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Sep 10, 2007

Mishy Mishy arrives ! Sep 10,2007

My second delivery was a scheduled one ! My parents arrived well on time and Rishu took very nicely to thatha - after-all he was his companion from morn to night ;-)
I went to the hospital with a very unsettled mind and the whole process went pretty faster and easier than I expected. The epidural was the worst part, the rest was a piece of cake :) There were 2 things we did not expect - a boy(we expected a girl)and such a light baby(he was just 4 lbs). (A small digression - So the name-picking was waiting till the last minute as it happened with Rishab. Atleast for Rish, we were kind of expecting a boy and just had 2 names that we were debating over majorly. But this time we had just short-listed girl names. I had the easy part of lying down and rejecting names while Ravi was scooping out newer names. The second he mentioned Nishad both of us knew this IS the name :-))
Amma was a big support. She would be ready before 9 a.m with all cooking done and the kitchen spotless and come over to the hospital. I tried to catch up on as much sleep as possible. I would just take Nishad for his feeding and rest of the time I was content in him being in the nursery. Feeding him was a herculean task and I never realised that simple things could be so complicated. I cribbed so much that my mom and Ravi just wanted me to take the easier route and put and end to the agony that I was putting everyone through.(But after 3 months I was glad I persisted but I learnt a lesson - NEVER CRIB !! I realised that though I am persistent in some cases the cribbing causes people to think I am confused while all the time I am very clear but just vent out a tad too much ;-))
We were excited to bring Nish home ! I was surprised to see the decorations done. It was easy for appa as they just were re-used from Rishab's. And even more super-exciting was when Rish called him Mishy Mishy. I guess that name will be stay for a long time to come :-)

Jul 7, 2007

Rish at 6 months+, 1 year+

Rish was a very easy baby to handle and very predictable. After a few days of returning from the hospital, he established his routine. His morning feeds were very less and evening to night he would almost have the double amount of milk he had in the entire day ! He was very cheerful in the day time and 10 to 12 in the night was his crying time. The second he started crying you could say that it was 10 p.m and the second he stopped crying you could be sure that it was close to midnight :-) Since it was so regular we were not too troubled by it.
But close to 4 months, all this stopped and he started sleeping from 11 to 5 a.m :-)
Joining back work with him was very easy and hardly like having a new born. I did not really know what to talk to him and I used to smiling when I see my mom talking to him as if he could understand everything :-) He also started his cereal and he liked it a lot compared to his milk..Solids was easy for him and he did not have as much liking for his milk.
As Rish became close to 6 months, my parents had to leave. We had a week in between my ILs arriving. At that time Rish was very moody and I could sense he was upset and missing my parents. I was surprised to see this display of feeling from him.
But once my ILs arrived, they had a 1 week transition with R who stayed home and familiarised them with the formula, sterilizing and diaper changing routine. I was fortunate that my MIL took excellent care of him . And I was happy with work, some gym visits and taking over the kitchen and house work once I came back from work and some weekend cooking. It was also summer and we went around quite a bit and Rish was also bigger now. It was also the time when we taught him many words and rhymes and though he could not repeat the whole thing he was always ready with the ending words and some one word answers. He brought a lot of joy to my ILs since he was the first grand-child they have spent considerable time with and probably the reason why he is very special in their hearts. The only downside was close to 9 months , R for lack of time or drive,could not raise the crib and he started co-sleeping with me. Anyway, it was fine with me as I would sing to him all the songs I knew and I would doze off and in the middle of the night would pull him closer to me from whichever corner he was. It filled my heart in a strange way and I guess this is how kids slowly climb to the number one spot of your heart !(And we lived,er, happily slept like that till I went to deliver my second baby)
And close to a year, we found a nice home based daycare that had only 2 kids including him , a very clean house and that was all I wanted for him - a protected environment, free of any infection even if he did not learn much. And thus our life continued.
Close to a 15 months, Rish could tell all the feminine genders for about a dozen words and also the singular-plural for quite a few words. While the expectation for his age was around 15 words I guess, he already had close to 40 words that he knew. But he knew the words more by memory than by meaning and guess used only 4-5 words in context.
One thing that amazed me was when he was around 18 months, I was teaching him the alphabets and when M would come, he would sing 'ambasuda' a song from 'lambodara....'
a carnatic song which was one of his bed-time lullabies. Probably his phonetic sense was taking place right then ;-)