You're the best

It's no secret that without my Mom's help S and I would have checked into a madhouse. I mean, having two kids under two is no joke. It's not twice as hard but hundred times as hard. My mom does most, if not all, the heavy-lifting, leaving us to catch a breath and some sleep. I thank her almost everyday but just a simple "thank-you" doesn't seem to convey the amount of gratitude we have for her. Her response is the usual "Stop thanking me, if I don't help my kids, who will?". Regardless this Thanksgiving I am especially fortunate to have her by my side.

For a change though, how about thanking myself too? Pardon me while I toot my own horn cause there ARE somethings I do better than my mom. Like:

- I can snip Tara's and Nisha's nails. Ok so this list is starting off rather lame but do you know the precision involved in cutting a baby's nails? Not to mention I don't have the best eyesight in the world.

- I can make Tara go to potty and pee-pee even it it means reading the "Brown Bear, Brown Bear what do you see" book a zillion times.

- I can put both the girls to sleep faster than anyone even if it means singing "Goodnight Baby" a zillion times.

- I can cook Tara's favorite meal - Pasta and I get a compliment of "Mama, it's nice" every single time.

- I can get Tara to finish her meals better than anyone. Even if I have to plop her in front of the tele and get her to watch Teletubbies while I shove dal rice in her mouth.

- I use my voice of God so well that it shuts up Tara every time she is ready to throw a tantrum. My boob shuts up Nisha for now.

- I can put Tara's silky hair into two perfect ponytails.

- I worked till the very last day, till 4:30pm (hey I'm a government employee we work very diligently till 4:30pm, thank you very much) on both my pregnancies.

- I produced two adorable girls even if I have to say so myself. Mom bought Avi and me into this world, so I think I win on this one hands-down!

This and That 2

Thanks for all your concern over Tara. Happy to announce she is no longer ignoring the baby. Instead she gives Nisha a good old whack on the head every time she passes her.

-x-

The other day Tara took her shoe off and put her hand into it and exclaimed "My arm is now my feet!" She blew all our socks off with that remark, even though the grammar wasn't quite right.

-x-

Nisha is gassy! Very gassy!! Just like her father gassy!!! In medical terms they call it colic. This is how her evenings go - she wakes around 7pm, wants to nurse constantly, yells as she arches her back and turns beetroot-red in pain. This lasts till about 11:30pm at which point I hand her off to my mom who carries her on her shoulder for the rest of the night. My mom probably has had 2 hours of sleep in the last few weeks, maybe not even that much.


-x-

Nisha has dark-brown highlights. It's the strangest thing, her hair is jet-black but the tips are all a dark brown shade. To think we named her Night primarily after seeing the color of her hair and whadoyaknow it turns to brown.

-x-

We've been partying of late and the Thanksgiving weekend hasn't even started. We've been attending birthday parties galore. At her best friend Tanvi's party Tara flipped to her insecure self until the last guest left and then she was all playful. Lakshmi told us that we should be the first to arrive at a party so Tara does not get overwhelmed. The best advice ever, we went to Aakash's and Divya's party and the results were fan-freaking-tastic. Tara had a blast and as a result we did too. In fact at Divya's party we didn't even know where she was, she was busy playing with much older kids and refused to go home even though it was 11pm, way past her parents bedtime.

-x-

S and I had our first night-out alone in 2 years. My mom, the gem that she is, agreed to keep the kids while S and I went to his company's holiday party. Can I admit how nice it was not having to chase a toddler or carry a toddler or pick up a dropped sippy cup or eat off a plate which has Elmo on it!

Tara's reaction

Put it down.

Take it off.

Switch it off.

Send it home.

Take it away.

The "it" refers to Nisha and the words spoken by Tara. To say that Tara has taken the arrival of her sibling not-so-well could very well be the understatement of this year. I sent out birth announcement cards this week and lied, I lied people. Frankly I just left off one critical word "Tara is enjoying being a big sister" I said, failing to add the word NOT at the appropriate place.

I read about it, I was told about it, I was warned about it but nothing prepared me for it. To see Tara's insecure eyes and the change the arrival of a newborn has done to her is gut-wrenching. I must admit it's getting a bit easier but the first two weeks were terribly saddening to watch. Tara kept wanting me to carry her which after the c-section was hard to do. Considering I carried her till the very last day of my pregnancy, in fact, I walked into the hospital carrying Tara but walked out carrying Nisha which was too hard for little Tara to witness.

Even the daycare staff have seen a drastic change In Tara's personality. Tara always went to anyone and was the playful one. Now her notes say:

"Tara had a sensitive day."

"Tara had a rough day but we worked through it."

"She made it known when she was unhappy."

"She had a better day but she did have her meltdowns too."

Poor girl is still too young to totally comprehend what's going on at home and why this bebe-doll Nisha is attached to mama all the time. How do I explain that her sister sleeps during the day and wants to nurse constantly in the evenings. My Mom and S give Tara all the attention all the time and that seems to help. We don't talk about "the baby" and pretty much ignore her when she is not needy. We constanly tell Tara that we love her, and she is our baby too and we love, love, love her.

It is getting better, slowly. Tara has started touching Nisha's hair and every now and then gives her a little pat. I wonder how our parents and grand-parents managed us? Did they buy books titled "Siblings without Rivalry" and "My New Baby"? My great-grand mom had 14 kids, how the hell did she manage it?? And to think some people say I take after her, what are they thinking??

Cheer up, my Tara.

In 2 weeks

1) Nisha has gone from 8lbs9oz to 9lbs13oz and from 21inches to 21.5inches.

2) I have lost 23pounds, ALL MY PREGNANCY WEIGHT. Hallelujah!!

3) Tara has gone from happy-go-lucky child to insecure, introverted, does-not-want-to-leave-mommy-for-one-millisecond child. Tell me it does get better?

4) One child wants to nurse at my breast and the other wants to be held at my breast at exactly the same time.

5) I can tell if Nisha is comfort feeding, cluster feeding, hunger feeding or night feeding. Don't ask me how I know, but I just do, something called experience?

6) We celebrated my Mom's birthday. A year ago we were partying it up in Vegas. This year it was McD's for breakfast and pizza & cake for dinner to celebrate. Oh shut up, don't look at me with those eyes, that's what my mom wanted. Really, she did.

7) Our desktop mysteriously went kaput. I can access only https sites so I can go to BOA, AmEx and all the credit cards sites to check how much (Holy mother of God) is going in diaper expenses but can't get to any other site. Then to add to it our HotDiggity (yeah S named our wireless network Hot Diggity!) connection also went kaput. Right now I'm on someone's unsecured network hoping to not be dropped before I hit publish.

8) Nisha wakes up every odd hour and Tara every even hour, hence giving me exactly 1 second of sleep between the hours. I am so sleep-deprived but enjoying being a mom of two, atleast till my mom is here.

9) Nisha's poop color has gone from black to green to mustard.

I'll leave you with that pleasant thought and pictures of Nisha's countdown to a cry.

Halloween, not really

This ain't really a Halloween post as we didn't do much, correction, didn't do anything this year. Last year I was 100% into it and got Tara and S devil costumes which I spent a crap-load of dollars for and they both wore it for .05 seconds and that was it. This year with baby#2, oops, Nisha being born a week earlier I didn't have much time to do or think of anything. We picked up some last ditch effort shirts from Toys r Us which Tara wore to her daycare party and then another one last night to scare the few kids that came knocking on our door.

Tara's didn't care much about handing out the candy, she kept holding the candy basket going "No, mine. No, mine" so at the end of the day she had the candy jar all to herself.


Nisha on the other hand just slept through it all (Thank you Rama, Krishna, Ganapati my little one sleeps oh does she ever sleep!). But I did get a picture of her where she scarily resembles Tony Soprano ... I know I was on a Sopranos craze during my pregnancy but this is taking it to the limit, no? Or, maybe I'm just imagining it.