A new way of life in our 'Global Village'.

Last night there was a documentary on CBC about cricket , and a large part of it focused on Trinidad, the country where I was born and raised, the funny thing is that I hardly recognized the country. The doc explored how playing cricket transform the lives of these young men, but as the narrator was originally from India, he discussed a lot of the similarities between the 2 countries, making it look almost exactly like India so that someone like me had some difficulty believing that this was Trinidad. However, I did appreciate the fact that the stereotyped view of Trinidad was avoided, as it is not always about Carnival.

It has been my experience living in Canada (at least the greater Toronto area) that most people have heard about Trinidad, but it is a little known fact that the country is populated by East Indians as well as Africans. (plus Chinese, Caucasian… etc, but that’s not the point) Most times I tell someone that I am originally from Trinidad (after the get over the initial shock) the response is “What? I never knew that there were Indian people in Trinidad!” Yes… hard to believe that we live in a ‘global village’, yet our knowledge about other cultures appears to be quite limited.

When I was in my last year of high school we had some well defined cliques, it seemed like the Africans all ended up together; it was a gradual occurrence… girls who had been in inter-racial friendships at the start of high school, were now hanging out with their ‘own kind’. As I reflect upon it, even now I wonder what happened in those 5 years that separated us like apartheid hitting a nation…

Now that my son is getting ready to meet new people and form his own friendships for the first time, I am wondering how his peers would interact with him in our Canadian home… Not wondering so much because we are Indian, but because we are Muslim, and the often erroneous views that are allowed to grow in society today prevents people from looking at us as the individuals that we are, but to look at us as the mass media has stereotyped us as being.

Now, I hope that my son can overlook race, religion, and cultural differences in this multi-cultural land, and form friendships with individuals based on their personalities, and I hope he tries to find similarities instead of differences, and I hope that he and his new classmates can succeed where we failed, bringing us closer to ending all forms of racism.

When I grow up.

Parents are all alike when it comes to the future of their kids, we all have big dreams and aspirations for them, and I often talk to my kids about what they would like to be when they grow up.

My thoughts however, are not so much in terms of doctor, lawyer, engineer, that our parents must have imagined for us, but more like defining a plan for peace in the Middle East, or being able to eliminate poverty and world hunger. You know… just small things…

The eldest one often tells me that he wants to be a doctor; I think the reason (like many kids) is because he wants to help people, but then again he also wants to be the bad guy from The Incredibles because he wants to wear a cape! The eldest one also declared that his brother (the 2 year old) will be an Animal Rescuer, and that the baby would be a fireman!

My 4 year old loves to talk, loves to have discussions, loves to make plans and deals, he is very creative, and being the eldest, he is quite a good bully leader, so my husband and I are thinking that he would make a good community leader, or leader of a grassroots group that succeeds in ending world hunger… or something like that…

My 2 year old is quite curious about everything, he will take everything apart, and then put it back together, he loves his blocks, he loves his books, so my husband (being an engineer) thinks that he has the mind of an engineer, but I think that he can be a scholar, discovering something about the world that we didn’t figure out yet!

Of course no matter how smart you think your kids are, sometimes you just have to wonder… My almost 4 year old said to me “When I grow up, I would like to be a truck!” Yes, not a truck-driver, but an actual truck! And the toddler informed me that he is thinking of being Hi-5 (yes, the TV show)...

At least I still have hope with the baby…

Mommy, the sequel.

Yesterday was not such a great day… (as you might have been able to guess from my previous post)

As this week started, I started feeling like I just did not want to be a parent anymore… well, at least I did not want to be a stay at home one!

The constant “mommy, mommy, mommy” of the almost 4 year old, combined with the insistence of the 2 year old for me to help him put gloves on his hands in the middle of summer, and with the background noise of the crying baby just made me want to scream… very loudly. It took every bit of restraint and faith in me to remain fairly calm. And as my almost 4 year old was telling me “keep it together man!”, I made sure they were all safe and made my ‘getaway’ to the bathroom for a few minutes of silence.

My husband, who I can imagine is also constantly tired and would also like an escape was assigned to babysitting duties as soon as he entered the house… But as I sat by myself, googling mastitis because I thought that was the reason for my considerable breast pain and ‘cranky’ disposition, the family downstairs sounded like they were falling apart without me there.

I felt angry that I could not get a break… my husband appeared to be pretty inconsiderate and useless to me… I mean he could not take care of them for just 5 minutes… JUST 5 minutes! I did need some rest, especially with the mastitis and everything, I mean it is an illness after all!

So here I am today… there is much to be said about a brand new day… turns out that I do not have mastitis. Still don’t know about the breast pain… maybe from nursing a teething baby. At some level I almost wish that I did have an infection, because then I would have an excuse for feeling like crap, and I would not have to feel like I was just a miserable mother, but as it happens…

Motherhood is a weird career, its great yet it totally sucks, the pay is horrible yet more people join everyday, the rewards are not obvious right away and miraculously we have the patience to wait for it, the perks however makes it all worthwhile. So as I sit here, typing on the ridiculously small keyboard (without gaming console attachment), my kids are down for their nap and the baby is getting a chance to crawl around on the floor. Earlier today we took a walk and then I listened to them play in the tiny backyard, I noticed that I was enjoying their voices again, enjoying my 2 year old say for the first time ever “I don’t like bugs mommy”, in that sweeter than anything 2 year old way of talking, and I felt at peace with myself.

I spent a lot of time sitting in front of my computer in the past 2 days, not so much doing work or anything productive, but more because it was the only form of escape that was possible. But having spent more time enjoying my kids today, I noticed that they really did not mind so much that I was a little distant lately, they were just happy to be playing today.

Do I really need an excuse to have a break? Does it really make me a bad mother to just want an escape sometimes? Is it really unreasonable to just want some silence? Does it really mean that I do not like my kids or that I should not have kids if sometimes I wish that I can be ‘without’ them? Maybe we do not have to ensure that our kids are being ‘stimulated’ every second of the day… maybe we don’t have to be their playmate every second of the day… maybe sometimes we can just let them be…

Sometimes I can just deal with the priorities, like making sure they are fed and safe, because being the ‘far-from-supermom’ mother than I am if I attempt to be everything that they want all of the time, I will certainly explode.

Time and a camera.

As I do not use a microwave anymore, I heat milk for the kids, yes both, yes even the almost 4 year old, on the stove.

On any other night, I would be upstairs with the kids and hubby would get the milk, but, as the baby is crying like a newborn, I needed some time away… Yes, I consider time alone in the kitchen ‘time away’!

So alone time in the kitchen and a camera in hand… (I was taking it upstairs with me to download the pics)

Things that should really never be shown, but is… because my brain is actually melting… I think…

Dude, the milk is ready!

Inside the ‘entertainment centre’ cupboard is a great place to store stuff for the kids. Books, crayons, markers, and even more pampers!

This is our dinning room floor… attractive isn’t it?

This is our dinning table. What can I say… I am not exactly domesticated!

WAY too much plastic dishes! My husband used to fill the role of dishwasher perfectly while I was pregnant, but now the belly is not stopping my hands from reaching those dishes… I guess he’s expecting me to do it. Well, I guess its only fair… as he IS working all day, and I, with the 3 kids, am at HOME all day!” />

We desperately need a dish-washer and we have WAY too much plastic dishes! My husband used to fill the role of dishwasher perfectly while I was pregnant, but now the belly is not stopping my hands from reaching those dishes… I guess he’s expecting me to do it. Well, I guess its only fair… as he IS working all day, and I, with the 3 kids, am at HOME all day!

Yes, we bought this at IKEA... its cheap & easy! We have a lot of glasses although we don’t drink… go figure! And notice that I have some cars and trucks on the second shelf… I didn’t know what else to do with it as I was frantically cleaning for the ‘in-laws’, I saw my mother in law looking at it on the shelf with that ‘what the hell did my son see in her’ kind of a look!

Hospital Bedrest.

When I was pregnant with my second kid, I spent 2 months in the hospital… yes, 2 MONTHS, not weeks, not days…

I had complete placenta previa and started to bleed on the first day of my early maternity leave at 7-ish months. An ambulance took me to the hospital, where I remained until I had the baby.

I was there for exactly 2 months, and I saw so many other women come and go with so many different pregnancy complications… that experience really makes me appreciate the relative “normal-ness” of my life.

Anyways, I kept a blog while I was there, and here is one of the posts from when I was there…

Saturday, May 01, 2004

My official name in the ward…”THE easiest patient”! The nurses tell me that I am the easiest patient on the floor…why…I get my own water, I have my own towels, I don’t complain to get my sheets changed, I take my tray back to the kitchen when I finish my food, AND I never ring that call bell!! Now they only do my vital checks twice a day, once in the morning and once before I go to bed, I don’t see my nurse very much, although a lot of them are coming over to check on my cross-stitch progress! What is it with nurses and cross-stitch?! I never even heard of cross-stitch before I came in the hospital.

So, in other news…roommate number 1 is back. This is her 4th time back since I have been here, and she’s been coming in since January! Nurses refer to patients like her as ‘frequent flyers’. This time she thinks that she is in pre-term labour…she thought the same thing the last time she came in too…

My present roommate, number 14, is extremely quiet…sometimes I forget she is there. She has been reading her religious book non-stop since she got in here…she has about 3 more weeks to go…she tells me that her plan is to read…

I said goodbye to roommate number 13 today, she gave me a gift…I feel so special! She was really nice, we got along great… She told me that her nurse was telling her that one of the moms fell asleep while holding her baby and the baby fell to the ground!

There is a symphony going on in the room next door…once one baby starts to bawl…they all start to bawl. The ring-leader is really screaming though, I have not heard a newborn cry this much before…wow, don’t know how much sleep we going to get tonight!??!? – posted by s @ 10:06 PM