All is not well

Adi has got tiny bumps randomly on her body and face. It has started couple of days back and we thought its because of climate change (can you believe snow in October) and should fade off soon but from last evening she appears very tired and body temperature is slowly raising above normal. But, she is active as always and was very adamant to go to school today as they have Halloween fair. She took the fever medicine at 2am sitting straight up with no denial just for that one reason (to go to school today) which is otherwise an half hour task for me to feed that 10ml.  She also wants to go out to the shops for trick-or-treat in the evening.  I am confused. Should I take her or not?

She has a good sleep routine. Usually goes to bed between 9 and 9:30 pm and wakes up by 7 or 7:15 am but yesterday evening I noticed dark circles under her eyes and I also see her coughing randomly..  Is this all just my imagination?  Thankfully the bumps are not turning red and not itchy.

Called the doctor’s office and booked an appointment for today evening. I am picking her up early today. I am scared to Google about the tiny bumps. Praying all the god and keeping my fingers crossed that it should be nothing. Hoping to take her for trick-or-treat after doctor’s visit.. Am I too sensitive? Am I worrying too much for nothing? My mind is not working..  I am restless.. Its a day of tears..

Hope tomorrows dawns as a good day for us…

 

Jack o lantern

This year’s attempt. As M was impressed with the happy face and cat we made last weekend he got us a bigger pumpkin to try one of the difficult pattern (the one on the right. It was more than double the size of the smaller pumpkins). Adi was mighty happy with mommy’s carving skills 😉 … All 3 lanterns are now decorating the living room window.

AT – Here are the steps for you.. (tried my best to take pictures at each step)

Setup the work area with all things needed (tissue roll, a bowl of water to wash hands while scooping and an empty bowl to collect the seeds are missing in the picture). This year we bought the carving kit from Walmart ($5) and took print out of free patterns from web. The pattern we made were chosen by Adi..

1. Cut the top portion like a lid so you can close it later (don’t close when the candle is lighted).

2. Cut the bottom portion to fit the size of candle and scoop out the seeds and strings from inside. Messy job..

3. Draw the selected pattern with a marker on the side of the pumpkin that you choose to carve.

4. Cut along the marker lines (that’s Adi in action :)). She helped me in carving the straight lines.

5. Make fine adjustments if needed and place the pumpkin on top of a lighted candle.

The smaller ones (both) took 1 hour and the bigger one took 1.5 hours including cleaning and picture taking..

Hope this helps…

Happy Diwali

Wishing you all and your family and very happy and safe Diwali..

Diwali platter at our household

It was a family effort 😉  Just in case if you cannot identify them or if I find it hard to recollect the names after few days months 🙂

Coconut burfi
Rava ladoo
Murukku
Diamond biscuits (sweet and salt)
Oma podi
Masala Vada

Woke up early, had traditional oil bath, made Vada (we have to offer something that is not tasted to God right?), Prayed, Adi wore new dress for couple of minutes and now all of us back to daily routine. Its worth the effort.

Hope you all had a great celebration.

Leaving you all with the diya hand painted by Adi for this Diwali..

 

Updated:  Diwali crackers – check

 

Passport to a healthy pregnancy – Womensweb contest

Alright I am also joining the club. Submitting my first entry to a contest in web. Honestly I am left with no point after I read similar posts by fellow blog mates. They all have written it so beautifully and covered most of the points for a healthy pregnancy. Anyways who doesn’t like to talk about the journey of getting their most precious gift of life.  So, here I am with my story and two cents.

My pregnancy was not a planned one.  But, once I knew about it the only thought that was lingering on my mind was I should give the best to my child in these nine months.

* Prepare yourself –  Take sometime and think about it. The next nine months is an once in a lifetime opportunity that you get to develop a healthy future for your child.  Fix it in your mind that the child at this stage depends on you and only you.  No one else can share this job. Its unique and just between you and your child. Give it your 100+1% as there is no second chance.

* Rest all will fall in place once you prepare yourself and have the priorities redefined in your mind.

* Subscribe to weekly updates and be aware of the body changes happening every week.  The book “What to expect when you are expecting” might help. At the same time don’t get perplexed as not all changes might be applicable for you.  Its good to be aware but don’t go overboard and receive a zillion updates.

* Remember that every pregnancy is different so absolutely no comparison.

*  Enough is said about the DO’s and DON’Ts in blogosphere so I am not going to elaborate them in detail.  Our mind knows what is healthy and what is not. So, just follow your mind.  Think for five seconds before dumping anything into your mouth. Trust me that will save your body from a lot of junk.

* My personal experience well I was crazy. Somehow I had this strong feel that the baby will in future reflect whatever we do during prego days. So, I read like crazy, gave a technical certification when I was almost full term,  listened to vedic chants specially designed for expecting mothers, religiously ate all that amma packed for me. Those days my food bag used to be bigger than my hand bag.  Amma had all those cute dabbas in which she will pack curd for calcium, date fruits for iron, sundal for protein, pomegranate juice, lunch with poriyal, kuttu, one big bottle of  boiled water et all.. Drank a lot of tender coconut especially to beat the heat. My daughter is May born and I had this body heat problem. There are days  nights when I have made my husband run around the city at midnight to find tender coconut.  I walked every evening at the terrace for 30 mins listening to music. Yeaahh I was that crazy.. 🙂

* About birth story I hit hospital few days before expected due date on a false pain and the doctor said it will take at least another ten days for me to get ready for the D-day.  Next day, when we went to collect reports I got admitted 😦 I know at the least expected time. After spending around five to six hours in labor room with very little progress and epidural the doctor declared that I have to be shifted to the theater for c-section.

The doctor said to me “your baby is very adamant. she doesn’t want to see the world”…

I remember the anesthesiologist standing above my head and constantly saying your baby is going to be out in few minutes.  Finally my bundle of joy made her grand entry to this world on 13th May 2005 at 10:52 pm and made her first appearance to appa (daddy) and ammachi (my mom) who were waiting outside impatiently.  Mom’s first description about my daughter was “she looked like a laddu (south indian sweet) with two cute eyes wide open di”..  From then on my world is revolving around her.

So ladies sit back, relax, enjoy all the special attention you get on these nine months and have a safe ride to the world of motherhood.

Cheers

October crafts

Here is our entry for this month’s artsy crafsy challenge. As usual Adi made these cards in my absence. I have NIL contribution.

and she wrote this inside

It says “Dear Shruti Aunty,  I like making crafts with my mommy”   🙂

She also made this card for me.  When she is happy her first choice would be making cards. I have got many cards from her especially when I behave to her 😉

She also made a flower bracelet for me. While fixing this on my hand she asked with an innocent face “Mommy why do I always do stuff for you and you never do anything for me? No card, no bracelet, no necklace”  what do I say? 😦 Accepted the bracelet with head down.. Have to make some thing for her soon…

On a different note she has recently started piano class in school this year.. Can you guys guess this song?

200

Yep.. 200th post of this blog !!!!!

when there are avid bloggers around who easily reach 200 in less than a year here I am coming as slow as I could be reaching 200 after the second birthday of this blog 🙂 I can neither post daily nor do a NaBloPoMo. The content for this blog predominantly depends on the happenings around my little girl. But, I would like to promise to all my readers that I will keep this blog alive as long as I can. There is no way to escape my sweethearts 😀 I don’t even dream about shutting down this blog.  Blogging/blog hopping has become an inevitable part of daily life.  I have got so many amazing friends and learned many many life lessons in this blog world. Thank you all people for being so nice to me by commenting. It means a lot to me. I am that kinda person who cannot live a day without talking chit chatting. I love to chat with friends over phone and will automatically feel low if I don’t talk to at least one friend to my hearts content in a week. But these days my phone usage has drastically come down (blame it on really busy friends, pretending busy me and timings) and I am not feeling low either. That’s the power of virtual friends I got in this space. After reading all the blogs I follow (2 left to reach 100 subscriptions :)) , writing comments, reading other’s comments, replying to comments on my post it feels like the chit chat for that day is done and I can now peacefully get back to all my other work. That mental peace is mind blowing. Thanks again to all my blog friends.  You never know the person on other side of the world might be smiling all through the day after reading your post.. Sometimes they are thought provoking too.. So, keep writing folks..

Leaving you all with two incidents.

First one is heart warming and second one is ???

Heart warming incident
Today morning – One of those days when Adi leaves early to school and momma waves bye bye from home. M reached the outside door, she was following him and I was standing near our apartment door peeking my head out to say bye. When this girl turned back to say bye I called her closer to me and hugged her tight for no reason. She waited till I was done and instead of hugging me back my over responsible little brat said “Momma I don’t want to be late for the assembly. I got to go now. I will hug you back in the evening okay? really I got to go now momma”… She left only after getting an “Ok” signal from me. Othewise she knows momma’s day will not be good. Seriously how and when do they grow? Does it happen secretly? She melts me for no reason I say…

??? Incident

Adi: You know mommy J (boy in 2nd grade) is scared of N (girl in 1st grade)
Me: Why is he scared of her? did she hurt him?
Adi: No, actually she said she wants to marry him so he is scared of her.
Me:  Did she tell this to him? How did he know?
Adi: No. I told him (narayana narayana)
Me: Why did you tell him?
Adi (shrugging her shoulder): That’s okay because now she is not sure about it. She changed her mind but I don’t know if she changed for good.

You may want to know my reaction? I was searching for my dropped jaw in the floor 😦 😦

Now, please go ahead and do the honors of naming this ??? incident…..

 

Finally…

Okay folks after so much deliberation I am now the proud owner of Samsung Galaxy S II smart phone. My team mates are android guys and they have convinced me enough to go for this.  No, I am not against Apple. I have a Shuffle and an iTouch. Both were gifted by special people ;).  iTouch was my first handheld device and I love it.  Listening to songs (I have a collection of 2000+ songs and listening to them in shuffle mode is bliss) and solving Sudoku in my iTouch is my favorite pass time during transit.  Without my iTouch I could have never solved a Hard level Sudoku.  I and Adi had spent hours in playing Scrabble, Word Search and Angry birds. I have many more sweet memories attached to it.

Coming to Samsung Galaxy S II this is my first smart phone and I am still exploring the features. Its cool to check gmail often except the fact that there are hardly any new mails :(. I can now save the time spent on FB in the evening every day. It has 8 megapixel camera with HD video recording. I don’t have to carry my camera or camcorder anymore.  Its very slim and light weight though height is 4.93 inches and width is 2.60 inches. Its not fitting some of my pant pockets :(.  Its super cool but reached me after a long wait. The release at USA was postponed for months and finally made its appearance on Oct 2nd.  I mean through phone careers where you get the phone at discounted price.  At market it is some $550+ and with phone career you get it for $199+2 years contract. For the records I got the phone on Oct 5th (yep 3 days after the release). There was no stock in nearby store and M purchased it from a store near his office.  I am not a gadget freak person and not sure if its worth those extra bucks for data plan every month. I may not make anything out of it except frequent checks of social network sites. But, this phone has already started growing on me…

The only sad part is that I bought it on the day Jobs said good bye to this world.  I am a true admirer of his creativity and Vision.

Presenting to you all my first smart phone 😀 😀 😀

Okay next post is a special one. Any guesses?

Farm Visit

2010 visit is here

This time mommy took a day off and volunteered be a chaperone so she gets to do a picture post :). Needless to say Adi was super excited about me joining her for the trip. A week before the trip the first thing she asked me every evening was “Amma did you check with your manager about leave? What did he say? “.  Though her teacher introduced me as “Mrs.Ani” to the kids most of the time they called me as “Adi’s mom”. You should have seen this girl’s face when they called me as “Adi’s mom” for help. It was full of pride 🙂  I had eight kids to take care of and every other minute it was like “she pushed me, he pinched me, she is not leaving way, he is taking my stuff, I need to pee, I need snacks..” I was about to do a “sashtang namaskaram” (falling on feet) to their teacher. Hats off to her for handling them with so much patience.

We left the school around 9am and it was an hour and a half drive to the farm. Adi sat next to me holding my hands tight 🙂

Virtual farm trip begins

Getting on to the bus

Corn fields on the way

First thing first – So right after reaching the farm we had lunch at picnic area that had some wooden tables. (it was brown bag lunch packed from home).

Followed by pee time. Unfortunately there were only few portable toilets and the line was long.

Farm without farm animals? No way.. So we saw Goats, Lambs, Chickens, Donkeys, Horses, Cows (What you see them on road sides at India? We had to travel more than a hour to see them 😦 ) and I felt pity on seeing the kids getting too much excited for a Lamb or Goat.

On the way to apple picking

apples here , apples there, apples apples every where

Adi – busy picking the right apple for daddy

On the way back from apple picking. The kids were grouped into two and it was heart warming to see them holding on to their partner’s hand all through day.

Next was hay ride to visit the other side of the farm for potato picking and pumpkin picking.

Potato picking

Dig dig dig to get fresh potatoes.

Pumpkin picking

Greedy Adi but later she picked one that can fit her size.. Almost all the kids did the same 🙂

 

 

Strawberries (Unfortunately there were no berries. The season is over 😦 )

Brocolli

Migrating brids

and finally back to bus with hefty bags (every person carrying a bag full of apples, bag full of potatoes and a pumpkin)

The End (Hope you are liked the virtual farm trip) 🙂

P.S: For the records potatoes were roasted for dinner on the same day, apples were eaten raw and they tasted so good, pumpkins are waiting in the corner to get transformed into jack o lanterns.

Dumb moment # 1001

Yesterday evening Adi was at her pattu (carnatic vocal music) class and we visited nearby mall to buy few items.  As it was already past 7 pm we decided to pack dinner from the mall. We bought Indian combo meal for us and Burger King happy meal for Adi. I packed them all in one plastic bag and asked M not to tell her about dinner. I thought it can be a surprise for her when she reaches the table for dinner.  You know how good I am with surprise plans don’t you?

So, I hid the plastic bag with food under my seat and picked up this girl from the class. As I opened the car door the little devil just smelled once and shouted

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“Guyssss is it Burger king kids meal for my dinner today?” I smell fries and there I see the cover under the seat. She can easily beat Bloodhound on a smelling contest I say.

You should have seen my face. M was literally ROTFL. I have hardly seen him laughing out loud like this.  And he said please squeeze your brain twice as much as you normally do before planning surprise for us.

This little devil she made me feel like a dumb (as if I am not one) all night yesterday 😦  I have asked myself a million times “how did I miss that?” I am a stupid. I am an idiot…

As of today I am officially giving up planning surprises for these two creatures on my world. 😦