– Met Uma and it was great. It was nice of her to stop by for a quick chat session, much to the cabbie’s dislike, on the way to the airport. She got the kids awesome scrap books made out of hand made paper. I have put it away for a rainy day craft activity. We talked like we knew each other for ages. Kids behaved. So all in all a good meet.

– Are you ready for CROCUS2011? At Saffron Tree we are busy over working our keypads and gearing up for CROCUS2011. ST is turning five and the CROCUS theme for 2011 incorporates our birthday. ST is five and the theme is ‘THE FIVE ELEMENTS – EARTH, AIR, FIRE, SPACE, WATER’. Stay tuned with us and you will not be disappointed. We are bringing our A-game, you guys prep your cozy reading chair. 7 days of back to back reviews, the famous CROCUSword, teacher resources, art, activities and much more.

 

– Mieja is in to making money for some reason. Of course I do tell her often that things do not grow on trees and that we have to work hard to buy things. After buying money from Target, her next idea was to grow a money tree in our back yard. The most recent in this unique line of thinking is, ‘Amma, let us sell the market. There are so many things in a market right?! If we sell the whole market, then we will get lots of money right?!’ Soon she will be selling me. The day is not too far.

– Chula….. something is going on. With every day, she is living a little bit more inside her own head. There is lots of dreaming, thinking, drawing, reading, shutting off her links to the world outside going on. Some of her pictures blew my breath away. She is drawing Little Mermaid scenes. Shading with her pastels, looking at it from right-left, top-bottom, just a shade here a shade there. Perfecting it, sometimes after spending hours on a picture deciding to throw it away and starting it from scratch. Finally when she is happy showing it off to me and asking me to frame it.

– Uma tagged me for Mommy Guilt, few months ago. When she met me, she was nice not to smack me on my head as I am still sitting on it. So here it is.

With every day, my priority in life is getting defined over and over again. Now it is clear – my personal space, kids, house keeping, thousand mundane things, at the very last bringing up the rear, cooking. The bandh and the kids lounging at home played a major role how this priority list got shaped up. The kids are no longer allowed to play inside the house. They have strict instructions to play in the corridor and to eat what is put on their plate at the time it is put on the plate or else wait till the next scheduled eating/snacking time. There have been few occasions in the past month, when they were hungry and I ruthlessly, said no to the unscheduled snack quoting that they nibbled their lunch and now have to wait for another hour for their milk/buttermilk.

If there is fresh made hot rice or idlis, I get first dibs. I have often fed the kids left over rice and kept the fresh made rice for myself.

I maintain it is for the greater good and do not feel an inkling of guilt.

– Went to Ohri’s Nautanki Gali. It gave me the impression of ‘wanna be a good restaurant’. The food was aplenty, the waiters were super nice. But felt as if something was missing. We sat in an auto and ate our dinner, definitely a high point for kids. I was not too kicked about the general garish do and loud music. Food was so-so. High point of the buffet seems to be the chocolate fountain, though the fountain looked watery.They also have Rajasthani style puppet show, but the puppets were resting when we went.

– Went to Skandagiri temple in Secunderabad. Major renovation going on. So I had to watch the kids like a hawk. Right next to the temple was a branch of Giri Trading. They have golu dolls,  marapachis, all types of pooja items, devotional CDs/DVDs/books, golu stand etc. In general gave me a Mylapore/Saidapet feel. Also next to the temple an Anjeneya temple by Kanchi mutt.