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???!!!

EDITED TO ADD ANSWERS

PV requested a Eric Carle quiz and here it goes.

-There are FOUR Eric Carle books. You have to find ALL four.

-There is a clue for EVERY word in the title of the book.

Example:  Yesterday would be too soon, tomorrow would be too early, something in between (= TODAY) ; First half of DESI in reverse(= IS); Second day of the week(= MONDAY). Name of the book = TODAY IS MONDAY.

-Do not expect the title  words to be in order. Decipher each word and from the 19 words, unscramble the four titles.

-Quiz closes July 28, Wed, 4.00PM PST. First person to list ALL FOUR titles, wins. First one to get ALL FOUR wins.

-Result will be posted July 29, Thursday, 4.00AM PST, latest.

(1) They dropped the why.

(2) A short line.

(3) Not unsaid.

(4) Thorough blending, in the past.

(5) Not a very fast adverb.

(6) My pronoun.

(7) 59 of its species exists in Madagascar.

(8) Famous movie with this dialogue.

Person1: Hey, let’s play a game. It’s called “see who can be quiet the longest.”

Person2: Cool! My mom loves that game!

(9) Teeny weeny.

(10) _____, set, go.

(11) One of the seven deadly sins, according to the Christian moral tradition.

(12) She _____________ ate her food.

(13) If you are texting or tweeting you would just type 4.

(14) Definitely an article.

(15) One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

(16) One of the magic words.

(17) Particular, three letter, article.

(18) If in tamil, a small baby girl will respond to this. In few other languages a small child will use this to address an adult.

(19) Think blogs: tag____________

Answers:
(1) They dropped the why. = The
(2) A short line. = Hyphen mark (–)
(3) Not unsaid. = Said
(4) Thorough blending, in the past. = Mixed
(5) Not a very fast adverb. = Slowly
(6) My pronoun. = Me
(7) 59 of its species exists in Madagascar= Chameleon
(8) Famous movie with this dialogue = Up
Person1: Hey, let’s play a game. It’s called “see who can be quiet the longest.”
Person2: Cool! My mom loves that game!
(9) Teeny weeny. = Little
(10) _____, set, go. = Get
(11) One of the seven deadly sins, according to the Christian moral tradition. = Sloth
(12) She _____________ ate her food. = Slowly
(13) If you are texting or tweeting you would just type 4.= For
(14) Definitely an article. = The
(15) One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. = Moon
(16) One of the magic words. = Please
(17) Particular, three letter, article. = The
(18) If in tamil, a small baby girl will respond to this. In few other languages a small child will use this to address an adult. = Papa
19) Tag ……= Cloud (a tag cloud is a collection of tags)

The books are
Papa Please Get The Moon For Me
The Mixed-Up Chameleon
Slowly Slowly Said The Sloth
Little Cloud

PV wins the quiz. Chox, Sandhya, good try 🙂
PV, please pick one of the following books. That is going to be the award 🙂

Help! Help! (Kapathunga Kapathunga), Tulika English-Tamil bilingual picture book.
or Best Friends(Nalla Nanbargal), Tulika English-Tamil bilingual picture book.

In one of her emails PV said

“Your book shelves are so cute and inviting – drooled over the arrangement and the collections – please tell me that you have a cozy nook with bean bags, comfy chairs and soft rugs with a bay window close by to the bookshelves and coffee-on-demand (brewed by the better half while you are busy reading)”

At that time I did not have a dedicated reading area. Its been a long time dream to establish an art space and reading spaces at home. PV’s email kind of got me started. Considering the space limitation, I decided to focus on one thing and do it well. Reading space won ( and I settled for organizing the art material ). This summer, I did some shopping, rearranging and ta-da…… presenting reading spaces on a budget.

Look at the pictures and tell me what you think. If you guys have reading spaces at home that you love, do write about it, post pictures and leave a comment. I would like to take a virtual tour and use the inspiration for the future.

Harry came to us during the winter break and simply never went back. We had much younger children in our classroom and they thought that it was their daily duty to put their hands in to the fish bowl and prod poor Harry. So it was decided that it will be best, for Harry of course, to have him at our house.

Monday morning we found Harry belly up. We put him in a ziplock and placed him in the trash container. As a part of their continuing effort to understand death, there were a lot of questions from the little ones about Harry passing on. In spite of our sincere efforts to answer them, they are still a little puzzled. Chula seemed to understand that death is serious business and that Harry is not coming back as Harry ever. She even cried a little bit before sleeping. The all knowing Mieja consoled her saying that we could always go to PETCO and get another Harry. I am not sure if she understands or is overly practical.

Harry, you brought happiness to our family and in some capacity and we hope we did the same to you.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.