Lilypie Kids birthday Ticker
Lilypie Kids birthday Ticker

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Around the world in 80 clicks

2b’smommy tagged me. Here are the 5 things that I love about being mom..

1. I love the way they express their love. They are filling the hole I have ever since I know. Through my kids I am experiencing the love, bond and affection that is in mother-kid relationship. Their hugs, kisses, sitting in my lap and telling me the secret, whispering “Mommy, you know I love you.. You are the best mommy in the whole wide world ” atleast 5-6 times a day:-), fills me heart with so much love everyday.

2. I love the way they make cards for me and make everything special. A is really a kind soul who thank me for everything I do, be it giving him candy, telling him story or buying him something and Gudiya learnt from him. They make special thank you card almost everyday. Send me surprise e-cards so many times.. It feels good to open your email and find 5-6 cards from your cutie pies, with special message in each one of them;-) Makes me feel proud to see him making his sister feel better with his special cards after getting a boo-boo, or even after fighting with him. Those are the time I feel like “maybe I am doing an ok job as a mom” and smile with proud.

3. I love it when they fight over whose turn it is to sleep with me that night. And A wait for her to fall asleep and jump over her to sleep next to me. (yes, they sleep with us:-)

4. I love it when his teachers and my friends tell me how good they are and give me all the credit. Every time someone say something nice about them hubby never forget to mention “Its all because of their mom”;-)

5. The other day A and gudiya were talking. I heard A saying to her “When you get boo-boo you don’t need a bandaid. All you need is mommy or daddy’s kisses. Mommy’s kisses have magic in it. They make you feel better.” I love being the mommy magician.

Almost everyone has done this tag. If someone reading this hasn’t and wants to do the tag, here are the rules..
Just write a post of your own (five things that you love about being a mom) and find someone to link to and tag-someone from your own country, if you like, but definitely someone from another country, and link back to HBM's and leave a comment.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

A and Gudiya

Its been almost 2 years since I posted their pics.. So here are some recent pics..


With her monster














His school pic of this year

Wednesday, April 08, 2009

...contd...

It took us 2½ days to reach KS. Hubby had to start working the same day. Yes, everything at last minute is his motto. We checked in the first motel we found. Rented the room for a week and the next day start looking for a place on monthly rent basis. Its not a big city so everything we found was on yearly lease. We were thinking that we were gonna buy a house soon, it was just 2-3 weeks we needed to stay somewhere and if the house needed work it the mostly 2 months but not more than that. Still checked out a few apartments. I have a phobia of rugs with pets pee and dirty walls. Since its not a big town, everything is not upto date here like in NJ. Even though it was ok we(I) didn’t like any of it. And I never lived in an apartment, to me its like living in someone else’s house.. Beside it was crazy to unpack some stuff and then pack it again in few months.. In the mean time we looked at couple of houses and all the schools.

They have one virtual school, which follows the same K12 method and requires the kid to take test before enrollment. Since A was already reading fluently, doing addition, subtraction and multiplication in pre-k I thought of sending him to virtual school where he can learn the next thing he should instead of repeating everything he already knew... In pre-k he had trouble going to school. School was for only 2½ hours still he didn’t want to go to school because he was getting bored. I had arranged with his teacher to give homework or some extra sheet to him but she was lazy. I even used to give him some assignment to take it to school still couldn’t interest him going to school regularly. I wasn’t happy with his teacher or principal so let him stay home when he really really begged. At home he was having more fun and doing more things than school so I wasn’t worried.

Anyways A took the test and according to the grades he got, if we pick the virtual school he was gonna go to 3rd grade language arts and 2nd grade math catagory.. I was so proud of him.. But there was one problem, socializing.. so keeping that in mind we decided to put him in regular school which I loved when we went to visit. Everybody was very nice. School was clean.. Kids looked happy.

So we enrolled him in Kindergarten. There they took his tests for 2 weeks and called us for a meeting. A never told us that they were taking his tests. We found out when we went there. In the meeting room there were around 10 teachers who gave their report after testing him. They thought he had mastered Kindergarten and 1st grade and he should be in 2nd grade.

WOW… yeah thats what came in my mind.. I never forced A to learn.. we never had study time but he was curious about stuff and I always tried to satisfy his curiosity. But 5 years old and 2nd grade was amazing.. They set a trial period of 2 weeks for 2nd grade and decided to have another meeting after that. After 2 weeks, his teacher said that ‘I thought a kindergartener would not survive in 2nd grade for even a day but he has proved me wrong.”

He got 94% on his 2nd grade weekly assessment test and 100% on spelling test. Everything was fine but kids in his class were 8-9 years old. He was getting along with them fine but we thought it would be best for him to spend time with his age group kids. According to them kindergarten was out of question so they put him in 1st grade and continue going to 2nd grade for language arts. 2nd grade math time was clashing with his 1st grade schedule so he picked the 1st grade stuff. We were happy.

I compare the stuff they do here with the stuff they do in previous school and it was way different. They learn a lot more here. Some of the stuff he is doing in 2nd grade, my friends son did in 3rd grade. Almost no home work here.. only once a week he gets spellings other than that they test them what the teach in school. All he does at home is play play and play..

Then one day I was eating Chinese food and all of a sudden my forehead went numb. I got so scared and went to ER. They did EKG and other blood tests and again everything was fine. He told me that something near my stomach felt very tender and recommended a doctor. In the mean while he gave me acid reflux medicine. It helped but only 40%. I missed the appointment and they gave me another appointment after a month.

By the time we bought a house. It was an old house but in move in condition. Nobody painted the house since it was build, green carpet, old kitchen, one standing shower bathroom, one with only bath no shower etc but clean. I could live in it if I had to but decided to get it done before finally settling down.. hubby agreed (at that time, now he blames me because of the time it took).

Got somebody to work in the bathroom and moved in the new house by end of oct. That guy got some problems and could work only few hours a day and it took him 2 months to do one bathroom. We stayed in motel for 2 months and we were back to 1 room situation in the new house. I was going crazy in one unfinished room with no carpet, old bathroom, sleeping on mattress, no washing machine and buying new cloths. I found another guy who could do rest of the work cuz I was already sick of the other guy. I painted A’s room. Got the carpet done and moved into that room with the bathroom that took 2 months to get finished. The new guy did the other bathroom in a 10 days.. whole new bathroom..

I started painting the room attached to the new bathroom so that we could move back before my MIL came to visit. We thought kitchen would be done before she came but it was partly done. and even if it was finished I couldn’t have used as it was all dusty and who wants to cook in that condition. She was here for a week.. She stayed with us for 3 days and we took her out to salt mine, to MO to see fantastic caverns.. It was 3 days trip.. The end of 3rd day she had flight back to my BIL and we came to our undone, dusty house..

First thing we did was hook up the washing machine and dryer so that we could start the laundry. Then I started the painting job.. painted Gudiya’s room pink and purple.. changed the kitchen color again. Painted downstairs playroom with 8 different colors. Painted another room downstairs and hubby did the living room & hallway upstairs. Forget about the extra time for white ceiling.. By now paining wasn’t a fun thing anymore.

Hubby has to finish his Phd so he started working lots of hours a day.. Me with the kids and the same routine.. house not done yet.. I was going crazy. I kept the kids busy.. they were happy , I wasn’t.. Stress started to build up.

Had doc appointment and they said I should get the endoscopy done. They checked for tumor and stuff and found out that I had some irritation in my stomach and hiatal hernia. He gave me 2 kind of medicine and told me to come back for follow up. Pills worked great and got rid of most of the symptoms I was having. The reason for Hiatal hernia was pregnancies. And another reason was gudiya’s acid reflux. She used to throw up a lot during her first year and I used to hold her in my lft side and sit about 22 hrs. a day. Doc said that my shoulder muscles are very tensed and I should visit chiro but who has time between all this chaos.

Its been 7 months since we moved to KS.. little over 5 months since we moved to new house and we are still living in 1 room, house is not doen fully.. upstairs room are done and one room is set as playroom other is just for bags of stuff which we can’t put in our bedroom yet and tons of folded laundry. Living room and kitchen is 99% done still he has to do some work. He kept taking off in feb & march and worked for 3-4 hr. a day.. That’s what put us so behind our schedule.. my stuff is still in boxes in the garage.. I don’t know how I am going to unpack all that.

This is small city with no computer jobs.. I can't get any job if I want to work.. What will I do?

Every thing took a toll on our lives.. Its not like it used to be.. This is the first time in my life when I am scared, confused, stressful and in depression. This is the first time when I felt the need of having mother, a loving family and friends. This is the time I really needed a shoulder and needed somebody to hug me, understand me, comfort me and be there for me. This is first time when I am scared thinking my kids are going to hate me when they grow up.. I am not a good mother, a good wife or a good person.. This is not how it used to be. Anytime somebody needed solution to a problem, I was the one they used to and still call. They all think I am the best mommy and I go out of the way to help everybody. Their kids are great too but my kids are considered the polite ones and intelligent ones and everybody gives the credit to me still I feel worse..

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

Absent from blogging..

I was absent from blog world for quite sometime. I thought it was going to be a short break but it turned into a very long one.

The main reason of my absence was a guest from India, who was gonna stay with us for 4 months. He was vegetarian and we hardly cook any veg food or let alone 3 meals a day. After he came, our household turned into pure Indian one, where I was just cooking Indian veg food for him, regular food for us, cleaning and taking care of the kids. I thought I will be free after that but then hubby got job in KS and we had to put our house on sale and start packing. Well didn’t start packing right away as we were gonna move in July-August and it was march end, so decided to take a little break. Went to places we hadn’t visited for a long time and the new ones that we were planning on going for a long time. Between house showing, little packing and going out, I didn’t get chance to come back.

Right when I was thinking of writing a post something strange happened. One day I was done feeding kids at night and put them in the bedroom so that I could eat, all of a sudden my heartbeat went up and a warm rush went from my feet upward. I didn’t know what was going on. It stopped in a few seconds. I thought I was having heart attack. Hubby was out. Called him to come home. By the time he came home everything was fine. Didn’t go to the hospital thinking whatever it was, it was over, why bother the kids late at night. Then it happened again the next afternoon and we went to ER. They did all kind of tests but couldn’t find anything. Came home 2 o’clock at night. It wasn’t easy even though I told hubby not to come to the hospital and told him that I will call him when its time to come home. ER report said it was because of the stress but I wasn’t feeling any stress so told them that I am not going to take any stress medicine with tons of side effects. It happened again 2 days later. Went to ER.. same thing, they couldn’t find anything. Hubby kept saying there is nothing you are fine, its all in your head. Go to India for sometime.. Yeah rite, just get rid of me the minute you get chance ;-)

I made an appointment with my doc to see if he could find something but nope.. Went to heart specialist, every report came out ok.. But I was having dizzy spells, my heart was racing few times a week.. no particular pattern but it was happening. I wasn’t stressful but all this was starting to show effects. I was scared 24hr. that something was gonna happen and I was gonna die alone with 2 crying kids for hours as hubby was (still is) busy 18hr. with his work.. What if something happen to me how will I get help.. Even if I reach hospital they won’t be able to treat me if they don’t know what was going on with me. Change another doctor. He did every possible test he could. CAT scan. Individual scans of different parts but nothing.. I was still feeling all the symptoms. Found another heart specialist who looked at my report and said I was fine.. It was just the stress that was causing all the panic. With 2 kids this happen. But I explained that motherhood is not stressful for me.. I enjoy playing mommy, mean mommy sometimes but noway it was stressful. Went to a neurologist, got MRI done. Again nothing.. Now I was really scared.. Hubby kept saying it was all in my head. I spent months crying thinking about the kids if I die. Who will take care of them.. I don’t have parents or any family. From hubby’s side its only his mother but I don’t want my kids to be raised emotionless and selfish.. I was raised by my grandmother and it was the generation gap that killed my childhood.. Don’t get me wrong; I got lots of love, endless love but noone can raise you like your parents can. It is like I was never a child. I was born grown up..

Anyways between all this we sold our house.. moved from NJ to KS.

...to be continued….