Shutter Bug

I have got the shutter bug. Just joined a photography club and now I am on the rampage. Anything and everything is clicked and stored in a camera. No one is safe when I am on the prowl.
H,, if only .... I have never been one of those 'creative' kinds, but I am determined to spool out some decent pics. My project is 'Joys of childhood' ... With this project it certainly helps to have a 15 month old .. Will keep blogging.
Bye for now

Working Mom

I have been a mom for a year now and working for 6 months of it. One day my colleague told me 'Oh we would love to see a lot more of you in office'. My son had been sick for more than a week and I was working from home. That comment made me realise that career and motherhood don't go well together: especially in the first few years of motherhood. Well to make things clear, I never had a very high-flying career before my son was born, but I was quite ambitious, worked hard, stayed late to complete projects and generally gave 100% into my work. The general opinion was that I did a good job. But things changed quite drastically once I became a mom. My priorities had to shift (quite naturally). I now had someone who depended on me for everything. Balancing work and motherhood is quite tough. I do feel the tussle between professional ambition and motherhood from time to time. How do you kill that feeling of guilt that comes seeping through when you hear your child cry as you leave for work ? Or that sadness that envelopes you when he doesn't seem to mind when you go. How do you concentrate on that all important meeting when you know you child is down with a cold and fever and is refusing to eat whole day ? How can you explain to your colleagues that you are going home at 5:30 cos you came to office long before they arrived and that you need to be with your baby after being away for almost 12 hours ? How can you tell all this to your colleagues all of whom are men ? Most are fathers but somehow they don't seem been wrecked by these thoughts, but then all of them had wives who opted to stay at home to look after their babies. So I have to ignore comments regarding my work ethics and just continue doing my job.
Having a working mom in a company may seem like a bad idea to many, but I think there are many skills that we moms have to offer
Patience : How else can you handle an hyper-active toddler who refuses to do anything you say. These skills will definitely help you tackle any wayward colleague
Time management and Multitasking: Try looking after the house and managing a baby for couple of weeks, you will know the value of these skills.
Innovation and Problem solving skills : Need to think of a 100 different ways to entertain a fussy toddler while he eats his dinner. or think up a different story each night to put him to sleep. What product/creative company would not love to have a person with such imagination ?
So anyone looking for an ambitious, hard-working, talented working mom: you know whom to call ;)

Paris Revisited

September 2007. We decided to revisit the magic of Paris once again, but this time with extended family. I had very fond memories of our last trip to Paris and was hence quite dewy eyed thinking of this trip. I was looking forward to seeing all the romantic sights of Paris.

Pre-trip preparations

Travelling with a toddler is always stressful , atleast for me. I am always asking qts like 'Have i taken enough clothes ?' 'Does he have enough food?' 'Should I take more diapers' ... By the end of my packing I think I had enough food to feed an army and enough diapers to sell in a market !!! Its also funny how travelling with a toddler changes your perspective of the attractions. My only criteria for an attraction was availability of baby changing facility and stroller accessibility !

To and Fro

I would recommend taking the Eurostar if travelling with kids. They have more freedom to run around and enjoy. I cannot speak for our fellow passengers though :D. Return trip was a bit of a nightmare since my son refused to sleep and we had to move away from our assigned seats and go to the area between 2 carraiges to entertain him. Next time I am going to pack more toys for my son !!

Now Paris is a city for the fit and healthy. It can get quite tiring for those who cannot walk long distances , as we soon found out.

Metro

Almost none of the stations in Paris have an escalator, so we spent most of our trip lugging the stroller up and down the numerous stairs. My in-laws were also quite tired walking up and down the stairs. Also, the exits at most stations were not very stroller friendly. There were couple of places where the exit door nearly slammed into the stroller !!! The interchanges between lines is also quite a long walk, but we found that it was much easier to transit between RERs. So we took the RER whenever possible.

People

What Paris lacks in facilities, it makes up with people. We were prepared for a cold reception to our toddler in most places, but to our amazement we found Parisians we quite baby friendly. One of the stations I was lugging the stroller on my own when 2 teenagers came upto me and carried the stroller all the way up. I have never experienced such good manners in teenagers in London !! Also, my son loves to look at people and talk to them and the surprising thing was most of the people responded back. Funniest moment was when a tough looking punk climbed in the train , our son babbled to him and the punk smiled and did a little dance for him !!

Eating

We had 2 issues when searching for a place to eat. 1. We needed a place that would accept babies and 2. We needed something that served vegeterian food. I had printed out a big list of places based on our iterinary, but since we didnt stick to the plan we did have to scourge for places. We found a Korean restaurant near Notre Dame (other side of the river). The food was fantatsic. They didn't have a high chair for our son, but they didnt mind letting him sit with us.

We had dinner at Pooja restauarant in Passage Brady. Passage Brady is full of so called Indian restaurants, but Pooja was the only authentic Indian restaurant. Food was good and we sat outside so our son enoyed watching the rush of people. The last restaurant we visited was an Iranian restaurant on a street off Champs Elysees. The food was yummy and service was good too.

Attractions

I did have a plan of what we could do each day. Given that we were travelling with a toddler and quite elderly in-laws, we knew that we would not be able to see all the attractions. We managed to cover Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Arc De Triomphe, Champs Elysees and Montmarte. We did Eiffel Tower at mid-morning when it was a little less crowded, but there was still a long queue for the tickets. I wish there were advance tickets like they have for the London Eye and other London attractions. I did have high hopes of doing some shopping, but luckily for my husband we ran out of time.

The trip was nice but quite tiring and unlike my last paris trip I was looking forward to coming home.

Trying too Hard

An Old Blog revisited
*******************

Been long since I have poured out my heart into the blog. Its not due to lack of thoughts (surprising), but its more to do with vanity and ego. There is this vain part of me that says I need to maintain a standard. I have to write blogs that are amusing and stimulating and about something that means something to everyone. But then I realised that this blog is hardly read by anyone outside my family (they too read it at gunpoint), so might as well get back to what I am and not what I wish to be !!


Right now I am at a stage where nothing but my baby means anything to me , so all my thoughts seem to be filled with him. He will turn '1' soon and I am in this panic mode. His first birthday party is something I have been dreaming about ever since was 1 week old , 1 week as an embryo I mean. Yeah thats how long !!! I had created a list of people we should invite, which included even the people I sometimes bump in to on the Tube. I had this long list of catering companies who cater to chic children's parties , another list of party entertainers, and a list of huge halls. I bookmarked everysite that mentioned birthday party, and read articles on the best way to celebrate a child's first birthday.As with most things in my life, the actual doing bit is always left till the last min and so right now I am running around trying to organize a just about decent party. Its when I am running around organizing the evnt, when the actual significance of the event strikes me. Its been 1 year, 1 year since our lives had changed, 1 year since I have become a 'mom', 1 year of loving and caring for someone special. It was a unique experience. The first 3 months were hell. I was exhausted, dis-oriented, sleepless, angry and depressed. I felt nothing special for the brat who kept me awake most of the nights. I had no idea why he cried and I was angry at everyone who gave me advice. Then the golden period started. He was 4 months old and was starting to respond to me. You think you know love when u get married, but that is nothing compared to what u feel when u look at ur baby. Nothing else matters at all. I know a friend who told me he used to laugh and dance with his son in supermarket aisles without a thought of what people were thinking. Having a kid is like alcohol, you loose your inhibitions. And people seem a lot more friendlier too :D
I miss my pre-mom days. Miss the me-time I had. Miss the late night parties I could attend and the movies I could watch. Holidays were time to relax and enjoy and not an endless worry about milk and nappies and baby food. I miss chatting with friends and miss being able to lie down simply relaxing or reading a book. But I have had my share of fun and being a mom is fun too. Now i have someone to whom I can read to, I can talk to and clown with. someone who doesn't care how ragged I look, someone who always looks at me and says 'Amma you are beautiful'.
So thats why this 1 year is such a big milestone. Its 1 year since a mom was born.

Paris - An experience of a lifetime

Seems like something that happened ages ago ... but here are the sweet memories of the trip.

We are back after a splendid trip to Paris; the City of lights. It was really wonderful.
Firstly: walking around Paris is a very tiring task. The city is huge and even though the attractions can been seen from anywhere, they are actually miles and miles apart!!! Key attractions are Arc De Triomphe, La Defense, Eiffel Tower, Concorde, and Louvre Museum. The city is so beautiful there are many more glittering gems hidden out there. But it is for you to go and discover them.
We started with Louvre which has some of the best paintings in the world; most noticeably Mona Lisa. Oh yes we saw her, but to say the truth there are many other paintings much better than Mona Lisa. The sculptures too were great. The museum is huge and it’s not possible to cover entire place in one day. We just had a look at some paintings and then decided to carry on to our next stop.
Cathedral of Notre Dame: yes the setting for Hunch Back of Notre Dame. Victor Hugo had painted such a marvellous picture of this cathedral that we could almost see the Hunch Back ringing the old bells!! This cathedral took almost 200 hundred years to complete and you can see the ideas of numerous architects in its arches and domes and frightening gargoyles. It’s an amazing piece of history. For a scenic view of the cathedral one should look at it from across the River Seine. It is magnificent. We tore ourselves away from there to visit
Sainte Chapelle: This chapel is housed in the Palace of Justice. This is an exquisite piece of Gothic architecture. It is almost entirely made up of stained glass windows. Words cannot describe the beauty of the place. When the sun streamed through the stained windows, the whole place was lit up in a myriad of colours. It was almost like being in heaven. After some quiet contemplation (and photo clicking) we decided to go back to our hotel. And so ended Day 1 of our trip.
Now our hotel's name was Place De Clichy, which as its name suggests was in Place De Clichy (how cliche). Anyways this place is home to one of the hottest and most famous cabarets Moulin Rouge!!! Yes as in the Nicole Kidman movie. !! Unfortunately we didn't go in. Its expensive and you have to be formally dressed and there was a HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE Q for it. So all we could do was admire it from the outside and of course go click click !!!
The next day we set out for MontMartre. The area of MontMartre is set upon a hill and grandly overlooks Paris. It is home to Basilique du Sacre-Coeur. The crypt within is contains a relic which many believe to be a piece of the sacred heart of Christ. The Basilica is very pretty with its domes and arches. This town was also the haunt of artists and writers and all other creative beings; i.e. until prices soared and killed all creative instincts. But you still see artists busy at work, on the tiny winding streets of the town. These streets are typical Parisian streets you have seen in movies; lined with cafes and music playing on the road. An old man was playing an instrument and singing. He had such a lovely voice!! We enjoyed the sights and sounds and smells of the place. It was superb. We almost felt like artists!!!
Well we had to move on and our next stop was a piece of modern architecture. It gets you by its sheer size. It was La Defense. It is a 100 mts hollow cube style building. It’s humungous!!! Sheer size, Sheer power!! We took an elevator to the top and we could see all the attractions of Paris. It was simply amazing.
Our next stop was Place de Concorde. The Place de la Concorde, which is the largest place in Paris, is situated along the Seine and separates the Tuilerie Gardens from the beginning of the Champs Elysées. The famous Obelisk can be seen here. It’s the pencil like monument you see in those postcards; in fact Americans have copied it and they call it the Washington Monument. The difference is that the Paris one is gold tipped and has Egyptian hieroglyphics on it. Champs Elysées (pronounced totally different from the way it is written.) is like the Mall in DC. Concorde, Arc de Triomphe and La Defense are in one straight line. We walked from Concorde to Arc De Triomphe. Its a nice walk along a street lined with cafes and some great shops. It was quite a long walk and with a few café breaks in between J we reached the base of Arc de Triomphe. We decided to leave it and headed off to the Eiffel Tower.
Eiffel Tower: The best view of Eiffel Tower is from Trocadero, which is across the river Seine. It was amazing!!! We had one look at it and we realised that we were in Paris and we were looking at the most famous structure in the world. It was great. Simply stunning. We sat there looking at the structure for sometime. Sat there just absorbing it all in. Finally we decided to walk across to the base. Fortunately we didn’t have to wait in a long queue to get to the top. Eiffel tower has 3 levels. You can walk up to the first 2 levels, but you have to take a lift to the 3rd. (quite naturally!!!!). We took the elevator to the second floor. We just roamed around this level. The view from this level was great. It was getting a bit windy and chilly and so we went up to the 3rd level. Whew!!! If the view from the 2nd was great, then this was stunning!!!! Well critics may say the Eiffel Tower is over-hyped and in fact true Parisians prefer La Defense to Eiffel Tower, but I think its great just for the views. We went up the tower and sat there for 4 hours just waiting for the lights to come up. It was well worth the wait .It was spectacular. The whole city was lit up and in the centre the Eiffel tower... looking really beautiful with all its lights. I can’t describe the scene. No words can do justice to what we felt as we sat there basking in its lights; the gently flowing river down below and the sparkling lights all around. Maybe this was the magic; this was the romance of Paris. It was like falling in love all over again. We got back to the hotel all dewy eyed.
Last day in Paris and we had done almost everything. We decided to go to Musee D'Orsay which is a museum devoted to all forms of arts. It’s an ancient train station, which was converted into a museum. It houses paintings by Monet and Van Gough. Unfortunately we landed there on Monday and it was closed. River Seine beckoned and so we walked along its banks and generally strolled around until we found ourselves at the base of Arc De Triomphe.
Arc De Triomphe is a monument built by Napoleon as a tribute to the Grande Army. This huge arch stands at a very busy traffic roundabout with 12 major roads meeting. The best way to get to the base is via the underground walkway. The last time we came here, we had decided to skip the long climb up. This time we decided to climb those 300 odd stairs to the top of the Arc!!! The view from top was well worth the pain and effort. We enjoyed the view for some time and also sat down to catch our breath!!! (Whew we need to exercise a bit more!!!) Once we caught our breath we ran back to our favourite place, MontMartre. This time we just sat in the cafe and looked at the artists busy with their paintings. It was heavenly. Sadly it was time to come back and so with a heavy heart we packed up and took the plane back home, back to office, back to routine ... but with beautiful memories of a wonderful city.

What makes it worth it

I wake up at an ungodly hour cos he is screaming his lungs out. I look at the clock and see an hour I have never ever seen before. I curse and sigh and turn and pick him up. He looks up at me gives me that smile that melts my heart. My heart sings and I say to myself 'Anytime baby , will do this anytime just for you' ... Thats parenthood. Your life is turned upside down. Till the little bundle of joy lands on your lap, your life was perfect. Everything was planned, you had time for yourself. But there come this lil fella and everything is topsy turvy. Every second the lil someone is demanding your attention. He needs to be fed, needs nappy changed, needs to be comforted. But its that one look of utter love and pure innocence that makes it all worth it. Day starts at 6 (ie if it ever ended) with a tiny hand falling across my face, I turn and I see a tiny face peering at me trying to see if I am awake, I smile and wake up and then starts the rush ... change nappies, play with him, entertain him, take him to the park, sing to him , dance with him ....... There are times when I just want a break ... I sigh and think of all the leisure times I used to have .... and then I hear a tiny voice calling amma .... Once again my heart sings and I say 'Anytime baby , will do this anytime just for you'.. At the end of a long and tiring day I see him sleeping peacefully and I think God, what did I do before he was born ?

Trying to be the Perfect Mom

Some v knowledgeable mom once said Mommyhood doesn't come with a manual. How true it is !!! I am not v sure if a manual wld help too, since a mom like me wld spend most of her time checking to see if she was sticking to the manual. I have always been a person who is tensed 90% of the time so u can just imagine my state when akshay was born !!! are we using the ISO standard nappies ? are we feeding him nutritious food ? is he eating well ? is he sleeping enuf ? He looks a little skinny today ... is he loosing weight. Oh no he is so short for his age !! So many questions so many issues ... They say discussing it with other moms makes it easier. But I think it just makes it worse !!! Oh god the neighbours kid doesnt scream as much as he does ... oh god he is walking faster than my kid ... am i doing something fundamentally wrong ? And then there is thing abt Home food. Now that gets my %^&^ .. You say u feed ur baby bottled food and u can see the eyebrows raising .... oooooh really? i prepare my baby's food !! Then u cringe and feel like a little insect. You wait for the earth to open up and take you in !!! Oh no I am now a bad mom who can't even take enough time out to make food for my son. Whew !!! I guess thats a part of being a mom. You can never be perfect. 10 months into mommyhood and I think I can say is u do as u feel and pray that it all turns out okie.
Wonder if dad's have it as bad ???

The first one

For someone who is from the IT field, I am still a blog virgin. Sounds silly but thats the truth. I finally decided to take the plunge and start publishing my blogs. Its more as a therapy than need for recognition !!! Not even sure wot form these blogs will take or if I will keep up with the ideas that come out of my head.