Baby clothes buying in Pune

For all new parents and to-be parents, i hope this post is useful.

I used to buy maternity wear clothes at Uzazi at Camp.
(I had my eye on the shop long before i was pregnant, and always wanted to shop there :-D)
Once while shopping there, i asked the friendly woman there, where can i buy newborn baby clothes, and she told me about this wonderful shop called "Needlewoman" on M.G.Road. (its right next to Karachi sweets)
This is a plain old traditional shop, but with very good soft cotton clothes for kids upto 7-8 years of age I think.
When we went there, asking for new born baby clothes, they immediately gave us a whole list of what is required for a new born baby, it was so helpful, we just selected all the things we needed and they showed us all the stuff they had.
The baby clothes there are all of cotton, nice and soft, reasonable prices, i buy all my daughter's comfortable home and night wear from this shop.

The other shop from which we bought  a lot of stuff is Mom & Me.
We bought her baby cot, pram and a lot of other baby paraphernalia from there.
The clothes there are a little expensive, i have not bought a lot of clothes there, only once i bought a baby pink party wear frock for my daughter, but in general the range of party wear frocks is not that great.

Same with Me & Moms in SGS mall at camp, the clothes not that great, but have bought some small items there once in a while.
One tip : the socks that i buy for my daughter to wear around at home, i buy those, which have a rubber print design on the underside, this gives better grip and chances of slipping on the floor are less.
Such socks i could find in Me&Moms, didnt get them either in Mom&me or in Needlewoman.

When i had to buy her a frock for her first birthday, i took the advice of a friend, who told me about a great shop called "Small Mall" in Deccan. It has a lot of variety and I got a lovely frock there!!

Laxmi road has a lot of good shops too. I have shopped in Maitrik - this is where i bought her 2nd birthday dress. I also got a very good ghagra choli from here.
They have a good selection of shoes too, but on the expensive side, ranging from Rs.850-900.
In tulsi baug theres a very small shop, i will try to remember the name and update, that too has nice soft homewear for babies and kids, it also has cute parkar polkas (the traditional maharashtrian dress) for girls.

Recently, theres a shop called bonsaii opened in seasons mall. The shop has a very good variety of shoes.
But the clothes range I didnt like so much.
The range of toys for kids of all ages is very good!

BTW all the above shops are good for boys clothes too :-)

Next time I plan to explore more shops on laxmi road and tusli baug, the shopping experience there is so much fun! I love the traditional market there, the small shops, this kind of shopping cannot be compared to the glass and AC shops in malls...

Copycat

My little daughter copies everything we do..

Yesterday, i told her i am calling her pappa, while i was still dialling, she picked up her toy phone, put it to her ear, started walking around like we do, and was talking "haan, tu kadhi yetoy ghari?" (When r u coming home?)
It was amazing to see her talking the way I do!

Another incident today morning, every day in the morning i call up my mom (my daily status call :-)).
My daughter calls her "mothi aai" (it means elder mom, its the term used for grandmother).
While i was in the kitchen, she went in, got my phone and gave to me and "mothi aai la phone laav"!! (call mothi aai), i didnt realise its become a routine for her too...

But sometimes these cute little things she does can also be scary..
In the evening, I had put the pressure cooker on the gas stove. As soon as the weight on the cooker blew a whistle, she ran to the kitchen and before i could blink my eye, came back to me saying "aai, shitti zhali, cooker band kela"!! (mom, the the whistle blew, i switched off the gas!!)
the little girl had actually turned off the knob!!!

Toddlers and playschools

My daughter is 2 now, and the thought of putting her in a playschool comes up several times.
Some people put their kids in playschool at 1.5 years of age!
There are different views on this, play schools promote the idea of sending kids (babies still) to playschool early for their development.

I too have had a lot of conflicting thoughts about this.
Once playschool starts, the kids (or rather baby's) life will start off in a never ending story of playschool, nursery, kindergarten etc...
I want my daughter to enjoy at home , when else will she have this time of -
getting up in the morning, going straight to her toys and just playing,
running around giggling  while her grandfather runs behind her trying to stop her :-D,
getting flowers from the terrace in her basket and offering them to god,
doing what she wants, when she wants :-),
making a mess of the entire living room,
jumping on the sofa and not letting her grandmother sit :-D,
running behind the cleaning maid (mavshi) and helping(!!) her to put the clothes to dry,
playing hide and seek with the cook,
sitting on her little chair in front of the devara, folding her hands and saying morya at any time of the day! :-),
singing chandoba chandoba,
watching krishna on tv and eating dahi with her hands :-)
generally creating a chaotic scene at home and then laughing away!

People say a child develops faster, learns a lot in playschool.
But she is learning at home too, she observes everything everybody does, and tries to do it too...

I think its a personal choice of each parent.
There's a lot of confusion among all parents about when to put in playschool, and most go by peer pressure.

Let the kids enjoy whatever they do :-)
I have decided to put her in playschool a little later, i will also get more time to get adjusted to her going to school!
I guess for working mothers who don't have support at home, putting in playschool early becomes a necessity, my daughter thankfully has wonderful grandparents at home, who can look after her along with the maid, while i am at office.

My daughters 2nd Birthday!

We celebrated my daughters first birthday at home, with just family. We felt she would not enjoy in a big party with too many people, most first birthday parties i have been to have involved the baby being cranky, crying, not happy at all, you get the picture :-)
This year, for her second birthday, we wanted to do the "big" party for her, and also wanted her to enjoy.
First issue was the venue.
We thought of some restaurant/hall, but due to consideration of her grandparents and the travelling time involved etc, we decided to do it in the clubhouse of our building.

Next was the "theme".
My daughter loves the humpty dumpty nursery rhyme, I thought of making the theme around it.
I checked with some decorators about it, but none of them had done this theme before, so they would have to design all the thermocol cut outs newly and since they wouldnt be able to reuse them, they would charge me more.
Also, since the rhyme involves a single character, it would be difficult to think of decorations around it.
I finally decided this theme can be done if i am doing it on a smaller scale at home, so i went with the next idea i had in mind, about  doing a jungle animals theme, quite common, i know, but this is something my daughter would love too!
I somehow do not like the princess/cinderella themes, maybe if in future my daughter asks for it, will have to go with it!
We hired a decorator who would handle this decor, the games, music etc.

I bought her birthday dress quite in advance, i think its best to get all these things done earlier, which dont require a lot of thinking, later you need time to do all the other preparations, guest list, inviting them, cake, and the return gifts/party favors.

"Party favors"/"return Gifts"
The return gifts was something i spent like 2-3 weeks just thinking about it :-D
One weekend we went to the Ramsukh market in Raviwar peth, the market and the area around it is full of shops related to birthday parties!
Theres a shop inside the market, which sells stuff from rs. 2 to rs.300 per return gift, it was crowded and i was amazed at how many people were buying!
There were games and colours, lunch boxes and bottles, bags and pens, lots of stuff!
There were shops selling cut outs of all the usual characters like chhota bheem etc, there were stationery shops which had a good variety of paper bags, decoration material, i felt tempted to buy a lot of stuff :-D
I just wanted to check out the whole area and see if i find something interesting.
Personally, i dont like giving plastic stuff which is no use or will break in a day.
I was thinking of giving out some books or any toys which are also educational, like puzzles.

I also checked out all websites which sell such stuff, and mostly found the same stuff everywhere.
In my case, there would be kids from 1 year to 10 year old, and if i went for age specific gifts, it would be difficult to come up with the number of gifts required for each age range.
So i decided to go with something generic for all.
Goody bags filled with edible treats was a good option, its something kids of all ages will like :-)

i started looking for chocolates and wrapped packages etc and was also thinking of checking for cookies shaped like animals, it went hand-in-hand with my search for the perfect cake :-).
We went to all bakeries near our area, and unfortunately none of them said they did cookies with animal shapes, they didnt have animal shaped cookie cutters, i finally gave up on it and decided to go ahead only with chocolates.

"Birthday Cake"
As for the cake, i thought jungle theme is a pretty common theme, and i would just go to the cake shop, select the design and place the order and thats it, but i was in for a surprise.
All cake shops do jungle themes, with plastic animals placed on top of the cake.
Cream cannot be used to make them, you wouldnt be able to mould cream, also the shape wouldnt be attractive at all!
I did what i always do, and went to google, it opened up a new world to me, of fondant cakes :-)
Fondant makes beautiful cake designs, the cakes looked so amazing, thats when i decided i HAVE to go for fondant, and will not go with plastic animals.

I read a lot about fondant, and asked my friends on my different whatsap groups, i got a lot of inputs.
I decided i need fondant only for the animals, rest of the cake should be with fresh cream.
Fresh cream tastes better any day!

Now was the next challenge of finding a cake shop which does this, in my area, none of the cake shops did it! I went to a shop in koregaon park as well, they too didnt do fondant animals.
I went to fatima nagar where there are several cake shops and a couple of them showed me pictures of the cakes they did, and i was very happy i found what i wanted.
But none of them delivered to my area :-( i didnt want this last minute cake pick up on the day of the party, so i wanted home delivery.

I started googling again, i found a website kreativekakez.in, it also had a page on facebook, the pictures looked amazing, i called them and they said, they can deliver the cake but they will charge me for it.
i was fine with it, i am wondering why didnt the other shops offer me the same?!

But just calling up some number, without having any feedback/review was risky, what if the cake turned out to be a disaster?
I called them and asked them if i could come and taste, the lady is a home-baker, she doesn't have cakes ready, since she bakes only on order. I went to her home, tasted the samples and booked the cake.

"food"
I forgot writing about the caterer, we booked a caterer whose food we had tasted in a friends birthday party. A note about caterers, do taste the food before you book any caterer, its very important, after spending so much on the party, average food really spoils it all.The food was very good and the desserts, moong dal halwa and strawberry rabdi were yummy :-)

Overall the party was great :-) The cake looked amazing, the upper layer was chocolate, and lower one was pineapple flavor, the pineapple cake was awesome and soft, the chocolate cake not very soft, but the cake simply looked amazing, just like what i wanted!

Pictures of the cake and decor below: