About Mommy Center

About Mommy Center

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Malini starts reading


Daughter is turning 5 and she already read 18 sentences ALL BY HERSELF................. !!!

She told me to buy her an 'easy book' and I did that. Bought her the Book, 'Goat in a Boat' and SHE READ A FULL STORY :)) I loved every minute of it and even felt rewarded all over again!! I started reading out to her when she was barely 4 months old and she would stare at the pictures with full focus and curiosity as I turned page after page.

The neighborhood book shop 'CROSSWORD, Powai' has been my second home ever since we landed in Mumbai and I can't stop without a word of gratitude, especially to 'Nisha' who works in the children's section and has read out many stories to her. Sooo Happy, Guys! Want to share this moment of joy!

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Anjana Parthasarathy

My Information
Name - Anjana Parthasarathy
Husband's name - Sanjay
DOB - August 1st
Wedded Since - 22/04/05
No. of Children- 1
Interests - Reading, travel, baking cakes, sometimes play the keyboard, shopping and currently, photographing my little angel.
Web page/Blog - http://www.cozyoven.blogspot.com/
http://www.my-potpurri-of-thoughts.blogspot.com/
About Me - I grew up in Bangalore and did my schooling etc all the way upto engineering, and then came to Hawaii (yes! Hawaii) for my masters, though I transferred out to a school in Bay Area and graduated from there. I am now living in the Land of Sun and Sand, sans the Surf!

Kids Information
Maanya - Female, May 1st, 2009

Divya Panuganti

My Information

Name - Divya Panuganti

Husband's Name - Arjun

DOB - 07 Oct

Wedded Since - 15 feb, 2009

Interests - I enjoy music, driving, travelling, reading now and then, chatting, and shopping!!!

About Me - I grew up in Hyderabad mostly and then went to Lko for my MBA. Joined Infy from college, and have been with them ever since. have been comfortably single for a long time, before getting hooked to arjun early this year. and here i am - already ready to be a mom! :) am due in the end of november.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Vijayalakshmi Chandrasekaran

My Information
Name - Vijayalakshmi Chandrasekaran
Husband's Name - Eswar
DOB - 23rd February
Wedded Since - 30th April, 2007
No. of Children- 1
Interests - I love reading, travelling, watching home decoration and cooking shows(though not very fond of cooking:))
About Me -I was born in Bangalore, grew up there, went to school, college, basically lived there all my life. Then came marriage, got married and moved to the US but oh, how I miss Bangalore! Now in the US working as a statistician in a pharmaceutical company. .

Kids Information
Krish - Boy, 23/6/2009

9 tips for stay-at-home parents from Gerber

Got this lil piece of information and thought since we are on the topic of stay-home moms, its the apt time to post it.. although following it may seem tough.


Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Introducing Paromita Deb

A new member after a long time indeed. Here's introducing to you all - Paromita Deb. She has been among the best of friend's I can ask for and was my colleague at i-flex Bangalore, only I hardly remember the colleague bit because we had so much fun at work! We worked in the same team, on the same projects even... but never ceased to stop by and grab every chance to take part in just about every cultural/non-official activity. That gave us the feel of being back in college.

Paromita has a son, Rishi who turned two this July. She lives in Toronto with her hubby, Shivaji, and her little brat. Now, Mommy Center enters another country.... nice!!

Paromita, welcome to Mommy Center. I personally cannot wait to see more of you here!! Share with us everything you experience as a mom - whether they are answers to others queries, your own questions or just random thoughts you want to share with everyone out here.

I'm guessing you would have accepted the invite to the blog. Now all you gotta do is subscribe to Mommy Center. For this simply follow these instructions. And, for everything else that you want to know about Mommy Center read up the archives!

And here is a little something we would like you to do as a member of Mommy Center. We run a section with profiles of all our members (which you can see on the blog) so it will be easy to look up basic information about a member whenever you want. All you have to do for this is mentioned here. Make this your first post so we have you up on the Member Profiles Section!!

Happy Blogging Paromita!!

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Stay-home moms et. al.

Anjana this is in response to you post. Others, its a long one... just the way most of my posts are :) Enjoy!!

To start off, being a stay-home mom, for whatever reason you become one, is a huge thing. Here, I will put in my perspective of all the good and bad (and everything in between) of being a stay-home mom in a setup where you have NO domestic help and practically no 'social influence' per se.

It came to me as a surprise - this whole baby thing. It was one thing trying to conceive, then go through a miraculous pregnancy and now, its another trying to raise a child with absolutely no prior experience (Even visual, since I have so siblings/nephews/nieces who have grown up with us).

As I write all this I'm wondering where to begin. Whether I should tell you the number of times I lost my patience and temper because Samvit did something very annoying.... and got so angry that Id whack him hard on his snuggly diapered butt. Or narrate how much I crave to re-live every single moment that I spent until today raising this baby of mine just so that I can see how he has become every little thing that he is today, yet again!!

Its tough. It takes patience, perseverance and a many self-taught philosophy lessons. It was one thing to deal with home and work and totally another to deal with home and baby. Im sure its another ball game having work in the latter combination. I think someone who is going through that can throw more light on it. Well to put things simply - Ive grown from sitting on a swivel chair at work and commenting on the way the world is... to staying at home and making the world what it is. Ive come to believe, after having a baby, that what the world is today is due to every single mother (working or at home) who put in her EVERYTHING to raise a child and make him a contributor to this world. Ok,I'm drifing away to philosophical fundas now!!!

So, back to the point. Stay at home moms are not somehow suddenly blessed with a ton of patience and nor does motherly passion takeover entirely. Its a battle between trying to be who you are (or 'were' before baby) and who you ARE!! Like most of you working women might agree it does give you a break to go off to work and be 'yourself' although mentally you might have baby on your mind 24/7! Its work but its some time off for yourself too. I might be wrong, because going to work, I know, has its own pressures since Ive been there and done that too.

And then there is the physical aspect. There are days when I personally would do anything to simply sit in a silent room and not do ANYTHING. No cooking, no dishes, no tons of laundry, no diaper changes, no potty training, no cleaning, no nothing. Yes. Being at home takes a huge toll on a woman physically. It is very VERY exhausting to say the least. I think its the toughest task to keep up with a toddler who wants attention. Besides, more than just attention, they even need physical activity.. so apart from doing all these chores we have to see that we play with these little bundles of energy so that they would sleep easily at nap times and eat well too. Having family at home solves this problem to a certain extent. How much can one woman do? It aint easy.

And how can one forget about how we moms can get totally insane just worrying that our kids are not eating, or not sleeping easily, or not walking or talking etc? What makes this worse is the fact that when you are around them all the time as a stay home mom you feel YOU are responsible for it all. The only thing that compounds this feeling is #1 Our guilt and #2 Relatives who pass snide comments about our 'incapabilities' of being a parent. It gets on you - Like a dose of slow poison....and suddenly you get engulfed by this whole horrifying idea that you are not doing a good 'job' as a mother. I had this feeling. I broke down in front of my husband one evening when he returned home. And I kept sobbing and weeping like a kid telling him I'm a pathetic mom because Sam cannot eat with a spoon. He was like, "Are you ok? You fought for it this far.. and, for Gods sake, its all not about a spoon!!" That did miracles, but what I'm coming to is the fact that we stay-home moms feel we are accountable for EVERYTHING. Which does cause more than a few strands of hair turn gray.
And then there is this whole 'what-am-I-doing-with-my-life' aspect, that takes over every once in way which Id rather talk less about because if I start with the list I want to do and rant and rave about it... this post can become an endless one.
All emotional attachment said and done, sometimes(out of monotony of our daily lives and trying to adjust our routines to the kids) we stay home moms tend to push away kids when we are doing chores. Simply because we have 'so much work' to get done before 'its mealtime/naptime'. We're at home but always rushing to cope up with time juggling N number of things at hand and trying to find a little 'Me' Time. And sometimes I think I do take my childs presence for granted. But later when he sleeps I feel guilty if I did not pay him attention when he was screaming his heaad off and showing me that he put those two red blocks together...and later realize that it was because he recognized the colours and I failed to see that!! Its the little things they do and the monotony of daily life makes us over look it all.

But apart from all this, no matter how tired I am or how frustrated I get with the number of times Samvit throws tantrums I think there is nothing more rewarding that staying home and watching a miracle grow right in front of my eyes... that I think is enough to refuel a mom, ANY mom!!

So as you can see life of a stay home mom is a huge concoction (and confusion) of emotions, chores, activites - all put together in a way that cannot be explicitly explained. And like I said earlier... I would do anything to watch a re-run of this entire story - even with another thousand diaper changes. Yes!

Monday, October 19, 2009

Co-Sleeping

Its something we all do right from when our lil ones are born. And I think its a part of our Indian culture to have our babies sleep with us until a certain age when we think they can sleep on their own.

But how and when do you make the transition? Have any of you made your babies sleep alone, separately at night right from the start? Have any of you already transitioned them to sleep themselves? If so when and, more importantly - HOW??

Put in your thoughts on this aspect and lets see what we all would agree on and finally end up doing!!

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Patience, Passion or Both?

One question has been knocking on every brain cell for the last two weeks - how do the people working at day care, single moms, stay-at-home-moms manage to care for the little ones? Is it just passion, or an abundance of patience, or both?

Since my parents returned to India 20 days back, I have been staying home with my almost-six-month old kiddoo. This is just the beginning of my three month time off from work. These last few days have been such an eye-opener to me, I tell you! I figured how much work goes into managing all the household work plus the little "Home Entertainment System" that I have. It does take up all your time, but sure is well worth it in the end.

My typical day starts at 6 in the morning when I shower up before hubby leaves to work at 6:30. I get about an hour to myself before Maanya is up, and I usually try to catch up on household chores then, except, occasionally (like today) when I go online to check my mails. Once the little one is up, it's all whole nine yards - nursing, diapering, baby bath, rock her to sleep (and catch a few winks myself right on the rocking chair). Before I know it, it's evening and time to step for a little stroll! Once we are back home, that's when my patience is tested. I will need to get done with cooking, and put Maanya to sleep (the princess protests if her dad rocks her at night!). And oh, I am still working on getting her to at least nap in her crib. It's baby progress, if you know what I mean. I am so exhausted by the time I hit sack, the night seems to just whizz by, what with waking up a couple times to nurse the baby as well.

So I wonder, how does a single mom manage? What is it that folks at day care centers have that keep them going every day? Is it a huge pot of patience that they have access to, or do they just love kids so much that nothing else matters? I absolutely love kids, and am very patient as well, but there are still times that actually test me! What about stay-at-home-moms? Does everyone feel the same, stay-at-home and otherwise? Are there times when you feel you need some time to yourself?

All in all, I must say that I am really glad to have taken a little break from work and am enjoying every minute I am getting with Maanya!!
 
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