Mending a Relation … Contd..

Tags

Emotions, feelings, hurt, life, relation, RJ

Continuation of Mending a Relation

Apparently, 5th time wasn’t the charm.

I don’t think I will be going back and initiating a conversation with RJ anytime soon. RJ had soo many ups and downs in the past 2 months and it was beyond the limit. RJ even asked me why the hell am I forcing to mend the relation again and again. I can’t even believe that this person had the nerve to say that. Looking from RJ’s perspective, it is me initiating conversations and it is me trying to fix things. RJ must be thinking that her/his life will be much better if I don’t exist in the picture. Whatever the reason is… enough is enough… I’m taking a break from all these relation stuff and going to let RJ go for the time being.

Hopefully coming new year I won’t feel like emailing again and being the “bigger” person…

If I do that and when I read this post, I will make sure to smack me!

adios!

 

His First Vacation/India Trip

Tags

baby, india, trip, vacation

I’ve heard people saying its better to travel with babies when they are young. I couldn’t understand why, but now I KNOW why! We took Singapore airlines and the whole journey (including the lay over) was 34 hrs. By the time we reached TVM, I felt like we started our journey weeks back. Appoos didn’t cry because of ear pains but he was very uncomfortable and wanted to move/crawl around. The tiny bassinet didn’t help either.

5 weeks in India :
The 2nd week of our vacation, AB got cold and then as the dutiful husband, he passed it on to me ( grrr…. ). Unfortunately Appoos got it too. This was his first cold and it was really painful to see him suffer with congested nose. Luckily he got better in 3-4 days. My cold, coughing, throat issues stayed for a good 3 weeks. Appoos had 3-4 Onam sadyas and had his thulaabaram in a devi temple.

Shopping was really hard with a baby. Me being picky, also didn’t really help the process. AB and I ate a lot of food. Mainly porotta, chicken dishes, rice, curries etc. We went on a Houseboat for a day and enjoyed the food & company. Overall we had a good time.

Singapore:
On our way back, we stayed in Singapore for 3-4 days. I loved loved that part of our vacation.  No household chores, no DIL responsibilities… just eat out, hang out, sleep … bliss! even if it was only for 3 days, it was a perfect vacation for me. Loved it!

The flight back to Cali was better. Appoos slept long hours. I managed to watch “What you are expecting when you are expecting” and “Bel Ami”.

Back to Home Sweet Home!

| or ||

Tags

baby, delivery, husband, pregnant

I’m taking this tag from Boo & CA, almost 3 yrs after they completed it!

1. WAS YOUR PREGNANCY PLANNED?

Yes Yes Yes otherwise I don’t know how I would have reacted.

2. WERE YOU MARRIED AT THE TIME?
Yes (Thank God!)

3. WHAT WERE YOUR REACTIONS?
well… the first time I took the home pregnancy test it was a negative.
I was not too thrilled but few days later I got a clear positive.
The reaction/emotion can’t be explained. We were really thrilled but at the same time scared.

4. WAS ABORTION AN OPTION FOR YOU?
No

5. HOW OLD WERE YOU?
26

6. HOW DID YOU FIND OUT YOU WERE PREGNANT?
Home Pregnancy Test.

7. WHO DID YOU TELL FIRST?
AB’s parents.

8. DUE DATE?
End of October

9. DID YOU HAVE MORNING SICKNESS?
No

10. WHAT DID YOU CRAVE?
whatever my amma used to cook.

11. WHO/WHAT IRRITATED YOU THE MOST?
Few people..

12. WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST CHILD’S SEX?
Boy

13. DID YOU WISH YOU HAD THE OPPOSITE SEX OF WHAT YOU WERE GETTING?
Nope
(I’ll have my chance again 😉 )

14. HOW MANY POUNDS DID YOU GAIN THROUGHOUT THE PREGNANCY?
24 lbs

15. DID YOU HAVE A BABY SHOWER?
Yup. Two.

16. WAS IT A SURPRISE OR DID YOU KNOW?
I had a hint about the first one (from office)
2nd one I had nooo freaking idea. I still can’t believe AB could keep a secret like that from me for a month.

(I guess I’ll have to be more careful about him huh)

17. DID YOU HAVE ANY COMPLICATIONS DURING YOUR PREGNANCY?
Yes

18. WHERE DID YOU GIVE BIRTH?
California

19. HOW MANY HOURS WERE YOU IN LABOR?
34 hours

20. WHO DROVE YOU TO THE HOSPITAL/BIRTH CENTER?
AB

21. WHO WATCHED YOU GIVE BIRTH?
Husband, 1 ob/gyn, 2 nurses, and 1 resident.

22. WAS IT NATURAL OR C-SECTION?
Natural.

23. DID YOU TAKE MEDICINE TO EASE THE PAIN?
Yes Yes Yes!!

24. HOW MUCH DID YOUR CHILD WEIGH?
7 lbs 5 oz

25. WHEN WAS YOUR CHILD ACTUALLY BORN ?
A day after my due date…
He planned to arrive perfectly on his dad’s birthday 🙂

26. WHAT WAS YOUR REACTION WHEN THE DOCTOR ANNOUNCED THE SEX OF THE BABY?
I was not surprised. I knew it!

27. WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST REACTION ON SEEING THE BABY?
He is the first newborn I’ve ever held :).
Again, the feeling/reaction can’t be explained.

28. DID YOU CRY?
Yes

29. WHAT DID YOU NAME HIM/HER?
Appoos

30. HOW OLD IS YOUR FIRST BORN TODAY?
10 Months

My life wrapped around a little finger! – Part 1

Tags

baby, family, home, love

This is totally a baby post. The ones who doesn’t like mommies talking about their kids, please stay away.

My baby turned 10 months last week. 2 more months and he will be 1 yr (that also reminds me that AB will be 31 in 2 months). I can’t believe that he (our kid) has been in our life for 1 yr now. I still remember the day, we brought him home, like it was yesterday.

I think we did a good job so far with him. I’m sure most parents feels that way. I feel like all his achievements are mine and mine only. I think I’m possessive and protective of him (not too much though… that’s what I claim at least).

Updates @ 10 Months 

Activities:
He can crawl really well and he is crawling faster than us walking (ok thats exaggeration but still …)
He is pulling himself up and making baby steps by holding on to something.
He can stand by himself for 2-3 seconds but once he realize that he is standing, he falls down on his butt with a grin on his face.
He doesn’t like to be inside the house for too long (like his amma). But he throws a small fit when I bring him inside even after spending an hour outside.
He likes watching cars but more than that he likes to lick/eat/chew on the patio chairs.

He finds it very funny when I take him near our pooja place and pray to god.
90% of the time he will fake cry when I try to strap him to the car seat. The minute he is buckled up he will stop crying. I think that the poor thing knows that there is no use in the fake cries anymore.

He likes to play with his amma more than his acha. Whenever he is in the living room with his dad and if I’m in the kitchen, he will crawl to the entrance of the kitchen to check up on me. The moment he see my face, he will sit for a while and turn around and go back to his dad. If he is irritated with his dad, he will crawl all the way to me and raise his hands to me (baby lanugage “enne edutho” (take me)).

He will give us big smiles but it takes a great deal of effort for other people to make him smile. His grandparents often complains that he doesn’t look at them when he see them on skype.

Eating:
He is a good eater (again like his mom) so far. He will eat veggie purees and fruit purees with the same enthusiasm.

Play Time:

Amma’s Own Peek-A-Boo
He still loves my version of peek-a-boo (oliche kande) and when I say “kunju enthye” (where is the baby?) he makes some noise to let me know where he is.
I’m surprised that this is one game that he liked since he was 2 months.
I revised the game little bit now. I will act as if I’m hiding behind the couch or behind a wall and when I say “oliche” he will come and find me and laugh uncontrollably. These might sound very silly to a person without any kids but then I’m sure most moms/parents will understand the feeling.

Kathu
How can I not mention “Kathu”. His uncle (chittappa) introduced him to the malayalam cartoon called “Kathu”. He loves it and will sit very quietly for the whole video song. If I need to get his attention, I sing that song and he will be idle and staring at me for at least a minute. I get my stuff done in that time span. In the morning if he wake up crying for milk, by the time we warm up the milk, one of us will play the video on the phone and calm him down. I’m very very grateful to the people who created that animated video song. You have no idea how much you’ve helped me out!!

Sleep:

He has been a good sleeper so far. He started sleeping 4 hr stretches at 7 weeks and started sleeping through the night around 10 weeks. Nowadays he will sleep from 9:30 pm – 7:15 am. There are good days and bad days but mostly good days, hence I can’t complain. I think his sleep schedule worked out because of 50% luck (genes from his dad’s side) and 50% tough love.

Until 6 weeks, he was waking up every 2 hrs and I used to feed him. After 6 weeks when I had to go back to work, my doc suggested us to do CIO. It was very very hard to see him crying. We both felt horrible doing that. I took him and fed him after 10 minutes. Next day, the same routine but after 10 mins of sobbing he went back to sleep and slept for 4 hrs straight. Next day he only woke up after 4 hrs. Even though it was very very hard to watch/hear, I think that was the best advice we ever got from the doc and it saved our life.

Don’t even get me started on co-sleeping. We didn’t co-sleep at all for various reasons. I know people who have raised their eyebrows when I said “he sleeps in his crib next to our bed”. FYI: I love my kid no less than any other mom out there. But I have no issues with someone judging, because me & my DS needed our beauty sleep and our own space for sleeping.

There are lot more happening in our home but thats all for the cyberspace!

Mending a Relation

Tags

family, Friends, relation

I have a sibling type relationship with a person and lets call him/her “RJ”.

I’ve known RJ for almost 6 yrs now but the relationship was always rocky. We both wanted to be friends but then something weird will happen. In the beginning I used to wonder why this is the way it is.  Then I try to make myself understand that this is how it is always going to be. But every year, I feel like I can do something about this and I initiate a conversation/exchange of emails or something. In the past years, it will go on fine for few days and then everything goes back to square one. This year also I initiated the conversation and it is going well as of now. I’m hoping for this time it will go on fine. I’m happy that we are communicating but also scared that I might say something and ruin this.

One might wonder what is the need of putting effort into mending a relation that didn’t work in the past. But to my defense I would like to have RJ as part of my life. AB always warn me that it might stop after few days and that I need to be ready for it. He knows very well that I will get upset (like past years) if that happens again.

Hopefully 5th time is the charm!

Signing off!

Pregnancy & Baby

Tags

baby, birth, husband, love, pregnancy, son

Pregnancy
I think I should have written this post at least an year back. Now I can’t remember half of it. Overall I think I had an easy pregnancy. No morning sickness, vomiting or anything of that sort. I kind of feel like the whole year “2011” I was pregnant lol.

2011
January: We celebrated our 3 yr anniversary 🙂
February: Pregnant (First Positive)
April: 12 weeks reached and announced it to everyone!

I was gaining weight like a maniac. I think I was looking at pregnancy as a “license to eat”. My MIL suggested me to avoid any food with artificial color in it. [on a side note: one of the famous south indian restaurant in bay area actually told me the only curry/appetizer that they have without any artificial color is aloo gobi]

End of April/Beginning of May: We got to know the gender of the baby (Its a BOY!!). From the beginning itself, we both wanted to know the gender of the baby. From the beginning itself I had this gut feeling that it will be a boy. I’m sure Ab thought (50%) otherwise.

mid MAY: BANG!!!!! Failed the glucose test and got diagnosed with Gestational Diabetes. I was not too thrilled to hear about that. But I thought it just meant “avoid anything sweet”. The GD specialist gave me a list of things to avoid/cut down. The first line said “CUT DOWN ON CARBS”. I had this “WT*” look on my face. I’m a south Indian, that too from Kerala. How can I cut down on rice. I live on rice & curries (and yes I live to eat 😛 ).

So my day went like this:

Wake up: Poke and test the fasting glucose level
Breakfast: 1 slice of whole wheat bread, 1 egg white scrambled with few veggies.
1 hr: Test glucose level again
Snacks: few almonds
Lunch: 2 whole wheat chapati & curry.
1 hr: Test glucose level again
walk for 20-30 minutes
Snack: nuts/veggies/fruit
Early Dinner: again 2 whole wheat chapati & curry
walk for 15 mins atleast
1 hr: Test glucose level again

It doesn’t look that horrible for a regular person. But for a pregnant lady the whole menu was like a snack :P.

I followed the diet religiously and my weight gain slowed down and I was feeling healthy.

August & September: Baby shower months.

FastFwd to October: Last 4 weeks of pregnancy. First 2 weeks were ok not too great and not too bad.
Then the last 2 weeks came. It was not easy to walk/sit/move etc etc etc.
oh did I mention… I was working too. I worked till the end of my 35th week.
It was really hard to turn once you lie down. Some of the muscles (which I never knew existed in my body) also started to hurt.  At the last doctor’s check up she told me “it seems like your LO wants to stay inside his mommy and don’t want to come out that easily”. So she set a date for inducing. The day before my due date.
(The date after my due date is Ab’s birthday btw). Ab kept telling me that no matter what I do LO will only come on his birthday. I didn’t want to believe him.

So on Saturday, the day I’m supposed to get induced, I started calling at 8 am to the L&D (labor & delivery) @ the hospital to check when I should go in. They told me they will call me back and let me know. They didn’t call back until 5pm.
5pm – we all (Ab, me and my mom) got ready and went to the hospital. I was all happy, smiling and taking pictures. Amma looked very tensed. I told her “no big deal… every one goes through this”.  Poor thing (me) had no idea about what is coming :D.
6:30 pm – They started inducing. They hooked me up to all these machines, put an oxygen mask on me and started monitoring the contractions. It was not bad at all. I was thinking “whats wrong with all these people complaining about contractions and pain… in 4-5 hrs I can go home with my kiddo”.

Next day 1 am: contractions were getting strong and I could see what people were talking about. I thought by then I will be at least 4-5cm dilated and ready to get epidural. So when I complained about the pain, the Dr. came over and checked and to everyone’s surprise she said “you are not even 1cm dilated… may be .5cm”. l couldn’t believe it and I asked her to check again lol. I couldn’t sleep at all. The contractions were getting closer and painful. Ab also stayed up with me asking me to “breath in and breath out”. I didn’t feel like kicking him or cursing at him at that time (unlike many comments I heard from other woman). I felt bad for him because I could see that he was feeling “helpless”.

anyhooooo… Another 14 more hours in pain and no pain meds and not dilating fast enough… I couldn’t wait to get all these over with and hold my baby. I think around 4pm they gave me epidural and told me I was just 3cm dilated and its going very very slow. After the epi, it felt like “heaven” for the next 3-4 hours. I could smile again… talk properly… and even get some sleep.  Around 7-8pm, there was no pain but I felt like my legs weigh a ton. It went on like that till 1am (next day). I wished Ab happy birthday and I told him the next time the doc comes in I’m going to ask for a Csection. He agreed!. The doc came in at 3am and checked on me. She said I was fully dilated and the baby will be here probably in 1 hr or 2 (which is normal for the 1st delivery). 15 minutes later, I was holding my 7 lb 7oz baby boy. We (family) were all crying. My DS stopped crying and looked at me and made a face (I claim that it was a smile). Ab was really happy that DS and him will be sharing the same bday :).

We named him a name that starts with D. Few close friends came over in the evening to see us.
We stayed in the hospital for 3 days before bringing our DS home.

FFWD again to Present Day:

DS completed 8 months. He is slowly getting naughty and learning all the tricks to get attention. Like most of the parents, we both love him more than anything in this world. :). Hopefully he will turn out to be a good human being.

Chicken Jalfrezi

Tags

chicken, cooking, Food, jalfrezi, recipe

This is chicken jalfrezi in my style.

I followed (loosely) chef-adeel’s recipe

Ingredients

• Boneless Chicken Thigh Meat – 3 lbs
• Tomatoes – 2
• Oil – 3 Tbsp
• Cilantro powder – 1 tbsp
• Turmeric powder – 1 tsp
• Cumin powder – 1/2 tsp
• Chilly powder – 2 tsp
• Garlic cloves – 2 (sliced)
• Red capsicum – One particular (minimize directly into cubes)
• Onion – 1 (finely sliced)
• Ginger Paste – 1 tbsp
• Cilantro foliage ¼ bundles
• Salt – to taste

How to make Chicken Jalfrezi

• Cut chicken in to ice cubes.
• After that marinate with turmeric powder, chilli powder as well
  as salt; set aside with regard to whilst.
• Heat 2 tablespoons oil inside a skillet, fry onion and add garlic colves and ginger. Saute them until they turn little brownish.
• Add tomato cubes and saute them as well.
• Now put the marinated chicken and saute them for 5-6 minutes.
• Once the chicken cook half way through, add little bit of tomato sauce also (optional).
• After the chicken is 3/4th done, add capsicum, few cilantro strands and cumin pwd. Mix well.
• Once the chicken is fully cooked, add few more cilantro leaves to the top for garnish.

All Set!… Go enjoy your Chicken Jalfrezi (Ed.) with Roti 🙂

October 2010 to July 2012

Tags

2010, 2011, 2012, baby, boy, coming back, Food, husband, kunju, love

wow it has been a very long time since I logged in or even visited my blog.
This doesn’t mean that this is a coming back blog. I might go away again and disappear for a long time. Who knows!

I hope Vimmu, Priya, Anu etc still remember me 🙂

So many things happened/changed in the last 2 years. My perspective, priorities, likes, dislikes etc…

I still like coffee, food (of course!) and yes I still talk a lot.
I haven’t been to a movie theater in the past 10 months (there is a reason for that)
I don’t like to go for shopping as much as before but the little stinginess that I had before is still staying intact 😀
Working in the same company as I was in 2010.
Made few new friends. Few old ones, whom I considered close, turned out to be not that genuine.

Still married to the same guy and planning to stay with him till death do us part … (cheesy..)

what else… hmm… hmmm… oh ya…

I’m a Mom (amma) to a naughty 9 month old baby boy now 🙂 …. how could I forget that big change in my life 🙂

 

 

 

 

Elsamma enna Aankutty

Tags

aankutty, ann, direction, elsamma, laljose, Malayalam, movies, Review, songs

***Spoiler Alert*** 😛

Even though I’m a movie buff (most of the time), I usually don’t write reviews anywhere. But I think this movie need to be reviewed. I did not have a lot of expectations when I went for this movie. well can you blame me? Most of the recent mallu movies were really BADDDDDDD with stupid story lines. Actually angane paranjal pora. Manushyane mandanakkunna story lines & some imported N.Indian girls to show skin. Vineeth Sreenivasanante direction il ulla malarvadi arts club nannayi ennu parakke abhiprayam kettuvenkilum kanan pattiyilla.  well let me go back to my topic.

The movie/story is set on the backdrop of a beautiful high range. I think bits of the story line were there in many other movies like kasthuri man, kanmadham, samyuktha in veendum chila veetukaryangal etc..  A girl leaving her studies behind and  supporting her family. The story line also runs through an unsaid love story between Elsamma (Ann) and Unni (Kunchako Boban) . It also discuss about some disasters in Kerala like madya durantham, mannidiyal prashnam etc.  Nayakante karyam paranju appol oru prathinayakan (indrajith) venamallo.  Sambannanaya appopantem, achanteyum panchara kunchu aya otta makan… lol.. Well the viewers can guess what happens next… him proposing to the heroine… obviously her saying no…  etc etc etc… Long story short… my favourite part.. a happy ending :).

The director didn’t overdo any of the scenes or dialogues. kudos to everyone who worked for this movie. Songs are not very catchy.  Some of the lyrics didn’t even make sense. The new heroine is a very promising actress. Lal Jose mentioned in one of his interviews that he approached Meera Jasmine for this role. I’m really glad that he didn’t cast her. I’m tired of seeing her in those mezhukuthiri roles. Kunchacko, Indrajith and jagathy did a good job too. Let’s see whether Indrajith get type casted as a poovalan now. His role was similar in classmates & happy husbands. Kunchacko’s mannerism reminded me of Jayaram in Manasinakkare. Hopefully other directors won’t follow this trend now and come up with 5 similar movies. uff!!!

These are just my thoughts on the movie.

For detailed review: http://tinyurl.com/35ldj66

 

 

 

 

Friends, Acquaintances or Strangers?

Tags

acquaintance, airport, book, boring, flight, friend, fun, smile, stranger, time, travel

What would you call two people who meet once and get to know a fair amount of information about each other or about their life but never keep in touch or might never see again? Usually when I travel I try to get some reading done or get some sleep. But this time unfortunately I picked a book by J.D. Robb and it was horribly boring. So there I was wide awake and bored to the core. I thought of chit chatting w/ someone but the man next to me looked little scary and when I smiled he kind of gave me serious “nod” and that took me right back to my boring book.

The next connection flight was for 4 hrs. Due the earlier “nod” situation I didn’t even bother to look at the person sitting next to me. The turbulence was really bad and unknowingly I had my palm on my chest.  Then I heard a nice friendly question from the next seat “are you nervous?” Then that person introduced him/her self as “MT” and we talked about movies, our lives, travel etc.  Sometimes MT asked for my opinions and I could give my honest opinions because I didn’t have to worry about this person judging me or keeping a grudge :P.  MT never asked anything too personal. Neither did I.  We had an on and off conversations for around 4 hrs.  Then the flight landed and we went separate ways saying good bye and a “nice to meet you” handshake. We didn’t exchange email addresses, phone number or social networking usernames. I don’t even think MT knows my last name.

So this takes me back to my previous question. What would I/you call a person like MT? A Friend? An Acquaintance? or a Stranger?