Taking a toddler to a restaurant

If your toddler is anything like mine, and refuses to sit in a high chair in restaurants, then this post maybe very much relevant to you.

My daughter was 5 months when we took her to Goa. 

Me and my husband love the breakfast buffets in hotels, and planned to enjoy it in the hotel we were staying.

We took our baby and sat on a sofa, with her on my lap.

(TIP#1 : We didn't take her pram to Goa, reason being it was a big size pram which would be very difficult to carry in the flight, so if you plan to travel frequently, buy a lightweight stroller as opposed to a pram).

If we had her pram, we could have kept her in it and probably (not very sure) might have enjoyed our food in peace.

She was crying, trying to pull things (yes even at 5 months), one of us had to take her around while the other ate. From the next day, we decided to go separately and each of us took turns to go to the breakfast place and enjoyed in peace :-)

After this episode, we avoided taking her out for a very long time. 

But we realized the only way she would let us eat out is if she gets used to it. So we decided to take her along the next time we go eating out.

Next time we took her to Rajdhani thali restaurant, she was a little older, could walk (!!) and refused to sit at one place. Me and my husband took turns eating, but it was a thali restaurant, all the food went cold and it was not an enjoyable experience at all!

(TIP#2 : Thali restaurants can wait until the child is older)

Not to be deterred, we planned to go to a restaurant called Fresco, which has a Mediterranean buffet.

My daughter sat on the high chair for a good half an hour! And also seemed to enjoy pita bread.

But once her tummy was full, she was all raring to go, and once out of the high chair, she was running all over the place. So again we were back to taking turns at eating.

(TIP#3: Choose a restaurant which has some open space, inside or outside, so if the little munchkin has feet that need to run around, one of you can take her outside.)

BTW, we tried Rajdhani again when we went with our family, i cannot say it was better, but somehow we managed to eat.

(TIP#4 : Kids love things like papads, so thats a good way to keep them busy)

We also tried Ramkrishna on MG Road once. We ordered cheese dosa for her, since she loves cheese. 

(TIP#5: Choose a table which has a sofa, not chairs, so she can be comfortable on it and you can make her sit towards the wall, so she is kind of, umm, trapped :-D)

We once went to a restaurant in the Taj blue diamond hotel, it was a nice maharashtrian food restaurant, with most people eating quietly. We had one challenging time there with my daughter trying to run around, pull stuff, and making general mayhem. So there I was eating all alone while my husband took my daughter outside and vice versa.

The waiters at restaurants don't realize that there is a toddler on the table and treat them just like adults, by placing very much breakable plates and sharp forks and spoons right under the kid's nose. So be quick and remove all such dangerous stuff far away, you need to be really fast here, because the things will be in the small chubby hands in a second :-).

One restaurant called Kokkita in hadapsar, has a huge aquarium with huge fish and also a small play area outside. It entertained my daughter no end, but it resulted in us eating separately yet again!

Over time, after taking her out several times, we have achieved the state where we can both eat, and maybe for 5-10 mins towards the end we need to take her around and eat one-by-one.

We avoid crowded places, but food courts in malls are also a good option to try, although it is very difficult to keep a toddler busy there, since they get so much space to run around :-D

So don't be afraid, go ahead and eat your heart out, your toddler will help you in burning all the fat  :-)

PS: I think i need to write about all the restaurants i have been to and review them :-)

Maid/Nanny for Baby - Part II

The search was a difficult one, time was running out and I had not yet found a nanny.
The nanny who was leaving, one day came with another lady, who said she needs work.
I thought why not, lets give it a try, I was desperate.

I decided on a transition period of about 10 days, where both will be taking care of the baby, with the old nanny doing KT (knowledge transfer, its the term we regularly use in our world :-)).
Even after spending 10 days, my daughter refused to go to the new nanny!
After the old nanny left, I decided to work from home for a few days, until my daughter adjusts to her.

A couple of days passed, and it was just not working out! My daughter would start crying if the new nanny tried to feed her, to put her to sleep etc. So I had to leave my work and go to her all the time, i was not really able to work from home.

It was a very frustrating time, I even thought of taking a sabbatical maybe and looking after my daughter myself.
But I knew it was not something I could really do, I cannot sit at home, and would surely get frustrated soon. Even in my maternity leave of 7 months, by the end of 4-5 months, i was itching to go out and have some space of my own.
Finally, I decided that the only way my daughter would get used to the nanny is by me getting out of the way. So one day, while she slept, i left for office, telling the nanny and my father-in-law to call me if she cries.
And what a day it was! I was constantly worried at work, looking at my phone every few minutes to see if there's a call. But what a surprise, there was none, my daughter stayed with the maid the whole day!!
And then from next day, i started going to office as usual and all was fine :-)

Since then, its been almost a year now with the new nanny, it has not been an easy journey. I have had to constantly monitor her actions, her cleanliness habits were clearly suspect, and her work not of the greatest quality.
There has been a lot of improvement now, and my daughter also enjoys with her, and learns marathi songs from her. Her favorite is "Chando mama chando mama bhaglas ka" which she asks me to sing every night when I put her to sleep. :-)

Maid/Nanny for Baby - Part I

Before my daughter was born, I had thought I will put her in daycare when she is 6 months and then resume office.
But things change when you become a mother, you become protective, emotional, and I couldn't imagine keeping my little baby in a strange place with strangers, and so the thought of keeping a maid/nanny for her came up. Thankfully my in-laws are living with us, so the nanny wouldn't be alone with the baby.

Nanny search isn't an easy one.
I started by informing our building security to let me know if anybody is interested. I also had a lady coming home for "maalish" (massage) for my baby, she is very well connected with many such people, so she too was looking for someone for me.

The ladies who came to me looking for work, came at odd times, at 3 in the afternoon, ringing the bell loudly, which in turn made my baby wake up!
Also, some of the conversations i had with them were hilarious, some of them were so unsuitable for the job, i didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
Sample conversation:
Me : Have you worked somewhere before?
Candidate (holding her sari pallu in her hand, looking down, and blushing, god knows why) : hee hee hee hee
Me (Again) : Have you worked somewhere before?
Candidate : (hee hee) yes
Me : Where? What work do you do?
Candidate:  "Te, tikde, hotel madhe" (translation: there in the hotel)
Me : What do you do in the hotel?
Candidate: (hee hee) "te bhandi ghasna, cutting karna" (washing utensils, cutting vegetables)
Me : have you taken care of a baby before?
Candidate: No
Me (Already decided she isn't the one) : Give me your phone number, will call you if i need
Candidate - cant write :-(

The basic expectation i had from a nanny:
1. should be able to read and write
2. should be clean
3. speaks clearly

The above candidate failed in all.
I met several ladies, who came looking for work, but really, it was a nightmare for me.
Finally the lady who massaged my baby, found me a nanny who had taken care of a kid before for 3 years, I also spoke to her previous employer, who had only good things to say about her.
After about 8-9 months, the nanny left me, since she found some other job.
The search for a new nanny started, which is a story for my next post.

In general, some points to note when hiring a nanny:
1. If she worked somewhere before, do take their number, call them and ask them about her.
2. Note down her address and phone number, if possible check the area she lives
3. Make sure to tell her that the priority is cleanliness and only cleanliness, her measures of cleanliness might not measure up to you, so spell out the exact things she needs to take care of.
4. The nanny I hired turned up on the first day in a sari which was a little dirty and had sharp sequins on it. The next day i bought her 2 saris, which she was supposed to wear when she comes and wash before she leaves. This might seem a little awkward to some, but believe me, for a mother, baby comes first, and I don't mind asking the nanny to do this. Just tell her you are getting her 2 new saris which she needs to wear while handling the baby, and she will be okay.
5. Make the job description very clear, if you want the nanny to do additional jobs around the house, make them clear before you hire, so later you don't have conflicts around it.
6. If you are hiring the nanny for full day, then surely she needs weekly holiday so agree on that beforehand.
7. Ask the nanny to get her own lunch, because one thing, she might not like the food you eat, second, you will be obligated to arrange some food for her, even when you have other plans, don't want to eat etc. The nanny I have currently follows many religious fasts, so many times she eats only fasting food.
8. There are maid agencies available, I didn't try them so far, but have heard that some of them are good, they charge a little more though.
9. The nanny might expect a holiday on every festival, but we don't have holiday in offices for all festivals, so make it clear to her, she will get a holiday only if you have one too :-)

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.

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: