Baby book

Creating baby books is fun, its a lovely memory for the child, and it gives the tired parents a creative channel to vent out their parenting blues.

Many people i know feel too lazy to do this, thinking it takes a lot of effort.
But with a little planning making this baby book can be really easy...

When you take photographs of your baby and upload them to your computer, make sure to create a folder for each month and upload the photos accordingly.
This way, you have all the photos ready in chronological order.

The baby  book can be updated at the end of the year with all the photos per month, selecting one best photo of each month.
You get lovely ready made baby books in most shops, i bought mine from Reliance Timeout (the one near me has closed down now), but Landmark and Crossword have very good options.
(Or you could get a blank book and do a scrapbook)
I didn't want to put too many photos in the baby book, i put a limited set of photos there relevant to the format of the book.

I prepared a separate baby album, for that I selected the best photos of the entire year, from her birth to her 1st birthday and put them in a separate folder.
I wanted to get them printed, in photo shops like fotofast they charge Rs.10 per photo to print.
I checked online and found a good deal on snapfish.com, I printed almost 250 photos for Rs.4 each. I uploaded all the photos to the site and placed my print order. They charged me courier fees Rs.200, but i got all my photos home delivered :-)
Next was an album to keep these, I looked for albums in many shops, didn't find anything suitable.
Finally bought a cute pink mini mouse album from landmark at MG road, and arranged all the photos there in chronological order.

Go ahead and do it for your baby, its one thing they will love to see when they grow up :-)

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.