of food for thought? Nopes! For Toys and Chips! :)

M has been traveling a little and that leaves Cub and me to fend for ourselves over weekends. Since I cannot drive and am still using my two wheeler, our radius for going out cannot be too far. WE did trips for story telling sessions at Crossword close by, vegetable shopping at grocery division in a mall, eating at a food court etc.


Now generally M and me don't go to malls unless there is some shopping that needs to be done. It really is not our idea of fun outing. How can it be when it takes forever to find parking and space to move without getting pushed around? Inspite of our not so often visits, Cub seems to enjoy the malls! He likes the lights, the noise and mainly the escalators!


The Central close to home has a McDonalds. Cub has been to a McD's maybe a total of 4 times, but if you hear him talk about it, one would think we take him there everyday! :p This weekend, i made the mistake of attempting to go on a Saturday evening. It took us close to 40mins to teach on a TWO wheeler! Phew! Then McD's hardly had any space. I actually made Cub sit by himself till i got us some food, telling him not to move and to scream if he needed me. Thankfully, he stayed put and i got our order quick enough.


When i came back with food, the first question Cub asked me was "Toy kidhar hai?!" HUH! I would have happily got him the errrr Happy meal if the toy had semblance of being even remotely nice or worthy of 5mins of play. So i was trying to explain to him how new toys come along as merchandise for movies etc. Duh!


Anyway, he did not insist, (guess the long winding explanation turned him off!;) had his burger and fries (minus the bun) and then we went up to the food court so that I could eat something that would fill my tummy. And our 2hours were spent just in eating at two places. Of course there was a potty session thrown in which meant i had to gulp down my food at super sonic speed. When does it stop? And we are gonna do it all over gain! Gah! ;)


By the end of it all i remember is a lot of crowd and sweat! and messy loo. Bah!


Sunday morning didnt start off too well. We fought over something silly. Then made up. When asked where he wants to go, the child said "I want to go to Ranga Shankara (the gorgeous theater modeled over Prithvi in Bombay) to eat that egg sandwich!". I was quite impressed. It's only a little later that it struck me that the child's attraction for the humble egg-mayo sandwich stems from the fact it is served with even humbler potato chips or wafers as we call them! :) Now, we rarely buy chips etc as a part of our regular grocery. Cub gets them only when we have guests or we are traveling. Poor kid! :p


But we did go there finally and what fun it was. They have a beautiful l'il cafe with wooden benches, granite top tables on terracotta bricks, paper lanterns, fresh flowers in metals tins that milkman carries and an over all nice and open feeling. The lobby for the theater is right there with its art work, posters for plays and masks. There is a small space outside completely covered by trees that has small stone stools and log benches, strewn with sand and pebbles.


So we ate peacefully... Cub his egg sandwich (running around and coming back for bites and trying to cheat by having two chips instead of one after every sandwich bite!;) and me a yummy kheema pav! :) I was wearing my "baby Under Construction" tee (last month folks!) and coupla women there told me how cute it was. One of the women then offered us a yummy walnut and banana cake as dessert and my day was made. Cute tee and cute Cub did it for us! hehe!


As we were leaving it started to drizzle and we decided to spend some time in tree covered area. Cub had fun jumping off the stone stools / slabs, throwing pebbles and practicing writing his alphabets on sand with twigs that were strewn all over the ground. He carried one pebble back as souvenir and was quite reluctant to go back home.


Cub thankfully said thank you to folks, but refused to tell his name to make up for it! Bah!


What a peaceful meal this was compared to the madness at the mall! :)


In the evening we went to the park close to home. past few weekends we have been going there regularly because it has more of jungle gym, bars to hang on kinda stuff than the colony play area. The doc reccos them for Cub's hypotonia as well and its anyway a really nice park.


Now Cub by nature is someone who would not try anything new if you don't push him a little. So we did to make him climb the jungle gym shaped like B. He refused and cried, wailed and stomped about. Then we started a game. he now loves saying what words start with every alphabet! So we picked a letter and said a new word for every step he took. He was now distracted enough to go without crying and now does it super easily. It was welcome change to see another father pointing to Cub and showing his daughter"See thats how it is done!", since usually we are the parents pointing to some other kid! :)


And the girl was behaving exactly the way Cub was just a few weeks back! :)


He played around on everything. It was super nice to see him get more confident and comfortable with physical activities. We took a short walk and went home. Dinner was had with a staple of stories and sleep after 10mins of pre bedtime TV.


Give me more Sundays like these i say! :)


Here's some old memories at Ranga Shankara with Cub's beloved Daadu on his last trip here to see our new ghar...



The uncle who man's the counter with a smile! :)



The Three Generations in single frame for pretty much the last time :(



One with his DiL! :)


and the light of his life... the Cub! :)