Send Me to The Gallows, if You Will!

I Deserve the Gallows, Readers!

Yes, dear blog I know I have been absent for too long.  I confess I am guilty and I won't even ask for forgiveness this time. If the blogosphere envisaged a punishment for absenteeism - I would surely deserve the gallows!! So what happened, you may well ask??- Plenty actually! All this while I had loads of news and views to share but I got side-tracked and (yes I admit) lazy.

Recap -April 2012 to March 2013 

Is it even possible to recap one whole year in one single post? Well we live to try, isn't it? So here is my attempt to recap the events in my life in the past one year that occupied me, touched me, inspired me, changed my life for the better or for worse.

April  to June 2012- Welcoming the Baby and the Guests;

23rd April, 2012, Monday, 10.47 p.m - was when we welcomed our second son Akshit into the world. Since it was to be a planned C-section (the gyne was reluctant to do a VBAC for me), we had decided to have the baby on 24th April as it was Akshay Tritya -an auspicious day according to the Hindu calendar.

But my son had different plans and decided to arrive on the 23rd night itself (which means that both my sons share the same birth date-23, albeit in different months). After a volley of names which were thrown to and fro, we settled on Akshit which was a mid- way option for both of us - Akshath  (my original choice) and Archit (my husband's choice).

Three days later we were home, me sore, exhausted but elated and the baby alternating between sleeping, poos, pees and feeding. My elder son was initially not very impressed with the baby - "Mama, I thought the baby would be much cuter" was his first reaction! 

Welcome to the world Baby Akshit!

It was a blessing to be welcomed at home by my sister (who had come down from India to be with me at this time) and home cooked food. I couldn't help remembering my first son's birth at London where my husband and I trudged up the stairs to our locked apartment on the second storey...me holding my stomach which was still hurting as it was barely 40 hours post the C-section delivery and my husband was holding the baby basket with 1 day old Akshobhya inside it.

Having a helper at home this time around also helped.  It really seemed like sheer luxury that I could concentrate only on my own recovery and the baby while someone else took care of the cleaning, the cooking and the other chores as in London I was on my feet and in the kitchen from day 2 -post delivery (If you ask me, how I managed with swollen legs, a wound area that pained like hell and a colicky baby who wouldn't sleep- I really won't be able to tell except that each time I remember those days, I involuntarily shudder!!).

Having people in the house also helped allay my biggest concern - which was for my elder son and how he would cope with this apparent upstaging by his little bro!  Akshobhya was so busy with his cousins that he scarcely noticed the baby and how Mama's time and attention was now more towards catering for the baby's needs.

At this point, I would also like to give myself credit for how well Akshobhya adjusted to his brother's birth....I would like to think I had prepared him well...I had told him about the baby and shown him scan pics. I had even told him how the baby will be needing Mama more as he would be tiny, totally dependant and would only know Mama as he had lived inside Mama's tummy for 9 months. I think he understood that quite well and did not feel that insecure and jealous as a child would have had he not been mentally prepared....the only indication that he did feel a pang of insecurity was when he insisted on sleeping with us in our room instead of his own room when I came back from the hospital. He also understood why we could not call his friends for his birthday which falls exactly one month after Akshit's birth date....and settled for gifts and play time at eXplorer kids.

Once my sister left, my parents-in-law and then my parents came over to Singapore to bless the little one.

July to November, 2012- Getting back into Shape!

The month of July saw us trying to scramble back to normalcy at home- the guests has left, Akshobhya's school had reopened after summer vacations, I had recovered quite a bit and Akshobhya was now a doting elder brother to the baby who in his opinion, had now become 'much cuter and rounder'! Bonus, the Dragon baby had learned to smile and make cute sounds too!

A smiling baby and a beaming elder bro!

The children were achieving milestone after milestone even as Akshit's poor thighs took the brunt of one jab after the other! Roll over, head and neck straight, sit up unaided, crawl on all fours, teething, solid foods, pull, throw and chew things, babble non-stop- ma!ma! ba!ba!- omg! babies achieve more six months than adults can in a lifetime!

All of us scrambled to catch his firsts and record them on whatever gadget was handy (which mind you-  are plenty these days- five years back we used a not-so handy handy-cam to record my elder one's firsts) and share with family and friends...yes, share - he is after all born in the age of FB and Pinterest  - a celeb in his own right!

Try to catch me if you can!

My elder son was achieving milestones albeit on the a different scale. With the advent of his younger brother who poor helpless baby  '"could not do ANYTHING himself ," my 5 year old was suddenly feeling very grown-up and capable- almost a junior super-hero (who as he loves telling me CAN destroy the world, but will not :)). There were demands to watch Nickledeon instead of Nick Jr. and Disney ch instead of Disney Junior which were too babyish for him now. Arguments and emotional blackmailing followed after which a compromise was reached on what a 'grown-up 5 year old' could still not do or watch! For the rest, well I had to relent (didn't have much choice, did I?)

Also, once the extended family members returned to India, my elder one suddenly noticed his younger sibling getting a lot of his mother's attention.  His displeasure at the situation more often than not meant getting into more trouble (which to my guilty soul seemed like desperate attempts at capturing my attention).  So, when the baby slept- I made a valiant effort at pushing back my own yawns to spend as much time with him as was possible- reading stories, playing, simply listening to his endless tales of school and imaginary  monsters or taking him to concerts and story-telling sessions!

The Samurai at his Annual Day performance -Sep'12

Battling the Post Natal Bulge!

All this while, there was another tougher challenge that was awaiting me - the challenge of shedding off my pregnancy fat. I was in an unenviable shape after my younger son's birth. I had lost some weight and fat naturally, thank God for that! After deducting the baby's weight, the placenta, the water discharge, the lochia and and the breastfeeding, I was still left with a whooping surplus of 13 kgs. I weighed my odds.....I could not  cut down on my food a lot as I was still nursing Akshit.

3 months post delivery I started with walks limited inside my estate compound (I had to be within rushing distance of my house to feed the baby in case he woke up during my walk.) I followed it up with  some breathing exercises and stretching at home (again if the baby permitted). The result was far from spectacular - in fact the little weight I lost confounded my dressing dilemma - my maternity clothes hung loose on me but I could not fit into any of my pre-pregnancy clothes yet - buying new clothes to fit my ''new in-between size" seemed a waste of money (since I was convinced that I would lose weight)! So when we took a vacation to Bintan, Indonesia end of September, I looked pretty out of shape (on hindsight, we should have picked up a hill destination rather than a beach so I could have covered that one up!! )

Bintan

Once my son started solid food (after 6 months), I could squeeze in more effort and time- the walks became lengthier and brisk as the post natal aches disappeared. This was followed by exercises, stretches and more yoga. I indulged myself a bit and went for fortnightly post natal massages to help with the toning. I also tweaked my diet (without cutting it down since I was still breastfeeding) to include more salads and fruits and replaced biscuits and chocolates with raisins for mid-night snacking (kicking off this habit- that begun in the last trimester of pregnancy proved the toughest especially since the baby still woke for night feeds).

My goal was to slim down before our vacation trip to India in December so that I would n't have to hear constant reminders about how fat I had become - the added incentive was to look good in a saree I had to wear for my brother in -law's wedding. And hey! I managed to lose 11 out of the 13 excessive kgs in 5 months - not a small feat if you consider that I did not need to pay an expensive upmarket gym to achieve it! 

Akshit joining me for meditation!

Re-educating Myself!

The last quarter of 2012 also saw me enrolling for a course at the London School of Journalism (LSJ)  in Sub-editing and Design in a desperate attempt to to do something fruitful with my life (I get these pangs every now and then) since I was determined in not letting it becoming a 'course in history' which correspondence courses have a penchant of becoming, I plunged headlong into the course....completing 4 modules in a span of under three months. It is another story that I am yet to conjure up the same enthusiasm in 2013 for completing the course.

December 2012- Trip to India

We spent the whole of December '12  in India. As always, a trip to India requires planning, shopping , doctor visits and much more from a month earlier.....more so since we were travelling with 2 kids including a seven month old infant.  It is tough since we travel to 3 different cities in India located each in the East, West and North. This means plenty of travelling, packing, unpacking and constant adjusting to the changed environment especially for the kids. The worst part is that you just don't know what clothes to pack as December in the northern parts of India means chilly temperatures- nearing zero degrees but the east and the west of the country can still be blazing hot or sultry during the day!

For me, the first fortnight of the vacation was even more hectic than normal workdays since the Dad was still in Singapore and the kids especially the younger one was really clingy all through. Anyhow, the good part was that health-wise the children were fine barring some minor cold, cough and stomach ailments. Akshobhya enjoyed himself thoroughly with his cousins and grandparents and freaked out travelling in auto-rickshaws where you can feel the wind in your hair and managed to seat himself in the front seat in the car too (a strict no-no in Singapore). As for me all the hard work paid off and psst!pssst! I had people complimenting me on how I had managed to get back into shape post delivery :).

January  to March 2013 - Of Achievements and Injuries; 

So after a busy but good time in India, we returned to a new year in SG, 'back to school' for Akshobhya and  happy crawling time for Akshit! Yes, now he was crawling on all fours- a very very cute sight indeed and also standing up with support. Within days he had mastered his crawling skills and soon he was 'crawl-running' (a term coined by our helper) since he was very very fast and could reach places that he was not supposed to go to in seconds. Soon we were scrambling to put up everything that he could now reach and break or mouth and there were many casualties on the way as the little explorer took charge!

A Bad Fall;

Barely had we settled back that Akshobhya badly injured himself. I had taken the kids out to a nearby playground and he was swinging from the monkey bars. On one of these instances, he missed catching the bar and fell to the ground. Probably on instinct he kept his hands on the ground to break the fall and then landed on top of his hands. The angle at which he fell fractured both the bones on his right arm - the ulna and the radius that connect to the wrist.

What followed was an ordeal for the poor child who was in a lot of pain. We rushed him to Raffles Hospital only to discover that they do not have a child specialist in their A&E so though they did the X-Ray, they could not do the plastering. We then took him to KKH where they assessed him and decided that he would have to be sedated before they could fix his bones. It was painful to see him resist the sedative and the subsequent sleep- trance it induced. But it had to be done. We waited outside while they rejoined his bones and plastered him at 11 in the night.

It was 2 am when they finally discharged him, conscious but groggy. The next few days were even more difficult as he was not supposed to move his right arm at all to allow the joint to become stronger. What's an action hero got to do when he can't jump around, cycle, swing, play or even go to school? Keeping Akshobhya in bed was a challenge for me but the doctors had warned us that if the bones do not get fused properly in the first 7 days, it would require an operation which we all wanted to avoid.

So I tried to engage him with board games and books and he was allowed more TV time. Thankfully, the bones fused together- there was no operation required but  the plaster was required for another 7 weeks to allow the bones to heal. The hard plaster was replaced by a lighter fiber-glass neon green plaster (Ben 10 color) and for the final weeks with a neon orange shorter plaster.

He was granted medical leave from school, so with both the boys around at home it was impossible for me to get back to my work or my studies. Slowly, I started taking him out of the house (as he was getting awfully cranky holed up in the house for weeks on end )  but kept a hawk's eye on him because even with the plaster- he was back in action! It was only in the first week of March that his plaster was finally opened but even then he was advised to avoid contact sports and wear a brace on his arm for another 6 weeks.

It was  a difficult phase for all of us  but I was surprised at how resilient and strong kids are!  Akshobhya was never 'down in the dumps.' After a week of forced rest, he was finding ways to engage himself. Since his right arm was indisposed, he used his left arm efficiently for almost everything - one would think he is ambidextrous. Except for the two times when he missed his school picnic and his sports day because of his injury -and he was obviously sad  about that- he took the whole episode quite cheerfully and bravely. And that made me really proud of him :)

7 weeks hence, the plaster is smarter, lighter and neon orange!

In March, Akshobhya graduated from Kindergarten  - a big boy and  a big event for us as he crossed the first academic threshold! 

Akshobhya's Graduation Day -Dress Rehearsal

Trip to Legoland

Akshobhya had term end holidays in March - and we decided to make a trip to Legoland - a celebration of his fracture healing and his graduation from Kindergarten.  I could call the trip good except for the fact that we were roasted alive in the awful, unbearable Johor heat (and I am not exaggerating). So much so, that within a couple of hours, everybody (including Akshobhya who was terribly excited for the trip) wanted to give up and return to Singapore having covered barely one-fifth of the adventure park. Bravely, I trudged on motivating everyone- making sure the kids were well-hydrated, reminding everyone that we had only a 1 day pass and we must make the most of it.

So  we carried on for another few hours but by the end of it I had started to feel terribly exhausted too and after many years - I got a heat stroke and kept throwing up in the hotel and all the way back to Singapore (ugh!). 

 Legoland,Malaysia

The Killing Heat!

Akshobhya with a Giant Lego Rhino

Whew! Wasn't it an eventful year - a new baby, a growing up action hero, three out of station trips and so much more! That's all for now, folks!

We are all now looking forward to Akshobhya entering Primary School and Akshit's First Birthday next month- April '13! Hope to keep you all posted! Ciao!