Asked Mieja every 10 seconds for the past week. What was so special about Saturday(July 31, 2010)? It was ‘The Wiggles’ show at San Jose HP Pavillion. The children knew that we got tickets for the show and were thrilled beyond words. After showing her the calendar for the 1000th time, I got a bit tired of the routine. So I fake-gasped and told her, “Yesterday was Saturday. Remember we went to see The Wiggles??!! You were so tired because of the excitement that you slept through the show.” The expression on her face was priceless ;-P

Anyways, Saturday arrived and we went with bells on to the see The Wiggles. The auditorium was 80% full, the crowd was excited but not the kind of excitement that leaves you drained and tired. The Wiggles were friendly, all four walked through the aisles and waved to the kids. Even though we had the cheapest $10 tickets, we still were blessed with a darshan. Murray walked through the row directly in front of us and actually made eye contact. Some seasoned parents bought roses for Dorothy and bones for Ruff. Among the songs they sang, I could identify the iconic Fruit Salad Yummy Yummy and Hot Potato. Forgive me my Wiggles acuity is not as good as the girls. A good, relaxing show.

Mieja after having hyperventilated about The Wiggles for a whole week, was unusually quite. She asked me, “Can go home and have TV?”. When I glared at her she repeated the question, “Can we go home and watch TV please?” So I quit glaring and politely said no.

If any one interested, Ringling Bothers Circus is in San Jose(HP Pavillion) from Aug 18 – Aug 22. A quick tip, get tickets directly from HP Pavillion. The ticket office is open 10.00AM – 3.00PM. There is two hour parking right opposite to the ticket office on S.Autum Street. They charge only facility fee of $1/ticket. Where as Ticketmaster is a whole different story. I was dumbfounded by their day light robbery. They charge approximately 45% convenience fee/ticket and a service fee/ticket on top of that. Seriously???!!!

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I discovered Ms.Ravishankar only four months back. When I first saw the books authored by her on Tara catalog, I did confuse her with Anoushka Shankar, the sitar player. Live mint sorted me out proper. I started reading more about her and the title Dr.Seuss of India had me riveted.

The first Ravishankar book we read at home, The Rumor – published by Karadi, charmed the pants off us and left us wanting for more. Luckily we found a couple of her books in our library.

Elephants Never Forget!
Anushka Ravishankar. Illustrations by Christiane Pieper.

The story is simple. An elephant calf gets separated from its mother after a storm and is adopted by a heard of buffaloes. He grows up as a member of the buffalo herd. When he encounters an elephant herd few years later, will he choose to go with the elephants or will he remain with the buffaloes?

The simple story has been made interesting by the typical Anushaka Ravishankar’s style of story telling.

“He needed some water
To wash himself clean.
The buffaloes looked so calm, so serene.
The water was lovely, cool and green.”

What endeared this book to me was not just the rhyming verse. To me the elephant growing up with animals totally different from him, forming his identity and in the end deciding his zone of comfort was very similar to immigrant children forming identity.

To market! To market!
Anushka Ravishankar. Illustrations by Emanuele Sanziani.

I still remember my tri-weekly trips to the vegetable market with my dad. A buzzing Indian bazaar is not exactly a theme park, yet I found it very entertaining. Walking along the aisles touching the fresh vegetables, observing the art of bargaining, being mesmerized by the art of peddling(Doesn’t even the mundane tea and coffee has a magic to it when the peddler calls out in his deep voice – teeeeeee-kaapi-kaapi-kaapi-kaapi-kaapeeeee ?), the smell of fresh flowers and a quick pass by darshan at the local road side temple……

The essence of my experience is captured effectively in rhyme and in illustration in To Market! To Market! It brings out powerful nostalgia. It brings fleeting images of a five year old me walking to the old Saidapet market holding my dad’s fingers. I remembered this one particular trip where I was busy looking around and reached out for my father’s fingers and he shook me off rather rudely which made me look up at his face only to realize that in my trance, I had lost my dad and was trying to go home with a stranger! It brings out the child in me.

Contrary to her claim to fame as India’s ‘nonsense verse’ writer, Ms.Ravishankar personally made a lot of sense to me.

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Mieja sits on her chair, holding FUNTIME RIDDLES ( by Marilyn Helmer and Jane Kurisu ) and with 150% focus reads:

What ship do prize winning athletes sail on?
Championship.

What is common to a cake and a baseball game?
They both need a good batter.

Why are basketball courts wet?
Because all the players dribble.

Why are football stadiums always cool?
Because the seats are filled with fans.

She is very calm, very composed. There are no pauses and no laughs. Because she does not understand. Heck she can’t even read! She repeats entirely from memory, from what she has recorded away in her brain by listening to what her older sister has read to her. Its hilarious to watch this child read a jokes and riddles book like some one reading SUN TV news.

BTW the riddle book is good. Do check it out.

Chula understands the jokes, I can tell. She is at a stage where she understands both slapstick as well as the subtle semantic/phonological jokes. We also picked up from the library SILLY KNOCK-KNOCKS( author Joseph Rosenbloom, illustrated by Steve Harpster ) and all of the jokes are subtle phonological ones and go right over my head, but Chula gets it. I will give you a sample:
Knock-Knock
Who’s there?
Canoe.
Canoe who?
Canoe please get off my foot?
( Ammmmaaaa… *some serious eye rolling* it is just like CAN YOU please get off my foot. Did you even think about that? *sending more attitude my way* ) For my part, I irritate her further by saying that I understand the wordplay, but what is so funny in a knock-knock joke?

Tell me folks, is it a cultural thing? I don’t get it. Probably will never, because I did not grow up with it?

PS: Recordings of Mieja “reading” books.

PPS: A riddle for you all. Who can jump taller than the tall mountain? ( Clue: If you are a Dora enthusiast or have one at home, you will know the answer. )

Technorati Tags: humor development, humor development chart, humor development in children, humor development milestones, is sense of humor acquired?, is sense of humor nature or nurture?, potty humor, sense of humor and language development

At some point of time, all parents would have witnessed their child telling no. After the NO, comes the power struggles and the temper tantrums. It is an universal phenomenon and experts console parents saying that they are witnessing the terrible twos and that it shall pass …..in to tremendously terrifying threes, frightening fours, frustrating fives, shocking six….. my amma swears that I am going through a tiresome thirty three phase right now and is waiting with all toes and fingers crossed for ‘my phase’ to get over. The phases are a complicated play of wanting to establish an identity and earning respect and approval. The best thing for a parent to do is to step back and realize that they are not alone. The very thought that zillions of parents, irrespective of time or culture are going through the same thing at the same time gives immense strength and patience.

This is the gist of the book beautifully conceptualized and illustrated by Mr.Warburton. Little Noah is sitting wearing his diaper and playing. In comes mommy and says that it is time to leave. Even before she explains where, Noah says no, not once not twice, but a 1000 times.

no..NO…reverse-no-on, grumpy-mad-gritting-his-teeth-NO, cool-come-on-make-me-NO, big-72-point-bold-no, No-way-jose, nooope. He proceeds to say no in russian, greek, hindi, old norse, chinese, inuit, tagalog, sign language etc. Little Noah is so innovative that he says no in creative ways such as using the carrots and peas on his dinner plate to spell out no!, as skywriting, he texts no, morse code(dah dit dah dah dah -. —).

If you think it is hilarious, you must look at Noah’s face when his mom shrugs her shoulders and says, ‘Ok, fine. If you don’t want to go to the PLAYGROUND, you can stay here.’

Found the whole book as an animation here.

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Picture books are an essential component to developing early literacy skills. One might come up with numerous adult oriented reasonings, beyond that picture books are pure fun. How else a child, who by nature is an active participant in the learning process, sits down and listens to something read to her? The illustrations in the picture books play a key role bridging the gap and provide the sensory input that rivets the child to the book.

But like everything one thing evolves in to another. Picture books eventually give way to chapter books. To ease the transition from understanding with aid to following the subject content by creating mental pictures, there are several easy reader books.

These easy readers books are classified in to different levels. In general I do not go by the age recommendation for each level. Combining age and the skill level only puts unfair pressure on the child.

Over time I see some patterns developing at home. I see strong likes in each of the above levels.

Just wanted to make a list of the books we read at home.

(1)Sometimes called pre-level as in for pre-readers. The author still relies largely on pictures. Many a times there is no story. The focus is on words. Select keywords are repeated again and again throughout the few pages of the book, supported with pictures. The sentences with keywords are simple, basic three word or two word sentences. The idea is to help the child understand the keyword, train the child to familiarize the keyword, reinforce the keyword with pictures. All this leads to the child recognizing the word, written or spoken, stand alone or in a different context.

See Pip Point series (by David Milgrim) in which the protagonists are Pip the mouse and his friend, Otto the robot. Names Pip and Otto are repeated in almost every sentence in the book. The names being phonetic are easy to read. The rest of the words are mostly sight words like ‘the’, ‘there’, ‘you’ with few rhymes like see-bee, few action words and couple of new words thrown in.

Biscuit series (by Alyssa Satin Capucilli, illlustrations by Pat Schories). The main character is an adorable puppy named Biscuit. Some pages do not have any print on them, just the pictures and the illustrations are tell-tale of what is happening in every page. “we can feed the hens Biscuit” is illustrated by the puppy’s owner, a small girl feeding the hens. Every book has a theme, a farm theme, where all animals are introduced. A school theme which talks about school and so on.

Mittens series (by Lola M. Schaefer, illustrations by Susan Kathleen Hartung). Where there is a puppy, there is a kitten and it attracts young readers all the same. The author picks a noun and verb, example a butterfly flying, and introduces prepositions that are associated with the noun and verb, example ‘the butterfly flew up’, ‘Mitten ran under the bridge’, ‘butterfly landed on a flower’ etc.

Elephant and Piggies series (by Mo Willems). Why leave pigs and elephants? This is least of MY favorites, but the young readers do not mind. Well it is MY blog and here is My honest opinion. The piggie is over hyper, unrealistic reminds me of Kareena Kapoor in Jab we met. The elephant is over sensitive and super stressed, reminds me of Nicolas Cage with his standard constipated look. These books are not your typical 15-20 page three word sentences. It is 50+ pages of a pig who wants to fly and keeps going Fly! Fly! Fly! Yes! Yes! Yes! Fly! Fly! Fly! and the elephant going No! No! No! You jumped! You can’t fly! Yes, every other word ends with exclamation. But as I said the girls seem to enjoy it. Chula can read, Mieja reads from memory, I don’t have to read it to them. Good.

(2)Pictures are still a bigger part of the book. There is a very simple story that can be summed up by an adult in one or two sentences.  There are slightly larger sentences and  lesser keyword repetition. The prime objective is to make sure that the child follows the story line.

Max And Mo series (by Patricia Lakin, Illustrated by Brian Floca) is about two hamsters(I think, may be they are some other kind of rodent pets) who live in a school in a cage. The series is about the adventures of Max and Mo. One we particularly enjoyed at home is MAX AND MO GO APPLE PICKING. After getting tired of being fed corn, Max and Mo escape their cage and have fun with the apples they find in the school.

(3)This is a flavor of what an young reader will experience in the future. There are chapters and each chapter is representative of introduction, plot and an ending. There is an index to every chapter. There are not just sentences, but paragraphs.

Mr.Putter and Tabby series (by Cynthia Rylant, illustrations by Arthur Howard) Mr.Putter is a senior citizen who lives in a neighborhood with other senior citizens. Mr.Putter finds in Tabby a companion. The stories are not just about the aches and ailments of being old and living alone, but are tasteful snippets in to the lives of old people, that evoke a myriad of feelings and makes the young readers wanting for more.

Also by Cynthia Rylant, illustrated by Sucie Stevenson are the Henry and Mudge series and easy read about a young boy Henry, his 180 pound dog Mudge and the adventures they share.

Cynthia Rylant (illustrated by G.Brian Karas) also has the High Rise Private Eyes series, about a boy and girl detective pair. For some reason, I found the pair to be sassy. We read about a couple of books and did not take much to the private eyes.

Amelia Bedelia (by Peggy Parish, illustrated by Lynn Sweat). Amelia Bedelia can be easily equated to our good old Suppandi. Amelia Bedelia is maid who manages to mess up every instruction given by her employers. If you tell Ameila Bedelia to clear the weeds in the garden, you must tell her ‘Unweed the garden’, for if you tell her just ‘weed the garden’, she would bring more weeds from your neighbor’s garden and lay it around in your garden. But in the end, she wins over her  employers with her awesome teacakes and mouth watering cookies. She is quite a character.

Magic School Bus series by Scholastic. The level 2 books are the ones I find appropriate for the 4-6 year old age group. Mrs.Frizzle, the teacher takes her class on a ride in the magic school bus. They can travel to the past, the future, in to the human body and in to outer space and the children learn first hand how circulation works, about the dinosaurs, how snow is made etc.

Fancy Nancy series (by Jane O’ Connor, illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasner) The girls go ga-ga over Fancy Nancy may be because the protagonist is a girl. Or may be because, true to her name, Fancy Nancy is very fancy. Nancy is the fashion diva born to two plain parents. She has a chic BFF, a teacher who is always in vogue and a neighbor who can give models a run for their money, but her own parents and her sibling are so simple that they don’t even ask for sprinkles on their plain vanilla ice cream. The adventures of Nancy are about a variety of subjects like Nancy getting over her jealousy and sharing her best friend with another girl, trouble writing a book report etc. I like the fact that Fancy Nancy is always introducing new words.

“… we shout in unison. (That’s a fancy word for all together.)”

“…That makes me unique.(You say it like this: you-NEEK.)”

Young Cam Jansen series (by David.A. Adler, illustrated by Susanna Natti). Jeniffer, has a photographic memory and is nicknamed Cam, short for camera. She solves mysteries with her friends and is good at it because of her photographic memory. At thirty pages, it makes a good light read. For the young boys, David A.Adler also has the Bones series in which boy detective Bones is in charge.

There are many more like Poppleton the pig, Amanda Pig, Charlie and Lola, Nate the grate, Dick and Jane etc that we have read on and off.

(4) This is a complex form of the previous level. The shift from pictures to the written word is explicit. Rainbow Fairies, Cam Jansen, Akimbo series by Alexander McCall Smith, books by Roald Dahl and The Magic Tree house are some examples. So far, I read these books, few chapters at a time during bed time and the girls listen.

Happy reading young readers.

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We have interesting food profile in our house. I am a vegetarian and R eats poultry, mutton and seafood. What we have is a perfect example of an arranged marriage and a standing example of not every thing can be ‘arranged’. In my teens, I cleaned the meat my father bought home and that sealed the deal for me. My amma being a vegetarian herself, did not mind. After my marriage, R and I had to work out dietary preferences and now we have settled in to a pattern. While I am still a vegetarian, I cook chicken and egg few times a week at home. Seeing how much I wince at the smell of seafood, R has stopped eating seafood at home.

But the issue was being a vegetarian in USA (though I am lucky that I live in California and technically I must not crib…. ) where people do not comprehend the full meaning of vegetarian. While on the road the husband just says, “I will have number 2 please” and I have to say, “I will have number four, without X. But can you add Y and Z? And A on the side. I am a vegetarian. No meat, no egg, no seafood, no shrimp. No bacon bits. BTW, is the broth vegetarian too? Can you check? Thanks.”, fully knowing that I had lost the person taking order at ‘without X’. Sigh.

Places like Subway, where they have veggie sub, are equally bad. They have a system where they have their add ons in buckets in the order of cheese, meat, veggies, condiments. Even if the person making a Sub changes gloves every time he/she makes a Sub with meat, the person touches meat first and then continues to touch the veggies. And they use the same knife to slice everything. Even worse, in some Subways, the people outright refuse to change the gloves. While I am aware that if I am a vegetarian and also eat outside, I have make adjustments, it is the lack of awareness bothers me. If I thought ordering and awareness were an issue, I am facing the REAL issue after I had the girls.

First were the concerned relatives, who still refuse to believe that I can make decent chicken/egg/mutton dishes without checking for taste, this even after eating what I have cooked, started to throw questions at me right from the time Chula was six months old. Suddenly it was every one’s business. Both the girls did not like the texture of meat till they were three. Every time they spat out meat or egg, blaming eyes would be directed on me. I couldn’t help but laugh. Okay, I fumed a little, but now I find it funny.

Now the girls notice that I do not eat meat and there are hazar questions.

Chula: But why??

Me: I just told you why.

Chula: Am I a vegetarian?

Me: Well you eat chicken and egg and you enjoy eating it. So, no, you are not a vegetarian.

Chula: So am I non vegetarian? Do we eat hot dog, meat balls?

Me: No. You eat only chicken and egg. So if there is a celebration lunch at school and your teachers offer you pork or beef, you have to say no.

Chula: I want to be vegetarian.

Me: Ok. What is your favorite food in the whole world?

Chula: Chicken.

Me: So why do you want to be vegetarian? Just because you like me, you don’t have to copy me.

Chula: Ok, this one time I will eat this chicken and from tomorrow, I will be vegetarian.

Me: May be you can decide it after you are ten years old. How about that?

Chula: So what am I?

Me: Hmmm. You eat chicken and egg. So may be you are a Chick-eat-rian.

Presently we have decided on Chick-eat-rian.

PS: Mieja does not like to be defined by anything, least of all, her food. In fact she prefers to define her food as, “I like” and “I don’t like”. She refuses to waste time in questions related to food. Her recent occupation is, “So what happened before the big bang? How do you know that?”, “How old is the earth? How do you know that? Did you go for the birthday and count the candles?”, “How do you know that dirt has germs? Did you see that?”.

Same sex, same family, same parents, same environment, but different personality and styles of thinking.

Technorati Tags: diet preferences, preschool children styles of thinking, vegetarianism

Sandhya tagged me for unwomanly behavior.

Does gender define me?

Yes. Big time. Right from childhood if I think back. I am the only girl child born to parents who had clear expectations who married in to a family which had crystal clear expectations of me and my role. I must say that I haven’t done much to send shock waves through the family.

I have always been dolled up. My mother loves to choose clothes for me. Even yesterday, she picked out what I wore. Occasionally my MIL/SIL does it for me. I love to dress up. I loved the chutti, nathu, pullakku, false hair, flowers decoration, kasu malai, ottiyanam traditional ensemble  I was in for my wedding. I loved it so much that I felt bad that if I try doing that any time any where again it will be over the top. I jumped with joy that I could do a repeat of it for my seemandham, without making people roll their eyes and enjoyed every moment of it. I like beauty parlours and such. Not much the make up part, I just like the idea of being pampered. My favorite colors turquoise blue and baby pink, in that order, in the whole wide world.

The role of gender has always intrigued me and made me write this post three years back. I think that we are all ardhanaris basically, with varying degrees depending on nurture and exposure.

My actions, at this point in my life are divided in to

-comes naturally to me

-love to do, so I will put my life on hold to do it.

-hate it/tolerate it, but do it anyway because life has to go on.

-will NEVER do it, no matter what.

The best part is, R is the same way too. So there are no major combats at home.

I love to make things, be it crafting or building furniture or dishing out fancy stuff from my kitchen. All the furniture in my house are assembled by me. Of course they come with instructions, but when I open a box of furniture, things kind of click and snap in my mind. Once to calm down, I locked myself in the girls room and spent two hours assembling the two newly bought chest of drawers. When I came out of the room, I was Buddha(for five whole minutes adds R ).

I painted the inside of my house. This was three years back with a 1 year old and a 2.5 year old. Picked colors, spent couple of hours every night prepping the room, covering furniture, get up next day, cooked for the day, painted like there is no tomorrow and packed up by the end of the day. Four days like this. I partly cribbed but mostly loved what I did.

I made the inside of two of our bedroom closets. There was provision for just hanging clothes and I wanted some kind of system where I can get more storage within the limited space and a tight budget. So I bought 12 feet wire shelves, hack-sawed it in Home Depot parking lot, loaded it in to the car, drilled and  hammered till the shelves were done.

I get vague ideas for a display shelf or a picture frame. I take my sketch to Home Depot early the next day(6.30AM – 7.30AM on Sat mornings works best) and consult with the guys to implement my idea effectively. Not all the ideas were super hits, but I like the adrenaline rush involved in the whole process. I probably would be wearing pink shoes, pink sweats, waving my pink cellphone and sporting a pink hand bag during the entire process. But who cares?

Planned an almost around the world trip from US to Tanzania to India and back to the US. Realized first hand how painful it is to make cost effective safari and hiking arrangements in a distant continent. All along there was this uncertainty if the tour operator is legitimate. When we landed in Tanzania and my tour operator did show up, I hugged him and almost cried.

While in Tanzania, we roughed it out on the mountain for five days, without shower or a bathroom. Perfectly cool with pit stops. Without any hesitation, will drop everything including the kids to do the hike again.

I have a record of  fighting with my teachers. In school, I once told my PT teacher that she was wrong, I was right and asked her to apologize to me. This was in the assembly hall, in front of an audience. I did not get apology, but got pure hell over the next few months I was in that school. While in college, while in an association meeting, asked the professor in charge to put his cigarette down. Proceeded to tell him that he is killing himself. Four words, ‘Did not go well’. Two years back, I fought for my grades with my Childhood and Culture course professor. We had different opinions, she made me redo one midterm and two research papers and then while arguing about the final paper, she said, ‘Something something a B grade is not bad. Something something all Asians are very sensitive about their grade. Think about it.’ I said, that I do not want to think about B because, I am A material. Not because I am Asian, but because I work hard for it and I deserve it. Proceeded to give her a mini lecture. Yes, I did get an A in that course.

Except for people, I kill all living things under my care. None of the house plants have survived past a month. They sense my presence and commit slow painful suicide.

I am horrible taking care of sick people, even my own kids. I am okay the first two days, then I undergo sudden transformation from Florence Nightingale to grinding teeth.

I have high tolerance for physical pain.

I cannot sing, dance, handle a needle, do kolam, string flowers even to save my life. Absolutely don’t planning on doing any of the above. I am the spiritual one, but not always religious and regular about lighting lamps and saying my daily prayers. Of late I am developing a strong aversion to anything domestic – cooking, dish washing, cloth washing and the likes of it. May be it is a phase, may be it will pass, but I don’t know.

Meanwhile R is there watering my house plants, secretly suffering his long spells of cold, giving tylenol to kids in the middle of the night, toiling in the garden, taking care of the fish and whatever pet I drag home, washing dishes and cooking an occasional dinner while I am buried in my end of the term papers, dressing up the girls for social engagements in pattu pavdai+matching jewellery+color coordinated bindhis(the girls are very particular, so I know how tough it is) while I am busy attending my weekend language development workshops, supporting my friday fasts,  and picking up loose ends, if any. All this without making fuss about roles and with only the girls(three including me ) in mind.

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