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Ashwin, Riana and I are looking forward to our trip to India next month. A lot has changed since the last time we visited our families in 2005. Mom and dad were here last year for Riana’s birth. When they left, Riana was almost six months old. My sisters are yet to meet Riana. I missed weddings of both my sisters. When my sister Soni got married, I was seven months pregnant and was restricted to travel by air. When my other sister Surekha got married, I was a consultant at my company and did not have vacation benefits. I am looking forward to meeting my brother-in-laws and other family additions. I have a sweet 6 month old nephew. I am sure Riana will have fun with him. My older sister Surekha is expecting to have a baby in Feb ‘09. There is a lot of catching up to do… and not enough time…Three weeks is just not enough. We will try to make the best out of the time we have.

The count down has begun…

A lot of you have asked me why I haven’t blogged in a little while. Life’s been too busy lately. I have however been posting on Riana’s website. I will try to keep up with my blogs too. It’s good to know that people are actually interested in reading!

Riana turns one today and I am amazed on how fast her first year went by. I distinctly remember the day she was born and it feels like yesterday. Since then, life’s been full of joy and a lot of hard work. With each passing day, I grow fonder of her. I wish her a very happy birthday. I look forward to another year of craziness and fun. Oh yeah!

Cheers

It’s been a difficult winter for my daughter Riana. In the past four months, she’s hardly gotten a break from various illnesses. She’s had everything from common cold and cough to high grade fever, laryngitis, bronchitis, pneumonia, recurring conjunctivitis, ear infection and stomach flu! Right now she is suffering from a stomach bug that is causing her to vomit and have diarrhea. After spending six hours at the Emergency Room last Tuesday night and getting her three bags of Saline and Dextrose, I was very hopeful that her appetite would return and once again she’ll bounce back to usual eating habits. It has been three days now and she is still completely uninterested in having any fluids. On an average, her total intake in a 24 hour period is about 7 oz! She’s already lost close to 4 lbs!

Giving Riana bath three times a day and doing four loads of laundry each day is indeed frustrating. But, what is more frustrating is the response we get from the nurses when we call the emergency line. Every time we call indicating that our daughter is dehydrated and just not interested in taking fluids, we get the standard response and that is to try our absolute best. We’ve tried it all… We’ve tried the bottle, the sippy cup, spoon, dropper, even a medicine syringe. We’ve tried forcing milk into her but it comes right out. We’ve tried Pedialyte, water, juice, water melon, popsicle, regular formula, soy formula, anti-diarrheal formula and nothing seems to work. Today, Ashwin took her back to the Acton Medical to be seen by her Pediatrician, Dr. Christopher Cooper, who is a very good Pediatrician. I really like the facility. The doctors promptly reply to all your emails and concerns. As much as I understand that there isn’t much they can do other than rehydrate her through IV, it is still disappointing and frustrating. It is hard to see your 11 month old baby being poked several times with needles. Unfortunately, it is a stomach flu which needs to run its course. There is no medicine to get rid of the virus. It can take from two to four weeks! On top of this, she also has cold, cough and double ear infection right now. All at the same time…

Riana’s first birthday is on Tuesday, March 4, and I hope she has a nice day. Hopefully she’ll get better by then. At this point, we feel very helpless. There is nothing we can do to help her. She’s had more than her share of illnesses this winter. My only hope is that she comes out of this 100% and that none of these will have long term consequences on her health.

For now… we are taking it one day at a time…

Riana is on par with other babies of her age as far as developmental milestones are concerned. She began rolling over at 4 months, started eating solid foods at 5 months, began sitting up without support at 6.5 months, started mastering her crawling skills at 7.5 months. Now at 9 months, she can stand up and has figured out how to climb stairs. She can only climb as many as 2 or 3 steps but it is a big achievement for her. She know how to pull herself up to a standing position using various kinds of support. Some of the more interesting supports that she uses is a 2 year old kid and a small dog at her daycare! She is now starting to feed herself simple finger foods such as baby cereal and toast.

So why do I think she is a child prodigy? Well, amongst all her skills are very good computer skills. Ashwin and I have let Riana type on our computers several times. She loves the keyboards. She has done some things that have amazed both of us. She has, not once but twice, inserted date and time stamp into Notepad. That cant be a fluke… She has managed to launch the help menu and find tool in Notepad. In Firefox, she has decreased the font size without using the mouse wheel, she has opened home page in existing window, opened a new tabbed window, opened a information box indicating the window size. In Picasa, she has zoomed into a picture and deleted a picture. What’s next?

Perhaps she is not a baby prodigy. She simply has our genes! I am yet to find out the shortcut to insert date and time in Notepad. I think I will do that after posting this article.

It is great to see her do so well but at the same time, she is terror. She is a little devil who likes to get into trouble. We’ve tried to baby proof the house but she is now using the drawer hardware as support to stand up. And oh, did I forget to mention that she is a drama queen. Why, of course! As I said earlier… She has my genes!

For all her latest pictures and videos, please log into my gallery.

Cheers.

Wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. For those who celebrate Chanukah, Happy Chanukah and for others who just want to enjoy the spirit of the holiday season, wish you a very happy and bright Holiday season…

Cheers.

Going through surgery was my last resort and 2 weeks after the surgery, I did in fact have a significant improvement. I was finally happy and was anticipating a painfree hand. However, at my 2 week post-op visit, I got my stitches removed and soon things began to get worse. A few days later, I started noticing a bump and pain along my thumb and wrist. I didn’t think much of it until it began to progressively get worse. Today, I saw my doctor for what looks like tremendous amount of swelling and hardening around the incision site. I have limited flexibility due to the hardening and tightening of my tissues. I can feel the resistance when I try to move my thumb. Once again I am in excruciating pain. The doctor said it was due to scarred tissue and is often caused when the injury does not heal properly. This is called the “peak effect”. In my case, the post surgical healing process is causing the internal scarring of the soft tissues. I have been prescribed another regimen of oral steroids to get the inflammation in control and to aid faster recovery. Let us hope this works. If it does not, I have to prepare myself for yet another steroidal injection that will be administered directly into my scarred tissue. There is no guarantee that it will completely heal. I may need weeks of physical therapy, which I am not looking forward to. I am going to try to stay optimistic although it is difficult when your hand is stubborn and does not want to heal. I hope that this so called “peak effect” will subside soon. I don’t want to train myself to live with pain. Never…

I think the perfect gift for Riana this season would be a baby hair trimmer. Born in March, she is only 9 months old and has already had two hair cuts at the salon; three if you want to count the one I attempted. There seems to be a big selection of baby hair clippers online but I wonder if I have the necessary skills to be a Do It Yourself mom. I gave it a try with the scissors and needless to say that I failed miserably.

On the second thought, I thought perhaps the perfect gift for her this season would be to get her some wonderful hand made hair clips. So, now Riana will get some beautiful handmade clips along with some other surprises! As far as the haircuts are concerned, I think I will save that job for the hair stylists.

Is it the quality of shows or the quality of audience that we should question

In the recent years I have noticed a marked improvement in the quality of television shows. However, it is disappointing to see a lot of nice shows like Studio 60 on Sunset Strip being canceled year after year. I moved to the US four years ago. When I first came here, I had nothing to do. So in order to keep myself entertained, I would play computer games or sit and watch television with my grandmother-in-law who would wait anxiously every afternoon to watch an episode of Matlock. My father-in-law has a vast collection of movies and TV shows of yesteryears. I began watching a lot of old shows including the Honeymooners and I love Lucy. I immediately got captivated by to these shows and I could sit there and watch it for hours. I realized that though simple, the shows from the past were really fun to watch. Then my husband introduced me to a bunch of nice shows including CSI and West Wing. He also had a collection of Sports Night which was fun to watch but I heard that it was one of the shows that only lasted a season. For comedy, I would watch Friends, Simpsons and Mad about you. I try not to restrict myself to one particular kind of show. I like variety although I am not a big fan of reality shows like the Survivor and American Idol. American Idol has it’s moments but after a while, it is saturating. Today there are over a hundred channels to watch but only a handful of them broadcast good quality shows. It is not hard to find reality TV, game shows, Hollywood shows, adult soap operas and nighttime dramas. I watch TV every evening before going to bed and among my favorite shows are 60 minutes, Cold case, CSI, Criminal Minds, House, Bones, Cane and CSI: NY. I like to watch drama and thriller. I also like to watch football especially when the Pats are playing. I watch news occasionally though the quality of news that you get from the TV is atrocious. More than 95% of the news is filled with negative information and it brings negative thoughts to our minds. Sadly, this is the kind of news our audience likes to see and hear.

Why is that a vast majority of audience watch dumb shows like The Office and Desperate Housewives? I remember the hype for when they were to broadcast the pilot episode of Office. After having seen the movie Office Space and really liking it, I decided to give this a try but to my disappointment, it was really boring and in some ways an annoying show to watch. A better comedic break would be The Family Guy. I had stereotyped all nighttime dramas to be full of crap until now. One of the new fall shows from this season called Cane casting Jimmy Smits is a nighttime drama and is a really nice show to watch. It is a story about a Cuban-American family running rum and sugarcane business in

South Florida and their family foe, the Samuels. Pushing Daisies is yet another show to look forward to. It is comedy in fantasy land. The story is about a pie maker who has the ability to bring dead people back to life. It is not what the show is about but about the way it is shot and narrated that makes it so special. Journeyman, another good show that started this Fall, is a time travel drama. I think it would be great to have more science fictions. My husband, who also has a similar taste, loved watching Star Trek. Another hot new show from this summer was Damages.

I am excited to see this positive trend where there is variety and quality. Although after seeing a lot of great shows like Studio 60 on Sunset Strip, In Justice and Standoff being canceled, I don’t know if next year, we will have these wonderful shows to watch. Let us hope that we continue to move in the right direction and that more and more people start watching these wonderful shows.

Cheers

I started working for Wyman-Gordon recently as a Network Engineer. I really enjoy my new position. It’s a very challenging position and gives me the ability to get exposed to other areas of Engineering such as Industrial Automation and Robotics. It is a critical position because I am responsible for the plant’s network infrastructure which runs the 35 million dollar Press machines. I especially like my short commute to work. It allows me to spend more time with my daughter.

It is a very different environment. I have to wear my safety shoes and glasses when I am out in the shop. Wyman-Gordon is a metals forgings company. We supply materials to all GE and Rolls-Royce Engines and virtually every commercial plane including the Boeing 747 and Dreamliner has our parts. Wyman-Gordon is a part of PCC, Precision Castparts Corp.

It is a great company to work for. I am enjoying the job. I will post some pictures shortly.