Thursday, April 11, 2013

Rambling away

When you start to write often, it becomes somewhat addictive.  The more you write, the more you have to say.  It also works the other way around.  The less you write, the lesser you find you have to say.

I've been fighting with the urge to write about a few things lately and then decided to just give in and make these updates.

On the Sunday last, I went for a meet with the other moms from my daughters' nursery school.  It was fun and not what i expected at all.  About 8 other mothers were there, all of us had decided to meet without kids so as to give each other the opportunity to bond socially rather than be known as 'kid a's mom', 'kid r's mom' etc.  We introduced ourselves and i found out rather anti-climatically that most of the other mothers at the meet were stay-at-home-moms or moms who worked out of the home only part time.

Whew.. :-) it's become so difficult to be politically correct when it comes to talking about moms.  When someone asked how many of them were working, one of them wryly pointed out that all of them were working moms - some worked outside the home and were paid for it while others worked at home.  And when some of them mentioned that they were full-time moms, i felt like asking, was i a half time mom ?  Just because i work away from home 10 hours in a day?  Mothering is a full time job even when you are way from home.  But of course i get what they meant.

We had a good time, we played a couple of games - Dumb Charades and 'What's the good word'.  It helped ease some of the social awkwardness we all felt and broke the ice quite a bit.  I ended up feeling happy i had gone and returned home, feeling happy for myself as well as my daughter, for having made the effort to go.

One of the moms also worked from home full time for a IT services company and it struck a chord with me - should i have looked for such options after my kids?  Hmmmm.. still thinking along those lines.

The next thing that i wanted to write about was this superb dinner we had on Monday night - inspired by this:

http://onehotstove.blogspot.in/2012/11/pumpkin-mac-n-cheese.html

One hot stove is an awesome blog, full of yummy recipes and the vibrant spirit of the author - Nupur.
She's the mother of a very young child, she works full time, cooks and bakes with great enthusiasm as well as finds the time to pursue her other passions in crochet, quilting etc.  She is a true inspiration.

The yummy sauce from the pasta had Sammu and me licking the pan clean :-)

And in the last update, yesterday was Sammu's last day in Pre-K.G.  It was the day we collected her progress card as well and it was such a happy, incredible moment to know my daughter was moving up to L.K.G.  Around this time last year, I had serious doubts on whether she would ever adapt to school.  I was quite sure that we would end up homeschooling her.

Now I look back and wonder on how much of the difficulty she faced at adjusting to play school was caused due to her age, due to being weaned at around that time or due to the teacher at her play school.  I've decided that all the credit to her problems at the school should go to her teacher - she was just not the right fit for us. Really, we looked around at so many schools before we chose her play school and still ended up making a mistake.  Forget the fancy toys, forget the surroundings, forget the fancy talk that the 'director' of the school makes to you.  It really does not matter how much English they speak, how they speak it.  What matters for such young children is whether the teachers are empathetic, kind and firm.  Trust your instinct in these things, it speaks the truth.

I've lined up a stream of projects for us to do every day during her summer holidays.. mostly I am very unispired to do art or crafts.  I was not one of those kids that was happy in art or craft class at school.  I did it only because i did not have a choice.  But with my daughter, it's different.  I truly love making things with her, whether they turn out well or not and we have a great time together.

Here is the list I have for this week:
1. Origami fish
http://www.artsycraftsymom.com/2013/03/dr-seuss-special-one-fish-two-fish.html

2. Paper plate parrots
http://www.artsycraftsymom.com/2013/02/paper-plate-parrot-craft-class.html

3. Tissue paper butterflies
http://www.artsycraftsymom.com/2009/10/tissue-paper-butterflies.html

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