Children of tomorrow!!

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, "Speak to us of Children."

And he said:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;

For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

- Excerpt from the book The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

Baby talk!!

I have a baby now.. I am a mother... phew!! Life will never be the same again. Parenting comes with one-the-job training..it freaks me out that someone's life is in my hands and I am responsible for them...it started the moment he was conceived.. somehow I feel that the nine months when my son was inside my womb was easier than this one month he has been out in the world. Sigh!! People keep telling me that the difficult years will just fly away like a dream..yet,somehow I am not able to look at my current plight as a dream when my son cries at my hands for apparently no reason and I have no idea why he is crying nor what I can do to help him..

I haven't had a whole night's sleep since the day he was born.I guess I will; once he flies away from my nest to make one of his own...and thats a long way to go... The only person keeping me sane in this mayhem is my husband..Thank you,Honey!! But, why is this thing so difficult?! difficult for me and the baby.. The only way my son articulates is by crying and that doesn't convey much to my birdbrain. The more he cries, the more helpless I get.. and it really pisses me off to see him pacified by someone else other than me... his crying only intensifies when he is in my arms and gets pacified the moment he is switched to someone else's arms.. how mean and rude of him?!

One thing this new way of life is making me realize is how great our parents are and how hair-raising the experience of bringing us up would have been for them...Trust me!! But still, I pick up fights with my mom on how wrongly she is doing things for my baby...and that I know the best for my baby. Then I have to tell myself that there is no one best way to bring up a kid.. there are only thousands of potentially best ones and it takes lots of patience, commitment and oodles of unconditional love to find the right one that works for you and your baby.