Two weeks ago, yours manic truly and her offspring were stuck on a vegetable farm as the skies peed on us.

Try juggling an umbrella, a mini rucksack, a waterbottle and a 13-kg toddler in your arms while someone pours buckets on you, and you'll understand what fun I was having.

And that's before the mud and puddles we had to dodge, plus the threat of mosquitoes buzzing in the undergrowth. Ms Ivy Singh-Lim, the owner of the farm, Bollywood Veggies, had cheerily assured us that none of her mosquitoes (thanks to the organic veggie diet they grew up on, probably) would give us dengue.

But nothing like a black, six-legged winged insect can make this tot-toting mummy run like the wind. Meanwhile, other toddlers and their parents similarly wielded brollies to the front and back of us, winding a damp trail through the greenery.

Welcome to the pre-school excursion.

Having 20 squealing, fidgety kids pawing farm produce like pumpkins and loofahs in stormy weather can be a surreal experience. Ostensibly, the outing was meant to help the kids learn about vegetables (the wee ones were being taught the names of some common greens in Chinese class), and the dedicated teachers hit upon the idea of taking them out of the classroom to experience the joys of agriculture firsthand.

But, short of not wanting to let go of the comfortingly orange-hued and smooth pumpkin, my two-year-old son Julian hardly paid any attention to his surroundings.

 At one point, he edged dangerously close to the garden pond, eyeing it with a gleam in his eye. But we could have been in VivoCity for all the difference the dug-up beauty of nature on the farm made to him. I waved aromatic blades of mosquito-warding citronella under Julian's nose. He took a disdainful sniff.

I held a tumeric root in front of him. He turned his head away, as if to say: "Okay, stop that, I ain't smelling any more of this stuff".

I pointed out a big bunch of bananas growing on a tree. He affected enthusiasm for five seconds, then went back to staring carefully at the ground, aiming to step in every puddle. He complained his shoes were wet.

I've heard of more elaborate school excursions, of course. A friend of mine chronicled her son's pre-school river cruise outing, which - judging from the photos on her blog - was a major production. And I can only imagine the chaos at my three-year-old niece's childcare centre's annual sports day.

Then again, the importance of excursions - like many other things where children are concerned - lies not in the destination and activity, but the journey.

Something about stepping out with your tiny friends, getting on a big bus with wheels that turn round and round, and staring out of the large glass windows on board, can be immeasurably exciting.

On the way home from our drizzly vacation in the semi-wild, Julian and I sat side by side on the chartered bus, buckled into our seats while his friend Jovi-Kate popped her head up from the chair in front peek-a-boo style.

The combination of an early morning call, the interminably wet weather and kid-lifting led me to doze off. My son, I spied from behind closing eyelids, was singing the alphabet song contentedly to himself as he watched the traffic outside. Then, he turned around and, seeing me almost asleep, popped his thumb into his mouth and drifted off too.

Now, that, also, is a kind of bonding with nature.

myp@sph.com.sg

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