Team Yatra

​Yatra means joy, sharing, happiness, togetherness and more than all it's a time of celebration with our loved ones. Though we all have gone to many yatra from childhood only few remains special leaving an unforgettable sweet memories that fills our heart with utmost joy and happiness.

One such special yatra was my team outing to Munnar in the year 2008. Munnar is a town as well as a hill station which is located in the Idukki district of the Indian state of Kerala.

My yatra to munnar was a thrilling but scary experience in my life because I was the team lead and it was my sole responsibility to arrange everything from the start to the end of the yatra.

It was my first experience to make an entire plan and arrangement for my team outing. I discussed with my manager about the rules and the sponsor given by our management for the trip and then I arranged for a team meet and discussed with my team about the location and the budget for our team outing.

We thought about many places and finally we decided to plan our trip to MUNNAR a place which speaks and shows the beauty of nature. We worked hard as a team for 2 months with a great team spirit to achieve the best team incentive to enjoy every moment of our trip and then fixed the date for our journey.

I booked Jojo cottage in munnar two months before and arranged for a 20 seater mini traveller bus from my company to that cottage in munnar through travel agency. We started our journey in the night and reached cottage the next day evening. It was a fun filled yatra with music, dance, games and so on.

When we reached the cottage it was drizzling and the cottage owner uncle and aunt gave us a warm pleasant welcome with a hot chai. After a small refreshment we went for a walk and had our dinner outside. The next day morning we ordered breakfast in the cottage which was prepared by the owner aunt. Wow.... They gave us Aapam with coconut milk and Kerala special kondakadalai kurma. First time we tasted such a mouth-watering Kerala dish and we all asked for more and they served it hot for us until our tummy was full.

We started travelling to the tourist locations near the place and one such beautiful place was the Rajamalai hills. We walked, jogged and somehow we reached the top of the hills. When we reached the top of the hills the clouds passed over us and kissed us. It was such a wonderful moment which made us to feel the love of nature. We clicked our beauties along with the hills. We played, laughed, had fun and enjoyed each and every moment of the trip. Especially we all enjoyed the taste of mouth watering Kerala dishes with the nice aroma of the coconut oil used to cook their food.

Finally when we started from munnar we all stood still took a deep breath to enjoy the fresh air which cannot be enjoyed in the city.Though we felt sad for some time to leave such a beautiful place again we started enjoying our return journey from munnar to our office. It was a great team yatra. These days travel is made easy. Visit Yatra.com for any Domestic Airlines or to check the Flight Schedule .

Happy Travelling.

Meet you all soon with another interesting post.

Till then take care

Cheers,
Priya Arun

Infant Parenting

Tips for Infant Parenting

In this blog post I would like to share about few simple but very important basic things that a MOM should know before getting her little one in her hand. It is very important to handle the baby with all care in the first few days.

Once you deliver your baby ensure that your baby cries normally which plays a major role for a healthy start of life.

After getting your precious baby in your hand, slowly and softly check your baby thoroughly. If you find anything unusual immediately report to the doctor without any delay.

Make sure that you have cut your nails before getting admitted in the hospital to feel comfortable and safe while handling your baby. Also keep a baby nail cutter in your delivery kit so that you can use it if your little one has nails by birth. I faced this issue with Dany, because he had nails and the very second day he scratched his face with his nails. So it's good to keep a baby nail cutter in your delivery kit.

Use soft cotton clothes and towels for your little one. Also wipe your baby lips with warm water using soft cotton cloth after every feed to avoid blackening of your baby lips.

Keep your baby as much warm as possible by covering your baby with soft clothes properly and also using baby bed. Its good and safe to give your baby with the baby bed to your beloved friends and relatives who comes to visit you. This practice will help you to avoid mishandling of your baby that arises due to lack of experience in handling babies. Moreover your baby will not feel the body pain caused by different way of handling by people on the same day.

Always use hand sanitizer before handling your little one and also give hand sanitizer to your friends and relatives who comes to see the baby.

While putting diapers ensure that the umbilical cord is not covered or tightened by the diaper. The umbilical cord will fall within 5 to 9 days from birth. It fell down on 5th day for Dany and on 8th day for Tina.

The first bowel motion passed by a new born is a sticky greenish black motion called as meconium. The first motion will be passed by the newborn on the same day(mostly within 8 hours) and it will be completely passed within first few days and slowly the colour changes into yellow indicating the digested milk.
My little ones (Dany and Tina) passed the first motion within 5 to 6 hours from birth.

The most important struggle comes when we teach the infant for breast feed. Mostly the infant will find very tough to catch the nipple in the initial days. Keep your baby on your arm and teach your baby to put the full nipple in mouth to get a good latch. Once your baby gets a good latch then both of you will feel comfortable while breastfeed.

Many of us will get neck pain and back pain while feeding the baby. To get rid of that pain always use pillow under your lap(to increase the height) so that you can feed ur baby by sitting comfortably without bending down. In the initial days I was not aware of this method so whenever I fed my baby (Dany) I had severe neck pain and back pain. Later my Grandma gave this advice and it worked out in a perfect way.

The most important thing is Always sit and feed your baby, never feed the little one by lying down or sleeping. Feed your baby every 2 hours and every time you feed, feed your baby for at least 20 minutes( each side 10 mins).

Never give up by saying that there is no milk secretion. The fact is for the first 48 hours there will not be any lactation, more your baby sucks more will be the lactation. Frequent feeding is very important for good lactation.

After feeding, put the baby in your shoulders and tap your baby gently till three burps and then put your baby down. This is very important for proper digestion of milk for your infant.

Only breast feed for 6 months and go ahead with your doctor's advice about giving water for the infant.

Give bath to your baby according to doctors advice. While bathing make sure that your baby doesn't drink water. While head bath ensure that you are not putting the baby upside down because chances are high for the baby to drink water. Always keep baby facing you and wash off the hair gently.

At birth, many areas of the newborn's skull have not yet been converted to bone. This is the reason for the soft spots (known as fontanels) in the newborns skull. Later these bones will fuse together in a natural way. A protein called noggin is the reason for the delay in the fusion of an infant's skull. Make sure that you are not pressing that areas in your newborns skull and also be alert, while another child is playing with your baby and touching his head.

These are the few basic things that I learnt while parenting an infant.

I hope this post will be useful for new Moms and if you find it useful and if you want to ask about few more topics about parenting please post your feedback,suggestions and valuable comments.

Meet you with another interesting post.
Happy Parenting.
Happy Blogging.

Peppy School Days

I believe School days are the best ever-loving days in all of our life. If we just recollect our school days without our notice our heart will be filled with joy which cannot be described in words.

The best memories which helps me to refresh my mind and heart are those peppy fun loving moments in my school time.

I did my schooling till Std V in my place called Ambattur in Chennai. But in Std VI, I joined a new school which was located in Avadi(6km from Ambattur). I felt bad to move to a new school because of the fear in my heart about new environment, friends,teachers and also travel by bus.

On the very first day with all fear in my heart, I entered into the new school campus with prayers. We all were from different places.
When I prayed, I said, God " All I need is one good friend from ambattur, so that we can be together all time even while travelling".

God answered my prayers and gave me an ANGEL staying in the next street from my house.
Yes, she is my best friend till now and she will be my only best friend till my last breath.

My angel name is Miss.Ramya. Oops! now she is Mrs. Ramya Nandakumar, Blessed mother of two clever and cute boys. We became friends at the age of 11 and now we are 33 and our friendship is 22 years old with the same ramp and it keeps growing as we grow.

We always hold our hands together, when we walk to school. The people who are passing by that road will look us like mad girls because we will never care about anything around us other than our fun filled talk and peppy walk.

I can still remember our 10th science special class under the tree where we both started laughing for some reason( no idea why we started laughing) and we started laughing loud and when our science teacher asked why we were laughing we bursted into laughter and the whole class including our science teacher started laughing by seeing us. No words to say about that peppy day in our life.

Recollecting those happiest moments enlightens my heart and fills my eyes with tears.

I still remember the day we both left our lunch basket in the road and came back home. We always do many things together without our knowledge.

We won't waste our holidays and weekends. Like the school timetable we had our own playing timetable. We played many games like Shuttle, Kho-kho, Volley ball, Carom, Snake n ladder, Business, Pallaanguzhi, kallaanga(5 stones),Dhaayakattam, Bambaram, Paandi, Aadu-puli aattam, 7 stones, statue, cricket etc.

We were five in numbers Ramya, Revathy, Selvi, Dhana and myself. Also there were many children in our street, so we never felt bored in our holidays.

We used to climb the Guava tree in her house with chilli powder mixed with salt to taste the fresh guava fruits from tree. One day, when we were sitting on the Guava tree I can never forget our big fight. I seriously can't remember the reason for our fight but it was a terrible fight between us. We jumped from the tree fighting with each other and started holding our hairs and she was very angry so she took bunch of my hairs in her hand and I shouted in pain. I didn't speak with her and ran to my home because of severe pain. But on the same day once the pain vanished our fight and anger also vanished and we started playing and reading together.
I can proudly say that the fight, anger, ego or pain didn't disturb our friendship and our friendship retained the same beauty.

Though we dont meet often nowadays, whenever we meet and take our kids to park, we will start playing like kids and our kids will say " Our Moms started playing da, so they wont play with us.

Friend is the only person who can take you back to your childhood days and makes you feel young like a kid and fills your mind with joy.

Friendship is a beautiful relationship in this world. One can live without many things that he thinks as mandatory to live in this world but one cannot live a complete life without a best friend in life. A good friend not only add nice aroma and tasty essence to life but also creates and marks important values in our life.

Rammi is my True Best Friend.

She is a
F for Fantastic
R for Reliable
I for Intelligent
E for Enthusiastic
N for Nostalgic
D for Daring, person in my life.

Love you my sweet heart.
I am dedicating this post to you dear on your birthday for being my FRIEND.

Happy birthday sweetie......
God Bless.

Happy Blogging!
Meet you with another interesting post!