It’s amazing how children learn so much by watching and observing their parents,but what’s even more special is how parents can learn to see everything in a new light when they are with their children.
Every new experience for the child, becomes a new experience for the parents too, as they get to learn a different way of exploring and dealing with things.
I love Diwali – the biggest Hindu festival of the year – the festival of lights!
Last year, I wrote about how I spend My kind of Diwali in Dubai. This year, I wanted to document my Diwali in pictures – the Rangolis the kids’ and I made, the diyas we lit, the clothes we wore, the prayer rituals – everything!
Diwali typically is a 5 day Hindu festival starting from Dhanteras and ending on Bhai Dooj.
I love pictures. Not so much taking them or being in them, but surely love printing them and putting them in collage frames all over my bedroom. I do get lazy to update the photographs in the frames, but I make sure memories of all major events and milestones have their space on the walls all over the house.
Quote by Neale Donald Walsch
I am an introvert. My uncles and aunts often describe my childhood self as “the girl who used to hide behind her mother”. I was quite shy and only comfortable around my immediate family and close friends.
When I was in high school, my older sister went to Wollongong, Australia to complete her undergraduate degree. She has always been a people’s person and loves making friends. Looking at her having a great learning experience there – both inside and outside the classroom – I had decided that I would also like to go study abroad.
Post my mother’s heart attack last month, our family has been shaken up. It has disturbed me deeply and such a close encounter with life makes you re-evaluate life and it’s relationships, the true meaning of happiness and what really matters. I had put down my thoughts in a previous post: A wake-up call!
A thought that has stayed with me since then, is that if I still need my mother with me at every step, how dependent are my kids, who are just 4 and 2 years old, on me.
They have a whole life ahead of them and a mother is one of the most important companions in the journey of life. She is not simply known as “a cook, nurse, nanny, teacher, caregiver, best friend in one”. She truly lives up to all those roles, and more.
I write this while I’m sitting outside the ICU, praying for my mom to recover from a heart attack and an angioplasty. Sitting here, I can only think of how a close and scary encounter with life serves as a wake-up call.
As a child, the most important people in your life are your parents. As you grow older, you get busy in your own life, you do not realise how your priorities are shifting. When you become a parent, you realise that there is no love greater than what you feel for your child. You start to appreciate everything your parents have done and are still continuing to do for you, all over again. But by then, sadly, you do not have the time to be with them and reciprocate their selfless love. No doubts on the love you feel for them, but life somehow doesn’t allow you to act on it and be there for them physically. For most parents, it is a stage of life when they need their kids the most – due to ailing health, loneliness, etc.
And then one day, God decides to give you a wake-up call!
Fridays in our house are also know as “Chocolate chip pancake days”. This ritual of having chocolate chip pancakes EVERY SINGLE friday for breakfast has been in place since my elder son turned 3. When everyone else at home is having a lie-in on Friday mornings, our mom-son duo is on a mission to make healthy pancakes for breakfast.
Healthy pancakes? Yes!! They are made entirely from wholewheat flour and have no or very less sugar in them. I also manage to sneak in some chia seeds and a banana to make them more wholesome.
Ever since I remember, I’ve always loved looking up at the sky in the evenings and gazing at all the different stars and constellations.
Unfortunately, how much ever I love the Dubai life and especially the well-lit and bright nights in the city, it does have the drawback of not many stars being visible.