Wordless Wednesday – 2

Snapped

I snapped. Today morning. There really was no reason. Everything was going on as usual. Shantanu was a little cranky. I shouted at him. Poor baby. He was hungry but wasn’t ready to eat. Then  I did my usual chores around the kitchen still feeling angry at the world. Maybe I had woken up on the wrong side of the bed. Then while chatting with my parents they realised that I am the one who is being cranky today. So mom asked me what did I have for my breakfast. And I said I didn’t eat anything since morning. She asked me to put something in my stomach so that I would be my normal self. And that’s when it struck me that I was hungry, ravenous. And that’s why I snapped.

It’s a very old habit of mine. Whenever am hungry and don’t realise it, I get angry and upset with everything. My brain has some loose connection with the stomach I think. It doesn’t recognise hunger when it sees it. After having a glass of milk I felt much better and functional. Of course the caffeine helped. One of my earliest memories are of me upset and crying over something very trivial and my grandmother asking me to eat. This incident made me nostalgic and brought back all those childhood memories and habits.

The best one, to be loved and understood by family. Isn’t it wonderful to have your loved ones understand you without you understanding yourself. I feel very protected with this feeling. I know I have someone to look up to who would know what’s wrong with me if I ever have trouble understanding myself.

PS: I know it’s a kind of stupid post but I wanted to jot it down for memory.

The others..

…I know you come visit my space here. I feel very happy about it. But please do not be anonymous. Leave some comments whatever you feel. I would like it very much to read your thoughts on my posts. I know you come because I can see it in the sidebar. And it makes me sad that you haven’t left any comments.

Thank you 🙂

The Edinburgh Diaries – The Royal Mile

I wonder now which is more hectic, weekdays or weekends. Kiddo seems to go into an overdrive on weekends finding hubby at home. He sleeps less, wants attention more and is getting prone to throw more tantrums. However, if you take him out, he will be remain quiet for hours. Just like this weekend. The kiddo sat happily in his pram, not complaining even once He even had conversations in his sign language with the old ladies travelling in the buses with us.

We left home at 12 o’clock. Had lunch at Pizza Hut and then went to the Royal Mile through the Edinburgh Castle. To say the walk up the castle is beautiful is an understatement. You can see the entire city in front of you right up to the sea and beyond. The Royal Mile is the busiest tourist street and runs between the Edinburgh Castle at the top of the Castle Rock down to the Holyrood Abbey. It’s the most lively street apart from the Princess Street.

Most of the shops on these street are souvenir shops, pubs & clubs, kilt shops, whisky shops and cashmere. The street is crowded with tourists and it reminded me of the Dadar market gullies filled with enthusiastic shoppers. You can spend an entire day here and also in Princess Street. One of the kilt shops even has a kilt weaving loom and you can also dress up in kilts and take pictures. I didn’t shop any. I wanted to but didn’t. The reason you ask, well I wanted to have a look at all that was there before digging a hole in my hubby’s wallet. And maybe next time, I will take a picture myself and put it up here.

Image taken from here.

The 65 things tag

This tag has been doing rounds in the blogosphere and I found it so interesting that I took it up instantly. This is one To-Do-and-Have-Done List, all the crossed out ones are done and the unscratched are yet to be done.  

1. Graduated high school.
2. Kissed someone.
3. Smoked a cigarette.
4. Got so drunk you passed out.
5. Rode every ride at an amusement park.
6. Collected something stupid.
7. Gone to a rock concert.
8. Helped someone.
9. Gone fishing.
10.  Watched four movies in one night.
11.  Lied to someone.
12.  Snorted cocaine.
13.  Smoked weed.
14.  Failed a subject.
15.  Been in a car accident.
16.  Been in a tornado.
17.  Watched someone die.
18.  Been to a funeral.
19.  Burned yourself.
20.  Run a marathon.
21.  Cried yourself to sleep.
22.  Spent over 10,000 bucks in one day.
23.  Flown on an aeroplane.
24.  Cheated on someone.
25.  Been cheated on.
26.  Written a 10 page letter.
27.  Gone skiing.
28.  Been sailing.
29.  Cut yourself.
30.  Had a best friend.
31.  Lost someone you loved.
32.  Got into trouble for something you didn’t do.
33.  Stolen a book from the library.
34.  Gone to a different country.
35.  Watched the Harry Potter movies.
36.  Had an online diary.
37.  Fired a gun.
38.  Gambled in a casino.
39.  Been in a school play.
40.  Been fired from a job.
41.  Taken a lie detector test.
42.  Swam with dolphins.
43.  Voted for someone on a reality TV show.
44.  Written poetry.
45.  Read more than 20 books a year.
46.  Gone to Europe.
47.  Loved someone you shouldn’t have.
48.  Used a colouring book over age 12.
49.  Had a surgery.
50.  Had stitches.
51.  Taken a Taxi.
52.  Had more than 5 IM conversations going on at once.
53.  Been in a fist fight.
54.  Suffered any form of abuse.
55.  Had a pet.
56.  Petted a wild animal.
57.  Had your own credit card & bought something with it.
58.  Dyed your hair.
59.  Got a tattoo.
60.  Had something pierced.
61.  Got straight A’s.
62.  Known someone personally with HIV or AIDS.
63.  Taken pictures with a webcam.
64.  Lost something expensive.
65.  Gone to sleep with music on.

Tag left open 🙂 Anyone can do it.

This mommy guilt

When was the first time I felt guilty? Yes, it was the very next day after I found out that I was pregnant. I debated whether to have morning coffee. Not for the next nine months. And a few months after that while breastfeeding. I remember occasionally when the urge to drink a strong cup surged in me, I would slowly walk to the kitchen, take the coffee bottle out and take a sniff. It was bliss. I would have an odd cup once in a while too, all the time thinking whether this would harm my baby. It was a fight between gratifying my tastebuds and keeping the baby safe. When I would indulge myself, I would feel guilty as hell and swore that I wouldn’t do it the next time.

The guilt started with coffee. Later during the pregnancy when I couldn’t stay back late in the office, I would feel guilty about not giving my 100% to my work. I used to seethe internally when my colleagues left office before time, without completing their daily tasks, and when I did the same during later stage of pregnancy, I felt guilty. Suddenly, work was not the priority anymore. 

I couldn’t help out much at home, no cooking, no cleaning. Pregnancy exhausted me. I felt guilty about not being a substantial contributor in household chores. I started feeling inadequate, poorly and not the perfect person that I was.

I thought this would improve after the baby came but it only got worse. The first week after the baby was born, I felt like my life was only to feed and change the baby. I wasn’t allowed to watch any tv, nor go out, and not to exhaust myself in any activity whatsoever. I always thought that after having a baby, I would feel elated and be over the moon. It was actually the opposite. To make it worse, I had a C-section. This made me feel even more guilty about not being a woman who could endure the labour pain. It made me feel small and cowardly. I wondered for days whether it would make me any lesser a mom as I didn’t have a normal delivery. But, now that I think about it, I think my expectations about labour were wrong. It is to expect the unexpected.

Going back to work was again a very hard decision. At one hand, I was happy to be back into my world and that made me feel guilty. Is it right to be happy about leaving back your baby while you do and enjoy work? It has been drilled into our psyche that women are essentially caretakers and motherhood is the best thing to happen. Once you have kids, nothing else should take a priority in your life. Having this thought constantly at the back of my mind, I felt very uncomfortable having to work. I wondered whether my baby is happy at home without me and though he showed no outward signs of being unhappy.

Before travelling to Scotland, relatives warned that he would feel lonely with no one around. But I waved a hand across shushing them by saying that, he will come around. He will have me. I consoled myself by saying that the weather would do wonders for his health. And that he would enjoy. The first week here, we both got brilliantly bored and even caught the cold. I wavered about my decision whether it was right to come here or would he have been better back in India. But sometimes, the mother’s instinct is right. Touchwood, he has taken to the weather pretty well apart from that soft cold. And his tummy is fine after the change in food.

With him being quite a handful, I do get time to do other things such as cooking. If done, it is sparingly. I feel guilty about not being able to provide fresh food to my husband who is a foodie. I wonder whether he feels am not the perfect wife and mother to be able to do both. I often wonder, how our mothers and grandmothers did it. That too with more than one kid. Is it the same with this whole generation, or am I the only one lacking in multi tasking?

This post has been written for the Fight that mommy guilt contest on Women’s Web. I would like to encourage all mom bloggers and otherwise to note down their thoughts too.

Shantanu’s Birthday Poem

Here’s the birthday poem that I made on behalf of Shantanu:

Back from Edinburgh my dad is here,
to celebrate my birthday with pomp and gear,

Thank you friends and thank you family,
for coming to this ceremony,

In this world, today I turn one,
apart from you all, I know not one,

Teach me, guide me, show me the way,
in your care I will not stray,

Choicest of blessings and your love I need,
to grow into a man of wonderful deed,

Every day I pray to god,
prod me towards a righful trod.

I think I will need another post to describe the birthday and the birthday celebrations.

Day 8 @ Edinburgh

Today we (Shantanu and I) complete our first week in Edinburgh, Scotland. In this 1 week, we have experienced a variety of moods; from surprise, happiness, wonderment, to shock, dismay and lethargy. Why? mainly because of the weather and lack of liveliness around. Shantanu, being used to having people around is quite bored to see only my face the entire day. But from this week, hubby has decided to come home for lunch, so Shantanu could get to see him and that would put some cheer into him.

Shantanu passed on the cold to me and now we both are altering between running noses and light fever spells. However, I think this is just the acclimatizing phase. We should be fine in a couple of weeks.

This weekend, we went to Princess Street. It is one of the main streets in Edinburgh and a major shopping place. It has shops lined up on one side and the Edinburgh Castle and garden valley on the other. Shantanu had a lot of fun watching the variety of birds, the people around and the greenery. He sat quietly in his pram, taking it all in and basking in the excitement. Travelling to the park was also so easy. We could easily carry him in his pram and onto the bus.

This week, the weather forecast is good, sunny intervals and bright. So we are hoping for some more site-seeing. Till then, bbye!

Day 4 @ Edinburgh

Shantanu has picked up cold due to change in place and climate. He is better today than yesterday. The rains have gone. However, today it is bright; as bright as it can be. Spoke with an old friend who is staying in London for now. Talking with old friends helps. Helps a lot. Yesterday, I went around the housing complex with Shantanu. There’s a big park a few blocks down the road. But sadly, I couldn’t find the entrance to it.

Tomorrow, we are planning to go out and explore the city. Hope the good weather stays.

Day 2 @ Edinburgh

Day 2 seems to be much better than yesterday. Maybe because I have got work to do.
 
Shantanu’s time table is not set yet. He wakes up at 5 in the morning and goes to sleep at 7- 7:30 pm. The good thing is that, he seems to have accepted this change of place pretty well. He finds out new corners and places to play with. The kitchen here has two doors, one leading to a common passage and the other leading to the dining room. When it gets too cold outside, we both go round and round the room to make him exercise and to make the cold go away. So far he hasn’t missed the pankhus above. He feels that the pankhus have been miraculously replaced with dius and he is fine with them. Another of his pass time is to switch on the lights, then I have to switch them off and then he switches them off again.
 
The windows of the hall are huge like ours and he has enough entertainment during his meals which he takes sitting by the window pane. He also loves watching the white kabbus here. He also keeps circling the centre table in the hall. Yesterday evening when he got bored, we both watched Anubandha and Bhagyalakshmi with rapt attention.
 
Here we don’t get to see much people around. Only in the morning when they leave for work and in the evening when they come back. Most of the population is old but they dress up as if going for a party. Specially the old ladies – they walk with the help of the walker, you would think that they might not survive beyond this evening, that is how old they are; but they are all decked up with makeups, hats, shiny shoes, fashionable bags and what not. The others ride in BMWs and Mercedes.
 
The slow moving showers and the howling winds keep us company during the day. I haven’t seen the sun since I arrived here. Looking outside the window you wouldn’t realise what time of the day it is. Coz it is still bright even at 10 in the night.   

Am attaching 2 photos, first one is taken in the morning at 11 am and the second one is taken at night 10 o’clock.   

Taken at 11 am.

Taken at 10:15 pm.

Not much difference.