Festival of Lights and Colors, Not Noise and Crackers

Like most of you, Diwali is my favourite festival too. But this year, our Diwali is a little different compared to all other past years: this is our first Diwali with my 9-month-old baby Riyan!

We all are super excited to make it the most special and memorable Diwali for us and Riyan too but without disrupting his routine. So we preferred staying home rather than taking a trip because I didn’t want to end the festival with distress and sickness.
My husband invited the close family members at our place to celebrate Riyan’s first Diwali. Our family met after a long time and I made sure Riyan got familiar with all the members and greeted them with a smile.

We pre-shopped festive clothes for Riyan which are comfortable and colourful to get the best Diwali pictures. We managed to get matching-coloured traditional outfits for all of us to make it more special.

Also with a lot of festival food I was always handy with food items for Riyan to avoid his cranky behaviour. I had some homemade healthy snacks and fruits always by my side and also breastfed Riyan whenever possible.

My husband and Father-in-law decorated the home with lots of string lights on the wall, ceiling and curtains along with flower bunting and diyas. Riyan was overjoyed to see the lights and diyas.

I managed to draw 2 rangolis at the doorsteps and decorated the entrance with a decorative elephant and flower bunting. We even pasted Shubh Deepawali posters on the entrance wall.

During Diwali, we performed Laxmiji Pooja and Ganesh Pooja where kids enjoyed playing the temple bells. The whole family went out to watch the city adorned in lights. Kids enjoyed watching lights and got balloons on the way. Riyan learnt to greet the guests who visited our place with a smile. To make it more memorable we bought a new tricycle for Riyan as a Diwali gift. We clicked pictures with every member of the family and clicked a lot of selfies too. The takeaway moment was that four generations of the family were captured in one photograph.

My husband and I dislike crackers and we wish for Riyan to dislike them too. We clicked a special family picture of us to promote an eco-friendly green Diwali and forwarded it to all friends and family members.

To make a complete festival mood at home, we played Garba and danced for hours. Adults and youngsters, elders and children, all danced to the beats and enjoyed. Our family had a great time as we all met after a long time.

As we had 5 kids at home including Riyan, we arranged games for all the Bacchus. We had pre-planned the games for kids as well as adults. We played with balls, blocks, cards and a few activity games.

Trust me, this was the most fun loving day for all as the kids played, laughed, cried, fought and shared. We all sang songs and shared a lot of childhood stories which strengthened the sibling bonding.
The most memorable moment of Diwali for my husband and me was that Riyan learnt clapping to Pooja music. We were over-whelmed to see him clapping!

Alas, the days passed too fast! Bye bye to the guests and bye bye to Diwali. Eagerly waiting for the next Diwali. We hope the next Diwali will be more fun, as Riyan will be old enough to understand the festival and celebration.

Hope you enjoyed the journey of Riyan’s first Diwali! Hope you too had an equally joyful Diwali.

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