First Birthday Party

Like every parent – I went through the “To do or not do” question. After much contemplation I decided to go ahead and plan a party for my daughter. I felt guilty that we had not held a single function since she was born and felt that missing a first birthday party would be quite awful. Specially since birthdays are a big deal in my family and my mother has always made them super special for us.

Planning was the key. I got an early start and researched several ideas and themes. I knew I wanted to do as much as I could on my own. So here is a list of all that I did.

Cake

We had a caterpillar shaped cupcake cake – inspired by Eric Carle’s book “The very hungry Caterpillar”. We also had a butterfly shaped cupcake cake as I had a total of 56 cupcakes and the caterpillar used only about 25.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar Cupcake Cake

My biggest concern with the cupcakes was that I wanted to keep them fresh. I had planned the party for a Sunday lunch. I baked the cakes on Friday night and kept them fresh by cooling them and sealing them in Tupperware. Yes there were a lot of boxes. I did a test run two weeks in advance and tried all methods – freezing refrigerating etc. However, they kept well outside. Besides, it was October as well. I iced the cakes on Sunday early morning.  Around 4 a.m. I had prepared the icing. It took me all of 1.5 hours to assemble the cake and ice them. I stuck with a very simple design. Just moved the nozzle in a circle from inside out. The cake really was my biggest project.

Party Menu

I also made the rest of the food myself with lots of help from the husband. The birthday party menu included –

Starters: Mini Idlis, chips & dip

Adults: Rajma, Paneer, Mushroom, Aloo Dum, Naan, Jeera Rice

Kid’s Menu: Mini Pizzas, Fairy Bread (an Aussie speciality), Fruit Rainbow and individual bags of Goldfish crackers.

The mini pizzas, we made on the morning of the party. We used Betty Crocker’s Pizza dough packets – cut the dough using a cookie cutter. Top with Barilla Pasta sauce spiced with herbs and good quality mozzarella.

The Fairy bread was super simple too. I used white sandwich bread and cut it into triangles. Used regular butter on half and peanut butter on the other half and topped it with rainbow-colored sprinkles. They were quite a hit with kids and adults alike.

Fairy Bread

Each child went back with a goodie bag based on their age. These included Bubbles, wood rattles, play-doh and puzzles for the older kids.

We had also organized some activity for the kids. There was stuff for coloring and foam figures that they used and made collages.

Decorations

We had the party in a bright room within or condo complex. For decorations we used blue, pink and yellow balloons. I made tissue paper pom poms that now hang over my daughter’s crib. We also did a photo banner of pictures from her first year.

Decorations at the party

I made sure she got her morning nap and brought her high chair along, so she could sit and watch all the fun. She had fun, however, she did not make a mess of her cake! We also waited till next weekend to open her gifts in the hope that she would want to tear the packages, but she just was not interested.

The party eventually was as much for us as for her, but I am so glad we did it.

Inspiration:

Caterpillar Cupcake Cake 

Butterfly Cake

Tissue Paper Pom Poms

The privelege of being a Mother

So it was Mother’s day this past weekend. As a family, we do not celebrate Mother’s , Father’s or Valentine’s day – Reason being that every day is a day to tell that relationship – that you love them. However, yesterday being my first ever Mother’s day, I got all nostalgic about being a Mum. So while I have nothing great to write about celebrations around the day, I want to share how special it is being a mum.

Since my daughter has been conceived, I am grateful for being a woman. I always thought that the man has it easy in society. No gender bias, no gender role expectations of being super humans and No Periods!! I thought they had it all. That was only till I had not had my daughter. Everything has changed since. I feel privileged to be a Mum – to have given birth to a child (another life). I even don’t mind those wretched periods any more. It is all worth it.

I am happy for women as a collective. We do have something that the men do not have. A privilege that is exclusively ours – a privilege that you can understand only if you go through it.

Sorry if this sounds like a male bashing piece. It really is not, but I can’t articulate how everything becomes ok just by having a child. I guess, becoming a mother unleashes a certain inner strength in you where nothing else matters.

Lessons Learnt from Hiring a Nanny

You can read about a detailed description of my experience of hiring a Nanny. Thsi is a quick recap of all the lessons I learnt.

• Never doubt your gut
• While doing a reference check, be observant of the language the refrees use (One of the refrees kept using words like Honey while talking to me and it just did not sound right. I thought she was one of the Nannies relatives. Also, two of the numbers that she gave me were never reachable. Those folks did not call me back. So, in retrospect I had only 1 real referal for her)
• Get the Nanny to do things. She can claim to move mountains while she talks to you. (Nanny number 1 had worked as a CNA, knew CPR (for which I was paying her big bucks), and had worked with babies – but clearly, she could not make a bottle of formula milk correctly and was inept at taking instructions around such things)
• They say it takes a village to raise a child – that is why get your village (other friends) to casually visit with the nanny during her interview. It is always good to have another opinion apart from your spouse and yours.
• You may feel that your baby is a good barometer of the Nanny’s success, but really your baby knows nothing. My daughter will smile at anyone and be happy with anyone. She is non-fussy and easy going. This means I have to be extra vigilant. My daughter was happy with Nanny number 1, but really I had to watch out for my daughter. As a new mom it is all one big learning expereince.
• Always get someone who has had their own kids. I was told this when I started the interview process, but chose to ignore this advice when hiring my first Nanny. I later realized that there were some things that would frazzle her just cause she thought my daughter was too delicate. Nanny number is a grandmom – she has become my go to person for advice. As a new mom I really know nothing, she has kids and grandkids and has a wealth of knowledge that I am benfetting from.
• Pay a rate that you are comfortable with. I realized that I was paying Nanny 1 way over the going rate. I agreed to it then because I thought I was getting a professional. One red flag went off when I was ref checking for her, the refree told me that the Nanny had requested that I do not disclose how much she was charging. In my converstion Nanny 1 had told me that she was chrging this particular family “a lot”. I suspect it was quite the opposite.
• Do not commit to things at the outset – such as food, TV etc. See how it goes and keep adding these priveleges as you go along.

This person is caring for the most precious thing in your life, so you want to get it right. I will be happy to share with you how much I am paying the Nanny, job responsibilities etc. Just reach out.

 

Hiring a Nanny

As soon as my daughter turned three and half months, I was oferred a new job and that meant deciding on baby care options. As you already know, we decided to go with a Nanny. So, I started the search by sending out requests for leads to my network of mommies and browsing profiles on care.com and sittercity.com.

I also reached out to a friend who had just finished hiring a baby sitter. She happened to talk to me about it when she came to see my daughter and so, I reached out to her for information on a Nanny she had really liked, but not hired. I called the said Nanny and asked her to come over for a visit the following day. I guess somewhere sub consciously, I was already convinced that I was going to hire her. I liked her the minute I saw her. My daughter smiled at her and was comfortable in being held by her and that was good for me. I asked her a couple of questions around her experience and how she would do things and decided to go with her. I checked her references, did a background check – everything by the book before I said a yes. It was strange how being in a job search myself influenced the whole hiring process. I was giving to my Nanny all the benfits, I wanted others to give me.

Well I started work and so did my Nanny. The first week went off very well, but then slowly things started getting weird. I had red flags going up every day, nothing major, but my instincts kept telling me that I had made the wrong decision. As the Nanny got more and more comfortable, things kept getting more and more out of hand. Our Nanny first started eating our food. I had made it clear that she had to bring her own food simply because I did not have the bandwidth to shop for another person. A slice or two of bread really does not matter, but she could eat half a loaf of bread in a day. She would open sealed boxes of food, which in my opinion was totally inappropriate. Eventually she started cooking at my place.

She was also not feeding the baby correctly. She did not measure the baby’s formula correctly which caused my baby to get extremely constipated. She could not follow instructions. Within three weeks of her being with us, we decided that she had to go.

I felt guilty about judging another person, but after it started effecting my baby, she just had to go. Fortunately I met someone at work who had the exact same Nanny (what are the chances!) who validated everything I was aprehending. She confirmed my instincts were on target and pretty much two days later the Nanny was let go.

We now have an amazing person, who again was recommended by this colleague at work. She has turned out to be spectacular. However, the second time around, my interviewing was very different. I met three people and instead of asking then waht they did, I asked them to come spend 4 hours at home with me and the baby. During this time I got them to feed and bathe my daughter. Just by watching them handle my daughter, I knew who would work for me – and this time we got it right. I also invited my neighbor for a third opinion (apart from my husband and mine). I did not conduct any refernce or background checks for this Nanny. I just went on collective gut feel.

I also took a day off from work, to show her how I want things done. My nanny has been spectacular. She makes my daughter laugh and play. Also, as an additional bonus she helps us with some hosuekeeping work.

Nanny vs. Daycare

Leaving your baby behind in someone else’s care is probably one of the toughest decisions. Should you go with a daycare or a Nanny? Well I was in this situation a couple months ago and decided to reach out to some of my “Mum” friends to get a perspective. I also spoke to my family and after getting all opinions, my husband and I decided to go with a Nanny.

Our reasons for doing so:

1.) Our daughter was very small. Just 3 months and we wanted her to stay in her own environment.

2.) I went back to work in the winter and so, I really did not want her to get sick through exposure to other kids

3.) The day care that we were most interested in was unavailable

4.) Our daughter was still sleeping a lot at the time and so, we felt that she really did not need the social interaction at the time

5.) I wanted her to continue to Skype with my family, which would not be possible if we sent her to day care

6.) I wanted one on one attention to be given to her

7.) We didn’t want to drag a sleeping child out in the cold to drop off at the day care

Apprehensions:

1.) Can we trust the Nanny with our baby?

2.) Can we trust the Nanny with our home?

3.) What will it be like to leave another person unsupervised with the baby?

We weighed the pros and cons and decided to go with a Nanny. In four months we have gone through 2 nannies. Our first hire was a learning experience and our second hire is just awesome. Knock on wood.