Size does matter!

Our home in Hyderabad was much bigger than the one we have moved into in Chennai. While the new one is nice in its own way, i wondered what arjun would feel about having a living come dining room as opposed to two different rooms for each of the areas. My fears were laid to rest when i overheard him telling his cousin,

" You know what, our new living room is so big that the dining table also fits in there!!"

The glass is obviously half full :)

The worrier!

Jun watches his dad getting ready to go to work and suddenly bursts into a wail

" How will i become a father and go to office and work? I dont know anything!!"

We convinced him it was perfectly okay to be almost six years old and still not know what to do in office.

:)

The Storyteller

Jun : Amma, shall i tell you a story?
Me : Sure Jun
*Silence*
Me : What happened?
Jun : I am making it for you!!
Me : Oh wow, your own story? i can't wait!!

After two minutes

Jun : ok amma, i have maken the story but its very short.
Me : Thats ok

Jun : One day, a dinosaur was walking in the forest. Then it saw a squirrel in the hollow of a tree. It ran towards the tree to eat it up and just as it tried to bite the squirrel, the squirrel shut the window of the hollow and the dinosaur bit the window and broke all its teeth. Only two broken teeth were remaining so the dinosaur went away sadly and the squirrel was very happy.

Jun : U liked it Amma?

Me : Loved it Jun!!

Did you? :)

How rain happens

We said goodbye to Hyderabad and flew into the most glorious sunset ever... (very filmy but true!) Junjun was as awed as the rest of us till he suddenly said "Oh, now i understand"

Understand what jun?

How rain happens amma.

How?

The sun gives water to the clouds and the clouds spit them out and it rains.

'weatherman' is hereby officially struck out from the prospective professions list!

:)

I do not recommend..

...discussing the chinese almanac in front of your kids. You will have them informing all unsuspecting visitors,

"Did you know that my mom is a DRAGON!!!!??? SCARY NO?"

And as if that was not bad enough, "And my dad is a RABBIT....FUNNY NO'??

Scary.

:)

For the Record

Fireflies by Owlcity - The first song that jun knows that i don't!!

Toe curling moment of the day - Jun singing this song totally off key with fake accent and all!!

My heir in every sense of the word...

;p

Stopped!!

Me : Jun, by the time the big hand reaches twelve and the small hand reaches two, you better have a clean, empty plate.

Jun : No, no, that is too soon...the hands are moving too fast!

Me : Yes, Jun so hurry up!

Jun : No, make it wait.

Me : (Philosophically) Time does not wait for anyone Jun!!

Jun : If you take out the batteries, it will!!!!!!

Me : *Blink* Blink* (pretty dumbly i might add)

:)

Seven!

Today maddy and i complete seven years of being married. They say life is a series of seven year cycles and i am beginning to believe it because, here we are, back in chennai, where it all started!!

Jun watches everybody wishing us and then ofcourse, has to ask that million dollar question

"So when you get married, you become older twice a year"?

:)

We actually had mixed responses to that one!!

Catching Up!

So much catching up to do....our first loooooong drive as a family, arjun's new school and our hunt for a new home. Too much to write, too little time.

Evening - car comes back from the service centre and early the next day we drive down from hyderabad to chennai!! Lovely time except for arjun asking us every ten minutes "are we in chennai now?"

Arjun's new school is just that - new. Will qualify it as time goes by...but i have no complaints as of now. Arjun is very thrilled that he is again put into I 'C'...yup...his priorities are a little different :)

My search for a life partner was a piece of cake compared to my current hunt for a reasonably priced decent home in Chennai. It doesnt worry me that i am not over thrilled about the houses in my budget. It scares me that even the ones way above my budget are so awful!!!

As for right now, we are re-enacting the story of the Arab and the camel with my in-laws....i suspect they are house hunting for us much more aggressively than we are! ;p

I wonder...

..if anything can feel worse than the sound of car scraping pillar when you are the one driving.

Sad. Angry. Sad. Very Angry.

Damn!

Winds of Change...

...are shoving us around again!

The intention of this post is not to communicate how much i hate leaving hyderabad; even if it is to go to chennai. It is, ofcourse, about something more entertaining :)

Arjun does entrance exam in prospective school and comes to meet me.

Jun, you took ten minutes to finish that...are you sure you did everything? Did you write correctly AND beautifully?

Yes amma, thats why i took TEN minutes, other wise i would have finished earlier.

:) smug smile from mom :) But the story does not end there.

Jun : Amma, i really like this school

Me : Really? Why da?

Jun : The teachers have such nice faces!!

Me : The teachers have such nice FACES?!! (I must have stressed 'faces' a bit too much coz jun's next reconciliatory remark was...)

Jun : Their other body parts are also nice.

:) just when i think i've heard it all! :)

Whozzzatttt??

The revision for term exams continued...

Arjun, what is October 2nd celebrated as?

Gandhi Jayanthi's birthday!!! :) :)

Dabangg!!!

Ten minutes into the movie and arjun says, 'Amma, see EXIT is there......lets GO!!'

Obviously my 'I-am-a-Salman-Khan-fan' genes haven't been passed on.

Secretly relieved!! ;p

Hairy Tales!

We have TERM EXAMS coming up next week. So i asked Jun to tell me three sentences about his body

He answered :

1. I like my legs very much.
2. They help me run faster than a rocket.
3. I also like the hair on them.

I obviously freaked out at point number three and gave him a thorough examination till i showed him that there was NO hair. He said, " no amma, it comes in the night only"

No more revision questions till i get over that answer!!!

Happy I got to read this now!!

If I had my child to raise all over again,
I'd finger paint more and point my finger less
I would do less correcting and more connecting
I'd take my eyes off my watch and watch with my eyes
I'd care to know less and know to care more
I'd take more hikes and fly more kites
I'd stop playing serious and seriously play
I'd run through more fields and gaze at more stars
I'd do more hugging and less tugging
I'd be firm less often and affirm much more
I'd build self esteem first and a house later
I'd teach less about the love of power
And more about the power of love.

- Dianne Loomans

Happy Teacher's Day!!

Me : U know Junjun, ammamma was my teacher in school.

Jun : Really? When will you be my teacher amma?

Me : I cant be a teacher jun!!

Jun : Why? You dont know anything?

:)

Getting Tripped On!!

She : (Drooling over stud in the mall) wow!!...

He : Oh, THAT guy? His third wife jumped off their balcony day before yesterday. Don't you remember him from the newspaper?

She : Blink blink in horror...

Then GETS it, grins and whacks the He....and they lived happily ever after :)

(hopefully ;p)

If

So felt like doing this when i saw it on wanderlust's page .

Its nice to be dreamy sometimes :)

- If I were a season, I would be Spring
- If I were a month, I would be September
- If I were a day of the week, I would be Friday
- If I were a time of day, I would be Evening
- If I were a planet, I would be Saturn
- If I were a direction, I would be East
- If I were a tree, I would be a Coconut tree
- If I were a flower, I would be a Gerebra
- If I were a fruit, I would be a Mango
- If I were a land animal, I would be a Horse
- If I were a sea animal, I would be a Sea horse
- If I were a bird, I would be a Kingfisher
- If I were a piece of furniture, I would be a comfy sofa!
- If I were a liquid, I would be lemon tea!
- If I were a stone, I would be a Ruby
- If I were a kind of weather, I would be Cloudy
- If I were a musical instrument, I would be a Guitar
- If I were a color, I would be Red
- If I were a facial expression, I would be a 'hunh'? !!
- If I were an emotion, I would be Gratitude
- If I were a sound, I would be the laughter of a child
- If I were an element, I would be Water
- If I were a car, I would be a Beetle
- If I were a food, I would Pasta!
- If I were a place, I would be Goa
- If I were a flavor, I would be Honey nut crunch!
- If I were a scent, I would be a male aftershave
- If I were an object, I would be a vase full of fresh flowers
- If I were a body part, I would be Ears! :)
- If I were a song, I would be "Walk the Line" by Johnny Ray Cash

What about you?

Some nice words

" Children need love, especially when they don't deserve it " - Harold Hulbert

" Raising kids is part joy and part guerrilla warfare " - Ed Asner

" You spend 18 months teaching a child to stand up and walk and the next 18 years to get them to sit down and listen!! " - Jim Heffelfinger

You know you've put on weight when...

...your neighbhour who sees you almost everyday, suddenly asks,
" You have some good news to share with me"?

sigh....

Career Choices

Amma, I want to be a cricketer!!

Oh wow...batting or bowling?

NO Amma, i want to be an UMPIRE!!

*******

Amma, i have been doing my homework for so long

OK take a break...come and help me fold my clothes

Amma, i like folding clothes; i think i can become a good maid

******

We are seriously reconsidering our - Let him be whatever he wants to be - attitude :)

Of Mice and Little Boys

A few days back, I had taught junjun how to draw a cat easily and he was quite thrilled.

This morning, i asked him if he would like to learn to draw a mouse.

He said 'no, amma. I already know' and drew a perfect mouse for me.

Except, it was the kind that is attached to a computer!!

Love is...

...doing little things that actually make life easier for the other person :)

Mithran

I hope everybody has that one person in their life who has always been there for them.

Who has known you from before you were born.

Who has been a part of your growing up years, always making you feel so very special and loved unconditionally.

Who opened doors to new worlds.

Who saw in you things you would never have dreamed were possible.

Who actually put his money where his mouth is.

Who never judged. Who was always there...time and again.

Who was kind, funny, creative, immensely talented.

Who was always on your side.

Whose whole family enveloped you with their love.

Who never missed a birthday

Who chose to live life on his terms

Who did not let cancer stop him from continuing with life...that too with renewed vigour and zest

i hope with all my heart, that he knew how much he meant to me.

I hope, all of you are lucky enough to have had a Mithran Devanesen in your life

Love you Mithran Uncle, will miss you more than you can imagine.

Reality Bites ...and how!!

I DONT WANT to go to school. I want to sit at home and do NOTHING like YOU!!

...and this was said in all earnestness!!

Anybody with a job for an hr professional in hyderabad, please contact me so i can repair my image. sigh!! I really thought he would be older before he got all ungrateful on me :(

The age bender!

Me : Arjun, let me make it very clear...if you dont finish your homework, you are NOT going to that birthday party in the evening.

Jun : AMMA! You know something? When your birthday party is going on, do you know what i am going to do? I am going to CANCEL it!!

Me : Have you ever seen me have a birthday party?

Jun : No, but IF you do, i will cancel it and you know what will happen when i cancel it no? You will stay the same age!!!

I died laughing :)

Cricket Crazy Convertible!

Maddy : So what car are you going to buy when you are all grown up?

Arjun : An LBW.

:)

Dont drink and drive!! - Jun Style!

Driving around Bangalore's roads on a holiday, we regularly come across boards which say 'Dont drink and drive'

Arjun finds the need to explain them to us :

" See, we should not be drinking and driving. We should stop somewhere, drink up everything and THEN drive"

Cheers!! (and god help us!!)

The pleaser!

Amma, can i please play outside?

NO arjun, it is too hot!

Amma, please please please please?

Arjun, NO!!

Amma, please please, see, i am pleasing you so much no?

:)

Why i am worried arjun won't have any friends

New boy on our corridor : Hi , I am Sunny!

Arjun : Sunny? What kind of a name is 'cloudy', 'sunny' and all?

And then there are some days...

.... when you wouldnt think twice about handing over both the men in your life to the lowest bidder!

The Deccan Charger

AMMA!! we just hit a four, no? why are they not showing the cheer girls??

!!

And he reads...

...stuff he doesn't have to.

In the supermarket, at a decibel level that can put microphones out of business for good,

"AMMA, it says 'buy one get one FREE' !!! TAKE IT, TAKE IT!!"

sigh!

Why we just MIGHT...

...be doing UKG all over again...

Me : Did you sing your nursery rhyme today?

Jun : A little bit

Me : A little bit? What happened?

Jun : I sang 'paanch choti chidiyan khathi thi anaar, one chidiya flew away and then there were four'

Me (definitely going a little pale) : That is supposed to be a hindi rhyme!! Where did all that English come from?????

Jun : I forgot amma!!!

Me : What did your teacher say?

Jun : She said, "do you know one two buckle my shoe"

Me : You sang that properly?

Jun : Yes

I dont quite believe him.

One for the road...almost.

Nothing galls me as much as watching men relieve themselves in public.

Secondly, till i personally started supervising the laundry, i didnt realize that the briefs men wear are technically different from those made for women.

Both these facts came together in my head one morning as maddy and i were driving somewhere and yet again we saw a man doing it right out there for all and sundry to see!!

Me : Maddy!!!! i think i just found a solution to stop men from pissing in public!!!

Maddy : really? (grins)

Me : Yeah. They just have to stop making men's underwear in such a way that actually lets them do it without pulling their pants down!!

Maddy : Oh?

Me : Yeah. Dont you see...once the design is changed for good and does NOT facilitate this...well...umm ... whatever, no man will want to squat and do it right?

Maddy : Hmmm..ofcourse, that is considering that all these men who do it on the roads are actually wearing something inside.

Me : WHAT!!!Oh dear...ike that hunh?

Maddy : Yeah like THAT.

And thus ended yet another educational conversation with the husband.

:)

Depressed.

Yesterday, two horrible things happened.

First, the plane crashed. Not in my part of the city but since we are not far from the begumpet airport, they would often fly close to our apartment building. From my balcony, i could see 2/3 planes flying together. Though they did not do anything fancy, the very sound they made would get my heart beating faster and hair stand on end. It was awesome.

And then we got to know that one of them had crashed and the pilots had died and i for one, am feeling so so so sad...it was like i almost knew them. We have decided that come Sunday we will STILL go to the airshow.

The second horrible thing i got to know from my mom. She called, first to enquire if we were fine post the crash and second to warn me NOT to watch sun tv especially with arjun around. I actually forgot all about the call since i was kind of mourning the crash but come evening and maddy had heard about the news too. So he switched on the television.

I am no fan of godmen nor of actresses. But what i saw on tv physically repulsed me. NOT because a so called holy man was making out...as far as i know, hindu priests are not required to take any vow of celibacy and everybody is entitled to a personal life. But what kind of a mind would stoop to such a level where they go about installing a camera knowing exactly what the camera is going to capture and worse...how can a television channel air something like this?

Something very wrong happened yesterday and i think the swamiji is the least of our problems.

The killer lady

Jun : I dont want to go to school
Me : Why? What happened?
Jun : One little girl hit me!!
Me : Oh dear why?
Jun : I dont know!!
Me : Where did she hit you?
Jun : Here (somewhere near his waist)
Me : err..maybe she saw a mosquito or something and wanted to kill it?
Jun : No. She doesnt kill mosquitoes, she kills little boys!!!!

:) :) :)

If this isn't the sweetest thing....

ps : he can 'write' now :)
ps 2 : The difference in font is apparently because "acha is taller than you no amma..."
ps 3 : He took my permission to call me arch coz "its too long to type out otherwise"
ps 4 :The capitals are c/o ms word...jun is not THAT smart...yet ;p
ps 5 : am already envying the girl he is going to fall in love with...sigh :)

Train Terror

Sweet aunty who had been chatting with arjun the previous evening in the train, wakes up in the morning and this is what follows :

aunty : good morning arjun
arjun : (sullen) good morning.
aunty : did u sleep well?
arjun : no
aunty : why? what happened?
arjun : You were snoring so loudly, i couldnt sleep at all

..... at this point, i swear i disowned my son. This was actually painful even to type out.

The journey back was a little easier :

On seeing some men buy pirated cds, arjun says : "Such grown up men and they are buying tom and jerry!!!"

I am hoping this is just a stage...that arjun will revert to the sweet and kind person i always thought him to be.

Or was he always like this?

This is getting a little scary.

A hearty valentine!

My dad has always done things in style...be it wooing my mom by singing to her in public or playing a match of football and hockey simultaneously to impress her.

So come Valentine's day, he went ahead and had a heart attack.

A little too much. Even for him.

Stable now, he is in good hands for further treatment.

Inshah allah, all will be well.

Reading Right from Wrong!

Its nice when your five year old starts to read except....

...when he has to use the loo in a mall or airport and says

'That says 'SHE' ' i am not coming there...you come HERE!!'

sigh!!

The mystery explained!

Arjun explained that when a baby is born, you will know if its a girl or a boy when you see the child's hair and ears.

"If it is wearing earrings, then its a girl amma...and the hair also should be a little longer."

:)

A prayer is answered...

Its a GIRL!!!!

:) :)

A kiss in time...

As is usual these days, i got whacked by arjun on my forehead as he swung his arms around while playing something.

Couldnt help but grin as he immediately came and rubbed my forehead hard and then gave it one loud, tight kiss.

"Hmmm, what goes around does come around" i thought to myself when arjun asked me....no...when arjun TOLD me..."you are feeling better now, na?"

When I obediently nodded in agreement, he launched into his new philosophy :

"See amma, i kissed you and you felt better because when i kissed you, your pain went away no?"

Again i nodded obediently.

"Amma, see, i am a PAIN KISSER!!! From now on, whenever anybody is hurt, i am going to KISS them TIGHTLY!!!"

Since i didnt have the heart to damage his 'super-kisser-man' image, i nodded again.

So flying doctors are out...please welcome the new age kissing doctor...who i hope won't get into trouble at school!!!!

Flying high...

Why i enjoy flying with jun :

Just as we are taking off : "Ready, get set, GO!!!!'....and the plane obediently takes off!!

After the take off : "Amma, have we come out of the world now?"

During the flight : "Amma, i can see INDIA!!!"

During the flight : " Why do they give the same book and broken pencil again and again? They dont have anything else?"

As we descend for landing : Amma, i have MAGIC ears. If i yawn, i can hear better!!!

New Beginnings?

Christmas :

Stared and stared at little sis who is currently BIG with child and looking more and more like my mom every day!! Discovered that my brother in law is a rock star, hiding his light under the proverbial bushel. The christmas spirit was terribly evident with him letting junjun play his 27k guitar...while the rest of us held our breath! Luckily no damage done and i hope i have a budding 'geeetarist' at home!

Old friends dropping by, catching up with relatives passing by...everyone tired of me repeating my 'Oh we live in the US of A - United States of Andhra Pradesh " joke, ...great food, fun decorations, lots of shopping, mom and dad doing all the work while we just lazed or caught up with the gilmore girls...yup - a perfect christmas.

Now coming to All that i have to look forward to in the new year :

1. Arjun getting a brand new cousin....(heavy lobbying going on with Mr G up there that it should be a girl! ;p....you are all free to sign the petition too )

2. Jun turning five and actually wanting a birthday party!

3. Jun moving to first standard (inshah allah!) and having school till 3.30pm

4. Me having more time than i need on my hands

5. Me looking out for a job - to become some sort of a research scholar and teach - or to go back to the big bad corporate world?

Decisions, decisions.....but what is life without them?

Here is wishing everybody a HAPPENING new year!! :)