Its five and half months on...

Ada is home now for five and half months now and I blog very rarely these days. Apologies for that, it has been a lot of adjustment, but I dont think my not writing has anything to do with Ada :) She is a great baby, when I say great, I really mean it - not because I am her momma. Now she is 8 and half month  old and she can crawl very fast and she is trying to stand. Her favorite sport is doing "Jhul Jhul" (by holding our hand and moving back and forth) and dance. Earlier we were thinking how to accommodate a baby in our life, now we cant imagine a life without her. She is such a delight! She makes us happy and fills the space with her contagious laughter.
Now I have become expert diaper changer, baby soother, bottle refiller. I can give bath to her, message her, take care of her all by myself. I never thought I had all these abilities.
Whoever says that adopted babies are not treated well, I have to strongly disagree with them. After the baby is home, no normal person will think about their genetic makeup. The baby becomes all yours. You hardly think if she shares the same single nucleotide polymorphisms as yours. When we look at her, it gives so much pleasure to see that actually she is growing and we are taking care of her. She learns whatever we say or do. That is amazing! I dont think if we had a biological child, we would have loved him/her more than we love Ada. She is apple of her papa's eyes. He can let her do anything, but that scares me sometimes, what if she goes the wrong way... 

The momma syndrome!

Not very long ago, very frequently I would make fun of momma's complaining that their children are not eating at all. But recently I found myself doing the same, albeit without much of my knowledge. Our baby Ada is home for the last two and half months. These two and half months have been a huge turning point in my life.
In November 17th, the agency called us saying that a 11 days old baby girl has come and if we would like to adopt her. My immediate response was a big yes without giving much thought. After sometimes the thought started percolating in and the thought of arranging logistics started sinking in. I was getting in touch with my mom and I in-laws regarding a full timer at home. Then the nervousness about handling a small baby all by myself. I have heard horror stories of babies crying  all night long, parents going into depression and so on. But we went ahead during last week of January 2014' camped about a week, but the agency, lawyers with vested interest turned us down until till a later date. Only after extracting some money, they called us the next week to come and take the baby. I went again with my parents for a day and got the baby with us. Ever since life has changed completely. From a free spirited person I became a mom!!

I have heard that moms cry when the baby's are taken for blood test. What a surprise i cried too when ada was getting her blood taken for a test. I am talking often these days about Ada not eating well! Is this the mom syndrome. I have successfully now inherited the mom syndrome.

Time of my life....

We are witnessing a great time and a great transition. In the last decades of my life, I am witnessing lots of changes - positive ones, quite astounding. I will cite some of this with examples. In Kolkata, there are lot of things are there that I dont like, and many times I wished silently that all of these go away. And as I watch some of them really go away!! This is not about mysticism,  this is about changing times. This may be because many more people thought about it acted upon it and made it happen. Of my wishes that were fulfilled were:

1. Cleanliness in the lake park near my house. As I see now there, people are cleaning it everyday :)
2. There was a guy selling green coconut near the park, but his cycle ricksaw is always parked on the road blocking the traffic. One fine day I saw he has permanently moved to the pavement, unblocking the road and keeping his surrounding clean.
3. There are homeless people on the street on my way back home. As winter approaches, I always think of donating them blankets. One fine morning I saw all of them already having blankets :)
4. Our apartment complex campus is much cleaner now.
5. Traffic stops way before their traffic lines giving way to pedestrians.
6. People clean up the road after selling puchkas etc.
7. There is stadium near my house and every time there is a program, the noise is quite disturbing. Now I see they are building walls around  it and we hear much less noise.

Among the things that has not happened so far is:

1. Spitting on the road. I wish this stops completely.
2. I hope there are no homeless people.
3. I hope there are no street children.
4. I hope there are no street dwellers.
5. I hope the encroachment goes away.
6. I hope there are vending zones all over....

Apart from all these, it is heartening to be in an era where there are a number of great people are around. I call this as renaissance. The great people we are contemporary with are: Baba Ramdev, Sri Sri Ravishankar, BK sister shivani, Narendra Modi. All of them work selflessly beyong their personal agenda. Hope our country will be prosperous one of these days in my lifetime.