Playing Hookey

Today we played hookey from S' school and it was so much fun. It was ostensibly to give S some rest, but it was more of a break for me.
S has skiing every Saturday for 5 weekends leading up to the ski break (Feb 11th-15th) and it is a day long affair. We have to leave her with the instructors at 9:45 am, they ski from 10-12, then have a lunch break from 12-1 and then again ski from 1-3. The ski slope is an hour's drive from our place so we end up leaving home around 8:30 and getting back only around 4:30. Added to that is the minus temperature at the ski slope and it becomes a very long day for S, after a full week at school. School itself is from 8:30-3:15 (i personally think that's too long for 41/2 year olds but others don't seem to think so) and being an overambitious mother S has extra curricular activities on half the days after school!

So I thought i would give her a break in the middle of the week. It helped that it was snowing heavily this morning, A did not have school and the hubby was out of town so all of us woke up only at 8:30 in the morning. Yummy, i really miss waking up late! After a leisurely breakfast (what a relief not to have to hurry up S, feed A while simultaneously packing S's bag, drinking my coffee, wearing my lenses etc) the girls did painting, finger painting and playdough while i managed to get my exercise. After that we had some friends over for lunch- they had kids A's age and S had a ball running around with them. I used the snowing heavily card to skip S ice skating class also (to be fair i would not have taken S for ice skating after school if it was snowing, very difficult to skate in the outdoor rink then; but stepping out of the warm house at 3:15 pm after a heavy lunch seemed even more difficult) so we had a nice long nap in the afternoon also.

It was board games in the evening, some english work for S and skyping with Ajji and then its dinner time. Now of course is 8:30 in the night and both kids look far from sleep. Usually at this time S is half asleep! Look like its a long night ahead for me, but I don't mind, its fun playing truant!

At work I had always longed to take a day off and just relax at home doing the things i wanted to do. But before the kids were born i was too much of a workaholic to do that (i used to feel guilty taking my full entitlement of leave) and after the kids were born i used to save up my casual leave for their sick days. Have you ever played truant, and just relaxed at home?

Board games

I'm a big fan of board games and am succeeding in passing on my enthusiasm to the girls (I think!)

S favourite game to play whenever any of her friends comes over is children's dumb charades. There are picture clues for young children and written clues for slighter older children. The picture clues are pretty easy things like animals, actions like sweeping, aeroplane etc and now S has done them so many times she knows how to clue each thing by heart. A long long time ago I had also mastered all the taboo cards in the taboo board game and it was such fun playing when you already knew all the clues. And if the people you've been playing with are on your team then you just need to say one word and the clue is done. A very similar thing happened two days ago. S best friend M had come over for a playdate and each time she comes over both like to play dumb charades. There are limited picture cards and they both knew all of them. So the moms watched amusedly while the kids stood up to clue and before they could complete the action the other kid had guessed. Even A was guessing some of the clues! Need to buy more picture cards

S other favourite is tumbling monkeys. There are monkeys hanging on sticks and you have to pull sticks so that least monkeys fall. You roll a colour die to see which colour stick you have to pull and players take turns till all the sticks are pulled. Of course S is most excited when she gets to pull a pink stick but understands the concept pretty well and looks for the stick with the least monkeys. For A its enough if she can match the stick colour with what's rolled on the die. How many monkeys fall is of no concern. In fact the more the merrier.

A's favourite is incy winsey spider. You roll a die to make the spider climb up the wall and then you have to spin a wheel pointing to either sun or rain and if its sun the spider continues at its position (towards the top) and if its rain the spider gets washed down all the way to the bottom. A finds the rain very funny and each time her spider has to go down she playacts crying loudly (of course she learnt this from me, S if course pretty upset every time her spider goes down- initially she used to cheat and move the arrow only to sun and i used to let her get away with it when she was playing with me, but now that she plays with other kids i try to ensure its fair and square and she gamely spins the wheel). This game has the potential to never end so after a few turns I somehow ensure (don't ask how!) that somebody wins.

S has started playing snakes and ladders. The problem is that she is not that familiar with larger numbers so after a point she starts moving the marker along any line. A of course starts from any point and goes to any point so I have to sit with them and move the markers for them. It is a pretty long game and they get a bit bored after while so its maximum one round of snakes and ladders each time

Colourful snails. You pick your favourite coloured snail (no guesses for which!) You line up coloured snails at one end of the board. Then you roll two coloured dice and move those coloured snails forward. The first to reach the other side wins. This is a SIMPLE game. Requires minimal supervision and therefore my favourite when S friends come over. Luckily they have now stopped fighting over who gets to pick the pink snail.

Animal memory game. This is the usual memory card game with animals instead of numbers. S likes this and can play by herself if it set it up for her. I usually play along and I try to involve A also (i tried to palm off some of the animals cards to her to play with but she got pretty adamant and insisted on having a go) and sometimes i am pretty suprised to find she remembers where things are!

Am waiting for the time they learn to play ludo (my favourite) monopoly (another favourite) and then of course onto cards. Teen do panch here we come...

Sledding in Uetliberg

This is an old post (end November, just managed to finish it now!)

It's been snowing non stop in Zurich. It lets up for a couple of hours and again the snowstorm starts. Sometimes its mild- you can walk in it, and sometimes its really stormy, its difficult to even drive. The highest temperature over the last few days has been + 1 and its mostly -2 or -3 degrees during the day and much colder at night. The downside is that the car gets covered in snow and every trip to the school and back or anywhere needs to more minutes to scrape off the snow, sit in the car with the heater on so that the windows clear and only then you can go. Of course the driveway will be completely snowed in so either you have to shovel an exit for yourself, or take your car 3-4 times over the snow so that i can get out. And its very cold..brr..2 mins outside without a cap or gloves and your hands feel numb, or you get a headache.
The upside is that its so beautiful - there's a huge blanket of snow over everything and it looks amazing. The fir trees are snow covered and the drive to the girls school is through some field and the landscape looks amazing all covered in snow, especially when the sun is out. Its so bright you need to wear goggles to look at the snow. And the best thing about the snow- sledding! Or sledging, i don;t know what is the proper term for it.
Our kind neighbour gave us his two sleds- they were used by his kids when they were young but they are in great condition. And when it snows like this in Zurich everybody heads to Uetliberg where there's a 3 km trail down the mountain. The whole exercise was pretty exhausting though. Cars are not allowed all the way to the top of Uetliberg mountain so parked at the nearest station. The GPS didn't tell us that the last 800 m was restricted access, so we actually had to park away from the station and walk 800m . and with two sleds and two whiny girls (ok they were fine on the way up, but exhausted on the way down!) it felt pretty long!
The train was very crowded (I think the whole of Zurich was on the train headed for the mountain) and there was barely room to stand, let alone manage two cranky kids and sleds.  At the top it was easy enough to spot the start of the sledding course. The hubby took S (and zipped away) while I took A and began a more cautious downhill journey. While it was a 3 km downhill trail, a lot of it was very gentle slopes or flat ground so often we had to get down and pull the sled, or sit on it and push hard. The steeper parts were fun but i couldn't go full speed as A was getting frightened. Being Switzerland it was not at all child protected, meaning if you took a curve too fast you could literally fall off the mountain so that made me more cautious but we ended up falling hard once (but not over the mountain!).
It was good fun, the steep stretches made up for the effort of the flat stretches and the whole thing took about 40 minutes. I'd read up on it before going and when i mentioned to the hubby that it could take 40-45 mins he laughed and said to come down the mountain? that should take 2 mins! Now we know.

The return journey was tiring. We ended up at a train station before the one we had parked at. So we had to catch a very full train heading towards the mountain and get off before the stop everyone gets off so there was much pushing and nudging and stepping on toes , that too carrying the sleds but we managed! The Mumbai locals, Bandra-Churchgate experience came in handy! I lost my gloves in the train and my hands literally froze on the 800 m stretch back to the car. It did not help that A who was exhausted and cold by now kept whining and i had to carry her and the sled.

It was fun, but we won't do that again in a hurry! I thought i was decently fit now with the regular running on the treadmill but all my joints and muscles were aching the next day.

Travelling with sick kids

Travel with kids is by itself tough. But travelling with sick kids is one of the most difficult experiences I've had. I've managed quite a bit of travel alone with S and A - from India to Zurich a couple of times with a stopover at Frankfurt or London and its been ok. I've even managed a couple of hours sleep on a day flight when A was napping and I've somehow managed not to be utterly at my wits end by the end of the journey.
Still i looked forward to the US trip since the hubby would be accompanying us on both legs and i thought finally I'd be able to watch a couple of movies, have a glass of wine, generally relax a bit.
But that was not to be.
A got a ear infection a couple of days before our return, and the day of our return S got the flu. As a result both kids were unwell and extremely cranky on the journey back. The flight from Chicago to Munich was a night flight and at the time of booking we thought we would get a good 7 hours sleep on the flight. Of course that was not to be. One or the other was continually restless and their hours of overlapping sleep was about 3 hours. And exactly at that time a most irritating girl sitting behind us decided to tell the guy sitting next to her the story of her life. And she continued in her loud voice for more than an hour. So totally we got about 2 hours of sleep.

And then we landed in Munich with two sick, sleep deprived kids. They refused any breakfast and had to be carried all the way to the connecting flight. Luckily they slept while waiting for the connection and on the flight from Munich to Zurich but at as luck would have it, one of our luggage pieces did not connect so we had an hour extra wait at Zurich to fill up the form for missing luggage. S was extremely tired and nearly asleep on the trolley and A kept crying sitting on the trolley asking to be carried.
We reached home at 6 pm and after feeding the kids some maggi and preparing their dinner i took S to the doctor to get some medicines to relieve her. It was 9 pm by the time we got back and we were all so exhausted.

Unfortunately it did not get much better in the following days. Both the girls had jet lag and took turns in staying up and when S was not sleeping she was unwell. I know i sound like a terrible unloving mother but the high point of the last week has been dropping both of them at school on Monday morning and looking forward to a few hours of peace and quiet!

Our trip itself was great fun but the return back and the last few days have been so frustrating that I'm starting to wonder whether it makes sense to take these trips with long time differences and lengthy flights unless its at least a month long!

Norway trip - Oslo

We did a 7 day trip to Norway in August, just after the kids and I returned from India. It was very hectic because we left the day after we got back, but luckily none of us had any jet lag, and the kids were remarkably well behaved (touch wood) on the flight back from India so I was not at my wits end.
We flew into Oslo and spent 3 days there. We had rented a service appartment in the centre of the city and that was good because a) the food is awful there, especially if you are vegetarian , and b) because we didn't have our car we could walk or take the public transport to the major locations

Let me start by saying that Norway is extremely expensive, even by Zurich standards which is saying a lot. The taxi ride from the airport to the service appartment was astonishingly high and we promised to use as much public transport or our legs as possible.

The first day we went to Bygdoy Peninsula. Its a really beautiful country area to walk in and full of musuems. We misread the bus directions and ended up walking some 2 km ( I had not brought A's stroller along (why ?) so there was much carrying and much of motivating to walk.) I saw the bus when we had nearly reached our destination after the long trek and thereafter I put myself in charge of figuring out the public transport! We started at the Norwegian Folk Museum. A quaint place depicting life as it would have been in the last century - with a typical bakery, pharmacy , bank etc. There was  live folk singing and dance,  farm animals and a modern playground which kept S and A engaged. I would say, worth a visit only if you have time.

Folk singing and dancing















Then after lunch at a local restaurant- seemed to be somebody's house converted into a restaraunt which was set in really beautiful surroundings but had a really limited menu we set out for the Viking Ship Museum. Very interesting. It had 3 preserved Viking boats and we could just imagine the Vikings rowing out on them!

                                            Viking boat

The second day we went to Frognerparken which has the famous Vigeland Park, with sculptures by  Gustav Vigeland. The sculptures are really amazing, very detailed and realistic. The part of the park surrounding the sculptors has rows and rows of beautiful roses. The girls had a blast running through them. S wanted to collect pink petals, but agreed to only pick those fallen on the ground. At the other end of the park is a children's play area. It had pretty unique stuff with many ropes and bridges, and doubles swings and the kids spent a happy hour there. So the park turned out to be a good outing both for the kids and for us.

Sculpture dedicated to the Holocaust                                                                                

Play area















In the afternoon we decided to walk around downtown Oslo. Very pretty. There was an outdoor jazz concert at one of the places, and the whole atmosphere was amazing. The Opera House is beautiful,  overlooking the harbour.


View from Aker Brygge
Both evenings we went to Aker Brygge around dinner time. It has a lovely view of the harbour and is a nice play to just relax, watch the sunset and have a glass of wine. There are a whole host of restaurants overlooking the harbour. We were surprised to see so many American restaurant chains - TGIF etc which we don't see in Zurich. Probably a lot more American tourists here.





All in all I really liked Oslo. It was a modern city but very scenic and beautiful, lots of things to see and do and a nice place to just hang around. We were lucky with the weather, it was cold (we needed sweaters in August) but it wasn't raining at least.

Why do they grow up?

They are so cute at this age. The other day i went to pick up A from the daycare and i found all the kids  in a dark room huddled around a light. They were making wishes. I asked A what she wished for. She said ' for mummy'.  My heart could melt just then. I told her, your wish has come true, here I am.

And then you have S. She had a playdate with someone in her class and she wanted to go with her mom directly from school. She had done this once before and started crying halfway through the playdate so i told the mom that A and I would also come along. But S would have none of it. She insisted on going alone and said that I should not come. I had to finally go there an hour later under the pretext that A wanted to play with her friend's younger brother!

Bunk Beds

We finally bit the bullet and got a bunk bed for the girls. Basically S already has a car bed so we bought a bed which fits on top of that and stairs to get up. The hubby made a slide to come down the other side. Yes, you heard right, he made the slide. Bought the wood pieces from Jumbo, had them sawed to the correct dimensions, then sandpapered it at home, hammered in the nails attaching the sides to the slide and voila it was done.
Of course that was not as easy as it sounds and it took three evenings to make it. The bunk bed had to be assembled as well and all in all the making of the bed and the slide was a major activity at home.

S now sleeps on the top, and slides down in the morning when she gets up. A sleeps on the bottom on the car bed (I wish!).  I lie down with her on her bed and she goes to sleep. Then she wakes up somewhere between 1 and 3 am and cries. So either i lie down with her again till she sleeps, or else if I'm too tired i bring her to our bed. I guess she has to get used to waking up and being alone- we've tried to convince her that she's not alone since S is on top, but i guess old habits are hard to break!

The slide is great fun and the girls have invented a new game of throwing toys on top and watching them slide down. Initially the wood was a bit rough and A went on it and refused to go again. The hubby had to put some wax and smoothen it and then only it was good enough for the fussy madam. This highly sanitised place has ruined her I say, even the slides in the playground have tyres at the bottom to absorb the shock!