Tag Archives: mommies

December 6, 2011 · 3:07 pm

The Weight Loss

We all know it’s hard. So, that I am not going to say.

What I will say is that what’s harder than losing weight, is keeping it off.

The weird thing is, and I am not sure if this is true of other women too, but it is for me, that once I am past that one week where I’ve been to the gym and eaten right, I seem to be on a roll and it gets easy from there. You need to see that initial 500 gram loss on your machine to feel, “gosh this is working, so am not going to slip back this time”. But, you do. Of course, you do. You take a break from the gym and somehow, and this is the really weird part, you even start to eat wrong again. So, it’s a double whammy. No exercise, more food – bam! the inches are back. Aaaggghhhh.

So, what you have to accept, first, before you even start to lose the weight, is that losing weight is like marriage, it needs constant work, you slip a little and the effects start to be visible almost right away.

Earlier this year I told myself that enough was enough, I had to get the lard off. And, I also told myself that nothing comes easy in life, nothing, so stop trying to look for magic and move your ass, literally. I did.

I can tell you, it’s a glorious feeling. You fit back into your old jeans (ok it’s not hanging around your waist like it used to) but you can stuff yourself into them, even that is an amazing feeling. Before long, that too changes; they start to fit better. Then come the compliments. “How did you do this?” asks someone and you feel like you’ve climbed the Everest and start to narrate the ordeals of the gym and eating right.

So far so good. The trouble, however, is to keep this going. That, truly, is the most challenging part. Not impossible, though, far from it. But you need to work on yourself, your mind especially.

For most women this is how it goes:

You put on the inches over the years.
You hide behind loose clothes.
You go on like this for a while. A long while
Your mother tells you to get hold of yourself.
That’s never going to make you do it. You eat more.
Then, one day, something, on its own, snaps.
You wake up with this I-am-going-to-catch-the-bull-by-its-horns feeling. And you do.
Food does not matter the way it did before.
You put yourself on auto-pilot and hit the gym
You loose weight.
People notice and comment.
All goes well, for a while.
Then, you take a break from the daily gym routine. Maybe a holiday.
Routine broken. Domino effect.
You tell yourself – I need a break.
Comfort food again.
Bang, the weight is back.

This has happened with me a few times before, so how am I so sure that this time it’s different. Not sure, actually. Just taking one day at a time and not thinking about the future too much.

I feel good. Am not the size I really want to be yet, but, hopefully, I’ll get there. Am not in a tearing hurry. And that’s the other thing, you can’t, and shouldn’t rush it. Don’t look for magical solutions. It takes time, but you should do this the right way. I am not one for diets, never worked for me and know many friends who got into them, only gain more when they stopped. And you do stop, unless you’re Gandhi.

So, in short, what worked for me was gym four days a week and a little control in eating, meaning, not snacking, staying off the fried goodies, stuff like that.

Weekends, by the way are not for any of this. You gotta have a life! Don’t be too hard on yourself, because if you are, chances are you’ll have a reaction someday and go into reverse gear.

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December 5, 2011 · 7:24 pm

A confused mind.

I think it’s mid life (no, not going to say crisis, yet). It must be something to do with mid life, because I am confused, stressed, angry, frustrated, and yet, quite happy with life, in general I mean. It’s possible. Didn’t think these mix of emotions can go together, but, apparently, they can!

I think about getting back to work, or to some sort of work. The twins will start school this spring and my older one will have a full day at school. So, I probably can do something, not a whole lot (what between picking, dropping, tennis, homework and the doctor visits thrown in for good measure) But, I can, if I try hard (and I do want to) have some sort of a work, freelance life.

The trouble is, what do I do? One day I wake up, ready to write that book that I’ve been writing in my head for the last ten years, or longer. My thoughts are lucid and I get a high thinking about it. This usually happens when I’ve had little sleep and returned from the gym, all charged up. By mid-day I run out of steam and my who-am-I-kidding mood drapes itself over me like a wet blanket. By the evening, I’ve given up that plan altogether.

Till, another day arrives with optimism, and I think about a neat business idea that I would love to work on and in my mind it all gets worked out – do-able I feel. I think about all the women who took the off beaten path and then made it somehow, against all odds, et all. Again, I get all excited about it, but, after the initial giddy excitement of having found what I want to do wanes a little, I start to see the holes in my so-called great idea and before long, poof! that’s abandoned too.

This happens over and over again. One day I am all set to go be a teacher at my daughter’s school. The other day I want to write, then I want to start a small business. Gosh. This is mid life, it better to be. Either that, or I am losing it, finally.

Between all these spasms I manage, and don’t ask me how, to actually do some freelance work. Some writing here, some design there, etc etc. A friend wants something done, I oblige; like that.

What I , however, do regularly, and this I am proud of, is go to the gym. Yup, started it earlier this year. Not crazy about it, but I do it and it’s shown results. A good feeling.

More on this in my next post..

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December 1, 2011 · 6:07 pm

Been busy. And still not doing all that I want to do..

Is it me? Is it me who has no (real) answer to the question “what’s up?” or “What’ve you been up to?”. I seem to not have a moment in the day (my sister is livid with me that I don’t answer my phone, ever). And I am not working, yet. And still when I think about what it is I’ve been doing, I have to wonder. I know I am busy with the kids, (the plumber, the electrician, et all) but that’s pretty much it. So how do I answer that question? “Been good, busy, you know with the kids”. I get a nod, mostly a I-hear-ya kind of one. One (almost) six year old and two two year olds. That’s enough to take up my day.

Then, I talk to my mom. Now she had three kids too, and not half the help that I have, and of course she achieved much more than I have! Humph. She still works. And I spend my day in pajamas (ok, tracks) running after the kids. Double humph.

I am not organized enough, I don’t manage my time well, it seems (mother says). True, maybe, but does one like to hear that? Not really. So I tell my mum, come help me with my kids and I’ll get back to work, be the super mom et all. Right, she says.

So my point is, how will I ever have the time to do all that I think I will – I mean I do believe that one day I will work, that I’ll organize all the photographs that’ve ever been clicked and put them chronologically in custom made albums, that I will sort out all my papers and have everything filed away in impressive formats, that I will organize my drawers, that I will read to my kids and play games with them that add inches to their grey matter, that I will take time and visit my parents (and not lose patience with them), that I will read the books I buy, or the one’s sitting on my bookshelf bleating at me, that I will have a perfect garden with seasonal plants planted well in time, that I will watch all the films I want, that I will go for the occasional play or book reading . And yes, one more thing, that I will bake (well).

When will I do this all? I don’t know. But I know I will . Oh, one more thing, that book I want to write (now it’s a script, btw) that’s got to squeeze its way into my life too.

Someone give me more hours in the day. I could use them.

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July 5, 2011 · 5:59 pm

Five Things Motherhood Has Taught Me.

Thanks Forever Mother for tagging me in this and making me think.

What has motherhood taught me? Agh. So much. But, here’s the thing. When I respond to a question like this on my blog, there is, almost immediately, a conflict in my mind – between what I think motherhood has taught me and what it really has. You know, we have a perception about ourselves, which is not always accurate, but we like to believe facts about ourselves anyway! And a question like this makes me stop and think about perception and reality. Agh. The truth is not always good!

Anyway, here’s a sincere attempt:

1. Children are born selfish. The first instinct is of survival and self fulfillment. It is for the parents to teach them about sharing and giving. Ever tried to take a toy away from a two year old? What did that result in? You know what I mean..

2. Having kids has taught me something about my own parents – that people are not perfect and we expect our parents to be. It’s only when you become one you realize that your parents are human too.

3. Children do lie, though they do it without malice. So don’t always believe yours, listen to the other kid too..

4. Every child is different, so comparison is really not a positive thing.

5. And now for some emotion! Above all, motherhood has taught me to thank God for my happy life. No matter how much I rant and rave, I am fortunate. Very fortunate. And I don’t mean only economically. I mean it in every sense of the word…

Has motherhood changed me?

Like hell it has. Some for the better and some for the worse. Honestly.

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June 2, 2011 · 11:22 am

Perfect Honesty Is Not Always Good For Childen.

Childhood, I believe is about happiness. Children need not know the truth about everything. I think we as parent sometime get too caught up in doing the right thing. What’s the right thing anyway? How do we know that is not better to bend the truth than to tell something to a child that he or she can’t digest?

I’ll tell you why I say this.

A few days after the earthquake in Japan my five year old daughter came to me and asked me what an earthquake was. It was a mama-what-does-this-word-mean kind of question. Now, whenever my daughter asks me a question,  I try and give her a detailed answer. In fact, we play a little game around it,  with the aim that she remembers the answer. It mostly works. So,  when she asked me about the earthquake,  I drew a little diagram, got out the globe, cut an orange to tell her about the earth’s crust and layers etc etc. She loved it.  That was that.

About three days later when I was putting my daughter to bed at night, she sobbed and sobbed and refused to sleep in her bed. She said that an earthquake might come at night. I told her that it won’t. She asked me how I could be so sure. After all, if the tectonic plates could bang into each other under Japan, the same could happen under India! I winced. Great,  I thought,  in my enthusiasm to teach her I’d given her too much information!  I’d gone and scared her.

Damage control, I thought. So, I launched into logic. And zones. India is in a zone that is not really prone to earthquakes, I told her (true) and that there are some countries that are more prone to them and we are not one of them. She seemed a little mollified, though not entirely. Phew!  (Still refused to go back to her bed). I had dodged a tricky question.

Unfortunately, there was more to come.  A few days later she asked me (and this is some sort of a recurrent theme, we’ve talked about this before, in snatches) about death. Agh. Not again, I thought. I was not in the mood for this.  But she was, and her questions were not general, they were specific. “Can babies die?” she queried. I decided to lie. “What about dad?”. I told her that only very old people die (One day, sometime ago, when I’d told her, on one of these bedtime question and answer moments, that mamas can die, she’d wept uncontrollably and clung to me for days) . So I decided to let her believe happy things. Why cloud her little five year old mind with unpalatable truth? Dad will be with you till you are as old as mama, and even after that, I said. “And you?”. Ditto, I said with a straight face. She thought, then she smiled. Not sure if she believed me entirely, but she liked the reassurance.

Like I said, and many may not agree, childhood is about happy things. Truth is for grown ups.

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May 3, 2011 · 9:31 am

The Sibling Factor..

I feel like a tightrope walker. All I seem to be doing, for, well, for a large part of my day, is the balancing act – between the kids that is.

Three kids – one five year old and then twenty month old twins – you can imagine the i-want-this-one kind of fights. To a new entrant in our house, the noise levels can be, well, just a wee bit overwhelming, to put it mildly. I am used to it, though; screaming is part of the general acoustics here. There is always a bone of contention, and that object, for that time, assumes such great importance for all three that nothing else can match its excellence and try as you might the one who has it will not part with it and the other two cannot be persuaded to play with anything else;  distraction tactics are met with flailing of the arms and, of course, some more screaming. No matter how hard I try to be fair and equal, there is always one kid (sometimes two)  screaming, or worse, sulking (this, mostly the older one) feeling betrayed and cheated. The younger ones like to express their discontent, at what they take for unfair treatment,  by prostrating themselves on the floor with shrieks that could pierce the Rock of Gibraltar.

The older one, on the other hand, has mastered the art of touching the raw nerves , of saying what she thinks will get her a reaction, and it does. “You don’t laugh with me the way you do with the twins”, or, “they are small, so you are always giving them my toys”.  She knows she’s being unfair when she says that, because I have been only too careful not to make her feel this way.  In fact, I have neglected the twins if needed, but not her, because I knew that it would be difficult for her to suddenly have to share everything, from her mother to her toys, with two more siblings. But, even then, at some level, she feels that I am not fair, that I treat her and the twins differently.

So, here’s what I think.  It’s a tough balancing act when you are a parent of two or more kids. In your mind you try and be fair, but that does not  necessarily mean that the kids see it that way too. In fact, it’s probably safe to say that they won’t.

I don’t know how my parents did it. I now realize what it means to raise three kids (we are three siblings too) and have them feel equally loved.  It’s a hard thing to do and my hope is that once they are grown up they won’t feel this way. Sibling rivalry can manifest itself in unpleasant ways, and that’s scary for a parent.

My kids are young right now and these are passing, insignificant fights, I know that. But, it makes me think, how will it be in the teenage years? When one of my girls is, say, 16, and the other two 13? Gosh. Imagine that.

These days will, in retrospect, look rosy and wonderful.

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March 15, 2011 · 6:51 pm

The clingy stage, all over again, and this time, it’s double trouble!!

My five year old is just about getting out of the really clingy stage (still demanding, don’t get me wrong, that’s not going to change – mommy must do everything!) But, she’s past that I-am-going-to-stick-to-your-leg-do-what-you-can state. So that’s something of a relief. (She’s developed other somewhat distressing habits, like the sulking and moodiness of a teenager, but, more on that later – another post). For now I am happy that she’s not hanging around me like a rope, on most days.

However, the twins, now one and a half, are right there! Clingy does not quite define their behavior right now. They are gluey to the point that I cannot even escape to the bathroom without them pounding on the door beseeching me to come out.  And that makes me wonder if this is so extreme because I’ve done/am doing something wrong!

The only thing I can think of is that, at night, I don’t put them to bed. I  leave the room because they drink milk (still on the bottle!) before sleeping and I can’t put two of them in my lap and feed them, so I leave them to their maids, something they were OK with till recently, but now they scream and shout and want me in the room. The problem, however, is that if I do try and put them to bed, they fight over who has to be in my lap, pushing the other out. It leads to much shouting and crying, with both of them saying “both babies!!” or “Mama, I want your lap!”.

It’s now kind of become a vicious circle – I flee because they fight each other for me, and no matter which one I pick up, I feel bad for the other. I leave because then, at least, they know that I’ve not picked one over the other. I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do. I do know that, because I leave, they get clingier. I did try once to lie down next to them and pat them both, didn’t work. They both wanted to climb all over me and fought sleep.

Maybe I need to do this a few times to make them believe that I am not going to leave them at sleep time. But then, I get tired by the end of the day and look forward to a little bit of downtime before I go to bed. And that’s what I am going to have to give up if I have to put them to bed too.  I have no time in the evenings to myself, none at all.  My older one has to be fed and put to bed by 8:00 – 8:20, on school nights, so once we come back from the park, I am on a fast track to get her all set for the night. Then we eat dinner (mostly, I eat with the twins taking turns to sit on my lap while I try and eat!). Then I play with them for about forty minutes, till the maids eat and wrap up. So, by the time it’s time for them to sleep, I am out of steam (and patience).  That’s when I want a bit of time to unwind, talk to my husband (seems like that never happens nowadays – a gap’s developing that I don’t like). The kids sleep with us at night, and the twins still wake up a lot, so I don’t get even one uninterrupted night’s sleep – they sometimes wake up at the same time and in their sleep they cry for mommy. That’s the hardest part, because they are sleepy and not in a mood for sharing their mother and I am not my best at that time either.

What am I doing wrong? Do all mothers of twins go through this?

I have so much to write, but, I need to sleep now. It’s late and something keeps telling me to stop blogging and sleep while the kids are sleeping too. Wonder what tonight will be like..

To bed now.

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