All I knew about phonics till about three years back was it was all about learning the sounds of the letters. When my daughter first started school and came back home one day singing, ‘Snake is in the grass, snake is in the grass, ssssssss’, that’s when I started taking a real interest in learning all about phonics and using it to form the spellings of words. At the end of her pre-nursery, my daughter and I could sing the songs for almost all the alphabets. I was to discover only later that the songs they taught in her school were from ‘Jolly Phonics’.

Having so far never been a mother who freaks out and makes her kid study for several hours each week, partly because my daughter just cannot be made to sit if she is not interested and I am also of a strong believer that there is no way a person can escape from learning ABCD, all through her Nursery and Kindergarten 1, I continued to be laid back teaching her only on and off. The school was doing a good job anyway and I never could and still cannot understand why so many parents are enrolling their kids for extra phonics classes.
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It was a rainy afternoon yesterday and there I was on the way to my daughter’s school, carrying my half-asleep toddler in one hand and carrying my umbrella in another. Even as I was struggling to manage both, a fellow parent with whom I haven’t interacted with before asked me to close my umbrella and shared her own with us. Even as I thanked her so many times, I remembered the numerous times I have been offered timely help by strangers simply because I was with small kid(s). It is a kind world after all!

Ok so now back to tracking how my voice rest is going on. Last Saturday saw me waking up with my throat strained. I immediately started doing multiple rounds of gargling, drank lots of warm water and above all, did a quick recap of all that the doctor said. Then I maintained almost complete silence for the next 2 hours. My throat did become better after a while. My daughter, ever the most helpful, from then on, has been reminding me to stop talking the moment I talk beyond a couple of sentences. Barring four-five instances when I talked a lot, but never once shouted, I have otherwise been Ok. My patience level is also improving. I don’t just maintain external silence. I am also working on remaining calm deep down.

Everywhere I find everyone writing about the need for a bit of a me-time to rejuvenate yourself. I wonder if in olden days or even in the previous generation, did people really crave so much for me-time? Forget about everyone else, why do I myself crave for at least a small chunk of 10-minutes of me-time often?

Earlier this year, I went for a concert of Sanjay Subrahmanyan in Singapore. As I was going by train to the venue, I realized that that was the first time I was travelling without my children by train! And to think that I have been here for almost 5 years! Having gotten so much used to people giving up their seats for me since I am with kids all the time, I almost expected that somebody would give me their seat. 😛 That 20-minute train journey had me thinking for quite a while about the need for taking regular breaks from the routine.

A month back, I had taken my kids to Ikea just so they could play in the play area there. This was the first time my son was going to play there. The play area at Ikea doesn’t allow parents inside. Though I knew my daughter would take care of her brother very well, I was still a little bit apprehensive about how he would be. He wanted to come back to me ten minutes before the allotted one hour play time. But those 50 minutes time turned out to be a happy time for my kids and a happy time for me too since I could happily browse through my favourite shop without running behind a naughty toddler. Retail therapy does work wonders, isn’t it? 😉

Believe me when I tell you that your children need a break from you too. Yesterday we had guests come home. My little one was so happily playing with everyone who had come that he didn’t even come near me. Children need more people to play with than too many toys.

If there is one thing that almost every person who visits you post the birth of your baby tell you, it’s ‘You should take rest and nap when the baby sleeps’. It’s another fact that when you have at least one more person who can take care of the baby, you can rest even when the baby is awake. The problem arises when you are the only one with the baby the whole day and you have a dozen household chores waiting to be done at any given point of time. So every time the baby takes a nap, you would be rushing to do as much as possible and before you are even half way through your chores, the baby would be wide awake feeling refreshed.

Now that my little one is almost two and a half years old and his nowadays-rare daytime naps are always when his sister is back from school, finding a bit of a free time for myself has become a rarity. Today is one of those rare days when my little one is now having his daytime nap and I don’t have much to be done. Ok if I want, I can dust the windows, iron the clothes, etc. But I have decided that all those can wait. Here I am, all set to type away everything that I wanted to in the last two weeks.

Ok so it has been about 12 days since I wrote something here. And how have these 12 days been? The first few days of August were nice and relaxing. But, last week, there were several instances when I was whining aloud a bit, though I did cut it short within a few words. But I definitely did not do it in a loud voice. So, yes, I am improving. But, nowadays, I feel that I am talking a bit more than I should be.

Last week saw both my kids falling sick with fever which meant sleepless nights for the kids and me and crying spells from them. Add to it those rainy days. It meant we couldn’t get our much-needed outdoor play time. So, yes, we were all in a bit of a lousy mood. A school holiday in the middle of the week which turned out to be a rainy day further added to the lousiness. Hmmm, so were these the reasons why I was in a bit of a whining mode myself? No proper sleep meant there was a need to keep at least a bit of a conversation going all through the day (and night too!) with my kids. At two different instances during our nowadays brief-phone-calls, my sister reminded me that my volume level and the tone of my voice needed to be minded.

There were those good moments too with regard to my progress on improving my patience levels and controlling my anger and stress levels. When my daughter had her full-blown crying spell last week, I remained calm throughout, did not raise my voice and did not make the mistake of giving any advice to her. I always get so much stressed out in trying to find ways to calm her down as soon as possible that I would keep talking with her all through the crying spell. It would either be ‘well-meaning advice’ or some more shouting from my side as well! Last week, I not only did not utter any unwanted words, I also remained calm deep-down. My daughter’s crying spells apart, I always get provoked easily. I seem to be improving on that area as well, though I have a long way to go. Unruffled, will I ever be?

Another good thing which has been happening is we have started reaching school on time without rushing on the way. But, there were a few days when I should have reduced my talking further while getting my daughter ready to school.

Anyway, now that both my kids are back to normal and we are all slowly catching up on our lost sleep, I hope that this week turns out to be better. Also, writing here will definitely help me remember to not do any unwanted continuous-talking.