Imagination at Work

Instance # 1

The other day Big V came home coated and I mean coated with mud/sand. Sand was all over his clothes, his hair, his nose, his toes and finger nails!! I have captured our conversation word to word below (Well at least his side of the conversation is verbatim)

Me: What did you do? Roll in the sand pit?

Big V: No, we threw sand on each other.

Me: Now, why would you do that?

Big V: Because we imagined it wasn’t sand.

(I am highly amused at this point)

Me: What did you imagine it was?

Big V: We imagined it was snow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Instance #2

I was busy washing Lil V's bottles and Veer was sitting at the table giving me company.

Big V: Mom do you know that Michelangelo's (of the Ninja Turtle's fame) middle name is John

Me: Ok. (I was quite preoccupied and never really into superheros as a child. Hence I had no idea if this was true or not) Who told you this?

Big V: I dreamt about it.

Who am I to judge? - Rant Post

So I have to come out and say it because if I see it one more time I will scream… As a full time working outside of the home mom, I am perpetually scrambling to get everything done. What is this “working outside of the home” business? Does the world think that moms who work outside of the home sit with their feet up and drink lemonade when they are at home?

Well yes, it’s a choice I made. To be able to live the kind of life that I want and provide a certain kind of life for my children and for my general sanity I need to have a job. As a full time working outside of the home mom I co-ordinate my kids play dates, birthday parties, activities that they participate in, their day-care schedules. I plan & cook all their meals, I buy all their clothes, I schedule and go to all their doctor visits, I pick and drop them up from day care - All this in addition to meeting some of mine and my husband’s needs.  I don’t get breaks or “Me” time because my husband works just as hard as me. I don’t get to shove the kids onto my husband and stroll through the aisles of Target or whatever. Keep aside the fact that I have never strolled through the aisles of Target even before I had kids. Maybe some sojourns at Barnes & Noble or a Starbucks (one never gets to idle time away at a Dunkin!!) I wake up earlier than the rest of my household to hand wash and sterilize my infant’s feeding bottles and pack my older one’s lunch. I spend a bulk of the Sunday evening cooking dinners for the family. I think you get the point – I do everything for my kids in addition to holding down a full time job at which I am fairly successful, if I may say so myself. I don’t come home to a sleeping child! I haven’t missed either one of my children’s milestones. I heard the first words, I saw the first smile, the first crawl and several other milestones that my older one has already hit and can’t wait for my younger one to do them as well. They are healthy, happy, well – adjusted, intelligent children.

And I am not the only one who does this! There are several other wonderful women who do exactly what I am doing. We don’t have the time to shout it from the rooftops! Will I do it differently if I had a choice? Probably not! I am going to end my rant with the wonderful line that I hate from the bottom of my heart – “I am sure everyone has their reasons and I am not one to judge.”

Of memories and nostalgia

Last weekend was a big milestone in our household. My older V graduated preschool!!! At his daycare it is called Kindergarten Prep or K-Prep so he had a K-Prep graduation. These are kids who have literally grown up in front of my eyes and I have seen them transition from babies to young boys and girls. The teachers had put up a 15 min presentation which was a compilation of photographs from the year that was. Watching this video, I could almost feel the nostalgia that these kids are going to feel when they see this at their high school graduation. I studied in the same school for my entire schooling years so I literally grew up with the same bunch of girls (All girls’ Catholic school) from ages 3 to 16. I have distinct memories from my school days and thanks to the proliferation of social media, I am able to keep in touch with some of them. I hope that these kids when they look back a few years from now have the same nostalgia that I feel and also cherish the memories they are making.

On a slightly unrelated note, I spent some time looking over the blog posts of yore and it struck me how much life has changed for me in the last 11 years of writing this blog. So this is not just a journal for big and lil V but also for their Mama and I hope they enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy documenting it for them.