Says Shruthi and it truly is a subject close to my heart.

My worst nightmare is all the trash collecting to heaps  and humankind drowning in it. Before throwing things, I try my hand on turning them in to something that can be reused. Some of these are imitation of what serious crafters have done, some are my versions of what I read.

I would like to dedicate all these projects to my wonderful glue gun without which many of these projects would not have been possible. My colleague encouraged me to get a glue gun and once I used it there was no turning back. Spread news papers to cover working surface, gather the materials and lock ‘n’ load glue gun, every single time I feel like Laura Croft

Created so far…..

CD Many Ways

(1)CD Coasters1: Children’s art work on one side(cut to size and laminated) and left over flannel scraps on the other side. A birthday gift for the children’s teacher.

CDArt1

(2)CD Coasters2: I am having a serious love affair with burlap these days. I have been saving the burlap bags in which they sell rice. The big idea was to make a bag. But considering my non existent needle skills, I decided to turn them in to coasters. I loved the result. Especially the coasters that show tamil letters and words such as INDIA and IDLY put a smile on my face.

BurlapCoasters

(3)CD Coasters3: I made some ‘very Indian’ art work on these CDs. I had to sand and prime the CDs for the acrylic paint to stick on the CDs. The big idea is to make these in to ornaments for the children’s teacher’s christmas tree.

CDArt

(4)Another CD project: The girls painted a ready made bird house(thanks Reva) and I just added this to the birdhouse and hung it.

CDBirdHouse

Gerber Bottle Many Ways
(1)It’s A Boy Party Favor: R’s nephew had a baby boy in May and I mailed these party favors for their baby announcement. I sterilized the bottle and the lids, painted the lids, added some IT’S A BOY ribbon and buttons on the top.

ItsABoy

(2)Party Favors-Candle and Candy Jars: We had so much baby food bottles that I was looking for something else to do with it and I stumbled on this. Loved it. The candle votive holders looked really pretty with vibrant yarn. But I decided to use the left over baby blanket/sweater yarn I had.

PartyFavors

Tetra Pak Containers – Tetra Paks cannot be recycled or composted. I try to buy the gallon cans, but sometimes,  cannot avoid tetra paks. When I throw them in to the trash can, I feel guilty. I saw this simple project in FamilyFun magazine. All it requires is hardy scissors and sticky back velcro. I use these as food containers, especially when I want to give a friend some food without having to chase the person to get my containers back.

TetraPakContainers

Brown Bags To Envelopes: I carry my own bags for bringing back groceries, but paper grocery bags tend to collect over a period of time. Brown bags are pretty hardy and are perfect for little hands that learn to wield a brush. But the girls are grown up and want real paper for painting. So I converted my collection of brown bags to envelopes.

GroceryBagEnvelope

Fuse Bead Greeting Cards: The girls do fuse bead work. We have a ton of fuse bead art work, which I am turning in to hand made greeting cards.

FuseBeadCards

Soup Can Pencil Holders and Big Metal Can Planters: This is just for home use and I used them as is.

CanHolders

Technorati Tags: recycle art, reduce reuse recycle, reuse

I call the bubble lady amazing, for one reason and that is because she is A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. We happened to see a bubble show by TheBubbleLady - Rebecca Nile( here and here ) in our local library. The community room was filled with about 100 bodies – children and parents. Irrespective of the age, the audience were mesmerized by the bubbles. As TheBubbleLady tried blowing bubble within a bubble within a bubble, we all held our breath. When she popped a bubble and out of it came vapor, we all cheered. When she narrated a story about the swamp adventure with mosquitos, spiders, dragons, scary swamp creatures all created from bubbles, we all jumped with joy. Something about bubbles brings the inner child out in the open.

TheBubbleLady seamlessly switched back and forth between managing children (Imagine about 70 children in the 0-12 year age group, in a room full of bubbles! Wild is the word.), managing the room to make it draft free – optimum for bubbles, spraying the room to make the bubbles last, and making the audience tap their feet for music. She was absolutely in the groove.

Leaving you all with a video.

Technorati Tags: bubble birthday party, fun with bubbles, rebecca nile, The amazing bubble lady, TheBubbleLady

Mieja: Where is my period?

Chula: You don’t even have periods.

Mieja: (In a teasing voice)May be I don’t need periods. (Calling out to me)Ammaaaaa, can you tell me about my periods??

Meanwhile, said mother is fainting in the kitchen. She quickly pulls herself together and runs out to investigate.

The children point to the birthday card they are making and ask her where to put ‘full stop’ in their birthday message.

Technorati Tags: full stop, period, punctuation

Chula

Yes means no. No means yes.

Hot is for cold and cold is for hot.

Less is more. More is less.

Mieja

{Child X} always wants my things. That is unless she doesn’t want my things, she always wants my things.

Yesterday evening, while Chula was writing a poem (* don’t ask *), Mieja and I were rolling on the bed and having a conversation, which lead to an interview. I jumped right ahead, proper journalist style with pen and paper. She played along with her trademark, ‘Um…..um…..um’ and checked ever so frequently, ‘Did you write that down?’, ‘Did I say four already?’, ‘Make sure you get the right spelling, okay?’

Name four of your favorite activities

• Painting
• Plucking flowers
• Playing in the swimming pool
• Sledding in the snow

(If you ask me, dropping coins has to figure some where in this list. Electronics items have been unsuspecting casualties for her coin dropping. Things that have been damaged include, but not limited to CD player in car, music keyboard, slot for memory card in appa’s laptop.)

Name four of your favorite books.

• Princess baby
• Dora goes to the beach
• Fancy Nancy
• James and the giant peach

Name four of your favorite foods

• Plain white rice
• Keerai
• Broccoli
• Cauliflower

(Except for plain rice, the other things were news to me.)

Name four of your favorite TV shows

• Super why
• Sid the science kid
• Dora
• Strawberry shortcake

Name four of your favorite colors

• Violet
• Indigo
• Green
• Yellow

Name four of your favorite songs

• Adungada from Pokkiri
• Excuse Me from Kandasamy
• Allegra from Kandasamy
• Sollamal Solluvaan from Kandasamy

Name four of your favorite games

• Hi-Ho cherrio
• Candyland
• Smatch
• Go fish

Name four of your favorite animals

• Elephant
• Giraffe
• Tiger
• Lion

Name four of your favorite things to do with appa and amma

• Watch TV
• Making a picture for amma
• Making a book for appa
• Buying flowers for amma.

Name four of your favorite things to do with akka

• Blowing bubbles
• Swim
• Drawing with side walk chalk
• Having a picnic lunch/dinner

Technorati Tags: favorite things of a four year old, interview with a four year old

If you take a higher level perspective, you can make sense of the message given to every generation.

The message is not given by one single source. For that matter it is not even ‘explicitly given’.

The message kids now a days are getting is SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT.

It is not ‘if you work hard, you will get this’ or ‘this is a privilege, but it has been made possible for you’, just plain sense of you deserve the world and beyond.

Technorati Tags: sense of entitlement vs privilege

“Involve the kids in everyday activities.”

Whoever said this did not have kids, that I can be sure of.

It works well in a school setting. I have scrubbed chairs, watered plants, gardened, done nature walks – all with kids. But a home is not as structured as a school. There are certain things that are a routine like loading/unloading the dishwasher, line drying the clothes, folding laundry and putting it away. We do these jobs together. At times when I am making dishes like soup, sandwich, cookie, cake etc, I involve kids. There have been days on which I have made them sit at the kitchen table with a slice of bread to butter or a tomato to be chopped or a cube of cheese to be grated, even if I am not using any of the above in my dish, just to get them out of my hair.

The thing about involving kids is that it needs some degree of planning. One must know the steps in order to delegate. Even better, the delegator must have done the chore at least once(with the delegatee in mind) in order to comprehend the exact skills essential to complete the chore.

Do you want to know what is even more difficult than delegating to kids? It is a mother delegating to siblings who are close in age. Imagine child1 and child2 sitting in their respective carseats all strapped up. After reaching the destination, child1 wants to take child2’s seatbelt off and the mother agrees. Child2 is deeply insulted. She wants to take child1’s seat belt off. So the mother comes up with the solution where child1 takes her seatbelt off, then takes child2’s seatbelt off and gets on to her carseat and straps herself. Child2 now proceeds to take child1’s seat belt off, every one is happy, calamity avoided. But hell no, the children being highly skilled torture specialists come up with the supreme question of who goes first. Now the mother has two choices, to bang her head on the steering wheel hard enough to do some damage to her brain or to calmly tell her children that this is an egg and chicken problem in which she does NOT want to be involved and walk away. Trust me, they do come up with some creative solutions, because they are clear that the enemy is not the sister but the parent and when the parent is not involved, they do tend to save their energy.

PS: This is not an isolated incident. All chores are now viewed by the children as ‘Why can’t I do that?’, ‘Why can’t I do it ALL BY MYSELF?’, ‘How else can I show off to my sibling?’, ‘Are there any other ways to establish MY territory?’.

PPS: The mother is secretly anguishing over the fact that  she was stupid enough to read to the children that the free tiger trial issue of  GloAdventurers where it describes in detail how tigers establish their territory by peeing. She is hoping that they do not connect two and two, end up with twenty two and pee all over the house.

PPPS: Double thumbs up to GloAdventurers. Do try them.

Technorati Tags: delegating to kids, division of labor, involving kids in every day chores, the chicken and egg problem

Its been a while since I did updates about the girls. So here it goes.

Chula:

She loves to dance. She can dance gracefully and keep decent beat.

When she is focusing on something she bites her lower lip.

She is REALLY good in reading between lines. There are 56 children in her class and new kids join her class all the time. I do not remember all her classmates names. So if I address them as ‘honey’, she pulls me aside and says, ‘Amma her name is [x]. You called her honey. Is that because you don’t know what her name is? Do you want me to introduce her to you?’ This is only the tip of the iceberg. She goes much deeper as to rationalize lots of things that it is actually scary for me.

She has an amazing sense of direction. Considering that I am still working on my left and right, this she definitely got from her appa. This coupled with her fluent reading there are constant requests to go through a specific street to her school. If she mentions a street name and I draw a blank, she promptly says, “Don’t worry amma, just follow my directions. Go past X street. Then slow down. After J make a left on to W Ave. Remember, W Ave does not hit F Ave. So you have to make right on S Ave and then a left on to G. You know G, so you can manage from there amma.” When I ask her how she knows this, she places both her hands in parallel-perpendicular-parallel fashion and explains that A street and B street are parallel/perpendicular(in action, she does not know the terms parallel and perpendicular yet) and hence forth so it all makes sense.

She has an amazing perspective. When she has just turned four, she colored a Caillou print out and next to the it she drew a pair of shoes much bigger than the boy. I made a flippant remark about Caillou’s big giant shoes, she calmly explained that in the frame, Caillou’s shoes are much closer to us and Caillou is standing far away from us and hence the difference in size. She still has this perspective, sense of depth/distance and I see it in her art work.

She is the queen of procrastination. This she gets from me. When I ask her to put a book away in the shelf, it almost invariably goes like this: puts the book away->gets another book->starts reading the book->wants to draw something connected with that book->comes to get a pencil->gets distracted by the easel on her way->starts drawing something on the easel->goes to get the camera to take a picture of her drawing->gets distracted on the way to the technology shelf->goes to her room and starts picking her clothes for the next week of school…….. Me: “No fair, there can be only one procrastintor in a home and that position is taken.”

She thinks her sister loves her, but is not always kind to her. Her fantasy is to have a ‘Mieja tree’ in our backyard, so that there can be many many many more Mieja’s in our home. (More than one Mieja? The very thought makes me shudder.)

She takes poetic license when explaining facts to me and hence my nick to her ‘Dubukku’. Her other nicks are mylapore mayil, annakili, smathu chellam, seeni sakkarai, pokkiri.

She follows rules to the T. While on walks, she reaches intersection and waits for me to cross the road. When outside, she always asks me very politely if she can do something. While in public library, she always tells me before she leaves her spot. While crossing roads, she mumbles to herself, ‘STOP. Look left, Look right. Look left. Make sure it is safe. Now cross, quickly, but no running.’

She is scared of movies, even kid’s movies. The only movie she has seen in theaters is UP and that too she closed her eyes after the first 30 min. Not sleeping, just closing eyes and ears. All she watches is PBSKids programs.

Mieja:

I thought it was a fad. But it has lasted for the past five months and she is still going strong. Chula got a face painting kit for fifth birthday in Dec. Mieja of all people, who hates anything on her face has taken an unusual liking to it. However it is not ‘face’ painting per-se for her, but body art. So the routine now a days is, come back from school -> shower -> face painting body art. The routine hasn’t wavered for the past five months. R thinks his daughter must have been a temple elephant in India in her previous jenmam and this fascination is affectation of her previous jenmam. So far I have painted rainbow, cloud, dolphin, flower, heart, frog, star, butterfly and the list goes on. Even on weekends, when she is dressed in something fancy, she insists that her ensemble is complete only with hand painted bracelets, anklets, necklace and such. R and his temple elephant jokes apart, I am seriously praying that this is not a window in to Mieja’s future in which the said child is covered with tattoos.

The children have taken to Kandhasamy songs, which, I would like to clarify, has absolutely nothing to do with me. It is the husband’s idea of exposing them to the real world (*rolling eyes*). I banned Meow Meow, so I am happy that I have had my say. Mieja in particular loves singing, ‘naan pattu pattu pattu pattu pattu sundari’ in her baby voice and it is quite adorable.

Her current nick names include, but are not limited to Pipi Longstockings, pattu sundari, minor kunju, lord labakkudaas(labakku in short to match the dubukku)

Last month when her patti forced her to say something in Tamil, she said, “Soap-le face podatheenga patti” (Don’t put my face in soap instead of the other way around). She got mad that we laughed, stormed out of the bathroom, closed her naked self in her bedroom and refused to open the door.

The child has emotional blackmail encoded in her DNA. She goes ahead and does something 100% unacceptable, which makes me mad and what does she do? She turns on the water works. Here I am using every ounce of self-control and I ask her, ‘Why did you do that?’ and she has the nerve to answer, ‘Only because I love you amma. I love you, love you and love you. All I do is love you with all my heart and you are mad at me.’ But she is beyond any kind of blackmail. Once my chithi pretended to go back to Boston  because her feelings were hurt by the said child and the automatic response that was uttered was, ‘Stop, you forgot to take your jacket and suitcase. Take everything before leaving.’

She wants me to have another child. When I told her that two is my limit, she offered to move to Antartica and live with the penguins, so that I can have another baby.

She is very particular about her clothes. By the time she gets ready her room is strewn with clothes ALL around. I have learnt not to interfere with her clothing decisions and not to question her methods.

She has definitive idea of the concept of time. She carries on her daily routine without much repeated instructions from me. She is adamant that she will keep her own time and is offended if some one tries to manage her time.

If I tell her that I am not feeling good and ask her to take care of me, she makes me lie of her lap and pats me very gently and sings songs for me. Ever since I fell and broke my tail bone, she has been very protective of me. “Amma, don’t sit on the hard chair. I will get your cushion. Amma be careful, you cannot bend like that. You might fall again.” Every morning begins with Mieja asking me how my tail bone is feeling. Her favorite thing is playing mommy and baby game with me, where I am the baby and she is the mommy taking care of me. Today morning, armed with a rubber sheet, body towel, spray on starch container she insisted on changing the baby’s diaper and I had to declare that we are done playing.

She honestly believes her sister knows more and seeks her for advice, ‘Oh-oh. Chula I have a problem. How do I do this?’ and can tirelessly repeat the same question till her sister throws her hands up in the air, rolls her eyes and agrees to help her.

Technorati Tags: chula, mieja

So we got four Karadi’s Chitra books as Mieja’s fourth birthday gift. Karadi claims that their Chitra english hardcover books are ‘exclusive picturebooks in English, written by India’s finest children’s writers and illustrated by many talented international artists’. I must say that they live up to their claim.

Mieja loved this book. Ever since I read the title and the blurb, I was intrigued too. It was one of those rare days, we were all early to school and I decided to read the book to the girls. Shobha Viswanath starts the story with the earth losing all its shapes. Can you imagine a world with out triangles, straight lines, squares or circles?

An adult mind races with images of buildings, architecture, art etc that are possible because of shapes. But a pre-operational child’s mind to which shape is a very 2-d, strictly theoretical concept, knows not of any of the complications. Now a good story teller makes the audience relate and this exactly what Shobha Vishwanath does.

Subsequent pages show in illustration and text what a shapeless earth would look like. The eggs are not oval but are already scrambled, oranges are not semi-spheres, but look squeezed, the kite looks windswept and the stick looks beaten. These are little, day to day things that make the children think about the importance of shapes in every day life. I can clearly see that the two little audience are hooked in. Their eyes are wide and their mouth slightly open, not a peep out of them.

At this point in comes the hero – Little Dot, which is literally a dot, which some how holds on to its shape. The rest of the story is how Little Dot saves the world from the shapeless confusion.

The story does not go in to detail how the shapes were lost. I was half expecting an onslaught of questions about the how part. But there were none. The author quickly gets in to the practical difficulties of living in a shapeless world and the children were engrossed.

Christine Kastl’s brilliant acrylic pallette knife illustrations in bright colors bring fleeting images of Eric Carle to my mind.

Definitely a book Karadi can be proud of.

Lizard’s Tail is the story of a little lizard that lost its tail in an accident and how the little one learns that its tail is regenerative. My children have heard this as a bed time story and were quite excited to see and experience the story through the vivid illustrations of Christine Kastl.

The story some how managed to bring a flood of childhood memories to my mind. One of the common misconception in a ‘firangi mind’ used to be that India is a land of snakes and tigers. However growing up in India, I didn’t see a snake in the wild till I hit 19 years of age. The only exciting reptile I grew up with was the household lizard. Considering that I am such a thigh shaking coward when it comes to the reptiles, I must be happy that this was the case. Certain memories from childhood stay etched in one’s mind and one of mine is witnessing a lizard’s tail getting severed after it fell from the ceiling to the floor. I remember being clearly freaked out by the body-less tail twitching on the floor. And who will forget the famous ‘Kowli sollum palan’ (the predictions based on the direction from which kowli, the stripy variant of common household lizard, makes its calling sound) and ‘kowli dhosham’(the ill-effects that awaits you assuming the darn lizard falls on you) in your friendly house hold panchangam(almanac). The whole thing is extra special fun if your poor old grand mother believes in such things and if your father does not

This is our very first Anushka Ravishankar book and I regret for having waited so long to lay my hands on one of her books. Like in citi card ads: Silly verse – check, funny story – check, nonsense names – check, non-preachy and fun just for the sake of having fun – check, engaging – check, perfect for story telling – check, vibrant illustrations – check, simple enough to read and follow – check, the experience – priceless.  The older child is found pouring over the book when ever she gets a chance.

This is an adaptation of a famous Japanese folk tale by Anushka Ravishankar. The emphasis is that every one and every action has an ultimate purpose. Anushka’s adaptation is very true to the original version. Water color and ink illustrations by Christine Kastl add true Japanese flavor to the story.

Technorati Tags: anushka ravishankar, chirstine kastl, kanyika kini, karadi chitra series, karadi hard bound english books, karadi tales, Shobha Viswanath, the boy who drew cats, the lizard's tail, the rumour, when the earth lost its shapes

Tulika at our local library. Yesssss. Yessssss. Yesssss. Finally it is happening, the dream is coming true. But there is a conditionality clause associated with the dream.

The San Jose library has a system. If the material has not been borrowed for more than a year, their policy is to take it off the shelves. Considering the severe budget crisis the libraries are facing, they are monitoring the genre of books to be purchased. So if you are in the San Jose area, search your local libraries for children’s books from Indian publishers, especially the foreign language (Hindi, Tamil and such) ones and make it a point to borrow it. I found these Tulika titles in the JUVENILE FOREIGN LANGUAGE(Hindi) section. Search your catalog, ask your librarian, make purchase recommendations and BORROW, BORROW, BORROW. San Jose bloggers spread the word.

Karadi mama comes home, thanks to YadaYada. She always asks my children what they want for their birthday and they always send her on wild goose chases like this. But when she asks me, I give her something tangible to work with So we are now proud owners of Karadi’s four new hard bound books – The Lizard’s tail, When The Earth Lost Its Shapes, The Boy Who Drew Cats and The Rumour. Expect reviews soon. Right now its time to show off our bookshelf.

Tara Books are now available in Amazon. I can buy it locally without having to wait for the holy book pilgrimage to India. I am so buying One, Two, Tree ASAP.  Few books are also available in our local library, all of which have been put on hold by yours truly.