A Date Night to plan and a giveaway

 
This giveaway is now closed. The winner is commenter No. 3 , Springbird. The winner has been contacted.Thanks to everybody who participated !

 

It would be fair to say that since the birth of my son about 4 years ago,
TH and I have had very few opportunities to have some alone time. 
Add to the fact that we come from a culture where dating was traditionally not prevalent and that we do not have family here to babysit our child - that makes planning for a date night even more difficult.But both of us agree that it is imperative to be able to spend time together, without any distractions, such as TV or attention hogging kids (no matter how well behaved your kids are , if they are 4 years old,they will definitely want to be the center of attention ! ) So to that end, we have been making efforts to free up time such that we can at least sit together and spend time,either watching a movie together or discussing favorite topics or even planning for the immediate future. We either let P watch his favorite show for 30 minutes, or made sure that he was engaged in an activity that would keep him engrossed for at least half an hour. We still couldn't go out together, since we both work and we haven't really found any babysitter that I would want to leave my child with.

When MyBlogSpark sent me a kit that would make Date Night In easier , I was excited..I made simple plans to send P to bed earlier and cook a meal using the Wanchai Ferry and Macaroni Grill kits that came with the prize pack. I was going to use the 30$ visa card that came with the kit to purchase some nice place mats and candles to make a romantic table setting. (So what if we couldn't go out by ourselves to a nice restaurant..) The dinner kits looked easy to prepare ...the instructions are easy to follow and you need to add just a few everyday ingredients to make a complete meal for two. Although the kits are intended to be made with meat, it would be easy to substitute vegetarian/vegan options like tofu or seitan or tempeh.

Well, all planning aside, hectic work schedules, pregnancy and an active preschooler made it difficult to bring this about.But I haven't given up my attempts to make this happen.We have found a babysitter with whom we are all comfortable. Its now a matter of carving out the time so that I can cook and set the table and have a nice relaxed meal with TH !
I will update this post once I do get to have that date night !!

MyBlogSpark ,Wanchai Ferry and Macaroni Grill want to give one of my readers a prize pack of their own, containing two dry dinner kits and a $25 visa card. All you need to do to enter is leave me a comment saying how you would plan for a date night with your significant other.
The giveaway ends on 01/07/2011 at 11.59 pm.  I will use a random generator to pick the winner.
Please note that the giveaway is open to US residents only.
Also, do enter your email address when you leave a comment. Otherwise I am left with no way to contact you in case you win !

(Disclaimer: The products, prize pack and the information was given to me from Wanchai Ferry and Macaroni Grill through MyBlogSpark.The opinions and post content are all my own ! )

Winter Wonderland !

" Sleigh bells ring, are you listening,
In the lane, snow is glistening
A beautiful sight,
We're happy tonight.
Walking in a winter wonderland. "




We woke up today to a magical world outside !
Lawns, vehicles and houses were covered with a thick layer of snow, there was a considerable chill in the air
and streets had a deserted look.
Snow in Dallas is generally a-once-a-year event.
Snow several times a year with extreme cold temperatures is quite rare.

As I drove to work, I took in the sights and realized that the snow had transformed my ordinary
world into something quite mystical and pristine.
Bare trees were adorned with loads of snow and had an other wordly feeling to them.
The rooftops of houses were blanketed lightly with snow, giving them a look of cozy comfort.
People you met urged you to drive carefully and to stay warm.

As is often the case, we generally tend to focus on the negative aspects - the outcome of being able to think, I guess -
about possible accidents , about the inconvenience , about delays , about horrible traffic.
But we should try and suspend that predisposition to dwell on disaster. Its too beautiful out there to ignore !
So enjoy what nature has graciously bestowed on you ( I would probably be singing a different tune had I been
residing in any of the northern states ;-) ).
Dress warmly and go build a snowman , have snow fights with your children.
Snuggle under a blanket with a cup of hot chocolate or a delicous bowl of soup.
Listen to romantic melodies or watch a movie :)

Enjoy this day because tomorrow will bring other moments and today will be gone in the blink of an eye.

Keep warm and savour what the day brings !

Nostalgia

Nostalgia is a strange play-mate.. you never know when it is going to accost you and insist on taking you down memory lane...
Most of the times you can anticipate its arrival -
* When its festival time in India (almost every month, you might say ! ) and you are at work, in a different country , in a different time zone, yearning to be with friends and family who are merrily celebrating
* When you talk to your parents on the phone
* When you get together with friends to celebrate an occasion

Sometimes, you wont see it coming, but you can sense it gently taking your hand and leading you away -
* When you see the parents of your friends ; softspoken , bespectacled , tolerant, loving and probably balding fathers and vivacious, enthusiastic , gently smiling , laughing mothers who remind you of your own much-loved and much-missed parents
* When you see another family, going cycling together or playing tag in the front yard , or taking their dog for a walk, or just having dinner together in a restaurant
* When you see a football / basketball game in progress with vehement and boisterous spectators, you remember cricket matches in the past which you ardently watched with your family and friends

And oftentimes it takes you by surprise, striking you out of the blue and yanking you into days past. It was Monday morning and I was filling up my van with gas, on my way to my son's school and then on to work. I hadnt had my morning cup of coffee yet and would have been termed almost bleary eyed if it hadnt been for the fact that I had showered and was dressed
for work. It was a new week and a new day and I was looking forward to it , but not just then.

Out of nowhere, I heard a sound that I hadnt heard in a long time ...Caw Caw ...the shrill , often racuous cawing of the common black crow ! (I dont know if there is a paucity of crows in the city where I live or it just doesnt penetrate my conscious hearing, but I didnt recall hearing
that sound in the recent past !) I turned my head and there it was - a medium sized crow , sitting on a lamp post and singing ..err..cawing away merrily ..And just like that , I was transported to the backyard of my father's ancestral house in the coastal villages of North Kanara. That was an annual pilgrimage for my family when I was a kid ...visiting my relatives for two glorious carefree months.
Having been brought up in a city, living in a sprawling house with dusty attics and dark corridors was a refreshing change. Mornings and evenings would be spent in various activities and events around the house. But afternoons were ours to spend as we chose. My brother and my cousins would be holed up on the staircases, pretending to be bus and truck drivers and I would be tucked in a chair in the front yard, under a huge mango tree, with my favourite book of the moment. The shade was a relief from the afternoon sun and the slight breeze flowing in from
the sea was almost soporific. The only ones to keep me company were cats from neighbouring houses, scrounging around for food and of course , crows sitting on the above mentioned mango trees, enthusiastically and unrelentlessly trying to sing me to sleep. These were my constant afternoon companions, familiar and irritating at the same time. The afternoons would always pass as if in a haze, I would be half reading and half asleep, but I didnt have any complaints ! Hectic school days would arrive soon and I had only so many days of satisfactory solitude :-)
Evenings would again be spent with ever arriving cousins and visitors, as is the norm in any village setting. Every household always has guests trooping in and out and the hosts are ever prepared for every visit ! But thats besides the point (maybe another post!).

So there I was, remembering crows and lazy afternoons and mango trees. The thud of the gas nozzle thrust me back into the present. My toddler was squirming in his car seat and the gas pump was spitting out the receipt, thus ending my sojourn into the past. Getting into the driver's seat, I turned my head to look at the bird that had started this pleasant interlude, but it was nowhere to be seen.
....Perhaps it was sitting on some other lamp post - crying out its high pitched , ear piercing tune , leading some other hapless individual down memory lane.

What triggers your nostalgia ?

Nourishing minds !

Education is not the answer to the question. Education is the means to the answer to all questions."
-- William Allin

"An educational system isn't worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn't teach them how to make a life."
-- Source Unknown


Recently, while randomly browsing through Barnes and Noble, I chanced upon a book with a very interesting title.
It was called 'The Well trained mind'. The few pages that I rifled through intrigued me and I couldnt wait until I got my hands on the book.
Its another matter that I did have to wait quite a bit before I could access the book (but since thats a testament to my laziness more than
anything else, I will not elaborate on that.! ) The book is written by two women, a mother and a daughter team. It is a kind of a reference book for parents who want to take a more active and involved approach to their childrens' education. A comprehensive guide to the list of topics that should be introduced to children at each development level, this book covers grades K-12.
Wait, you might say, shouldnt books of this kind be read by teachers and educators ? After all, kids go to school for that very reason.
We as parents expend some effort in finding the best schools for our children and we would be within our rights to expect that the teachers at these schools be on top of everything under the sky and be the best resources themselves when it comes to the education of their students.

While all that is valid, I strongly feel that we shouldnt forget that education always begins and continues at home. We as parents should always know what our children are learning at school. That is especially true for parents who havent attended schools in the US and have absolutely no idea about the curriculum followed here. All my dicussions with other parents in the know has made me realize that the
education system here is completely different than the one that I grew up with.
In such a situation, wouldnt it be advisable to be aware of as much as possible ? To be able to help them in their school work ?
Wouldnt it be gratifying to know whether your child's capacity is more than what they are learning in schools and then be able do introduce them to more interesting topics ?
Wouldnt your heart soar when you see your children make the best of their abilities and be able to use their intelligence to the maximum ?
Wouldnt you want them to explore not only academic interests but also fuel their imagination and curiosity ?

On the other hand, it is a rather large investment of your time and energy. Not everybody might be able to sit down with their children everyday to make them study. The kids might not have the inclination to do so either.. But then the challenge is about incorporating education in day to day activities where you do spend time with your kids in any case.

For toddlers, parents could teach shapes and colours and numbers and alphabets very easily in the course of a car ride, or while setting the table for dinner or while watering your plants. You could let the kids have a small container with a few flowers and let them water it and see the plant flourish. The point of this interaction would be more practical rather than academic.

For older children, you could invest in a good telescope and learn about the planetary system together. Enterprising parents could attempt to build a rudimentary solar system with lightweight balls and then cover it with paper. Let the kids paint it, either from a picture or from imagination and then hang it up from the ceiling in their rooms !

For kids in the 7th - 10th grades , a magnifying glass could open up loads of possibilities..Take every opportunity to use a dictionary with your children if they are of reading age.
Thats an amazing way to increase your vocabulary.


These are just possibilities ...I am a newbie at this myself, so its exciting to think about opportunities to learn with your kid,
because you will be learning quite a lot with your child and about your child too !

I remember sitting at the kitchen table with my mother, revising spellings and doing homework. Thinking back, I am touched that she took enough interest in my education, even though she herself wasnt able to complete higher education. With the vast resources available to us now, we do not have any excuses for not becoming co-educators for our children.

There are a few online links that are pretty interesting :
http://www.jstart.org
www.mathcantakeyouplaces.org

A search on homeschooling will also provide lots of links that we can explore.

What strategies do you employ to make the environment around your family funfilled and enriching at the same time ?
I would love to know about your techniques !

Lost in Time ?

Time - The one thing that is the epitome of constantly moving forward and never looking backwards. The only dimension that surges ahead no matter what - come summer or winter, rain or frost, peace or war, happiness or dejection - it doesnt stop for anyone or anything. The passing of time brings along with it many changes. Nations advance, societies change, cities replace towns and villages,modernity replaces antiquity. This in itself is nothing to be worried about, I guess.. Its a given fact that things will change, for better and for worse.
We gain a lot of things as time progresses, but how much and what do we lose ?
Some time back, a friend's mother and I were discussing in general how people used to be quite self sufficient in the way they led their lives. They maintained livestock for their dairy needs, grew vegetables and fruits for consumption, cultivated fields to provide food, knitted clothes, fixed up roofs and walls as much as possible..if they didnt have a particular commodity, they would barter with neighbours and friends and be satisfied. Paying loads of money to get the basic necessities of life was quite unheard of. In fact, if a family had to pay to get something it would indicate a lack of skills or a lack of good upbringing (for a woman who wasnt able to make things herself!!)
However, as time evolved,societies progressed and modernity became the fashion of the day, this ability to put one's own effort into making our lives comfortable is not as appreciated as before and is dying a slow death at the hands of convenience. Farms made way for modern buildings, barns were replaced by garages and old houses were torn down in favour of high rises. All necessities are now purchased. There is hardly a required commodity that is not available if you have the means to pay for it. Making things by hand, at home is left to the few who are either practicing frugal living or have an interest in gaining skills at things like making bread, knitting, woodworking, etc.
What is the point in this monologue, you say ? Well, all said and done, I am all for modernity and convenience where required. But it saddens me to think that all the knowledge and practices of our forefathers and families , small things which were and still are part of their everyday lives, will be forgotten and relegated to memories only.
When I was growing up in Pune, my mother used to reminisce about her bittersweet childhood days in a little village in the Uttar Kannada district. She talked about going to school in heavy rains using umbrellas made with leaves of plants like the palmyra palm , of summer days when she and her sisters would finish their household chores and then dive into the pond for a heavenly swim, of picking raw mangoes from trees and eating them with salt and pepper ! She would go into ecstasies about the sugarcane season when fresh jaggery would be made and the first batch would contain fresh coconut pieces, ginger, lotus stems ! Her memories of my uncle going to village fairs sitting on my grandfather's shoulders, of clutching a 10 paise coin and trying to make up her mind about what to spend it on were very nostalgic indeed...How quaint and idyllic it all sounded. For city bred kids like me, it was both wondrous and alarming !
I am sure there are scores of people from my own generation who share my lack of village life knowledge. On the other hand, there must also be scores of my peers who did grow up in small cities and villages and have had an intimate, first hand look at my mother's experiences. But I cant say the same for our children or from children in the next generation. One might very well say that its not a big deal and today's or tomorrow's kids do not need to know at all, but for me...village life and all the toils and joys associated with it is part of our culture, it has a simplicity of its own, an earthiness and humility that we are in danger of forgetting if we don't hold on to it..
I have therefore made a simple list of things and activities that I can do in my life time, along with my family that will help us preserve this life, if only in memories and photographs:

* Visit our native place during the sugarcane season and participate in the small festival that is celebrated at this time.
* Eat sugarcane with my family.
* Watch the process of making jaggery.
* Learn how to milk a cow (!!!!) ( Cows are notoriously finicky about who they will allow to milk them...so I will have to find a really docile cow back home :D)
* Pick fresh jasmine flowers and make a garland out of it.
* Drink fresh tender coconut water.
* Learn how to make pickles and papads. (This continues to be a major summer time activity in many Indian households today with neighbours pitching in to help.)
* Learn how to pollinate a vanilla flower.
* Learn about the various festivals celebrated in our heritage and then acknowledge those festivals every year.(It doesn't have to be a grand celebration).
* Get acquainted with the stories in the Bhagwad Gita and other ancient texts and read them out to my son as he grows up.

Hopefully I will be able to complete the things listed here and add to this list. I am aware that these are very minor activities and thinking that on their completion I will have achieved something worthwhile would be very absurd. That is not my intention here at all. My wish is just to remember that we have a culture that is very rich and ancient. It doesnt deserve to be neglected and forgotten. This effort would just be my attempt to keep up with Time, but not forgetting about what it has left behind in its march towards the future.

What would you have in your list if you compiled one ?

A Simple Life

It was a few weeks ago when I was driving along a long stretch of empty road early in the morning, with my soon-to-be-two toddler P strapped in his car seat, making our way to his Montessori school. Little P was happily prattling to himself, sometimes pointing out wondrous creations like a firetruck or a school bus or even a digger, to his apparently ignorant Mummy..I was acknowledging his exclamations, making the appropriate responses, while at the forefront of my conscious mind, several thoughts were going on at once(Oh yes ! we women have been blessed with that capability...or do I mean cursed ?? How advantageous is it to have the ability to worry about several things simultaneously ??? But wait, before I launch into that thread, let me restrain myself...that will have to wait until another post !!)
Going back to that weekday morning, I was sorting out and thinking about several different topics..Important matters like trying to find a suitable job, keeping family members healthy, mundane matters like housekeeping, being in touch with friends, trying to deal with the guilt of keeping little P in school for several hours...you get the gist. It took me some time to realize that I was driving under near perfect conditions.The skies were clear, there were a few wispy clouds floating lazily, there were green fields on both sides of the road, there was hardly any traffic on the road and there was a sweet smell in the air...that of freshly cut green grass ! There is something so sweet and crisp about freshly cut grass, it always makes me smile and take a moment to just enjoy it.
And it just hit me all of a sudden that life could not be any simpler and more beautiful than at this moment: My loved ones and I were healthy and energetic, I was in no hurry to find a job and at the same time was certain that I would find something that liked very soon, Little P was adjusting well to school and was always a delight to his parents. The weather was great too ! There it was , my slice of heaven for the day !
I also realized that it was not too difficult to find such slices throughout the day, everyday ! Little things that lift my mood, moments that make me happy to be where I am, events that show that beauty and happiness can be found in the simplest of things, are all peeks into heaven, in my humble opinion.
A new bud on a flowering plant, dew drops on leaves early in the morning, flocks of birds against a clear blue sky, driving with the window rolled down and feeling the breeze on my face, seeing the unrestrained wonder and laughter on little P's face, finding myself with some extra time with no chores to do, having an uninterrupted chat with my best friend after a long time, teaching new thing to little P and then discovering that he is teaching the same thing to his father, finishing an edge-of-the-seat mystery novel,trying out a new recipe and having TH compliment it, hearing from a school friend after what seems like ages, receiving a nice comment on my blog; these are just a few of my favourite happy moments
We don't need to have the biggest houses, the latest car model, the most number of jewels and clothes, the most intelligent and gifted kids. We don't need to worry about money (it will always keep changing hands), about housekeeping (its a never-ending chore !), about the grades that our kids make (just ensure that they give their best effort and accept it at that). I mean these are all nice things to have...I wont deny it..but they are not necessary to enjoy life :-)
All we need to do is just honestly see what it is that gives us peace of mind and fills us with unconditional joy and then realize that it is already available to us in our life, in one form or the other !
So here's to our efforts to make our lives simpler, happier and clutter-free !
Hope you find your slice of heaven today :-)