2012 in review

2012 was a special year to me, primarily because I saw my daughter grow from a tiny, innocent infant to a naughty, active toddler. She rolled over in Feb, started crawling in July, standing in Aug and cruising in Sept. I was there at home to witness all these special first steps. We are waiting for the moments when she starts to walk on her own and run around the apartment. We are already chasing her everywhere as she crawls at high speeds.

At the beginning of 2012, I didn't know a thing about what to feed my daughter once she is ready for solids. When the introduction of solids phase started, it was scary. Thank God to the power of Internet, I learnt so much on what to feed babies as they explore the sense of taste. As I decided to be at home to take care of her, I took the time to prepare home-cooked food, noted down her food log and introduced new foods gradually. Though a scary phase to begin with, it actually became quite interesting and challenging. I definitely would want to share what I have learnt during this phase so it can be useful to other new moms as well. This is one of my to-dos for 2013.

The key lesson I have learnt is that taking care of a baby requires effort and patience. Yes, there were times when I felt helpless and lost. But dear husband has always been there to give the much needed support and encouragement. In the busy year, I also managed to lose 5 kgs of my pregnancy weight (3 more to go!).

Ever since the pregnancy phase of my life, I have started to become very conscious of what I eat and what I feed my family. Nutrition is one area which I got really interested in, in the past 2 years. I have been exploring new recipes and expanding my knowledge of food. I can't imagine how much of junk food I used to eat in the initial years of my working life, blaming on the lack of time. Now when I get back to work, I'm sure I wouldn't be tempted by all the packaged and ready-to-eat foods in order to save time.

On the professional front, I did pretty much nothing in terms of actual work. There were times when I missed going for a job, the morning rush-hours, meeting and interacting with people at work, the challenges and the satisfaction of accomplishing some interesting work. But I kept telling myself that this is a temporary break that I'm taking for the benefit of my daughter. I started learning Python programming just for fun. I tried to do some work-from-home consulting work for a couple of startups. But the logistics and schedules didn't seem to work well. It's difficult to schedule and organize interactions only when daughter is taking a nap. I had to cut down on phone calls in between as soon as my daughter woke up. In 2013, I'm hoping to invest some time and get some traction on the work front but unlikely that I might restart a full time job like earlier. Maybe, a year later once daughter starts going to pre-school.

Reading books was completely on the back-burner for the most part of 2012. I had to make sure that daughter doesn't grab the book from my hand and tear the pages apart (BTW, tearing papers is one of her favorite activities). I managed to read 3 books, though.
- Don't lose your mind, lose your weight by Rujuta Diwekar - Highly recommended. Lots of useful information of what we should eat and how we should care for our stomach
- Revolution 2020 by Chetan Bhagat - Not as good and witty as his previous "2 states" but can read once
- How I braved Anu Aunty and cofounded a million dollar company by Varun Agarwal - Interesting fun read on how the author went about setting his e-commerce company

Wishing everyone a very happy new year. Hoping to write more and keep my blog active.

This day, last year

I've been meaning to write this post for quite a while and it has taken me a year to put down those wonderful memories into words. Memories to be cherished for a lifetime! Memories to be revisited whenever I want to gather some strength in life when I can proudly say "I did it!"

Experiencing labor pains and the transformation into a new mother - something that every woman goes through in her life which is very, very special. Around this time last year, I was having severe contractions and was immediately rushed to hospital. My husband was driving the car while I was holding my brother's hands tight. I never thought a speed breaker bump can be so painful when in labor. We reached Cloudnine hospital around midnight. The gynecologist confirmed that my labor had started and I was 4 cm dilated.  Since we had booked our room earlier, I immediately got settled. With each passing minute, the intensity of the pain was increasing. A glass of mosambi juice gave some temporary relief. The nurses came every hour or so, checking my blood pressure and other necessary parameters. Around 3:30 AM, the pain was severe but labor wasn't progressing much. So they gave me a choice to take a pain killer shot which would help me to get some sleep. I took it and slept for a while though I could still feel the pain every 5 minutes. At 8:00 AM, my gynecologist came and gave some medications for me to proceed with labor. For the next 2 hours, I was screaming with pain and yelling at everybody. Thankfully, things went fine with no complications and I delivered a beautiful, tiny baby girl. The nurses in the labor room were very helpful. My hubby was present with me, throughout the delivery and that was so comforting.

The nurse placed my little angel on my chest and she immediately started crying. That's supposedly a good sign. After checking her initial parameters, they wrapped her up in a clean, white towel and brought her to me. Our eyes met for the first time. I made a promise to her that I'll do as best as I can in my new role as her mother.

The medications and the recovery process made me feel so exhausted the rest of the day. I wasn't sure what was going on around me. The night was extremely tough with my daughter continuously crying and we had to call the nurse every 5 minutes. The nurses in Cloudnine were very helpful and supportive.

Sleepless nights, sudden crying sessions (both me and my baby) and emotional swings were all the after-effects in the next one month. It took me a while to actually lift my daughter with confidence. Slowly, the anxieties of a new mom came under control. I have never been so grateful to the power of Internet as I have in the past year. Even my silliest of doubts had an answer somewhere on the web.

From the beginning, I was very determined that I'm going to nurse my daughter exclusively and will not give her formula milk. I firmly believe that's the best gift a mother can give to a baby. Thanks to the Almighty, I'm still able to nurse my baby and it's been such a satisfying experience for the past one year. The introduction of solids has been an exciting and challenging phase as well. I have made sure that I give her home cooked food and not packaged foods. One thought that keeps pushing me in the right direction is "Choose what is right for the baby and not what is convenient to you".

As months passed, her milestones like rolling over, sitting, crawling and standing brought in a lot of joy and excitement. I can't wait to start walking with her, have conversations, play "Monopoly" together, answer her list of questions and many many more. But this first year will always be the most special one.

the third time

Before you proceed any further, read this blogpost of mine to get some context.

Now, the third time was indeed a charm. After the disaster that happened three years ago, I made proper kozhukkattais this time for Ganesh Chaturthi. I'm so happy that they were edible. The shapes could have been better.

I planned quite well in terms of risk mitigation. Less quantity of raw materials to begin with so I don't waste them if at all it didn't turn out well. I also prepared a backup offering for Lord Ganesha in the form of moong dhal payasam.

After the kozhukkattais came out well, I felt I could have made more of them. The sweet tooth was asking for a couple more pieces. Unlike me and hubby, our little daughter is not into sweets yet. I just gave her a small piece and her facial expression indicated that she didn't like it. I said to myself, "her reaction might be different next year". Hope so!!

The unusual lullaby

What better way to dust my blog than to talk about one of the not-so-famous gems of Rahman's music! I fell in love with this song around the same time when I fell in love with my soul-mate (my hubby). It's the title track of "En Swaasa Kaatre". I used to listen to this song continuously while working and waiting for my hubby to come to office (We both worked in the same office and he used to work in evening shifts). Now after many years, my 10 month old daughter loves this song and it's her favorite lullaby. As I rock her in my arms gently swaying, she goes to sleep peacefully, with this song repeating in my iPod.

Very few musical instruments, a gentle beat, the mellifluous Veena interludes and the soul-soothing raaga, all blended together with Chitra's amazing ah-hmm-la-la-s flowing like a stream in a serene forest. She takes this beautiful song to greater heights. Though I felt the essence of this melody could have been captured better in the picturization, I just love this song and can listen to it a million times.

Learning Python

Before I get into the "how" part of learning Python, let me first list down the reasons on why I am learning Python:

  1. First and foremost, my resolution for 2012 was to focus more on Create rather than Consume. Learning a new programming language was one of the list of action items I had listed earlier
  2. Being a stay-at-home mum, the thinking time periods are more these days, during the times I feed my daughter or rock her to sleep. Random ideas pop up now and then, and I want to be able to quickly create something. Of course, the time to focus on such ideas and spend some quality time on execution is really rare, given the circumstances
  3. I want my brain cells to remain active. Working full-time in a job alone shouldn't become the sole reason for my brain cells to get exercised
  4. My prior programming experience was mainly on PL/SQL and SQL in the databases world. Though I had learnt Java long time ago, I'm in no mood to go back and upgrade. I want to experience something new in the programming paradigm
  5. Having read a few blogs on Python's ease of programming, faster learning curve and data processing capabilities, I decided to learn Python

Whenever my daughter takes a nap in the afternoons or when she sleeps early in the nights, I decided to do my learning. I downloaded Swaroop's e-book "A byte of Python" and started reading it. He has covered the basic concepts so clearly that it gave me a good revision of object oriented programming fundamentals. I also ensured I tried the examples and exercises diligently. After finishing his book, I started loving Python. It's definitely a no-non-sense language !

I believe learning becomes more interesting if there are different mediums and sources from which one can learn. Having read an e-book, I decided to go through the Python video lectures hosted by Google. The lecturer Nick Parlante keeps you really engaged and takes you through the concepts of Python step-by-step. I have always had an aversion towards regular expressions. But through his lectures, I finally understood regular expressions and did some interesting exercises in Python. The more you code, the better you learn - after each lecture video, there are a set of exercises you need to complete. It gives immense confidence as you breeze through them. I still remember the night when I was solving one of the exercises and felt thrilled to be "in-the-zone".

Having learnt the basics, I was looking for some advanced concepts to learn in Python. Many programmers have recommended the e-book "Dive into Python". I appreciate the fact that the author has given a real code snippet and then goes about explaining the concepts based on this snippet. It makes learning much more serious and engaging. I'm one-third through this book and hope to complete it by end of May.

I'm enjoying this slow and steady programming journey with Python. I would love to hear comments from experienced Python programmers on how I can take my learning to the next level.