Of this one song....

I've been waiting to upload a song that the husband got recorded recently and presented it to me as a surprise mother's day gift, but every day I forget to bring the CD from the car to my desk. Today I remembered to do so :).

He got 3 songs recorded, but the one that I (and my daughter) liked the most is: "pyar maanga hai tumhi se, na inkaar karo". Here is the link to the audio.....(warning: the quality of the uploaded version is not as good as the CD version, but this is the best I could do to share online).

https://soundcloud.com/sthakkar/pyar-maanga-hai-tumhi-se-sam

So, since the first time we heard that song, whenever I drive the daughter to school (or anywhere else in my car), she buckles up in her car seat and says: "mumma please pay pappa's song". {I love when she says "pay" instead of play - oober-cute :)}. And soon as it turns on, I look behind to find her grinning ear to ear. Her happy smiling face makes me heart melt....every.single.time.

Then, one day, she insisted on listening to that song at home too. I explained to her that we only have the CD in the car, and we cannot play it on our iphone or ipad. But I also said, you can listen to the same song in a different voice. And she was eager to listen to it :).

So I played the above, and she was mesmerized. She must have watched this video more than 100 times by now. And when I asked her, whose voice is better, she tells me: "mumma in one nine nine two I like man's voice; in mumma's car I like pappa's voice". Smart cookie! {one nine nine two is our house number hence the reference}.

Then one day, after watching the video, she tells me: "mumma I sad. Man sing song and lady cry. Lady very sad mumma she not stop crying" - LOL! {watch the song and you will see the heroine crying and that's what she is referring too}. I have tried telling her that the man singing is Kishore Kumar but it has still not registered in her head :)!

She loves music, and she loves dancing. She can sing so many hindi songs now....even though she cannot speak fluently in Hindi or Gujarati, she really enjoys bollywood music...and I am thankful for that :).

Overall though, the daughter is going through a very rough phase right now. That is the main reason I have not been able to post more regularly on this blog. I don't know if its because of the preschool or a growth thing. We checked in with her ped and everything seems to be okay, nothing alarming. So we are doing our very best to understand her, empathize with her, and keeping our patience when dealing with her tantrums. She went through a phase couple weeks ago where she would hit the baby zillion times a day, but this week we have seen a remarkable improvement and they both have been playing very well with each other. We hope it only keeps getting better :)!

Hoping to write more regularly from June onwards....and ending this post with a few pictures from the Mother's Day photoshoot!

Happy weekend!!!!

Baths and Swings

One of the very few things (or maybe the only thing?) the kiddos love doing together is bath time. They share toys, and have fun frolicking in the water. I am yet to try it out in the big tub, coz the son is still unsteady on his bum...but the little tub in our master bath is working great for now.

And they both lurrrrrrrrrrve the swing - ya there's swings at the park and they are oh-so-much-fun but we can't go there all the time.....both the kids can fall asleep in this swing at home, the daughter will eat her snack while swinging, and any tantrums going on can be resolved by putting the child in the swing. For less than 20 bucks, this one is a great addition to any home with infants and toddlers.

And today is my mum's birthday....mum n dad and the kiddos came to work to have lunch with me (thanks to my friend A who played chauffeur) - we have a vegetarian station in the cafe whose fabulous cook presents us with new yummy dishes every day. I am yet try out something here that I did not like. Today was no exception. We had a quinoa and brown rice thai salad with pineapples, red cabbage, green beans and asparagus in a peanut-sauce. We also had peanut-curry tofu with cauliflower, a barley salad and some yummy falafel. The daughter had way too much fun at her mumma's workplace :).

Next up - Mother's Day Weekend :)! Fun Fun Fun!

Book Review - The Secret Wish List

Preeti Shenoy is one of my favorite bloggers and friend in blogosphere. She also happens to be one of my favorite personalities (now a celebrity :)), someone who I admire a lot, and someone who never fails to inspire me in anything she does.

I instantly fell in love with her writing when I chanced upon her blog one day, a few years ago. I remember spending an entire Sunday afternoon browsing through her posts. I soon read her first book, 34 Bubblegums and Candies" which had just been released. Although I loved the book then (and still do), I must say that she has improved leaps and bounds in her writing since her first book was released. Her writing has gained so much confidence.

I won a copy of  her latest (fourth) book, "The Secret Wish List",  from one of the contests on her blog and the book was waiting for me when I arrived at home during my recent India trip. It took me a while to start reading it, but I finished it in a couple of days (hard to do it in one sitting with a toddler and a full-time breastfeeding infant) and even though its been a while I read it, the story and its message is still lingering on in my mind.

The Secret Wish List is a love story beautifully woven into words. And the part of the story that appealed the most to me is how the protagonist finally realized how miserable she was with her current life and did something about it. Since I was in India when I read the book, I could see many people like her around me. Most Indian women who are homemakers are very submissive to their spouses or family, and after reading the book I wished that were not the case. I wished more women voiced their opinions during conversations (I found this to be huge coz I totally lacked company in this department during my visit). I wished they spent more time pursuing their hobbies. I wished each and every one read Preeti's book, made their own wishlist and decided to fulfill it, slowly but surely. I did made a mental note of my wishlist and will work on fulfilling it for sure!

Preeti's lucid writing, her definition of the characters and the cities they live in, the places traveled - it all feels so real when you read it, that you instantly form a bond with her books and start relating your own life to it. She always transports me back to my happy memories - whether its college, a close friendship, a place I visited, and so I say that she's an amazing writer.

Another thing that Preeti's books and blog posts always remind me is to live in the moment, be sincere + work hard and be grateful for the blessings in life. Life can change any minute, and there are no warnings given. We should greet each new day given to us with a smile, give it our best, and when we go to bed, we should fill our gratitude journal with positive notes and fill our minds with content.

I cannot end this post without mentioning one more thing. Preeti is also a woman of her words. She will do what she says. And even after achieving so much success and fame, that quality of hers has not changed. She was there for me when I needed her.....and I will forever be grateful for that.

Her fifth book is very much awaited....and I wish her much more national and international success as a writer in future!

Thoughts on maternity benefits

I read this article yesterday:
http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/30/technology/yahoo-maternity-leave/index.html?fb_action_ids=10152798888910721&fb_action_types=og.recommends&fb_source=aggregation&fb_aggregation_id=288381481237582

If interested, read the comments. Very interesting, to say the least.

I have mixed feelings about this whole maternity paid leave thing. I have voiced my opinions earlier about how Intel does not give us even a single day of paid maternity/paternity or bonding leave. Also, the state of CA classifies maternity as a short-term disability condition and because we pay for a short term disability plan through our paycheck, we get those benefits.

On one hand, I applaud large corporations like Cisco, Google, Facebook, and now Yahoo, for providing such generous benefits to new moms and dads. Any amount of leave for a new mom is not going to be enough. So whatever you get is great. However, I am of the opinion that such benefits have to come from the government (state or country), not from private corporations. Or, there should be a standardized policy that everyone follows. Atleast the minimum requirement. And then they could go above and beyond the minimum requirement, and that's entirely upto the company and its policies. That is how it is in many of the European countries, where the government itself has generous policies for new parents. In some countries, moms get upto 2 years of leave (not all is paid but their position in the workforce is guaranteed). Most countries do a year of leave in Europe.

I can see how the current situation where the benefits largely vary from one company to another in the US can cause lots of grief. Within the company as well, it brings on feelings of discrimination between employees. Another point that is sure to bring feelings of discrimination is these private companies dishing out cash for baby gear. Why is that? Isn't having kids part of your life plan? Don't you plan your expenses in such a way that you can accommodate the additional expense of bringing in a baby in your life? How do you compensate to the employees who choose not to have children or who don't have them yet or have fertility issues? Again, the appropriate thing is the tax breaks that you get for having more dependents in your household, and any deductions/credits you can take for their care....but such policies are already in place.

Not only the leaves - atleast with Intel - most of the "Great Place to Work" perks and events are also catered towards employees who have children. We have spring carnivals, movie nights, free museum and water park days, discounts on kids activities, etc. There are a ton of college graduates in the workforce who don't have a family, many childless couples, many more whose kids are college-age, and not to forget, the few single souls, who feel totally left out. This one colleague of mine who is single is never able to utilize any of the perks. He even skips the holiday dinner coz everyone brings their spouse and he feels odd to show up by himself.

The whole childcare-daycare ecosystem is also not too great in the US. From infants to preschool age children, there is a big dirth of quality childcare centers or individual providers who are licensed and experienced. I am experiencing all the issues first hand. I'm reading a book (bringing up bebe) which talks about creche's in France and how good they are, and how you have to get into the waitlist, etc and I feel why don't they have such places here in the US? Why don't they train people specifically for this purpose and pay them well enough to take up this career as a living?

An ideal life is where one parent stays home and takes care of the kids and the house, and the other one is the bread winner. But then we would never evolve as a society, would we?

I've mostly ranted out here...but what do you think?

How do I look :)?

This picture is from last weekend.

A couple of things happened while I was on vacation in India.

First, I lost 10+ lbs (I think 12 lbs but definitely more than 10). YAY! All the weight that I gained during my second pregnancy is gone. I didn't have to diet, or exercise. Just breastfeeding the baby full-time and watching what I eat helped me lose it. I also had to cut out dairy from my diet for a few weeks, and I'm sure that helped me shed some pounds. Now I have about 10 more lbs to lose....its the excess from my first pregnancy with the daughter, and as I introduce a little bit of exercise this summer into my routine, and continue to be mindful of my calorie intake, combined with breastfeeding the baby past his first birthday (or as long as he wants to nurse), I will be able to shed it.

Second, I cut my hair shorter. A lot of people are noticing it and commenting. My neighbors in India were very sad....they never commented that they loved my long hair, but after the haircut, they told me they had always longed for hair like mine. After coming to the US, the person who is disappointed the most is the husband :). He had grown a mustache while we were gone, so when we met him at the airport, he said he grew it to mourn my haircut without his consent - LOL!. Personally, I love the shorter do. I can wash my hair everyday and leave it open and don't have to spend much time caring for it. I had loooooong hair for 10+ yrs and a change was overdue. With a toddler and an infant, I barely manage to shower everyday. There could not be a better time to enjoy this new hair style.

Both refreshing changes for me....looking forward to enjoying summer and being outdoors and active!