Fall? Is that you?

While I know that September can be a sneaky month in Virginia, teasing with cooler temperatures then bringing back 80 degree days, yesterday and last night felt like the first taste of fall here. I'm so excited to be able to walk Maya outside again. And to wear jeans. I'm sad to say goodbye to the pool though. Have I told you about the pool? Maya's all about it. There's a big three-pool park that we joined for the summer, and I spent some really fun afternoons hanging with Maya in the baby pool and chatting with my friend as her kids splashed around us. It was a total highlight of the summer here. Anil and I took the waterproof video camera once--check it out. Just make sure you're sitting down, as you might remember that Anil's camera work can make you a bit dizzy.

I guess now that the weather is getting a little bit cooler--cool enough at night to make the pool less than balmy, anyway--the park is the new pool. Especially since Maya is crawling! Grass, here we come, get ready to be crawled on then eaten by my daughter.

Also commemorating the end of summer was last night's finale to Charlottesville's summer music series, Fridays After 5. Every Friday there are bands, beer, and lots of people in the pavilion concert area of the Downtown Mall. Sadly, they end when the weather is finally less than oppressive. We set out a blanket early last night, brought food in, and got to enjoy a few beers, good company, and a happy baby.

mama trauma

After what had already been a long day today, with Maya taking fitful naps and Anil having worked until the wee hours last night, sleeping all morning, then working again this afternoon, I debated between taking Maya to the pool and going to the gym as a late afternoon treat. I should have chosen the pool. Why does every attempt to take care of myself end up going so awry? And shouldn't I know by now that it will? This is how moms end up in ill-fitting khaki capris and clogs. It's just so hard to keep up with yourself without feeling like you're always getting bitten in the ass just for trying.

When we went into the gym, Maya was all smiles. She charmed the woman at the front desk and the woman who took her from me in the gym's daycare place. Her track record at the gym isn't great, but last time I took her we made a breakthrough. I brought baby rice crackers for her to munch on, and she hung out for a whole hour. I, meanwhile, did my usual twenty minutes on the elliptical, then stretched, expecting someone with a logo-embroidered black polo shirt to come get me at any moment. When they didn't appear, I got on the treadmill, but after pressing the stop button and stepping off the machine twice when someone in a black shirt so much as entered my peripheral vision, I gave up on working out more and sat in the cafe, dazed and drinking a smoothie.

I had no idea if we'd have a repeat performance, but other times, they've come to get me when Maya just isn't having it, and twenty minutes is better than none. I refused to let myself be so self-conscious of her out-of-character stranger danger that it kept me from trying to work out at all.

So today, I ran on the treadmill for 25 minutes. Then I stretched and did some core work. I dropped Maya off just after 4:10 and went back at 5:00, having not been interrupted by a looming polo shirt.

Internet, I think she cried the entire time. The entire time I was working out, I kept my eyes open for anyone in a gym logo shirt who might be looking for someone, knowing that someone would be me. I saw no one. They had my name, and I had a sticker on my shirt that's supposed to tell them which child is mine for this very situation--when they come looking for you on the floor. There is also a picture of me in the system, in case they don't remember what I look like after I drop her off.

Somehow, today, none of this worked. And as far as I could tell, they were too busy to care. I was SO upset. Maya stopped crying as soon as they brought her to me, but that's about when I started. They said they couldn't get my photo to come up, they sent someone around the floor but she didn't know who she was looking for, and she sure didn't make much of a show about it or else I would have noticed. They were about to take her to the gym floor, screaming, in order to find me. Really?!?

For the record, Maya is totally fine. She fell asleep as soon as I put her in the car and woke up with a smile. She had organic carrots for dinner al fresco in her high chair on our back deck, followed by a bubble bath. I, however, am still trying to recover.

Here's the irony of it all. I was listening to an old Fresh Air interview with Judith Warner, the author of the book Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety while on the treadmill. Warner was talking about how for women today, motherhood becomes this all-encompassing lifestyle in which there is no room for taking care of oneself. Systems in America aren't set up to support women in achieving balance. There I was, thinking, "Not me! I'm at the gym. I'm taking advantage of the child care that this gym offers and I'm taking this hour for myself. "

FAIL.

Not so much, huh? See what I get for trying to take time for myself? Guilt and more guilt. If I had taken her to the pool, none of this would have happened. I know, I know... it was just this one afternoon. Everyone is fine--it was separation anxiety, not a concussion. I have to take care of myself to take care of everyone else. Blah blah snore. But it sucked, Internet. It sucked. And it sucks that it's so so hard to take time for yourself once you're a mom, and that, in fact, as Judith Warner lamented, structures aren't necessarily in place to help you do so. Sometimes it seems like they're there to just make you feel worse. And how come we have to feel like taking time for ourselves takes time away from others? Why do knowing we deserve it and feeling like it's okay seem like two separate concepts?

As they handed me my puffy eyed bunny rabbit and explained the situation, I had to keep stopping myself from saying, "I'm sorry." Because that's what comes naturally. I'm sorry that she cried. I'm sorry that you couldn't find me. I'm sorry for the entire situation because I'm a girl and I apologize for things that aren't really my fault, and as a mom, I feel responsible for everything. Doesn't it sound ridiculous written out like that? But I wasn't sorry, and I didn't say it. At least that felt like a victory. And now I'm off to follow Judith Warner on Twitter.

Also, I just stress ate any calories burned at the gym.

Indian wedding adventure

We go big around here, so for Maya's first wedding, we went all in for an all day Indian wedding. No 4 p.m. start time for Team Shukla. My good friend from college got married in Arlington, Va., this past weekend, so Anil and I booked a hotel for Saturday and Sunday night and crossed our fingers, having no idea how it would go for us.

Our biggest and best realization from the weekend is that, for now anyway, Maya can sleep through movies and room service in the hotel room. Yay for us! We were afraid we'd be laying in bed playing on our iPhones in the dark from 7 p.m. on. Anil erected a Macgyver-like attempt at sound-muffling around the travel crib, with me helpfully improvising lyrics to the "Macgruber" theme song from Saturday Night Live. He used the hotel desk, phone book, blanket, desk chair, and the carabiner on his keychain to clip the blanket to the chair. It also turned out to be worth it to pack the white noise machine and endure strange looks while carrying it through the lobby.

We even ordered "Ironman 2" on the hotel's pay-per-view--complete with explosions and gunfire. She slept through it all. Amazing. Then I slept through Anil going downstairs to meet our friends for some drinks. Not so surprising.

Here was the itinerary for Sunday:

9:15 a.m.: Rakesh rides a white horse from across the street to the hotel's lobby. Everyone rallies around him, dancing and clapping.

There was a DJ and pounding bass. Maya took her morning nap in the Ergo carrier, and I worried about bending the wrong way because somehow the back of my dress, and only the back, had mysteriously shrunk and was a little short if I wasn't standing up straight. I figured Maya was enough of a distraction that no one would notice, and it wasn't like my underwear had my name on it or anything, like someone else that day.

10:30 a.m.: Wedding ceremony in the hotel's ballroom. Fortunately, Indian ceremonies have some flux to them for the audience. I didn't realize this, so I deliberated whether we should leave Maya in the kids room so that she wouldn't scream "DA DA DA!" during some moment when the bride and groom were staring into each other's eyes. We saw lots of babies were in attendance though, so Anil convinced me to stop worrying. People ended up going in and out of the room, with or without kids, bringing back Starbucks; it was perfect. The ceremony was about an hour, so I took Maya to our room to eat, then Anil walked her around, then I let her crawl on the carpet outside the ballroom and she got rug burn on her little knees (I need to get more of these!).

12 noon: Lunch--a giant south Indian food buffet (south=spicy). This poor blond girl at our table from Charlotte, NC, accidentally bit into a red chili pepper and her head almost exploded.

There was a break in festivities from 2-6, so we went for a walk to the Air Force Memorial, around the corner from the hotel, then hung out on the rooftop pool. It was the first time I'd seen a few friends from college in years, so it was so much fun to catch up and drink a beer under the sun like old times. Maya was so excited that she didn't really nap all afternoon, so we were all ready to just curl up and sleep, but instead we showered and got dressed for cocktail hour before the reception.

6 p.m.: Maya juggling commences. Maya was so tired by this point. We'd given her a bath in hopes that she'd go to sleep in the Baby Bjorn on Anil during cocktail hour and sleep for a bit so that we could enjoy some of the reception before turning in. But she just needed to sleep for real, in her crib. I'm sad that we hardly even got any photos of Maya all dressed up (two different dresses!), awake and out of a baby carrier. On that note, I'm sad that we hardly got pictures of me without a baby carrier obscuring the front half of my body. But we did what we could to make it work for the three of us. The reception started around 7 I think, and we made it until about 8, but Maya was just done. Somehow she slept on me through an awesome dance performance of that song at the end of "Slumdog Millionaire," as I furrowed my brow worrying that being right under the booming speaker was damaging my infant's hearing before she's had the chance to do it herself with an iPod. Anil took Maya up to bed while I stayed for a few more toasts from family members of the wedding party, then I too called it a night. We didn't get to stay for dinner at the reception (I think it was served at 9, so it just wasn't in the cards for us), but we did get to order room service again and watch "Date Night." I'm sure we missed a huge Indian-dance infused party that would have been really cool to experience, but as the bride and groom's parents were talking about the importance of family during their toasts that opened the reception, it felt right that we take care of our own little family and call it a night.

This is the best photo we got of the three of us, courtesy of our friend Brooke.

We're back!!

HI! I've missed you. Sorry for the long break. Moving, settling in, new job, playing at the pool, blah blah blah... we've been busy. Oh, did I mention crawling?! Yep, Maya started motoring around just yesterday. She's been scooting and lunging and sort of haphazardly crawling for the past week or so, but yesterday she put it all together and was continually traversing the floor. For my shoes. She wants to eat my Rainbow sandals. Possibly the grossest thing in our house, of course. So we have some baby proofing to do next week. We're headed to a wedding in northern Virginia this weekend--Maya's first wedding! We're going all out too, because it's an Indian wedding with events all day on Sunday. I'm thinking this means outfit changes, which is fun for Maya, and not so fun for me as I only have one dress that really fits right now! Some JCrew jersey dresses will be making an appearance, wedding-appropriate or not.

Here is Maya's big debut to the world of real motion!

baby tweet

Apparently the handle "@mayashukla" isn't yet claimed on Twitter. Is it weird that I feel an urge to sign up under my daughter's name just so someone else doesn't take it? Probably, yes. But @GoodnightMartini won't fit. I'd have to be @GoodnightMartin, which obviously wouldn't work (I don't know anyone named Martin). I haven't had any inclination until this very moment to join Twitter. Honestly, I'm just too lazy. I don't want one more thing to check. I don't want to know people's random thoughts. I don't think anyone wants to know mine. I hardly get on Facebook as it is. I might be tempted though ... maybe this is what moving out of the city does to me.

Know what handle is available? Shuklanator. Restrain my typing fingers.

update: Internet help me, I signed up. Follow me @sara_shukla. That is if I ever tweet anything. This is what happens when Anil goes to work at 5, so we have dinner at 4, and once Maya is in bed at 7 I have too much of nothing to do... and apparently it's going to rain here for the next 24 hours.

design on hiatus

I'm not sure what's happening with the design here. I got my former background design from a web site called Cutest Blog on the Block (specifically "bird in a pear tree" design, and I'm noting that here so that I can remember how to find it when I have time to figure this out). Over the past month, it's just disappeared. And there was that floating "deleted picture" box. So for now I'm just using a simple Blogspot template, but I'm not happy about it. Hopefully I can figure this out soon.

I now have to get Maya ready for swimming lessons at the gym (that's right!), but for now, here she is trying to find a Sox game on TV in Virginia.

Wherein having a 6 month old baby precludes having time to write about a 6 month old baby

Biggest blog slacker ever, I know. Hang in there, please, I'm not going to let this blog languish forever! Turns out that moving and getting set up in a new town and new life doesn't lend itself to taking the time and energy to write about it all. Go figure. But we're getting in a groove here.

Maya is actually about to wake up, any moment now, from her morning nap, so I'm going to post and run for today. Here is a crazy cute photo of us at the beach (yes, from a month ago). More to come of us in Charlottesville. Maya's latest adventures have included swimming and a baby gym class, as well as making sounds using the letter "d." Very exciting.

P.S. I don't know why there's this floating window saying something about a picture being deleted. Does it show up on your view of the blog? I'll try to take care of it before 2015.