Tag: vacations

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Organising weekend activities for kids

Back in Pune the kids have a bunch of friends and normally manage to keep themselves busy. However during weekends or vacations I find them running out of ideas and getting into trouble with the society guards or the elderly members. That’s when I received this offer for a guest post from Charlotte at Surf Excel. I have to admit I was in a bit of a quandary on whether I should host a post ‘sponsored’ by a commercial product but then decided to go ahead simply on the merit of the piece. All they asked for was a link to their site, which also I found interesting. Here is the article.

While organising weekend activities for young children the idea is to get your kids involved at every stage.

As a parent, it can be tempting to take complete control of your kid’s social calendar. You know the type of activities your child enjoys and who they are friends with, so when it is time to prepare a social activity you tend to just get on with it. After all, depending on the age of your child, there aren’t many responsibilities you can completely entrust to them anyway.
There are many online resources about child development  that you can look at in order to help your children become more independent individuals. One easy way to help your kids grow is to allow them to help plan weekend adventures with friends. Not only will you help your kids to become more confident and self-reliant, you will be boosting their social skills and helping them learn the ways to socialise effortlessly in the future as well.
How to help children organise activities
For very young children, once you decide to organise an activity on their behalf then you should allow them to participate in the decision-making process. Talk them through the decision you made: for example, you are going to the indoor swimming pool because the weather forecast is bad, or you are going to the park because it is quick to walk there. For older children (aged 6 and over), you might want to give them a couple of feasible options that you are willing to co-ordinate. Don’t give them the option of going to the zoo if you haven’t the spare time to get them there! After explaining any limitations on the number of people they can bring, let your child decide which friends to invite.

Encourage your child to make the arrangements with their friends themselves – either through a phone call or in person. Both options allow you a degree of supervision and intervention if you believe the wrong message has been conveyed, but stepping back and letting your child make contact with his or her friends will give him or her the experience of organising an event and communicating necessary information to others. These experiences will be very valuable for their future!
Once the activity has been arranged, the whole family can get involved in preparing for the activity. Children can get involved with the making of snacks or lunch for a day out, or they can help pack all the essentials for an afternoon in the park into a rucksack. The parent can give guidance and support.
How to deal with problems when organising activities for kids
Sometimes, of course, your children will make a suggestion that you must refuse – for example, it might be too expensive to go to the cinema twice in the same month, or you might not have time to go to the zoo or the national park. Your child might get upset if you reject an option without any explanation. Instead, you should take the time to explain why their proposal is not going to work and help them come up with an alternative that gets around the stated problem. If the cinema is too expensive, suggest cheaper or free fun activities that they can do instead – maybe watching a film with their friends at home would be a better option? You could get the kids to help make their own special snacks, as well – which might be even tastier than the ones they could get in the cinema!
As a busy parent, coordinating activities to keep your children amused over the weekends or summer holidays is an intensive task. By teaching your kids how to plan and organise their own activities, you’ll be saving yourself a lot of work in the future!
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Mountain rain

Among a host of other things, summer at Lucknow has come to mean a trip to Mukteshwar. Like I’ve said before, Mukteshwar has none of the glamour of its closeby cousin Nainital, but is ideal for a laid back vacation. The BIL and SIL, both doctors dealing with rather morbid branches, desperately need breaks to keep themselves sane. They were the ones who discovered the place for us. While the BIL loves driving, the SIL braves a bad case of road sickness over twelve hours for her bit of peace. After more than a dozen trips they decided to invest in a tiny cottage. And so we were super excited this time round.

The journey is a bit irksome but holds a wealth of beauty. Fields stretch out on either side of the road, golden with ready-to-be harvested wheat, while others are laid out with neatly tied up wheat stacks. Scores of brick kilns fly by with chimneys spouting black smoke and thousands of bricks lined up in various stages of baking. Towns, villages, bullockcarts, tractors, tea shops, dhabas… it’s not so bad.

Braving a small car breakdown ….

and a minor jam

we reached the mountains.

　
36 degrees to 13 degrees. Bliss.
The cottage, right at the top of the mountain was a dream with a super view of the hills.
And then .. it decided to rain.

　
That made it really cold. I have to add, that though born a Lakhnawi, I’m more a Mumbaikar where the cold is concerned.. 17 degrees and my woollens are out. While the BIL reveled in the ‘pleasant’ weather I shivered in my borrowed jacket. Then we had a hailstorm to the complete delight of the kids. They couldn’t stop themselves from grabbing the bits of ice, despite our attempts to keep them dry.

The rains ensured we stayed indoors. Nobody really minded. We downed endless cups of tea and played rounds of dumb charades and the kids watched ‘Bhootnath’ for about a hundred times (since that was the only available film) then gave up and joined us.

From then on the game went a bit haywire with Naisha miming Cinderella (pretending to look at her watch and running away in horror) and Hrit miming ‘crying’. Films, fairy tales, books and plain words were all included. When we drifted off chatting, the kids scooted off to the small resort close by for a turn at the carom and TT tables. The resort was also where we turned to for lunch and dinner when we didn’t feel like cooking.

When it stopped raining we made ‘shopping’ trips to the quaint little Bhatelia market. Oh we can shop anywhere no matter that all we did pick up were tomatoes, potatoes and some not-so-fresh coconut burfee.

Now, it’s back to the plains. Lot’s remains to be done.. remember the food list! Besides, I’m off to Dehradun  this weekend for my second tryst with the mountains with the other side of the family. I have to keep everyone happy, you see.

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Vacation within a vacation

Okay I dug this one out from the drafts. It should have been posted right after we got back from the vacation but got lost. Last week’s Thursday Challenge reminded me of it.. and so here goes….

It was last year that we kicked off this trend of a vacation within a vacation. We went off to Mukteshwar for a quiet off-the-beaten-track kind of holiday. This year it had to be Nainital, every North Indian tourists haunt.
Nainital holds a special place in our hearts. When we were kids and vacations were few and far between, we’d holidayed there with the cousins. Now 30 years later.. the memories are still fresh in our minds. The hot tehri (what Punekars call masala rice with vegetables) mummy made, the chilled rain that gave her a horrible allergy at Tiffin Top, the flimsy shelter under which we took refuge from that rain, the picture we clicked of my sister, a cousin and I posing as Gandhi ji’s three monkeys, the walk over dried leaves down China Peak (now Naina Peak) singing Suhana Safar. Interesting, how I have little memory of the climb… it’s just the walk down that has stayed. Guess good memories last longer than bad ones :-). The trip was unforgettable.
And so it was with a host of memories that we made our way to Nainital. While Mukteshwar has a special charm with it’s long winding quiet roads and lush greenery Nainital is .. well to put it mildly… different. It’s choc-a-bloc with tourists and then quite obviously offers every touristy thing one might want to do. There’s boating and ropeway, the zoo, caves and of course the Mall road with shops jostling for space. It’s a 12 hour journey from Lucknow and we decided to go by road since train reservations would have needed too much planning and our helicopter had gone for servicing.. heh..heh.. okay you didn’t believe that.
First the statistics..
14 adults, 6 kids, 4 cars, 5 hotel rooms
… Nanus, nani mas, uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, man fridays, drivers… chaos.
THE JING BANG: Here’s most of the party
I was meeting up with some of my cousins after nearly a decade and even though we’ve keep in touch there’s nothing like getting together. The long summers we spent together as kids before varied school curricula ended that tradition, have left us with plenty of memories and bonds that haven’t frayed. The years melted away. It was wonderful to discover that nothing changes… that childhood bonds remain.. the comfort level .. the shared memories, the laughter… it all came back. There we were having bun maska for breakfast, dashing off to the close by Pappu da dhaba for tea, stepping out for a boat ride or a walk down mall road yet always converging in a room for long chatathons.
The Pappu da dhaba needs more than a mention. Many of us in the family are teaholics. One glance at the resort menu and we pretty much cringed at the tea prices. Then we found Pappu… the perfect solution to our troubles. We started off tentatively wondering how the hotel staff would react to this preference for Pappu’s tea over their’s. However, soon we were going there in hordes, calling out to each other as we went.. ‘Let’s go to Pappu’s’. Then we moved on to getting tea in flasks for the tired members of the clan. And finally.. we were asking the hotel staff to loan us their flasks to carry the tea back.
THE PAPPU DA DHABA
TEAHOLICS INC
The kids were in their own world. They put the rooms to good use playing hide and seek and chor police. The three older ones looked out wonderfully for the younger bachcha brigade. I am glad They got to meet each other and make their own memories. I could see at least one of my New Year Resolutions being fulfilled.
MEN AND WOMEN: While the boys can’t look beyond their bags of wafers Naisha won’t stop posing
IT’S FAKE: Naisha picked up this cap with hair attachemnets and was just too thrilled

I’M SO BRAVE: But that’s just a front. When we asked Hrit if he wanted to have a go he held the gun in one hand and shut his ear with the other. Only after many tries could he get the hang of it.
The weather was great.. cool and cloudy. The last night of our visit we had a hailstorm for a super finale to the complete happiness of the kids.
That’s it till next year.. can’t wait for May.

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In Lucknow

This is one post I should have done as soon as I got back from my vacation but what with the sister coming back with me and the kids’ birthday… it had to be put off.

After Lucknow’s dusty story I stepped out to the main shopping area, or maybe I should say the erstwhile main shopping area, Hazaratganj and Wow what a pleasant surprise. It is indeed new and oh so improved. Cleared of vehicles the roads look like a runway, shops have uniform sign boards, green patches, tiny fountains, awesome. There’s hope still. Lucknow will always be special.

Given that almost a month has passed since I got back I find it easier to let these pictures do the talking.
Bear with the longish captions please..


STUNTMAN: If you haven’t guessed already.. that’s from
the torturous train journey.
Hrit provided edge-of-the-seat excitement with stunts
such as this one and was the nightmare for all tea/snack-vendors



TWO’S COMPANY: When Naisha refused juice he sorted it out for us by having both of them, simultaneously



DRAWING CLASS: That’s one of Hrit’s ‘boy friends’..
only it turned out she was a she 🙂
 Naisha found a friend in the neighbouring compartment which left Hrit alone in the ‘boys’ team’. And so he went around the entire coach looking out for boy-friends. Finally he found enough of them to make his team bigger (one of who happened to be a girl). So there I was almost running a drawing class in the train for lack of any other way to keep the bunch of them occupied.

 

THE BOOTY: To say that the SIL loves Naturals ice cream would be an understatement. So passionate were her appeals to The Husband and so heart-rending her tales of deprivation (since Naturals doesn’t have an outlet in Lucknow) that he got about ten tubs packed in dry-ice so we could carry it through the 24-hour journey. And doesn’t she look thrilled?

 

BREAKFAST AT LUCKNOW: Ever tried bread-jam and mangoes for breakfast?



TRIAL ROOM: Chaniya Choli gifted by nanima being tried on

 

HAND ART: Naisha’s first proper mehendi ever



IPL ATTACK: The nephews, specially this younger one, is an aspiring Malinga.
Here he is with Naisha’s fake hair for the perfect look.
He has for long debated ‘Easy ways to get rich’. The two he shortlisted were to ‘star in a film’ or to ‘play the world cup’. The first option was discarded because it had too many people involved and any mess up by any one could be the end of his dream. And so that left the second option. If I may quote ‘sirf ball ki dhulayi karni hai’. What’s better, reasoned he, by the time he grew up Malinga would be too old to really trouble him.. so the Cup is ours.

 

SARTORIAL WONDER: If Nanima got new clothes for Naisha
she couldn’t leave out Shanti, could she?
Here she is cornered by Naisha into stitching up new clothes for her doll. Of course Mowgli got new clothes too.

 

CARD GAMES: Then it was Dadima’s turn to keep Naisha occupied with a card game.

 

FURSAT KE RAAT DIN: Though the husband was there for just a few days he made the most of them. Here he is chopping up some watermelon while the older nephew bites in



BONDING: Hrit, Naisha play the hoop with their cousin

 

MORE BONDING: Apparently that’s how boys bond.



MASI GYAN: This is something I could never do and so the masi took up the task of imparting
this crucial skill to Naisha. Take a guess..
… that’s right.. she’s teaching Naisha to whistle.
Now you know why masi is such a hit with the kids

POTTED: And finally these two pics are of a roadside shop that completely fascinates me.
I guess it’s all about the colors. Love it

So which one’s your favourite?

Next up.. Nainital pics.
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Shaame Awadh ….

….is just not the same this time round. Oh no I’m not going to start off on how Lucknow used to be this wonderful place and how it has changed for the worse. I’m really not one of those who leave their hometown only to come back periodically to criticize it.. uff the heat.. uff the crowd.. uff the narrow roads.. uff no roadsense at all.

No no.. that’s not me. However this time round the famous Awadh evenings bear a jaundiced look. Lucknow is crazily dusty. The entire city seems to have been dug up for laying some huge sewer lines. Mammoth pits follow you everywhere, flanked by yellow mountains of mud. The hot May breeze blows the mud into your hair, in your mouth and everywhere else it can possibly get to. One half of the roads has been left for the commuters. Give over some more space to vehicle parking and you’re left with a veritable strip.

‘Sawadhan’ that’s the catch word
Didn’t I say yellow was the predominant colour?

That’s right on the road

Scary, isn’t it?

The two-wheelers climb onto pavements wherever they can, leaving the pedestrians to manage the best they can. A ride on cycle rickshaws, which, by the way, are a huge favourite with the kids, can be safely classified as adventure tourism. The two wheels are never on level ground and you’re left clutching the rickshaw for dear life. If the kids are with you and you have some shopping to hold onto as well remember to carry a few extra pair of hands.

The kids are of course kicked beyond happiness. The ups and downs thrill them no end drawing shrieks of delight at every bump. I’ve had to contend with enough curious/annoyed looks from passers-by who, distracted by the kids’ glee, find themselves stumbling.

In any case our forays outside the house have been severely limited because the kids have decided to fall ill by turns. It seems like they’ve taken it upon themselves to keep me in character, making sure I don’t forget for a moment that I’m an OM. No heading out to those gorgeous shops piled with Lakhnawis, no handing over the kids to the myriad nanis and dadis, no being the dutiful daughter/DIL. They cling to me like glue during the day and keep me awake at night. Sigh!

The good news is that finally now they’re on the mend and I’m ready to step out and step out big. We’re planning this rather ambitious four-day visit to Nainital with an entourage of over 15 uncles and cousins. Keeping fingers crossed.

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