3 day weekends…what a relief..

Had a series of 3-day weekends recently which were eagerly awaited, much deserved (in my view) and used to the maximum level possible. The first weekend we just chilled out on Friday, on Saturday we met up with my friends at a grill restaurant for lunch for a belated birthday celebration – we ended up taking S along though the whole idea of having a lunch out was that she could stay back with the maids and wouldn’t be uncomfortable in the restaurant (being restricted to her seat for 1- hours). But my friend decided to bring her son along and I thought S would also enjoy meeting everyone and playing (not really, but I guess maybe interacting?) with my friend’s son. Lunch was good fun and we managed to make it home for a good nap in the afternoon (my favorite part of weekends!). On Sunday we went to Vie (a restaurant overlooking the beach) for brunch. The food was terrible (we are not going to eat there again) but the ambience was excellent. There were some sofas overlooking the sea on which we relaxed and enjoyed our wine/beer. We could see kids playing the water and while the sea was not azure blue or at all blue in the least I really enjoy watching waves break over the shore and also the sound of the waves. S also enjoyed the aero planes flying past- its very close to the airport and we could see planes every 5 mins. She gets all excited when she sees planes and here she could see them flying away into the horizon- so she was jumping up on the sofa and making excited noises- I think she wanted to tell us something..
There was also a meaow cat (what we call cat) which came right up to us- S found that also really exciting and kept wanting to go and stroke the cat. I am quite scared of all animals and was terrified that the cat would scratch S so didn’t let her go very close to the cat. During the weekend we also managed to take S to the park near our house which has a duck pond, parrot cage, and also has turkeys, roosters, geese in the duck pond alongwith a duck and duckling family. S was very excited to see all these birds, and especially the rooster which was running on top of its cage and on the verge of jumping out on us.

The next weekend which was again a Friday holiday I spent looking at some playschools for S, shopping for clothes for S and for me (at one shop where we took S along, there is a play area for children and S was watching other kids playing there and also doing her own thing- putting some blocks into a bin etc, then suddenly a bigger girl hit her and S started crying…before I could intervene the maid who was minding the big girl, or rather not minding her adequately pulled her away and scolded her..i felt bad for S, I guess this was her first interaction with bully kids and she was too young to understand that she needs to defend herself..i read an interesting blog article on this which said you need to be the biggest advocate for your child and I guess I should have been around the playpen with her to ensure nobody bullied her instead of leaving her and going shopping and allowing her to be bullied…will be more careful next time..the hubby of course felt that S should have hit the girl back but I guess S is too young). We managed lunch out on Sunday at our favourite restaurant where S sat next to her dad and read from his menu!

The last of the glorious 3 day weekends I spent with S at my parents place. I decided to pamper myself and go even if only for 3 days and had a great time. Firstly I slept late everyday shamelessly. Then I managed to take S for her first swim-she loved it. I had bought a tube and floaters for her but they were too big. But luckily the kids at the kiddie pool were friendly and allowed us to borrow an floating aeroplane where S can put sit and put her feet through it and I can push her so she is floating on the water. That was great fun and though she got splashed quite a bit by other kids she enjoyed watching them play in the water as well. I also managed to go to a bookshop and buy some books for myself after ages and conquently ended up spending most of this week finishing Twilight- yes I like teen vampire love stories (am now planning to watch the movie!) and now I have 3 more books to read in this series. My parents house also has a lot of kids stuff like cycles, ricking horse, pram , toys because my brothers kids keep coming there when my brothers are down from the States and S was happily occupied. We alos have two dogs and they are quite aggressive so they had to be tied when S was down there, but she was quite keen on going and touching them but I wouldn’t let her since they are huge boxers and while they are friendly if they jump on her she will definetly fall down and hurt herself badly. Maybe when she’s bigger.S is also quite attached to my mom and at one point refused to come to me when I was trying to put her to bed…but I just took the opportunity to catch up on mail, facebook, reading and sleeping.

Now we are planning our annual leave- that’s going to be quite a challenge since we are going to the US and visiting 3 cities there and the number of flights we are taking is quite crazy…but should be fun as S will get to meet her cousins!