May

Summary

Day care, sickness, ramping up on work, trying to cook and clean, eating out, driving a little, wild babies on Netflix, phone conversations, moon child.

Doubting oneself, little thoughts and the challenges of motherhood, slight trauma, difficulty balancing boundaries and relationships, dependency and its rightful consequence of having to refine oneself. 

Happy things : 

May starts with recovering from this allergy/ congestion that seems like it’s been forever. The good side is no fever, pain has gone and it’s a great excuse to cook and order a lot of good comforting food. Soups, pho, banana bread, samosas, garlic naan. 

S delivered a baby in Apr and she's been doing fine and already sounding confident with her routine and I was reassured hearing what I expected of her. Both S & D named their son the same name.

A got married. It's a huge step and I'm sure there's lots to celebrate and learn :)

Week 1 - Cooking frequently. Week 2 got tiring and involved eating out more. Then, I did not cook much. My favorite was aalu capsicum and kurma that came out well. And Ajey's briyani.

New team happiness.

Some driving.

Gifted AJ a couple of things I knew he liked - a McLaren f1 lego set that's limited on the market right now and a ferrari regular f1. Dinosaur lights. He's still got his little kid inside him and that's awesome. There's one more thing I'm waiting for that I think he'll like :)

Rat made time on Sunday inspite of all the work at office he had to get done, so he could take Zaya and me to Solvang. It was nice to be out of the house. We stopped by a breezy lake, found how weak my cardio health was but it was nice for Zaya to experience the shock of strong breezes or rather funny for us to see her reaction. We had Danish food and some ice cream. We finally found butterscotch :) And on our way back we saw lunar eclipse from the car. It was nice for Rat to just change the pattern of things a little.

He also bought some lovely cakes for us to try the other day. It was a sugar fest. Zaya was super interested in it.

So I've not been a fan of filling up time with TV. But with Zaya sometimes it's easier to put her on my lap and zone out into the TV and so I've indulged on a few movies. Gangubai kathiwadi was good. It had a story and amazing sets. Great camera work. I loved a funeral scene. I watched war of the worlds which Ajey suggested. An alien movie from long back - entertaining. I like movies like the day after tomorrow which gives you this eerie doomsday feels. I watched kannathil muthammitaal the n'th time and still cried when Amudha met her birth mom. I watched this awesome movie called the fundamentals of caregiving. Right from the beginning it put a smile on my face - so much wittiness and an offbeat characters. Finally a raw revenge story - saani kaagidham - so much violence. Quentin Tarantino style. Personally I've distanced myself from the futile feeling of revenge but I could not help but be gripped by her story.. I did not want to judge her.. I took her side cuz only she felt what she felt and she was okay with whatever settling scores entailed. 

Of all the inefficiencies in my life, the few moments of spending with Zaya being nothing - that somehow makes it to my list of something good done. I also enjoy spending a few minutes with the other babies and toddlers at the day care and seeing them smile or comforting them. 

I love the tattoed teacher. She mostly spends time with the toddlers and I can see how much fun she has doing what she does - it shows. One day she was playing around with the kids, the other day reading a story, another day talking about feelings. I love her. 

Rat is awesome. He understands when I need to take rest. He always steps in to fill the gaps cuz he understands there are no real gaps and I'm no robot. It's the best feeling to be with someone with whom I don't have to be anything else. 

When I forget my hoodie and Rat gives me his - that's love. I love the smell and warmth of it all. He's always the one doing something like this.

Chai latte at Thyme was like a warm frothy flavorful hug.

Pink Punjabi and gulab jamun at the roots. 

Tres leches cake that Rat bought. 

An amazing biriyani he made after buying kalpasi javithri and other specific ingredients. 

A massage at the massage therapy center from this super strong Taiwanese woman Debbie who told me her whole life story over the 90 minutes. She has a degree in China and after 3 kids and a 10 year gap, and a 1- year stint as an insurance agent, she found it hard to cope with her lack of english speaking skills and became a massage therapist by chance. She first started part time, her mom still does not know what she is, and after all these years she feels her calling was always 'Healing'. Her three daughters are doing well, and she even visited France as part of her daughter's exchange study program, one of them makes food for her, during the pandemic they got her paints so she could pursue that. She also makes great bouquets. She spoke about how she went to church to learn English, her plans to graduate from Acupuncture program this year. A regression hypnotism she did, where she was an alien in one life :D and a medicine making man in a tribe in another life. She spoke about how she learnt martial arts as a kid but was seen as un-womanly for winning the tournaments. She was great at her skills in healing as much as she could talk. It was nice knowing her and seeing her spirit. The massage was amazing. 

Reading the book "Practical Fraud Prevention" and feeling good about the reassurance it gave on what I've done right.

I love this series called Wild Babies. In many species, the mother is the sole protector of the kid, directly. Lions don't even care about the cubs, lionesses protect and feed. Hyenas , however take turns in protecting the crew and always allow the kids to eat before the elders eat. Pangolins assign one adult to mentor one baby. Otters (ignoring all the other things I know about them) felt the most motherly, they almost had me in tears. I also enjoyed switching on French subtitles and attempting to refresh my familiarity with French. Of course there are some that are just born evil. The pride of male lions is almost cruel. Amma’s story strung a chord. The struggle of not knowing how to grow without a mom was hard to watch. 

Watching the penguins was great too, the partnership between mom and dad to keep baby alive. 

M confided in me of the therapy she's been going to and while it's hard to know how much she had to experience beyond her age, I'm glad that her process has brought her to a self awareness that many folks don't put time into. I pray that she knows she is enough just the way she is. 

Talking for an hour over the phone with the same person without an agenda. It's probably happening after twenty years. It's different but nice to do something human.

Zaya has been crawling all these days and we did not really count it cuz she lifts her bum and moves backward or just turns 360 while doing tummy time but now we know it counts cuz she actually moves from A to B. It’s fun to put her toys a little away and letting her figure how to get to it. She bends from a seated position and her legs a hindrance. She manages to put one leg behind and one forward like a pigeon pose and then she cluelessly starts calling out.

Just like that just a few weeks before her 7 months she has learnt to topple both sides now. She also knows to go on her tummy directly from sitting. She's getting heavier, naughtier and gives us several instances to worry about choking and falling - not a happy thing :/

A new restaurant Banana Leaf with greaaaaat food.

Bombay Jayashree's amazing album of lullabies called Moon Child.

Work is good. I can learn about data engineering, data analysis, Advertising, the fraud industry. My manger has good energy and is on top of new things and loves to converse, discuss and pick people's brains on new happenings

A loose framework

Week Day

Weekend

Thoughts

It's 2.30 am memorial day weekend. Zaya is asleep and yet I've managed to flip my sleep timings this weekend in an unfavorable way. Making it worse for sleep now by writing down thoughts - a lot - that can be categorized under worries too...

Want to write about motherhood, generational behaviors. honesty and introspection, triggers and relationships. Social life. 

Okay, motherhood

 If I ask myself (and I often do) am I the best mom there can be .. the answer is always no.. there are so many versions of what best can be and it's very nature is that there's always something better. This is a challenge because you're always questioning yourself.. are you doing enough.. I think a better question would be 'are you sincere?' and the answer to that is.. 'most times' and I should be able to live with that. I want to be good at this responsibility that I willfully took up even if sometimes emotionally it's hard to connect to the role when you're just focused on keeping a spring of energy in one place and you have other things to do.

The other thing about motherhood is that it's an important responsibility to bring up a good human and that in turn means you need to be a good human yourself. Another tough question to answer.. are you a good human? .. there's probably things you're not aware of that you should not pass on to your daughter..and so starts a whole lot of introspection.

motherhood means you don't have the bandwidth to entrap yourself in too many emotional things like past, trauma, social media, debates.. you have to be really selfish with your bandwidth and boundaries so you can create a positive place for your baby. 

Motherhood means showing by example to your daughter that she can find meaning in her life and pursue what she wants and does not have to let her roles like wife and mother limit her. Motherhood is pursuing your meaning while doing justice to the role of a mother.

Okay, next. Too much honesty. There are things this brain brings up that can wear down your confidence of who you are. Sometimes if you are honest with just yourself you know your ability to work beyond what your thoughts tell you but if you are honest with others they can weigh your thoughts higher than it needs to be weighed. What was I honest about.. I was honest about the fact that love is not a constant.. it's an ongoing process. And it sometimes takes time to overcome the littler thoughts so you can let love find its space. This is the case with even the most important people in your life.

Third, generational behaviors. There are some behaviors we've learnt from folks that we've seen in our lives that are normal for us because of what we're conditioned to but not right for others who find it harmful. It's important we protect our kid from normalizing what we learnt. That means the people and behaviors we let into our circle, but more importantly bringing awareness to our own self. 

Social life

- it's been a while since I socialized. 

- I can't socialize with just anyone. It's nice to have fun, it's nice to chat, play, eat but also there are boundaries that protect peace.

- socializing means opening up to opinions, assumptions, expectations. And it takes skill to handle it smoothly. 

- it also can mean loving people, learning from others, warm relations. 

Triggers 

- men / women issues. 

- mansplaining

- people trying to control how I have to be

- expectations that don't fit my lifestyle.. I want my time to relax. 

- casually treading on someone's deep sensitivities as if nothing happened

- territorial 

- cleanliness / leaving dues

- being called when needed and asked not to interfere when not needed. 

- freeloading 

Traits - 

Snapping

Using tone

Wanting things now

Saying instead of requesting

If you try and you fail sometimes and that's not favorable for others, it's a reminder to focus on your own self acceptance. It's time to focus on all the things you do right. And be more at the places where you shine. 

It's 3.30

 Time to sleep

______________________________________________

Be careful what you wish for, cuz that's exactly what you get. 

Distractions. Money. Movies. Insta. Beauty. Bigger. not being answerable to anyone. 

I could be moving to audio books from other forms of distraction. Could watch a series that can teach me a thing or two about real life/ work.

Motivation Theories

What's the motivation in life : 

- To share experiences with Zaya

- To shape her values

- To give her the space to learn and grow and discover

- To build spaces that can extend care

- Home & Garden

- Exercise breath, body lightness, happy focus

- Your space to receive love and warmth

- Your space to give love 

- General niceness and warmness to peers

- Weeding out bad learnings.

- Experience music

- To meet, break out of regular

- To learn and build something that makes things easier

- Pretty corners. 

- Read books and make art with Z.

- start business.

I read articles about early childhood care and development and there are pros and cons. The important point is that early childhood care by itself can be either positive or negative, without context.  It is only as  helpful as the quality of care given. Also, an important factor in childhood care is mother-child relationship.

I have a startup idea. I also need a money plan. A marketing plan. Hiring plan. Space plan.

Lazy people will take their chance to judge what kind of mom I should be because they are all talk. I feel good about my journey so far breastfeeding Zaya for six months, managing sleep, ramping up on work slowly so I can get her good exposure at the day care, soothing her and feeding and cleaning her and bathing her. Rat helps soothe her and tries solids. Sharing time with day care helps me get some energy and fully be available to her instead of being a tired mom. 

I was talking to someone who's an extrovert and after having pushed to grow / focus on few things for long, and being the introvert I now am, it was a reminder to what extroverts see. It was a reminder about meeting people, about what covid did to people and how everyone wants to be in bubbles - married bubbles - children bubbles, that no one has the time and intent to wish others and meet. About how friendships were innocent and natural earlier in life. It was uncomfortable hearing all the things that could change with introverts, and discomfort in the right direction is a good thing. The question remains how do we network, put energy into maintaining relationships, how do we learn to exist and break out of comfort zones.

Another day exploring ideas like meeting people once a year. . 

Worries

Gun violence and racism

Still not trying bottle. Still sleeping on bed. Still needing momma during sleep. 

The amber heard and Johnny Depp trial. Spoke to someone who assumed he was already acquitted when he actually already lost another defamation trial under the laws of a different country. The comments and overarching assumption for most folks is that this is a case of feminists misusing the me too moment. While it is possible that this can be the case, after seeing the videos of him slamming and using bad language.. and hearing her account of him checking her body for drugs, what stood out to me was how dangerous it is for an actual domestic violence victim to be tried in this way with thousands of folks knowing nothing about her journey , not even watching what she had to say, listening to "expert" comments and deciding she lied. This is a lot of pressure for someone to go through. What I gather is that there was abusive language on both sides and lack of enough evidence.. but no one knows as much as the court knows what sequence of events happened. And so I wish the right thing is done. What's even truer is someone knows more than the court knows and it is the folks of the case itself. 

I'm sad because of the amount of time I lost discussing this with someone - both of us mostly driven by a biased ego - useless to the case. 

I'm ashamed how much importance is given to this vs understanding and supporting Ukraine. 

Sympathy can be used as a bait and that's something to be wary about. 

Loss of sleep. Prolonged congestion.

Adenovirus 41 

For some mental health means discussing about things. For some others it's about boundaries and not discussing about things. I hope everyone understands and respects another person's need for that space.