Leftovers from catching up

Life is slowly limping back to normal in the P-new mum- Nikki household. Nikki's tummy infection has finally settled down, S is back from her month long vacation and I've even managed to find part time help who actually gets some work done as opposed to skipping around the house with a broom and duster before calling it a day. I hadn't blogged about Nikki's tummy bug earlier because quite frankly it had scared the living daylights out of me. It began with a vicious attack of diarrhea and a horrible rash which made nappy changes a nightmare, and even though we managed to get these under control soon enough, the infection itself persisted for nearly a month as revealed by ongoing stool tests. As a result of this poor Nikki was on a rather restricted diet for a very long time though we are gradually resuming a regular diet now. She's still lactose intolerant though so its a continuation of soy milk disguised in fruit smoothies and soups, since its undisguised version tends to bring out the mutinous streak in Nikki. (As you can imagine, I have been subjected to way more than my share of "Kitni kamzor (how I HATE that word) hai!" comments this last month than I could possibly care for. Aaaaaargghh!)

What worries me more than the illness itself, even though I would be quite happy to never encounter it again, is the apparent ease with which it can be picked up. "Oh happens to kids all the time!" was a frequent refrain I heard from both the ped as well as the chappie at the pathology lab where we went for the stool tests. According to the ped the infection is often picked up due to teething which makes babies rather non-discriminating when shoving stuff in their little mouths or as a result of eating raw food like salads or outside food which may not have been hygienically prepared. Now I'm very careful, okay fine, ultra paranoid, when it comes to Nikki's food but there's little I can do about the stuff she puts in her mouth. She has a particular fancy for scouring the house for dirt, finding it in the most unthinkable places (the nearly invisible crevice between the grooves of the balcony sliding doors anyone?) and then sucking on her dirty little digits with joyful relish. Then there's the problem of friends and relatives who come over and like to feed her all sorts of stuff, never mind whether I approve of it or not. In the month leading up to Nikki's birthday our home was full of guests and I was going nuts between trying to maintain some semblance of control between what was going inside Nikki's mouth what with her own explorations (Ooh blob of slime! Wonder what it tastes like?) and what people were trying to sneakily feed her (this is a post for another day, I think!). Since I'm hoping that this particular tummy bug never makes an appearance again, I need to figure this one out fast. Suggestions and advice are most welcome (Read as SOS!!! Help me please!)
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Sometime back I had got this award from Buzz, I'd now like to pass it on to some of my very special blog buddies; women whom I've never met but whose blogs I enjoy reading immensely and with whom I've connected on so many levels, albeit virtually. This is for you MRC, Aneela, Buzz, Divs, Mindful Meanderer, Priyanka, The Soul of Alec Smart and Momo's Ma. I had ALSO *ahem* got another award (whoop, whoop, whoop!!) from Shruti, and here it is proudly displayed!

Er, well actually I think that may be two awards so whoop, whoop, whoop once again!!!

I've also been thinking for sometime now of doing something a little different with my blogger template, you know, jazzing it up a bit. So do drop me a line if you know anybody who might be willing to take design requests or know of even any online resources that will enable even creatively and technologically challenged souls such as yours truly to get a spot of designing done, will you?
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P was out of town for the day yesterday and I hadn't made any plans, so the weekend got off to a rather uneventful start. S had the day off as well so it was just Nikki and me left to our own devices. We spent the morning doing a lot of reading; I had picked up a few books for Nikki last weekend and she seems to be turning into quite the little bookworm :) Her current all time favorite is Sleep Tight Bunny, so it was demands for that all morning. In the afternoon it was a trip to the supermarket and the park followed by some water play in her baby inflatable pool (she's become a total water baby ever since P's little experiment). In the evening we went for a walk and I took her to a new park near our house where there's a massive sandpit. It was Nikki's first time in the sand, barring the Goa trip where she'd been too little to play properly in it. At first she ventured in very gingerly, looking quite disgusted at this grainy stuff that was sticking and slipping from her fingers all at once and brushing her hands on her clothes or dusting them off every now and then, but soon she got quite comfortable and was scooting around flinging sand here and there and destroying the sand castles I was trying to build for her. She ended up having so much fun she didn't want to leave but she got tired soon after having hardly slept during the day, so it was home for a relaxing bath, dinner and then bedtime.
I found myself at a loose end once Nikks was alseep so I popped some Wild Honey, from this album, into the music system and cooked a dinner of Sanjeev Kapoor's chicken meat loaf and a rocket and lettuce salad for dinner for P & I. The cable guy was beaming Housefull, and I remembered reading good reviews in the papers so we decided to check it out over dinner. Now I am not the most discerning of critics anymore as movies go; the long hiatus from movie watching that early mommyhood got with it as well as the supreme levels of patience I have developed post Nikki, normally ensure that I enjoy pretty much everything that I watch these days. I even LIKED Dostana for example, so that gives you a pretty good picture doesn't it? But even I had to draw the line at this Housefull trash, I mean really, what were they thinking?! I'm going to need all of today to recover!