A for Apple, B for boy, C for...

The little one came back from school. As usual she had a couple of sheets of her workbook exercises in her bag.

One of them had four pictures on each page and a row of three alphabets next to the pictures. She had to circle the starting alphabet for what was in the picture.

She had circled the 'c' for carrot etc. etc. and there was one mistake..

There was a picture of a bunch of potatos and she circled 'a' instead of the small 'p'.

Me : Why did you circle 'a' for this one?
LO : I circled 'a' for AALOO silly! but they said it was wrong.

the way she said "it was wrong", shaking her head from side to side was just amazing! Have seen kids who refuse to call a Tomato a "thakkali" at home, because it is not what their school teachers call it.

The little one is different.

A for aaloooo!

What can I say...

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Bharatanatyam

Jr. went on stage for the first time today. She did a great job and did not show stagefright. We were all very happy with her performance.

Another summer day spent driving around in the hot sun and the adults health is going for a six. After watching the performance, the little one is trying out some freelance moves which reminded me of the old days where my brother and me would try karate moves after coming out of a Jackie Chan movie. Some of the little one's self concocted moves are really amazing. Hope to sneak up and catch it on video one of these days. She cannot wait to be six so she can also learn dancing..

On another note, the kids have picked up some slokams from daddy over the recent weeks. Finally managed to slip in a Sri Rudram CD into the van and displace Slumdog Millionaire from the top slot. At first there was the usual stubborn refusal to change the CD.

Now that they hear daddy sing along with the CD and they find it so amazing that daddy can recite minute after minute of what seems to be an endless tongue twister, they asked me "how do you remember all that? Can you teach me how to sing it?" Have patiently broken down the first Ganesha slokam and they so excited that they can sing along too!

Do not know if they will continue on, or this will be it. If anything learning slokams will improve their ability to memorize things, which always comes in handy in any education system. So far so good....

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Please sleep with me

It has been a while since daddy slept in his bed.

Let's say that it has been since the little one was born..

During the recent India trip, San had somehow made sure that the LO went to bed on her own. I never believed it. When I got back, the LO tried her "daddy, please sleep next to me!" puppyface routine and without realizing what a mistake it was,(and being guilt ridden for leaving her and going to India), gave in and slept next to her two days after I got back. She promptly used my hand for a pillow and went back to sleep.

Then we tried to say things like "remember how you slept on your own in your bed when daddy was in India. Do that and make us proud ! " etc. and it seemed to work. Still, she would wake up at 3, 4, 5AM and come to our bed and say "daddy , you lied. you are not next to me" or "I have bad dreams" or "my tummy hurts" or just plain wail for 30 minutes till I relented, afraid that she would awaken everyone else in the house.

That went on for 2 weeks.

Yesterday, she slept on her own. Cried at 4AM for 15 minutes and I came over and gave her my hand to sleep on.

Tonight, while drinking milk before bedtime, she asked me

LO : "daddy will you sleep with me"
me : No. sleep by yourself and make me proud
LO : but, but, I will cry!
me : why should you cry? you are a big girl. your akka sleeps on her own in her bed. You want to be like your akka right? go sleep on your own.
LO : but I am going to wake up and come to your bed.
me : If you wake up and have bad dreams or something, I will come sleep in your bed later. But right now, go sleep. I have work to do.
LO : I am having a bad dream
me : (!!!???!!!) what do you mean?
LO : I am having a bad dream right now daddy. will you come thacham(tamlish kidspeak for sleep) with me?
me : But you aren't even sleeping yet!
LO : I know. I am just trying to see if you will come...

so much for the deviousness of a three year old.

If the little one was a three year old boy, would he be this devious? the eyelash batting, the puppyface, the devious logic... somehow this has to be part of her being a girl and don't think anyone is even teaching her this stuff. Mommy doesn't do anything like this.. at least not in the last four years...Mommy just glares at daddy if she want's anything done! So where IS she getting this stuff from? Has to be in-born right?

I know.. I know.. that last paragraph is going to spark something somewhere, but cannot help thinking that!

This is like making a four month old baby to sleep through the night.. all over again.. except this time making her sleep through the night on her own!

I need to be strong
I need to be strong
I need to be strong
I need to be strong
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Okay will write it a hundred times in a notebook somewhere.. and yes, didn't cut paste it 3 times.. actually typed it! and that should show you how serious I am about the being strong part.

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Henna Ho!

Something to distract the little devils when they are at their worst behavior.

Pity it lasts only a few days. Then again, you get a fresh smile every now and then.

Talking about bad behavior, there has been allegations that it is correlated to this blog itself!

Using approximate numbers provided by two random sampling instances by wife and MIL for Jr. and the Little one respectively and averaging them out over a period of 24 hours starting at 7:30AM the data suggests ...

You know what they say? There are lies, damn lies and then there is Karl Pearson....

Their tantrums and health are correlated more to the average color of the family underwear when expressed on a scale of 0-255 than it is to the blog posts, but I cannot prove it with numbers as convincingly.

How could any lying mathematician?

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Orangeutans

The last of the new matching Salwars...

complemented by some bead garlands..

They sure are getting naughtier by the day!

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