Reading

Like most parents of today, S and I are all for reading books out loud to BA. That I love reading makes it even more of a reason to try to foist the same habit upon my son. I can hardly wait for the day BA can start reading and enjoying books on his own.

The public library in our city has a nice collection of children's books and we usually pick up a few books for BA during every visit. They are all kiddie board books. Even then, the books are usually very colorful and have an interesting enough "storyline" that I genuinely enjoy reading them out to BA.

Then yesterday, with BA sitting attentively on my lap, I started reading out a book called "Hello Doctor". It was book about a bunch of animals waiting in a doctor's clinic to get checked out by the human doctor. The book started off well with the animals complaining about various ailments and the doctor making silly diagnoses for them.

Then, I noticed that the animals in the waiting room seemed to be disappearing one by one in the pictures without being diagnosed and assumed that maybe they had fled the clinic after overhearing his silly diagnoses. I continued reading.

A wolf went into the doctor's office. As the doc checked out the wolf's mouth, the wolf sucked the doctor right in and swallowed him whole. Whaaatt....

Then the wolf came out of the doc's office and with an evil grin, asked the next patient, a lamb, to come in. At this point, I was looking like this:

Then realization dawned that the other missing animals had not left the clinic but had apparently found new residences in the wolf's tummy :-O!

As I hastily shut the book, I was heartily happy that BA still cannot read or understand most of what is being read to him! Seriously, this was a book for toddlers? Which young kid will ever agree to go to a doctor again after reading this book? *I* had to make an effort to stop myself from getting creeped out!

Valuable lesson for the day: read every book before letting BA get his hands on it!

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Cat pic from http://www.kulfoto.com/cat-pictures/14743/shocked-cat . When did I become a cat-pic posting person!?!

2014

Happy New Year to the one person who is still following my blog (Hi, Mum!). 2013 flew by in a flash. I would have had a tough time believing that an entire year has gone by if I did not have BA's baby pics to look back to. I keep wondering how the tiny baby has grown into a toddler so soon. Who would have thought that nostalgia and reminiscing would start this early!

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A few random thoughts:

1. I only recently noticed that while song lyrics in Tamil usually refer to rain in a positive way and to the sun in a negative way, English song lyrics are the exact opposite. I guess this is understandable considering the climate of the places these songs are usually written it. I am just surprised that it has taken me this long to notice this!

2. From childhood it is drummed into our heads that it is what it is inside that counts, not exterior beauty. The other day I was thinking about how a person's personality is also decided by his/her genes to some extent just as his/her exterior appearance. So why is having a good personality touted as a super great virtue when inherited genes probably played a part in that as well?

3. In a situation which requires an apology, the apology works best if it is offered without an added supposed-to-be-mitigating excuse. Usually, a no-strings-attached apology quickly defuses the situation and then the hurt party becomes more willing to listen and to forgive. Yes, it is tough for the apologizer to admit culpability but it usually works out great for everyone eventually.

4. Life is too short to read crappy books. I have finally given up on my "Have to finish reading any book I start reading" rule.

5. I really like ice-cream cakes or rather, cake with ice cream. 

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I hope to write more in 2014 - let's see how that goes!

Quick silver

My mom has very few grey hairs on her head. I was very sure (make that 100% hopeful) that I would follow right in her footsteps.

For years, in an otherwise lush sea of black on my head, only one stubborn silver (yeah, no hair of mine will ever be grey) colored hair stood out. Hiding it was a non issue and I had absolutely nothing to challenge my idea that the curly mass of black hair would continue encompassing my head well into old age.

A couple of months ago I was combing my hair and was surprised to find a silver hair peeking out from near my ear. Wow - stubborn silver hair had migrated from the middle of my head to the side of my head. Who knew hairs could migrate like that! Amazing, huh?

I continued brushing my hair complacently when I spotted a silver hair in the middle of my head. Wait a minute - now the stubborn silver hair was migrating in real time? Which was when I noticed that I had a stubborn silver hair by the side of my ear AND a stubborn silver hair in the middle of my head. What the ..?

It did not take me too long to discover 2 more rogue silver hairs. Oh no, no, no I had aged overnight. Oh no, no, no, no! I obsessively hunted through the rest of my hair but found no more silver hairs.

But - I know they are there, just waiting to come out. Before I know it, I will be the silver haired old lady with knitting needles in a rocking chair. Sob.

I tell you - I inherit the wavy, frizzy and dry hair from my mom. But not the delayed silvering. Genetics - hmph!!

But never fear - when I do become all silver, I going attribute it all to stress and not to my getting older. Aging gracefully and all, you know.

Still, just in case, any recommendation for good hair-coloring products?

Wait till you have kids..

You know how parents always tell you when you are child-free "Wait till you have kids, then you will understand". I used to find such people extremely annoying and used to mentally promise myself that I would never turn into one of them.

Well, now I have become a parent myself. While I will never ever unleash the "wait till you have kids" line on hapless souls, I can now understand where those parents were coming from at least in some scenarios.

Punctuality
I used to be anal about being punctual. I used to the be the first arrival at any gathering. I used to wonder just how the tardy people could be so disrepectful of other people's time. Short of being hit with a truck or something on the way to an appointment, there was no excuse for being unpunctual in my world. Then arrived Baby A. In short order I realized that A (i.e. me ) proposes, BA disposes. In a baby's world there is no concept of time. BA eats when he wants to, sleeps when he wants to, poops when he wants to. If it interferes with your plan of getting somewhere at some particular time, too bad. In the intial days we thought we were doing pretty good if we managed to get to at least doctor appointments within an hour past the scheduled time. Nowadays, we have become more efficient and start the getting out the door process about an hour before the actual time. However, getting anywhere on time is no longer a given.

Talking about baby
I never thought I could have so much to say about a tiny little being who communicates mainly by crying, who cannot get anywhere without help and who spends the majority of his time eating and sleeping. But I do. I marvel at the way he curls his little fingers, at the way his ears are perfectly formed, at the tiny toes at the end of adorably chubby feet and can talk about them for ages. However, I realized I still generally find other parents gushing about their respective offspring quite boring. So I limit my gushing to the BA's grandparents and immediate family who are more then happy to listen and infact encourage me to gush. I am also pleased to report that I refrain talking about baby to the other folk till they bring up the topic themselves. So, formerly being at the receiving end of baby-gushing still has some effect!

Taking pictures of baby
My phone has hundreds (literally) pictures of BA and several videos as well. I love looking at them. I sometimes take 10 or 15 shots in a row, each of which differ from the other only in the slightly different angle of the baby's hand or the way his foot is placed. Yet I save all those 10 or 15 shots AND love looking at all of them too. Babies look adorable in every snap! Only saving grace is I do not upload them all onto Picasa and send the link out to all my contacts.

Being paranoid
Till BA arrived on the scene, I barely noticed when anyone coughed or sneezed. Now, I am keenly attuned to any sign of illness around me. I  obsessively use sanitizer and wash my hands and give a wide berth to coughers and sneezers. The other day, someone at work was coughing quite a lot and I found myself getting really angry - why could they not stay home instead of spreading germs around? I was quite surprised at just how badly I wanted to march up to that person and ask them to please go home since I could not afford to pick up their germs and then pass it onto my baby - thus acting like one of those totally crazy, obsessive and paranoid parents. I blame it on BA being an ex-preemie and how it is very important for him to not catch infections during the early years. But I suspect I would have been the same regardless of BA's preemie status.

Sleep
I always knew that the parenting gig was not a walk in the park. But it has taken actually living through it for me to realize that you are on-call ALL THE TIME. And that means, you cannot simply take a day off because you are too tired or too sleepy or just because you needed a break. This was especially hard the first few months since both S and I were constantly short on sleep and I very badly wanted to be able to sleep in at least one day. Now we are more used to it and of course, BA sleeps for longer as well (touch wood) and it is easier.

Love
Forget about you unconditionally loving your baby - your baby unconditionally loves you and you are the center of his world. This is an indescribably warm and great feeling. But it also comes with a huge sense of responsibility. Yesterday I managed to do a small screw up which left the baby uncomfortable for a few minutes. I was miserable and picked up the baby to comfort him. I turned his face towards me to say sorry. He took one look at my face and smiled broadly at me through his discomfort. He was simply so happy to see my face! I thought my heart would burst with happiness and guilt at the same time. I love that little boy and would do anything to protect him.

There are a lot more little things - will save them for another day.

ROP - Retinopathy of Prematurity

Till I had a preemie myself, I had never even heard of the term ROP (Retinopathy of Prematurity), let alone know what it was. In the preemie world though, being affected with ROP is pretty much par for the course, especially in case of extremely early as well as extremely low weight preemies - two categories into which Baby A (BA) very squarely fell.

We got an amazing ophthalmologist to treat BA. When we gratefully thanked her at the end of it all, she simply said "You can best show your gratitude by spreading the word about ROP. Too many innocent preemie babies go blind due to lack of awareness about ROP." I am doing my part here.

If you or someone you know has a preemie, please make sure that the preemie baby is looked at by a ROP speciality ophthamologist as soon as possible. Typically, the monitoring starts at about 4 weeks after birth for the very early preemies. Later preemies get looked at pretty much as soon as soon they get into the NICU. Thereafter, make sure to diligently follow the advise of the ophthamologist and keep up all the follow-up appointments without fail.

Here is a primer about ROP as culled from Wikipedia and personal experience:

What is ROP?
ROP statnds for Retinopathy of Prematurity.  It usually affects the eyes of premature infants and is thought to be caused by the disorganized growth of retinal blood vessels.

Who is at risk of ROP?
All premature infants are at risk of being affected with ROP. Very low birth-weight infants (infants weighing less than 1.25kg at birth) and/or at very low gestational age (less than 31 weeks) at birth are especially at very high risk.

How is ROP detected?
The ophthamologist uses tools to look at the eyes and the retina. This procedure is not painful but very uncomfortable for the baby. So, typically, babies cry a lot during the test which usually lasts for less than 1-2 minutes. It is a good idea to not feed the baby upto an hour before the test since the excessive crying might lead to the baby aspirating (getting food into the lungs) the feed.

What is the treatment?
Once ROP is detected, depending on the stage ROP is in, the severity is determined. Lower severity ROP might resolve on its own without treatment. In that case, the ophthamologist simply monitors the baby periodically to make sure everything is still alright. In case of ROP of higher severity, the treatment could be laser ablation (to remove the abnormal blood vessels) or injection into the affected eye with Avastin.This treatment needs to be started as soon as possible after detection since severe ROP progresses rapidly.

What is the prognosis?
Provided ROP has been detected early enough and the treatment started promptly, success rate is pretty good in most of the cases.

What is the risk of not treating ROP?
If the preemie has a severe version of ROP that is left untreated, it eventually leads to retinal detachment and blindess.

So, please, if you know of someone who had a preemie recently, make sure that they are aware of ROP and they get their baby looked at by a ROP specialist. This is especially true in countries like India where not all  hospitals make it standard protocol to get preemies checked out for ROP. You could be saving an innocent baby from a lifetime of blindness.

Resource
Sankara Nethralaya Eye Hospital, Chennai, India has excellent ophthalmologists who evaluate, diagnose and treat ROP in dozens of preemies from all over India and from other countries every day. BA was treated at Sankara Nethralaya. 

In general, the neonatologist attending to your preemie should be able to direct you to the appropriate specialist for evaluating ROP.

Catching up

I know I have dropped off the radar for almost a year. A few things happened in the interim:

1. S and I had a baby boy.
2. S, baby boy A and I relocated. Again.

S and me being ultra special and all, number 1 was not the usual 9-months culminating in a squirming baby arriving wailing into the world with smiling faces all around. Not at all.

Baby A arrived early. Really early at 26 weeks. He spent a few months from birth in the NICU at the children's hospital before he was well enough and later, weighed enough to be able to come home. A's entire NICU stay was the most intensely stressful experience of our lives so far. I would not have believed it if anyone had told me that I would have the strength to face the first one month especially. But we did. Baby A is a fighter and his fighting spirit and courage humbled and inspired us. He is our big miracle and is doing well now :-).

We relocated back to the US recently. I guess it is in our destiny to keep moving back and forth between India and US. Let's see how long we stay this time around! Relocating with a baby, a very young one, and a former preemie to boot, was no joke. But the support from family and friends made it as painless as was possible under the circumstance. Baby A was a trooper and behaved beautifully during the long flight journey as well through the setting up process in a new country. Now we are almost all settled in.

So here we are, back in the US, with new baby in tow. That's what was happening with me. What were you folks upto :-)?

Oh God!

Karnataka is reeling under a drought and the government has received plenty of flack for not taking sufficient action. This morning, I read in the newspaper that the government was spending 17 crores as a part of its drought relief effort.

'Oh goodie,' I thought, 'They are doing something. Wonder if they are providing aid to farmers or constructing some water delivery mechanism.' and read on. The answer was: neither.

The 17 crores is going to be spent for offering poojas to appease the rain Gods in not one, not two but in 34000 temples. Absolutely the most logical and sensible solution, eh?

Oh well, at least, Karnataka will have some happy priests soon.

It's your move, Wordfreak - A book review

It's your move, Wordfreak by Falguni Kothari.

The premise of the book is interesting. Wordfreak (supposedly male) and Worddiva (supposedly female) meet on an online Scrabble playing website. After several months of playing and flirting, they finally decide to meet in person. In the real world, Wordfreak and Worddiva would have in all probability found out that they are actually two much-married, balding, middle-aged men.

However, in the book, Worddiva is 28-year old lawyer Alisha Menon and Wordfreak is 25-year old architect Aryan Chawla, both living in Mumbai. They meet each other and fall for each other like a ton of bricks upon sight. Why ever not - Alisha is a tall (yet waif-like and petite), dark and slim beauty. Aryan Chawla is a tall (and hunkily muscled), fair and handsome stud. And both are single and rich to boot as well - yaay! 

So, the first half of the book moves in total Mills & Boon land where pages and pages are devoted to just how wonderful Aryan thinks Alisha is and just how adorable Alisha thinks Aryan is. This being modern-day India and all, a few pages are devoted to describing the couple having sex in loving detail as well.

If you are into this sort of romantic fluff,  those chapters might have been entertaining. However, I am not and was impatiently wondering if the story was going to go *anywhere* as I skipped pages. I was getting a tad too tired of  reading about two beautiful people mooning over each other while being helped along by other beautiful people. Seriously, not a single character in this book is ugly or even average looking - they are all beautiful and elegant.

Towards the middle of the book, somethings starts happening. Aryan has hidden his past beneath his gorgeous smile and an unfortunate run-in Alisha has with one of her clients results in all his insecurities coming to the fore.From that point onwards, the story starts to focus on Aryan and his relationships and how Alisha acts as a catalyst in helping him resolve his crises. This part made an engaging read as the story wound towards the happily-ever-after end.

The book is well-written and flows well. The secondary characters are quite engaging. I found Alisha's friend Diya very lively and a hoot, though her habit of calling Alisha, Lee-sha (yes, the dash is included) was a little grating. For that matter, Aryan's nickname of "Sunshine" for Alisha made me want to poke my eye too. And in some places, some rather weird observations popped up. Sample this:

"Even though tanned, he was still several shades lighter than her. The quintessential difference between them - he was a North Indian Aryan, and she was a South Indian Dravidian"

Say what!?!!

Still, the book makes for an overall pleasant read and at 282 pages, is a fast read too. Perfect for a holiday.
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This review is a part of the Book Reviews Program at BlogAdda.com. Participate now to get free books!

Smile please!

Not so very long ago, when one needed to take and view a picture, a lot of planning had to go into it. First, obviously, one needed to have a camera. Then, a film roll. Then, have the subject framed so that one could take the best possible shot in one try - hey, film-rolls don't grow on trees. Then, click the shot and hope one had done a good job of it. Once the entire roll had been used, it was dropped off for processing. After the processing-center defined processing time, it could be picked up. Finally, the result of one's efforts could be viewed. Phew! It WAS a long process and made all the more exciting for it.

Nowadays, you just need to whip out your digital camera or cell-phone and keep clicking pictures till the cows come home. Charging your device and downloading pictures is so very easy too. Maybe some of the magic of the previous process is lost; still, I love my digital camera and love taking pictures with it.

However, there's the dark side. Everyone knows at least one person who *will* send a link to some 800 pictures every time they take a trip in the mistaken belief that you will view them all. That is a minor annoyance though. After all, hitting reply with a generic "Nice pictures! Looks like you had a great time." takes probably a minute from your life.

What gets my goat is: when watching live shows like concerts, plays and dances not featuring one's kith and kin, what is it that possesses people to constantly take pictures (yeah, some times with flash turned on too) or worse, make a video-recording of the proceeding? Among annoying live-theatre behavior, I think this ranks near the top, right among formidable contenders like crying babies and non-stop commenters.

There you are, happily enjoying the dance or play or musical performance going on the stage when suddenly, the person two rows ahead of you lifts their digital or cell-phone camera and starts filming the scene thus giving you the *special effect* of having a small, bright rectangle of light in your line of sight in the best case or actual blocking your view if you are unlucky.

Seriously, who watches these video recordings once they are made? Perhaps the person doing the filming? After all, they have missed the live show due to focusing on their camera instead. But otherwise? Their family? Their friends? Heck, I have watched my own wedding video, a show where I was the heroine and the center of attention, only once. I thought a live show is special because it is *live*.

Recently, I went to a Thai cabaret show. The lady next to me started filming as soon as she sat down. All fine and dandy except that the show had not yet begun and she was filming the closed curtains! I immediately knew I was next to an obsessive filmer and sure enough, for about 50% of the show, her video camera continued to hover towards my left (after that, I guess her hands became tired). It would have been distracting but for the fact that the gentleman two rows ahead and the lady one row to the right, among plenty of other folks, were filming as well - thus, my eyes just got used to these splotches of light and ignored them.

A couple of  years back, we were visiting the Niagara Falls. We went to a theatre close to the falls which showed a movie about the Niagara Falls. Obviously, there were plenty of shots of Niagara Falls being shown on screen. Guess what some fellow audience members started doing? Yup, they whipped out their cameras and started taking pictures of the screen when these shots popped up, flashes galore. For heaven's sake, the REAL falls were barely 20 feet away! Just because one has a digital camera, one is not obliged to use it all the time.

So yeah, I love digital cameras and mobile cameras for the wonderful ease of use and the opportunity it gives me to chronicle even everyday stuff. But,at times, when I see the blatant misuse of these devices, I really wish I could grab them from the offenders and make a huge bonfire out of them. Perhaps even do a war-dance around the bonfire for good measure.

One can always dream I suppose.

Bleep

The other day, I was watching this song Chikni Chameli on TV. Call me a prude but I really don't think that song belongs on day-time television. It is very disconcerting to see a woman, a top-tier heroine at that, dancing so suggestively and yeah, I will say it, vulgarly. The post is not about that though.

So the song was going on and I was lifting up my jaw which had hit the ground after seeing Katrina's on screen antics. Then I realized that there were blurs on sections of the TV screen periodically and started wondering what that was about.  Then I realized that these blurs were actually cigarettes/beedis in the mouths of the extra dancers in the song.

Apparently, our censor board thought that watching these cigarattes will corrupt me majorly and make me take up smoking pronto while watching Katrina's heaving bosom right next to it is will not at all give me the idea that objectifying women so blatantly is normal. Because, you know, while we never, ever see people smoking on the streets, women dance provocatively in itty-bitty costumes on the corner of practically every single Indian road. The ways of the censor board are mysterious - I have never quite managed to figure out what constitutes 'censorable'.

I then watched some more songs on TV and realized quite a few Indian movie songs do have such suggestive moves and no one has any qualms about playing them at all times on TV on channels meant for audiences of all age-groups.

I think I am going to stick to watching Star World and Zee Cafe from now on. At least I know what I can expect on which show and besides, the channels very *helpfully* bleep out all kinds of 'explicit' words both on the audio as well as visually on the subtitles.

Come on, when you know you are watching a sitcom which also talks about relationships, is hearing the word 'sex' going to make you keel over in shock and have you reaching out for the smelling salts? It is sometimes hard to understand sitcoms like Scrubs when dialogs have four or more words bleeped out in a sentence (they once bleeped out the word 'broad' when it was not even being used in the derogatory sense - really) - good thing I have watched each episode about 3 times or so :-D.