Birthday 2006

Last weekend was Arsh's 4th birthday and Ruhi's second. Navin and Meeta had decided that this year we should have a very small party to ensure that neither of the kids gets overwhelmed by the crowd of people. Thus there is a chance that the kids might actually enjoy the birthday. With larger parties, both of them are mostly miserable, and Meeta is stressed out from making the arrangements and ensuring that everything goes smoothly.

Hence, we decided on two small parties. Saturday evening for Arsh's closest friends - Tanishq Vaidya, Smeet Dedhia, Rohit Sahasrabuddhe, Eeshaan Basu, Ishita Chowdhary, Atharva Gunda, Aarzoo Swaminathan, Vedant Damani, most of them with their moms. Ruhi is too small to have any independent friends of her own. But she enjoys the company of Atharva, Tanishq, Rohit. Priya and Shashank Deshpande, Makarand and Deepa Sahasrabuddhe and Shuchita Basu dropped by later. This was the first birthday that Ravee Deshpande missed - she was in Aurangabad for summer vacations. Navin and Meeta decided to bake cakes at home this time. Arsh initially wanted a gun-shaped cake. Obvisouly that idea did not go down well. Thankfully, when Meeta suggested a bat-and-a-ball he agreed to have that instead. Ruhi of course, wanted a fish.

When Meeta and Navin were in Goa (weekend of April 14th) they had bought a fish shaped cake mould. That was used for Ruhi's cake. The bat-and-ball had to be shaped by hand. We made icing and used food colouring to get the different colours.

Meeta cooked most of the food. Meeta made jello moulds of various shapes and colours. We also melted some milk chocolate into various fruit-shaped moulds. Inexplicably, people were also impressed by that.

On Sunday, we took the kids to Lekha Farms with Pune-relatives: Amit and Namita Kabra, Rakhee, Mahesh and Harsh Rathi, Ravi, Mamta and Nandini Mundra and Varsha, Anurag and Arsh Maheshwari. The kids always enjoy Lekha, so that is a guaranteed way to have an evening that they will enjoy.

Activities of last week - dancing, tent

This week was Arsh's second week at the Sparkles' summer camp. By now he no longer complained about going there. Arsh has begun reproducing the steps that they teach there for songs 'Nach Baliye' and 'BnB title song' from "Bunty Aur Babli". Ruhi has picked up parts of the dances and lyrics and accompanies him when he is showing off for friends and family. Arsh loves to shout the song out (mostly in tune) while dancing so the whole world can listen to him and Ruhi loves to sing and shout for the worlds beyond. This was a typical occurance at 6.30AM which resulted in Mr. Sandhooja (tenant of 201, Twin Towers 'B') closing his windows twice. Of course, Navin has put up a tent in the terrace in which he hides himself to absolve himself of any responsibility. Amazingly they have toned down since and restrict themselves to softer notes.

Arsh has been waking up at 6:15 regularly this week, and Ruhi soon after. Navin, Arsh and Ruhi then spend the next 45 minutes in the tent on the terrace alternating between the Bunty aur Babli dances and stories. Ruhi is currently fascinated with "Jane's Elephant Adventure" while Arsh goes for "Sam and Sophie", "Hanuman", the Dr. Seuss-esque Dogs book, or "Lion King". More recently, we are doing Aesop's fables.

Meeta takes the kids down to play from about 6 to 7:30pm. Tanishq joins them around 6:45. Arsh and Tanishq have been "fast friends" now. Typical play involves bey-blades, bat and ball, or cycling.