Drawings

I love looking at the details of Priya's drawings and how things are changing as she grows. You can almost literally watch your children learn at this age and it's so fascinating. One day they are spelling it "flawer" and in a couple of weeks or months it's become "flower".... "awt" becomes "out"... "bolld egel" becomes "bald eagle"... "perity" becomes "pretty". Her drawings are becoming more accurate like her spelling. She draws more details and is showing proper proportion in the pictures. The trees are taller than the people; the heads are smaller to fit the bodies that they are drawn on; the swimming octopus has lines around it indicating motion.

Here is a picture that Priya brought home from school recently showing some of the ways in which her drawings have matured. It's a particularly flattering image of me 'cause I'm looking quite skinny! :)



I don't want to read too much into her drawings, but check out her picture of Mommy at the park when compared to the picture of Daddy at the park. If you happened to be an onlooker of our family enjoying an evening at the park, you'd be more likely to find Daddy climbing the jungle gyms, sliding down the slides or swinging on the swings and Mommy hanging on the bench.

Priya's Journal Entry

Found this in Priya's room today...



Translation: For dinner I like to have waffles, but Mom doesn't let me. My brother Sanjay likes it too.

It was on scratch paper on her dresser and I'm not sure when it was written. It's just her expression of a private thought since she never bothered to share it with Mommy or Daddy. Maybe I'll surprise her with a waffle dinner one night this week. Wouldn't that be fun?

Catastrophe... Calamity

We've had some things go wrong lately and they all seem to revolve around water. The month of July was the driest on record here since the Great Depression and though I haven't read any news on it, I would venture to guess that the month of August 2008, even in its 18 short days thus far, is probably the wettest!

It feels like we have had more rain in the past week than we've seen for the entire 5 years that we've lived here. Ok, probably a slight exaggeration but nonetheless the steady rainfall on Saturday was a mess and these crazies were even out running in it. As usually we are concerned about our basement gathering water during big storms, we checked on it every few hours starting Friday night. Bartee meticulously pumped the water out of our window wells at regular intervals so that it wouldn't overflow in through the windows. We were on top of it... so we thought. In the late afternoon on Saturday, Bartee walked downstairs to discover a rather large puddle on the floor. This is like the third time we've looked at each other and said... "Thank goodness we didn't put carpet back down here". To solve the mystery of where the water was coming from (because it certainly wasn't the window wells this time) Bartee actually saw the water "flowing" downhill and when he realized where uphill was, he opened the utility closet and it jumped out at him. Our concrete half-wall that holds back the dirt in our unfinished basement has a crack in it! The water was seeping out of it like a mini-waterfall. Well, the good news is that we found the source and can probably fix it enough to at least contain the water to the utility closet if we should happen to get this much rain again.

This basement leak followed an upstairs flood we had only a few days before... the dishwasher of 14 years sprung a leak and dumped water all over the kitchen floor. So we are now handwashing all the dishes (ugh!) and researching floor options to replace the laminate flooring that is now gone from our kitchen.

Tonight, the third and hopefully final in the trilogy of water-related catastrophes involved Sanjay. I'm reading a bedtime story to Priya and Sanjay comes running in with a worried, very concerned look on his face. He tells me that his car is gone. I'm thinking in my head, "I just heard the toilet flush... I wonder if that has something to do with the disappearance of said matchbox car". Sure enough when I asked what happened he told me "It's in the potty", and I promptly sent him to Daddy to take care of it. Sanjay usually carries about 4 cars with him during his bedtime routine because he plans on sleeping with them. Well, tonight it seems that one accidentally fell in the toilet and he probably freaked out and the only thing he could think to do was flush it. While watching it disappear down the drain, the tears started flowing. Daddy tried, but was unsuccessful in his attempts to retrieve it. It should pass through our house without causing any damage, right? Priya wants to know what the water company does with all the "stuff" that they filter out of the returned water. I think she's hoping that Sanjay might some day get that car back in his possession. Sanjay on the other hand will be mourning for some time over this. He's losing sleep over the flushed matchbox and is ready to go buy another one, since none of the other 37 cars he owns can possibly replace it. Daddy did manage to calm him down with the promise of a sleepover in our room one night this week.

Let's hope we're through with these kinds of problems for a while.

Back To School

Today was Priya's first day of school. Summer went by too fast this year, but ready or not, it's time to get back into the routine... going to bed on time, eating breakfast before 10:30am and learning lots of new things every day. First grade is the real deal, and at her school she has entered the French Immersion program which means most of the instruction (at least by the end of the year) will be in French. This should be an interesting year for all of us. Today her teacher sent each of them home with a high five and an "au revoir".

Translation Please

I realized recently that even after their speech is nearly perfect, kids still require translators. Luckily, we have Priya to help us out with Sanjay. We call on her often when his words are disjointed and archaic... at least to us. With her telepathic link to the boy, she can usually discern the meaning.

In fact, just last night we were playing family charades. Sanjay wanted in on it, so we thought we'd give him a chance, expecting very little. We were quite surprised with the creative things he came up with... Merry-Go-Round, Roller Coaster and even Hubba-Hubba-Highway (a ride from the water park). But he really stumped us with this next sign. He held his hand flat in front of him, parallel to the ground, then started it in forward motion while at the same time lifting it slightly up and down. Mom and Dad were shouting out things like “Bumpy car ride”, “Airplane turbulence” and within seconds Priya yells “Bouncy Rocket”. Sanjay announces that she's right... he was indeed doing his version of a “Bouncy Rocket”. What?!? See what I mean about the telepathy?

Anyway, I have compiled a list of some things the kids have said lately that have required translation. Here are the results of my very scientific study...

Actual Spoken Words By Sanjay	Translation
He's hiding behind the water goes up.	He's hiding behind the water fountain.
Did your eyes sprinkle? (Question posed to Priya after she ate something spicy)	Did your eyes water?
Look at this, I'm down blinking.	I look over at him and his eyelids are opening only half way and he's speed-blinking them.
I have x-ray eyes... I can see through the water.	Said after popping his head up from swimming underwater in the pool.
Does your band-aid hurt?	Does your boo-boo hurt?
He's down... he's working. (His reply when asked about Pappy's whereabouts.)	He's downstairs working. (It didn't occur to me until then that he thinks all Daddy's work in the basement, since that's all he's known.)
Actual Spoken Words By Priya	Translation
Let's play body talking.	Let's play charades.
After Nana said, "I forgot"... Priya replied, "That's ok. You're too old to have your memory good."	Needs no translation, but I wanted to capture this because it made all of us laugh. No worries... she was quickly forgiven.

Long Lost Friends

Thanks to Facebook I found an old high school friend that I'd lost touch with over the years. I don't have the good fortune that my friend Kristi does with running into these folks at random places on various occasions, so I have to rely on the good ole internet to bring us together.

We spent the afternoon discussing high school and college days while our kids played. What fun! Although 20 years has aged us more than a bit, our friendship remains as it was in the first photo... we just picked up where we left off.

Bittersweet Goodbyes

We leave tomorrow and although we're looking forward to sleeping in our own beds and seeing all our friends back in Colorado, it's still sad to say goodbye. Priya asked me this morning if she could stay and enroll in school here. Then she reminisced about last year when it was time to leave and she started crying. She's wondering whether she'll do that again this year and whether Sanjay might follow in her footsteps. Last year Sanjay couldn't wait to get back to the familiarity of home... but this year I know he'll have a harder time leaving.

When asked what she had the most fun doing on the trip, Priya didn't mention the rides at Busch Gardens, playing in the sand at Greenbriar State Park, the slides at the water park or even all the parties and friends she made while she was here. Instead she said, "Being with you, Nana". So, it's these seemingly purposeless photos, filed in my "AroundTheHouse" folder, that I'm so glad I took the time to capture...