, to be treated this way by my dear hubby ;) ).

You made sure I was comfortable and left to office and came back home post lunch feeling sick. You started getting the fever and was feeling very weak. We both just napped all the after-noon and woke up at around 5 and went to doc who gave some shot after which we got back some energy to deal with Anvith after he came back from school.

All in all, it was a very tirey, feverish and a dull day and couldn't celebrate your b'day at all. I really want to make up for this day some other time soon, once we all are fully recovered from this viral infection and regain our normal health.

But, I really wish you a very very Happy birthday once again.

As someone says -

Tum jeeyo hazaron saal,
Saal ke din ho pachas hazaar.

I pray to god that I do not get to see even a single day, when you are not with me. You are the most loving husband, most caring (little less-tempered though :) dad, dutiful son and most of all a beautiful person at heart. I thank god for making the right decision to marry you 5 years ago and feel so stupid that I took such a long time to accept your proposal.

Posting below one my favorite photos which is close to my heart taken on my baby shower day -

Love you always,
Your Wify

Just Dance!

2011-10-05T22:42:00.003+05:30

I was cooking something in the kitchen and Anvith comes to me, gives me my phone and asks me to play a song. I ask which one he wants and he says "shiela ki gaani" requesting for "shiela ki jawani" to be played. I start the song and there is a wide smile on his face. After a couple of seconds, he grabs my hand and pulls me to the living room where my sis, her kid and my mom were sitting and chatting. When I come, he tells "Amma, dance" and he starts jumping & twirling, up and down. I put a couple of steps and run back to the kitchen to have a look at the dish kept on the gas. He comes back, pulls me again and asks me to dance and I put few more steps along with him.

What a wonderful moment it was. I cant even recollect when was the last time I danced. Must be during one of those fresher parties in college. Been more than a decade! Today when my little fellow grabbed my hand and asked me to dance with him, I just felt so flattered and top of world. No guy ever asked me to dance with him till now and today one of my dream, came true. Bliss!

This is what happened today morning and right now the kid who was so enthu to dance, is down with high fever since evening. His temperature is not going below 103 in spite of the paracetamol drops and the fellow is in great discomfort. It hurts to see him moaning in his sleep out of pain and I just cant seem to do anything to reduce his pain. Hope he gets well soon.

Love you, Anvith.

Trip to Kodaikanal - Day 1

2011-10-02T14:13:00.005+05:30

My college time best friend So, made a plan to visit Kodaikanal and asked me whether I can join them. We both wanted to plan for a trip ever since she landed in India on her few weeks vacation before she could fly back to US. Her hubby had Club Mahindra membership and a 2N stay at Hill country resort in Kodai was decided. I was super excited and Okay'd it as I always wanted to visit Kodai (ever since I saw the movie Amruthavarshini) but never made it due to some or other reasons. We okay'd on the date Sep 23-25th. Hubby later got some major work issues popped and he was expected to be in Blore on 23rd and I was disappointed that I had to cancel the plan. When So called me on Thursday evening to check if we are going the next day, I didnt want to say No and I told I will come along with Anvith (without thinking if I will be able to manage Anvith all alone esp since he has asthma issues and kodai is a hilly area which means there can be cough attacks). After half an hour Naveen made some calls and declared that he will be joining but will have to go to office in the morning for half an hour and also has to take his laptop and have to send couple of mails next day. I was all relieved and happy and did the packing in full enthu.

It was first time we were going on such a long journey in our car (have been to udupi which is just 420km and Kodai was 480km from Blore with around 60km ghat section). Since we had recently been to Yercaud, we knew that the road is excellent, besides sharing the drive between me and Naveen, we thought we will be able to manage. I packed Anvith's nebulizer and some warm clothes for him and everything I remembered, only next day I realized that I forgot to take his yellow dress (more will come later!) which was a big issue next 2 days! We started from Bangalore much later than planned. We met So's family at Silk board and started our journey at 11.45AM. We planned to start by 10.30 so that we can reach the resort before it gets dark but got delayed by an hour due to traffic issues in Bangalore. We decided to take very few stops and did manage to stop only 2-3 times. First one, we stopped somewhere near Hosur for a temple visit (we always do before going on long drives) and then we stopped at Kamath Hotel near Dharmapuri for lunch around 2.30PM. After that we did not stop anywhere except for a small tea break in between and reached the resort at 8.30PM. We were damn tired. Anvith enjoyed the journey throughout and did not fuss much. I had packed lunch and breakfast for him from home and fed him that. Only thing was he did not allow me to get on the wheels which meant Naveen had to drive all the distance. When Anvith slept, I wanted to drive for a while but the fellow immediately woke up, when I was trying to put him in the back seat. We all were damn tired when we reached the resort and wanted a good dinner and a good night's sleep to get the energy back for next day's plan.

Resort was beautiful and the room had a small kitchen with microwave, fridge and kitchen utensils which meant I could prepare something quickly for Anvith. We had dinner at the resort hotel, which served some good (but expensive) food and got into bed by 11.30PM. Anvith became very cranky when we hit the bed and wanted to go to Udupi. All the while during the journey, he was thinking that we are going to Udupi to his Ajja's house but was disappointed when we landed into a resort. He cried for half an hour or so and did not want us to switch off the lights. We both were longing to get some sleep, we just let him cry and pretended to sleep thinking he will come to sleep but he started coughing continuously due to excessive crying and had to be nebulized only after which he agreed to sleep (with lights on!). It was a chilly night but with room heater on, we were able to sleep better.

Few photos from the 1st day -

No school

2011-09-27T11:35:00.003+05:30

"Amma, baabu school vacha na" (Amma, baby doesn't want to go to school today" - This is the first thing Anvith says as he gets up in the morning since past few weeks. This sentence is repeated atleast 50 times in 1 hr in the morning after he wakes up. After an hour, the sentence changes to "Baabu anga bastha" (Baby will sit here) (pointing to sofa). This is repeated another 10-20 times after which it changes to "Amma voggi yo, aava ?" (Amma, come early, OK ?) and this is repeated few more times. Even after all this, Anvith is not ready to go to school and when he sits in bike when dad starts his bike, he starts crying which doesn't stop until half an hour after he reaches school...sometimes 1 hr.

From more than a month Anvith is not interested in going to school. Lot of times, even I feel may be I should listen to him and not send him since anyway when he joins proper school, he will have to go and now that he is just 2n1/2 year old, may be we should not force him much. But the problem is, there is no one at home if he wants to sit at home. Sometimes, I think may be all this is temporary and after a while he will get adjusted again. I feel the absence from school for 3 weeks when he was in Udupi followed by my in-laws visit to our house for 2 weeks after which we had a 3 day trip to Kodaikanal - all this is making him feel homesick and make him be away from school. This weekend again we are going to Udupi for 1 week stay as my sister is visiting which means break from school again. After we are back there comes diwali holidays. I am not sure when we will be back to the normal routine.

Lot of times during mornings Anvith comes to me and says "Amma, office vachchu nakka." (Amma, don't go to office) and it really hurts me when I turn down his words and leave him. Throughout the day, my mind thinks about Anvith and I feel guilty. In the evenings, the spark in his eyes when he sees me at his daycare when I go to pick him up, really shows how much he misses me and wants to be with me. Yesterday evening as soon as I picked him up he said "Maam, hachcha kelle" (Ma'am, hit me) - pointing to his back and I just broke down. I kept wondering may be he gets spanking at school from teachers/aaya's and that's the reason why he hates going to school. But my hubby says, occasional spankings are OK. I am disturbed over his and planning to talk about this with daycare in charge today.

All these recent incidents are making turmoil in my mind. I am unable to understand what is right and what is wrong and not sure how to cope up with this. I so wish I just quit my job and be with Anvith but I really don't know whether that's the best choice or should I be looking for change in daycare ? I just don't seem to be getting an answer.

Home Alone Anvith

2011-09-21T10:33:00.003+05:30

These days Anvith is not at all interested in going to school. Every morning we go through a lot of tantrums and screaming from him, refusing to go. Past 10 days, my in-laws were at our place and Anvith wanted to sit with them at home, but we didn't want him to miss his school (since he had already missed 3 weeks when he went to udupi). But 1 day he had slight fever and we made him sit at home with grand parents. After that day there was big drama at home in the mornings, when he used to scream "I will sit with dodda (grandma) and ajja (grandpa) at home. Ajja and dodda used to hide in one room when Anvith was getting ready to school and we used to tell Anvith that dodda and ajja also went to school. But still he used to cry in high pitch all the way till school & also in school for initial 20-30 mins saying he wants ajja.

In-laws left last weekend and Monday hubby had to go early to office and it was my turn to drop him to school. I thought he might not object since nobody was at home. When I got ready and asked him:

(Translated from konkani to english)
Me: Come, lets go to school
Anvith: No, baabu doesn't want to go to school
Me: What you will do at home alone ?
Anvith: Amma also wont go to office
Me: Amma has to go. Else manager mama will scold amma.
Anvith: OK. Amma go to office but come early, okay ?
Me: What baabu will do alone ?
Anvith: Baabu will sit here (Pointing to couch)
Me: There wont be anyone here. No mummum (food), milk etc. Lets go to school
Anvith: No. You go and come early. I will sit here only (again pointing to couch)
Me: ^Realizing there's no way I can convince this guy^
Me: Amma will go to office and will come early. What time should I come ?
Anvith: Come at 2
Me: ^Took my laptop, car key and left the hall and went to car parking and started working there^

I was sure he will cry in 10-15 mins and ask for amma but the fellow didn't. I peeped through window and he was watching TV. I continued to work for 45 mins and this fellow started saying he has done potty. I wanted to go immediately (to avoid mess he would create) but then thought if I go right away, he will know I am at home. I waited for 15 mins and the fellow was just standing in one place. When I went after 15 mins, he saw me with a huge smile on his face and asked "Amma, office aana?" (Amma, is office over?). I said "No. I have to go now. I just came to wash your potty". I was searching where he did potty and didn't find it on the floor as I was expecting. The fellow had removed his pants and had gone to toilet to do potty. He was not able to clean his butt and that's why he called me. For a moment, I felt so touched (The toilet lights were off and the room was dark and he generally gets scared to go alone when we are at home, but that day he went alone, did it and came back). I cleaned him, gave him some snacks and water and told I am going to office. He again said "Amma, come early" (I felt like hugging him and kissing him and being there with him, but I knew if I do that he will refuse to go to school everyday). I again went to car parking and the fellow continued to watch TV. I kept peeping through the window every 15-20 mins to check if he was fine. He sat watching TV for almost an hour and then dozed off in the couch.

I came inside during lunch time (satisfied that I could do office work uninterrupted for first half of the day). He got delighted to see me and hugged me. We had lunch and some playtime. I wanted to repeat the same "going to office" natak again in the afternoon but the kid this time did not co-operate. He kept saying amma's office is over. Even I thought it's ok since he had spent half of the day alone at home.

My real intention was that if he is alone at home, he might get bored off and would ask me to take him to school but what I came to know is he is happy to be at home than in school. I didn't know whether I did correct by letting him bunk his school and be at home but one thing what I learnt in this experience is my kid can independently stay at home (not that I will do this again). I felt proud that he took care of himself and did not fuss or cry when he was alone.

Turning 30: 30 before 30

2011-09-16T21:20:00.006+05:30

Long post alert!!

I wanted to write series of posts on Turning 30 but not getting enough time to think and pen down my thoughts. One of the thing I wanted to write down was 30 items I want to complete before I hit the D day (just 1 more month to go). 1 month may be too less to cover all the things but I want to cover as much as possible and may be complete 100% things before I hit 31.

I had made a list already in my mind and did complete few items. Few more I plan to do soon. Here are the list of 30 things I want to do -

Just for me & myself:

1. Make a habit of getting up before 6.30AM regularly (looks impossible)

2. Do 20 mins yoga/exercise at least 3 times a week (had done to continuously for 3 months but got off track soon and never got back at it)

3. Get a mani/padi done in a parlour (never got it done before, dunno how it feels)

4. Have a get-together with friends (having it once in a while, want it more frequent)

5. Have a small picnic/trip along with parents (so much want this but not sure if its possible within next month)

6. Make a trip with friends and family (have a plan for next week. really hope we make it)

7. Ride Bullet (done long back 5 yrs ago...want to do it again)

8. Learn new recipe every 15 days (have done in the past, but of late no enthu to try it. Want to try it atleast for Anvith)

9. Organize things better at home and keep things tidy (My house is a total mess these days and I don't get time to arrange things since there is no maid)

10. Buy nice clothes for myself

For my prince:

11. Teach Anvith doing prayers/stotras (started since a couple of days)

12. Kiss Anvith last thing in the night and first thing in the morning and say I love you (have started and anvith also gives kisses back and says "i lul you")

13. Don't say No to him (unless it hurts him or is bad for him)

14. Get wet in the rain with him (not sure if I will try this but really want to)

15. Walk in the railway tracks with him (done it when I was kid, its so much fun n i'm sure anvith will love it)

16. Learn more pasta recipes (Anvith loves pastas and I lack variety in it)

17. Learn to bake cookies, pastries and chocolates (might be a long term goal. first thing is to buy a microwave)

18. Try to put more money into Anvith's savings box every week

19. Get more involved in Anvith's plays and try to teach him more through play

20. Take him to playgrounds more often and also arrange for play dates

For my hubby:

21. Stop (or reduce) blaming hubby for every wrong thing happens :) - yes, he has become the target to blame things on since a long time. Be it leakage in tap, shower not working, no water in tank or even no milk in fridge or anvith not eating - I blame it all on him :) All the frustrations which build up inside me due to office work or the mess created by anvith etc etc. it has to go out and I take it on hubby dear who patiently (well..sometimes) listens. I should learn to deal things practically and stop blaming poor hubby for everything.

22. Make satisfying shivalli brahmin recipes for my hubby. My hubby is a pricky eater. Its very difficult to please his tummy. He's fond of shivalli recipes and I born and brought up in GSB family am used to cook/eat GSB food. After marriage, I struggled to learn shivalli recipes and though I manage to cook it almost everyday, it doesnt get authentic taste (except sometimes, which is more by luck as my hubby says :) ). Would like to work hard on this part in the coming times.

23. Plan for a perfect b'day surprise for my hubby (whose b'day is in less than a month now)

24. Fight less with hubby :)

25. Hubby has been dreaming of going for long journey photo shoot and I always say no, since I am not sure how I will manage house and Anvith alone. Have been delaying this for a long time. May be I would want to say yes to him soon.

26. Prepare lunchbox for him everyday. Though I do it on most of the days, few days I skip it when I am in no mood or just lazzy. I know my hubby hates eating in canteen and I want to make sure that he gets to eat home food every day.

27. Make bed tea for him every morning. Have done it every day before Anvith was born and in last couple of years, I get the extra sleep in the morning and hubby wakes up earlier than me and is forced to prepare tea by himself.

28. Want to go out on a date (just like before marriage times) at least once in 3-4 months. This is more for me than for him :)

29. Go for a romantic movie following by candle-lit dinner and perhaps, a long walk on the beach holding hands in the night. (looks dreamy and impossible, yet want to)

30. Hug him more often :)

This is what happens when...

2011-09-11T22:45:00.003+05:30

you leave your toddler with a talcum powder, unattended for 15-mins -

Potty training & bottle weaning

2011-09-08T12:49:00.006+05:30

Finally I am proud to say Anvith is fully potty trained and bottle weaned. These 2 were biggest challenges to me especially getting him off the bottle as he was just addicted to drink milk from bottle which also used to put him to sleep during night. When I left him in Udupi with his grand parents, they did the magic and when he is back to Bangalore, he has never asked for a bottle! Again the credit goes to my parents who yet again helped on reaching this milestone. BTW, my mom played a major role when Anvith had to be weaned off breast feeding when he was 1 year old. We made Anvith sleep with my mom for a couple of weeks so that I was not in his sight when he woke up in the mid night for breast feed and my mom used to wake up and prepare powdered milk and feed him - multiple times in the night, loosing her sleep. I cant say enough thanks to her for this!

It was hard for Anvith to give up on breast feeding but eventually he got used to it & then addicted to drinking from bottle. When he turned 2, I tried hard making him drink from sippy cup, glass, straw etc. etc. but in vain. The fellow would not give up on his bottle. He was ready to drink juice, water or any liquid from sippy cup but not milk or boost. He needed bottle in mid night too. Without bottle he would never go back to sleep. Bottle kindof sooth him to sleep. It was bad for his tooth but he would demand on one. I also wouldn't be in a state to hear his screaming in the midnight and used to give him the bottle soon he asked for it. It went on for a long time. It was pain to wash and sterilize 6-7 bottles every night. When we traveled, I always found it difficult to keep his bottle sterile and wished I had started him directly on sippy cut instead of bottles! All his playschool mates were drinking from sipper or cup and Anvith was the only one drinking from bottle. So I somehow had to get him off the bottle.

Everything has to come to an end and his bottle feeding did come to an end when I left him in Udupi. When he asked for milk my mom used to tell him that his amma forgot to bring his bottles and they are in Bangalore. She used to tell him to drink from cup as long as he was there and later when back in Blore she told him to drink from bottle again. But the little fellow screamed, cried and banged things but wouldn't drink from cup. 2 days continued without consuming milk (except little drink mixed with rice for lunch/dinner). He never asked for it but when my parents came to him with milk cup in hand, he used to protest. 3rd day, he started getting rashes in his mouth which we believe due to heat in the body since he stopped drinking milk. 3rd day my dad decided to feed him milk no matter what. He sat with Anvith holding a ruler in hand threatening to hit him if he didn't drink. After almost 45 mins he finished 1 cup of boost. It was repeated for 3 times a day and continued as long as he was in Udupi. I was scared he would ask for his bottle after coming back to Bangalore but he had totally forgotten about it. Even when he saw one of his milk bottle, he did not ask for it. He has started hating milk now. Its a pain to make him drink 3 cups of milk everyday and each sitting goes for at least 30 mins! He's happy without it but we wouldn't let him. I have tried boost, malt, badam milk, plain milk but he doesn't seem to like anything. When I bring milk in the cup he gives all kind of excuses to run away. After bribing him and sometimes, raising voice at him, finally he finishes it. But I am happy that now he and I, both are able to sleep better during nights since he doesn't wake up asking for milk n times in the night!

Potty training: Even when Anvith was just few weeks old, when I was on maternity leave at my parents house, my mom used to hold apart Anvith's legs and make a "shsh.." sound and Anvith used to poop. This continued for few months and after I joined back to work and Anvith joined daycare, we discontinued this and he used to poop in his diaper whenever he wanted. He started communicating his need to go to toilet just a couple of months before he turned 2. By 2, he used to report su-su 90% of the times, and potty 50% of the time. When he went to Udupi this month, my mom kept him diaper free all the time and told Anvith to wake her up during night if he needs to use toiler. Since then almost all the time he tells us if he wants to do su-su and potty. There have been few accidents but very rare. I have a huge bundle of diapers and have not used one since he landed in Bangalore even when we go out of the house. I make sure that he uses toilet before he hit the bed in the night or when we go out of the house. If he wakes up in sleep, I again ask him if he wants to go to toilet. Sometimes he says yes and I take him and other times, he says no and goes back to sleep.

All in all, this has been a major milestone for Anvith and I am proud that he reached it before he turned 3!

Capturing Innocence!

2011-09-05T22:35:00.005+05:30

Just like his dad, Anvith these days is crazy about his camera and photography. Whenever his dad takes out his camera and goes outside the house for some photo clicking, Anvith follows him along with his toy camera and pretends like focusing, clicking etc. He looks so serious as if he is really trying to capture the best shot.

I must write few incidents which left me surprised (and warned me about the future in stock living with 2 photographers at home!)

- There was a bird which was knocking on our window constantly one day. I told Anvith who was busy playing with his carpentry stuff that "See there is a bird knocking on the window". Even before he saw the bird, he shouted "Where's my camera" and grabbed it from his toy box and rushed to me asking "Where is the bird, mamma. I want to take photo?"

- While in Udupi, we visited one of my cousins house who has a 4 year old son who was showing us some of his dances and performances he learnt in his school. Each time, he performed something, Anvith came in front of him and clicked a photo of his in his toy camera!

- We visited Lalbagh last weekend. While Naveen was busy clicking photos of the flowers, me and Anvith were talking a walk in the lawn and Anvith suddenly spotted dog in front of him. Immediately he took out the camera (which he asked to hang on his neck when we left home) and said "bow bow, stop. I want to click your photo" and clicked few times! Here's my budding photographer looking that day who got lot of attention from ongoing people -

Here are few glimpses of him which I captured while he was in the act -

Trip to Yercaud - Day 2

2011-09-02T23:01:00.005+05:30

We had decided to stay in Yercaud for 2N/3D but we had covered almost all the places on the first day itself. 2nd day we left to visit Pagoda Point again for early morning misty view, rose garden and kiliyur falls. Since the town itself is very small, all the tourist spots are very close to each other and if planned properly we can make yercaud visit a 1 day trip.

2nd day early morning Naveen was all ready to go for photo shoot and woke up pretty early, waiting for me to get up. I was so comfortably sleeping with multiple rug over me hating to getup from the warm bed on that chilly morning. I just told Naveen to carry on for the photo shoot alone locking the room from outside but he did not want to for security reasons. Hesitantly I woke up (cursing Naveen for not giving me another 1 or 2 hours of sleep). We reached Pagoda point at 7.15AM and the view there was breathtaking. I just couldn't believe what I was seeing...it was like I was in heaven. It was looking totally different than the view we saw the previous evening with all the fog and the fresh look just after the sun rise. It was beautiful view and only 2 of us in the spot :) It was lovely and I felt like singing a song and dancing with Naveen (no, we didn't ofcourse!) After a while hubby got fully engrossed in photography and I got quite bored and I went back to car and took a nap.

Later we visited Montfort school (were the famous movie Rockford was shot) and later we went to Kiliyur falls and it was like a mini trek down the hill and I enjoyed it thoroughly. It was my first trek after becoming a mother (and after almost 5 years). I thought I will be dead tired by the time we climbed the hills up but surprisingly I was not that tired and still had energy left for the remaining drive back to Bangalore. After visiting falls we went to the city junction and bought some fresh veggies and 2 jack fruits (2 jack fruits cost us only 50Rs. can u believe?) We were in no mood to have lunch and checked out the hotel and started our journey back to Bangalore. We left Yercaud at 3PM and reached Blore by 7PM with only half an hour break at Kamath Uphaar on the way back for evening snacks. Both took the driver seat for half the journey while the other person taking nap.

All in all, it was a superb trip and we plan to go there again along with Anvith. The drive is easy and the place is also nice with lots of good options for stay, though there are not much kid friendly places around.

Signing off with some photos -

Trip to Yercaud - Day 1

2011-08-29T13:53:00.006+05:30

Last weekend (Aug 20-21) we decided to make a short trip to Yercaud, TN. Till friday, we were thinking whether to go or not and Friday noon, we decided to go. Since Anvith was not accompanying us, we did not worry much about hotel booking or packing, food etc. After a long long time I was traveling without having to worry about whether I have packed enough diapers, wet wipes, feeding bottles, water bottles, tissue papers, fruits-biscuits, hand wash, nebulizer & medications etc etc. I booked some budget hotel which I found quickly on the net with not-so-bad review, got the route info to Yercaud, filled the tank in the night all set to leave next morning.

We left home at 8AM (an hour later than planned). Took the jail road to connect Hosur road and reached Hosur in 45 minutes to meet a huge traffic jam which took another 30 mins to cross. After Hosur, the road was superb and I was waiting to get my hands on the wheels but Naveen refused to give. We stopped at A2B near Krishnagiri for snacks after which I took over the driver seat and stretched my right leg as much as possible for a number of times. It was pure driving pleasure. I was aiming to reach 140kmph (ignoring Naveen's comments) but managed to touch only 130 that too just once. Later I re-set my limit to 120 which I was proud to touch quite a few times. Naveen was begging to stop the car and let him take over but I was in no mood. No-kid in the car meant we could take certain kind of risks. I continued till we reached Salem after which the fun was over as we entered into a village road and then ghat section, which I did not find pleasure driving but Naveen loved driving through the 20 hair pin curves in just around 30 mins. We reached Yercaud at 2PM after a half an hour break near one of the short falls on one of the ghat curves. Had lunch and checked into the hotel MM holiday inn by 2.30PM. Took an hour nap and visited Pagoda Point. Hubby did some photography and made a mental note to visit this place back next morning to photograph the view point with misty look. Later we did some boating at Yercaud lake and visited 2-3 more view points. At 7PM, the entire city was covered with fog and we were inside the car and it was literally impossible to drive since there was absolutely no visibility beyond 2 feet from the car even with fog light turned on. I experienced such a thing first time in my life and it was just too good. I feel everybody has to feel such thing at least once in their life. It is what they call being on cloud no 9 :)

After half an hour or so the fog started subsiding but it started pouring. We had earlier decided to have dinner at Hotel Sky Rocca but skipped it due to the heavy rains. Ended up having lunch at Hotel Shevaroys and reached back to hotel by 9PM.

Few photos to share -

Anvith away from parents - Then & Now

2011-08-29T13:14:00.002+05:30

Little more than a year ago, we had left Anvith at my parents place for over a month and this time we left him here for around 15 days. There is a huge difference between that time and this time. You can read about the old post here.

Last time when we left him here, he was just a 1 year 2 months old baby. I had joined back work but my mom had moved with me to look after him in Bangalore. But since my sis had come for her delivery, my mom had to return back to Udupi which meant I had to look for alternatives for taking care of Anvith. I did not think he was ready for daycare and the best I thought was sending him to Udupi along with my mom, since he was with my mom for over 6 months and they bonded very well, I thought he would be very comfortable with her. I left him in Udupi but leaving him and traveling back to Bangalore without him was much tougher than I thought. At home it was very dull and every time I used to think how he was, was he really happy there or not. Since he had not yet started talking it was very difficult to know whether he is really fine there or not (though I know my parents would take the best care of him, no doubt but I thought may be my baby needs his mother more than anyone). I used to visit him every weekend. When he sees me, his face used to lit up and he used to glue to me till I was about to leave. He used to show me how much he needs me and loved me and missed me. During one of such visit, when I had just landed at home in Udupi and stood infront of Anvith, he was totally in surprise just starring at me without blinking and I felt like he was asking me a question "Amma, are you again going to go back to Bangalore leaving me here ?" He looked very pale and when I extended my arms to pick him, he came quickly and hugged me tightly as if he never wanted me to go. That moment I decided I will take him back to Bangalore without thinking how I am going to manage. Luckily things sorted out, we got a maid and anvith also slowly adjusted to school and rest is history.

But this time things were totally different. Anvith had grown up from being a baby to a 2+ year toddler and he loves to be in a place where there is fun and play. When my parents were in Bangalore a couple of months back, he was glued to them. Check a post on it here. Ajja used to play with him all the time and he wanted ajja all the time. He wanted to sleep with ajja, eat with ajja, play with ajja and even go for walk with ajja. Since he is able to talk now, I asked him one day "Do you want to go Udupi and stay with Ajja for few days?" and his instant answer was Yes. I packed all his stuff for 2-3 weeks and went to Udupi to my parents house. I was there with him for 4-5 days during that time I observed that he was quite happy there. When I asked him if he wants to come back to Bangalore, he said No. I returned back to Bangalore on Wednesday and I had decided in case if Anvith wants me to come back I will go back the coming Saturday to pick him up. Twice a day I used to call him on phone and he used to sound all happy and update me with all things he had done, eaten etc. He was so much enthu to talk to me and after his updates, he used to say bye to me and hand over the phone to ajja or ajji, who used to give me detailed update on him later. I was content that he was very happy there. Every time when I used to ask him if he wanted to come back to Bangalore his answer was "No". His days used to be full of fun, play and visiting places (temple, beach, park, hotel etc) in the evening. Back in Bangalore, I did not have the guilt factor which I used to have last time when I left him there.

Its 3 weeks now Anvith is staying in Udupi and I came back here 2 days ago to take him back to Bangalore. As soon as he saw me, he was very happy. He still says he doesn't want to come to Bangalore but when I ask him, if he wants to come with amma, he says yes. He thinks that his Ajja is also going to come with us but when we are going to enter airport day after tomorrow without his ajja coming with us, he is going to do a big drama there. I am already thinking about how to console him. Much dreading thing is, about sending him back to playschool from Friday after full 3 weeks of vacation full of masti and 0 studies. Its going to be a herculean task for me!

Just popping to say Hi

2011-08-22T14:48:00.002+05:30

I know, I have absconded from blogger from past couple of weeks, without any notice. This month being a month of lot of long weekends, we have been traveling a lot. We traveled to Udupi on 11th Aug and were there for 5 days. We left Anvith in Udupi with my parents and traveled back to Bangalore post Independence day. He is having a superb fun time with his grand parents who are pampering him a lot, roaming around the city especially car street, Krishna mutt watching all the events going on due to Krishna Janmashtami and at the end of the day refusing to go back home. He is also talking to us over phone and telling us what all he did. Never he mentions about coming back to Bangalore :( He is all happy and enjoying his vacations there and back in Bangalore, Naveen and me are having some care free days. Eating outside, going for late night drives etc. etc. We also made a trip to Yercaud last weekend and planning to go for bowling and a movie tonight. This weekend, I will be going back to Udupi to bring Anvith back here. All in all all of us are having a great fun (much needed indeed). Missing Anvith already but I wonder if he will be ready to come to Bangalore. He has already declared that he doesn't want to go to school!

After I wrote my last post on Exhausting days, I decided to have a good break from things and planned all these at last minute and I wish this month is not coming to an end since it means no more holidays for next 3-4 months and only work work work! Just wanted to post an update about what's happening. Detailed posts will come soon.

Exhausting days...

2011-08-03T14:48:00.003+05:30

Past few days have been so exhausting .... Reasons -

- I am not keeping well since past few days. Got a terrible cough and throat infection. My body and mind doesn't co-operate much to complete office or household chores. Yet there is no option!

- From couple of weeks, Anvith wakes up a lot of times in the night. If it was just milk, it was okay but the fellow demands for toys, dress, dry fruits all of a sudden in the mid-night and wont take a NO as a response.

- Anvith is having cough attacks yet again since from a month now. We end up doing nebulizations even 2-3 times in a day at times.

- Most of my team mates in my current project in office are leaving. It's kind of giving a pressure on me to think, whether is it time for me to move on from this company since its already been 6 long years here. I am not able to decide on it as yet since I really don't have any problem with this job. It's just that all are moving on which is kind of giving me a tough time.

All what I dream for:
--------------------------

- I wish I get generous hugs from my hubby and my kiddo :)

- I wish hubby take care of cooking dinner at least when I am not well (BTW, he is an amazing cook but of-late becoming too lazy to enter kitchen ;) )

- I wish hubby sleeps with anvith for 2 nights a week, so that I can get full sleep and much needed rest

- Want a SPA package :)

- How I wish my mom was staying with me.....at least in the same city...

At last, I NEED A BREAK FROM THE SAME MONOTONOUS STUFF!!!

Terrible 2 or sweet 2 ?

2011-07-29T09:53:00.002+05:30

Anvith's favorite number these days is 2. His teacher tells me that his numbering always start from 2. Even if they ask him to say 1, he ignores it! At home, all the questions we ask him which should be a number in a reply, his answer is always 2. Other than number 2, his favorite is yellow color. He is just obsessed with yellow that there were few times, when I wake up in the night to change his wet pants, he demands that the next pant he wears has to be yellow. I don't have much stock of yellow pants and most importantly I don't have energy left to search for his *yellow* pants when he wakes me up at 2AM. I pick something close to yellow like orange or light green but the fellow recognizes its not yellow and says that he wants a yellow one only. By the time I negotiate with him, both of our sleep would have gone and we would be wide awake. He's becoming such a stubborn kid these days. At times, he wants exactly he has asked for. Not ready for any compromises!

Few of Q&A between us and him -

Me: How old are you ?
Anvith: 2

Me: How many dosa's you want ?
Anvith: 2

Me: How many friends do you have ?
Anvith: 2

Me: How old is amma ?
Anvith: 2

Me: How many pettu do you want ?
Anvith: 2

Me: How much do you love your amma ?
Anvith: 2

Me: What color dress you want to wear ?
Anvith: yellow color

Me: Which color pasta should I make today ?
Anvith: yellow color

Me: What coloring you did in school today?
Anvith: yellow color

Weekend update

2011-07-25T10:28:00.002+05:30

Last week I was feeling quite low throughout for one or the other reason and all I wanted at the weekend was a real break from everything and some good fun and it was all I got. It was all about attending parties, meeting old friends and new people. To sum it all it was a superb weekend and I feel very relaxed and hope to continue in this good mood throughout the week.

Saturday I met one of my very close friend from engineering days. I visited her home with Anvith. Though we both stay in Bangalore, we hardly get to meet since she stays in other end of the city. Last time we met was more than 1 n 1/2 years and Friday when I had called her up, she invited me to her home and I decided to go without thinking twice. Friday night I had told Anvith that "Tomorrow we will go to Pooja akka's house and he was super excited. As soon as he woke up on Saturday, he started telling lets go to Poo akka's house. Anvith and me took a BMTC bus ride (it was first time for anvith traveling in bus in Bangalore) and he enjoyed looking outside the window and pointing at various things on the road throughout the 1 hr journey. While Anvith had a fun play time with her 3 year old daughter we both talked all about our college days, friends, family and what not. Within no time, it was time to leave. Anvith was feeling very sad to leave. He bonded with my friends daughter so well that he kept on telling let's go to akka's house again in our journey back to house.

We also attended 2 birthday parties in the weekend. It was Naveen's Ex-collegue's son and his friend's daughter's bday. It was again meeting Naveen's old friends and remembering old days. All of Naveen's friends kids are almost same age as of Anvith and he had a superb time playing with the kids and the ballon's and the stuff in the party hall. It was very late when we reached home. Anvith wanted to play with his return gifts received and was in no mood to sleep. Finally at 12AM after making a deal that he can sleep with his toys next to him, he decided to go to sleep :)

All in all, it was a great weekend after a very long time.

Turning 30 - 3 months to go

2011-07-22T10:01:00.003+05:30

Exactly 3 months from today, I will be turning 30! I can't believe I'm this old already. Feels like my 20's just flew away just like that. I don't know how others feel when they turn 30, but it is big deal for me. When I am asked about my age, I think I will feel weird to say I am 30 something. It's round the corner and there is no escape! Being in 20's was the best part of my life. All my major decisions were taken in this decade - graduation, getting a job, getting married, going onsite and finally having a baby - all are over. Now I feel I don't have anything specific to look forward in my 30's & hence it might turn to be a boring decade. But I really don't want it to be!

Sometimes I sit and wonder, what will change when I get into my 30's ? Am I supposed look differently, older and talk wiser ? Will I start having grey hairs ? Am I supposed to start using anti-aging products ? Will I have to start thinking about old-age home...I don't know. I'm freaking out. I really don't feel that different than how I was 2 years ago. But still there is some pressure within that I have completed almost half of my life, that too the best part of my life - the childhood, teenage days, college life, first love, first job, getting that first salary, doing night outs with friends, the marriage and the first look at the bundle of joy I had in my hand when I delivered my baby & what not. All these won't come back again.

The good part is still I have 3 more months before I hit the big day. I decided that in these 3 month's from now, I am going to work towards getting this miserable feeling out of me and welcome my 30th bday with open heart. I will also be writing a series of posts on this milestone in the coming weeks. I will also be making a list of things I hope to achieve before I hit the big 3-0. Keep watching this space for more details :)

Letting go...

2011-07-20T10:02:00.002+05:30

Sometimes we believe that some things are just ours, have been ours for years and one fine day you are made to realize that though it was with you for years, it really was never yours. It becomes so hard to accept the fact, to let know that what you believed for years is not true and it's time to let go of it.

Liked the following poem a lot -

To let go does not mean to stop caring,
it means I can't do it for someone else.
To let go is not to cut myself off,
it's the realization I can't control another.
To let go is not to enable,
but allow learning from natural consequences.
To let go is to admit powerlessness, which means
the outcome is not in my hands.
To let go is not to try to change or blame another,
it's to make the most of myself.
To let go is not to care for,
but to care about.
To let go is not to fix,
but to be supportive.
To let go is not to judge,
but to allow another to be a human being.
To let go is not to be in the middle arranging all the outcomes,
but to allow others to affect their destinies.
To let go is not to be protective,
it's to permit another to face reality.
To let go is not to deny,
but to accept.
To let go is not to nag, scold or argue,
but instead to search out my own shortcomings and correct them.
To let go is not to adjust everything to my desires,
but to take each day as it comes and cherish myself in it.
To let go is not to criticize or regulate anybody,
but to try to become what I dream I can be.
To let go is not to regret the past,
but to grow and live for the future.

To let go is to fear less and love more
and
To let go and to let God, is to find peace !

- Author unknown

Life is becoming too stressful for lot of reasons and writing here is making me loose some stress. I might even delete this post after a while.

My Hero in school uniform

2011-07-18T21:41:00.004+05:30

Last weekend Anvith's school distributed school uniform, bag and books for the play school kids. As soon as we got back home, Anvith was super excited to open the bag and see what all was inside it. It had school uniform, a hat, crayon set and lots of books. As soon as he saw them all, he wanted to wear the dress, hat and open the books. Here is the pic taken when my little hero got dressed up in school attire -

PS: Today being Monday, I was expecting some crankiness in him in the morning, since he hates going to school after spending 2 days at home with me and his dad. But he was super excited to wear his new bag and hat and go to school and I heard from his teacher that, full day he was in very good mood.

Growth updates

2011-07-18T20:19:00.001+05:30

Long post alert!!!!

Last weekend I was having a look at my posts for previous few months and I realized I haven't written about development and growth update about Anvith. I realized that, there are so many things I missed noting down. Here is an attempt to recollect few things which is coming to my mind right now. Hope to come up with more frequent growth update posts so that I don't miss out on his antics!

- Anvith loves coloring. In school whenever he is given some shapes to color, he finishes his very soon and then goes to other kids to help them finish theirs.

- He got a little younger brother couple of week's ago (Naveen’s sis delivered baby). Since then Anvith keeps asking “Akka illa poya ? baabu undu” (Shall we go to Akka’s house ? There is a baby there). We keep hearing it at least 10-15 times a day. When we take him there, he loves watching the baby and calls him “paapu”.

- He has started doing lot of pretend plays. He does cooking with utensils. He prepares something and comes and gives it to me and his dad and says its “mum mum”. When we say it tastes so good, he feels so happy and makes us eat more and more. He sits in the driver seat in the car and tells me to sit in the next seat and asks me to close the “baalu” (baagilu, door). Once I do, he says “Tata poya” (shall we go tata?) and when I ask him where to go, he says “park”. When I ask him “what will you do after going to park?”, he says “see-saw”. Then he pretends to start the engine by inserting the key below the steering, changes the gear and moves the steering! (Great observation skills, I say. He grasped all these looking at me/hubby starting the car!)

- Anvith’s pachchi(his mousi - `my sis) had brought him a small kiddie laptop for his 1st b’day but since he was too young then we never gave it to him until few days back. Now he loves to play music in his “tappu” (he calls tappu for laptop). He is so much in love with this tappu that he sleeps with it and asks for it to be switched on waking up in the middle of the night. One good thing with this is, now he doesn’t come to touch mine or hubby’s laptop, since has his own now which he calls as “baabu’s tappu”

- Every day after I pick him from his daycare, we go for a walk in our layout for 30-45 mins and we both love it so much. It’s Anvith’s favorite time of the day. He loves to collect stones, flowers or play in the sand with his beach set near the under-construction houses, loves watching the JCB’s or concrete mixers doing their job, loves watching other bigger kids cycling and waves hi at them (some of them when they don’t wave back, he feels sad :( ). Every day I let him choose the street where he wants to go for the walk. Towards the end, when we take the street back to our house, he resists to come back saying let’s go tata again. It’s a difficult task to convince him to come back home (Only bribing works!)

- He has learnt doing “maaya” (magic). Today evening I was playing with him on our bed, Anvith was eating popcorns. I was begging at him to give me one (These days he refuses to share anything with anyone!) He took a popcorn in each hand, closed his fist and hid his hands beneath his armpit and said “Maaya”. I was surprised to hear it since we never taught him that at home. I think he learnt it in school. He repeated the same after his dad got back home and he too was surprised.

- Anvith doesn't like sharing. Just few weeks back whenever we went to children’s park he used to share his beach set with other kids and play with them. From last 2 weeks, he is refusing to share anything with other kid (for that matter, he refuses to share anything with us at home too). Even if he is not playing with some toy, when some kid comes and asks, he holds it tightly and says “No no” to the kid. I have been trying to teach him sharing things since then.

- He can wear and remove his shoes by himself and can put the shoe to the correct leg. He can remove his pants/knickers if he has to go to bathroom. He is practicing putting it back and I am sure he will learn it in few days. He can wash his hands himself.

- Anvith still hates bath time especially when it’s about taking head bath. It’s very challenging to bring him inside the bathroom. He keeps saying we will take bath tomorrow and tries to divert us. These days to make bath little fun, I have started asking him to point his body parts where to put soap, water. This is keeping him little distracted while I get away with bathing him.

- Food likes. All he wants for dinner these days is either pasta or coleslaw. I usually give him 2 choices to select from for daily dinners. Rice or chapathi, chapathi or paratha, pasta or rice, noodles or rice etc etc. These days even before I give him a choice, he says he wants pasta. I use pastas made with sooji (ones manufactured by bambino) but still I feel they might not be the healthiest if used regularly. Hence I try to make pasta for dinner just once a week and rarely twice. I am trying to see where I can get whole wheat pasta’s but not found any shop yet. His craze for pasta is gone to the extent that even if I offer him dried beans or pigeon peas and call it as pasta, he happily gulps it down! Anything with Mayonnaise is coleslaw for him. Cheese comes next. Any dishes with cheese pleases him. Easiest way to feed breakfast to him is put cheese in it. Be it sandwich, dosa, chapathi or even idli’s. What he hates in food – RICE, which is what me and Naveen eats everyday for dinner. This fellow turns his face when he looks at rice.

- Driving has been fun of late. Till a month back, I never used to drive my car alone with Anvith. He could keep quite only for 5-10 mins after which he used to try coming on my lap or let go of my hand from the gear or disturb me in many ways that I decided to stop taking him alone so as not to take any risk. From last 3-4 weeks, Naveen has been busy visiting his parents who are in Blore in their daughter's house that most of the weekend's its only me and Anvith at home and we both need to manage all shopping alone. So I decided to take Anvith and put a pre-condition that he should wear seat belt and should not move from his place otherwise I will not take him tata. He agreed and ever since he is behaving good inside the car which means we have more frequent park visits or just going for drives, window shopping etc.

Finally a photo of my chutku who has grown much taller now -

Anvith's Work - Crafts

2011-07-14T10:00:00.002+05:30

Through out this month Anvith's playschool is teaching the kids about various insects. They also went for nature walk yesterday and showed the kids some real insects and the kids had some great time. Anvith is now able to identify lot of insects and during our evening walks, he identifies few insects and shows them to me. Last week they taught the kids about Bumble bee and also made the kids do some craft work on it. Here are few pictures of Anvith's work. Cutting work was done by the teachers and sticking the pieces where done by Anvith under teacher's guidance.

Anvith's Work - Colouring

2011-07-01T13:53:00.003+05:30

Theme for previous week:
Hygiene
Letters: A, B
Numbers: 1, 2

A for Apple

2011-06-28T09:42:00.003+05:30

Anvith is being exposed to Alphabets & numbers in play school now and every week they teach him 2 alphabets & 2 numbers and lot of words starting with those alphabets. They also will have to color the alphabets. Last week they taught them A, B, 1 & 2. His teacher tells us that he is very attentive in class and got great concentration skills. He learns the things very fast and more importantly remembers whatever was taught in the past (TOUCHWOOD). Every week they have been sending the craft works & coloring works they do in the class and I really get surprised when I see some of Anvith's works. I feel so proud looking at his work and few of them really bring tear to my eyes.

Since he is learning alphabets in school, at home also we are kind-of exposing him to the same things. We have brought a big chart of alphabets with pictures and Anvith loves to stand in front of it and identify few letters and more pictures in it. We also have big alphabet mat and I take the alphabets of that week and stick it to our fridge. There is another book which I bought long back, Alphabets with pictures and Anvith loves reading that too.

Yesterday evening my hubby was sitting with Anvith and they were turning though the Alphabets book and here is how he recognizes the alphabets.

H (hubby): A for
A (Anvith): Apple

H: B for
A: Ball

H: C for
A: Cat

H: D for
A: bow bow

H: E for
A: aane (Elephant)

H: F for
A: puppa (pushpa, flower)

H: G for
A: daashi (drakshi, grates)

H: I for
A: i-ceam (ice-cream)

We just love to hear him say these :)

Bonding with Grand parents

2011-06-22T23:21:00.003+05:30

Anvith is so well bonded with my parents that whenever they are here, he is glued to them. His favorite buddy is his ajja and when Ajja is at home, Anvith is so happy. Ajja is the only person who has never raised his voice at Anvith even when Anvith doesnt co-operate or makes messes. My dad has great amount of patience which I really admire. Anvith does demand lot of physical activities from my dad and though at this age, when he really gets tired when Anvith calls he just can't say No. He takes Anvith for walking carrying him for more than 2km everyday. Takes him up and down the stairs probably 10-20 times in a day, plays aane with anvith where anvith sits on my dad's back while my dad moves around in 4 legs, spends half an hour for each meal running behind him and what not. At the end of the day, he becomes so tired yet he doesn't reveal.

Ever since Anvith was born, he always slept beside me during the night except for 1 month when I had sent him to Udupi before putting him in daycare. It also means I never had continuous 8 hours of sleep ever since Anvith was born. First 2 years he used to wake up every 2-3 hours and from past couple of months he wakes up just once or twice in the night. I don't know when the kids will start sleeping through full night and I can't wait for that time to come. There are times I always long to get those sweet uninterrupted 8 hours of sleep especially when I am sick or had a stressful day at work but its impossible to get. Hubby dear never agrees to sleep with Anvith since Anvith moves around a lot in sleep and my hubby is scared what if he gets to the edge of the bed or what if he accidentally keeps his feet or arm over Anvith's face or body etc etc. Most importantly he doesn't have enough patience to deal with Anvith when he wakes up in the night crying recklessly without telling why (must be from the dreams is what I think). Only mantra he knows to apply at that time is spanking him which I don't like and so I never let Anvith sleep with his dad.

Last 4 days when my dad came here to take my mom back to Udupi, Anvith started demanding to be slept with his Ajja in the night. My dad also said its okay, let him sleep with him. I was also very happy because, that night I could get much-awaited long uninterrupted sleep. I also had a fear that he will wake up in the night and ask for me and he did that. My dad brought him to my room at 2AM but the fellow refused to sleep telling he also wants ajja to sleep with him. Later hubby came and told him in high pitch either you sleep with ajja or amma and the poor fellow chose ajja and went back downstairs to sleep. 2nd night yet again he demanded to be slept with ajja. Now its been 4 days and every night when I ask him to come with me, he refuses and says he will sleep with ajja. Though I think I should be happy that now at-least I can get uninterrupted sleep, I actually miss him badly even though he is in the same house.

Tomorrow my parents are going back and I know he has to come back to sleep with me. I am also sure that he will throw tantrums asking for Ajja for next 2-3 days and will wake up in the middle of the night asking for Ajja.

I, who was always thinking that I am indispensable part of Anvith's life first time realized that no, I'm actually not! He chose my dad over me when it came to co-sleeping. It did pinch me. I also realized what a fool I've been to think I'm so indispensable in his life. No one ever is. It's something we fool ourselves with, building this notion of importance about ourselves, for ourselves. Though today he is depended on me for 100 things, we tend to forget one day they become independent and fly away. That's the reality!

Weekend outing

2011-06-20T09:40:00.006+05:30

Last weekend was a superb one. Saturday we had been to Cubbon Park, Bal Bhavan and Indira Ghandhi Musical Fountain and Anvith enjoyed a lot. Sunday there was some special cooking at home and also I spoke to my very good friend who is overseas after a long long time. I managed to watch 2 movies - "Pyaar ka panchnaama" and "Tees maar khan" and I enjoyed both a lot though TMK I was watching for the 2nd time. After a long time, I spent Sunday full day being at home. Anvith was having a slight temperature and we decided to skip our Sunday park visit. Had some gup-chup with parents who will be leaving to Udupi this week. That means an end to: getting 1/2 an hour extra sleep in the mornings since mom took over lot of my morning kitchen chores, having the veggies ready and coconut scrapped when I come back from office, throwing the vessels in the sink without worrying about washing it, clean kitchen-bedroom all the time, all laundries done, getting so much needed alone-time when my mom plays with Anvith, uninterrupted 20 mins for yoga and lot more. I am really going to miss having mom stay with me. It was almost 1 month back she visited here and I have really become so lazy that I have started worrying how I am going to manage without her :(

Anyway, back to the subject line. Posting below few snaps from the outing. Anvith had cotton candy for the first time and he just loved it.

Mr. Clean Freak

2011-06-17T13:51:00.003+05:30

Of-late Anvith is going through this phase where he expects everything to be clean else he will not even touch it. Well, I do really like some part of it but I am worried that his this habit prevents him in enjoying the play. All @ home say that it is my kiya-karaya as I am also a cleanliness freak to the extent that I wash my hands with soap at-least 10-20 times a day, don’t use common loos because it’s dirty etc etc. I really don’t know if Anvith does follow me in all this or not, but here are few incidents which shows how much of a perfectionist he is -

- If there is even little water or food spilled on his shirt, he immediately says “Shirt chichi” (dirty shirt) and asks us to change his shirt immediately. Sometimes when we clear off the food particle in his shirt and say there is “no chichi” (dirt) now, he searches all over his shirt with great detail and identifies some area with any dark spot and declares it is still chichi and demands for change.

- We have 3 washrooms in the house, 1 in living-room which is commonly used through-out the day and hence the floor remains wet most of the times. When we are in living room and Anvith needs to use wash room, we take him to there. If the floor is too wet and we ask Anvith to use this room when he has to, he declares this room is chichi and points upstairs and says “vairi” (upstairs) saying he wants to use the washroom upstairs.

- It’s raining most of the evening these days here in Bangalore and hence we have reduced the frequency to visit parks. Last weekend it drizzled a bit and then stopped and hence we decided to take Anvith to our regular park. There were very less kids as it was cloudy and could rain anytime and most of the rides were empty. We took Anvith to the swing which had little water on the seat. I wiped it off and asked Anvith to sit but the fellow refused saying “it is chichi”!

- The other day we went to Bannerghatta zoo. On the way to the entrance of the zoo, we have to cross the BMTC bus top and there were few Volvo buses standing. Anvith generally loves going in the buses. That day while crossing I was asking Anvith if he wants to go in the bus. I was surprised to hear this from his mouth. What he said was “Bus chichi” and he didn’t want to go, as the bus had too much dirt on.

- After he is done playing or eating where his hands get dirty, he immediately comes to me and says “haathu chichi” and waits for me to clean it off. Same thing he does after he finishes eating and asks to wipe his mouth.

- Whenever he has runny nose & he needs to use tissues, he runs to the kitchen to get the tissue paper and wipes off the nose himself and goes and throws the tissues to the dustbin. I love it when he does it all by himself (that too pretty neat I say) without any help from us.

- Sometimes when he accidentally does su-su on the floor (very very rare these days), he goes and gets the wipe cloth kept separately for this purpose, wipes off the floor and keeps it back.

- Sometimes he refuses to walk on the road saying it is dirty especially when it had just stopped raising and the road becomes dirty with mud and stuff.

Leaving a photo of the sweet little monster here -

Anvith Talks

2011-06-14T09:45:00.002+05:30

We see lot of improvements in his talking every day. He picks up new words so fast from Konkani/Tulu/Kannada/English (in that order) though pronunciation is still not perfect. Whenever he speaks some new word, we won’t understand it at first shot. After a few repetitions and guess work by me and my hubby we finally get what he says. Believe me it’s so fun to make meaning of the word what he says. Me and Naveen will be so enthu to find out who gets it first :) There are a few words he picks from his Malayalam and Telugu care-takers in the school though we never understand what it means! These days we also see him using English words more than other language. “Come” & “No” are the most frequent word we hear from him every day.

- When I go out of his sight when he is playing with me, he loudly says “Ashatha come” until I come back. Yes, he has started calling me by my name (he ignores the letter k in my name though) these days and when he does, it always brings a wide smile on my face. He still doesn’t know to pronounce his dad’s name (and his own name :( )

- His daycare teacher who used to tell us, he was not talking in school a month back now tells us he talks a lot with teachers as well as other kids. But he uses a lot of Konkani words that half of the things he speaks no-one understands there :D

- He repeats the sentences whatever we speak in day-to-day.

- Every day after we come home in the evening, I ask him about his daycare and he gives me a brief happening of things. i.e I ask him all sort of questions and he gives me reply with 1-2 words. It’s so fun to hear it from him instead of depending on his daily status reports.

- We have decorated our fridge with lots of pictures of Winnie- the-pooh characters and he loves standing in front of it and identifying the animals. He can recognize and say “totois” (tortoise), pooh, aabit (rabbit), shekka (sherkhan) etc. etc… There is big sticker of pooh bear which he always calls as “aane” (elephant).

New additions to the list of words he speaks: (just typing whatever is coming to my mind right now...I'm sure I am missing on lot of words here)

Amma come/commmme..aaa.., Appa come, mamma come etc
Auto (alto), innaya (innova), iniya (indica), anda ty (Honda city), yen (zen), jaysee (JCB), lolly (lorry)
Boosh (boost)
Eya (eva)
Sakal (down)
airi (vairi, up)
shun (spoon)
Lytchee
Cocon (pop corn)
i-keem (ice cream)
chelly (cherry)
shama (sama)
shaman (saamanu)
shakkil (cycle)

The best one is:
Coca sin (concrete mixer – no idea how this word got into this mind but every time we ask him to say concrete mixer he always says this!)

Story time

2011-06-07T09:39:00.004+05:30

Me: One day Anna was feeling hungry
Anvith: Mama
Me: No anna was feeling hungry
Anvith:No no...mama
Me: Ok. mama was feeling hungry one day
Anvith: [nods his head]
Me: So he went to a hotel
Anvith: hotel
Me: What he wants to eat ?
Anvith: doshe (dose)
Me: ok...along with dose what he wants ?
Anvith: shakkar (sugar)
Me: No, shakkar is bad for health. Mama wants chutney
Anvith: no no...shakkar
Me: okay. mama wants shakkar as well as chutney
Anvith: [happy]
Me: Mama finishes eating dose. He wants to drink something. He wants coffee
Anvith: nunnu (milk)
Me: No. mama wants coffee
Anvith: no..nunnu...nunnu
Me: ok. mama wants nunnu
Me: He drinks nunnu. Now he wants to go shopping
Anvith: total (referring to Total mall where we always go for shopping)
Me: ok. mama will go to total mall. How will he go ?
Anvith: car
Me: which car ?
Anvith: auto (alto)
Me: ok. he does shopping and gets tried and goes to sleep
Anvith: mama thathi (mama sleeping)

Rare days..

2011-05-30T10:40:00.003+05:30

How I wish if every day began like today when - (KATA TIKHA to this post)

- Anvith wakes up a little late than normal time, giving us enough time to finish off all house-hold chores

- As soon as he wakes up, when his dad tells him “Let’s go and take bath” he says “No. First we should brush” and shows the place to go and brush

- As soon as he is done with brushing, he says “now bushsha (Bath)” and shows the way to bathroom

- Then he asks for “Boost” and finishes within 5 mins and gets dressed up without any fuss

- Gets on the bike without any cries while dad tells him “let’s go to school”

- When dad starts the bike, Anvith shows the way to his school till he reaches school

- Gets off from the bike and goes with the care-taker till the school door and turns back and does “tata” to his dad

All this today being Monday after 2 days of holidays! I just did not believe when Naveen called me up and told this 15 mins back. (Generally all Monday’s Anvith shows too much crankiness as he doesn’t like to go to school. By Wednesday his mood lifts up and Fridays he loves going to school) I so much wanted to post this right away. I am so so happy and pray every day goes like this (expecting too much ? :) )

Itchy red bumps all over the body

2011-05-24T09:15:00.003+05:30

Our visit to hospitals/clinics seems to be never-ending and so is popping of medicines into Anvith's tiny body. Just in this month we have taken him to doctors 4-5 times for totally different reasons. Yesterday it was high fever with red bumps all over his body.

Last weekend Anvith was in a happy mood playing in full enthu with dad, mom and mamama (my mom). Yesterday morning when he woke up his body was warm and when I checked his temperature it was around 98. I gave him paracetamol and sent him to daycare while I went office. After a couple of hours I got a call from his daycare telling his temp has raised beyond 102 and he is feeling weakish. I immediately took him home and gave paracetamol again. Till evening there was no drop in temperature and at around 8PM, red bumps started appearing all over his body. We took him to the nearby clinic and the doc told its allergy to something and he asked us if we gave him any new food or chocolates or new medicines. Immediately I remembered on Sunday he had eaten kit-kat for the first time. Doc said mostly that's the culprit. His body is rejecting some substance in that chocolate and hence he is having high temperature and the rashes. He gave some medicine and gave some diet restrictions for next 3-4 days.

We generally do not give Anvith any chocolates. He only eats peppermints or similar candies which doesn't contain any cocoa as it causes continuous cough to him. Very rarely he sometimes gets his hands at some chocolates when we are grocery shopping and if diverting-his-attention-and-grabbing-the-choc-from-his-hand doesn't work, we end up giving him one (to avoid the drama he creates in the shop otherwise). Most of the times it has been either munch, dairy milk, gems or eclairs. I don't think he has eaten any other chocolate other than these. Even his daycare takes care of not giving him any chocs or give selective ones whenever there is some kids b'day. Last Sunday while grocery shopping, Anvith snatched some chewing gums kept near the billing counter. I tried to take it out of his hand but he refused to give up. Later I told him, I will give him another chocolate and this was not good. I found kit-kat in the same rack and just gave him that and got the chewing gum back from him. I thought since he eats Munch, this also is similar to that and wouldn't cause any problems. He ate the full chocolate in half an hour. Next day I didn't even have a clue that his all-of-a-sudden-fever was anything to do with the chocolates until the doc told so.

Today he still has temperature around 100 but the rashes have pretty much gone. And the chocolates are now banned inside our house!

Play, Hurt and STITCHES!

2011-05-16T11:28:00.006+05:30

Last weekend was a scary one...we having to rush to emergency room in the midnight with pool of blood coming out from Anvith's chin while he screamed in pain...then we having to wait outside the treatment room in emergency ward hearing loud cries from Anvith as he was being stitched up...we feeling so helpless and also guilty that we couldn't prevent the accident..

Saturday night me and hubby were watching the movie "Zathura" on some TV channel after dinner and Anvith was playing with his favorite car as usual. He roams around the living room in his car filling stuffs into the box beneath the seat having fun...This he does almost everyday ever since we bought him the new big car for his 2nd b'day. This Saturday night was just like any other night. He was playing in his car and stuffing the box with some items we bought that evening from grocery shopping. The box was too heavy since he filled it up lot of heavy things. All of a sudden he stood up and tried to do the stunt by trying to lift the car. Since it was heavy, he couldn't balance himself and fell down to the floor with car on top of him. The bottom portion of the car had some sharp edge and it hit Anvith under his chin and he got a deep cut. He screamed and the blood started gushing out of this chin and 2-3 tissue papers were totally wet. Initially we thought it would be a minor cut but when we had a proper look at it, it looked like a deep cut. It was 10.45 in the night and there were no hospitals near our home which was open at that time. We called Sagar Apollo, Jaynagar and they said they were open and asked to bring him immediately. We took Anvith there and in the next half an hour they did some first aid and wanted a surgeon to have a look to check he needs a stitch.

We were praying that he wont need the stitches and it is a minor cut but the surgeon said he indeed needs stitches. Suddenly some assistant came and recommended some surgical glue to the doctor and said if we can try that to avoid the stitches and the doctor agreed but they did not have the stock in hospital. They asked Naveen to go and check in nearby medical shops and get it. Naveen went to 4-5 shops and nowhere he got that glue. It was already 1 hour passed and doc was telling we need to go for stitches now. She said he will be screaming, shouting and restless and are we OK to go ahead. We were like "do we have any other choice?" Finally they took him to the OT with 4-5 nurses holding Anvith tightly as possible. I couldn't see this. They asked me and my hubby "Which one of you is stronger and can come inside the theater". Naveen went inside and I had to wait outside the room. But he couldn't stay there for beyond 5 mins and just came out. Those 15 mins were the worst part of my life. Sitting outside hearing painful screams from Anvith in between he calling "Ammmaaaa" and saying "Nakka" (No) to them ...and the doctors shouting at him telling "Bayi muchchu" since he was struggling to get out of the bed and it was disturbing their work in stitching him. I felt like my heart was jumping out of my mouth. I was praying each minute to God to not cause pain to Anvith and I was feeling so guilty for not watching over him while he was trying to lift the car. If I had paid attention to him instead of watching the movie I really would have prevented all this night mare.

Finally after 15 mins in the surgical theater the doctor called me inside. I just didn't have guts to look at Anvith. He was looking so helpless lying on the bed in pain totally wet due to the sweat he produced while he was being held tightly 5 nurses while he was opposing. As soon as he saw me, he got some relief and I was just waiting to lift him up. But the doc had to cover the stitched area and clean it up and I got to hold him in 5 mins. He hugged me tightly and I promised myself I will never let anything like this happen again. We left for home at 1.30AM with list of antibiotics and pain killer for him and by the time we reached Anvith had gone to sleep.

Its 2 days since all this happened and Anvith is now feeling much better except that he is too much irritated with the band aid they put to the stitched area and asks us to remove it now and then. Now I'm just hopeful that it will heal up with minimal scarring. Next step for me is to double check inside the house and make sure everything is baby proofed. We've baby-proofed whatever we can, but there are probably a thousand ways still for the kids to hurt themselves. I know I can't prevent all injuries from happening, but I still feel bad that it happened. But I really thank God that it ended with this and not something WORSE. I really hope and pray that God gives us enough strength to look after Anvith and prevent all such injuries to his tiny body!

Finally, here is the pic of our little wounded soldier who got back on his favorite car forgetting that it caused him so much of pain! -

My aim is shieyaa...

2011-05-12T20:44:00.000+05:30

Main entertainment at home these days has been Anvith singing (trying to) and dancing to the song "My name is shiela...shiela ki jawani". Its his absolute favorite and as soon as I come home he asks me to play it saying "Amma...shieya..shieya". The moment the initial beats start he starts singing "My aim ish shieyaaa..." and starts putting steps to it. He goes on for an hour or more. The song should flow continuously and if I stop in between he again comes near laptop and asks me to play. Sometime after a few rounds I change the song and start putting nursery rhymes but the fellow keeps asking for "shiela"...I wish I could put the recoded dance here but I still didn't get a hang of how to upload videos :(

Happy Mother's Day

2011-05-10T10:45:00.003+05:30

Here are wishes for all the mom’s out there – HAPPY BELATED MOTHER’s DAY. Hope you all had a great day with your loved ones. The post is coming a little late but that’s because I have hardly logged on to my laptop from last 3 days. My parents arrived to our home on Saturday eve and ever since I am trying to spend as much time as possible with them. I am very lucky that this mother’s day my mom was with me. I made sure that I didn’t fight with her or made her feel sad :) I took my mom n dad out to Ragi gudda temple along with Anvith (who is now un-control-able since he is the center of attraction at home who is pampered by ajja-ajji to the core!). I later took them out for a lunch in a restaurant and we had some good talk over some good food. After the off I took from office yesterday, making the last weekend a long weekend with lots of fun, I don’t feel like working today and so did Anvith who cried a lot when we sent him to daycare. Anyways before I drift away from the subject, let me thank my mom for all the countless sacrifices she made and all the love she shared with us.

Dear Mom,

I am grateful to you and respect you –

- For looking after us along with the household stuff all alone when Dad got transferred to different cities and could visit us only during weekends. Just because our studies were not affected if we had moved to different city, you scarified moving away with Dad and took responsibility of raising us all alone for over 10 years! You could have put us to some hostel and move-in with Dad but you did not do that. Love you for that and love dad and a hats off to you. I know those 10 years how tough it was for you…staying away from your family, being alone at dorm and not having good food to eat and too much of field work. I am happy it all ended 3 years ago when you got retired from work though you wished you had more service.

- Those days when I was in 12th and I had tuition early morning at 6 and Mom, you used to wake up much earlier just to prepare breakfast for me, keep hot water ready for my bath and all things like uniforms, books etc kept ready so that I get to sleep extra.

- When I had fever, you used to spend so many sleepless nights to take care of me…to put wet cloth on my forehead from time-to-time and to give water/juice for me to drink.

- When I used to yell at you for making dosa’s for breakfast (since I hated them), just for me you used to prepare some different food so that I don’t go to school/collage in empty stomach.

- For tolerating me when I was in teen-age and used to argue and fight with you for every small thing. You had a great deal of patience to handle the angry-minded me at that age.

- For taking care of all house-hold chores all-alone. I know I never used to offer any help to you but you never complained 

- The care you took for me and Anvith after I delivered baby. Since I had to get back to work and Anvith was too small, you came to stay with us for few months to look after him so that I can join back to work peacefully.

- Even now when I feel down or Anvith is not well you and Dad rush here so that I always have an extra hand when needed.

- For all the endless support you gave and the care and love you showed.

Lot of things you did for us cannot be even explained in words. You are always there when we need you and I am really proud and happy to have you as my mom. I have hurt your feelings a number of times but you forget all that and always share more love and I am really grateful for you for that. I know its not enough for what you did but I just want to say a loud THANK YOU for everything you did for me. I am blessed to have you as my mother.

Love,
Akshatha

Anvith - A people lover

2011-05-04T10:39:00.000+05:30

Anvith loves being with people. When he meets some new face, he feels shy for initial 10-15 mins but later really likes them and feels so sad when they leave. He gets attached to them very easily. Below are few instances which happened in past few weeks which shows how much he gets attached to people in short span of time -

We had sudden guests at home on Saturday. Anvith is always shy when we have guests at home and holds me tightly and turns his face away from them when they try to talk. Same thing he did on that day when “mama” (he calls all men mama) was trying to talk to him. After 10-15 mins he slowly got off from my lap and took out one of his toys and gave it to his mama and came back running to me. He repeated the same with the other man and gave 2-3 of his toys. After a while they wanted to leave and my hubby went outside the house along with Anvith to wave bye at them. As soon as Anvith got back inside the house he started crying loudly saying “mama yo…mama yo…” (mama come back). This went for half an hour or so.

Twice a week 2 girls come to our neighbor’s house to collect laundry stuff. They come in ladybird cycle. Whenever Anvith see’s them he is so happy and instantly goes near to their cycle and starts playing with the cycle talking to the girls (he calls them akka). When they are done collecting the laundry and leave and wave at Anvith, he feels so disappointed and cries saying “akka yo” asking them to come back.

Evening when I go home if my neighbor is outside we generally chat for a while and Anvith just plays there. When she goes inside, Anvith feels bad and asks me where is “aaty” (aunty). I tell him she went inside, he cries and calls her “aaty yo”

Few weeks back we had gone to attend a function. When we left the place Anvith’s cousin and her parents got in our car for a short while as they had parked their car little far and wanted a drop. Anvith was so happy as his “Akka” was in the car. When we reached the place where they parked the car and his Akka got out of the car, this fellow started screaming loudly saying “Akka yo” “Akka yo”. He was crying so furiously as if something terrible had happened. We promised him to take him to Akka’s place in the evening but still he was not convinced. Then we ignored and let him cry as much as possible. After 45 mins so his cries stopped and then he went to sleep while sobbing. After he woke up he forgot all about Akka but we did take him to Akka’s place next day as promised.

My dad had come to our home 2 weeks back to stay with us for 4-5 days. Right from day 1 Anvith bonded with him so well that he wanted Ajja all the time. He didn’t want to go to daycare but just play with Ajja all the time. He wanted to eat with Ajja and sleep with Ajja holding Ajja tightly. Whenever we told him Ajja will go back in few days he used to start crying and say No. When we asked him he wanted to go with Ajja he said yes. The day came when we went to drop my dad to bus stand and as expected when my dad waved at Anvith he started crying asking him to come back. Later somehow we convinced him that ajja has gone to bring milk and come home later. We took him to children’s park later and he forgot about it.

Anvith's Talks

2011-05-02T12:23:00.002+05:30

Anvith has been slow in talking since he is exposed to 4 languages (konkani/tulu/kannada/english). But over last 2-3 months we have seen that he is picking up words very fast and able to make up sentences on his own in the correct language. If we ask him something in konkani he replies in konkani, for tulu he replies in tulu etc.

Following are the list of words which he uses frequently. I had this in my draft for over a month now. I always thought the list was not full and wanted to add to it as and when I remembered more words...but the list went never-ending since now eveyrday he picks up new words. So I decided to post this lot and make seperate post for further words. So here I go -

Amma yo/Appa yo/mama yo (amma come, appa come, mama come)
Anga baisa (sit here)
amma baisa/appa baisa (amma sit, appa sit - showing a place where to sit)
aaty (aunty)
Tata poyee
Tata yo
Ka-ashi (car bisi)
Ka-aayi (car aayi – car is hurt)
ka-key (car key)
Isi-undu (bisi-undu – its hot)
Mammum na (mammam aana – had your food? )
isi (bisi – hot)
ish (dress)
shosh (socks)
aayi (wound)
kokko (rice)
aane (elephant)
naayi/vow-vow (doggie)
yitey (whitey-neighbor’s dog)
amma-shish/appa-shish (Amma office, appa office)
pa-ash (pausu – rain)
anana (banana)
aapple (apple)
sihi (sweet)
paya (papaya)
shi-shi/kakka (if he wants to go poop)
su-su (if he wants to go pee)
ana-naathi (nana-thathi - now sleeping time)
ana-tata (now tata time)
vaavu (baabu – babies)
mum-ma (bamba – jewellery)
shee-shaw (see-saw)
auto (Alto)
aathu (aaythu)
innaya (innovo)
aan (aan - done in tulu)
shatta (shirt)
kokko akka (kokko nakka, don't want to eat food)
anga aayi (its hurting here - showing the part where it hurts)

Feeling like crap

2011-04-22T23:57:00.001+05:30

Yes. I am feeling like crap from past few weeks. I don’t know how best to put it in words but I so much feel terrible and tangled between office and home. Too much of work pressure at office since a month and non-stop work for 3 weeks with no single day off in between with 14+ hours working every day for office and another 2-3 hrs at home. All this plus not able to spend quality time with Anvith. On the contrary when he comes near me, telling me to close my laptop and when I don’t, he himself does which makes me lose my patience and yell at him as I would be doing important work. After a while the feeling of guilt thinking what my child wanted was some time from me and what I thought was work was more important! But I did what I did which I couldn’t undo. I end up thinking it’s ok, it’s only a few more days… after the release things will be smoother and I will make up for all the lost time. I don’t know what is right or what is wrong. I cannot ignore work nor I want to ignore my family. But the present situation is demanding one of it from me. I keep oscillating between the two thinking I am being fare but deep within I feel so messed up. I am missing out on so much things about Anvith and sometime in future I really don’t want to feel that I wish I had got these days back again!

Growing up tale: Big boy Anvith

2011-04-09T23:28:00.002+05:30

Since Anvith started walking only 2-3 months ago, he still has falls and slips. Whenever he falls, he has a habit of beating the floor and this soothes him. Yesterday we had bought him a plastic cricket bat and ball to play with. Since he also used to watch the world cup matches we thought he might love the bat and the ball and he did. Only thing is...he wanted to bat and throw the ball together i.e. he throws the ball and goes near the ball and hits it with the bat and then does the fielding. My li’l all-rounder in the making :) After the bat has come home, whenever he falls what he does is..he first beats the floor with his hand, then goes and gets his bat and hits the floor with it again and again with such an anger! We were surprised from where he learnt to do it! We are trying not to encourage this gesture now.

Whenever we go grocery shopping generally Anvith picks something in his hands from the racks and carries along with him. To divert his attention we always tell him to put it into the basket and the uncle in the counter will do the billing, wrap it and will give to us and we can open it after we go home. We generally take it out from our basket later and wont bill it and Anvith generally forgets all about it after going home. Yesterday we went to TOTAL mall, Sarjapur Road for grocery shopping. As usual my little fellow picked up a cup cake as soon as we landed into the grocery section. He was holding it in his hands and just walking around the place with his dad following him while I was doing the shopping. This fellow looked everywhere and then found one counter for billing and went and placed his cup cake on the table there, wanting it to be billed and given back! We were totally shocked looking at him. This shows how much they follow us!

We had gone to Sadashivnagar park last Saturday and Anvith loved the park and so did we except that it was too crowded. Anvith played around with most of the rides and then settled down playing in the sand. After a while he declared done and came and told us his hands have become “chichi” (dirty) and needs to be washed. We told him we will go to car and wash hands there. When we were about to exit the park, there was a water tap beside the walk-way and this kid dragged me and his dad near the tap and asked it to be turned on so that he can wash hands. This incident really showed how big my baby has grown!

Today when we were sitting in the hall there were some thundering sound and I was telling hubby that its thundering. Anvith suddenly looked at us and said it is going to rain now. We were surprised to find out he knew to relate the thundering with the rain since we never taught him that.

Last week I was feeding Anvith his dinner and the power went off. The room was dark with little visibility. Anvith generally gets scared when the lights go off suddenly and starts crying. That day he suddenly got up and walked till the charge light and switched it on and came back to have dinner and announces “Light ON”. We rarely switch on the charge lights since there are no power cuts during night times. I was surprised seeing him so grown up that he now knows how to use such devices and most importantly when to use them! My boy, when did you grow up so much ?

I use photon stick at home and the other day it was in the floor and Anvith got his hands on it. He took it and found his dad’s laptop lying around on the floor and went and inserted the stick in the USB slot (it was a perfect fit). We thought it was just a coincidence that he put it into the slot. Later I gave him my laptop which had USB ports in different place than from my hubby’s and this fellow again inserted the stick into the right spot! We were dumbstruck.

World Cup 2011: We won! Proud to be Indian

2011-04-04T23:07:00.005+05:30

Finally we win the world cup after 28 long years. At the beginning of the series, I was doubtful if India would even go to semi-final but Dhoni's team showed a fabulous performance and grabbed the world cup. A big salute to the men in blue.

I thoroughly enjoyed each ball, each run scored of all matches played by India along with a great companion, who witnessed the world cup first time in his life...that too India's victory. This little fellow loved watching some smashing hits 4s and 6s and declared so a lot of times. Now at the end we do have a little umpire who is ready to conquer the world :)

That's a four

Bowler's appealing. Let me get ask for a review!

c'mon. Declare soon. I am waiting...

Oh no! That wasn't four. It was indeed....

OUT!

Just a coincidence wanted to share. India had first won world cup when I was 2 years old and now it won again when my kid turned 2 years old. Hope for the 3rd we won't have to wait till my grand child turns 2 :)

Mysore Trip - 3

2011-03-27T23:21:00.006+05:30

This is the last post from Mysore Trip series. We stayed in the Wind Flower Resort during 2nd day of our trip and the resort was awesome. The whole resort area was so calm, clean and serene. It gave a much needed break from the stressful life. Anvith too enjoyed a lot here. We really didn't want the stay to end so fast but there was no choice. We had the booking only for 1 day and even if we wanted to, we couldn't extend the booking since it was already booked for someone else for the next day. Someday in future I really want to go there again. Few pictures taken in the resort -

Mysore Trip - 2

2011-03-24T23:40:00.006+05:30

Finally got some time to upload some pics here. Below are few pics taken outdoor while roaming around the Mysore city. We managed to visit only the palace, zoo and the wax museum apart from the resort stay due to various reasons stated in my previous post. Luckily this time we got to see the palace all lit up during the night and it was looking so stunning. Though I had visited palace many times in the past never made it there during the night time to see it lit-up. Its a real beauty and I am happy this time I got a chance to see it. Anvith enjoyed a local tanga ride there.

Trip to Mysore - I

2011-03-21T14:30:00.004+05:30

Last weekend we had been on a holiday to Mysore. My company had offered me a vacation package on completing 5 years of service. It was pending from past 5 months and due to Anvith's cough and winter reasons we didn't want to travel. The offer was going to expire this month end and hence we decided to avail it last week. There were lot of options to select from but we selected a resort in Mysore since this was the closest of all places and we didn't want to go for long journeys with a toddler. This was 4th or 5th time we were visiting Mysore but 1st time for Anvith. Nothing went as planned but yet we enjoyed a lot. Most importantly Anvith had a blast. He enjoyed every bit of it and that was rewarding.

We were supposed to start our travel on Friday. Our car broke down on Thursday and the service folks told we cant get it back for another 3-4 days. This was a major disappointment because getting around in the city with a toddler in bus/rikshaw/walk would have been too stressful. But we didn't have an option. We decided to board Shatabdi train which would reach Mysore in just 2 hours. Since plenty of seats were available we didn't reserve the tickets before hand. We were supposed to board the train at 11AM but due to the heavy traffic on Friday morning we reached railway station at 10.55AM and were denied the tickets since the train was supposed to leave in 5 mins and it was too less time to reserve and board. This was the 2nd disappointment. There was a passenger train after 45 mins and we boarded it. It was Anvith's first train journey and he loved it. There was plenty of space for him to move around and the in between visits to the door of the bogie with his dad was a thrilling experience for him. We reached Mysore at 3.15PM late by 2 hours. We had a booking at the resort for Saturday and for Friday we had booked a hotel in Dasprakash. Photo taken inside the train -

Anvith had a mild stomach upset since 2-3 days and feeding him with healthier food was the biggest challenge for me. Also due to the frequent motions he had, changing diapers frequently when we were out roaming the city was another challenge. 1st day I had packed idli's from home and those were Anvith's breakfast as well as lunch. I had kept idli's for dinner as well but the kid was tired of eating idli's and I had to throw them out. I fed him with soup and fruits for both day's dinner and the fellow really liked it. Friday evening we visited Mysore palace and nearby market area. Saturday Anvith's stomach became fine but hubby dear had a body ache and a mild food poisoning. We had planned to visit zoo at 8.30-9AM but had to go to the clinic since hubby was feeling very weak. After he got an injection and some medicines he got some energy and we went to the zoo. We boarded the 6-wheeler open top van which would take us for ride inside the zoo as we didn't want to (have any energy left) to carry Anvith throughout. We thought Anvith would love seeing the animals but his interest was more in the van and every time the van stopped (OFF in his words) he would say car-on (saying he wanted the van to be turned ON). After the zoo we headed to a wax museum nearby which was not that great.

After having a good lunch at the hotel were we stayed we headed to the resort. Hubby and me were feeling very tired and we decided to stay in the resort for full 24 hours and dropped plans of vising KRS or chamundi hills. Worst part was Anvith was refusing to walk though out the trip which meant carrying 11Kgs of weight along with another 3-4Kg of bag with his items. Bribing him, raising voice at him ..nothing worked as he just refused get his legs on the floor. We checked into the resort (Windflower resort) by 2PM and were dumbstruck by the ambiance. It was just excellent. Very well maintained, spacious and modern. I would rate 5/5 for it. Hubby wanted some rest and Anvith was too excited to even take a nap of 5 mins. As soon as we got into the room he got into the exploration mode and the first objects were the 2 glasses kept on a table. Within 5 mins after we got in there the glasses were found on the floor broken! Before he could put his hands on to other expensive items I tried to keep as much stuff as possible out-of-his reach. Still the kiddo had too many things to explore and even till Sunday noon when we were about to check out he did not sit in 1 place without doing some mischief. Bathing and putting him to bed were never so tough. He just didn't want to miss out on 1 minute of freedom he had. He had a terrible cough in the night which latest for more than an hour and we were so sure he would throw up which he generally does after excessive coughing. Luckily he didn't. We had to switch off the AC only after which his cough stopped.

Next morning i.e. Sunday both me and my hubby woke up with leg & shoulder pain. The resort had spa (with high pricing though) and I really needed a foot massage and went to get a slot but all were booked being Sunday. We stayed in the resort till noon after which we checked out. We were supposed to stay another day in Mysore but due our body needed rest and we boarded the Shatabdi at 2.15PM and were back at home by 6PM. As soon as the auto stopped in front of our house, Anvith refused to get out of the auto and enter the house. He kept saying he wanted to go "tata" for next hour or so after which he realized we won't be going anywhere. We were glued to the bed watching Inida-WestIndies cricket for next 4hours and Anvith playing with his toys.

We have taken holiday for today and I wanted to use this time for some blogging and happy that finally I wrote one post. I have series of posts with photos to come shortly on this blog. Hopefully will be able to do it soon. Signing off with a photo taken in the resort near a bar below -

Anvith's first stage performance

2011-03-14T21:32:00.002+05:30

Yesterday there was annual day celebrations of Anvith's daycare and Anvith participated in the fancy dress. It is his first time being on the stage and he really did well. Till last week we were not sure what fancy dress to put because we didn't know about any shops in Bangalore which lends costumes for fancy dresses. My hubby later came up with an idea to make him bhat maam (poojary/hindu priest) and we could do with what stuff we had at home. We never practiced at home. We were doubtful if Anvith would co-operate to wear a dhoti and janivaara (holy thread worn by brahmins). Luckily he did co-operate well. He was very comfortable with the dress. We gave him a bell in his hand and he was supposed to go to the stage, ring the bell, do namaste and come back. Though this is what we wanted we didnt set any expectations. We were almost sure that he will just cry in the stage looking at the crowd. We just wanted him to participate. When his name was called out, he didn't want to go alone to the stage nor with his daycare teacher and hence I accompanied him. He walked till the middle of the stage, looked at everyone. I just said "ring the bell". He didn't'. We started to walk back to the dressing area. Just before we were about to go off the stage Anvith looked at the crowd ringing the bells loudly. Everyone clapped. At the end I really felt so emotional and happy and tears filled my eyes. I don't know why. I was really proud of Anvith and definitely this first performance of his on stage will be remembered by me for a long long time.

Here are some photos to share. I am really disappointed that my hubby didn't manage to record the video since he wanted to take pics in his SLR. But most photos came out blur. I am hoping that the event videographer has recorded Anvith's performance. If I get it I will post it here. Till then enjoy the photos -

Back to work & the hectic days begin once again...

2011-03-10T09:24:00.004+05:30

I joined back to work this week..I mean started going back to office after a 3-month work-from-home routine. And the life goes back to the hectic days leaving me totally drained out and exhausted at end of each day. The productivity at office reduces a lot compared to WFH since most of the time goes in attending boring meetings and interviews, answering endless queries from my reportees and giving status updates to my manager n times a day. Ultimately what I get is just a couple of hours to do my project related work and that definitely is not enough to meet the deadlines! That's about office. At home... morning time is the busiest time - to prepare lunch/breakfast, do dish wash/laundry etc etc Thanks to Anvith who is waking up a little late these days which gives me some time to do Yoga. I try to leave to office before Anvith wakes up else there will be lot of crying & screaming session at home since Anvith doesn't want me to leave him & go. I will back at home by 6 in the evening picking Anvith from his daycare and spend some good quality time with him playing. After that getting back to kitchen and preparing dinner. Time passes so fast that by the time I am done with all the work its time to put Anvith to bed. I always think either I should do some blogging or read a novel after Anvith sleeps but once I hit the bed to put Anvith to sleep my mind also shuts down and I go into sleep.

Life is going so fast and somehow I feel I lack time to be myself, do something for me or something I like to do...blogging/reading/watching movies etc. There are lot of updates I have missed posting in my blog about Anvith's growth that I think I will need to take a day off to write all that. I have just given post title and kept it in my draft so that I don't miss out on writing the post later (whenever that is) when I get time.

Its time to sign off from blogspot and start office work now :)

Gift with Love from Dear Hubby

2011-02-28T12:40:00.000+05:30

Anvith and me came back to Bangalore on Feb 10th and I had a big surprise at home. When I went to our bedroom I saw a beautiful wardrobe which I always dreamed of buying and kept on postponing. I loved the design, color, positioning of it and the big mirror and every detail of the whole wardrobe. But what made my heart melt was that my dear hubby designed and built it all by himself when Anvith and me were away for past 2 months. He had done a few of the carpentry work at home earlier but this one has been a major one among all that and it had a such a perfect finish I really took a long time to believe that he did it. I loved every bit of the work he had done on it and I admire the long hours and weekends he would have taken to finish it without any support. It just brought tears to my eyes when he showed the cuts and bruises he got in his hands while doing the carpentry work. I have no words to describe and would let you have a look at the piece here -

Dear Hubby,

I am so proud of you for such a wonderful gift which you made with your own hands. I will cherish this for years to come. I just couldn't ask for anything better than this. Love you always.

Love
Akshatha

2011-02-13T15:21:00.007+05:30

My dear baby

Today you turn 2 and I would like to say a big Thank you for arriving info our lives and bringing so much love, joy & hopes. Time is running so fast and it feels like just a few days ago you were like this -

And now you are like this -

From a tiny-weeny baby you have grown upto be a little 3ft monster. These 2 years have been the best-est years of my life. I wont say that it was very easy and a smooth ride. There were some hard times for you as well as for us but these only increased the love between us and an opportunity for new learnings in our lives.

When I am writing this letter my memory goes back to that day 2 years ago when the doctor pulled you out from my body and I heard your voice for the first time. I was in so much anxiety thinking how is my little one feeling and when I will get to see him and I didn't have to wait for more than 5 mins. You were brought next to me, you head turned towards me. That image is still crystal clear in my mind. You had stopped crying and were observing the environment around you. I was so much longing to touch you and hold you but could not do so for next few hours. And now 2 years have passed since that amazing day!

In the past one year, you started standing holding on to things, started saying words, started expressing your needs and started showing your love towards us and started walking. I cheered and cried when you started to walk just a few weeks ago because I was so proud and amazed how far you'd come. You came into this world weighing 2.8 kgs and now you are 10.5 kgs. Then you were so tiny, pink & soft & delicate and so much dependent and just perfect in all the way. And now you are a little boy...laughing, talking, playing pranks & charming every person who meets you.

Past year started with a good note. After a very long time your paternal & maternal grand parents got together at our house along with your aunt, uncle & cousin and we celebrated your First b'day in their presence. It was a perfect day. I wish this birthday was also like that but this time it will be just the 3 of us celebrating your birthday. In just a couple of months after your first birthday my mom who was staying with us to look after you had to go back to her home since my sister was going home for her delivery. My mom had been the greatest support for me through your first year and I couldn't imagine how I will manage without her in my home. I knew the days ahead would be a very challenging one - having to manage chores at home, office work and you all alone. I didn't know if I really could do all that. I had to take the decision - either to send you to daycare or send you to your granny's house or quit my job to look after you. This was the toughest decision for me to take. I worried about sending you out into the outside world since I thought you were still so young. Our home was a safe, secure place for you and I was doing my best to keep it so. But outside world is totally different. I knew one day I had to really send you out into the world but I thought at least not now. You needed much more attention than what daycare will provide and I decided to try out the 2nd option - to send you to my mom's place. Since you had a great attachment with my mom who was taking care of you since birth I thought this would be the right thing for you though it meant I have to stay away from you...so far away that I wont even get to see you daily and have to wait for fortnights to meet you. But I did chose this... That 1 month was the toughest time. It was so hard to stay away from you. Every second I was thinking about you even during my office hours and was waiting for weekends to come so I can come to Udupi to meet you. Whenever I was in Udupi you used get so cheered up and was so glued to me, it was becoming very difficult to leave you and go. As time passed coming back to Bangalore saying bye to you became more and more tougher and I decided to bring you back with us without thinking how we will manage.

We brought you back to Bangalore to live with us and I took a week off from work and then my hubby took a week off. At around the same time there was a new daycare opened 2 streets from ours and I decided to send you there. First week there you were good. We left you there just for an hour and you managed well. But as second week started you just didn't want to go there anymore. The moment you were brought to that place you cried for hours and hours in high pitch showing your anger and helplessness. Since it increased day by day we decided to not to send you there since you were still not ready. It was time when I had tried all options and the only thing left was to quit my job. When I was going to do that, one of our relatives recommended this nanny Manjula who was ready to move in with us to take care of you full time. She moved with us sometime in June and to my surprise you got along with her so well. We waited for a month and then again thought of sending you to daycare along with her for small intervals. This time you did very well because Manjula was there around you for full time with whom you shared a great bond. Slowly we started increasing your stay time in daycare and reduced Manjula's time along with you. Finally after almost 3 months you got fully adjusted to daycare and loved your "school". Even on sunday's you would come to us along with your schoolbag and ask us to take you to school. I feel so proud of you now! Its been 9 months now you have started going to school and this definitely has helped you in building up your social skills and changed my thinking where I used to think "kids are not ready to go to school/daycare" until there are 4-5 years old. This June you will be starting your preschool and I am very excited about it and hope you too are.

When everything started going fine you started developing unusual cough all of a sudden. Initially we thought its just normal cold cough but even after a month it did not stop. You would be fine most of the time and suddenly the cough used to start generally later in the evenings or early mornings. It used to last for 1-2 hours and some times you used to throw up everything you ate due to the execssive cough. Your appetite also went down drastically. Most of the days you just survived on the food given at daycare and refused to eat even a morsel at home for dinner or breakfast. Only console was you were good at your milk intake. Since there are almost no improvement on your cough even after the medicine from your paed. we thought of showing you to a senior doctor who was visits Sagar Apollo. He identified it as some sort of allergy but said its difficult to find what it is which is causing this allergy and he said we need to start eliminating some items from your food and try to see what triggers this. He also started some mild medicines for you and also suggested the nebulizations whenever you have the cough episode. Each nebulization session was like a torture session to you. We had to hold your arms and head in a tight grip with the mask over your face which delivers the medicine in the form of mist and you need to inhale that. You used to struggle, wail, scream and cry till the nebulizer was switched off. It broke my heart to see you that way. So many times these sessions would bring tears to my eyes.

This chronic cough attacks have really impacted us in many ways since there are lot of things which trigger this cough. Dust being the mail culprit along with this smoke, some food and excessive milk intake during night triggers your cough. We always try our best to keep the house as much dust-free as possible but no matter what the dust makes its way inside the house. We try to avoid going to crowded places or take you to open-air places as less as possible. Since last winter was pretty bad in Bangalore we also decided to keep you away from it and I took you to Udupi to stay with my parents. My employers were kind enough to offer me work-from-home for these 2-3 months time and these 2 months we have seen much improvement in your health. Once in January the firework show in Krishna mutt triggered your cough and it became so worse that you had to be admitted to the hospital for the first time. You were on continuous nebulization sessions and it was painful to see you going through it. You were put on puffs since then and that has done a lot of difference. Compared to nebulizers the puffs were very easy to handle and since that has to be kept in your mouth just for a minute unlike nebulizers which take 15-30 mins. You are now used to take the puff and co-operates with us. Hopefully all these will pass when you grow older.

Overall the past year has been a wonderful journey with priceless memories seeing you grow from a baby to a toddler. Words cannot express my love for you..it has only grown more and more each day in the past 2 years. But love also brings other emotions with it. I have experienced feeling of despair when you cried relentlessly for reason unknown to me, feeling of helplessness when you were made to go through nebulization sessions, feeling of pity when you were made not to eat some of your favorite food because we had to check if that was causing allergy and feeling insecure when you had started going to day care thinking if that would reduce your love towards me.

This letter has been a long one but I have so much to tell you that I feel this letter has not covered all this. Though it will be few more years before you could read this letter and really understand it but I hope you will cherish this. Before I end this letter I would like to tell you again that I will always love you no matter what. I want you to know you can lean on me for any support you need. Just want you to know that you are loved and cherished by your parents & grand parents.

A very happy 2nd birthday to my sweetheart and loads of hugs and kisses and blessings to you!

Always loving,
Amma

Johny Johny

2011-02-04T00:28:00.001+05:30

Me: Johny johny
Anvith: sh pa pa
Me: Eating Sugar ?
Anvith: pa pa
Me: Open your mouth
Anvith: ha ha ha
ha ha ha
ha ha ha ...

Walking & Coughing

2011-01-21T10:16:00.003+05:30

Want to write about 2 things here. 1 good and 1 bad. First the good news. Anvith walks around independently these days. Till Dec 31st he was crawling everywhere and suddenly on Jan 1st he started walking. Every day from then his walking has improved to a great extent and from last week he hasn't crawled at all. He can move around comfortably from one room to another. He keeps 2 hands up in the air and tries to balance himself using them. It's so cute to watch him walking this way. There are some falls but he soon gets up and walks again. This has been the biggest relief for me. I had been pretty tensed about his walking delays though most of the doctors had told us everything is fine with him. But when I was seeing other kids of his age who runs around I was having a small fear somewhere within me about Anvith's walking ability. We had even consulted our old family doctor who is an Orthopedics in Udupi somewhere in last week of December, who checked Anvith's feet and told that he has a flat feet i.e. he doesn't have arches in his feet and this is the reason he cannot balance himself while walking. Anvith's dad also has flat feet and his great grandpa and few more in Naveen's family are having flat feet and now it is passed on to Anvith as well. The doc said this is not something to worry about. There will be a delay in walking but no other problems at all. He asked us to handover Anvith's shoes to him and he will get it altered to have built-in arch support. He suggested that Anvith should wear such shoes till he is 5 years old so that the arches will develop. We had given him the shoes in Dec last week and were supposed to collect them on Jan 5th. But when we went to collect it Anvith had started walking and we were so happy about it. This has been the best new year start I ever had.

When Anvith's enthu was too high with being able to walk around the house almost during the end of 2nd week of Jan his coughing increased suddenly. Since beginning of Jan every evening he used to get cough attacks which would last for 2-3 hours and stop after he takes the inhalers. On Jan 14th we had gone to Car Street, Udupi to see the procession for makara sankramana. There was cracker show were they burst more than 100-200 crackers. We were there till the procession ended which took almost 2-3 hours. After we reached home at around 9PM Anvith started coughing badly. We gave him the inhalers and thought his cough will stop in an hour or 2. We put him to bed by 10.30 but cough didn't stop. It continued till 12AM disturbing his sleep. After 12AM he seemed fine but again at 2 AM it started again along with wheezing. He was looking to be in great discomfort. I tried lot of things to give him relief and nothing worked. It was 4AM and due to the excessive coughing the voice of his cough changed and it was a reason to worry. We took him to hospital immediately and they asked us to admit him right away. And he was put on nebulizers every hour which continued upto 10AM. The lack of sleep along with the torture of multiple rounds of nebulization, Anvith had become very cranky. After 2-3 days he became fine. Last week we had to take him to nebulization twice everyday. Anvith had reached the double digit in weight recently touching 10.6 KGs but soon after this episode again his weight has gone down to 9.8 Kgs. Due to the effect of medications his appetite has also gone down and its a big hurdle to make him feed his meal. I am just waiting for all this to get over and want to see Anvith healthy and rid of all those junk medicines. Big challenge for us is to identify what is the reason which is triggering the cough suddenly. We have tried eliminating lot of things which we thought could be causing the cough along with big list of things banned for him like eating fruits, curd, chocolates, leafy vegetables and lot more. But nothing is working out. We heard about some allergy test centers in Bangalore where they do some tests on him to find out what is causing the allergy and we have decided to take him there once I am back to Bangalore. Anvith is turning two soon and as he steps into 3rd year I wish he gets back his stamina and hope god graces him with good health in the years to come.

Another beach visit

2011-01-18T11:35:00.000+05:30

I had written about a beach visit with Anvith here. That time Anvith was just 1 year 4 months old. It had been more than 6 months now since we visited any beach though this was always in the list whenever we visited Udupi. But due to the rains and other reasons we did not make it for 6 long months. So during last christmas holidays we planned to go to Malpe beach again. We really thought this time Anvith will have great fun playing with the water and the sand but sadly his reaction after getting into the water was much the same as that of last time. He kept telling to go out from that place. Here is the photo taken where you can see his reaction :

2 word sentences

2010-12-30T22:51:00.003+05:30

I really did not think this post would come so soon i.e. I didn't expect Anvith will start making 2 word sentences since his vocabulary is still small. I think he knows just about 20-25 words. 2 days back all of a sudden when his dad came home he said "Appa hi". Both me and my hubby were surprised and he said it again and again. After a while he said "Amma hi". His favorite word these days is "Hi" and he just greets almost every known person or a stranger with "Hi" including trucks, buses, cats, dogs, babies and what not! Apart from "Hi" the next most frequent word he says is "Appa". I think he says "appa" atleast 100 times a day. Next word after Hi and Appa is Amma. These 3 words tops the list and naturally the first sentence he made had these words in it.

Yesterday there were guests at home and there was a 9-10 year old girl "S" who and Anvith got along so well that Anvith who doesn't share any of his favorite snacks with anyone, shared it with her and was hugging her and asking her to play with him a lot. After a while S's mother called her to have lunch and she went. Anvith didn't want her to go and went behind her and sat on her lap. Then we pulled him from there and he sat at a distance watching her have food and suddenly he said "Akka baa" (akka come) asking her to come to play with him.

Today we went to Malpe beach and there were lots of crows there and Anvith looked at them and said "Hi kaka" (he says kaka for crows).

I cannot seem to wait to hear more sentences from him. I am really happy that Anvith reached this milestone before ending this year.

Flashback at 2010 & Wishlist for 2011

2010-12-27T23:53:00.002+05:30

Flashback at 2010
-----------------------

It was a mixed bag with some good things and some bad!

1. Year began with our house registration. We had our house warming in Feb and we celebrated Anvith’s 1st b’day in our own house.

2. We admitted Anvith to daycare in June but initial 2 weeks were very hard on him. Finally after 2-3 months, he got adjusted there and now loves going there.

3. Health wise both Anvith and me had a bad turn. Anvith has been suffering from severe cough attacks resulting in lower respiratory infection for months now. My immunity is also gone down badly resulting in flu atleast once in a month.

4. We had a pretty bad car accident and it’s a mere luck that we escaped with minor injuries. But the car had some major hit in the engine and we had to spent a fortune to get it repaired.

5. It was more fun to be with Anvith this year since he was much more communicative. We have had some great time together this year which I will cherish for years to come and also hope to carry forward.

6. Before Anvith had his admission to daycare, we had left Anvith at my mom’s place for 1 month in Udupi while Naveen and myself were in Bangalore. That 1 month was the toughest time and worst time I had in my life. It felt like staying away from a very important part of my body.

7. My sister was blessed with a baby boy and my hubby’s brother was blessed with a baby girl, which made Anvith a big brother to both of them. During the year end Anvith had a union with all his cousins and we all had some great fun.

8. We celebrated my dad’s bday in a great joy. This time everybody where present at home (except my bro-in-law) and dad cut the cake along with his 2 grandson’s and we gifted him a devotional book on Bhagavatha which he loved.

Wish List for 2011:
----------------------------

1. Top of list would be – I would want to see Anvith running around the house with full of energy and want to listen to him talking non-stop. I hope his health improves and no sickness touches him.

2. Would want a real good vacation (actually 2). Would like to visit somewhere southern India during first half of the year and during next year end, would like to plan for a vacation at Northern India.

3. Start doing yoga. It’s been 2 n ½ years since I gave up on it and in 2010 I did try starting it back but somehow I was too caught up with office and house work that I couldn’t make time for Yoga, which I really plan to start soon on regular basis.

4. Take more family photographs. We had taken lots of family photos in 2009 but the number reduced drastically in 2010. In 2011 I really want to click lots of photos.

5. Do something nice for my parents which make them feel proud of me. There are endless things they have done for me and I don’t even remember doing even 1 good thing for them. I really hope that this year I fulfill this wish.

6. I like to plan for a date with my hubby. Would like to spend a evening at a beach having a long walk holding each other’s hands followed by a romantic candle light dinner and a nice movie.

7. Learn lots of kiddie-friendly recipes. As Anvith is growing up, his tastes keep changing. He loves variety and I lack at it. Often I find myself thinking about a variation to make with what vegetables I have and end up doing the same old thing. I need to really spend more time in the kitchen in 2011.

8. Buy some good furniture for our house.

9. Would like to plan for more frequent get-togethers with our family friends.

10. Change my job. It’s been more than 5 years with my current employer and I feel that now it’s time I start looking for outside opportunities.

Post from Udupi

2010-12-21T23:38:00.003+05:30

It's been 10 days since Anvith and myself came to Udupi. After we got back to Bangalore in November the atmosphere in Blore started getting colder day-by-day due to the arrival of winter. The cyclone effect from chennai was pretty bad and the temperature dropped down below 15 deg. Due to this Anvith and me, both fell sick very often. I went to a point where I felt I literally cannot take all of it together i.e. being sick myself, taking care of a toddler who is sick, managing house work and office work. I had had enough of it. I could not call my mother to come and stay with me since she had other commitments. That left me with the only option to go to where my mom is. I decided to apply LOP for 3 months at work. But my managers had better plans for me. They suggested me to work from my native for 3 months. That option suited me well. I packed my luggage and reached here by Dec 11th.

Its 10 days today and things are going pretty well. I have admitted Anvith to a daycare center here so that he doesn't loose touch with going to play school and mingling with other kids. He goes there just for 2 1/2 hours in the morning. Afternoon he sleeps for 2-3 hours and evening his grandpa takes him to park or temple. So I get enough time to do my office work and also get some time to do cooking if I feel like. Sometimes I do miss dressing up to go to office, driving my car to office and the lunch time fun I used to have with collegues.

Anvith still got a couple of cough attacks after coming here and next week we are planning to start homeopathy medicine to him. I am tired of feeding him antibiotics, steroid based puffs etc which causes more harm than good. I really hope that by the time I get back to Blore Anvith will be fit and healthy running around the house :)

Anvith turns 22 months old today

2010-12-15T23:28:00.002+05:30

I have been wanting to write a growth updates on Anvith since a long time now and this got delayed a lot. More than 3 months are passed and I did not write a post about his growth. Today Anvith turned 22 months old and I decided I have to write this post at any cost before it gets further delayed. So here I go -

- If I have to describe Anvith in just a couple of words it would be Stubborn-Clingy-Cranky-Shy kid. Yes, he is becoming more and more stubborn every day. He is having the “I want it and I want it now” attitude. He is very assertive about what he wants to do, what he wants to eat and where he wants to go. He wants to do things what I ask him not to do and he doesn’t want to do things what I ask him to do!! He constantly tests my patience. I find myself getting so close to losing my temper quite often these days. I raise my voice at him sometimes and other times I bribe him something to keep him calm.

- Anvith’s clinginess is increasing day-by-day. He expects me to carry him right from the moment he wakes up. He is not ready to sit down even though I am in the same room just a couple of feet away. I find it difficult to carry him and continue with the household work. Naveen keeps telling me if I continue doing this, he expects it more and more but every time I try to put him down, he just cries in high pitch with tears rolling down his cheeks and I go weak. How hard it is to make a 22 month old listen!

- Anvith is turning into a shy person. If we introduce him to someone he is seeing for the first time, he just turns his face from them and hugs me tightly. Doesn’t respond to them if they try to talk to him. If we take him to someone’s house, he doesn’t get off from my lap for at least half an hour. After a while, he slowly gets down with his one hand holding my hand and starts exploring things reaching one or 2 ft from him. Goes like this for another half an hour after which he lets go of my hand and starts exploration everywhere in the house. When we are decide to leave, he nods his head telling he doesn’t want to go home. Most of the time, he takes something in his hand while leaving which we return next time we land into their house.

- He has good memory now. Even though we take him to his grandparents house once in 2-3 months, he recognizes them and instantly bonds with them. He also knows where is his biscuit box and sugar box kept in my mom’s kitchen. He knows there is a water tank in the terrace and points to take him there to play with water.

- He loves to dance and sing. The moment he sees any dance or someone singing in TV, he gets up and starts dancing and singing in his own language.

- He greets people with a very cutely pronounced “Hiiii”. He greets fish, dogs and any moving object he finds too.

- Few more words are added to his vocabulary now. He says – “ss hheee” (for HP), “phish” (for office), alla, illa, ishya, ashaya (for Akshatha), Eva & Yash (his friends in day care). And he calls me in many ways like “mum”, “mom”, “amma”, “ammmmmaa”, “ammammamama”, “mom”, “maa” and some more.

- Though talking wise there are some improvements, walking wise it’s still the same as it was 3 months ago. He still doesn’t walk independently. I am very sure he knows how to walk because 2-3 times he walked on his own from one room to the other which is around 10-15 fts away. He is very scared of falling down which is preventing him from walking independently. We had taken opinion of 4 doctors till now and 3 of them told us it’s just a matter of time and some kids are late walkers and told us to wait till he turns 2. One of them had suggested to start him on Physiotherapy if he didn’t walk by 20 months. We did take him to that doctor only to find that doctor was on long leave. Day-by-day I worry more about this but my hubby is very confident that he will walk soon which I really really hope and pray.

- Food habits – He goes through this cycle where he eats very well for 2-3 weeks and then next 2-3 weeks it’s very difficult to feed him even 1 meal a day. Weight wise he at 10kgs now which is in the bottom of 15th percentile. Some months back it was possible to make him eat by distracting him. But now if he says no, it’s the end. No matter what techniques we try to distract him it just doesn’t work. There are days when he sleeps having no dinner at all.

There were few more updates I wanted to post but not able to recollect now since I am feeling drowsy. Will write another post on it soon.

Rangoli

2010-11-18T16:00:00.003+05:30

From last few days (Last Sunday to be precise) I started putting Rangoli in front of my house. Long long back I used to try putting them in my mom's house when I was in high-school but not on a regular basis. But after marriage I never even thought about putting it. I am still a novice at it. When I had a maid staying with me, she used to put it everyday. She used to love putting them and in her free time she always tried to come up with new patterns on a piece of paper. Some days back when I was cleaning the house, I saw a box full of rangoli powder and decided to try it out. I thought it would be fun especially doing it along with Anvith. Its been 4-5 days now and we are having a great fun in the mornings. Some pictures to share -

This is how we begin. I take out a box with the powder and give one small bowl to Anvith with some powder in it -

Anvith looks at the pattern (& sometimes laughs at it :) )

Then he sits beside it and shows it to the dogs (these are street dogs & Anvith just loves them and so do they love Anvith )

Then he starts putting his hands into the powder and tries to spill it on the ground -

Goes on for half an hour and then declares DONE!!

Crayon Stand

2010-11-16T13:13:00.002+05:30

We love to dine out and last weekened we had gone to McDonald's. We have still not started giving outside food to Anvith except a bite or two when we are eating. But have started taking kiddie meals since Anvith loves the toys they give along with the meal. So last weekend, they had given some crayons along with Ronald Plush doll as it was Children's day. Anvith did not like the toy much but he loved the crayons.

Few days back when I was surfing the net to find some activity ideas for toddlers, I came across this making crayon stand activity. It was fun, simple and colorful. Most of all it would keep Anvith occupied for an hour or so and hence decided to try it out. All it needed was a kitchen roll, scissor, color paper, crayons and glue. I had all the items at home. Here is what I did -

1. I took the kitchen roll and glued the color paper on it.
2. Made some holes onto the roll using the scrissor, just enough for the crayon to enter.
3. Took a crayon and inserted into one of the holes.
4. Anvith was watching all this and was waiting to try it out and I handed over the remianing crayons and the roll to him and started watching him.
5. He took a crayon and inserted it into the hole like a pro. Once it fitted into the hold he showed it to me, his face all brightened up with achievement. I kissed him on the cheek.
6. One afer the other he took all the crayons and inserted them into the roll.
7. After he was done with all the crayons, I inserted a thread into 2 holes so as to made a handle sort of a thing so that Anvith can carry it easily.
8. I also had a small umbrella which was given with the fruit punch I took in some restaurant and put it on the top.

Here are some photos of Anvith playing with it -

Daycare drop-off with Mamma

2010-11-12T21:30:00.000+05:30

Today for the first time I went to drop Anvith to his day-care. It has been almost 5 months now since he has started going to day-care but I was never the one who went with him to drop him. I never had the courage to go because I knew he will refuse to go inside and will cling on to me and I will change my mind seeing his tears and bring him back home. But today I thought let me give it a try. I thought since it has been months now he would have got adjusted to the routine and will not fuss about it. I along with Naveen (who drops him otherwise) went to drop Anvith. As the school came near, he refused to get down from my lap. I carried him along with me till the day-care entrance. When his favorite maid came outside to pick him up, he was clinging on to me tightly refusing to get off and tears started rolling down his cheeks. The maid just took him forcefully from my arms and went inside. I was dumbstruck. I waited outside for 2 mins and heard him crying loudly. I was feeling so sad. One part of my mind was telling to go inside and bring him and the other part was saying he will be fine in 5-10 mins. Today they have children’s day celebrations at daycare and I did not want Anvith to miss the celebrations. With half mind I walked out of the place. I knew if he kept on crying they would call me. When they didn't call me I was relieved and knew things were fine there. I called the day care sometime in the noon and they said today Anvith was having a great time with other kids and was much more interactive than the normal days. When I went in the evening to pick him up, he greeted me with a big hug and happy smile which just erased all my tensions :)

Aggrevated cough

2010-11-05T22:43:00.004+05:30

Anvith's cough severity and frequency has increased a lot now compared to 2-3 months ago. And this week we have seen the peak and thinking of future really scares me. It has been 5 days now we are in Udupi and every day he has been having severe hacking cough attacks. He's all fine from morning till evening and all-of-a-sudden from nowhere the cough starts and it goes on for 2-3 hours leaving him totally drained out. We had thought the humid weather in Udupi will improve his health but the reverse is happening now. Saturday when we traveled his cough started in the evening and lasted for about 2 hours. Sunday evening again there was cough for an hour. Monday evening again he developed the cough and we decided to take him to a senior doctor here in Udupi. We gave him the background and the medicines we have been giving and he recommended for an immediate blood test which came out as normal and the doc said the cough is due to some allergy content in the air. This was the same statement made by the doctor we consulted in Bangalore. But nobody tells us how we can prevent this cough attacks.

Anvith was given some medicine which helped just for 1 day. Tuesday he did not get any attack. Wednesday he was fine till evening and we went to the Krishna temple and while returning all of a sudden he started coughing so badly that he threw up everything he had for evening snack along with milk. We did the neubilization at home which gave him some relief. Thursday evening was also the same. He got the attack in the evening but the asthaline neubilization which we generally do also did not help him. Hence we took him to the doctor again and he recommended for levoline neubilization and the cough stopped after this. Today, Friday has been the worst of all. He got 3 attacks in single day. Today morning at 4/4.30AM he got the first attack. I was patting his back continuously for an hour trying to avoid waking him up for the neubilization but there was no sign of relief. At 6AM I decided to neublize after which he could sleep for 2 more hours. At 12PM, again he got 2nd cough attack and at 9PM, the third. He was looking so pale and tired at the end of the third attack that it was difficult for me to see him in that state. He seems to have lost some weight and looks very skinny. Sometimes I feel so helpless looking at him, I feel why does such a small baby of mine has to go through the torture of cough, neublizations, medicines!!

BTW, wish you all a very happy Diwali. Hope this Diwali brings good health, peace and prosperity to everyone.

Communicating discomfort

2010-10-29T09:34:00.006+05:30

Today morning Anvith was unusually cranky and was looking to be in discomfort. He was clinging on to me a lot and did not want me to come to office. Also when I asked him "Don't you want to go to school" he nodded no. This he generally doesn't do since he loves going to school. But today he didn't want to. I tried to convince him a lot saying today is the last day and he doesn't have to go to school for next 10 days. But nothing worked even the distraction.

First I thought it's just that he doesn't have mood to go but when I observed carefully, he kept sticking his tongue out quite often and drinking water from his sippy cup very frequently. I went near him and asked him "Aayi assa ve?" (Meaning are you having pain). Immediately he nodded yes and opened his mouth to indicate that he is having a teething pain. When I saw his mouth, there were molars ready to erupt which was probably causing him too much of discomfort.

When your little one is in discomfort it is very difficult to understand what is the reason behind it. It has always been a challenge to me to troubleshoot his pains. Though some people say mother will know it easily when her child is in pain but I really don't understand how. There have been so many instances in the past where Anvith would cry in pain and I wouldn't know what the reason for it. I try to offer him something based on my instinct which works sometimes but not always. When nothing works, All I do is just hold him, hug him tightly and try to console him. If it doesn't stop for hours (generally it does) then take him to the doctor.

So today's incident has been a moment which I will cherish for a long time. My baby can actually communicate his discomfort to me. This is a milestone which I have to note down.

My baby, When did you grow up so fast that now you communicate what bothers to you ? I really hope that you will never experience any pain in your life.

Yippeeee....we are going on holidays!

2010-10-27T09:59:00.002+05:30

Yes Yes....Both Naveen and my leave plans are sanctioned and we are heading to Udupi this weekend for 10 days holiday. We will be back after Diwali. This is the first time I am celebrating Diwali with by parents/in-laws in my hometown since past 3 years I missed it due to some or the other reason. Also last 3 years we did not burst much of crackers. 1st year we were in Canada and no one bursts crackers there, 2nd year I was pregnant and 3rd year Anvith was a tiny baby and we did not want loud noise. So this time we have bought lots of crackers. We had been to Hosur last weekend to buy the crackers and we are planning to take it to Udupi and also buy some more there. So this Diwali will be a special one.

Also I have been longing for this break from office, house hold work and the daily bhag-daud. My health also is not very well and my body needs rest and this holiday I have decided to get plenty of it only if Anvith lets me :)

I am so eagerly waiting for the weekend to begin!

Happy Birthday to Me!

2010-10-22T11:05:00.002+05:30

Happy Birthday to Me!

Yes…I turn 29 today. This will be the last year in my twenteeish age and next year I will be 30. Somehow 30 sounds like a big number :) Anyway I have one whole year to cherish before I hit 30!

It was a very pleasant morning today. As soon as I woke up my hubby dear gave be 3 beautiful red roses along with a Titan watch which I just love. I thought he would have forgotten my birthday but he surprised me. We both wanted to take half day off and go to a lunch followed by a movie but both of us are stuck in some commitments in office and hence cannot seem to make it :( So all celebrations are postponed to the weekend. As I step into 30th year, I wish to list down the things I am thankful for –

1. My Parents: I'm thankful to be the daughter of two very loving, supportive people. They never put any restrictions on me and always let me do what I really wanted regardless of how much they sometimes worried. They were very supportive towards all my decisions and let me live my life the way I wanted. My dad still considers me as his little daughter though I am a mother now. Thanks dad and mom for bringing me into this world. I now understand how difficult it is to raise a kid and really grateful to my parents for raising me in the best possible way they could.

2. My Sister: I am thankful to my sister Amitha who was a great companion in all the fun and the pranks we played in the childhood. Without her, my childhood would have been very boring. Even now the way we both cook up plans for our parents b’days, anniversaries are something I will always cherish.

3. My Husband: It’s been a decade now since Naveen entered into my life. He was my senior in college, became a colleague later and then a friend and finally husband. From him, I always get unconditional love and acceptance. At the end of the day if I am feeling down, he’s always there to discuss my problems and lighten up my mood. Love you Naveen.

4. My Son: I’m thankful for giving me a beautiful child who makes my day special every day. Also he teaches me to be a better mother, a better person. I am thankful for his smiles, hugs and kisses, for the feel of his arms around my neck, for the trust I see in his eyes, the joy in his eyes when I go to pick him from daycare, for the peace I see on his face when he sleeps and for all the things he does. There is no biggest satisfaction for me than seeing him happy.

5. Good health: Touchwood! I am thankful that I am having a good health. So far in 29 years I haven’t had any major health issues. One can never know for sure what will happen in that regard, but I'm thankful that I've been blessed with good health.

6. Sonia Clinic, Udupi: I am thankful to them for making a smooth C-section without any complication or pain and helping me deliver a healthy baby. Ever since I remember I always had the fear of child birth in my mind but I am happy that the clinic assisted me overcome the fear.

7. My job: I’m thankful that I have a good job which gives me a freedom to be independent, secure and gives me a good income. I am thankful that I have option to work-from-home whenever I feel the need. I am thankful that my office is so close to my home. Also I am doing work what I enjoy and do not regret.

8. My house & my car: I’m thankful that I live in a place which we can call as our own.

9. Fulfilling my dream: It was always a dream for me since childhood to travel abroad, live there for a while. This happened in 2007 after I got married. I traveled to Ottawa, Canada for 6 months on project assignment and the best part was my hubby joined me for 3 weeks during the end of tenure there and those 3 weeks were the best times of my life. I am thankful that we both got a chance to visit Niagara Falls together to witness the beauty of it. It was the last weekend of the season before the place was shut down for winter and we just did it on time.

10. I am thankful to God for all the above reasons and much more. At last, I am thankful for my birth because today I get to eat cake and receive gifts :)

Finally, thank you for visiting my blog and reading this post :)

Love
Akshatha

Anvith has got friends now

2010-10-20T14:39:00.001+05:30

Anvith bonds better with the older kids than with the kids of his age group. In his daycare there are kids ranging from 18 months upto 5 years old and Anvith generally tries to play with the kids of around 3-4 yrs of age. Last week since the older kids had Dusserha holidays, most of them did not come to the daycare. The daycare in-charge told us that Anvith was having a boring time due to their absence. This week the kids are back and it seems Anvith is so happy to play with them. Last 2 days he skipped his afternoon nap just to make up for the last week’s lost time and ended up playing with them all afternoon. It seems his face was all lightened up and he was in so much of joy that they were thinking of calling me to the daycare to check him out. I wish they had done that.

Back to the subject, yes Anvith has a friend now because he keeps blabbering his name a lot at home. One of the older kids in daycare with whom Anvith plays is “Yash”. Yesterday when I asked Anvith with whom you played today he said “yeshsh”. I asked him the same question 10 times and he answered it all the time. Today morning when I took him for morning walk, I said we will go to school and play and he said “yeshsh”…. The way he says “yash” is so lovely, I wish I could capture it somehow.

Visit to Lumbini Gardens

2010-10-18T22:48:00.006+05:30

We had been to Lumbini Gardens near Hebbal Lake, Bangalore for the first time a couple of weeks ago. Looking at the place, I wondered how we missed it all the while. Anvith had a great fun and did not want to come back from that place. Naveen and me had never seen him so much happier playing in the rides there. All in all it was a great time spent. Some pictures here. There is no need of words to explain Anvith's happiness if you look at his pictures below -

Something is Wrong!

2010-10-17T15:11:00.000+05:30

Last 4 days I have been feeling extremely tired especially during the nighttime. Thursday evening for the first time I felt as if I cannot even stand up and my energy was totally drained out. I was finding it difficult to even lift a glass of water. We went to the nearly hospital for the checkup and the doc said the symptoms looked like dengue or malaria but told that can be confirmed only after 2-3 days if the situation aggravates and vomiting, nausea also starts. The blood report which was taken that day said –‘ve for the malaria. But the doc said another round of blood test needed on the 3rd day to confirm. I stayed in the hospital and got drips for the weakness. Felt a little better after the drips and came back home. Friday I was feeling a little better but in the night again felt too weak. Saturday also remained the same. Saturday night was horrible. I couldn’t even move an inch. The back hurt badly and all the muscles in my body ached. I was having fever and shivering throughout the night. Today morning we decided to go the doc again since it was 3 days and this time doc suspected chickengunya and advised for another round of blood test which has also come out as –‘ve. We still don’t know what is the reason for this and the doc says it could be just a viral infection. But somehow my inner feeling says there is something big going on but don’t know what it is. I have been doing lot of search on the net but not able to get any case close to mine.

Anvith is also having a hard time at home since I am unable to carry him due to no stamina. He is confused these days thinking what’s wrong with his mamma. Every time I give a smile to him, he comes close to me, hugs me and asks me to lift him. But when I gently refuse, he gets disappointed. Naveen has been managing all the household work along with taking care of Anvith since there is no one else at home. Last 3 days was okay since it was holiday. Not sure what is going to be the situation tomorrow. I really hope to get better by tomorrow morning.

Anvith's Reactions

2010-10-11T15:23:00.000+05:30

Anvith has been more communicative these days. Not by talking but his reactions do convey a lot of things. Talking he is still very slow and I don't see much progress but he almost conveys everything he wants by actions. There were few incidents happended and we were surprised to see his reactions. We thought he is still too young to be taught the public behaviour but I think we should start it now.

- 2 weeks back we took Anvith to a park and he had so much fun playing in the slide. He climbs the ladder on the other side, walks till the sliding point and slides down on his stomach. When he lands into the sand, his face is all lightened up and he hurries for the next trip. When he finished one trip and was ready for the next trip, there was a girl standing at the slide point. Anvith was the next one in the queue to slide down. The girl was just standing and did not show any sign of sliding down. Anvith was so excited to slide down and got annoyed that she was not moving. He just pushed her back so that she gets down and then he gets his turn! God knows, who taught him this. We later told him not to do this again. Don't know how much of it he understood.

- Same day in the park, he was playing with a toy horse. After a while, Anvith just got off the horse seat and started playing with the sand below but he was holding the horse for the support. Another kid came and attempted to sit on the horse since it was empty. The moment Anvith saw that kid approaching the horse, he hurried up and sat and tried to remove the other kids hands off the horse.

- 4 days back he had a fight with another older kid in the daycare for the sand fork toy. The other kid was playing with the fork and Anvith went to snatch it from him. He refused to give but Anvith just did not give up. He pushed it and suddenly the other kid released it from the hand and the fork hit Anvith’s forehead and he got some bruises and bled a little. I think the reasoning behind this behavior is that I generally tend to give him anything he asks and he expects others to do the same which cannot happen. This is a lesson for me.

- We had been to “Lumbini Gardens” last weekend and Anvith had a great time there. There is one big fish tank which gets filled with water and when the tank gets full, it suddenly rotates and all the water splashes around. I was holding Anvith and watching this, Naveen standing beside me. When the water splashed suddenly, Anvith got very scared and jumped to his dad. Both me and Naveen were surprised. Generally he's glued to me and comes to me if he needs anything or if he gets scared (like the power goes off, cooker suddenly whistles, sound of thunders etc). Here though I was holding him, he wanted to go to his dad! We didn't understand why he did this.

- We had been to Mc'Donald's 2 days back and there was a kid in the next table who was peeping at our table. When Anvith saw him, he raised his voice and pointed to my hubby and me, and said "mummam..." as if he is trying to say "my pappa, mamma are eating here. dont disturb them!"

- After the last episode of pushing the other kid on the slide to get himself move, last weekend when he took him there, there was another kid who was blocking Anvith's way to get down the slide. But this time he didnt push that kid. On the other hand, he called his dad and pointed towards that kid and showed that he is blocking to move further. We were impressed that this time Anvith did the correct thing.

Daycare Updates & A typical day at home

2010-10-03T16:04:00.006+05:30

It's been a while since I wrote a post and the reason is I have been too busy with managing home, Anvith and the office work. My maid who left for Ganesh Chathurthi holidays did not come back. We were suddenly in a totally helpless position, when we got the news she wouldn't come back. We both could not get leaves and we didn't know if Anvith was ready for a 9-6 daycare routine with the maid not being around in the daycare. But my dear boy, did not leave us any reason to worry, since right from the next day when my maid left, he stayed in the daycare for full day without fussing. Its been a month today since he started 9-6 routine and I am proud to say Anvith is completed adjusted to the day-care environment. His dad leaves him at the daycare at 9.30AM and I pick him up by 6PM.

The reports I get from the day care has also been good. He has started mingling with other kids, finishes all his meal without any fuss and sometimes demands for more, goes to sleep in the noon and overall a happy child as his caretaker says. I cannot thank enough of God for taking care of things at the right time.

Work has been very hectic at home. Morning is a very busy time at home with lot of pending things to be done along with getting Anvith ready to daycare. There is literally no time to sit and breathe for a while. Preparing breakfast and Lunch, Packing lunch/snacks for Naveen and Anvith, cleaning the utelnsils, feeding breakfast to Anvith, bathing him and getting him ready to daycare...the list goes never ending. All my kitchen work should be completed before Anvith wakes up. Once he is up, he expects me to carry him and take him for a walk for 10-15mins. If I miss it even for 1 day, Anvith will be very cranky that day. It has become more of a habit for him now that he is not ready to compromise with. I am very lucky to get a husband like Naveen who shares lot of my workloads at home and takes care of Anvith's needs when I am busy in kitchen.

Evenings I am mostly at home by 6.15PM and make sure that I spend 30 mins of time playing with Anvith either in front of the house where Anvith loves to carry a bucket and collect stones, leaves etc in it or put him on his tricycle or just go to neighborhood where other older kids play which Anvith just loves to watch. At 6.45/7PM, I will have to force myself to get into the kitchen for dinner preparation and getting things ready for next day. If hubby is at home by then, I am lucky or else I find it very difficult to finish the tasks since Anvith just doesn't let me work. He comes and cling's onto my knees. Most of the times, I have to carry him and do the work in one hand. There are also times, I take up my anger on him (no spanking just raise my voice) because I would have been exhausted and the fellow just doesn't listen to me. Its just momentary, after a while I start feeling guilty, leave all the work and go play with him.

So in short, the weekdays are exhausting and only time we really get to sit and enjoy are weekends...to be precise are weekend evenings. Morning is spent in doing all the pending things which we couldn't do in weekdays like laundry, house cleaning, preparing a 5-course meal, grocery shopping etc. etc. Initial few days it was very difficult to manage without the maid but now I am happy to say that we are settled down. We feel that we can manage things well on our own and do not need a servant.

Last few weekends we had done some outings, the pics of which will be posted soon...

Grown up kid

2010-09-14T09:57:00.002+05:30

Anvith suddenly has started acting like a grown up and here are a few scenario’s. It left us surprised to watch his reactions -

- One night after having dinner, I was sitting with Anvith and feeding him apple cut into pieces and put in a plate. He was taking a long time and I had some cleaning work pending in the kitchen. My mother-in-law asked me to hand over the plate to her and said she will feed Anvith so that I can continue with the kitchen work. I gave the plate to her. Anvith didn’t like it. He went to her, took the plate from her hands and brought it back to me and indicated that I should feed him.

- Other day Anvith was sitting in a chair and I was putting dosa pieces into his mouth with jam applied on to it. Anvith accidentally touched the plate and jam stuck to his hands. He being a cleanliness freak, took his hand and wiped it against his dad’s white banyan. Naveen noticed this and he took the jam and applied it on Anvith’s banyan just for fun. Anvith looked at this and didn’t like what his dad just did. He calls his dad and shakes his head and says not to do it again.

- We had kept Anvith’s nebulization device in the sofa within the reach of Anvith. He was very much tempted to play with it. Every time he went near to it, his dad said not to touch it. He was just looking at it for 5 mins and then slowly goes near to it and touches it and looks at us and shakes his head and tells us no one should touch it!

- Anvith’s grandpa was sitting in a chair watching TV and his dhoti had gone little up leaving his knee open. Anvith saw it, went near his grand pa, took one edge of the dhoti and covered his grandpa’s legs properly and came back to his play area.

- I generally wear pajama’s at home and one day since all my pajama’s went for laundry I took a shorts to wear. Anvith had never seen me in shorts and he didn’t like it. He looked at me disapprovingly and brought one of my night gown which was lying next to him and gave it to me pointing me to wear it!

- Generally whenever we travel in our car, Anvith sits in the front seat alone or along with me on my lap. Very rarely he travels in the back seat. The other day when my in-laws were with us, we had decided to go out in our car. Since my FIL has leg pain, sitting in back seat will be difficult for him since he cannot stretch his legs. So we told him to sit in the front seat. As soon as he sat in the front seat Anvith started crying in high pitch. He could not see anyone else sitting in his place. No matter how much we tried to convince him, he didn't budge. His grandpa got off the seat to move to the back seat and only then Anvith stopped crying and immediately went to occupy the front seat so that no one takes it :)

- Today morning after he did potty in his diaper he called his dad and pointed to the diaper asking him to remove it. Then he pointed to the dustbin showing that the diaper has to be thrown there. I think Anvith is now ready for potty training. We are planning to start it soon.

Sick

2010-09-07T08:59:00.003+05:30

It's been more than 3 weeks now and Anvith is still having hacking cough. It gets worse during night time and his face turns all red coughing continuously. He is not eating even half of his regular intake and whatever we manged to feed him, he pukes it the moment the cough starts. He looks pale and also is loosing weight. We have showed him to 3 doctors till now and have given X number of tonics, anti-biotic, syrups etc. but nothing seems to help. I regret for popping so much of medicine into his tiny body all for no-use. No home remedies are also working. Last night he was coughing so bad that we called his doctor immediately and he advised for neubilization. Anvith just hates it and the moment we bring the device near him, he starts crying in high pitch which aggravates his cough. Then I applied some Vicks run on his feet and covered it with socks after which he got some relief. It was 2 AM in the morning when he could get some sleep.

We are unable to understand the reason for his cough since he is perfectly fine for 2-3 days and suddenly starts getting the hacking cough along with runny nose for another 2 days. 3rd day he is back to normal. We suspected it could be some sort of allergy and eliminated all that from our house but that also doesn't seem to help. We don't understand why even doctors are not able to give proper medicine for the cure. My maid has also gone on unplanned leave all of a sudden. Luckily my in-laws are staying with us and are taking care of Anvith. We send him to daycare when he doesn't have cough but the daycare people will call us and ask us to take him home when the cough starts. So his daycare routine is also getting affected badly and we are not even sure if our maid will come back or even if she comes back how much we can rely on her. We are just hoping that Anvith gets back to normal soon.

Happy Krishnashtami

2010-09-01T20:54:00.001+05:30

Anvith joins me in wishing you all a very happy Shri Krishna Janmashtami...May god bless you all.

Then & Now (At daycare)

2010-08-31T11:13:00.005+05:30

Then & Now (at daycare)

I never thought I would write this post one day…at least not so soon… A kaala theeka to this post.

Then: Even the talk of going to school (his daycare, we refer it as school to Anvith), used to upset Anvith and made him cry.
Now: The word school cheers his mood no matter how cranky or tired he is.

Then: When we take him near the school entrance, he used to tightly cling on to our arms and refused to get down. Often pointed at opposite direction indicating lets go elsewhere but not school.
Now: Even if we pass by his school in way to grocery store, he points at school and demands to be taken care. If the school gate is locked, he takes any key (our house key or car key) and attempts to open the school gate. Finally when he fails in it, he starts crying because he wants to get inside but not able to.

Then: Anvith used to be very happy on Saturdays and Sundays when we used to tell him today there is no school.
Now: On weekends, when we say there is no school today, he gets upset. He picks his bag and house key and comes near me or maid and shows at the door, pointing lets go to school.

Then: He refused to go to any aaya’s in the school or to the teacher. All the time he used to cry, cry and just cry and then sob. Refused to eat from any of the aaya’s or just not eat anything from anyone.
Now: He is comfortable with all the aaya’s there, loves his teacher and no hassles about eating. In fact he eats more there (touchwood) than what he eats at home.

Then: He used to jump with joy when he was taken out of the school, after the school hours. It was like a freedom from jail for him.
Now: Even though he stays there for almost 6-7 hours, he wants to stay there even more. Doesn’t like the idea of coming out of that place unless his mom has come to pick him up.

Then: He refused to play with any toy there.
Now: He has a favorite toy which he just refuses to share with any other kid. He believes that toy is his own and no one else has any right to even touch it.

Latest Update: Now we leave Anvith in his daycare between 11AM – 6PM. Our maid takes him to the school and brings him back. She also spends some time with him there but allows the aaya’s handle Anvith’s tasks. My maid comes back once Anvith is fed and put to sleep. He sleeps between 2-4.30PM. By the time he wakes up, my maid is already there. From next week onwards, we are planning to send him to day care by 9.30AM and then the last task would be to stop sending my maid to the school so that he is in hands of the day-care aaya’s fully. We are planning to do that in next 1 month’s time.

It has been a slow journey for Anvith to get adjusted to the day-care. From his reactions initially we never expected he would get along there well. But Anvith has surprised everyone. Even his teacher says that they are seeing a huge difference in him. All this wouldn’t have been possible without the co-operation from the school care-taker. They allowed my maid to be around in the school premise for almost full day for more than a month just that the transition is smoother. My maid also has been very co-operative. She didn’t mind doing walks between school and home 4 times a day and staying there till Anvith is slept even though it meant she will have a late lunch every afternoon. I am very happy and proud about my child that he is finally almost adjusted to this routine.

I am sorry

2010-08-26T15:25:00.001+05:30

Dear Son

From last few days, I am not spending enough time with you. I come home late in the evening after which I get myself into the room either busy on the phone or in front of laptop doing office work. Bathing, feeding, changing, playing & every small thing your dad is taking care. When I come out of my room, your face all glitters and you come to me with so much expectation thinking I came to play with you but when I just cuddle you and leave in a few minutes it disappoints you to the core and it hurts me too. When I hold you, you point at the door indicating we will go out for a walk but I have been refusing from many days. Our those evening walks are becoming a past. I am really very sorry for all this. I am becoming workaholic without wanting to become one. This is making me a irresponsible mom and sometimes I just feel helpless. I am ending up in compromising spending time with you just to give more time to my office work. This is not the way to go and I am feeling ashamed of myself.

But I want to promise you that I am going to make up for all those lost time. Once my current engagements at work are completed, I am not going to take anymore work which demands my personal time with family being compromised. I will start saying No to more work. There is nothing more important to me than seeing you happy and you are happy when I am with you. I don’t know how I let it happen this time. But not anymore. Just want to say a big sorry for not being around from last few days.

Love you forever,
Amma

Cold & Cough

2010-08-23T10:57:00.000+05:30

Anvith is having a terrible cold & cough since past few days. Yesterday it was so bad that he was making some strange sort of barking sound with the cough which sounded very scary. Every cough made him cry due to the chest pain caused by phlegm and the cries increased his coughs. We took him to paed. in the evening and the doc said it’s a pertussis cough kind of viral infection which was contagious and he would have got it from one of the kids at day care. Since last 2 weeks, almost every kid at Anvith’s day care had some viral infection and somehow I knew Anvith too would catch one soon. This is the biggest disadvantage of sending kids to daycare. If anyone gets a cold or a fever, most chances are that your kid will get it too no matter how much precautions you take. Doc suggested some antibiotics in suspension form but the poor fellow just refuses to drink it. Last night we just forced him to drink it and the very next minute, he vomited and the medicine came out. After a while , we mixed the medicine in his milk and tried feeding him but he just refused to drink it. Again we forcefully fed him the medicine and he threw up again! We didn’t want to push him more and he slept without taking the medicine. His appetite has gone down badly. Last 2 days he did not have breakfast, lunch or dinner and he is not eating anything but milk and some fruits. I tried offering variety of food but the fellow just doesn’t even agree to taste it. It was painful to see him like that. I hope he gets back to normal state soon.

Finally some good news. We had taken Anvith to a child specialist in Greeview Hospital in HSR Layout for checking about his physical development since he was not walking yet. The doctor told that everything is fine and 99.9% he will walk within next 2 months and suggested us to buy a walker for him and put him on it as much as possible. Naveen was against the idea of buying a walker since he had found some studies had proved that using walker delays the walking and hence we never bought one for him. After discussing with the doc on Saturday, he agreed to try it and we bought one for Anvith on the same day. Anvith loves to sit on it but doesn’t make an attempt to walk holding on to it. He just thinks that it’s his chair and has no idea we brought him for walking. It’s just 2 days since we brought it and may be in a few days, he might start using it.

Expressions!

2010-08-17T09:23:00.002+05:30

Letter to Anvith

2010-08-15T10:36:00.000+05:30

Dearest Little Boy,

Today you turn 18 months old and I am wishing you all the happiness in the world. Thanks for coming into our lives. Every milestone of yours was a kind of victory for me. Your first smile, your first word, your first kiss... You are a true bundle of joy.

I have learnt so much from you and will continue to do so in the years to come. You have taught me how to love unconditionally, how to forgive, how to enjoy small things in life and a lot more. Thank you for all this. You have touched my heart.

I also want to tell you, please do not feel sad when I am not around. It doesn't mean your mamma doesn't love you. I love you a lot and you are always in my thought even when I am not in front of you. I promise that I try to spend maximum time with you as possible today and forever.

Happy one and half birthday, my sweet heart. Let's hope turning two will be twice as much fun.

Love
Akshatha

18 Months Already!

2010-08-14T14:26:00.003+05:30

My prince turned 18 months today and I am amazed how fast he is growing! Feels like just a few days back we had celebrated his 1st b'day and already half year is over since then. I must say the past 6 months have been the most fun filled month for us and for Anvith as well. I haven't posted about his milestones in a while and I regret for missing out on the monthly updates. I had thought of writing monthly updates till Anvith turns 1 and had assumed that time that I might not have many things to write after he reaches 1 but I am totally wrong. I think now I have more things to write about Anvith since every day he surprises us with a new skill he learns! I only wish I had more time to jot down his learnings but I struggle to get time to open my laptop at home. Today I thought of skipping my sunday afternoon nap and decided to write this post.

First the good part-

- He knows the names of all the objects at home and knows the names of the people who he regularly sees. Whenever we take a name, he points to that object/person without any delay. Even though we tell him the name of any new object just once, he remembers it easily and will surprise us by pointing to it when we ask about it days later.

- He even knows where we keep our car key, house key, his school bag and can instantly bring it when we ask him to. When he give him 4-5 keys and ask him to pick the car key or the house key, he picks the right one every time. He is very fond of sitting in the car driver seat. Whenever he feels like, he takes the car key from its place, comes near to me and point at the door and when I take him there, he points to the car parking area. When I take him near the car, he tries to put the key in the hole (doesn't yet know to unlock it from outside, thank god!) and when he fails, he gives it to me, takes my hand near the lock panel and asks me to open it for him. Once he is inside the car (in the driver seat), he takes the key back from my hand, puts it in the lock under the steering & attempts to start the car (doesn't know to start yet nor I offer any help). He thinks the engine is on and moves the steering making zzz sound in the mouth thinking he is driving. He loves to do it all the time.

- He knows the direction to go to his day-care and way back to home. These days he loves to go to his day-care. My maid drops him at the day-care in the morning and when he says we will go to school, Anvith becomes so happy and waits eagerly to get dressed. He points at his school-bag to be picked and the door key to be taken so that he can go to school early. Once he is out of the house and when we ask him where is the school, he shows the way to go there (we need to walk 50mtrs, take a right turn and another 50 mtrs and another right turn) and he shows all the directions properly. When we take him outside the school, he is all so happy and opens the gate. If we tell him lets go home and turn backwards, he raises his voice and keeps pointing to school asking to be taken there.

- He loves to eat on his own. Most of the times, I cut fruits/chapathi pieces or idli piecies and put it in a plate and offer to him. He picks up each bite and eats it (also creates a mess around him). He loves to drink water/juice from a glass but milk is something which he refuses to drink for glass or sippy cup and demands his bottle. I need to work more on this to get him off the bottle and I have given myself next 2 months to accomplish this task.

- He is curious about everything around him. Any type of boxes/bottles/containers/tubes he tries to open and close. If he cannot, he brings it near to me or his dad and asks us to open it and give it to him. If we don't do it, he cries until he gets it done (usually from me).

- He mimics mixie sound, bike starting sound, car sounds, grinder sound. When he sees a broomstick he takes it and tries to sweep the floor. When he spills the water
on the floor, he takes any cloth he finds and starts wiping it, he takes the TV remote in his hand and points at the TV and presses some channel and jumps when the
channel changes, he takes our mobile, keeps it near his ear and pretends to be talking, when we give him his lotion bottle, he pretends to take the lotion in his hands and apply over his body, when we give him baby oil bottle, he pretends like taking oil in his hand and applying on his head etc etc.

- His appetite is much better. He still has a small appetite compared to other toddlers, but at least he's eating his usual portion of food which makes me really really happy! He eats whatever we cook at home for us but everything is in slightly mashed form with milk added. Only requirement from his side is add kissan jam to every dosa, idli, chapathi or any breakfast we prepare. Otherwise he refuses to eat it!

- He loves to play games with us. His favorite being - He crawls and hides behind us or behind a sofa and waits for you to say "where is Anvith?". When you turn around and act surprised, he cackles with glee and proceeds to repeat the process another 10 times.

- He has lazy period sometimes. When he has to scratch some part of his body, he takes my hand and keeps it on the part and shows me that I should scratch like this (Height of laziness nah!) Whenever any of his toy is far away from his reach, he points to the toy and asks me or the maid to bring it to him instead of he going there by himself. Sometimes he even feels lazy to chew the food and just gulps it down!

- He still wakes up 2 times in the night for feeding, 1 exactly at 1.30AM and next one generally around 5/5.30AM. I am so so longing for uninterrupted 8 hours of sleep in the night! He takes only 1 nap during the day which lasts for 2-2.30 hrs.

Worries I have in my mind:
- Anvith is not walking yet. He had started to walk by holding on to things like sofa, window, cot etc when he turned 1 year. Its been 6 months since then and still cannot walk independently. Every month we think by next month he will start walking but we get disappointed or rather more worried when he doesn't. Everyone around us
keep asking why he is not walking yet (and also telling their kid was running around by that time) and we have no answer to say. We have seen progress in his walking but its very slow. Now he can walk fast when we are holding his one hand or when me and Naveen are sitting couple of feets away, he even attempts to do drunken-sailor walk for 3-4 steps b/w us but not more than that. So we are thinking of talking to his pead. about it soon.

- Anvith wants me all the time! When I am at home, he is literally glued to me. Last week we had gone to our native and this time he didn't go to anyone and was clinging on to me 24/7. Every one was shocked by his behavior since last time around (3 months ago) he was going to all of them. Sometimes, I find it difficult when I have to be in the kitchen and he refuses to go to his dad or the maid. I try to spend sometime with him and explain him that I have to prepare mummam (food) for him and hence have to work in the kitchen but the fellow doesn't understand. I think he does this because he is scared that I leave him and go. Even when he wakes up in the morning, he doesn't go to anyone. If his dad goes to pick him, he cries in high pitch which stops only when I pick him.

- Not talking yet. He just has less than 10 words in his dictionary. He refuses to learn more or talk more. Amma is the only word which we keep hearing from him most of the time. He conveys everything he wants by signs and doesn't feel the need to talk. Sometimes we act like we didn't understand the sign he did (though we do) giving him chance to speak but he doesn't. Currently I am not worrying too much about it. Once he starts walking, we will be seeing how to work on the talking part.

- He has become very stubborn. If he points at something and does the "give me" sign and if we don't give him, he does a big drama of throwing tantrums and crying his lungs out. His dad generally is against of falling for such acts and raises his voice. Whenever his dad raises his voice at him, he comes near to me, hugs me tightly around my neck and don't let me go off until his dad is away from the sight. I fall for this and try to offer him whatever he asked for. I know I am doing wrong by giving him something which he shouldn't get, but I find it hard to say NO to him. I need to work on that part. I am generally against spanking or raising my voice at him since I feel if one parent is strict the other shouldn't be. But sometimes I feel this makes him come to me for everything he wants.

Guys n Gals, I am back!

2010-08-04T23:16:00.012+05:30

Hey Everyone,

This is Anvith here. I know its been a while since I spoke to you all but I have a valid reason. I have been very busy learning lot of things like crawling, sitting, cruising, walking, talking and exploring all new things. All this prevented me from logging into my mamma's laptop and writing a post. All of a sudden I realized, its been too long and I had to make some time out of my busy schedule to jot down some words. So here I go...Beware, this is going to be a long post since I have too many things to tell ya guys!

Well Well Well!!! Let me dig into my past and recollect what all I did...

I started rolling over in my 5th month. Initially I was finding it very tiresome to tilt my whole body towards one side and roll over but later I felt that was the
amazing thing to happen in my life. Before that happened, I could just see the fan and the ceiling but then, I started seeing lot of things around me though touching them was impossible unless when my mamma brought something very close to me.

I was not satisfied with just rolling over, since I was not able to move around to places and hence I learnt to cruise. I felt that was better than lying all the time on my stomach. I could move towards my parents by pulling my body using stomach. But that was very tiresome and I had to do something much smarter. Then I started crawling... I felt I was in heaven!! I could reach towards not only my dad and mom but almost toward any object I want (but limited to indoor!) In between the crawling and reaching out towards objects, I used to feel very tired and needed some break and that's when I learnt to sit. To tell you the truth, I hardly feel like sitting expect when I have lots of new toys around me to play with. Otherwise I am better off crawling.

But when my dad taught me to walk with towel tied around my chest, it was a great feeling. It gave me lot of encouragement to walk holding on to things like sofa, shelves, cot, almirah and what not! Very recently I have learnt to walk or rather run when mamma or dad is holding my one hand. That made me to utilize every opportunity I get to explore the world. I have started giving them directions on where I want to go and they put their steps along with mine. Its very fun to walk wherever I want to. My next goal is to walk independently, for which I am putting lot of efforts and hard work. I can put 2-3 steps on my own but only when someone is right in front of me but more than that looks very difficult currently. I get scared when I am asked to walk without any support thinking I might fall down and get hurt. My parents are giving me a lot of encouragement to walk and I know I will walk soon or even run by the time I write my next post which is real soooon!!

That was about the milestones and my goals. Other than that, let me tell you what all I like to do these days. I love to travel on my mom's lap when she drives. I can see the whole world outside but what I like the most is touching the steering, pulling the gears and playing with the horn. I also know to unlock the door and open it. The other day when dad was driving and I was sitting on my mom's lap, I unlocked and opened the front door. I got scoldings for doing that and from that day onwards I am not allowed to sit in the front seat. I hate sitting in the back seat where I cannot see as much as when I sit in the front! I also love to ride bullet with my dad. My favorite place is the petrol tank. I love the breeze splashing on my face & the open air. I love to sit on it the whole day. I get angry whenever my dad or mom stops the bullet or car. I tell them not to stop and take me to the round again. Some times I have to cry to get the things done!!! What to do, my parents do not understand my language. I also do my bit to repair the bullet whenever it gives problems.

Its close to 18 moths since I am born. But my parents still do not understand my language. So I have to put little more effort than them. Now I started learning their languages as well. I even point at the thing what I need, I can give directions on where I want to go, I can express if I like something or if I get frustrated.

I can understand a lot of words in konkani, tulu, kannada which my parents speak to me. Some of these are -
"come here"
"lets go for bathing"
"Have food"
"lets go for walking"
"eat food"
"drink milk"
"Eyes", "head", "ears", "legs", "hands",
"Flying kiss", "say tata", "swami deva", "go to school",
to name few.

But I need to work more on the talking part. Currently I can speak only the following few words:
amma, ajja, mamama, akka, anna (very rarely I say appa too)
mummum (if I need food)
tata (if I want to be taken outside)

The only sentence I can speak is "amma mummum". If no one hears me and gives me something to eat when I ask, I take out my frustration and say "ammmmmaaaa mammammmm" to get me something to eat.

I do not understand why they use so much complicated languages. In my dictionary I have only few words - give me food, I am dirty, I want to sleep, I want to play, I want to be with you mom and dad... That's it! Why my parents don't understand this simple language even after 18 months... :(

I like to sit with my dad in front of our home on the street. I like to pick the stone and throw it. Every time I throw the stone, my dad gives me another one... I like to hold the stone in my hand all the time, even during bathing!!! Same with dry fruits... I am crazy about them. My mom always gives me kishmish in the morning. 1 is not enough for me. When she gives me 1 in my hand, I put forward my other hand. When she gives 1 more in the other hand, I open my mouth and say "aa". She puts 3rd one in my mouth. Same thing I do when she gives me anything which I like. I love chocolate also!!! "Kallu sakkare" is another thing I like. My grandpa used to give me that every morning when I was in udupi but my dad never gives me that :(... What a kanjoos...

I like to do every thing what my dad does... Repair bike, take a photo, work on my laptop, play with my toys!!! but I do not want to give my toys to him!!! He has his camera which he never allows me to touch, then why should I give my toys to him??? My mom lends her camera to me and I know how to click it... So I let my mom to play with my toys!!! Some times I play with her other toys too... in kitchen...My "pachhi" (mom's sister) has brought me a lovely laptop which I love a lot... who needs dad's laptop anymore ? My laptop is so good, it plays music, it talks, gives help messages and it has a lovely mouse too... In front of this, my dad's laptop is a piece of junk... it doesn't sing music, it doesn't talk... what a waste!!!

I like the morning walk with dad and evening walk with mom (and sometimes dad if he comes early). I walk holding their hands. I like to swing holding their hands, walk backwards, pick stones, flowers etc. Evening bullet ride with dad is another thing in a day I do not want to miss. I like to do chaami deva(swami deva) whenever I see lord ganesha, lord krishna's photos.

I have lots of stuffs to say. I will reserve it for future post!!! I am tired writing this long post. Need a taquilla shot now!

Conversation with Anvith

2010-07-30T11:39:00.002+05:30

Me: What does mari pili (tiger cub) do ?
Him: Grrrr….

Me: How to start bullet ?
Him: Argheee…..

Me: What does amba buchchi (cow) do ?
Him: ammmmbaaaa

Me: What does kak maam (crow) do ?
Him: kakakakaka…

Me: what does mixie do ?
Him: wree….

Me: What does cooker do?
Him: kshkshksh….

Me: How does ajja cough ?
Him: ahhoo, ahhoo

Anvith's First Photography

2010-07-21T08:52:00.004+05:30

Like father, like son. Anvith loves to spend time with camera just like his dad who is obsessed with his SLR and can't think of living without it even for a day! Anyways, Anvith is very fond of playing with the camera and now even knows to click photos (click the button which takes the photo to be precise :)). He holds the camera close to his eyes and tells the object (generally his mamma or dadda) to look at him, clicks the photo, hands over the camera to either of us and points us to show him the photo which he clicked!! No...I am not exaggerating any of this. He does this everytime he gets his hands at the camera. His dad is very proud of his son and it is his dream to teach photography to Anvith and take him along with him for shoots when he grows up (but mamma is not much interested in this dream since that keeps them away from home for hours together).

We generally give Anvith my panasonic point & shoot camera. But from many days he has his eyes set on Naveen's DSLR. But Naveen doesn't even allow Anvith to go close to the camera let alone use it or play with it. Once when Anvith was around 6 months old, Naveen had kept one of the flashes in the table and Anvith dropped it to floor and it broke. Naveen had to spend more than 10K to get one more of such flash and after that Naveen is very cautious about his camera accessories. But Anvith is not giving up. He always tries one or the other tactics to get himself close to it but only get scoldings from his dad later.

BTW, below is the first photo taken by Anvith. I don't know what he pointed at but love this abstract photo -

PS: Above photo is not edited in anyway.

Monday Blues

2010-07-19T09:37:00.002+05:30

After spending 2 lazy days at home, having fun with family, not having to look at the clock hundred times to see if I am late for work there comes Monday morning…yet again! There were times in my life when I used to hate weekends and would await when Monday morning comes so that I can get back to work. This was the phase I went through in my first job. I would be glad when I was called on weekends to work but not anymore. Those times I used to feel 2 holidays a week was too much but now I feel that’s too less! I seem to want just 1 working day followed by 1 holiday and so on or even better just 2 working days in whole week :) How nice it would be!! Anyway getting back to the topic, Monday morning is a busy morning at home. When Anvith is still in his sleep, I just force myself to get out of the bed after I snooze the alarm 3rd time. The goal is to complete preparing breakfast, lunch and other chores in less than 1 hour before Anvith wakes up. I try to do everything at nick of time and if any delays I get in between I tend to loose my calm. Naveen has been poor victim to this since I tend to take out all my frustrations on him …more on Mondays which is another reason I hate Mondays :(

Anvith also seem to have Monday blues! Though it doesn’t matter to him which day it is, he feels sad because his mamma is going back to office after being with him for 2 whole days of fun and excitement. He seem to understand by the way I hurry up at all chores at home that I have to leave to office. Monday mornings he clings on to me more than any other day. Even for a minute if he doesn’t see me around, he cries. When I dress up for work, wear my badge, take out my laptop bag and car key, he surely knows I am all set to leave him in a few minutes and go to office and the poor fellow stops playing with his toys, comes near to my feet and holds my leg tightly and starts crying and nodding his head telling don’t go. He refuses to go to anyone including his dad. I go through the dilemma if I should hold him or not since if I do hold him, he will not listen to get off and will create a big drama when I leave. No maskafying works with him at that time. Even if his dad tells that he will give him dry grapes(which are his favorites) or chocolates, he doesn’t budge. He just wants mamma not to go office, he can compromise anything just for this. It’s a herculean task to calm him down and somehow let go of me, in between all this most of Monday’s I reach late to office (which means I have to stay late in the evenings, since my office has a strict no of hours to be followed). Even after I come to office, my mind thinks about him for some time and sort of guilty feeling occupies me. It takes a while before I battle out the feelings and start concentrating on work. I wish there were no Mondays or atleast Monday blues...I am sure then there would be Tuesday blues!