Ajja, Ajji and me!

When I left Abhay at my parents’ farm house last month, I honestly didn’t expect him to stay on for three whole weeks without me! In fact, I even held back from calling him often lest he begins to miss me or his home in Bangalore. How wrong I was! Not only was Abhay blissfully happy in his ‘summer resort’ but he was in no mood to return home! These three weeks have been one of the most memorable vacations for Abhay and for my parents who left no stone unturned to make their grandson’s stay as comfortable as possible. At his grandpa’s farm, Abhay was on vacation from all of his ‘duties’ – he was allowed to sleep in as long as he wanted, didn’t have to eat on his own but was fed breakfast, lunch and dinner as if he were a toddler, was constantly fussed around with toys and ‘surprise gifts’, supervised while he played with the farm pets, was taken on regular outings to the village or to visit relatives and cousins, was entertained with on-demand-no-repeat stories weaved around themes and subjects of his choice at bedtime and of course he loved cuddling up to his grandparents at night only to have his doting grandpa wait on him until he woke up the next morning! So…after all this…can I blame him for not wanting to return home?

So it took a constant reminder played out every day for the whole of last week for Abhay to reconcile to the fact that all good things must come to an end! So as we went to Dharmasthala to pick him up over the weekend, Abhay seemed to ready to bid farewell to his own little paradise and head back to reality! Reminiscent of the wonderful time he had with his grandparents, I had to log into Grandpa Ken's rendition of “Grandma Grandpa and me” a Little Critter adventure from Mercer Mayer. Little Critter is all excited to have a sleepover at his grandparents’ farm. At first he sleeps by himself in the guest room but as soon as thunder strikes, he hops onto his grandparents’ bed apparently because his grandparents fear thunderstorms! While he drifts off to sleep lying in between his grandpa and grandma, he is woken up by his grandpa’s loud snoring (Abhay could totally identify with this!) The next morning he decides to help his grandpa milk the cows, gather eggs from the hens but ends up making a mess instead. But like all grandpas, Little Critter gets away with his mischief. He then decides to let grandma benefit from his helping nature and assists her as she bakes a blueberry pie for a baking competition at the farmer’s fair. Little Critter has lots of fun accompanying his grandma and grandpa to the fair where he watches his grandma’s pie win the prize and he just knows why – because it is made with lots of love!  Thanks Appa and Amma for taking Abhay in during his summer break and being the kind of grandparents even I would have loved to have!