This morning, I was nursing Dlittle. Just then, D decides she wants a hug. I manage to squeeze in a hug. One hug is not enough. She wants more ans more and more. When I ask her to wait for few minutes, I get – I am not doing anything. I only want to love you, mummy. Oh my dear little girl, I give Dlittle to my mom and hug D. By then, Dlittle is screaming as she is not done yet. I take Dlittle back from mom to hear from D – ‘When I become small girl like Dlittle, then you will feed me also?’ Tears filled my eyes

Linked to karmickids: Is my child happy?

Every parent would analyse this differently depending on what happiness means to them taking into account the child’s personality.

I know my child is happy and loves me when:

When she proudly introduces me to her friends in day care ‘This is my mummy’.

When she laughs beyond control at my funny gestures. It melts me when she says ‘You are funny girl. mummy’. I could walk upside down to hear it from her.

When she says ‘You are looking very pretty today, mummy’.

When she gets hurts, comes running to me. All I do is to kiss her on her bruise to hear ‘Thankyou mummy. Its ok now’

When she is in the temple and says ‘Thank you for giving me mummy, thank you for giving me papa. Thanks for giving me toys’. Yes, I did teach her to say this with folded hands probably once or twice and then she started saying on her own.

When she comes home and asks ‘Where is my sister? Can I love her’

When she wakes up with a smile and shouts Where are you mummy? Waits for couple of minutes, runs to our room if we dont show up to cuddle in my arms and sleep for few more minutes.

When she finds us in pain, fetches her chewable vitamin and asks us to eat it to feel better.

When she jumps from the couch down holding my hands with complete faith in me to not let her down.

I can go on and on.. Dlittle one is waking up. Time to feed.

Bottomline is If parents are happy, the child is happy. The child is happy, the parent is happier and it continues…
Every day is not the same. We do get my moments, but for the most part I can consider my household a happy camper. Lot of credit goes to H, his postivie vibe and energy reflecting on us.

Guggu Baata aka Milk machine. D transitioned to the bottle when she hit 9 months, however continued to nurse to sleep. When she was a little more than a year old, she found it fascinating to hear me scream every time she bit me. The tube light in my head sparked and I realised it was time to wean her. I would then ask her as though she was old enough to understand – D, duddu bottle se piyogi? She conveniently interpreted the milk machine as the duddu bottle. And she started asking for guggu baata.

From then on the milk machine in my household is addressed as guggu baata. Did I dare to correct her? NO. Why?

We go to the beach and there goes D – mummy, 1 aunty has guggu baata, 2 aunty has guggu baata… and so on..
We went to visit my sister who had her baby few months back. D happened to see her nurse, comes out to the living room where a lot of us had gathered and declares mousi also has guggu baata, just like mummy.
Every time I nurse Dlittle, she has to know which guggu baata? the left or the right.

This post is just my view on this topic and is open for debate.

Just couple of days before poppin’s amma posted on anon blogging, I was debating if I should put my daughters pictures on the site. The sheer number of comments explains this is something that has crossed peoples minds at some point or the other.
Decided to write a post as the comments would be too long. Hope poppins amma and utbtkids don’t mind.

Folks who are able to publish pictures on the net are probably pure at heart and trust others easily. Maybe not so easily, but I can trust people as well. What I am scared of is todays technology and the speed at which it is advancing. For example, Like.com uses image recognition technology to find items of your interest sold on the net. How would this technology emerge in 10 years from now? What could it do with a simple innocent image that google has indexed and archived forever? Only time will tell.

Roll back 9 years, when I created my yahoo ID, I very sincerely gave all the correct profile information. Just few days after that I started getting lots of emails from “real” people from my community who would want to be friends/ take the relationship further kind of crap. To the extent that they would give out their company name and phone number. After a really long time, did I realise it was because of my public profile combined with yahoo’s person search. ok, agreed I might have been naive at that time. The point I am making is that new technologies emerge every day. And at the speed that we simply cannot imagine/catch up. I wouldn’t be surprised if some kid writes a software “for fun” which can scan through blog posts, gather enough keywords from various posts and give a history of my life long dwellings/personality etc. Combine that with a picture and the possibilities are endless.
To add oil to this flame, the p—r-n industry is a billion dollar market. What does it take for somebody to start a site, use software to take pictures from the net, combine, massage them with ther images? ok, I don’t want to go there. But this kind of thoghts gives me sleepless nights.

The other thing which scare me is the camera on cell phones. I might be scratching my butt in my backyard thinking nobody’s watching and next thing I know is this dude having a 10x zoom camera phone takes a picture from his upstairs windows and uploads in youtube.

That said, how far and how long can you protect yourself? Here is a picture of google’s street view, an afternoon snapshot of our office parking lot.

If you zoom within the street view, you can clearly see the name plate of the car. It changes a lot of things we take for granted. Imagine a combination of the like.com’s image recognition technology and google’s search technology. You can pretty much search for my car number plate and find out where all I go. I do not have a control over this, as of now that is.

My personal view is that we cannot do much about google indexing and archiving content without our consent. But I could blog anon to give me peace of mind.

Again, this post is just my view point.

Started this post few days back in response to noon’s post.

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Thursday night: 10:30 PM
Just yesterday night I posted about the two sisters, how much joy they bring in my life and how I could watch them for hours with a smile. The joy part still holds good, but as of today I am not sure about the sitting and watching them for hours.

This is how today unfolded:
H tells me a day before that he has to meet a client early morning 8:30AM, so he would drop D in the day care at 7:30AM. Yeah right, as though the care taker has been waiting to receive D and her father at 7:30 in the morning. I am left with 3 options, keep D at home, drive and drop D at day care, ask a friend to drop her. Option 1 was ruled out as I hardly slept 10-15 minutes yesterday, since Dlittle has been spitting up every now and then. I spent most of yesterday night sitting in the glider holding her and rocking her after each feed. I did dose off few times, but then the overloaded brain of mine would panick and wake me up sending signals that I would drop Dlittle off my arms. Option 3 was also ruled out as I was enraged with H, and I was not going to call anybody for H’s fault. Why could he not schedule his meeting from 10 – 4? He questions me back ‘Is it easy for me to ask VP marketing, VP community services to change their calender to suit mine OR I adjust with their preplanned meeting?’ Why do I care, they are VP of their company. I am the boss in my household. Yeah yeah, keep thinking. Ended up driving and dropping D in the day care, popping my eye balls out making sure I don’t pass out.

By the time I came home, it was time for Dlittles bath. While giving her an oil massage, noticed a lump in her left breast. Freaky me, inspite of mom convincing me thats its pretty normal, called up the doc and took the next available appointment. Helped mom to set a quick lunch, ate in a record time of 2 minutes, packed the diaper bag, nursed Dlittle and left to the hospital. Meanwhile H called that his meeting was over and he would drive us to the hosp. The train which H took conviniently got late. So, here I am, driving again to the hosp which is 10 miles away.

Reached the hosp, thanks to on-demand feeding, Dlittle is opening her mouth in the air hoping for milk. I am sitting in the lobby debating if I should nurse her there Or wait till I get to the doc’s room. Felt as though everybody sitting around had no other business other than watching me. Thankfully doc called us in and saved me from my juggling thoughts. Doc checks her and says its normal and will dry out in few days. With a sigh of relief, carefully avoiding my moms twisted looks we reach home around 4:00 in the afternoon. By this time, I have a headache.

H had reached home by then and dosed off in the couch in the living room. He had not slept well the previous night and woke up early morning to attend this meeting. I felt sorry for him and requested, rather demanded mom to make tea. The flood of love lasted only couple of minutes, when H says he has to meet another client at 6 in the evening. Without uttering a word, tears rolled in my eyes. Its not that me and mom cannot handle D and Dlittle, I just wanted to sleep for sometime and mom cannot handle both by herself.

D comes home, I am a bit irritated and trying not to show it on her. Dlittle sleeping in the stroller and mom’s sitting on the couch. I head to the kitchen to grab a snack for D. Hear a thud sound and ran back anxiously to find the stroller upside down with D standing near it a pale face. The last straw broke the camel’s back and I spanked D on her butt. Luckily, mom had picked Dlittle up a minute back, and this little big monster sissy was trying to grab the blanket from inside the stroller so that the little sister would not feel cold. As she could not reach it, she was climbing on top and toppled it. Was feeling bad that I was taking my days edge on her, but then it was needed for her to know that she cannot do it again.

Boy, just putting these emotions into words and venting out makes me feel so much lighter. Why am I blogging and not sleeping right now? Waiting for the next feed which is in about 1/2 hour. And I desperately want to do something other than babies for a little while.

The little one’s cooing again, am going to finish off the cow-ing duty and head to sleep. Will continue later.

Saturday: 11:15 pm
I am in a joyful mood today. Maybe because H got me a Iphone? No, really bcoz I got a good sleep last couple of nights, Such good sleep that I might have missed a feed Or 2. On Thursday, after the late night feed, asked H to hold Dlittle and work as I could not control my eyelids closing any more and Dlittle was spitting. I set the alarm for 1:30AM and dosed off. I hear the alarm ring, woke up, nursed her, burped her, changed her diaper and put her down. Cooing of my baby girl woke me up again around 3:00AM, H shakes me and asks me to feed her even before I could manage to lift myself up. I told him she can go another hour as I just nursed her at 1:30. H swears I did not feed her at 1:30 as he was holding her up until 2:30, and I was happily snoring as though there was no tomorrow. Did I do all the nursing and burping in my dream? hmm..

Little ones wake up again… more later.

Monday: 12:15pm
ok, Its high time I publish this post. Today its mixed feeling. D’s day care is closed for the week and H has promised to slow down his work to keep sanity in the house. So far so good.
Responded to just like that’s comment, at that moment H was in a 15 minute meeting and wanted all of us to stay quiet for few mins. To keep D occupied, I took her to the backyard, gave her the jhaadoo(broomstick) and asked her to clean while I could catch up on the blogs. She jhadooded me as I was dirty, duh. hey, this reminds me of something that happened on Saturday. H was talking to his client and D was sleeping. Me and mom were watching Indian Idol in another room, so we had closed the door slightly to keep the noise. H kept his door open as the monster was sleeping. D wakes up, runs to his room and screams, papa, potty’s coming. Put the light.

Todays feeling – I am one of the lucky person in the world with 2 beautiful daughters, a loving husband and a supporting family. What more can I ask for?