Change is the Only Constant

I finally got my life in order and so am back to my not-so-secret blogging life. I've missed all of you and hope to catch-up with your news. One thing I've noticed on my bloggy strolls is that most bloggers are having a slump in the first few months of 2011 (though I am the worst of the lot)! Coincidence? Blog overload or is it a seasonal setting-my-life-in-order phase *shrug*. Anyhow, I have made a couple of changes:

• I've moved to wordpress. Blogger was good for to start with, however, it's not versatile enough for me 
• I'm going to slightly tweak my content to focus more on the non-mommy parts of my life. I'm not a true mommy blogger and it was restricting my style
• I'm going to try and blog thrice a week. Hopefully, this will push me to be a lot more regular

So come along and find me at Seeking Synergy where I try to balance out the different aspects of my life to create a better whole.

P.S. - Please don't walk off. I would really love to have all of you continue this journey with me. You're my inspiration and the reason I log on.
      

Medical Break

We've had a horrible week:

• The munchkin has been prodded, poked and scanned to diagnose her three week long fever
• My maternal grandfather is in the ICU waiting for his angiogram this morning
• My paternal grandmother is getting her MRI done for a suspected dislocated shoulder, right at this moment

So, please don't go away if I'm missing for a while. I'll be popping-up in all your comment sections for sure in the interim.

Weekend Zen

I realized one thing this week. It doesn't matter how many brilliant posts you write in your head, you need to put it out in the blogsphere for it to have any sort of real value. So before the next weekend starts, here's a post I've been meaning to write for the past seven days. This is not one of those brilliant post (you need to hang out here regularly to get to read those), however, it's a special one.

Last week I decided that I need to be more like the techie. When he's with the little one, he completely enjoys her. I understand that I can never be the same, since a mummy's balance of fun versus responsibility is different from a daddy's (at least in my limited experience). However, I have also understood that sometimes you just need to have fun and throw caution to the winds, because this time with my daughter will not come back. So, I attacked the weekend with this learning in ,mind (yes, I can plan a fun day too). Surprisingly, just the intention to have fun lead to a spontaneous zen-inducing day.

On the weekends our whole family gets together to relax. So, we have about 7 kids ranging from 1.10 years to 15 years throw together. The first half of the day was pretty much par for course. Grocery shopping, family lunch and a movie in the home theater while the younger ones napped. Post naps we stepped into the driveway to perfect weather conditions, bright sunshine and a cooling breeze. That's when I hit on my first idea, hopscotch. This may seem a bit silly to some of you, but today's kids either play organized sport or spend time on the phone, in-front off the computer/television. 

When I asked for some driveway chalk they were all intrigued. By the time I had the first box drawn out, I had 10 people helping me. We ended-up with 2 different layouts and marked them as level 1 and level 2. This has to be the most fun game of hopscotch I have played in years. The little ones just had fun jumping, while the older ones loved the challenge and the adults actually got some decent workouts.  The perfect way to enjoy the perfect day.

We didn't end with hopscotch. The enthusiastic competing gave all of us a big appetite and I decided to make my favourite spaghetti arrabiata (I know it's nothing special, but we love it). My 12 year old niece loves cooking and wanted to help me out. My toddler is my current kitchen helper. So the three of us set off to blanch the tomatoes. By the time the tomatoes where ready for peeling I had 5 kids in the kitchen (2 of the boys joined in and the littlest boy decided to keep pulling stuff of the workspace). They all peeled and chopped the tomatoes, smashed the garlic, and halved the spaghetti sticks. (Breaking the sticks was their favourite activity, thought the flying pieces of dry spaghetti  almost caused a few injuries. I finally had them close their eyes every time they snapped the sticks.) Everyone had a turn at stirring the sauce and tearing up the herbs. The troupe even enjoyed the clean-up part. All this fun also resulted in food that everyone loved (there were about 15-20 of us that evening).

The best part of this experience - I spent a fun, stress-free day with my baby.

This is what I've planned for tomorrow's zen experience - jump rope competitions followed by tofu and vegetable stir-fry with buck wheat noodles. (The little one's running a fever today, so don't know if this will actually materialize.) 

What do you do for family fun? I love new ideas and am always willing to use my husband and child as guinea pigs (just kidding).

Bloggy Inspiration

Life has been so mad, that I actually forgot I have a blog. How lame is that!

Towards the end of October, I kept getting these amazing ideas for posts, however I didn't have the time to actually write them down. Now when I've finally logged in, I don't know what to write about! If this isn't a perfect example of irony, what is?

I think I read somewhere that most bloggers tire of their blogs within the first six months. Now, I definitely haven't gotten bored, just very busy and I absolutely don't want to give-up on my blog or lose the few readers I have. So I've decided to go and spend sometime reading the blogs that keep me going through the week and look for inspiration. Why don't you all come along and enjoy yourselves. I promise you some great reads:

• More Than Just A Mother* - This is the first mommy blog I ever read and till date it's my favourite. I dare you not to laugh out aloud. Infact, I would go so far as to say, that this mother got me to start blogging. If I spent as much time writing as I do reading her blog and thinking up interesting comments, I probably would have a book contract by now. She's pretty famous now, however, she still replies to most comments!
• Lost in translation - This is one tongue-in-cheek mommy blogger who loves poop. Her babies are bi-lingual and pretty entertaining. I found her blog after I started my own. I really appreciate the fact that she always takes time to visit and comment on her reader's blogs. This despite just having had her third baby!
• A Girl In Asia - This adventurer is truly awesome. She not only gives us great food insights of the cities she's lived in, she also connects her readers to other amazing travel and food bloggers. My personal favourite read, on this blog, is her aptly named 'Cafe Crush' series.
• Fashion Butter - When  I'm feeling down and dowdy, I turn to this greek girl for a bit of glamour. Her wedding pictures are dreamy. She can convert a regular cardigan into a glamorous dress! Trust me I need a lot of help in the glamour department, so if I can use her tips, so can you
• COCOCOZY - If you've been reading my blog for a while, you'll know that I've been planning my dream house for ages. Well, this is where I go for a lot of my inspiration. I don't know how she gets around like she does, but you really do get a lot of tempting eye candy here. Though occasionally I am tempted in the direction of bank-robbery or grand fraud (just kidding, please don't hand me over to the authorities yet).
• It's a small world after all** - This is my dream life. I've been planning something like this since I was 18 and now she's gone and done it. Yeah, I'm referring to becoming a world resident (remember my one month in one country plan?). A couple and their three children take 9 months off real life to traverse the globe. How much better can it get?
• The Yummy Mummy** - Is about having a really good time with your kids in the kitchen (and not walking around in 6-inch heels). I found this lovely read when I was looking for ideas on weekend activities with my 2 year old. We love messing up the kitchen together, though to be fair, the toddler also enjoys clearing up! This lady is also one of the most generous bloggers I have ever come across and she's currently working on her soon to be published book.
• Just Another Mommy Blog - I heart this woman. There's this warm feeling you get when you read her posts. I think it's because she truly enjoys her role as a mom. Get this she has three blogs and homeschools all three of her children!

Now there are loads more blogs out there that I enjoy, however, this post was taking too long, so I just decided to go with the names that came to me first. I'll definitely be adding to the list going forward.

*I didn't not copy her blog name. I had already registered my blog and was searching for mommy blogs to understand how blogging worked when I came across this lovely mother of three.

**I have a confession to make. I read these blogs on my iPhone, when I'm patting my daughter to sleep every night. So even though I love them , I don't comment quite so much as I should. Sorry to you lovely bloggers, I adore you girls.

P.S.: I just realized I have no idea how blogging protocol works. I didn't bother to take the permission of these lovely women, I just linked their blogs and left a comment letting them know. Hope they don't get mad and ban me from their blogs. I doubt I'll survive the shame if that happens.

Law and Order

I finally had an epiphany on why I haven't been able to blog regularly for the last month (excluding the vacation). It's because I don't manage my time well! Fine, I know it's not a a groundbreaking discovery, however, it does put me on the right path to getting rid of a lot of my stress.

What basically happens with me is - I start the day of fine, noting done all my tasks in order of urgency and importance. I even start working on the list with full concentration (I love striking of tasks from my list, so satisfying) and the best of intentions. Where I flounder is when an employee or family member interrupts and asks for my attention. I am totally unable to tell people to come back later. I have to resolve everybody's problems for them and before know it the day is over and I have over 70% of my incomplete list (to which loads of other stuff has been added during the day) staring back at me. In addition to this, I tend to get so involved when I have a writing task that I lose all track of time.

So basically at the end of the day, I rush home, feed my baby, play with her and put her to bed. The time I spend with her I'm totally focused on her, however if she takes time to doze off I get impatient because I still have to tackle my list and get it all done before the next day dawns.

See this is where I go wrong. I should be pressurizing adults to keep to a schedule, not a two year old who just wants some extra cuddle time with her mummy! So, I decided to bring in a clear time management technique to handle my day. Let me tell you there are so many techniques out there that you need to make a schedule just to go through all that information. I finally settled on two major tools that seemed simple and efficient.

The first one was pretty obvious, set out fixed time slots for:

• Internal meetings
• Interviews  
• Meeting with visitors

Obviously, family members will be highly offended if I set out a time for them to get in touch with me. So had to accept those pleasant distractions as they were.

The second tool I stumbled across purely by chance and almost dismissed. It was managing your time in minutes! Come on I work 12-14 hours a day, that's an average of 780 minutes. I was pretty skeptic about this, until I read that the world's best lawyers, who bill their clients by the hour use this technique to track and manage their time. I was sold, come on, if it's good for top-notch lawyers, it's good enough for me.

This is how the concept basically works. You split your hour in batches of 7to 10 minutes and then assign parts of a schedule task for each slot. Over the course of the day you finish all your tasks. Apparently this method keeps your mind fresh and alert since you spend limited time focusing on each task at any point of time. Obviously, if you have pressing deadline you need to tweak the system a bit.

Anyway, I've listed out my major tasks for today and am all set. Obviously, the first ten minutes are up, since I use them to write this entry. Wish me luck and I'll let you know how things work out. Who knows maybe I'll  use this to manage my mommy/wife time as well!

Back on Track

I haven't forgotten my bloggy world. The muchkin and I just had an unexpected holiday. We took off on the spur of the moment for my parent's home and things just got more and more hectic from there.

Well, we are back now and I'm going to start reconnecting, so please don't walk away and forget about me. This world is what keeps me sane on the regular days.

Here are the highlights of our mini-vacation:

• The munchkin and me had a playdate with another blogger friend (her's is a private blog) and her adorable tot.
• We visited Atlantis and another underwater zoo with the grandparents. I was more excited than the little one!
• Shopped, shopped and shopped
• Watched "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" and "The Joneses" 
• I lost about 7 pounds with no effort! Unfortunately have put back 4 of those in the last two days.

That's the round-up for now. Watch this space for regular posts from tomorrow.