Spring in the air!

After almost six months of long, cold and wet winter, spring is finally here!!!  Although, officially in the Pacific Northwest, winter was supposed to have ended nearly a month ago, winter didn't seem to let go without putting up a fight. So for most of us, April didn’t feel like spring at all until last weekend! For people in the west, the transition from winter to spring is most eagerly awaited, as it not only means more sunshine and light, but also allows freedom to explore and enjoy the great outdoors. Only after I came to the US did I realize the value of sunshine all year long, something we Indians, esp. the South Indians take for granted!  In this side of the globe, people really make hay when the sun shines!:-)

Spring also signifies blooming of flowering plants and the trees regaining their foliage. As we had taken Abhay to a tulip farm over the last weekend, I read the book “Planting a rainbow” by Lois Ehlert today. A great book to introduce your toddler to the vibrant world of colors or your pre-schooler to the colorful world of gardening. If you enjoy gardening and plan to involve your little one too, this book is for you! A child talks about how every year, she and her mom plant a rainbow in their backyard. A rainbow made up of orange tulips, red carnations, yellow daffodils, blue morning glories, purple asters and green ferns! The rainbow that is planted during fall, blooms in spring and continues to delight everyone through summer. When summer is over, it’s time to bid adieu to their rainbow garden and await its return in spring of next year! So, Spring is in the air, the soil is fertile and it’s time to get those gardening gloves out and plant a rainbow garden!

How Mommy met Daddy!

Kids sometimes find it hard to imagine that their parents had a life before they were born! Actually, most parents feel the same way  - they had a ‘life’ before the birth of their kids  and ‘life’ would never come back!!!!  Abhay is not all that pleased to look at our wedding photos or other pictures taken before we became Abhay’s parents. He cannot bear to see his parents 'all smiles' without him anywhere around! His eternal question is “Where was I when this picture was taken”? As some of the pictures he was referring to were taken during my pregnancy, I tried to explain to him that he was in my tummy at that point.  Hmmm...that was not a wise thing to do as the other day we caught him pointing to one of our wedding photos and explaining to our friends that he was in his mommy’s tummy, when this picture was taken! Believe me, that was embarrassing and what’s more embarrassing is that I’m writing about it!!!:-)

So I resorted to my tried and tested method – reading books! Today I read “ How Mommy met Daddy” by Kathrina Grossmann-Hensel. A little boy narrates the story of his mommy and daddy, how they were before, how they met and how they changed thereafter. Beautifully illustrated, this book helps your little one understand that mommy and daddy were two different individuals leading two separate lives until they met one and another and then turn into each other! :-) In the book, the little boy explains that his mommy liked things to be colorful and messy whereas daddy liked things plain and neat! He goes on to describe how different their lives were until they meet each other. Opposites attract and so did mommy and daddy. In the years that followed, they fell in love, got married, had a baby and did everything together. After all those years, they are far from the two diametrically opposite personalities they once were! Mommy was no longer messy and daddy no longer plain. When the little one grows up, he cannot tell the difference between mommy and daddy as they had grown alike each other in every possible way!! Abhay didn’t seem to understand how people in marriage could so change so radically! I could understand …. having seen my parents who just celebrated their 33^rd wedding anniversary yesterday! Though just a day late…..Happy Anniversary appa and amma!!  

Monsters under bed!

It’s been more than  a week since we got back from our vacation and I’m still having trouble with Abhay’s sleeping habits. I've been successful in re-establishing his sleep routine though, all thanks to a consecutive round of afternoon play dates that tires him enough to make him want to hit the bed by 8.30-9.00 at night. But the problem is which bed does he want to sleep in? Not his own, apparently there are monsters under his bed or hiding in his closet not letting him fall asleep!!!! Now the question is how do we get our little monster to sleep on his bed? For the last couple of days, his daddy’s severe cold and cough was a good enough reason to hold him off as we’d convinced him that he might catch cold if he slept in our bed…...but I don’t think I can get away with that one today! 

So I had his daddy read the well known book “Go Away Green Monster” by Ed Emberley. A wonderful book to help your little one to brave those imaginary monsters that make their appearance at night! With colorful illustrations on its die cut pages, both you and your little one first construct the monster starting with its yellow eyes, then a long blue nose, and a big red mouth with sharp white teeth, scraggly purple hair and lastly a big green scary face! Don’t be alarmed….your little one can make the monster go away by further turning its pages and deconstructing its blue nose, big green face, red mouth, sharp white teeth and finally the two big yellow eyes making the monster disappear all together….as simple as that! So is Abhay ready to sleep in his own room? Hmmm…after my husband read this book, Abhay expectantly asks “Appa, is your cold gone?”

Bedtime Squeak!

Consistency is the key to establishing a regular routine with kids and all parents can attest to the fact kids and consistency simply don't go together! Despite the odds, sometimes when you do manage to get your kids to follow a regular schedule, all it takes is a couple of days’ vacation for them to revert back to square one! The longer your vacation, the tougher it is to restore order at home!  Take for instance, Abhay who’s having problems with sleeping in his own room after sharing our bed in the hotel the whole of last week while we were on vacation. If only one week has upset his routine established over a few months, you can only imagine how crazy things were at home when we returned from a month’s vacation in India! I guess most Indian immigrant parents face this problem after a visit to India – smaller kids want to be carried all the time, bigger kids refuse to buckle up in their car seats, and all of them want to be pampered like they were back in India! 

In order get Abhay’s  bedtime business back on track, I read “Hide and Squeak” by Heather Vogel Frederick and illustrated by C.J.Payne. It is bed time and daddy mouse is trying to get his little one to bed who is seen playing “Hide and squeak” instead. As the daddy mouse chases him around the garden, up and down the stairs, in and out of the bathmat in the bathroom, baby mouse is relentlessly on the run. Daddy mouse’s reminder that ‘It’s time for bed and time for sleep and no more time for hide and squeak’, falls on deaf ears much like the way our kids ignore bedtime pleas!! Finally, daddy mouse catches up with the speedy little sprinter and gives him a kiss and a hug and tucks him in bed like a bug in a rug and that’s the end of “Hide and squeak"....or at least we hope so:-) If your little one plays "Catch me if you can" at bedtime......catch up with this book!

United in Rhyme!

Abhay had a fun play date at his best friend’s house with two other kids today and boy oh boy, were the two boys unstoppable! As it has been a while since his last play date, Abhay’s excitement knew no bounds and it was the same with his friend! At one point of time, the boys were so loud that we moms could barely hear each other! Both Abhay and his best friend, though relatively quiet when on their own, turn  wild and boisterous when together!!  I guess most kids feel empowered with like-minded company to do things they are otherwise hesitant to do, esp. with strict moms around. So whether it is jumping on the bed, or making complete pigs of themselves with junk food or racing each other to the car on the road, kids learn very early that  “United we escape and divided we get a time-out ”!!! :-)

So today in order calm down the noisy bunch, I read “One Two, Three and Me” by Jeremy Fitzkee and illustrated by Nadia Budde. Not much of a story, but a wonderful book to teach kids about words that rhyme. This is most definitely a great way to engage the restless kids and see them laugh out loud at its whacky  illustrations. Believe me, it’s not just the kids who'll be entertained by the bear with a towel and an owl with girl named Pat and a cat which is pale and a whale that is wee and a bee which is half brunette and half blond!! So if you have five little monkeys jumping on your bed …..say one two three and me!!!