June was about
- Bonding with Rian
- Martha
- Machine Learning
- Canada Prep / Red Tape
- Other happy moments
Rian has started smiling and babbling. How can you explain the joy of watching a baby express. His big eyes , sometimes curious , sometimes almost anxious, always cute. the way his mouth becomes O-shaped as he tries to communicate. His frown and adorable anger when he wants to be picked up. His size , the way you can pick him up and hold him. It's all wonderful.
Z wants to lay on the lap like Ri and she too looks big sometimes but I just step away a bit and see how small she is and what a baby she still is , just about 5 years old.
I switch between being annoyed by both, adoring one, adoring the other. It all happens in cycles. Suddenly all I want is to cuddle with Z. Most of the time I'm holding Ri who needs to be comforted more because he is a baby and just want Zaya away so I can manage one baby. When Rian sleeps , Z and I get our cuddle time or when he is with dad. And then there are some days when I'm glued to the phone and forgotten both of them.
Rian is fully formula fed and seems taller. I am worried about Zaya for her nutrition and wondering if Ri missed out on the immune and neuro effects of breastfeeding.
I'll be moving to a new country and hoping all decisions I take and will take help my kids access to many places in the world. Moving to the US gave me money, confidence, standards but also let me decide what my standards are when the country started deciding what immigrants can do and can't do.
My kids are US citizens with access to the opportunities of this country.
We will move to Canada as the current leadership preserves the idea of equality and good for all and that's the value I incline to and want my children to incline to. It does not mean being away from competition and survival and leadership and being opportunistic. It is by being all that while preserving dignity. It is by being on the right side of moving up in life. It is by thriving in a fair system and learning to preserve that fairness for all. This allows stability in us the parents' lives and that changes how we can evolve with our kids.
We are Indians and I do want my kids to experience that too. We will find out how that looks like in due time.
Martha:
She is our El Salvadorian nanny. Her life stories are amazing sometimes they feel like a movie script.
I almost want to write a book on her. If I did these would be the chapters
1. How I met her - cleaning / Nooshin
2. Her nanny experiences in Bel Air
- the English lady that ironed bedsheets
- the lady with the dogs that ate her lunch
- Nordstrom owner and selling necklaces based on magazines
- 6 children and ice cream trucks
- Twins
- Possessive mothers
- The au pair from Germany who moved with her
- The car accident from the alcoholic mom
- The ToysRUs coupons and giving away toys near USC.
- The boy who slept at her house and the fire at his house
- The mom who got caught in El Salvador who's son she took home because he was a neighbor and the dad that brought in other women
- the one who died and her husband felt bad there was no one to take instructions from.
3. Nanny's nannies
- the tailor
- the hitter
4. Her 4 Pregnancies
5. El Salvador
- The ocean
- The farm
- Mother's values
- Cult and abuse - aunt in law and uncle
- The military and the 'military'. Ronal Reagan
- Moving to sister in the city, her second cousin turning weird
- the killings - brother , Dad stopping the killing
6. The jump from Mexico to here.
- The stop at Mexico
- Coyotes, train San Juan Capistrano but Union station
- Someone else's Baby in her hand
- Finding baby's mother
- First job and running away from weird people
- Different jobs, newspaper jobs and weirdness
- Nanny
7. Travelling to El Salvador
- Death in family
- El Salvador now
- Her house, her 4 children, their education, their families, their health, selling things
8. How she nannies - from the heart
- Her church - the guy that jumped twice
- Pray
- Covid
It'd be a different world if I actually wrote a book
Personally I wished I have a female presence in my life and I had Nooshin - my neighbor,
Martha - my nanny and Harriet - my doula who all reminded me about the beauty of being a woman
Machine Learning
- I followed as much as I could and I did not follow all the things that I could not follow.
I got Martha here and paid her well just so I could study. Somewhere in the middle of the course, when I was losing track of the content, I was wondering if I really needed Martha here. And then I realized yes I needed here, with or without my ML course. She gave me a break from the baby. She gave my baby warmth like how I'd wanted a grandmom to give. She told me stories about so many people's lives and her rich life. She was good for so many reasons and my mental health.
- Well, after all that I did learn a lot from ML. I completed the course. I worked real hard on the capstone project and got myself and my team who did pretty much nothing , a certificate. I worked one day till 5 am.
ML is a huge world but the part I scratched made me a little better than I previously was and that's enough for now.
My project was in anomaly detection on credit card fraud.
I don't know where this journey is taking me, but all I know is I'm trying whatever I can in a direction I'm more interested in and that is good. It could help me with the market. It could help me learn more. It could help me work on interesting problems. It keeps me occupied.
Canada Prep
Rat took care of flights, shipping, Scooter move.
We have the car to sell and a lot more to do, but we are doing it in a chill way.
I think we will be fine
Happy thing:
I went to the mall the other day with the family. And we drove through a part of the city where we used to live years back. It wasn't far but I just had not commuted a lot. And I was nostalgic, also given I was moving out of the country, it all felt strangely nice to be driving by. We went to the mall near Meadows apartment. Suddenly I had a rush of excitement. I had been bored about going to malls for a long time. What's there to do - I don't really like to shop. So I never went much. I went with Keshu na's kids when I was in Dallas and that was nice but not exciting. But this time I was suddenly excited. I saw so mnay people and it made me so happy to see people out there having fun, eating, kids coming there with their friends. I got reminded of the time in Chennai when I went to malls with friends and the mall still felt like an out wordly place. So many things to see. So many people to look at. Friends to pass time with. Food to try. Wow what an amazing experience that I failed to allow myself to experience for a long time. When I go to Canada, I thought to myself, maybe I will have friends to aimlessly spend with at the mall.
Going to Canada, and just this phase of life of being a mom to two kids, and just many things changing in the industry with AI having come in has given me a somewhat fresh leash of life. It is making step away from the seriousness of having to do something right or good all the time and step into giving space for aimlessness, useless pleasures. This does not mean social media or TV, but stepping into the arts etc. It feels like I can get in touch with the person I used to be before I became 'serious' with life.
