Everything is two of the same at home that an innocent bystander will start rubbing her eyes, just to make sure that she is not assaulted with a sudden case of double vision syndrome.

But, totally worth it!!!!

Montessori is a philosophy. I consider it as a ‘way of life’ as opposed to ‘alternate schooling method’.

Magic number in Montessori – 3.

• Montessori believes that children’s development is in stages of three. 0-3 is the infant/toddler stage or the unconscious absorbent mind, 3-6 is the conscious absorbent mind. The 6-9(lower elementary) and 9-12(upper elementary) phases in a Montessori elementary focuses on helping children organize his/her thoughts internally. It is considered the period for social development and evolving a sense of justice.
• Even the lessons that are taught to children are taught in a format called ‘three period lessons’. The first period is the teacher introducing the child to the work. The second period is the teacher assessing how much the child retained from the first period and how much the child recognizes the elements of the lesson. During the third period the child is encouraged to do the lesson by herself, recalling all the elements and the vocabulary. If desired results are achieved, the lesson is considered complete. From this point onwards the child can repeat the work as and when desired.
• In the very core, Montessori regards a human brain to have three components – reptilian, mammalian and evolved. This is true to all human beings. What we exhibit is a complicated interplay of all these three tendencies.
• Shelves that are partitioned in to three levels with three objects/work displayed in each level.

Mixed age classrooms. Younger children and older children working together is a typical trait of a Montessori classroom.

Montessori classroom, often called as an environment, is divided in to practical life area, sensorial area, language area, cultural area and math area. In practical life children learn things like pouring from one cup to another, the hand control and hand-eye coordination learnt from this process is later applied to writing. Every area is interlinked. Though a typical Montessori classroom is a big hall with 50 – 55 children of mixed age, the children magically segregate themselves in to age appropriate areas. Younger children are almost always found in the practical life area, the older children in the math area and such.

Motto behind the Montessori environment is ‘everything has a place and everything in its place’. Same applies for children and teachers in the environment. The teacher’s place –  to observe and to guide. The children find their own place in the environment. Coming in to a Montessori environment the children are taught by modeling – by both the adults and the other children in the environment. The new child finds where she fits in this well organized environment and slowly grows from a novice to a leader.

Montessori considers 0-6 years of age as a unique window. It is known as ‘sensitive period’. Through her environment, the child is forming experiences which play a major role in how the neural networks are formed in the brain. By four these neural networks are precipitating and it becomes increasing difficult to rewrite the neural patterns. That is why many Montessori schools have an age limit after which they do not take non-Montessori children in to their environment.

Montessori places great deal of respect on sense of order, which is innate in a child. The first three years, all the child does is to make sense of the world and create order within herself. Sense of order in simple words can be explained as ‘where everything goes and when everything happens’. Though she cannot tell time, the child has a concept of time. Example, nap after lunch, dinner after going to the park, read books before bed etc. When the environment is predictable – few things, each in its place, well displayed, the child is more confident in the environment. Care must be taken to respect the child’s sense of order.

Many steps exist in a work and this is called cycle of work. If the child wants to paint, the cycle is -> get the apron on -> get paper -> pick paint -> paint -> place art work on drying shelf -> get water in a pail/container to clean easel -> dry the easel with a towel -> dump dirty water -> dry the container -> place all material in respective places (used towel in laundry basket, hang apron on peg, used paint cup and brushes in the sink). Every adult unfamiliar with Montessori to whom I have explained this cycle, have expressed doubts like , ‘this is too restrictive/child will feel burdened/are you for real?/this will never work’ etc. But I have seen 18 month – two year old children who do this without missing a beat. The main thing to recognize is that the doubt lies not within the child, but within the adult. The adult’s contribution to make sure that the child progresses successively without breaking the cycle of work is, to do the work once herself, think through the steps bearing in mind the age of the child, make sure that everything is available in the right place in the environment – like the paper is trimmed to size and placed on the paper tray, paints are filled regularly, dirty paint cups/brushes are cleaned and replaced, art work drying rack is accessible, towels are filled in the hamper, sink/faucet is easily accessible. I have also heard arguments that it is too much to expect from a child. I disagree. We talk about gratification and this is how a child learns gratification. Children learn their boundaries, which is not at all negative. Not to mention they expand their mind to the thinking that a certain problem has many steps and vice versa are aware that the small steps lead to a bigger picture.

Montessori environment places high emphasis on grace and courtesy. The idea is to teach through example that every person, every object, every process needs to be respected. This simple thing has deeper spiritual meaning. I can almost draw a curriculum web based on this.

Montessori, considers everything as work and every work is done in a certain way. In a manner of speaking even play is work and children are expected to play without harming themselves or their friends.

Montessori is based on reasoning and believes that fantasy can wait till the child is six and is capable of recognizing fantasy. As I have told many times, this does not make the children deficit of imagination and creative thinking. If a child is inclined to enjoying fantasy, even if they are Montessori schooled, they grow in to adults with logically sound fantasies. My most famous argument, ‘logic can exist without fantasy, but fantasy cannot exist without logic’. As an extension of this, tech toys, the iPads, iPhone apps and such are frowned upon. Because a young child needs to recognize not just cause and effect, but also a reason for this. All tech toys do is to teach children that things happen, take it for granted and don’t ever try to open your toy and analyze why and how.

Movement is incorporated in to the process of learning. Movement molds brain development in wondrous ways.

Montessori environment is filled with non-plastic objects, earth tones, no bright over stimulating colors, wooden materials, natural fabrics and such.

Montessori is neither strict nor all play. I like to think of it as flexibility within a structure.

Many more things to say, but I leave you all with this: any philosophy is only as sound as the adult who implements it.

Since this is a mommy blog, I have to write about the kids, even if it is once in four months.

Chula, all of a sudden looks so grown up. She is all of her 6.5 years and a little more, if you ask me. The danger in this is, I start thinking of her as an adult and start developing adult level expectations and she has to grow up, even more than she is currently, in order to catch up! Constantly reevaluating every scenario and breaking this cycle has been my prominent job for the past one year.

She has certainly departed from the ‘child’ category, but yet to arrive as a ‘girl’. In this journey, she is opening her mind and assimilating the world, thanks to the zillion-gazillion books she is devouring, eyes that are constantly observing and ears that are always listening.

Parents have been aware of the phenomenon of adolescence for ages now. Even terrible twos get noticed by parents, thanks to the child. But the flux children get caught while moving from what Dr.Montessori would call the ‘absorbent mind’ to ‘concrete thinking’ does not get the attention it deserves. From the parents point of view, first comes the monumental process of child birth. You don’t even get time to count all the toes and fingers and feel confident about the health of the offspring, you have to jump head first in to understanding a newborn’s needs and establishing a pattern that works. You take a breather and terrible twos is staring you in your face, which quite frankly is a misnomer, because we all know that terrible twos starts before two and drags on till four! Through out this phase we input values, family and personal, observe the outcome and keep tweaking the limits till we have a self propagating control system. By the time the child is six we start thinking about curriculum, extra-curricular activities, schedules, the poor second born, if any and such. So the transition  from child to girl/boy gets least notice, even if the parent notices it, since this transition is mostly inward, they pretend that it does not exist and do not want to deal with it.

I get some clues to what Chula is thinking. Of her most recent fascinations – namely poverty, pain, meanness, good and bad, kindness etc, the top priority goes to jail. Do children even go to jail? Why? Why would some one want to punish children? Are there even children capable of committing punishable offenses? Baby girl, I will tell you the truth and promise to answer your questions, but when you ask me, ‘But….amma…..if I don’t put my seat belt on, YOU are the one going to jail. Right???’, it scares me a little.

By now it is clear to me that she has a very broad sense of time. I think this is it. It is not going to change and I can either deal with it or try and make her perfect. While I understand that she gets it from me, it is annoying to have two such people living under the same roof. Half the battles between me and Chula is because of the clock. She is constantly taking her own sweet time to do things and I am constantly micromanaging her. It is chaos and friends will vouch to that!

Her clarity of thoughts amazes me at times. The other day she told me, ‘Not because I like you amma, because I love you amma.’ One of the drives back home, she requested for Enthiran songs and I replied, ‘The iPod is in shuffle mode and one of these songs will be an Enthiran song. I cannot drive and DJ.’ The reply she gave me for that, ‘Amma, there are 7 songs in Enthiran. There are 273 songs in your iPod. So 7 out of 273 will be from Enthiran’. I did not make a squeak after that.

After Chula was born, I learnt the art of giving choices. If I put my mind to it, I can give a child choices and still get the exact results I want. But now Chula is in a stage where she wants a role in coming up with the choices. She wants to be more involved in me parenting her. My choices are to either try figuring out how a child can parent herself or learn this new art without any manual what so ever. Sigh.

Her sense of humor is developing really well 🙂

Mieja…..

Her current thing is to yell, ‘Don’t talk about me’, on the occasions I narrate something adorable she did/said. So here I am, writing about her.

She is still asking cyclic questions. Now her cyclic questions are scientific. Need I say that I have completely lost my hair?

We watched The Oscars and the poor child sat patiently asking, ‘Is this Oscar?’ for every human being she set her eyes on.

She likes school and she hates school. When ever she whines to me that she does not like school, I insist that she has to go to school to learn things and she makes it in to another of her famous cyclic conversations. On a particular day she went on a walk with YaadaaYaadaa, picked a dandelion and made a wish, ‘I do not want to go to school. Ever, never, never, ever in my life again. I want to stay home all days. All 8 days of the week.’ See! Case in point for me.

We were going for R’s colleague’s son’s birthday party. YaadaaYaadaa asked her, if she knows the child from school/dance class/tamil class/swim class. The answer was, ‘YY aunty, you don’t come to my school. You are not my teacher. You don’t come to my tamil class or my swim class. But I know you right? That same way, I know this child.’ People, I have to say there are V.E.R.Y few occasions in which YY has been rendered speechless, any one who has know her will vouch for that. This was one such occasion.

Her favorite thing to do while riding in the car is to play games with me. So far name, place, animal thing; find the odd man out are super hits.

This 5 year old is forced to constantly catch up with her 6.5 year old sister. Sometimes I have to physically stop her from doing that.

The MPDs….how can I forget this? She has 3 different personalities. Bawawdi the cat – she licks you, holds your leg, meows and pretends she cannot talk English. Gaggiga the baby elephant – she hits you with her trunk and crawls on the floor. Diggie the dog – she barks and bites. Her big sister is her owner.

Finally a joke from Mieja, of course she got it from a book, but I was surprised she understood it.
WHAT IS A MUMMY’s FAVORITE MUSIC?
Wrap music.

Until later….

I must confess, I am not a non-fiction person. The only non-fiction books I read are text books or books related to Early Childhood Education. Even these books, I survive because I do not have to read them from cover to cover. I flip through the book, pick topics that interest me and read snippets. Or I look for for something in particular, like a reference or the author opinion. To complete a book in this fashion means that I need to own the book and over a period of time, I would have read everything the book has to offer.

Of the books I read recently, India Calling is one of the few non-fiction books that has nothing to do with Early Childhood Education. The reason I liked this book is because, India is a land of contradictions and Anand Giridaradas not only put this in to words in an effective manner, but he also shows how two opposing ideas can co-exist.

Once I was coaching an American colleague on the appropriate style to greet people in India. She asked me if she can say something to effect of ‘you look like you are in great health’ or ‘your child is big for her age’, I don’t remember her exact words. I launched in to the phenomenon of evil eye and how a remark about size, especially a child’s can be considered as a mark of evil eye. The bewildered colleague, who obviously insinuated nothing evil, asked if the appropriate thing to say is something the opposite. So I had to tell her that such a remark will not be well received. The thoroughly confused colleague threw her arms up in the air because she was lost!

Look closely, there are numerous such contradictions. India is perhaps the only place where there are always generalizations and always exceptions to any generalization. Women are worshipped as goddess, but they are target of sexism. Women are repressed, but can be elected to the highest offices in the country. The society preaches commonality/blending in, but is constantly looking for a leader. India is a high context culture, big on social knowledge and non-verbal cues, but we have detailed manuscripts that details how every man/woman/king/commoner/first born child/last born child/daughter/wife/widow/mother must behave.

The Anand’s perspective as an outsider, on the surface level inconsistencies, how India is progressing and to what it is progressing towards is very intriguing. Sometimes it takes an outsider to see things more clearly. Good read. Thumbs up.

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Edited to add:

The book is India Calling by Anand Giridharadas.

Congrats Reva on winning the quiz.

You can pick THE SEED or RADHA FINDS THE CIRCLE.

Please send me an email with your address.

I was surprised by the number of people guessing the right answer. Well done folks.

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As I was reading my older posts, yes I often do that to flatter myself, I almost gasped because I left the Sitcom Parenting survey hanging in midair. Sorry folks, way too many things going on.

Survey results are: 18 people answered the survey; 15 people voted for Claire Huxtable; 2 for Jill Taylor; 0 for Rosanne; 1 for Mrs.Beaver.

Now to the much neglected Guess The Book, book quiz.

– Guess the complete TITLE and AUTHOR of this book.

– Quiz closes Friday, March 4th. 4.00PM PST.

– Results will be announced Monday, March 7th, 4.00AM PST. Just in case I lapse in to short term amnesia, feel free to ping me.

– The prize is a book. I want to choose a book appropriate for you/your child. So will announce the title of the book after I announce the winner.

-Comment moderation is on.

Your picture clue is

Fun.          Jungle.       Fun in the Jungle.       Monkeying around.

The Fungle is all this and a little more. It is a complete story telling environment designed for 5 – 10 year old children. Our family has been having fun with the demo version of The Fungle for the past two weeks and we have found a groove that interests us all. Chula – strictly the stories, Mieja – the changing room and popping bubbles, moi(even though I do not fall in the 5-10 years category) – the concept, how the whole environment is presented and how the different components are weaved together.

I could go on and on and tell you how each story is tied together with activities and hence the child gets to re-experience the story in another form……but that will take the fun of exploration away from you and your children right?

You can have fun too:
-Visit The Fungle
-Register as a parent. The demo version allows you to create up to two child profiles.
-Explore using the child profile.
-For more information, click here.

When I heard about The Fungle, as a parent I had a few questions. Narayanan Vaidyanathan, the CEO of Gamaya Inc, was nice to answer these questions for me.

How did The Fungle come about?
We created The Fungle to be a safe, fun & interactive world where kids can learn about the various cultures in the World.

My grandmother is a great storyteller – an endless stream of stories and an amazing amount of patience! Now, as a parent, I appreciate that more than ever! We are too busy & far away from extended family and our kids are stuck to the couch with their game consoles and TV but I wanted my kid to hear all those stories. So we needed a tireless storyteller who can keep todays kids engaged! That’s how The Fungle came about.

Explain more about online safety in The Fungle.
The safety of kids in The Fungle has been very important to us from the start. We ensure the following –

1. We strictly adhere to the COPPA guidelines.  (http://www.coppa.org/)

2. We do not ask for any personally identifiable information about the kids.

3. There is no way for kids to share personal information or pictures with others in The Fungle.

4. Our chat system will be based on pre-made phrases and sentences, so kids (or adults) in the site cannot say anything inappropriate to other users.

5. We understand kids will want to communicate freely with their friends within The Fungle through our internal mailing system (BeeMail) – for this we plan to make parents responsible for picking and approving friends they know in real life, to also be friends in The Fungle. This way, the child has no way to befriend someone their parents don’t know or approve.

6. We don’t have any external links to pages outside The Fungle or advertisements that can lead a child out of our website.

The Fungle does not support advertisements. How does it work?
We felt having advertisements (banners with links to the advertisers website), while a decent source of revenue, is not safe for the age group we are targeting – a kid could click on an ad, be taken out of our site and then they are out in the open web. As a parent, that is a very scary thought! The world you can see and play in now will be our free trial area. Anyone can register for free and play in it with no time restrictions. We will offer expansion packs for parents to buy for their kids. Each expansion pack will contain 5 or so storybooks and access to a new location in the world & some games. We will also offer seasonal expansion packs with stories relevant to the season like Diwali or Christmas or Chinese New Year that parents can buy. Once a parent buys an expansion pack, the child will be able to access it the next time they log in. Pricing of these expansion packs is still being worked out and will vary based on content, but it is likely to be around $7 each. Kids like getting surprise gifts! So we will offer parents special virtual items to purchase and send to their kids in The Fungle. These gifts will be costumes and items for their avatar and will be priced at $1 or less. We believe most parents will prefer to pay something reasonable for safe high quality content and cultural enrichment, rather than a free portal with ads.

There is a fine line between being very interested in something and being obsessed. Does The Fungle have any check points to make sure that the child does not spend too much time playing?
Yes, we have plans to allow a parent to limit the time they can spend in The Fungle. We also have a way for parents to know when their child played last and how much time they spent in The Fungle. We will also remind kids after an hour or so of continuous play to stop playing and take a break.

How much parental support is required to play the game?
A child who can read & comprehend simple english, likely 5 or 6 years and older, will not require any parental support. We have designed the product to be intuitive to young children and have been doing periodic focus tests with kids to ensure new features stay intuitive. Kids younger than 5 will have more fun playing with their parent. We have got feedback from some of our parents that they enjoyed our stories too and reading along with their kids was a nice way to spend some time together!

Please feel free to email/contact me for further clarifications. (feedback@thefungle.com)

All the ruckus in the virtual world about one woman’s parenting style, made me think of the sitcoms I used to watch, the sitcom mommies and how they dealt with their kids.

Bewitched, Cheers, The Cosby show, Dharma and Greg, Family Matters, Frasier, Friends, Fresh prince of Bel-Air, Fullhouse, Family Matters The golden girls, I love Lucy, Matlock, Home Improvement, I dream of Jeannie, Seinfeld, Sister Sister….

These were my staple sitcoms during my pre-baby-non-career-woman days. Family Matters was the first sitcom I watched in the US. YaadaYaada having arrived in the US a year earlier than I, was my TV guide. She sang praises on the sitcom about the African American family, the doctor husband, the lawyer wife, their five children. She meant the Cosby Show. I channel surfed and ended up watching Family Matters. It took me a good three episodes to figure out that it was not the Cosby Show! But when I did watch the Cosby Show, the one person who captured my heart, the one and only Claire Huxtable. I knew I wanted to be a mother like her – loving, accommodating but no nonsense, poised and sensible. I am still working on poise people, but doing good over all, if I may say so myself.

So here is a fun survey. Choose from the list ( Claire Huxtable, Jill Taylor, Rosanne and Mrs.Beaver ) your favorite. It will be open till Jan 24, 4.00AM PST. Have a good one folks.

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Edited to add: Reults of survey here.

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If there is one thing all my friends, relatives, colleagues and acquaintances know about me, it is that I fast every friday. Rain or shine, even when I am traveling, I fast without fail. Yet, I am not a religious person in the way my mother or my mother-in-law are. Lighting the lamp and offering prayers on a daily basis are not my strongest forte.

I started the fast on March 5th, 2004. At this age and stage, I have already started to classify all events, except for the girls’ birthday, by month and year, because the brain is becoming throughly incapable of remembering dates. Last year, I forgot R’s birthday and my birthday because I have already blurred over the date and have filed it in my head as ‘sometime in Oct’ and ‘sometime in Nov’. But I remember March 5th, 2004! Is it because one always remembers the days their life changed for ever?

The funny thing about days that change your life is that, many a times they are so irrelevant and hardly seem monumental when it is actually happening. In fact some time in middle of April 2004, I had to look up the calendar and think back to narrow the date to March 5th. Even then it did not seem so big. Over an extended period of time, one grows, develops associations and the before you know it something irrelevant has already been coined as ‘life changing’.

On March 5th, 2004, the friday I started the fast, to me, all was lost. The only request I had for the higher power I was calling out to was to help me find happiness. In some way, may be the time was right or may be because I stopped fighting or may be all I had was faith, it worked and I did find happiness.

The quest to bear a child was over. But I held on to the fast determined that I will stop fasting after I have a second one. Three years and two children later, I was still fasting and told myself that I will finish the fast when the children turn five…. or may be fifty five…. That is when the warning came from an unexpected source.

My amma, though we have different perspectives on many things, asked me, ‘What are you trying to do? Holding God on a bind? Is it a retainer of some sort? What are you demanding her to do? Fasts must have an ending, that way you stayed focused.When something goes on for indefinite period of time, it gets diluted and loses meaning’. That is when I realized how painful the Friday fasts have become for me. I was irritable, always craving for food, demanded special attention from R – because I was doing this sacrifice for his children, I wanted him to put me on a pedestal at least every Friday. Plus many get togethers, pot lucks at work, fancy lunches at work, corporate evenings out A.L.L happen on Fridays and obviously I haven’t been a part of it. As my amma pointed out there were days I accidentally did something that was not be a part of the fast. Those days I was not just miserable, I was in terror. I imagined that it was a sign that something was to go wrong with my children. Fear without any basis is probably the worst torture that the mind can come up with. I decided to reevaluate my fast.

I felt what had started as a quest for hope had changed direction so much that it was back firing. This was around the time Tharini recommended Eat, Pray, Love to me. Certain experiences Gilbert wrote about deeply resonated with me.

What did I do by fasting?

I was asking, like Elizabeth Gilbert would say, the universe for something.

Did I get it?

Yes.

When I started the fast, did I truly believe that the only thing that would bring me true happiness is to become a mother?

Yes.

So essentially I was asking for something and I got it. In fact I got more than what I asked for and I got it at the right time. I have a good thing going. May be I must celebrate that instead of being terrified by the future. After a lot of thought, I decided I must continue fasting every Friday, but not as a preventive mechanism, but as a celebration.

Today, as I tell any one who enquires, I fast because it is my thanks giving. As life goes on, there are new demands, expectations and disappointments. In this process I can possibly get thankless and greedy. Every Friday brings me back to reality, it grounds me to the very basic of my being, teaches me to be truly thankful, never to lose hope – no matter how tough things seem to be and to focus on what is truly important.

I don’t watch TV very much. It is not that I am opposed to TV. Every night for the past few years, the ritual has been unaltered. The girls are in bed, I clean up. R and I settle on the couch to catch up on TV. I get my fluffy pillow, my cozy blanket, put my legs on R’s lap and get ready to watch TV. But invariably, within 20 min, I am asleep.

Sat/Sun are slightly better, I can manage an hour of TV before my eyes seal shut. But there are some gems that I catch before I drift off. I often find myself pondering over the snippets. Just wanted to share the gyaan with you all.

Michael J Fox in The Late Show With David Letterman

“There’s a difference between acceptance and resignation. I’ve accepted that this is my situation, but I’m not resigned that it has to be that way always.“

Star Trek Next Generation, Episode: The Host

Governor Leka Trion: Listening is a skill which seems to have evaporated with the heat of argument.

Riker Odan: Speak softly, Governor. Those who cannot hear an angry shout may strain to hear a whisper.

Current favs at home: The Mentalist, Star Trek Next Generation, Monk, The Late Show, Daily Show, Colbert Report, Top Chef, Next Food Network Star, Next Iron Chef, The Great Food Race.

I can confidently say that I have watched the first 15 min of most of these shows.

I have five more SummerFun posts, but my digital camera stopped focusing for some reason and I am struggling to get good pictures from the phone. So I am taking a small break from the SummerFun posts. Meanwhile at UTBTville…..

Ten days back, R left for a three week trip to India. He visualized the girls coming to airport and giving him a grand send off with plenty of hugs and kisses. But both C and M backed out the very last minute and all he got was me. After he walked in to security, I waved bye and guess what I stumbled in to?! The SFMOMA store at the airport. No strings attached, I mean it quite literally, I spent an hour just drooling over the things they had. R called just before he boarded the flight and was taken aback that I was still at the airport. Even key words such as budget, quality, unique etc did not put him at ease. After ten years of marriage he knows that we both have our own definitions about budget, quality and unique.

My SFMOMA find was Charley Harper. His art was simple, symmetrical, precise, balanced, brought some kind of order to my slightly obsessive compulsive brain and made me wonder if Sanjay Patel was inspired by Charley Harper. There were a whole bunch of alphabet books and counting books based on his prints. I can see myself purchasing the books for my classroom. The color yourself Charley Harper calendar, I would love to implement a DYI version at home.

I bought two board books for my classroom, Kangaroos Have Joeys by Phillipa-Alys Browne and Matisse Dance With Joy. Both were on sale for under ten dollars and I couldn’t resist.

For Chula and Mieja I bought….

Go Fish Art Card Game

Hypotrochoid Art Set

50 Optical Illusion Cards

The hypotrochoid art set is such a hit. The girls mixed and matched gears and covered stacks of papers with hypotrochoids. Chula loves the Go Fish art games. Half the time she just sits and stares at the cards. They haven’t caught on with the optical illusions. They think I am seeing things and give me odd looks.

The things drooled over….

A Book Of Sleep	Wire Bloom, wire clips	Foldable Flower Vase
Memo Holder	Magnetic Key Holder	Magnetic Rings
Wine Tote	Magnetic Flower Vase	Flowing Mobile
Silicone Place Mat	Stapler	Magnetic Paper Clip Holder

Window shopping is so much fun!!