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.
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.
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