Family And Child Care Issues

Holiday Blessings

2011-06-09T19:32:00.010+05:30

Diwali is one of the rare Indian festivals celebrated all over India with great pomp, last year Diwali was on November 5. Rare because of the all over India celebration, no rare as in it only happens every once so often, much like Christmas it is back every year. One of the things people do is clean out their houses – very similar to the idea of spring cleaning. Cleaning also involves repainting the house if needed, especially the exterior. Another part of the festival includes sharing wonderful sweets with friends and families. This is also the time many people wait for to buy major purchases such as TV, cars etc, so that they are bought on an auspicious day. People buy new clothes, burst crackers and generally have a good time. It is the time of good cheer in India.

Much like the US, however, India too has latched onto Diwali and the gift giving, new household purchases etc with great gusto. These days you see signs of sales all over the place. But it could also be a byproduct of the fact many young unmarried folks have good paying jobs and next to no expenses because they either live at home with parents (this is pretty much a custom – if a child does not stay at home when living in the same city, the assumption is there was a falling out between parents and their child) they have a lot of disposable income, so shopping is just the next logical step.

My in-laws live in New Delhi and come from a state called Bihar, where a more important festival per their customs is celebrated six days after Diwali called Chhat – literally meaning sixth (pronounced “chh” as in kitchen and “at” as in hut. It is an amazing event. My mother-in-law (MIL) tells me that this is the only festival that starts by worshiping the “Setting sun” and ends by worshiping the “rising sun”.

One woman in a family fasts for 36 hours, because she believes that this will protect of her family from harm and bless them with good fortune. This fast is quite austere, not so much as a sip of water is allowed. From past experience my MIL has learnt that eating a big meal before the fast starts doesn’t help, if anything she eats a very simple meal. At the end of the first 24 hours in the evening the family dresses up and sets out to a river, pond, or any other water body to pray to the setting sun. My family has done both, they have gone to a river, which has its own charm because there are numerous other families there for the same reason. Nothing in India happens in a small scale. Another year, they filled up the little pond in the gardens in front of their house and did the prayers there.

Everyone returns home after the evening prayers and life goes on as usual, well for the rest of the family not the woman fasting of course. When my MIL fasts I notice she also becomes very quiet. I don’t know if it is because fasting depletes her energies, or fasting and its purpose makes are introspective as she seeks greater oneness with the powers that be.

This is also the time when loads of sweets are prepared at home, for which preparations have been going on for a day or two, to be distributed to all who come to the family’s celebrations and receive it as “prasaad”. It is quite a production and wonderful to watch all the preparations.

Early next morning (thankfully this is a winter festival so the sun doesn’t rise too early, but we are still talking about 5 am). The family dresses up again and sets off to the water body they prayed at the evening before. My MIL steps into the shallow water and waits for the sun to rise. As you can see in the photos there are several difference things on offer. I do not recollect them all, but among them is milk and fruits. First, my MIL offers the milk and then everyone in the family offers a tiny bit to the river and sun from the same pot. After my MIL finished her prayers she is becomes a holy person and her blessings are eagerly sought.

It makes a lot of sense that the morning prayers, which also signal the end of the fasting, is the time when most people show up. So now we have family, friends, colleagues and I don’t know who else show up. Not every Bihari family will have someone fasting, so when a friend or extended family member is doing it they all come to enjoy the company of friends as is typical of any social gathering and wait for the blessings from my MIL. After the prayers people walk up and touch her feet for her blessings. She puts kumkum on their forehead and offers them a small packet of sweets prepared the day before at home.

After everyone returns home, meal preparation is in full swing. My MIL is offered the first meal. If you have ever fasted for 36 hours without so much as a drop of water, you don’t simply dive in and eat a meal. You take a little bite, sip some water and wait for it to settle into your stomach, before taking another bite and so it goes on. It is much like offering water or food to a starving person, you can’t simply fill them up.

November December are also months when flu is in the air, not much different than here in the US. My father-in-law (FIL) had caught a cold just before Diwali. By the time Chhat was over he still hadn’t shaken off the cold, in fact it seemed worse than ever. So much against his wishes, after all who likes to go to the doctors, he was taken for a check up. At the hospital, the doctor was convinced that my FIL needed to be in the hospital for observation because he had weakened (a wonderful part if you are lucky to have access to medical help is that the hospitals are happy to keep you on for observation instead of sending you home ASAP. My FIL is close to eighty years old, so it is not so easy for him to bounce back from illnesses. In their hospital room, the doctor was asking my sister-in-law (SIL) questions about the symptoms and progress of my FIL’s illness. While listening to my SIL, he never took his eyes off my FIL. Suddenly, he shouted out at the nurse to put my FIL on the bed and to use the defibrillator. As it happened, my FIL’s was just about fainting when he was swept onto the bed and revived. They later learnt that his heart had stopped for a few seconds before starting again.

What a blessing that this happened in the hospital where he had immediate assistance, or we would most likely not have the joy of sharing our lives with him now. Just as is the case with any heart or head injury, you cannot tell what damages may occur. At first, my SIL told me that he behaved in a very childlike manner. Another change was if he thought of wanting or doing something, it had to be done NOW! He had lost his concept of time. Before his illness, my FIL’s day had a very structured day, he ate 3 meals plus tea and they were always about the same portion size and about the same time everyday. This of course, made him a very healthy man and added to his chances of a better recovery.

My husband was quite worried. Here we are in the States and there they are in India. First, the news of his illness itself is shocking, then, one is never quite sure if you are getting the whole story here, or the family is glossing over some matter. But more than that, no son or daughter can sit in peace without seeing their parent and assuring oneself of their recovery.

Our last trip to India had happened in summer of 2009 (see Blog http://familyandchildcare.blogspot.com/2009/08/summer-travel-to-india-part-i-bombay.html). This year my oldest is in fifth grade and I thought it might be a good time to visit in the winter and it might be more pleasurable for my kids as well, so they won’t be sweltering in the heat, not to mention, we could escape part of the Wisconsin winter. But I kept dithering about our plans. Hearing of my FIL’s illness the decision was taken out of our hands and we immediately made plans to visit in January.

When my youngest heard we were going to India, it is not his favorite thing because he says, “there is no food in India.” A reason, if you need one, not to raise picky eaters. But he was quite sure he wanted to have Christmas at home in the States. Well his wishes must be quite strong that year; we didn’t get tickets until after Christmas. His birthday is the 29th of December. So the next thing he wanted was that his birthday to be celebrated at home too. But we said we had tickets, so we were going.

We set off to the airport in a limo, it was quite funny, my husband and the driver were loading the limo with our luggage and the limo started to slide down the sloped driveway. The funny part was that both the driver and my husband are hanging on to the limo; like they could stop it was sliding down. When we reached the airport check in, we were at the counter for a really long time, before we discovered that while we had a current passport for my older son, his visa was on the older passport which we did not have with us. So we rented a car and headed back to Madison.

We had to reschedule our flights and guess what, we got tickets for the day after my youngest son’s birthday. So once again, his wish came true. Our next attempt to travel went smoothly enough. We arrived in India and the family bought a cake to re-celebrate my younger son’s birthday, so now he got two birthdays!

It was heartening to see my FIL doing well, he was no longer bedridden, he still had a nasty chest congestion that he couldn’t seem to shake, but with the cold weather it would be a tough fight for the fittest, and given his age, it was slow progress. His words a still a little slurred, he still did not have the concept of time. But even in the two short weeks we spent in India (my kids were thrilled because they skipped the first two weeks of school) we saw much improvement in his health. Which was wonderful to see and especially reassuring for my husband.

My husband encouraged my FIL to go out of the house to feel better and less like an ill patient. My FIL was all for it. It was a little amusing to see him get all dressed up every morning and ask, so what are the plans for today. One of the days, my husband said, today we are going to the Bengali Market for lunch. My FIL clapped his hands together and said, let’s go.

In the past I have only ever since him being like the head of the household serious, he does have a sense of humor, and he took great trouble to spend time with my kids and learn of their interests and talk about things they would be interested in. And at least once during our visit he loved to take me and the kids to the Parliament to eat lunch. My FIL has an office in the Parliament. It is the office for the political party my FIL and MIL have spent much of their life supporting and being active party members. The office in the Parliament is to maintain their political party’s presence. It was interesting to note he is next door neighbors with Sonia Gandhi at the Parliament. We didn’t get a chance to see here.

But now, he wanted us to be a part of many outings. It is hard to say if this change was because he had a near death experience which changes people. Where he thought, well I am now living on extra time, so I am going to use it the way I enjoy best and one of them is spending more time with my family in more fun events. Or if the stroke itself was a cause of the change, where he couldn’t control his impulses to have fun, as mentioned earlier, I think he always had that in him, but didn’t openly express it nor do it very often. But now he was all about having as good a time as he could with his family. I think it is a wonderful change, we get our extra time with him and it is such an enjoyable time too.

This year was the last time my MIL was going to fast during Chhat, she is getting older too, and the severe fast takes quite a toll on the body. Her fasting wasn’t for naught, it kept her family safe.

Kalpana Kanwar, Copyright ©June 2011

Sleepless in Bombay

2010-10-09T05:12:00.003+05:30

We won a place in the Interior Design competition – Sharada, Parul and I.

We had 3 weeks to prepare and present our design. Like any other college students we postponed it until the deadline was on top of us. We had 2 days to come up with the design and presentation. Sharada and Parul lived in a dorm with many other architecture students. So we decided it would be best if I stayed over with them for a couple of days. If we needed something for a presentation we had a good chance of finding the materials from other students. We started late in the afternoon, right after our last class of the day. We worked through the night discussing ideas and coming up with a design we all agreed on. The next day, we went to our classes and returned to work on our project again. Now we had to finish the presentation. We stayed up all night for this. By mid morning, just an hour before the deadline we turned in our design.

After 2 days and 2 nights I returned home. As was usual I sat down with my family for tea. I told them about our design entry. After tea, I headed off to the bedroom to look for something. I sat on my bed trying to remember what I had come in for and fell asleep.

When I woke up, my bed was surrounded by 6 firemen.

After tea, my Mom had come in to tell me that all of them were headed off somewhere and since I was staying home, they weren’t going to take the house keys with them. Our front door was a self locking door. After a couple of hours they returned home and rang the doorbell. And rang and rang and rang. They rang it so much, that it actually broke down. Now they were really worried about me and wondered if something had happened. The neighbors had come out to see what was going. Someone suggested climbing over the balcony and entering through a window. This wasn’t really much of an option, as our apartment was on the 13th floor.

After some more waiting around and talking with our neighbors, my parents called the emergency number. Soon, a fire engine came, lights flashing, horn blowing and swung into our little compound. Now the whole building was curious as to what was going on. People spilled out of the building, a few were in the landing on our floor.

The firemen charged up, asked everyone to stand back and kicked open the door. By now it was late in the evening, so it was dark in the apartment. Torches on, they barged into the apartment and finding no funny business they let my family in. My Dad came and touched me. I up and found 6 firemen around my bed. Boy, were they cute.

You see, right after I went into the bedroom, I fell asleep. I don’t even remember lying down to rest or sleep. But after 2 nights of no sleep and intense work, I was so wiped out that I didn’t hear a thing until my Dad came in to wake me up.
Later my youngest sister told me how exciting it all was - the fire engine coming blaring through, the men kicking the door in, the whole shebang. She was the only one who thoroughly enjoyed the whole drama.

Blackberry Blues

2010-04-29T01:19:00.002+05:30

There was a time when I did not carry or even own an appointment calendar. Any contacts I wanted to keep were simply written down on a piece of paper. Of course, then life was simpler too. I was in college and other than family, friends and school there wasn’t anyone else in my world.

My first Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) was Palm Zire and I don’t remember why I bought it. My guess would be that after marriage and kids life got a little more complex – doctor’s appointments, school dates etc and there was no way I could carry all that around in my head. Paper seemed too retro, so electronic it was. I liked my Palm Zire, it was only Black-and-White, but did the job. One of the best things I liked about it was the 2 way sync with the Palm’s Desktop Manager. Since the syncing was with software developed by Palm themselves, it was quite smooth. No duplicates. Best of all, I could enter major information, use cut and paste on the desktop and just update my handheld, instead of slowly entering with a stylus.

After a while, I thought to get myself upgraded and got Palm Life Drive. I was already a fan of Palm, so decided to simply go with them. I have to say, I didn’t spend any time researching other than to go to the store and check out their Palm products and choose one of them. Why Life Drive you ask?

First, it was Palm. Second, it was now colored. So I could have a different color of each of us in the family and I managed all our appointments. By now our contact lists had also grown. The simple fact that my husband and I merged our contacts, and then add on various jobs, internships and friendships along the way, and our contact list was growing too. My original paper system may have continued to work, but when I could have it all in my fingertips why not.

Third, it still synched with a Palm Desktop Manager. And what’s more transferring all my information from the Zire to the Life Drive was a snap. A fourth cool thing about the Life Drive was that you could actually use your stylus and write notes as you would on paper.
The Life Drive came with a huge memory capacity and I thought it might be nice to use as a backup device too. And it worked great.

The down side to the Life Drive was that it was a chunky thing to carry around, and the mode of entry using stylus had changed. So I didn’t even bother to learn the new stylus entry system and simply used the keyboard on the PDA to enter data.

But then sometime last year, my computer crashed. After I had it fixed, I tried synching my Life Drive and nothing. I took it in to the Geeks and they didn’t have any answer. Then I learnt that Palm would no longer support the Desktop Manager programs. The drop deadline was sometime February of this month. So I thought it might be time to look for something else in the market. If the Life Drive wasn’t going to be functional, then I needed something else.

So off to the store I went. I learnt that nobody makes simple old PDAs anymore. Everything is a Smart Phone - an oxymoron if I ever heard one. Well that threw a wrench in my plans. I wanted to stay with Palm if possible. But if I had to combine it with a phone, I wanted to stay with Verizon. Palm had just introduced the Palm Pre with AT&T. But I gave priority to the phone company. Now I wonder why, considering the fact that I have the smallest calling plan on my phone and it works just fine for me. So obviously I am not using my phone a lot.

After a very brief consideration, the choices were iPhone or Blackberry according to my Facebook poll. Don’t get me wrong, I love Apple products and I think they work great together. It’s when you mix the Apple and PC worlds I feel things go wrong. But this is from experience several years ago. For all I know things are markedly different now.

As you can probably tell, this is leading to the Blackberry. I figured, it has been around a long time and they know what they are doing. Blackberry was one of the first names I recall hearing things like “I can’t live without my Blackberry.” “People who have Blackberry’s just love them.”
So again without any further ado, I purchased a Blackberry Storm 2. I was eligible to get a phone upgrade from Verizon and yet, I paid for the phone. The sales agent told me I will get a rebate in the mail. Nope, didn’t happen. So now I have a phone that I paid for. Who does that anymore?

Now begins the great adventure. First, we had to find a way to transfer data to the Blackberry. Turns out if I used MS Outlook, this would be a snap. Now MS Outlook is only available with the Professional Version of Office and is quite expensive. So obviously Blackberry was not meant for the Mom market. Then it turned out if I used a Google calendar I could sync it to my Blackberry. But I could not transfer from my Palm to Google calendar. So I just decided to simply start using Google calendar going forward and synch with my Blackberry. The Google calendar itself is quite sophisticated and allowed me the same color coordinated entries as Palm did. Unfortunately when it synchs with the Blackberry, everything is black.

This was the easy part. Let go of the past and look forward regarding appointments. What to do with the contacts? Again, apparently it would sync great with MS Outlook. I can’t say because I never went that route. Blackberry claims they can synch with the Google contacts. But if you look at the data entry modes in the Blackberry and Google contacts they do not match, so if you synch with Google contacts, it shows up as one continuous line of information on the Blackberry. But that wasn’t even a problem yet. I simply did not keep contacts on Google, except to save email addresses. It was not my address book.

I tried to do some research. I am sorry I won’t be able to tell you the whole miserable experience, but just let me say, I had to export files from my Palm in a certain format, go to Yahoo and convert them to another format and then try to import them into the Blackberry. Didn’t work. So I took my Blackberry back to the agent and asked for his help. He had this neat device where he could copy from one of those files from Yahoo or whatever and transfer them onto my Blackberry. It worked. Sort of.

So now I had a bunch of contacts on my Blackberry, most of the information was intact, but it was in a mess. For example, the address would show up as one long line – 800 Washington St,New York,NY. Considering we have a lot of international contacts and some of those addresses appeared thus – 14 International St,near tall pillar,behind well,City,Country,Zip.
But I was not ready to give up hope. I figured I had reached as far as I could with the trying to upload data business. So I went through each contact and painfully corrected each one. The frustrating part was that some of these contacts would randomly return to their original mess. Finally, I would simply delete that record and create a new one. That seemed to work better.
Since I had to take care of synching etc, I downloaded Google Sync for Mobile and synced stuff. Voila my calendar appeared albeit all black text. But then I realized that my contacts were messed up again. Why, because it had downloaded every single email from my Google account as contact and managed to mess up several of my other contacts.

Well this was the learning part, so I don’t mind so much. I realized I could go in and choose not to synch my contacts with anything, just synch the calendar. This worked quite well for sometime. Until one day, I turned on the phone and it said, would you like to upgrade to system whatever. I said yes. It went through its song and dance and when all was done, my calendar looked fine, but my contacts were a disaster. Now I had multiple entries for several people. Now I can understand if Mary Smith is copied from my Facebook contact, Gmail contact, etc. But why duplicate even the ones I already had on the phone. So now I could have as many as 6 Marys. Mary, Mary Smith (only email address), Mary Smith (all contact), Mary Smith (again). How do I know it copied its own self too?

See the wonderful thing about Palm contacts was that you could create categories, and I am not sure how executives do it, but as a Mom, my people categories were simple. Family, Friends, Neighbors, Work, Doctor, etc. You get the point. Well in the Blackberry too you could create categories, but if you created Home and selected Mary Smith, it would ask which phone number do you want to add. It would not include the whole information. Basically, I had to divide Mary Smith into Home, Work, etc. Who operates like that? Even in the business world, I would imagine if you know someone and have their contact information, both personal and professional, you are likely to categorize them in the category you are most likely to look for them. If they are personal friends, maybe FRIENDS works and if you need to call them at work, you just look up your friend’s work number. If they are business contacts, maybe BUSINESS works. But wouldn’t you want to have all of Mary Smith’s information in that one category you went to? And the whole point of categories is to break down your contacts into manageable lists. For example, if I am looking my doctor’s number, if I simply chose the category DOCTOR, there it would be within just a handful of names. At least, that is how Palm did it.

So I soon realized that categories in Blackberry are a dud. If I am wrong, please tell me. But now I had this long list of people in my contact list. And no matter how many contacts you have in your list, you don’t use more than a dozen on a regular basis. It was a pain to scroll through so many names. So the top 10 names became A Mary Smith, A John Doe. You get the idea, since they now started with A they would jump to the top of the list and voila no more scrolling, there they were in the screen.

Now going back to my story about duplicating records, I knew it duplicated my own records because I had 2 A Mary Smith, 2 A John Doe, etc. But I wondered why did this happen anyway, just because I upgraded the software on the phone.
Turns out that upgrading reverts all the settings to some default and it synched calendar and contacts (from various sources such as Facebook, email accounts and apparently itself). So I had to go back and deselect the option to synch contacts yet again. And once again I had to scroll through the contact list and delete the duplicates and unwanted contacts. This took me a whole hour. Since I had already done this once before, you can imagine I was not pleased.

How long have I had the phone? Barely 6 months and in this time, I had trouble finding a smooth way to transfer data from Palm to Blackberry. Now Blackberry has its own Desktop Manager. But all this does is let you use your Blackberry phone as a USB drive and copy files into it – the obsession seems to be media files. And create backup files of the data on your phone. Which I can see will be useful, if I need to reinstall that in my phone or a new phone sometime. But there is no desktop program where I can view what is on my Smart Phone. So any information I enter is typed in awkwardly and without copy and paste, is quite slow going. Now I know people text a lot these days and probably find this funny. But I do not text. I prefer a voice at the end of my phone or an email.

It is nice to be able to check my email and Facebook accounts on my Blackberry. But really they weren’t essential to my being. What I really wanted was a reliable phone, color coordinated calendar and contact list. I have the phone part, but the rest is sadly lacking.

Now I hear Palm has released a phone with Verizon and they do not have a Desktop Manager for it and suggest using Google calendar too. However, there are 3rd party software that will synch Palm to a Desktop Manager similar to the one Palm had or to Palm’s own Desktop Manager. Or so they claim. I am waiting to hear more on that. As an aside, did you hear they had a phone contest and the Palm Pre won - http://blog.laptopmag.com/march-smart-phone-madness-game-13-palm-pre-plus-vs-htc-hd2

Another feature I have not been able to understand is the Silent mode. When I chose my phone to be silent, not vibrate, not low, but SILENT, it won’t ring if I get a call, but every time a Facebook or email pops in, it beeps. Silence means silence, not beep sometimes.

Then the phone comes loaded with all these features, which just seem so redundant. Different programs seem to do the same thing. I am sure people have their favorites and don’t use all of them. Wouldn’t it make sense to only get the ones you use and make them work well rather than have a dozen programs that work somewhat inadequately.

Take voice activation, the button is on the side, very convenient. All you have to do is say, call Mary and voila. Now I will admit I may have a slight accent, but not enough to stump the phone. So I say, call Mary, it asks do you mean John? Whaaa? Oh, and I have even asked my born and bred American friends to try it, same results. Meanwhile, my husband has a Droid and the voice feature on it works just fine when we talk into it. So it is not my accent, it is the program.

I like that I can record a voice memo, I am sorry to lose the ability to scribble a note (no stylus).

As a first time owner of a Blackberry Smart Phone, I must say I am not impressed.

Baby Care - 5

2009-12-10T00:35:00.001+05:30

Pacifiers
I don’t believe in them. If they are going to self soothe, I much rather they learn to use their fingers or thumb. For one thing, when they learn use their fingers, you don’t have to keep searching for a pacifier and making sure it’s clean. Just wash their hands a few times in the day and no searching. Next, when they start crawling around they have to use their hands to crawl and pick up things etc, so they can’t have their fingers in their mouth at the same time and so without really doing anything about it, they will quit putting their fingers/thumb in their mouth or at least reduce their dependence on it significantly. Stats say most kids like over 95% stop thumb-sucking by 1 year of age on their own without any assistance.

With a pacifier you are stuck and you actually have to do something about having them break that habit. For one thing they can have it in their mouth and crawl around and pick up toys etc. Second, if they use it to fall asleep (most common use) then you have to get up and put in their mouth till they are old enough to do it themselves. How many wakings is that? The average person supposedly wakes up 3 or 4 times in the night. So with a baby (even when she has finally learned to sleep through the night) you could be waking up to put a pacifier in. What a pain. I say, go natural. Let her find her thumb herself. D2 was using his thumb since he was 3 months old, as soon as he could get his fingers in his mouth. Before then he would randomly suck on his hands. It’s a great help, he soothes himself to sleep so well. I don’t have to look for pacifiers, or boil them or anything.

Many parents talk about the pacifier soothing their baby. This is somewhat true, since at such a young age, nursing or feeding is such a comforting time for the kid. But in another way, everytime the kid talks (cries at this age), we shut them up with the pacifier. I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem nice.

I know many parents swear by it. I still say, go with what you think feels better. I choose to differ, but that is just me.

Solid Foods
Regarding solids, I started with rice cereal first. I used Earth's Best Organic Rice cereal. It has a bit of texture (looks like tiny rice flakes) rather than the Gerber one which looks like rice powder.

But first you have to watch for signs of readiness. Our doctor said you can start solids anytime between 4 and 6 months. You don’t want to start too early if they are not capable of swallowing well they can choke more and also there is danger of allergies developing later in life or so some studies say, and is it really worth it, if it only means waiting a month or two to feed your baby solids. Many parents believe feeding solids makes your baby sleep through the night. I say, one is not related to the other. If your baby’s brain development is at the point to sleep through the night, then she will, otherwise she won’t.

You also don’t want to wait too long because there is a window of opportunity to introduce solids and if your miss this they can get hung up on textures and refuse to eat. As babies grow older they start having opinions, imagine that, and the older they get the stronger their opinions. Babies see everything in black and white. Yes, they want it, or no, you can forget about it.

Signs of Readiness
So what are these signs of readiness to eat solids. Both D1 and D2 ate well almost from the start. I like to believe because I really waited until all the signs of readiness were there.

First – They must at least double their birth weight. This is an easy one.

Second - Around 4 months babies also start drooling more (teething etc), when they start drooling lesser (this is really a question of their ability to swallow and a little tricky, because when the teeth come closer to erupting the drooling really increases a lot). You see, when babies are drinking milk, they are not swallowing, the milk is simply squirting down their throats.
Watch for signs like when the baby burps does it always drip out of her mouth or does she swallow up small burps. If she is swallowing well, that is a good sign she is getting ready to start eating.

Third sign - Does she like to watch you eat. D1 will stop anything he is doing as soon as someone is eating near him. He watches very intently. And even works his mouth sometimes like he is chewing.

Finally - Is she drinking tons more milk (I guess the official word is more than 32 oz – D1 never got close to that number so I think that number is way too high) suddenly and remains hungry or needs more feeds for more than a week. Start solids. Most important, she should be able to hold her head steady. Its not necessary for her to be able to sit by herself, but should be able to hold her head steady when picked up.

For their first solid feed (just like with bottle introduction) start when they are not full of milk but not quite hungry for their next meal. Because it is a lot of work to eat and a slow process if the baby is hungry she will not have the patience to eat it and will get frustrated and associate that feeling with solids. So between meals is the best time.

For a few days D2 ate a small amount of cereal between meals. But it was soon obvious he could eat well, so I would feed him at his feed time but before he asked for it. That is I waited till about 2 to 3 hours (depending on when the naps fell in between) and then fed him cereal before he cried for a meal.

Anyhow, I started with some rice cereal mixed with breast milk (since D2 hadn’t had formula yet). You can also use water and formula of course. With D1 I used formula since he was mixed fed with breast milk and formula. The more nutrition the better I feel. But all baby cereals are fortified with iron so she might get constipated right away. Don’t feed too much rice cereal even if she is good at eating it, rice is binding and doesn’t help with constipation. I still mixed only about enough in 1 to 2 oz of milk, even if D2 could eat up more. Too much iron is constipating. Besides let their bodies adjust to the new food and learn to digest it slowly.

Most importantly, introduce foods one at a time. I usually wait a week for each new food introduced. I started the boys on their cereal at about 4.5 months. They both ate well almost from the start. The reason for at least a week or more between new foods is simple, if your baby develops rashes or other symptoms, you know right away which foods are doing this. D1 didn’t do well with peaches and that fruit family when he was little. It was a standing joke in his daycare, that he was an exotic kid, because I had to hunt up fruits like mango, papaya, etc for him.

The second week I started with yellow vegetables - squash. After he took that well ( a couple of days) I let him eat as much as he wanted to (so it would take the place of a nursing or bottle at daycare. The vegetables have enough fiber in them to counter the constipation of the iron in the cereal. I tried to keep the proportion of vegetables and cereal about 50-50 and maybe a little more vegetables than cereal.

Until they are 6 months old they are still supposed to be primarily on milk. So even though D2 was doing so well and would love to eat all day long, I waited till he was 6 months before adding another solids meal time in the day. But I continued to introduce one new food at a time.
With D1 I started with Rice cereal, Banana (really ripe one squashed up), apple sauce ( you can do regular apple sauce by the time they are 9 months or so), yellow vegetable, sweet potato, then green vegetables - beans, peas. Then other fruits - pears etc. D1 had a reaction to the pears, peaches, apricots - all fruits of that family. So I quit and started guava, mango, papaya (I guess he wanted to be an exotic baby).

Bananas are constipating too and D2 became constipated with his cereal in the beginning so instead of fruit I started with vegetables. Rice cereal, squash, carrots, oatmeal cereal, sweet potatoes and then fruits - banana, apple, pears etc., then peas, beans. You don’t want to start your baby with fruits, they might like the sweet fruit taste and reject plain veggies. But you also don’t want to introduce green vegetables since they are harder to digest, so the sweeter vegetables seem the way to go, squash, sweet potatoes etc. By the time they have tried through all these foods, they are ready for the pre-made baby pastas or really your own food, make sure it is very soft and mashed up.

I tried to buy organic foods as often as possible. Other than the cereals, I did use Gerber foods too. They don’t have preservatives so they are probably fine too. Now they have an organic line as well. The organic brand we got was Earth's Best and I don’t know if there are others, doesn’t have many food choices and seems to me they offer mixed foods (mixed vegetables or lasagna) etc more. And since babies are supposed to start eating one food at a time the organic ones didn’t always work out. (I am talking about 6 years ago, by now I am sure things have already changed and there are more choices and more readily available).

Self Feeding
No matter how good they are about eating, it is still messy. Those cute bibs - useless. In my opinion you have 2 options - feed them naked easy to wash the whole baby off and you don’t have to take food stains out of their clothes or get one of those long bibs that covers almost their whole body. I used cotton diapers, the ones that are not pre-folded. Works great. It just drapes over D2's whole body. They stay messy eaters for a really long time.

They have to start feeding themselves at some point. And if you don’t use a bib much they will resist it later. Although 6 months is still early, you can go the naked route in the beginning and try the bib when she is ready to sit on the high chair by herself.

D2 loved to grab the spoon and feed himself. He hindered more than helped at this point. So I offered him his own spoon to wave around. This was a really good idea. Because pretty soon after he sat on his own and ate, he would want to feed himself (couldn’t do it, but try telling him that). So with D1 I would give him his own bowl and a spoon with a little food in it and then my bowl and feed him from that. He loved to try and feed himself (couldn’t get anything in for a long time, but loved trying) and only then would be let me feed him (they do want to survive). And I say, when they want to feed themselves go with it. It gets truly messy, but if you don’t encourage that phase they will come to believe only you can feed them and then you are stuck for a long time. Feeding themselves is not really a concept many Indian families have, and I have seen many an Indian kid who won’t feed themselves even at 3 and 4 years old!!!! So this is a real danger.

With D1 and D2 I didn’t use a high chair. When they were ready to sit well on their own, I had a tiny table and stool (backed up to a corner) so he wouldn’t tip over and have support to sit him on. D1 loved the independence of sitting down himself and getting up. Instead of being strapped in. Do you realize how often we strap up our kids like prisoners, in the car, in the stroller, and in the high chair? In fact, they spend a very small part of their early childhood being free.
They will try to get up between meals sometimes, but you keep reminding them and holding their hands to bring them back to sit down. And so long as you don’t offer them any food anywhere other than at the table, they soon figure out they have to sit and eat. This is a really good idea, because they do understand they have to eat at the table. In a high chair they are strapped in, it isn’t something they learn, it is something that happens to them. So when they outgrow it they don’t always know to sit down and you have to teach them that whole idea anyway. Teaching them limits is more effective then tying them up I believe. With D1 we didn’t even baby proof our house other than some basic precautions, we just set limits (we did use visual or other apparent barriers), but not exactly physical barriers for everything and never had trouble with D1 playing with wires or things like that. It really works. It seems like more work because strapping them is so easy. But one time or the other you have to do it and it is easier when they are younger and more malleable and get the idea than when they are older and stronger and faster.

Baby Care - 4

2009-12-06T03:21:00.004+05:30

Nursing
Here is a big stress/worry factor - nursing. After D2 I realized I could have done better with D1.

You know, I really don’t remember much of day 1 for both D1 and D2. They did sleep a lot, and I don’t know how often I tried to nurse them. Then on day 2 they are really vocal. So I had D1 latched on the whole time. This unfortunately set up a vicious cycle, where he nursed and slept and nursed and slept in short intervals and I got no rest and I don’t think I produced enough milk in a 1/2 hour to feed him enough, so he was hungry soon and so on.

With D2, I got lucky, not because I was smarter, but when I was at the hospital, my nurse that day was a lactation consultant and she said, all 2 day old babies are hungry and cry. You just nurse him every 2 hours (meaning start times 10, 12, 2, 4, 6 etc). She said, I could nurse him for upto 40-45 minutes at a time if I wanted to, but I needed to get the rest too. So that is what I did. Trust me there was a lot of crying that 2nd day. But by day 3 my milk was in just fine and we got to nursing every 2 hours. At first I still nursed about 40 minutes each time and this slowly reduced and we are down to 15-20 minutes a nurse now.

D2 tended to fall asleep during nursing a lot during the first few days, so I kept waking him up so he would get a belly full, so we wouldn’t fall into the same cycle as with D1. This worked well for me. Ways to keep the baby awake - try to burp him often, change his diaper in between changing breasts (mid-bottle), tickle his toes, get him naked (they hate that when they are little), tickle his ears, jiggle him gently.

I also had to wake him up a lot during the first couple of weeks to nurse him. Not longer than a 3 hour interval at first. Later I let him sleep as long as he wanted in the night and had a 4 hour limit during the day. If he sleeps longer than that I wake and nurse him. My babies were born on the little side, so no surprise, I was concerned about them gaining as much weight as possible, not to mention the doctor and nurses also made it sound like a positive thing that the more weight the better since they were not so big to begin with. Today, I don’t know if it was necessary to wake him up for a feeding when he was ready to keep on sleeping. It seems their bodies would know when to sleep and eat. And while as parents we want to try and place a pattern to it, I don’t know that we have to be regimental about it.

I know they say feed on demand and I did do that, but there was a 2 hour limit (once in a while I would do 1.5 hours, but no less). Other than that, I nursed round the clock every 2 hours if needed. If he cried before, I would try to soothe him or just let him cry it out and just sit by him and gently stroke him and talk with him. I have done so much better with nursing and he is definitely gaining weight quite well.

Sore Nipples
You will get sore nipples. For one thing the baby nurses for 40 minutes each time about 10 times a day, that’s a lot of nursing. Later on your nipples are not sore, I don’t think it is because they harden or toughen up, but the baby is simply not nursing as long. Also, the first couple of months, your milk will come in copious amounts. Way more than the baby needs and this all overflows. Especially, with the first baby. With D1, I couldn’t keep my clothes dry. With D2 I only leak when I nurse.

When your nipples are leaking constantly and all that nursing is going on, they are never dry it seems and this makes them really sore and even painful to nurse. So much that you might seriously consider quitting. I am not kidding. I tried using pads, not wearing a bra and just changing my shirt, so my nipples were not in a wet bra or pads the whole time. But be careful too much no bra will make your breasts sag because they are so heavy with milk.

Another reason for sore nipples early on is, the babies have such little mouths and they are just able to suck on your nipple, which gets painful and sore easily. Later as they grow, their mouths latch on to the breast and not pull on the nipple. So the soreness goes away.

When I was nursing with D2 and was home, I would use one of those little ziploc 4oz containers and stick it under my bra and nurse on the other side. This way all the milk leaking collects in the container and I am dry. I don’t know if you can wear these all day or not. But it’s worth a try, if they will keep your nipples drier and out of friction with your shirt. Or you may get lucky and not leak as much.

Finally a note on to nurse or not to nurse. I think sometimes it works like a charm, sometimes you have to work at it. Sometimes, it is simply not meant to be. Despite what lactaction experts tell you, I believe (I don't have any proof of this) that some women do not produce enough milk to feed their babies adequately. Accept where you are and you will reduce so much stress from you life and enjoy your baby more.

Baby Care - 3

2009-11-26T21:59:00.001+05:30

Bathing
Regarding bathing, the baby's doctor will probably tell you no water baths for the baby until the umbilical cord drops off (about a couple of weeks) - just 'dry cleaning' until then. One thing to take note is to make sure to clean the neck and behind the ears everyday. D1 never got chubby so I never had trouble with his neck. But D2 was quite chubby and even when I think I have cleaned his neck properly, I still find stuff in there. You really have to make them turn their head this way and that (they don’t like it one bit), but the stuff that settle in their necks makes their skin red.

Lotion
My pediatrician is a very strong advocate about this and I agree, no lotions of any sort, no matter how natural the claim on the bottle. I just use almond oil (any organic oil will do - coconut and in a crunch even olive oil). I buy almond oil from an Asian grocery store, much cheaper than getting it from a wholefoods kind of store. J&J Mineral oil is a big fat No No. The molecules are too fine and tend to plug the pores, as compared to the organic oils which are literally fatter and stay on the surface where they need to be to provide a protective layer.
A new baby has very dry and thin skin. So I would put a little oil on it, but not on the creases (which look so red and raw). This goes away though and in a week or so the skin starts looking better (may still be dry though).

Soap
My pediatrician repeated this to me almost every time I took the baby in. The best soap is Ivory soap. Plain old ivory soap. Not even J&J baby soap. Ivory soap is supposed to be the most gentle soap in the market. I used it for both D1 and D2 and it certainly didn’t dry out their skin.

Ear Infections
Here I will unfortunately be of very little help. I was lucky enough that D1 and D2 didn’t get their first ear infection until Kindergarten. Which is apparently quite common.

Colds
When they do get colds, you know they can’t have any medications so the best you can do is use the little bulb to clear their nasal passages. Especially before nursing or feeding, so they can drink some milk. For sleep, when D1 was in the crib, I would hang his mattress so it was on a higher rung on one side and a lower one of the other side (just one rung apart though). Then make sure to put him to bed at the bottom of the crib, so his feet are close to the end. He is going to slide down anyway, but this way I can be sure he won’t get buried under a blanket or something. In the cradle I put a big book under one end to make a slight angle. It helps them breath easier.

Diaper Bags
I got a big bag from Lands End. It was nice, but I usually don’t need to use such a big bag. But that is because I really didn’t take the baby out for long periods of time. I usually did really short excursions between meals. So most feedings were at home for example, I rarely fed him outside the home. But depending on how you plan to spend your days you may want to think of the size of the bag. They are useful (although I don’t carry mine all the time). But one thing I would recommend if you think you will be using yours a lot is getting one that is like a backpack. It is quite a pain to have a bag hang from one shoulder and balance the baby on the other side, especially when you have to carry the baby in the carseat. It seems the bag is constantly slipping off. Big pain.

Sleeping
For sleeping I referred to a book called Sleeping Through the Night by Jodi Mindell. I read the book and then took stuff from Your Self-Confident Baby by Magda Gerber and Allison Johnson and developed my own plan for self-soothing and started from there. Go with what feels right for you. But remember don’t chose an option just because you are chicken about making tough decisions for your kid. Some tough love goes a long way in keeping both of you sane.
When I was expecting D1 I read and read up stuff. I knew nothing about babies. The stuff I am writing are things that worked for me and helped me out.

Baby Care - 2

2009-11-20T02:40:00.004+05:30

Bottle Feeding
I decided to breastfeed. But it was very difficult. I can now admit to myself that I was not one of those women who produce copious amounts of milk. And if I had a do-over, I would still nurse, but supplement with formula, even if it meant that I would have become dry faster.

I respect people's decision to bottle feed (pretty much everyone else in my family did), but there is something special about nursing too, the thought that you are producing the essential food for your baby and providing all kinds of immunity for them. But aside from that, it just as wonderful to bottle feed them when they cuddle up with you.

When my kids were a few months, they both had to do some bottle feeding when I returned to work and they went to day cares. For bottles we decided to go with the bottles where you put in a liner. I knew before D1 would be a year old we would be traveling to India. While I would have to sterilize the nipples myself, at least eliminating the bottles for sterilizing was a huge break.

Regarding nipple selection, there are tons of them out there, but I chose the bottle with the liner and they only have a couple of nipples to choose from, I offered it to my kid and that was that. I don't think kids are as fussy about nipples and stuff as the manufacturers would like us to believe. When the babies are hungry, the milk is the right temperature, and it flows through when they suck = Happy Baby

It ended up having another advantage I had never thought of, as they got a little older and were able to sit up. They liked to drink from their bottle sitting up, whether I was holding them or they were sitting up by themselves. Since the liner simply works on suction, they can keep sucking the nipple and the milk with keep flowing. One of by boys also like to keep sucking even when the milk was over. Just for the fun of it. BTW, also easier to get the air out of the bottle.

The reason I say this was an unexpected surprise was because when I switched them to cups, the never noticed that they had to sit up now as opposed to lying down to drink.

Another decision I made with D1 and later with D2 was to switch them from milk bottles to bottles with straws. For one thing they have a very similar look, although it still takes them a couple of tries to figure out how to suck through the straw. Again, they didn't have to learn yet another thing, tip the cup to drink. They simply held the bottle straight like they did with their milk bottle and drank.

My reasoning for a straw bottle was again our trip to India. I didn't want to carry a bunch of sippy cups and a package of straws is so much easier to handle. Not to mention any place we go I could get my kids to drink even in the absence of a sippy cup. Those days, people in India still did the simple way, kids didn't use sippy cups. Nowadays, they are pretty common.

Sleeping
D2 was so good about sleeping I forgot how consuming an issue it can be. D1 was really difficult in that regard. Babies sleep 16 hours the first few days, I don't know when those hours were when D1 was a baby. You may get lucky and get a sleeper.

But if you don't, just remember one thing, whatever method you choose to soothe the baby you are going to be stuck with it for a long time. So choose wisely. Walking the floor and rocking and singing seems very easy when they are only 8 lbs and fall asleep in 5 minutes. Soon they are 15 lbs and getting bigger and take longer to fall asleep and before you know it, you are pacing the floor for an hour and more, and several times in the night. So do think about this one issue seriously.

We decided that D1 and D2 had to learn to soothe themselves as soon as they were 6 weeks old. This can become a major issue if you get a sleep resister, like D1 was and still is at 10 years old. Especially because it cuts into your rest, and I believe you cannot be a good parent when you are sleep deprived and exhausted (some amount of exhaustion is to be expected, but not to the point where it begins to affect judgement, which is what was happening with D1).

Putting babies down to sleep has nothing to do with the debate on holding babies. I believe when they are awake and they want to be held, hold them. They like being held up and being able to see the world from a different view. But if they are happy and staring at the wall and not fussing, let them be. Even if you cannot understand what is so fascinating about the wall, so what, let your baby have her enjoyment.

Another thing to remember is baby's sleeping patterns are not uniform. That is just because they started sleeping through the night at 6 weeks, doesn't mean that at 3 months he will not start fussing again at night. Usually, babies have sleep disruptions during growth spurts - brain growth wise. This is especially stark when they are about 9 months old. That is the first time, they begin to recognize, familiar faces and strangers. And for the first time they become uncomfortable with strangers. They usually start waking up at night again for a few weeks.

More on baby sleeping myths. They are not quiet, in fact, they are quite noisy, even when sound asleep. In that first year, when they go from sleeping 16 hour days to 4 naps a day and down to 2 naps a day. That again doesn't happen on some predetermined schedule written in a book. I believe if you find some balance between learning your kids tired cues and sticking to some kind of pattern regarding sleep times and rituals, they will do reasonably well. Will this work every sleep time? No! For one thing, they may be getting ready to give up a naptime. They can't do this overnight. So some days they will nap 3 times, some days 2 times, some days 3 times, but one really short one. It takes a while. Sometimes they won't nap, but you know they need their rest, so you can say, even if you don't want to nap, this is rest time and you can lie down quietly and/or look at a book. Many times, just quieting down puts them to sleep, if not, they have still rested enough so the rest of they is not painful for all.

Another debate is co-sleeping. People all over the world do it, it is natural. However, that doesn't mean it is always the best choice. I started co-sleeping with D1, but like I mentioned earlier, I don't know when his 16 hours of sleep began. So within a few short days, I was so sleep deprived I was walking around like a zombie. One night he fussed in bed and I thought I nursed them. I heard him fussing again and thought, didn't I just feed him. I hadn't fed him, what I had done was fling the comforter away from me and it was over him. That's when I decided sitting up at night and feeding him was better than having him with me. We both actually did better after I moved him to his own crib, although he was still in our room.

The hardest part of parenting at this time is not having any control on your own time. It is so totally tied to your baby's schedule. And if that isn't bad enough, you get a million comparisons from people about how this baby is doing this and that baby is doing that. Sometimes we get so caught up with that and start feeling guilty that you are not being a good enough parent. You should be doing more. But the simple truth is, you are doing just fine with your kid if you enjoy being with him.

Unfortunately, because we don't know what we are doing most of the time we start feeling guilty. Remember this, parenting is about feeling worried and guilty all the time. If you can overcome this emotion, you are home free, the rest is easy.

Baby Care - 1

2009-11-08T23:59:00.005+05:30

When my first baby boy was born, like many other moms, I read a ton of books, got wanted and unwanted advice from family and friends. At that time I was also big into keeping notes on my babies growth. So as a natural byproduct for me, I started to keep notes on things I found useful from various books, websites, friends, and family. The places are too numerous to list, and this was 10 years ago, so I couldn't even track down references if I wanted to.

I found my own notes useful when my second baby boy came. Its amazing how much I had to read through them again and again. I have also passed these notes around to friends who have told me it was quite useful to them. I know of at least one friend to forwarded it to her friend. For all I know, this stuff is now randomly floating around in cyberspace going from new mom to new mom. If so, I am so happy for them if they find any of it useful.

Enough of about this and now to my notes...

Cloth Diapers
I used them with my first baby D1 the first 2 months but not with my next baby D2. D1 was so sensitive to the cloth diapers that he would wake up every time he was wet (other babies I know just sleep right through), so little D1 did not get to sleep well for the first 2 months. I guess he just did not like that damp feeling. Not that I blame him. As soon as I switched to disposables, he started sleeping better. It might have been great for toilet training, because D1 was already starting to cry before he peed even at 2 months. But since he was going to be in daycare all day, and in the Us people don't believe in toilet training kids this early, there was no point in pursuing it. But maybe if I was a stay at home mom. Don't believe all those myths about toilet training can't happen till they are 3 years old. I have seen 6 or 7 month old babies in India, who cry and then when taken to the bathroom do their business there. No diapers nothing. Do accidents happen, you bet. But think about how many diapers and landfills you save.

Wipes
With both my boys I used large cotton rounds (the kind you use for make up etc), with warm water for the first few weeks. No commercial wipes for at least 2 months. Their skins are so sensitive that even the no alcohol, no scent etc version causes rashes. It did for both my babies.
Changing diapers - Just change the baby every time she wakes. Dont worry if she poops and then promptly falls asleep. If you are nursing, her poop will not cause a rash and when they are this little the sleep is more important than changing the diaper.

Crying Baby
Babies may cry because they are hungry, have to burp, need to poop (this is an ordeal for some reason), need to sleep (they need to soothe themselves like this for some reason). If you pay attention and take a few moments to figure out what they need when they cry, you will soon be able to figure out the differences in their cries. They are actually different for hunger, sleep, burp, poop. Its their own special language. Ask any mom who's babies have outgrown that stage, they can read those signs just fine in other babies, even if they were too emotionally close to do it for their own, like me.

Talk to Your Baby
Talk to the baby about everything related to them in a normal voice and avoid nonsense words or mangling them. Especially things you are going to do to them or when they are around. Like if you are going to turn the tap on, and she is in the room or you are holding her, let her know in words that you are going to turn the tap on. D1 used to cry at sudden sounds, but when I talked to him about it, he was calm, but if I forgot to tell him he still cried. This will serve you well as they grow up. For eg., always tell the baby when you are leaving them and will be back after whatever task is done, or time or whatever. Just remind them you will return. When they are real little they don’t react to this much, because they don’t really understand it. That's the best time to start, because they start getting used to hearing it. But soon enough they will understand your words and still cry because they don’t want to be separated. But what this will teach them very early in life is that you will come back to them. Don’t forget to add this, I am leaving, but I will be back before your nap or after your nap or whatever and Daddy, friend whoever will take care of you. They need to learn that you will return, and they will not learn this if you try to sneak out on them everytime and when they turn around looking for you, you have disappeared on them. Imagine how scary that must be for them. They need to trust you and feel comforted in knowing you will return to them. And they do learn this. It is very reassuring for parent and kid when this happens. Trust me, this happens a lot earlier when you talk to them about it, but a lot later when you don’t. I am not saying this will mean no tears when daycare/preschool/kindergarten will start. But they will be more confident in their trust in you.

You don't believe me? When my D1 was less than 2 months old and I changed his diapers, I would say, I am going to change your diaper, I am going to open the snaps followed by the action etc. When I lifted his legs I would say, up, up up. When both my boys were only 4 or 5 weeks old, they started trying to lift their legs for the diaper change when they heard the words up, up, up. Before I even held their feet to lift them up. It was adorable, they were trying so hard to help me (even when they are that little).

Burps
I was lucky, my boys were not big burpers, so I pretty much only burped them when the whole meal was done. After you figure out how your baby responds, burp her a lot or a little. Like between breast changes or before the whole bottle is done or every 5 minutes. If they have a huge burp stuck, they can't eat any more, they squirm a lot, and they can't fall asleep. What's worse (at least as a mom, although I think it doesn't harm them), is to see this big burp get released and out comes this gush of milk from their mouth, and you think oh no, they are losing their milk. But it is only a small part of what they have eaten.

Warmth
You know lot of books and nurses will tell you babies need to be at temperatures like we find comfortable. What I have realized is that yes, you can keep the house temperature comfortable for you, but make sure the baby has another extra layer on. It may not be for warmth, but they sure like the snugness of being cuddled in.

Which leads me to the next thing, when you bring the baby home from the hospital, receiving blankets are great. But don't go out and buy a ton of them, because after just a couple of weeks, they grow so much, they cant fit into them and whats more, they don't like them any more (at least mine didn't). Although they both loved it the first week.

When D1 was born, he was so skinny, he had almost no baby fat on him. For the few couple of days, he was using all his energy just to stay alive and was gaining no weight. I called a nurse, and she asked me to get him naked and place him on my naked belly so his body doesn't need to worry about producing warmth and can now use his food to gain weight. After just a few days, we were out of the woods.

Milk Supply
I decided to nurse, and I struggled with D1, but with D2 it has been a breeze. Was it because I had a better lactation consultant who stayed with me when D2 was born and took the time to get things started right. She told me the first two days are critical on how things progress. But I didn't get that the first time around. And apparently I was not Mother Earth material where things just fell into place regarding nursing. In retrospect I think, I shouldn't have put such a big stresser on me to nurse. I should have tried a mixture of nursing and bottle feeding, or when things were just not going too well for me, turn to bottle feeding. Having said that, during their regular check ups they were progressing just fine along the growth chart, so I guess, even if you feel things are not going well, they might be.

Make sure to drink a glass of something cool every time you nurse, and try to fit in another glass of water in between nursings too. You will find you need to use the bathroom a lot too. Make it part of your ritual. Trust me if you do the same thing every time, the baby will stay calm. When D2 was hungry, I would say to him, ok, I need to use the bathroom and get a glass of water and he waited for me and his crying had stopped. If I did get delayed for something else along the way then he got mad and let me know he had waited long enough.

I can't stress this often enough, so long as you do the same thing every time they will wait. D1 used to wake up so early in the morning, I just felt I had to wash my face and brush my teeth before I could deal with him. So every morning when he woke up crying, I would say, I need to wash my face etc, and you know what? he waited the full 10 minutes it took me without crying, waiting to be feed. I did this every morning, he heard me talking and the noise from the tap etc and he waited. Every morning, same thing. Babies love routine, same thing, same thing. This is sometimes hard on us, because after a while all the feedings, diaper changes seem to merge together and you cant remember, did I nurse on the left or the right. It seems you nursed and nursed. You feel brain dead, because you may been doing so many more multitasking, brain stimulating activities before baby. But they love it.

I called the lactation hotline tons of times with D1 and the first few weeks with D2 too. So if your hospital/clinic has one use it. If not there is always, La Leche League. They are a nation wide organization. Look them up in your area. Trust me it helps so much.

Building Our Custom Home – Part VI – Anecdotes

2009-09-20T02:12:00.002+05:30

So we finally started construction. First they mark and put stakes on the ground. Then this big digger comes by and digs a huge hole in the ground. And after this I am not sure how they re-measure the corners of the house. They frame up and pour concrete for the foundations. All this proceeds along at a brisk pace and it is very exciting to see it develop. But then there is a long wait – 3 weeks as we wait for the cement to set strong.
While we were building this house, my father-in-law told me that it is customary to place a snake like object in the ground on which the house will be raised. I had a pair of earrings that were wiggly, and threw them in the part that would later become the basement.
After three weeks they started framing the house. I made it a point to stop by everyday to look at the progress. I just couldn’t resist. I am glad I did. Because before they had completed framing the main floor, I caught two windows that were framed to the wrong size. I pointed this out to the framers, at first they didn’t agree with me, I asked them to measure the windows and lo and behold, they had to reframe. Luckily they were early enough in the process that these changes happened quickly and without delaying the project. Upstairs in the master bath, I kept a watch and as they were framing it, reminded them that one of the windows will be raised higher than per the plan – same size window just raising a lower sill height to a regular sill height.
Then all the tradesmen came in. The HVAC (heating/cooling) systems were being installed, when I noticed that one of the wires for the thermostats was located in a place that would fall behind the door. At the time I was at site, so was the HVAC guy, I asked him if it was ok, to have it behind a door. He said, it had to be in a clear spot and moved it. How did I know to ask? I have no idea.
Another time, I was at site with our builder and we were in the master bath. The plumber had started work and had drilled holes in the floor for the various pipes. There was one hole in the shower area, but it was located in a spot that would come under the built-in bench. Apparently, no one wanted to tell the plumber he had made a mistake. So here we are standing there, the builder, a carpenter and me, wondering who would do the deed. The next day, I met with the plumber and told him about the misplaced hole. He totally disagreed with me. But the very next day, I saw he had patched up the hole and now it was located in a new correct place.
One major mistake I did not pick up until the drywall was up was the size of our walk-in closet. I know how the error happened. The closet width was supposed to be 7’11½”. However, there was line showing the measurement of the whole length running through one of the ones. So the framers read the dimension as 7’1½”. This was a huge difference, it meant; I could not have hanging shelves on either side, because of the positioning of the doorway. I asked with the builder to correct the dimensions. We went back and forth on it for 2 weeks. He asked me to meet with a closet designer who tried to tell me he could design a closet in it. I said, I know you can design a closet for this space, the question is can you design a closet with double hanging sides? Since the answer was an obvious no. I stuck to my position and asked the builder to make the change.
At about the same time the master bath was nearing its final tweaking of locating the shower, tub etc. And the shower was going to be a couple of inches shorter than the plan. I told the plumber in the builder’s presence, what is an inch or two. My builder said to me; keep that in mind for the closet. Anyhow, I insisted and one day when I came by to visit the site, the wall had been moved, including all electrical wiring to the correct position. This meant the lights and fan that had so carefully been centered to the old room dimensions were a little off. But we have a sloping roof, and the off-centered lights don’t stand out so we left them as they were.
There are so many decisions that are made during the construction, no matter how detailed the plans are. The day granite countertops were going in with the double sink, it so happened I was on site, and they were getting ready to drill the granite for the faucet and soap dispenser. Because I was there, the guy asked me which side I preferred the garbage disposal and soap dispenser. If I had not been there he would have made the decision for me.
When the tilers were ready to come in, I asked them several times to let me know the day they will start work. But they just didn’t give any regard to my request and started tiling. In the powder room, they were cutting the tiles to accommodate the cabinet. As luck would have it I found them when they had only cut a couple of tiles. I told them that the plans mention that the cabinets float and do not rest on the floor, so they will have to tile the whole floor. Same story with the location of the floor vent, it would not come from the baseboard of the cabinet since there would be none.
As the tillers continued their work, I asked them once again to call me when they were ready to work in the master bath. We had 3 different tile colors going in. I was going to match the off-white floor with a baseboard of white tiles, then our green tiles to frame our steam shower and backsplash for the bath tub and finally, a line of 2 colored tiles alternating across the whole wall. I had in mind the height I wanted the tiles to be. When I reached the site that day, they had started tiling (didn’t call me) and the alternating tile line was set. I would have liked it one more tile height higher. But they made that executive decision for me. Aagh. Then as they were building down from there to the shower floor, they had to cut a tile and they wanted to do a whole tile or something and so that one white tile height baseboard turned into this tile and half height. I mean, it looked so off, I am surprised the tilers wanted to do that. Didn’t they have any pride in how their work looks? I asked them to remove all the white tiles and just forget the baseboard idea in the shower and go all green. They were most unhappy with me for making them do more work.
But the wonderful part was the people who work for a longer period on the house, like the electricians and the carpenters. Once they realized I came by everyday, they would hold off on decisions that were different from the plan, like a floor joist where a light should be, or an unusual corner situation. They would even offer their suggestions to give me more ideas to consider and help make my final decision.
Another time, I caught the electricians installing light fixtures in our mudroom. Two of the light fixtures just above the window were to be smaller than the other lights. The electrician was starting to install the larger ones, I told him they had to be smaller. They checked the plans and placed the rights ones.
I decided on bamboo flooring in our whole house. Here in Wisconsin, there aren’t a whole lot of bamboo choices. I only had two colors to choose from. I decided to go with the lighter shade and put dark trim around the house. I also wanted bamboo treads. While we could find vendors for the flooring, no one carried treads. I finally found something online and asked my builder to order them. He had our floor vendor order them, but they didn’t warranty them. That was just fine with me.
When the treads were being installed, they had to be cut to size, which meant exposed sides. At first, the carpenters tried to cut a diagonal and place an edge to the sides. But bamboo is tricky to trim. I looked at the cut edge and saw that you can see the pattern of the bamboo construction and said, let’s leave the edges exposed. The carpenter noticed that not all the treads had the same pattern, so they opened all the boxes, counted each pattern (two kinds) and then alternated them on the main floor and since we didn’t have an equal number of both, let the jumble of treads be in the basement.
When I was picking out the fireplace, I so wanted a modern style and since we were putting in a gas fireplace, I would have liked something different inside than fake logs. But you simply couldn’t find anything, I even looked online. Everything really interesting was in Europe. I had to give up on that idea, as that would be too expensive for me to consider. And the only “modern” looking design I could find was one reflecting a southwestern pattern.
I was going to place the fireplace flush with the wall. But when the fireplace was installed I realized that wouldn’t work too well, because they are designed to be placed with tile or stone around the fireplace. So I had to do something to frame the fireplace. I told our kitchen/bath designer that I would like the frame to be made of stainless steel like the backsplash we had picked for the kitchen. He said, it could be done, but I would have to choose a thicker grade of stainless steel. He also warned me that I would have to pay for the whole sheet, even though I will only get the part after it was punched out. I agreed to that as well. Now the stainless steel vendors refused the job at first, said it couldn’t be done, wasn’t safe, and what not. My kitchen designer kept at them and they finally agreed to do it but didn’t want to warranty it.
Now, our kitchen window is this huge picture window. When the window first came, it was a foot shorter than the framing. That is how the original plans had shown it. But I had changed it to match the sill heights of the windows in our living room (all of them are in a straight line). I had told the door/window salesman about the change and insisted he note the change right in front of me. But still we got the wrong order. As usual they tried to convince me to keep the window, but I stood my ground and got the window I had wanted.
There are also things I didn’t notice until the house was done. There are electrical requirements that determine where the electric outlets must be placed and how many according to the dimensions of the room or wall. Our electrician was so good, he waited for me to be on site and walk through each room asking for preferred location. Now the silly thing is, our loft is only about 6’ x 10’ and we have four electrical outlets there.
In the mudroom, I asked for an outlet in the closet to charge cordless vacuums. My desk is also in the mud room, so I asked for extra outlets there, for computer, printer and whatnot. I just assumed the walls would have their outlets every 6 or so feet per regulations like the other rooms in the house. Now I don’t know if the electricians just missed that altogether, or the same regulations do not apply in the mudroom. I had this wonderful idea that the long countertop could act as an ironing spot right next to the washer/dryer and also for any sewing I might want to do. But guess what, no electrical outlets. If I want to use that counter I have to use an extension cord from the closet.
I knew I wanted a really colorful home. I had always lived in government house or rental property. Even when we bought our first home, we always knew we were going to be there only for a short while so we didn’t change anything in the house.
I hired an interior designer to help me pick the colors. The only color I was sure about was this bright green for our kitchen. We walked through the house and in less than an hour had the colors all picked out. She made the decision making so easy, she would offer me two maybe three colors to choose from after we had talked about which color to use to contrast or complement a color. We have 11 different colors in our house, including gold. When the bright colors were going up on the wall, our builder would tease me saying he has post-its in these colors on his desk.
Finally when the house was done we had to get the occupancy certificate. When the inspector walked through the house, he pointed out three things that had to be fixed, a couple of screws were missing (the builder knew about it, the crew had run short and had to get more from their shop), our porch needed a railing because it was more than a foot higher than the ground and our fireproof garage door didn’t have a sticker on it that identified its fire rating. The first two were no problem to fix, but the builder didn’t know what to do about the door. He thought to contact the manufacture or the vendor and see if we could get another sticker. As luck would have it, I was looking through the cabinets in the mudroom and guess what I found, the door stickers, which the painter had very safely placed while painting the door.
Which reminds me, when I were selecting the fireproof garage door, I looked through the catalog the door/window place gave me. Our fire door has a small window in it. At first, the salesman’s reaction was, it cannot be done, and fireproof doors cannot have windows in them. I showed him that the catalog said that it met all the fireproof requirements. He was most surprised and said, in 10 years of his working with doors and windows he hadn’t known of one like that.
Some freebies I got with my house – the window/door showroom said they would give me the exterior door from kitchen to porch at no cost. The screened porch was supposed to be bare concrete, but it got fine cracks in it. This meant the builder had re-pour the concrete at his own cost. So instead he offered me the choice to pick outdoor tiles. I picked the tiles and while he thought they were pricy, he stuck to his word and paid for them. I had not planned anything special for the porch. My builder thought cedar roofing would look good and gave me remnant cedar from another job at no cost to me.
Some moments of pride – our kitchen was featured in a magazine and our house on “What you get for your money” on HGTV. In addition, once in a while we spot our kitchen in local media when our kitchen/bath vendors are advertizing. I don’t think it is because we have the best kitchen in town, but because we probably have the brightest colored kitchen in town.
And so we had a new home.

THE END

Aside: Our home was featured on HGTV's What You Get For the Money. Episode #214
Our kitchen was featured in Signature Kitchens & Baths - Pages 24-25

Copyright Kalpana Kanwar August 2009

Building Our Custom Home – Part V – Kitchen and Bath

2009-09-19T22:25:00.001+05:30

Early on in the design process, when he had first gotten a plan together, I asked him to finalize two areas for me and keep them that size until the final plans - the kitchen and the master bath. While the architect was busy finalizing the floor plans, I took the kitchen and bath dimensions to various kitchen and bath places to finalize those details. (Pic 1-Kitchen)
Once again, I went with my magic number – 3. I first walked into a showroom and asked them to provide a set of plans and a price quote. I told them I had tall cabinets in mind with a plane solid look. The only plane set of cabinets this showroom had had rounded corners. No way. And let me tell you this is no shabby showroom. In fact, I know several houses in our neighborhood have used this showroom for their kitchen and bath designs. Not only were the cabinets not what I wanted (ugly), but they were expensive. The cabinets alone would have cost me $50k. The deal was that if I did not sign a contract with them, I could not get the plans. Ha! The one design idea I took away from here was the cut of the kitchen island. (Pic 2- Kitchen)

So off to the second showroom, their models looked promising. I met with a woman and told her my vision of a kitchen. I wanted an island with a small seating area. We planned a really large window on one wall and I planned to have two tall cabinets on either side with no countertop in between. Regarding the rest of the room, I did not want hung cabinets over my stove countertop – the whole length of that wall. I am not sure what she heard. When I went back to look at the design, it was like they picked up a generic kitchen and hadn’t listen to one thing I had said. In fact, I looked to see if they had accommodated anything I had asked for. Nope. So I restated my vision of the kitchen. The man (who had joined the meeting) said, you might not know this, but you are real cutting edge in design. So where are your cutting edge design ideas, my dears? Anyhow, this place was a no as well, if they weren’t listening to me first, what are the chances they will listen going forward. Did I walk away with anything from here? I liked their idea of the mudroom layout. At this point I had planned on buying a new washer and dryer set. But we ended up keeping our old ones so we couldn’t use their design idea. I can still recreate it if need to. I have it in the back of my mind and if my washer/dryer die, we can redo the laundry/mudroom. But being such a skinflint, I probably wont.

By this time we were getting close to the final plans with the architect. He suggested a builder. Long story short, we went with the builder the architect recommended. The builder gave me a list of vendors and people to contact to go over the design details and finishes. So the third place for kitchen and bath was recommended by the builder. What an amazing showroom, I loved half the kitchen models in there. The young man who worked with me to plan out the kitchen was thrilled that I had come to him so early and he could truly design a custom kitchen. We had nearly 6 months to work on the kitchen plans and I got the kitchen of my dreams. (Pic 3-Master Bath)
A funny thing with the kitchen designs – he emailed the very first set of plans and their 3-D visuals to me. The color on the walls was beige. My first reaction as soon as I opened the file was to close it right away. After a deep breath, I reopened them and paid closer attention to the plan itself. I was happy to note he had listened to a lot of my ideas and planned a pretty good kitchen for me. I emailed back letting him know my first reaction to the beige color. I had a lime green color in mind for my kitchen. So he promptly emailed the same plans and 3-Ds back to me in lime green. Lovely! From here it was just a matter of minor tweaking, picking out the details. Two additions we squeezed into the kitchen were a narrow spice rack cabinet and shelves along the side of kitchen wall for cookbooks, phone etc.
I also visited the lighting vendors and walked through the house and identified various kinds of lighting. I haven’t counted the different kinds of bulbs in our house. It seems as though every time a bulb goes out, it is not easily available in the stores and I end up getting it from their lighting showroom. It goes without saying the bulbs are expensive, but the fact that they seem to last so long seem quite promising. (Pic 4-Master Bath)
The only light fixture I couldn’t decide on were the ones over our kitchen island. You know that funky kind. When the house was being built, I finally picked on a pair that was supposed to be red. When they arrived, they were orange. Now I have no orange anywhere in the house, so I had to add orange. I picked bar stools with orange seat covers, I found dining chairs that are an orange leather, we even painted our old (many times painted) piano orange!! Now I have a whole lot of orange because of 2 lights.
I also had the time to visit the flooring place and after considering various options I decided to do the whole house in bamboo flooring. Basement would be bare concrete and the mudroom would have vinyl – we have snake skin leather looking vinyl floor. It is very cool.
By the time our architect’s plans were finalized I had the kitchen and bath designs finalized and priced, as well as, the lighting fixtures. My architect’s estimate for the house he had designed was $400k. Remember, I had asked for $350k. Not bad. So now my builder looked at the plans and drew up a contract which he claimed couldn’t be done for less that $425k. I reviewed the contract closely and found he had given really small allowances for kitchen, bath, flooring, lighting, plumbing etc. It is the finishes of the house that are expensive. By now I had pretty good estimates for kitchen, bath, appliances, lighting and flooring so I asked the builder to increase those allowances. I still have no idea how plumbing slipped right under my radar. And even if I had no time to pick out fixtures at that point, the experience from the other line items in the budget should have raised a red flag with regard to the plumbing budget. Our plumbing budget was set at $5k, the bath tub in the master bath cost $5k! So now the budget came back to me at about $525k. I said, ok, lets build.,.
Copyright Kalpana Kanwar August 2009

Building Our Custom Home – Part IV – Finalizing the Plans

2009-09-07T21:07:00.000+05:30

As I mentioned earlier I gave the architect a detailed list of my requirements for the home. A good architect can point you towards resources or provide a list of questions of consider. You don’t want to use a lot the architect’s time waiting for him to dig out every detail from you. It is best you come prepared with your ideas to the first meeting.
You will need a list (bullet list is fine) of the number of rooms in the house, use or purpose of each room, scale or size of each room, overall floor size, double level, basement, ranch style. You will also want to consider current family needs – children, their age – and changing needs of the family in the future. It is also preferable if you can bring pictures of what you like so the architect can get an idea of what your preferences are visually rather than trying to describe them in words.
Finally, my advice, if you plan to hire an architect, let him/her design the house. My instructions to our architect were, give me all these space requirements and you come up with the look of the home. I did not have any comments regarding picture windows, dormers etc. The design was entirely up to him. That’s why I hired him.
In our next meeting, the architect showed me come conceptual drawings. This looks like nothing more than a kid’s drawing. Some circles and squares placed next to each other. With a very general idea of what shape the house might take. Example, a circular corner here, or use this end for a grand statement to the street – these kinds of general ideas. This is an important stage, this is early in the design process and if you are unsure if you like it, raise your concerns now, further down the road, you may have to restart the design – you lose time and it costs more money to get a new set of plans. So review your own notes and look at the conceptual plans and see if you see a lot of what you want in a home.
Once this is approved the architect will continue on to make the first set of plans. Once the rooms and layouts are actually put down to scale, a lot of things change. You find you cannot tuck that room in here, or this must be larger than expected to accommodate that, etc. This is still an early stage.
One of my requests was to combine the dining and living areas as one space and do away with a family room. This gave us a large space; the architect decided it would be stunning to place this square room on a diagonal to the rest of the rectangular house. This would create some funky rooflines and make for an interesting street view. I liked the idea and we went ahead with it.
A couple more versions of the plans emerged as they were fine tuned. The architect sent me 3-D images of the exterior of the house. In his office, I was able to walk-through the virtual house. Since I studied architecture myself, I couldn’t resist offering critiques of his design.
When our plans were finalized, the architect presented them to our neighborhood design committee. This committee consisted of the developer and I guess his buddy a major builder in our community. They were both aghast at the plans. They thought the plans were too outrageous and would not fit the style of the neighborhood. They also didn’t like the color of the house, white bricks and blue siding. Apparently the white bricks are too institutional and the developer doesn’t like the color blue!! Of course, I heard this from my architect at 5:00 pm on a Friday.
So I stewed all weekend and thought about the plans. I have to say the rejection may actually have been good in the long run. You see, since I had copies of the plans on my computer I used them to plan furniture layouts. I already had dimensions of our furniture we planned to keep. And no matter how I tried, it was difficult to arrange the furniture in a reasonable manner in the diagonally shaped room. By the final plan, the room was too large, so we had knocked out some corners, so it wasn’t exactly a diamond shape anymore. But one of the features I loved about the room was it would have a single slope roof from front to back, and just under the roofline to the front of the house, we would have 3 clerestory windows.
Over the weekend, I left a message for our architect not draw any new plans until he met with me. I asked him to simply make the room square again. I could see he was disappointed, he may have felt I let him down and didn’t stand behind his design. But I told him the roof line stays, the clerestory windows stay and what’s more the guest bedroom on the main floor would have to be tucked into the house to keep an even front façade, this created a loft inside our main living/dining area. Hearing this he was on board with the plans once again. I had to pay extra for these changes to the plans. But I also know he gave me a huge break on the price.
Our architect likes windows and we have a lot of big windows all over the house. So many that in our living room we would not have any wall space to hang a picture or place a cabinet. I asked the architect to remove the window, but he wouldn’t do it. So one day, I was in his office going over the plans with the drafter and asked her to simply delete one window.
With the new changes I felt I had put something of my own design into the house as well, although I will still stay the house was designed by my architect. The down side to the changes was that we lost the amazingly spacious front porch. But there were still more design details to work on…
Copyright Kalpana Kanwar August 2009

Building Our Custom Home – Part III – Finding an Architect

2009-08-31T18:17:00.001+05:30

When I started looking for lots, I also started to look for an architect to design our home. I looked through the list of registered architects in our area and found only a handful of names. There are only a few rare homes designed by architects in the US, most architects do commercial or industrial design and very few work as residential architects. Anyhow, I don’t know that I had any specific criteria, but I picked out 3 names from the list. I believe if it is meant to be, it will be. I could go through the whole list, but if instead I find what I need among the 3 why go beyond. And if not, I can always expand my search.
The first architect I met had pretty much retired and had last designed and built homes in the 70s and 80s. He lived in a house that was designed by him in the style of those times. His portfolio also contained homes of that style. It was difficult for me to judge if he could give me what I was looking for in a house. He did ask pertinent questions regarding our needs for the house. There were 3 things that made me decide against him – I wasn’t convinced he could offer what I wanted design-wise, he had his own ideas of what should be in the house (independent of my own requirements) and finally he wanted me to pay him $20K, which I thought at that time was quite steep, especially considering that I would only get blueprints from him, and then my builder would have to develop construction documents from them.
So on to architect #2. He was part of a firm that did both commercial and residential work. His portfolio was impressive. He also offered a very reasonable suggestion – for the money I wanted to spend on an architect he said, I should look for plans in books or on-line and find something that I thought matched my interests the most and he would amend them for a more custom fit. While I agreed it was a reasonable suggestion, I still wanted something truly custom designed for us. Although at this point, I was beginning to realize this was maybe a pipedream. But I said thank you and good bye to him as well.
Finally, architect #3, he was at the point where he only planned to do residential architecture, his passion. He had a staff of drafters, architects, and interior designers but he was the principle architect. As soon as I met him, I knew he was going to be our architect. The first thing I said to him was – before we start discussing anything, I should let you know, I studied architecture. Most of the work I saw in his portfolio was modern, that is what he liked to do. I also knew he had designed a home for another Indian family and he told me he designed one home in India long-distance! But as you can imagine, most of the homes he designed were upwards of a million dollars.
I laid out my requirements to him. In short, I wanted a house no more than about 2500 sq ft, within a budget of $350k. He accepted my job right away; I suspect he did it because I studied architecture and because I gave him a challenge.
I had prepared a long list of requirements for our home. Some important ones were – walk in closets in all bedrooms, even if the kids’ rooms have a little smaller walk-ins. I didn’t care if the bedrooms were small, even the master bedroom, I didn’t plan to put a sitting area in the bedroom. Who uses that area? Of course, my original quest for a larger foyer area, and especially a working mudroom. I also wanted a walk-in pantry and a large front porch. My list was 10 pages long. I had information regarding how I wanted the spaces to flow. For example, I wanted our guest room on the main floor so they wouldn’t be close to our or the kids’ rooms, which meant the powder room had to be a full bath. But when you decide to build a small house, you have to realize some compromises, the powder room had to be close from the mudroom, situated so the guests didn’t have to see or go through any private spaces. But unfortunately, this meant we couldn’t have it attached to or next to the guest room.
The architect told us to expect the plans to take about 6 months to complete…

Copyright Kalpana Kanwar August 2009

Building Our Custom Home – Part II – Finding a Lot

2009-08-27T04:00:00.002+05:30

The neighborhood we lived in was part of a wonderful school district (actually we are lucky that our school districts are all commendable). My reasoning was, if we purchased a lot in our school district then we wouldn’t have to worry about having the house completed by a deadline and our kids could start school and continue uninterrupted by our moving.
So we set out to look at lots. There were many new neighborhoods being developed near our current home, but they were mostly developed by one company. This meant we had a choice of a few plans and no options to choose anything other than the builder’s finishes. But that is why you can get some good quality stuff in those houses for much less than if you build your own. Those builders get some heavy discounts for such big orders. Imagine all the houses in the neighborhood have the same shower stall, that is a lot of shower stalls.
If I was going to take the trouble to build a house, I wanted more freedom to choose than that. So it meant I had to look at neighborhoods that offered custom built homes. That is, you could buy what is called a spec home – something a builder goes ahead and builds and finds customers who want higher end homes, but not the hassle of building them. Or you could buy a lot and build your own home. Usually the lot was sold by a builder who wanted you to look through their set of plans and with minor modifications made by their team build the house. The builders are always in a hurry to build once the lot was sold. But I am getting ahead of myself.
We looked at a neighborhood in our school district, it had been developed for some time and the only lots left were the difficult ones, for example, steep inclines or very close to a major road. So I dropped that idea and moved my search to other areas. One of the neighborhoods we looked at was developed around a golf course – a highly priced commodity (which I don’t understand). My agent and I went to see the developer’s agent and she was so snooty, she wouldn’t even show me the more expensive lots, saying they are beyond my budget. I said, so what, there is no harm in looking, but she wouldn’t show me. And I am not talking about driving around the neighborhood; I am talking about sitting in her office and looking at a map. The funny part is the more expensive lots are the ones that abut the golf course. Those are the very lots I had no interest in. Why? You ask. For one thing golf courses open early in the morning, so it means that the mowers and the fertilizers and whatnot have to get their job done earlier still. Not to mention stray golf balls and kids in the back yard is a bad combination. And if that isn’t bad enough, all those chemicals that they spray to keep the grass so weed free and green. Do you think that poison stops at your lot line?
But anyhow, I found a lot that was flat, right across the street from what would be developed as a little park. The lot faced south – which meant the sun would help us keep the driveway ice free in the winters. So we decided to buy it. I told the builder that I planned on hiring an architect and my guess was it would take about 6 months to get the plans finalized. The builder’s wife, their interior design consultant, offered to help with design ideas because she was “very good” at that kind of stuff as she was also a realtor. What did I need an architect for? It so happened, that we planned to be away for several weeks visiting India, so that was another delay in our building plans. The builder not only did not want to wait for an architect, but actually expected us to made decisions on our house plans in the month before we left for India. There is no way you can convince me, that I would get a “custom” home this way. What I would get was a spec home disguised as a custom home. So before the month was out, we resold the lot back to the builder.
So it was back to the hunting grounds again. This time I decided to find a lot that was not owned by a builder. I contacted a developer of yet another neighborhood and asked if he had any lots available that had not been sold to a builder. He sent me a list of 8 or 10 lots. I drove by and looked at them, asked our architect to swing by one day and offer his suggestions and that is how we came by a lot.
Now that we had a lot and we had to develop house plans for it. I set out to hire an architect…

Copyright Kalpana Kanwar August 2009

Building Our Custom Home – Part I – Why?

2009-08-22T02:23:00.002+05:30

We bought our first home in 2000, the year our first son was born. Even as we moved into the house we knew we wouldn’t be there for long. There was nothing wrong with the house, we just felt that we would find something more “us” later.
So another son and three years later, I set out looking at homes. There was no hurry on our part, and I could take my time to look. After living in our home for three years I had a better idea of what I wanted in the new home. Three things that bothered me in our home were – tiny entry and hallway, non-existent mudroom, and small closets in the master bedroom.
The tiny entry and hallway made it difficult for more than 2 people to stand there, so if you had to open the door for guests you could only let in one at a time and if that involved taking off a jacket – fuggetaboutit. Now my kids were still little then, but there was hardly room to even put some hooks up for their jackets or a boot tray to set their dirty shoes on. It made it difficult to keep the carpet clean, because we usually ended up in the house to get our jackets and boots off in the winter. Not to mention my husband would walk into the house, sit on the couch to take his shoes off. So you see, it was hard to keep that outside dirt (and it can get real messy in a rain or winter) off the carpet. Now I don’t have many clothes, but still there is the winter and summer to consider. It was difficult to fit all my clothes in the closet. Not to mention, there was no closet organizer in there, just a shelf and hanging bar. I installed closet organizers and that helped, but was still insufficient space. Before you get the idea that I only sought grand spaces, let me tell you, our master bath only had a shower in it and it was plenty fine with me. Our bedrooms were small and that was fine with me too.
Our house also had some wonderful qualities that I knew we may not be able to duplicate. We lived on a cul-de-sac which meant less traffic. We were lucky and had many kids come over to our cul-de-sac to play and it felt very lively and enjoyable to my little ones too. We had a pie shaped lot as we were at top of the cul-de-sac and so did the house behind us. So we had an unusually long distance between our houses in the back. Not to mention the house behind us had planted a forest of trees, so we always felt a great sense of privacy. Although I thought it was excessive, we had a living and family rooms at opposite ends and sides of the house. Depending on the time of the day, the living room felt wonderful in the morning light and the family room was just fine even in the evenings. Maybe because the living room was empty but for a couple of sofas and coffee table the kids didn’t spend much time in there, which also made it attractive to sit and find some quiet time.
Anyhow, back to the house hunting. I started out by telling our agent that we wanted to buy a house about $400k. She started showing me some homes that were pretty close to the size and style of our home and with the same drawbacks. So I upped the budget and said how about $500k. The houses got bigger, there were walk-in closets in the master bedrooms, entry ways also started getting grander and wider, but the mudroom still continued to be non-existent. So we upped the budget again to $600k, I finally walked through a home that was 6000 sq ft, it had two sets of staircases, the main staircase from the front foyer and another back staircase from the kitchen. The finished basement had a sauna room, a wine cellar and a family room big enough to hold a mini-bar, pool table and a TV area. After all this, the house still barely spared 50 sq ft towards the mudroom!
So I said, this is nuts, I don’t want such a big house, I just want a house with a mudroom. That is what my mantra became at that time. And so we decided to build a house. Now we had to find a lot…

Copyright Kalpana Kanwar August 2009

Summer Travel to India – Part V – New Delhi Again

2009-08-13T18:04:00.004+05:30

Our final destination this summer was New Delhi again for the third time. This time we had my niece’s birthday to look forward to. She was quite excited about becoming a teenager. The day we got back to New Delhi she was all set to go shopping for some new clothes. An important birthday ritual for Indians is that the birthday person wears new clothes on their birthday. There were five of us, my niece, her parents and her two aunts (me and her mom’s sister). All of us browsed through the store and with the help of a saleslady put together a few outfits for her to try on. In the end we boiled down to four sets that looked good. She was so excited we got her all four of them. She wondered when she would wear them all. My suggestion was she greets her guests to her birthday party in one outfit. Have dinner in another, dessert in yet a third one and then a final change to bid everyone a goodbye. No, that is not what she did.
It was quite late in the evening when the birthday guests arrived so we decided to cut the cake first. My kids were quite excited about the cake as they had tasted it before and knew it would be good. What they were not prepared for was this – my niece cut the cake and as is tradition was fed the first piece of cake. As soon as she took a bite the rest of the piece was smeared all over her face. My youngest thought this was so cool. I think he can’t wait to try this on someone else now. Another fun tradition among kids is the birthday bumps. Where friends grab your arms and legs and swing you in the air and on every down swing they bump you on the floor. You have to endure as many bumps as the number of years in your birthday. My kids thought this was quite funny. My youngest would keep jumping on his cousin and then she would fall to the floor (which I had thankfully asked them to cushion with a mattress). So her bumps turned more into falls. A good time was had by all. (Pic 1: sign at McDonald's)
After the birthday it was mainly wrap-up time in India, figuring out any last minute details, confirming travel plans, and saying goodbyes. After travelling for 5 weeks, it is always good to come home. But after the hustle and bustle of the city and so much family it felt very quiet in Madison. The house feels too big for just the four of us. But after a while as jetlag wears off, we all settle into our routines and life goes on. (Pic 2: Pretty much what Delhi looked like this summer)
Copyright Kalpana Kanwar August 2009

Summer Travel to India – Part IV – Chandigarh and Chail

2009-08-10T21:09:00.005+05:30

We continued our summer travels to Chandigarh to visit my Dad. So far all our travels were by air, but we headed off to Chandigarh on the Shatabdi Express train. My kids love the experience of being on a train and it is wonderfully short – only 3 hours to get to Chandigarh. The train is air conditioned and has reasonably comfortable seats that even tilt back a little for extra comfort. If I have any complaints, it is that they don’t stop serving you. As soon as the train sets off, servers come by and give every passenger on board bottled water. After that they come by again to give you some boxed juice, usually apple or mango. Next someone comes by to hand out newspapers to anyone who might want one. Then they swing by and start the real service – serving breakfast (we were on the morning train), this includes bread, butter, jelly, omelet (non-veg option) or vegetable cutlets, couple of biscuits, and tea. Then of course the sweep through to pick up all the items they have served. While all this is going on the ticket collector is walking through checking everyone’s tickets. Then another gentleman follows asking for every passenger to identify their baggage and tagging them all so there is no unidentified baggage on board. We travel through villages and cities and fields. It is quite a pleasant trip and scenic train ride. And by the time all the serving is done, we are just about at our destination.
The day we reached Chandigarh the power was out for 6 hours! Luckily my Dad has an inverter so we could have a fan or two running in the house. But otherwise it was just as hot here as it was in New Delhi with the temperatures in the 40s C (100s F). My Dad told us that this was the first time all summer the power had been disrupted in Chandigarh. Anyhow, this was just too much for me and the very next day we set off to the mountains for cooler air.
We drove for 5 hours to Chail in Himachal Pradesh. It follows the same road to Shimla and just about 20 km short of Shimla it diverts off towards Chail. Shimla is a major city and capital of Himachal, it is also a major tourist attraction, so it is crowded with traffic and people. Chail on the other hand is just a quiet little town with a population of less than 10,000. Chail has beautiful pine and deodar forests surrounding it. There is a sanctuary near Chail so the areas surrounding it remain undeveloped. Chail’s claim to fame is they have a cricket ground at the highest altitude. (Pic 1: view from our lodge)
We stayed at a resort run by Himachal Tourism (I completely recommend any hotels run by them) that was at one time the palace of Maharaja of Patiala called the Rajgarh Palace. Since they are the palace grounds the resort itself is a charming campus with beautiful lawns and spectacular views and separate from the town.
The Maharaja of Patiala, Bhupinder Singh, was expelled from Shima by the British. He took it as a challenge and found a small village which was within sight of Shima, in a beautiful location and most importantly was at a slightly higher elevation than Shimla. So he was able to look down his nose at the British from his new amazing Palace.
When we reached Chail the weather could not have been more perfect, it was cool and pleasant. My kids finally came alive and were running about and enjoying the openness and the open air. The deodars surrounding us kept the mountain air fresh. When we booked the rooms at the palace hotel, we learned that there were no rooms available in the original palace building, but if we were willing to stay in one of their lodges on the palace grounds we could get rooms right away. I wasn’t going to wait to get out of the heat, so we took a couple of rooms in the lodge and it turned out to be a wonderful decision. At the lodge we had our own little courtyard overlooking a beautiful valley. Since it was away from the main Palace Hotel there weren’t as many guests and staff about. In fact, everyone at the lodge felt quite comfortable coming out in our pajamas to breathe in the fresh morning air everyday. It would have been perfect if we could have our morning tea in the courtyard as well. But there are lots of monkeys that live in these forests and will grab any food that is out there. So we had to drink our teas in our rooms.
We would walk up a mountain trail to get to the Palace Hotel where the only restaurant in the resort was located. The food was simple and well prepared. If anyone is familiar with Himachali food, you will know that it is healthy, nutritious, tasteful, but not spicy. So this was one time, both my kids ate well. This was great for me considering there are no McDonalds or Dominos nearby.
On the way between the Palace and the lodge is a children’s park. We never saw any of the families from the resort visit this park, but we made it a regular haunt during our three days in Chail. My kids loved it and loved that kids from the town came to play too. They town kids were fascinated by my kids and would play near them. By day three, they were so familiar with us that when I took pictures they would ask me to take theirs too. They loved to see their pictures on my camera and posed for more. (Pic 2: children's park and local kids)
One evening we stayed until dusk at the park. The local kids and their families headed back home taking a mountain trail back home and needed to do it with daylight. Then it was just us in the park and even as we watched the monkeys from the deodar trees started slowly making their way into the park. I guess when the people leave the park belongs to the monkeys.
The first night in Chail it rained. This brought the temperatures down even more. I got a little worried. Here we were escaping the heat and my kids and I did not have any long pants or long sleeved shirts. Luckily there was never any breeze (I don’t know if this is typical of mountain areas) and so after a very short while we were used to the cooler temperatures – we are from Wisconsin afterall. On the second day, my only slippers with me in Chail started to show a tear and I thought I would have to buy new footwear. We set off to the town nearby to get a few snacks to keep in the hotel room for the kids and to repair my slippers or buy something new. We found a mochi (cobbler) who fixed my slipper for Rs. 10 (about 25 cents). What a deal! (Pic 3: the mochi in town)
Then it was time to head back to Chandigarh. Luckily during the one day we spent there the power stayed on. My Dad’s house – my youngest calls this the Gate House – is right across from a park. The kids enjoyed playing there in the evenings, and I enjoyed watching the neighborhood kids play cricket. The teams are fluid as kids come and go during the evening. Disputes happen, they resolve them and the game goes on. My kids will never experience anything like that in the US where everything is so structured. (Pic 4: kids at the park in Chandigarh)
Copyright Kalpana Kanwar August 2009

Summer Travel to India – Part III – New Delhi

2009-08-09T20:28:00.004+05:30

Further continuing our summer travels and we headed back to New Delhi. The best part of New Delhi is that my kids have lots of cousins to play with there. But the terrible part of New Delhi this year was the heat wave. The last time I endured such scorching temperatures in New Delhi was in 1998. And if the temperatures weren’t bad enough, there were power outages - sometimes two or three times a day. When the temperatures hit 43C (110F) on a regular basis even the air conditioner can barely make it tolerable. And when there is no power at all, you can’t do much of anything but just loll around and want to pant like dogs.
So during those evenings when there was no power, we took the time to walk around in the parks. My in-laws’ house is at an amazing location. It is a corner lot and is surrounded by 3 parks. So much space and greenery just outside your windows is quite a unique setting. My in-laws were also one of the first ones to build their house here and planted quite a few trees in the parks so they feel pride seeing them so tall and bearing fruit or flowers.
In New Delhi, we ate out in some fancy restaurants like Oye Punjab, where the interiors are quite grand. This one has an interior fountain, but we had to pay the price for space the fountain took by having tables that are put close together. So close, that you feel you could have conversations with the people at the next table. The food was ok, but pricy. I guess we did pay for the ambiance.
In contrast, we took our in-laws to celebrate their 5oth wedding anniversary to Oh! Calcutta – also another fancy restaurant. I have never eaten Bengali food before, but my family claimed it was great food. The wonderful part of this restaurant was that it was not crowded (maybe because it was a weekday). The tables were not closely placed so even if it had been a busy night we would still have had a wonderful dinner.
Some of the restaurants I truly enjoyed were not so expensive and the food was great. We ate some great South Indian food (great for New Delhi) and some wonderful Indo-Chinese food. Even my kids tried some of these foods. We still had to track down Dominos and McDonalds for them though.
In addition to eating out we also shopped in New Delhi. In the past, we have done the mall thing. This time we pretty much stayed away from them, except to get McDonalds for the kids. (Pic 1: one of the malls in New Delhi) We braved the heat and visited such shopping areas like Janpath and Khan Market where they have little stalls with clothes, kitchenware, fake jewelry, and whatnot. There are tiny lanes created with all these shops, if my sister-in-law hadn’t been with me, I would still be walking around in there trying to find my way out.
It seems like we did a lot of shopping in India, which is really not the case. One major shopping item on my list was a wedding gift for my mother-in-law. As I mentioned earlier it was their 50th wedding anniversary – Gold Anniversary. So I set off to look at some gold jewelry for her. Have you seen gold prices these days, I couldn’t find anything that looked halfway decent and within my budget and my budget wasn’t too shabby either. Anyhow, after looking at several jewelry stores both big and small, I ended up buying her a diamond and gold bracelet. Hard to believe that a diamond and gold bracelet fit my budget, but a plain gold bracelet wouldn’t.
I also went to a Sangeet (pre-wedding song party). The ladies came in colorful sarees (I got to wear my new one from Indore). The Sangeet is an event for family and close friends only. There were about a 100 guests at the Sangeet which was held out on the front lawn. Seating was arranged around the lawn. One end of the lawn was set up as a buffet. In the center was a stage. The entertainment was set up as two parts – first, a lady called on various family members and sang songs about them or their importance to the family. She was so spontaneous it was amazing. For later, a DJ was set up with a dance floor and in between these was a show with a fire thrower. It was still warm in the evening, and there were fans set around the yard misting the air to cool it. As we were leaving the party, two young men beat drums to bid us adieu. (Pic 2: Mehndi (henna) at the Sangeet)
Copyright Kalpana Kanwar August 2009

Summer Travel to India – Part II – Indore

2009-08-08T02:17:00.004+05:30

Continuing our summer travels, in less than a week we set off for Indore to visit my elder sister and her family. I have not been to this part of the country before. Visiting her was also another pleasant surprise. Both my sister and her husband are faculty at a dental college and live in faculty housing on the campus. The campus is about 10 km away from the city of Indore and set midst some fields.
Bombay is densely built and crowded, but it was a homecoming and had its own joy. Indore (at least where my sister lives) has wide open spaces and beautiful fields and campus. It was pretty hot in Indore so we spent a lot of time indoors – either at home, in cars or in malls/shops.
I decided to skip any sightseeing in Indore, as I could barely tolerate the heat. So instead we went shopping. One of the first shops we went to was a music store. I asked the store owner for recommendations and she would pull different CDs off the shelf. If I was unsure of her selection, she would ask one of the workers at the store to put it on their music system. So needless to say, I left with quite a collection of CDs. Am I soft touch or what? I also bought some fun jewelry and finally a beautiful saree.
To buy the saree we first went to a couple of designer saree shops. The sarees are priced exorbitantly and I couldn’t really determine the “design” part of them. The salespeople claim, their beauty is in the wearing, yet they don’t pull out a single saree and show you how it would look draped. I wonder how they stay in business. If you ever visit a regular saree shop in India, you know they open just about any saree you want to have a look at; they even encourage you to drape it on yourself to see if you like the color or they will drape it on themselves so you can see how the pattern shows. It is from one these shops that I found a beautiful saree for myself.
We also visited a mall (western style) in Indore, where you get a mix of both Western and Indian clothing where one style is available in different sizes. Just like shopping in the US. The malls are attractively built and I loved them for their air conditioning. Another great part of the mall for me was I could buy McDonalds or Dominos pizzas for my kids, who don’t eat Indian food – I know it is sacrilegious. (Pic: street view from the mall entrance)
On the last day of our stay in Indore my sister was going out of town regarding work and was happy to leave because by then, her husbands and daughters were all caught in rearranging some furniture in their apartment, which she hates doing. I on the other hand love rearranging furniture, so I was happy to lend a hand. After doing some work on their daughters’ room, we rearranged her whole kitchen. Here is a picture when everything was pulled off the shelves.

Summer Travel to India – Part I – Bombay

2009-08-06T18:17:00.002+05:30

This June, the kids and I set off for India to visit family. We rode a stretch limo from Madison to Chicago. That was quite a treat. We could stretch out, the kids watched their DVDs on the car system. It was a lot more comfortable than flying into Chicago or driving ourselves. And for the price a total bargain.
At the Chicago airport we had plenty of time after our bags were checked in, so I took the kids up to the eating lounge and tried to fill their bellies so they would settle down quickly on the plane and sleep. Then we headed off to our waiting lounge. My youngest wanted to use the restroom and I took him. Then he wanted to go again, so we headed back to the restroom, but this time I decided to use the facilities as well and asked him to stand right outside my door until I was done. When I got out, he was gone. I looked about for him but didn’t spot him. I asked one of the airline crews how to go about locating him. The man tried to reassure me that he was probably just lost and not, you know, kidnapped. Oh, I know. I know exactly what he thought. He thought he could find his way back to his brother and why wait around for Mom. So we walked around looking for him. In a few minutes, we found him. He was spotted by another airline crew crying. When we were reunited I asked him if he was scared and crying when the lady found him. He said, I don’t want to talk about it.
In India it is hot as can be in June, but I find it works best because my kids have summer vacation and their cousins in India also have summer vacation. This is also the first time I was going to travel around to visit my sisters and take my kids along with me as we travelled to five places – New Delhi, Mumbai, Indore, New Delhi again, Chandigarh, Chail and back to New Delhi.
A wonderful thing about having in-laws in New Delhi is that when we land in New Delhi, we are there – No more travel. We took a non-stop American Airlines flight from Chicago to New Delhi which takes about 15 hours. We only planned to be in New Delhi for a day and set off to Mumbai the very next day. I figured the kids were old enough and they would be able to deal with their jetlag on their own. In trips past, I had to stay up with them and so my jetlag lasted as long as theirs did. The younger they are the longer the jetlag.
Even though it was late night when we reached New Delhi, it was still hot. Coming from Wisconsin, where spring was still debating its arrival, feeling the heat in New Delhi was a shock. So by the time we reached home – my youngest likes to call it the White House as it is painted white on the outside – we were all sweaty. It was close to midnight but I needed a bath to refresh after the long journey, but mostly the hot trip from the airport to home. Before kids (BK) I used to be so organized and knew exactly where everything was packed. No more. So I unpacked all our suitcases and found a change of clothes for myself and the kids.
The next day, I was setting right off to Mumbai, so now I had to repack most of it again. My reasoning to get to Mumbai as soon as possible was to avoid the monsoons and be back in New Delhi safe and sound. The flight to Mumbai was uneventful. My brother-in-law (BIL) and my nephew came to pick us up at the airport. Part of my growing up happened in Mumbai. My father was in the Indian Navy and my BIL is also in the Indian Navy. My sister’s family lives on the same Base I grew up in. So in many ways this was a homecoming for me. The sights and sounds of Mumbai filled me with nostalgia. Like many other cities, Mumbai is also constantly changing, but when you reach South Mumbai where land is limited and was where the city was built by the British – and named Bombay – everything seems the same as when I left and it was still Bombay then, the name changed to Mumbai after I left India and so it will always be Bombay to me.
When we reached their home, we visited for a little while and then I had to have a bath to freshen up. When I unpacked our bags – guess what? – I had not repacked my underwear from New Delhi. So I just had to rewash and wring as hard as I could and rewear. In the heat, let me tell you, it was quite refreshing. So needless to say, my first task in Bombay was to buy underwear.
Two of my sister’s live in Bombay, well if you want to be picky, my youngest sister lives in Navi Mumbai (New Bombay as it was first called). She spent the day with us and we reminisced about our childhood. Not only were we all meeting after along time, but we were also in a place where the three of us grew up for part of our childhood.
In the mornings my sister and I would walk to a small shop, no more than a stall really, where they made fresh vada pao and brought some home for breakfast. You get the best vada pao in Bombay. Then we walked along the seashore everyday. One of the best parts of being on a Naval Base is that we had the most private, uncrowded seashore walkway. Of all the places we visited this summer, Bombay had the “coolest” temperatures.
My kids and their cousin got along famously and my youngest still asks us to head back to Bombay so he can play with him. One evening we sat by their seashore club and enjoyed the sea breeze, snacks and great company. I had forgotten the joys of enjoying a meal at a club. There is no hurry to eat and leave, you can spend a few hours visiting with friends, enjoy the outdoor, stroll or just take the time to sip your drink and relax.
In Bombay we spend an evening by the Gateway of India and got a close look at the Hotel Taj (the one under terrorist attack last year). (Pic Hotel Taj in Bomba) They have done great work repairing the outside; you could hardly see any damage. But there is obviously a lot to be done on the inside and the hotel is still closed. After a ride on a Victoria (a horse drawn carriage) we went to a revolving restaurant – The Pearl of the Orient. It was a Chinese restaurant and one of only two restaurants that I have eaten in India where the tables are not on top of each other. We had a nice enjoyable dinner to celebrate my sister’s wedding anniversary. (Pic. Marine Drive or Queens Necklace from Pearl of the Orient)
One evening, my sister and I set off to do some shopping. We went into Akbarally’s where they sell readymade clothes, household items and some electronics as well. The saleslady who helped us was very persuasive and got me to select about 5 or 6 different clothes, while I had only planned on getting one maybe two things. Buying readymade clothes in India is quite different from shopping in the US. Each piece is one of a kind. If it doesn’t fit, then you have to just try and finding something else you like.
But the great part is if you like something but want small changes made – like changing the sleeve length, raising the hem etc, the store will do it for you in minutes while you wait. Anyhow, our sales lady was so persuasive, before I knew it I had about 5 things that were being altered, retried, and altered again. By now the store was closing and we were the only customers in the store. They closed the main doors and the staff were packing up and finishing their tasks before heading out.
I was ready to tell the saleslady that I only mean to buy a couple of the clothes selected. Just then one of her colleagues walked up and they started talking about the new sales target they had been given to meet this month. The colleague was concerned that the downturn in the economy would make it hard to meet this target. Our saleslady said, she was not afraid and she would just make it happen. Needless to say, I left the store with all five outfits. By now they had even turned the main lights off and only the security lights were on, the security man let us out from a side door.
Copyright Kalpana Kanwar August 2009

Stranded Upriver

2009-08-03T18:24:00.003+05:30

It was a beautiful summer day BK (before kids) and our friends were visiting us from out of town. We decided to go river rafting on Wisconsin River. After booking our rafting trip, a young girl explained the river route to us. She showed us some pictures and told us they were taken, oh, about 4 or 5 years ago. And these photos only give a general idea of what the landscape looks like, because every year it changes with the dunes.
We had two choices to pick from for the rafting trip – 5 hours or 3 hours. As the young girl continued to explain the river route, she told us as she showed us a picture that if you are doing the 3 hour route this is where you will land. She explained that if you are doing the 5 hour trip then you will go past a beach of “nature” admirers.
We all felt, 3 hours was plenty of time. So we put on our life vests and set of on two canoes down the river. Wisconsin River at this part is quite shallow and has a gentle flow. We started rowing and maneuvering to keep the canoe centered. We had maybe gone about an hour or so, when I noticed the “nature” admirers. I told our guests, I think we have gone too far and have to return to our landing site for pick up. The pick up was of course scheduled and we had to make it or be stranded and figure out a way to get back to our cars.
So now we started canoeing upstream. Oh, what a workout. Before it seemed like the river was just a gentle flow, now it seemed like it was raging with currents. Anyhow, we kept creeping up the river slowly, really working our arm muscles. A couple of times we spotted what looked like a landing site and rowed up. One of the landing sites turned out to be a public landing site for boat owners. So off we went again. Another landing site didn’t turn out to be much of anything. Now we were at a total loss. We didn’t know if we still had a ways to go to our landing site, if we had altogether missed it or what?
As we were rowing we saw a man fishing by a small sandy area. We rowed up to him and asked him if he knew where the pick up site for this rafting trip was. He pointed further upriver and said, just around this little outcrop here. So we said thanks and started rowing upriver again.
By this time my arms were hurting something bad. So I bent my head and started rowing as hard as I could. After a while I lifted my head and saw we were in the exact same spot as when we were talking with the fishing guy. The guy was laughing so hard, he was bent over double. I apologized to him for ruining his fishing; he could only wave his hand at us as he continued to laugh. Meanwhile, since we were talking and not rowing, we were now 10 yards down river.
By now I felt ready to just jump out of the canoe and drag it to shore and just wade through to our pick up landing site. Not that the river shore was a clean walking path. This is when a couple in a motored canoe drove up to us and asked if we wanted help going to our landing site. They told us they had been keeping an eye on us to see if we needed help. We gratefully accepted their help. It turned out our landing site was just as the fishing guy said, only a few more yards upriver. We got there safely and then had to sit around waiting for pick up, since we were now an hour early.
Apparently when we chose the 3 hour rafting ride, it meant we just had to sit in the canoes and not row, but simply use the oars to avoid any rocks or shallow spots in the river. If I hadn’t spotted the “nature” admirers’ beach, in 3 hours we might have reached the Mississippi River!

Copyright Kalpana Kanwar Aug 3, 2009

Thanksgiving Travel and Giving Thanks

2009-07-31T20:34:00.005+05:30

It was Thanksgiving weekend in 2005. My two sons – son1, 5 years old and son2, 2½ years old – and I were returning to Madison, WI from New Delhi, India. Our international flight out from New Delhi was at midnight. By the time we got to the airport, Son2 was asleep in his stroller.
We were waiting to check in and get our boarding passes. Suddenly Son2 woke up with a cry – and I just knew it was coming – and threw up. There wasn’t enough time to get to a restroom or anything, so I cupped my hands and caught his throw up and threw it into a garbage can. Thankfully there was one nearby. I got lucky. Usually garbage cans are not that easy to spot in India, they are few and far between and tucked away so they are not eye sores. Another passenger said, “yuck.” Yep, yuck. Thankfully Son2 went right back to sleep. I pulled out some wipes and cleaned my hands and his shirt as best as I could. He still stank a little. I was travelling light, just enough diapers to get to Chicago,and the kid’s DVD player. I didn’t have extra clothes for the kids or any snacks. So he would just have to stay in those clothes until we got home.
We checked in and were told our flight was delayed. They never really tell you anything else in India – no cause or when to expect the flight. We had a connecting flight in Frankfurt. But for some reason we only had two hours to make our connection, I don’t know how we didn’t notice this while booking our tickets. I realized we wouldn’t make it. I called my brother-in-law in Delhi to let him know that our flight is delayed and to relay the message to my husband in Madison. I planned on calling from Frankfurt when I knew our new flight details. It turned into a game of Chinese whispers and my husband did not understand or get the right message. He drove from Madison to Chicago, found out we were not on the flight we were supposed to be on, and drove back to Madison. Then he pretty much had to turn right around and drive back to Chicago to pick us up.
But I am getting ahead of myself. So here we are at the Delhi airport. We had business class tickets so thankfully we got to sit in a lounge and have snacks. The lounge was already busy and all the sofas were taken. So the kids and I found a table and sat down. Soon Son1 was sleepy too. He couldn’t get comfortable because he was sitting on a café chair. I picked him up and held him on my lap so he could nap. Son2 was thankfully still asleep in his stroller.
Our flight was delayed by 3 hours. Finally, it was time to board, I woke Son1, who was most unhappy, because he was so sleepy. As anyone who has boarded a plane knows, there is a time lag between announcing boarding and actually boarding. Every time we had to wait I would pick up Son1 and let him rest. But generally he had to haul himself into the plane.
We had business class tickets so we thankfully boarded early. I checked in the stroller at the plane door and now carried a still sleeping Son2 into the plane and coaxed Son1 along. There was only one other woman besides me and my kids were the only kids in business class. I hoped they would behave so I wouldn’t get glares and complaints from the other business travelers. We settled into our seats. Son2 continued to sleep as we took off. I was thankful because he is terrified of take-offs and landings and screams his head off.
Early into our flight Son2 woke up and had a blowout poop. I mean blowout. So I took him into the teeny-tiny bathroom, changed his diaper and again tried to wipe him down as best as I could. I wiped his pants as best as I could. So now I have a stinky Son2 – both top and bottom. I hoped the stink didn’t travel too far.
The rest of the flight was uneventful. But since I knew we were going to miss our connection, I asked the airline attendant to check if by any chance our connecting flight was delayed. She came back and told me that the connecting flight is on time since it originates in Frankfurt. She gave me a slip of paper with another flight number that would take us to Chicago. Thank you, thank you.
When we arrived in Frankfurt, our plane couldn’t get to its gate because the plane that was at our gate was being deiced. So now you know how cold it was in Frankfurt. They got a couple of buses to take us to the terminal. Remember we were travelling light, so I didn’t have even a sweatshirt for my kids to wear out in the cold. Meanwhile, who knew where we were going to find our stroller for Son2. I was certainly not planning to wait around in the cold to get it. So here I am carrying my Son2 and wondering how Son1 will walk beside me. He wanted to hold my hand. Thankfully, an elderly gentleman reached forward and held his hand and helped him board the bus.
As soon as we entered the terminal, I grabbed the first person I saw wearing some sort of a uniform and asked him about the new flight details. He told me the flight is already preparing to board and gave me the details for the gate number.
We had to get to another terminal via the airport train system. If you have travelled in Europe you will realize, there are very few signs regarding stops. You just have to be sure where to go. I was a little nervous about missing our stop. So I asked the other passengers about the stop, and let me tell you, I got some strange looks. I don’t if they were because I talked to strangers or if they were because I should just know where I am going.
Anyhow, to get to the right gate we had to get through security again. It was a really long line. I was nervous about making it to our flight on time. Both my kids were awake, whiny and hungry. They had slept through the whole first leg of the journey without eating a bite and were ravenous now. I tried to calm them and promised to find some food as soon as we got to our gate and changed our boarding passes. Then thankfully, one of the security persons opened the roped way, came up to me and moved me ahead of the line. We got through security quickly and moved onto our gate.
When we arrive at our gate, I saw that thankfully we were second in line to change our boarding passes. The waiting lounge for the plane was quite empty. But for some reason it took quite a while to change our boarding passes. By now there was a long line of passengers waiting to enter the enclosed waiting area and we joined the line. The kids continued to whine. Although, I was thankful, my Son1 was vigilant and caught a passport I had dropped and not even realized it. When we reached the front of the line, the lady told me I had to go to another counter and have my boarding passes confirmed. What?? Isn’t that what I just did when I changed them? Apparently not. So again back to another line. When we got to the head of the line and the agent ran through our passports and boarding passes, the computer kept rejecting my passport and asked the agent to recheck or reenter it. After about 3 tries, he thankfully said, I am just going to override the system. Now back to the line to enter the enclosed waiting lounge.
We were waiting in line, my kids were whining, there were about 5 or 6 young Italian gentlemen ahead of us. The check-in lady was flirting with them. Suddenly she turns to us and points to us and I am not sure what she said, but she looked at us, pointed at us and I heard the word bambinos. She motioned for us to come forward. I pointed to myself and asked in universal sign if she meant me, she nodded and motioned us forward again. When we reached her, she put up her hand to wait, checked in all the Italians and then checked us in. What was that all about? By then we were nearly the last people of board the plane. But thankfully we made it. I was most thankful, because this was the only flight leaving for Chicago that day, if we hadn’t made it, we would have to stay overnight in Frankfurt and hunt down some diapers.
We found our seats. My kids were hungry and tired and cranky. As I remember it, there was nowhere in the Frankfurt airport to get any food. No vending machines (not that I had any local currency) and certainly no restaurants. I could buy duty free chocolates, but really I had no time. I also didn’t get a chance to call my husband with our new flight details.
As soon as people started settling in, our flight attendant came and asked if the kids were hungry and would like some hotdogs. Yes! I was dreading airline food, not to mention it isn’t served until the plane takes off. She told me her kids didn’t eat airline food so she always carried some hotdogs for other kids who flew on her flights. Thank you. My kids must have eaten half a dozen hotdogs each. She also came back with some Swiss chocolates for the kids. The chocolates were shaped and colored like little Hershey cows. Son2 was so enamored by it that he didn’t even freak out when we took off. Although for the next few times we flew, he expected the special cow chocolates.
The rest of the flight was uneventful. My kids had full bellies, they had slept through the first leg of the journey, and now they watched movies. Before we knew it, we were in Chicago. Thankfully, my husband had made it back to Chicago to pick us up and we got home happily and thankfully.

Parenting and Child Care - Know About Health, Safety, Behavior, Fun

2009-06-27T10:25:00.007+05:30

Image: Courtesy Wickimedia Commons

Who doesn't have concerns about raising kids? Whether it's ensuring that youngsters eat right, stay safe, behave appropriately, are cared for properly, or simply getting enough time to play and have fun, worrying seems like a full-time job! These are some issues which need to be addressed:

Issues and Concerns:

Having someone care for your child can be downright stressful, and more so if you haven't found a caregiver or center you are comfortable with. Not all parent-provider partnerships are a successful match. Many relationships succeed, others fail, and quality of services, unrealistic expectations, costs, style of care, supervision, and poor communications can be among the reasons why.

Child Health

From germs and easily communicable illnesses and diseases to boo-boos and overall cleanliness, there are lots of issues surrounding a child's health growing up. Here are tips and ways to keep a child healthy and happy when at child care.

Child Safety

If parents didn't have enough to worry about, keeping kids safe continues to rank at the top of every doting adult's list. Here are safety issues and tips to consider to keep little ones safe at school, home and on the go!

Family Fun

Don't forget the "fun index" when raising kids. Kids love to play and interactions between parents and kids are whaat family memories are made of. Be sure to build in quality and smile time into every day!

Raising Kids Right

You've heard the adage that anyone can be a parent, but it takes lots of work to earn the title of mom or dad! Raising kids right isn't always easy, and here are tips and ideas from the experts to make the journey a positive adventure!

Kid Behaviors

Whether it's biting, brattiness, or the dreaded "whines," here are tips for dealing with kid behaviors.

From: http://childcare.about.com/od/generaladvice/u/issuesconcerns.htm