Sangeeta: Hi.Came across your blog while searching for Trekking Destinations in Western Ghats.....and came across the "Valley Of Flowers" Kas Valley near Pune...lovely pictures....and a very [...]
Sriram: There are no updates for more than 2 months now, this is bad I know u r not busy.
Madhavi Das: this is akshara's teacher madhavi from tree house school...the pics uploaded are very very good....she is such a doll...i wish her good luck for the [...]
Sridar: Hi, your pose is amazing in this photo and you look cute.
Kaas plateau near Satara is an amazing place to visit post monsoon. During these 2/3 weeks, the place is full of wild flowers. Last year was our first time and it was an incredible experience. This year, we were a week late and didn’t see as many flowers as the last. But that didn’t deter our mood and what followed was a photography spree, somehow avoiding the maddening crowds and the police barricades from creeping into the photos. Most of the photos are courtesy – Bindhu Madhavan
Akshara and Hari were in their elements and wanted to part of every photo being clicked.
Once the biggies settled down to doing better stuff like eating snacks, Akshara and Hari started exploring the surroundings on their own and started discussing about the various flowers.
When things start getting boring, there’s always Ring a Ring o Roses to the rescue. They tried hard to convince us to join, but all of us somehow managed to stay away. In a way, this was good. Otherwise, the nice photos below would have been spoilt!
All’s well that ends well. After a long day of chasing small flowers, we relaxed chasing bubbles on a hillside.
After every shopping trip, a mini fashion parade happens at the house when Akshara tries on the new clothes and checks herself out on the mirror. This time, i wasn’t doing anything worthwhile in the house (like always, acc to Vidhya). So, i decided to take Akshara down to the garden for a photo session. Also asked her to take her golf stick along for a prop.
But, she wasn’t very interested in the golf stick and it was soon forgotten. It was around 11.45 and the sun was beating hard from directly above. So, technically not a good time for photos. But, i did lot of experimenting with the flash and managed to get some decent photos.
Akshara is very fond of the swing, Jhoola as she calls it. From the moment we stepped out on the podium, she was constantly asking “Jhool Polama” (Shall we go to the Jhoola?). Once there, she was on a world of her own. 10 mins on the jhoola in the hot sun was enough for this session of photography. I wonder how many were looking down from their balconies on this crazy father-daughter duo and wondering what we were up to in the heat of the day!
Treehouse was having its annual fancy dress event. Akshara’s batch (the playschool group) was asked to choose costumes of any cartoon character. We searched east, west, north and south in Pune to find a good costume for her. But, the only ones which every store had were the costumes of Spiderman and Superman! For girls, it was only the Rabbit costume! We were given the reference of 2 stores close to M.G.Road which specialized in carnival costumes. But, they were giving them only for rent and by the look of the dresses, it seemed that they needed 2 or 3 rounds of dry cleaning before one could wear it.
Finally, Vidhya decided to go the DIY way. We got a polka-dotted dress and with the help of few accessories, we convinced Akshara that she looks like Minnie Mouse. Surprisingly, Akshara managed to keep on the headgear on her head all the time.
We were very apprehensive of how Akshara would react on walking on to the stage. She had never been on a stage before and given her aversion to huge crowds, we sensed that it may not go as expected. But, she walked onto the stage, didn’t cry or do anything traumatic. Instead, she did her usual ostrich-thing (if i don’t look at you, that means you are not looking at me!). It was a great day in the end with Akshara and her pals enjoying their fancy dresses and fancy looks!
The best part was when she even uttered “Minnie Mouse” on the stage. This was it, her first words on a stage – “Minnie Mouse”
Then, one day we were told that the class is currently being taught about community workers and that the kids should come dressed up as one. So, off we went again in search of “community worker” and the shopkeepers recommended Spiderman (again!), a monkey, an elephant and few others who would be better off in the jungle rather in the city. By luck, we came across a military uniform in one of the shops. We were impressed by the dress (and also tired of searching) and agreed with Akshara that she would go as a military officer. She even practised the march past that she had originally learnt for the sports day.
But, what happened in the 30 minutes before she left for school was unexpected. We were finding it difficult to get Akshara to understand the “Military Officer” concept. So, we changed the costume name to that of a policeman (or woman). She knew the “policeman” very well, with us having used his name often while travelling in the car to get her to sit in one place. The Policewoman was all ready and we started for school. Once she got out of the lift and saw someone, she had a sudden realization! A realization that her costume looked similar to the one worn by the Magarpatta Security guys!!! So, in an instant, she rechristened herself as “Security”. We had no choice, but to go with this newly renamed costume. Thus, the story ended with Akshara dressing up as a “Security” person. She even gave a demo of how a magarpatta security person would be discharging his duties…
With Hari dressed up as a “Vegetable Seller”, Akshara good a good opportunity to demonstrate the useless activities which the security people here do, like checking each and every vegetable for bomb-like symptoms, but ignoring big packages with “bomb” written on them!
The fact that the TV channels were showing Salman’s dance in Munni Badnam Hui too often was clearly visible with Akshara displaying various dance moves in her “security” costume.
How do you get a bunch of 2.x year olds to understand the concept of a race with a starting line and a finish? Seems daunting, but Akshara’s school Tree-House managed it extremely well. It was an entertaining day at the races, both for the kids and the parents!
Akshara wasn’t quite sure as to where we were taking her on that morning. But, on the ground, once she familiar faces, she settled down quite well. Before the races began, Shriya and Akshara decided to have warm-up laps of the ground. But they took it too seriously and ended up making it a very tiring walk for her teachers to go and fetch them back.
Every kid was made to wear a “fruit” tag around the neck and it was called a fruit-race, probably to make it interesting for the kids. Akshara was all set for the race, but i guess the teachers forgot to teach one important thing about the starting point. They forgot to tell Akshara the direction in which the race was supposed to be run! And Hari, he just wasn’t interested in running with the girls. He wanted something more challenging!
The actual race happened very fast. While her teacher said “Ready, steady, go!” and the kids started running, Akshara was still busy waving to the crowds. So, one of the teachers had to pull her along for the race. Unfortunately, the teacher was a slow runner
So, Akshara ended up getting a participation certificate and was clearly thrilled about the piece of paper she can play with!
But Shriya had a different plan up her sleeve. While other races were going on, she decided to usurp the first place on the podium. She also tried to convince the chief guest to have a separate presentation ceremony, just for the photographs.
There was also the parent-daughter race in which Akshara and Vidhya put up a creditable effort. There was also some parents who forgot the fun aspect and were desperate to win resulting in the first-aid boxes being used!
To ensure that the parents don’t feel left out, a parents race (Three-legged race) was also organised. Vidhya and I ensured that we got enough photography mileage out of it
On the whole, it was a very well organised event and Kudos to TreeHouse for this.
