celebration – Favourite Mom

I found this image on the internet and when the facts were in front of me it kinda came as a a shock. Well.. for India it might not hold completely true. P is in grade 6 and for her the last normal (almost) year was grade 4. They only lost the last 20 days of school for grade 4. But yes it was an abnormal ending for a school year.

But now I think there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. The third wave for us came much after the rest of the world and it was so mild compared to the previous one. Lesser serious cases and much lesser death rate than before. For most it was just a mild cold, cough and fever. Just like a flu. This time all adults in our house were down together. We didn’t even isolate 😀

Schools are opening next week and boy, are the kids happy. The moment the email came from school they both made up a ‘back to school’ dance. When their dad came out of his room they were dancing and singing in front of him and putting up such a show. At first he couldn’t understand what was going on and he thought it was just another game but slowly realised they were singing the words “offline school” and doing a dance 😂

I don’t know what the experts say but as a layman I feel the end of this tunnel is here. There’s light ahead and very soon we can expect things to be normal again. It might be a “new normal” but better than being locked up at home. The children have lost too much during these couple of years. There is a lot they need to cover up. Hopefully the damage will go. Even if it takes some time. Hopefully the kids will be able to go to school again (for the sake of their sanity…. And ours 😋). Hopefully we will see mask free people again and be able to smile at them. (Doesn’t it happen that someone you know is in front of you and you don’t recognise that person because of that mask? ) Hopefully we will be able to recognise people again! Hope keeps the world alive….. and hope has seen all of us through this pandemic. Many people lost their loved ones. There isn’t a family where at least 1 COVID death hasn’t taken place. Hopefully this is the end of it……

As everyone knows both are born exactly 5 years and 1 day apart. P on 14th Feb and A on 15th Feb. The age gap being so much , now I can’t even have 1 party for them both. Has to be 2 parties , 2 themes and everything different. So this year it was Unicorn for A and Harry Potter for P.

When I asked A to give me her friends’ list…. she gave me 18 names. And there are 23 kids in her class including her. So in short I invited the entire class. To do that I had to first make invitations because I don’t have even have 10 people’s numbers from her class. So got down to making those and distributing them 10 days before her birthday.

You know what I find most annoying? You take the effort of sending invitations to everyone, and people can’t just lift their phone and send you a WhatsApp saying that they can’t make it. Isn’t it rude not to do that? There are still people from her class who I have no clue about coz they just dint respond! Anyway… it’s their loss. Coz we had a great party and the kids really freaked out. But seriously…. one message? Won’t take you more than a minute 🤷🏻‍♀️

The next gargantuan task was the decorations. Me being me wants everything to be pretty and perfect. After all that’s what my job was right? Centrepieces, wall decor, hanging pom poms…. there had to be everything. And of course prettily packed gifts 😁 the next week went in planning, shopping, cutting , sticking. I had to ultimately ask my co sisters for help coz I could see I can’t complete this on my own. We had a couple of fun sessions together and voila!

Tattoo is a must. You keep anything you want but tattoo has to be on your list for this age group. The company I called to make the kids do activities is just fabulous. I have called them earlier for P’s 4th birthday and the kids simply had a ball. I chose a venue very close to home and by default school and it was so convenient…. you forget something…. send the driver (psst…. I forgot the candles… AGAIN!!). I don’t know why I keep doing that! Why can’t I remember to put in the candles? I did that a couple of years ago too. And had to send my cousin looking for knife and candle in the middle of the party 😁 anyway… turns out the candles we had were special! The colour of the flames matched the colour or the candles!! The pink one had a pink flame and green had a green flame 😀

So here are some pics from the party. Enjoy! (P’s party in the next post)