Little Boys

Typically we find Sanjay wandering through the house, looking for something to beat on. It's not out of the ordinary to find him playing drums on the recliner chair, the carpet, our bed or even one of his good friends. Well, this evening I'm getting dressed in the bathroom and I hear the oh-so-familiar muffled beating that assures me Sanjay is somewhere near, followed by Priya's warnings... "Sanjay, don't do that, it's disrespectful". I walk out to find Sanjay with Priya's stuffed cheetah in his hand beating it senseless into the carpet, one blow after the next. Just last week we lost Texas Longhorn to this same treatment, so I threatened him, "If that cheetah gets a hole in it, YOU are buying Priya a new one with your OWN money".

He has an immediate reply. I'm thinking he's about to tell me that he doesn't have any money (which he doesn't) or that he doesn't know how to count money (he doesn't even recognize all the letters of the alphabet, how can I expect him to know difference between a nickel and a dime?) or something along these lines. Instead, he says very seriously, "But Mom, I don't know how to drive!".

Where does he come up with this stuff? I guess the emphasis on YOU threw him off and he thought the responsibility of replacing cheetah was squarely on him, or just maybe he's secretly hoping that I'll let him behind the wheel of something other than a matchbox car.

Overheard in the Bathroom

Recently, I was very worried when I heard this from Sanjay in the bathroom...

"I'm gonna go a dangerous way. Look it, Mom... how dangerous this is."

Dangerous? I gotta see what he's talking about. When I look over at him standing by the potty, I see that he has not lifted the seat. He's attempting to stand up and aim the yellow stream over the seat and down into the water without even a droplet misplaced. I'm nervous, but watching carefully I see that he's well-trained. He manages with no drips.

You gotta give it to him though. Being already sports-minded like his Daddy, he's turning this into a competition. Each time trying to outdo himself. A couple of days later, he wanted me to see the new challenge... "even more dangerous" he called it. This time with the seat down AND no hands to help aim. What do you know... every little drop landed where it was supposed to. Now, if he could only have this kind of control over the water in his cup at the dinner table.

Taste of Colorado

Thanks to a good friend we have found a new festival to attend annually. We will add the Taste of Colorado to our list of events-not-to-miss which already includes the Pueblo Chile Festival, Halloween with the Horses, Colorado Balloon Classic and Territory Days.



The Taste of Colorado is a huge event in a very lovely park in downtown Denver. Sanjay walked away with a dinosaur-shaped balloon made by a well-dressed clown. Well, it lasted all of about 10 minutes before his rough playing caused body parts to randomly fall off until we had to throw the whole thing in the trash. Priya made a cute patriotic headband, which I think she left in the car last night. And Mommy and Daddy loaded up on free samples of ice cream, blue cheese dip, organic crackers, toothpaste and a paper towel, then purchased food from a couple of local restaurants. We walked away with full bellies and the desire to return again next year.



If you're interested in seeing more pictures from the festival, click here for the KodakGallery album.

Waffle Dinner

Tonight it was waffles for dinner... unannounced and a complete surprise for the kids. Priya's friend was over and got to join in the fun of breakfast-for-dinner, too. When I asked them to pick up the playroom, so I could start making the waffles... Priya was all out of sorts. She stopped in her tracks, turned around to me and said, "For real?" followed by a long stare. When I said, "Yes for real" I think the neighbors probably heard the ear piercing scream that she bellowed out. She kind of looked at me funny in a sort of how-did-you-know kind of way, but I never let on that we found the note in her room about it. I have never seen the girl so cooperative and speedy when cleaning up the playroom. Bribery has always worked with this one.

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.