Rainbow Birthday Party

Oh, to begin with let me update you all with the fact that we moved to a new home in the month of May. Lots to say on that front but let me first write about the way we celebrated Mantam’s birthday. Since we had just moved, there were umpteen things already on our plates and very little time to get settled. By which time their birthday was approaching at a lightening speed. We decided to just invite the kids in the apartment that Mantam had befriended within a month’s time. I’m writing this post with a few online links that came handy while planning.

I selected rainbow as the theme. So rest of the tasks became easier. First and foremost, the invites were handmade. We made 15 invites by having coloured prinouts of this free rainbow printable, and then cutting and pasting as per instructions to make the beautiful cards.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next we bought return gifts. We bought DIY kits from Itsy Bitsy and Falero lozenges of three different flavours – strawberry, mango and kachhi kairi, one each was dropped in the party favour bags. Mantam and I made the party favour bags out of newspapers, which is pretty easy to make. We followed this video

We bought the birthday dresses from a li’l shop in Commercial street at a reasonable price.

We even bought party supplies like balloons, paper plates, cups, candles, etc from a wholesaler in commercial street. I even re-used leftover supplies from their previous birthdays. (This year’s leftovers too have been neatly wrapped and stored in the attic)

The cake would undoubtedly be a Rainbow cake for which I got the recipe here:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Apart from the cake, I made at home – Sea shell pasta in Red sauce with colourful bell peppers, Rose and Vanilla custard with strawberry and kachhi kairi jellies topped with colourful sprinkles. Arranged colourful fruits on a plate, colourful fryums and litchi juice. We ordered in samosas, dhoklas and motichur laddus.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We had arranged a few games / activities for the kids based on the theme.

1. Till all kids came in, we started puff painting activity for kids inspired from here:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. We had prepared a few rainbow art sheets for all kids. We handed them over along with a toothpick each to them. Inspired from here:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. We bought a set of tattoo glitter pens. Abbas was the handy artist who drew patterns on kids’ hands:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. We made a huge rainbow on a chart sheet, stuck pieces of cotton here and there and made a small golden pot cutout. Kids had to pin the golden pot on the rainbow blind folded:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. Next game was musical rainbow. We laid down all 7 coloured sheets on the floor along with a newspaper on the floor. Kids had to stand on each of the colour. They had to keep hopping on to the next colour as the music played. When the music stopped, the kid who stood on the newspaper would be out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6. One after the other kids had to say the colours in the rainbow in a loop without pausing and without missing the order. Whoever did it for the longest duration won.

The party was fun and seemed like the kids enjoyed a lot. We did too.

 

 

5th Birthday!!!

Dear Mantam,

5 years!!! No, the time did not fly away. We lived every day, every minute and every little moment of this topsy-turvy journey. We had our fair share of fights and disagreements with each other. We have managed to steal several stolen moments to be etched in our memories forever. Your arrival into our lives changed every aspect of our existence, for good of course. In an attempt to teach you good manners and values of life, we had no choice but to set an example ourselves. In these 5 years of parenthood, we as your parents have grown as much as you have as individuals.

Mannu,

(Tammu, don’t be mad at me as I picked Mannu’s name first!!!) What do I say about you? You are a miniature me. You have inherited all my strengths and weaknesses which most often than not causes the two of us to be at loggerheads. I mostly give in because I can empathize with you easily. I very well know how complicated it is to be us You are strong willed, highly independent, hyper active, orderliness freak and you talk nineteen to the dozen (Which many a times makes me cry out to god, “Why God, just why did you forget to send her along with a mute button attached?”) You are my shadow, you try to learn everything I do right from folding laundry, cooking, cleaning, to even the way I call your Baba to enquire about his whereabouts. Gosh! At this rate, you are gonna fire me off this covetous household position pretty soon. The way you act like an adult makes us feel that Tammu is the only kid in the house. The way you pack my lunch box before I step put for work, or the extra care you take to check how many of my friends join me for lunch so that you can increase the quantity of pickle, and later you enquire if everybody had the pickle you had lovingly packed brings tears to my eyes. You are the go-to person at home if anybody is looking for anything around the house. The enthusiasm with which you search as if your life’s important decision depends on it amuses me. Your strong memory can pretty much be a bane than a boon to us. If I promise you  something, I better fulfill it rather than praying that you would forget it.

Tammu,

You are all that Mannu is not. You are a miniature Baba and all that genetic chemistry (or lack of it) causes Baba and you to fight like kids (Although technically you still are one). I have to pitch in to play the referee and 99% of the time, I cheat by favouring you. You are still the small, tiny little infant that came out of my tummy 5 years ago. You like being a baby and the focus of everybody’s attention including Mannu’s. But there are a few traits of maturity that you display and surprise all of us. You too help me around the house BUT only when you feel like it, which is once in a bluemoon. But on the rare occasions that you do, you outperform Mannu’s ‘domestic-goddess‘ performance. You have a very creative mind and you come up with such out of the box ideas when you draw or sing or dance or even talk. (All that gibberish that you cook up, must require some creative juices flowing) I have observed that your senses are immune to taking instructions. You perform very well when you learn things on your own and not when things are thrust on you. When we go to the park, we see all the kids playing together and you will maintain a safe distance from them and you play on your own and never for a moment are you not occupied. I love observing you and get surprised the way you can entertain yourself. You are the self acclaimed joker in the house who loves to makes everyone laugh. The only problem with you is your memory. I think God himself got confused while filling in memory in the two of you that he filled your share into Mannu!

Mantam,

All in all, the two of you complement each other in every facet and it is a pleasure to watch the pair of you. You both have your skirmishes every now and then (which you obviously should) Many a times I try to act like the lioness who keeps her calm and never bothers to pitch in when the cubs are fighting with each other. But when one of you approaches me, I don my referee hat and get to the root of the brawl. The best part of being the referee is that I do not need to announce my decision. By the time I finish my questionnaire, you would have come to know who is at fault and patched up on your own. You both have been well behaved children right from the beginning and we have never had to face any embarrassment in public. On the other hand, you have made us proud when you are among a bunch of kids and other parents refer to the two of you and say ‘Look at Mannat and Tamanna. Learn from them’.

I can go on and on and on but we are having a little party at home this evening and lots of preparations are pending. Well to conclude the letter, all I have to say is “Be good. Do good”. No matter what happens, always know that your Mamma and Baba are always there for you. And no, we will never judge you no matter what.

Love,

Mamma and Baba

 

Dear Fate

I know that you are extracting sadistic pleasure by having my brother live in the same city as mine, while he demonstrates undeterred resolve to stay away from my shadow too.

I know that it is your way of mocking me when you somehow make me aware of my family’s arrival at my brother’s place but I have no way of knowing the exact address to even try to visit them.

But I do not have a speck of hatred towards you in my heart…

Do you know why?

I know that had it not been for you, I wouldn’t have known Abbas, wouldn’t have experienced this bliss called love, wouldn’t have been the kind of person I am today.

Inspite of all the derision you derive at my cost,

I blindly trust you not just for all the magic you have spelled on my life so far…

But also for the hope that you will conclude my story on a beautiful note, just as you began it; the conviction that you will set things right with my family so that we all live ‘happily ever after’…

 

Bringing the curtains down

…. The blog marathon ends here and I seem to have got relieved of a humongous burden off my shoulders.

Few pointers to conclude:

• I don’t think I’m ever gonna do this month long marathon, atleast any time sooner in the future. It is really taxing. Although we might spend less than an hour a day on a post, the pressure builds up as the day progresses, dusk arrives and I have even published posts in the nick of time before the clock struck tweleve…

• Abbas would be the happiest person in the whole world. I wrote most of my posts at night. So, I would be on the laptop and not even strike a meaningful conversation with him while he would have his dinner. We missed out on the moonlight clothes hanging date most of the times and he had to do it alone. He would blackmail me that he would flood all my fellow marathoners’ blogs with comments requesting to stop it.

• I didn’t read any book the whole of this month coz I would then get addicted to it and might have backed out from the marathon. Have asked Abbas to take me to Blossoms this weekend to quench my reading thirst which seems to be at peak.

• This marathon helped me in dusting off this blog and reviving my readership too. I apologize to all my readers for my inability to approve the comments. I will start it off tomorrow. Also, thank you for bearing with the daily posts. I dunno if it would have been pain for all you to read me daily, especially to those who are subscribed to emails…

• My fellow marathoners were all sporting and I think their spirit kept me going. Thank you so much and a huge round of applause for all us, blogging marathon is no mean feat!!! I tell ya.

• Inspired by this, I would like to do such an activity with my on-the-verge-of-dying food blog too to bring it back to life. But I would rather go with week long marathons or month long ones excluding the weekends. Anyone game? RM, what’s your update on the Julie/Julia project?

• The title implies that the marathon is over. I will still blog regularly though not as frequently as in this month. If I eat up my words RS, please shake me up from my slumber with another blog marathon offer, will ya?

 

Auto memoirs

Like I mentioned in this post, I travel by autos on weekdays. So there are a few memories – some good, some bad. I wanted to document them (Brainstorming for topics led me here )

Instance 1:

I accumulated some reward points credited by the employer over a period of time. I redeemed them to get myself a lunch bag inclusive of four containers. I was all excited to take the new bag which I got for free. (Free stuff titillates my nerves!) I packed rice and fish curry in two containers and proudly took the brand new lunch bag to office.

After picking Mantam form the day care, we got into an auto and as usual I kept their bag, my lunch bag and hand bag behind us. When we got down, I promptly forgot to pick my new lunch bag. I called Abbas (what else could I do?) Mantam on hearing me depressed, came to me. Tammu – It’s okay Mamma. Don’t be sad. Mannu – Mamma didn’t lose it Jaan bhooj ke na? So, don’t be sad

After more than 2 months, one day when I was waiting for an auto with Mantam, the same auto guy came and before we settled on the amount I could recognize his face. It was a Eureka moment for me. I said “I had left my lunch bag in your auto, remember???” The guy with a terrified face – “It was not me, it was not me” and left. :-!

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Instance 2:

An auto comes and he demands 60 bucks. I never travel for more than 50 bucks, so I refuse. He says “Ok, come sit”. I said “Only if 50 is okay with you, I’ll come. Else I’ll wait for another auto.” He -”Okay madam, come. I’ll put on the meter. I want to check how much it will actually cost” Me – “By all means”

My house is in 16th cross. This guy stops his auto at 8th cross and asks me to get down. I say – “I had said 16th cross. Why will I get down here?” He – “No you had said 8th cross” Finally he keeps murmuring and I don’t pay heed. He stops exactly at the beginning of 16th cross and refuses to move any further. By then the meter read only 25.

Me – “If you are not dropping me at my destination, I will pay you whatever reading the meter is showing”

By now he is furious, “This is an old meter. I need to check the conversion chart”

Me – “Okay fine, where is the chart?”

He – Very rudely  ”Behind you, pass it on to me”

I oblige. He takes it and throws it on my face. “He – Why should I check the chart? Gimme 50 bucks and simply get down”

Frankly I was quite frightened by the looks on his face and also since Manta, were watching this and they too were stunned.

I got down immediately with Mantam and gave him his 50 bucks and yelled at him but to no avail. He turned a deaf ear and zoomed away.

On hindsight, I thought  shouldn’t have paid him at all. But then, I would have felt guilty by snatching his money away from him! I still remember the look on his face when he threw that piece of paper on me.

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Got into an auto, as usual dumped my bags behind. Auto wala goes “Arey, don’t keep the bags there. Don’t keep anything there” Me – “Why what happened?” He – “My child is sleeping there”

Whatttt???? I looked behind to see only a portion of the child’s head visible. It was neatly covered and tucked with a blanket. The child was not moving at all. I wanted to strike a conversation with the auto waala but he began abusing the fellow travellers and I didn’t like the way he spoke.

I was surprised that the child was not moving at all inspite of Mantam yapping away constantly.

Have you ever been in such a situation?

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Another day, three of casually chatting in the auto about our day’s events. Tammu suddenly says “I wanna do potty”

Me -”Arey, Tammu please control now. We’ll go home and do it”

Auto waala – “Madam, agar bachhe ko su su karna hai to main auto rok loon?

Me – “Nahi bhaiyya. Wo ghar mein jaake kar legi”

Auto waala – “Bachhe ko karne dijiye na?”

Me – “Nahi, usko su su nahi aa raha hai. Potty aa raha hai”

Auto waala – “Koi baat nahi. Thoda zyada time lagega. Hum wait kar lenge”

Me – “Nahi bhaiyya, waise bhi hamaare ghar pass pohonch hi rahe hain. Koi baat nahi.”

This person was very genuine and I liked the way he cared for his passengers.

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To end the post – Man-ism

Auto driver spits on the road.

Mannu: Mamma, this uncle spits on the road. He doesn’t have good manners na?

Me: Yes beta!

Mannu: Mamma, why don’t auto uncles wear seat belts while driving?

Me: Err.. Urm, Seat belts are mandatory for cars not autos.

Mannu: Why don’t they wear a helmet?

Me: Errr…. Helmets are mandatory for 2 wheeler riders as there is a risk of them falling in case they fall.

Mannu: (Spots a two wheeler guy passing by our auto sans a helmet) Look look Mamma, this uncle is not wearing a helmet.

Me: Errrrrrrr…. Yeah, let him travel a little further. There is a traffic police uncle near the signal. He will be caught.

When we reached the signal, that two wheeler was nowhere to be seen. I sighed. But it just so happened that another 2 wheeler passed with the rider not wearing a helmet.

Mannu: See Mamma, That uncle passed by but why didn’t traffic police uncle catch him?

Me: Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…. I guess police uncle looking in some other direction and might not have noticed

(I guess when I was pregnant, I would have watched that movie where Paresh Raawal has a question mark on his forehead and asks questions to make othersa faint. Mannu has become an incessant question bank. Sigh!!!

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Opposites do attract

• I heart Biryani. Period. I can Briyani 4 times a day and then if you wake me up in the middle of the night and offer Biryani again, I will gobble it up without any qualms. Abbas is not fond of Biryani but he loves Chinese food. So, the same 4 times a day and mid-night rules applies to him w.r.t noodles.
• Abbas is good at sports, he was once a soccer champ. I am a total flop show in sports. I can’t run to save my life.
• When Mantam are asleep on weekends and we both have some time to relax, you will find Abbas either playing some games on his lapotop or mobile or watching some movies. I would be either in the kitchen, or reading or doing some craft or so on and so forth. Between the two of us, we cover up pretty much all kinds of tasks possible.
• Whatever task I do, I give it my all, take too much of stress and strive to do a perfect job. Abbas on the other hand is a smart worker, he will take the shortest route possible and not strain himself to achieve the task
• I get affected by people’s behaviour very easily and take it to heart. Abbas is least bothered and never carries the baggage around. (His short term memory loss is also a contributor to this but then it is his nature)

ETA: I wrote this post last night and there was power cut. My laptop is connected to internet via broadband so, couldn’t complete the post. Tried to complete it on my mobile. But my smart phone illiteracy didn’t do any good. So simply hit the publish button. Will modify it at night… Sorry for an incomplete post, didn’t want to miss out on a day in the marathon after having come so close to its end

 

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Handicrafts

Have been meaning to collate a lot of stuff that I made during my absence in the blog world. Posting pictures of them:

To begin with, RS had gifted Mantam with a few books for their birthday last year. One of the books was on origami. I was more excited than Mantam on seeing it. The three of us almost immediately got to work and made all the orgami objects demonstrated in the book. It’s been too long but, better late than never eh? Thanks RS and sorry for not putting up the pics earlier

Next comes the sky lamp I prepared for Diwali. We weren’t going to be home during the festival due to our Goa trip but to keep the spirit alive, made this and hung it in the balcony before we left for Goa.

Here’s an ear ring with crochet work. Picked a pair of plain ear-rings from Commercial street for 40 bucks and stitched the crochet pattern on it. Got the idea from a colleague who bought a pair of crocheted earrings for 500 bucks

These are flowers made with socks cloth. Made the flowers on Chumki light, covered the wires with green cello tape. The flowers glow in different colours when switched on.

These are Mantam’s old jeans which are short for them now. Bought few laces for 20 bucks each, cut the jeans to half its original length and got the laces stitched on them. They are worn as shorts now. Cute na?

Had collected many flowers, bows fallen off from Mantam’s old frocks. Stuck them with Feviquick on old clips and they look so pretty on Mantam’s head.

 

Pain in Abbas’ neck

After discussing about overcoming our driving fears at RS’s blog, I declared at home yesterday about this challenge. Mantam were more excited than me and agreed to wake up early in the morning also to keep mum while I tried to drive.

Last night when we hit our beds, Abbas started fiddling with his mobile.

Mannu calls out from her cot – “Baba, what are you doing in your mobile?”

Abbas – “I’m playing a game”

Mannu – “Don’t play any games Baba. Just sleep or else you won’t be able to wake up early in the morning”

Abbas – @#!$%#!$

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Early in the morning, I woke up with a shudder when Mannu shakes and wakes me up…

Mannu – “Mamma, get up, get up quickly… You need to learn driving na?

Me – “Uh, oh… Why don’t you wake your Baba up? I can’t learn on my own unless he gets up”

Mannu – “I told Baba not to play games last time. He didn’t listen to me”

Abbas murmurs under his breath – “I wasn’t able to manage one, there is one more in the making!!!”

I retorted – “Oh yeah, you wished for our offsprings to be like me… That is why they say to be careful when you wish for something… It might just come true! Go figure now…”

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Panic attacks

After the previous cake, I went overboard and accepted an order for the princess cake. This was for colleague S’s daughter’s birthday. She gave me her daughter’s barbie before hand. The doll was quite tall, so I had to make a bigger cake to reach her hip level. Birthday was on 24th. So, I had to keep the doll ready by morning before going to work. I baked double the quantity that I made for my birthday on 23rd morning itself before going to work. Because, assembling or frosting of a cake can be done only once the baled cake cools down completely.

In the evening, i had my usual chores of cleaning up, fixing our dinner etc. Once Mantam went to sleep, I had my dinner and sat to publish the day’s post for my blog. By then Abbas came and I finished my cheat post by the time he had his dinner. After clearing the table and cleaning the kitchen counter top, I started off. It was 10:30 by then I guess.

First job was to prepare a base on which the cake would be assembled. Cut two pieces of cardboard in square shape, piled one on top of another to make the base thick, wrapped with a gift wrapping paper. Next job was to get the barbie ready. Undressed the barbie, combed her hair neatly into a plait, cleaned her well as there were some black coloured marks on her, wiped her dry, covered her legs with cling wrap. Already cut cakes were horizontally cut into 6 layers. Whipped cream to go inbetween layers. Assembled all the six layers and inserted the barbie in the center. I got my first panic attack. There was some gap from the top till her hips. A small one but I didn’t know how to cover it up. There was no way I could bake another one at that hour.

Presence of mind worked, I used the small circular portion carved out of each layer form the center to do the trick, I was skeptical if those bits and pieces would stay put or fall off once I started falling. But luckily, they chose to do me a favour by not moving a bit. That settled, I began with the frosting. I had showed S my birthday cake and she wanted me to do the same combination dress for her too. So Pink coloured buttercream frosting was made and smeared all over. her dress. All the chocolate cake’s crumbles began showing on the dress as I moved the spatula. I had to chill the cake for sometime to let the cream set well and proceed. So, I piped patterns on the upper body to complete her dress. It was already 1 AM by then so I hit the bed.

I set the alarm to ring at 5. For those 4 hours, I had a completely disturbed sleep with dreams of the barbie. Once I saw all the cream melting and dripping all over in the fridge. Another was that I opened the fridge door in the morning to see the barbie having fallen inside. I just couldn’t catch a good sleep.

Woke up at 5, and I thought of puttiing another layer of cream over the dress to hide those crumbs. SO this time I used whipped cream and coloured it pink. Somehow, the colour didnt match the upper portion of dress. Howmuchever colour I added, it wouldn’t upgrade to a darker shade of pink. So I thought of giving a shaded effect on the dress. Plain pink wasn’t looking that great all by itself. So I added a bit of blue too. Covered it with cling film by 7 AM and then started off with my usual cooking.

It was too strenuous but I enjoyed it. I dunno, it gives me such an adrenaline high once the end result is achieved. Abbas has warned me not to accept any orders in future on weekdays. I agree with him more…

Here are the pictures: