Bridgette

Sanjay,

Thanks for the incredible weekend at your place. I have been waiting a long time to come home with you and it was worth the wait.

Just before we walked into your house, the sound of barking put a big scare into me. I must say, that meeting your big dog face to face like that, was NOT the highlight of my weekend. Rather, the time we spent at the Indian New Year festival ranks among my special memories with you. Seeing all those lovely costumes, hearing the Tamil music and devouring the yummy spicy Indian food, it was hard for me to believe that we were still on American soil. For those hours, I felt transported to India. Thanks for sharing that with me and bringing along your sister's little stuffed furry friend.

Fortunately for me, I got a couple of extra days with you and you decided to take me to your piano class. Funny that you just learned a note called "Alligator A". Your teacher used my cousin, Alex, to demonstrate. It was good to see him again... hadn't seen him since Easter. Keep up the good work in piano!

The weekend went by so fast, and now it's time for me to visit another preschool friend. I'm looking forward to more adventures and I'll see you in the classroom soon.

Love,
Bridgette

Tamil New Year Celebration

This weekend the Tamil community gathered to enjoy a wonderful South Indian buffet dinner after a full afternoon's worth of dancing, game playing, singing and acting. It always amazes me what effort they go through to pull this off every year.

For weeks, the kids and adults have been holding dance, singing and acting practices in their homes. The menu plan was organized and families were assigned items to cook on that morning. A venue was selected and folks were trained on the audio/visual equipment available. Unlike many other Indian functions, this one is specific to a certain region of India where they speak Tamil. So, unfortunately for me, the program was mostly Tamil and Bartee had to do a LOT of translating. Disappointing to my MIL, I still have not learned Tamil. Despite the language barrier, I throughly enjoyed every minute of the program.

For a sample of what went on... check out this video:

Happy Easter

Before it's next Sunday and well-outdated, let me get this post out there.

We had a busy and fun-filled holiday weekend. The Easter bunny brought goodies for the kids, we spent the majority of the day with friends, and the weather cooperated nicely for playing outdoors. This rarely happens around these parts, so we have to be thankful for that. The kids were thrilled with everything except the mother lode of M&M's that filled their plastic eggs. It seems they were hoping for a nice variety of candy to keep their sweet tooth at bay for the next month or two. Of the 100 thousand M&M's Priya received, according to her estimates, Daddy said he'd be willing to take half of them off her hands.

The proof is in the pudding, or in this case, the video that I made of the days events...



Hope you all had a very Happy Easter!

Easter Song

He played this song flawlessly about 10 times before I whipped out the camera. This is how his early piano playing days will be remembered...



I did capture a perfect rendition of "Hot Cross Buns". Not quite as entertaining as this though.

Look A Like

Occasionally the facial expression, the body language, the wrinkle in the nose, the look in the eyes or the silhouette captured in the photo of a child can make you say, "Geez, he/she looks just like his father/mother".

Sometimes I know exactly which photo I'm digging for, but other times I go on a mission in search of the photos to prove it. Most people agree that, with the exception of their hair, Sanjay looks like Daddy and Priya looks like Mommy. I did some scrapbook pages a while back showing the resemblances, and thought I would share them here. What do you think?

Ski Weekend

Soon all the snow will melt and my posts won't focus on skiing, but in the meantime you'll have to endure just a little bit more. :)

The weekend started off a little shaky when, while driving Friday night, more than halfway there we realized that Priya forgot her winter jacket. It would not be possible for her to ski without it even though the weekend temperatures in the mountains were supposed to reach almost 45 degrees. So we scrambled for ideas and called a couple of friends to see if they had a spare that we could borrow. Of course, we don't have too many contacts up there and even fewer that have a 6-9 year old with an extra winter jacket lying around. So, that didn't work out too well for us.

We would have 20 minutes before the Columbia outlet store closed, so we decided to stop there. Luckily for us they were clearing out all their winter stock, so we ended up buying a gender-neutral jacket that fits Priya now and will likely fit Sanjay next year. Disaster averted.

Saturday morning Priya wakes up with stomach pains. Turns out a stomach bug is going around school and she's convinced that she has it. Clearly I can see by the paleness in her face and her unwillingness to play with Sanjay that something is wrong with her, so we stayed back at the condo while Bartee and Sanjay hit the slopes at Keystone. Unfortunately, we have no photos from their day but it seems that Bartee was able to talk Sanjay into several trails that Priya and I would have surely refused, so it all worked out.

By this morning Priya was feeling better and we all went out with Grandpa Bob. It was our (me and the kids) first time up the Imperial Express lift which is the highest chair lift in North America. So, it was a memorable day and definitely the ideal conditions to be up that high. The wind was minimal and the temps were toasty. Oh yeah, and the sun was really, really bright. See Priya's eyes?



I posted some more pictures from the weekend on Facebook... go have a look here.

Scraps of Paper

Once again I am collecting and documenting all the slips of paper around my desk and in my purse that have scribbled on them, my kid's sayings. At the time I jotted them down, they had a purpose, some significant meaning. Which is why I probably should have written the blog post right then when it happened instead of months, even years later. Yes, some of these are THAT old. Now that I look back on them, I am trying to remember exactly what I found significant in each of them. Let's see how this almost 40-year old memory does...

Priya knew her alphabet at 18 months and started reading at 4 1/2. When Sanjay didn't follow in her footsteps we weren't too worried as everyone assured us this was one of the big differences between boys and girls. So when conversations like this next one filled our days, Bartee and I just had a good laugh about it. As much as he struggles, he never gives up and no matter how wrong he is, his confidence remains high. Two of our favorite things about our favorite son. A glaring example of his confidence in this exchange...
Sanjay: "Samantha starts with a 'C'. What does Felicity start with?"
Me: "F"
Sanjay: "Oh, just like 'Evan'"
Me: *Shaking my head*

Recently school was delayed due to the weather... this conversation took place in the morning while looking out at the snow on the ground:
Priya: "Is there a late start today?"
Me: "Yes"
Priya: "Bullseye!"

Overheard Priya on the phone with a friend of hers from school. She's not particularly close to this girl.
"I don't think we have anything else to talk about. Do you have anything to talk about? I don't."
When I asked her later what the little girl wanted, Priya said, "We were just chattin'".

We were watching American Idol one evening during the auditions and several things were bleeped out because they were inappropriate for family viewing. Sanjay says to me, "It's waaaaaaay to appropriate for us. Mom, now can we watch dinosaurs?"

I forgot to turn in some paperwork for the school. Actually, it was just a box tops collection sheet so there was no deadline, but Priya asked me about it. When I told her that I hadn't turned it in, she was disgusted with me and said, "Maybe I should be involved."

Priya organized a photography class that was going to be held on Wednesday's after school. She discussed this with a bus buddy named James. When I asked her how many students she had signed up, she said, "It's only him because it's obvious I'm not going to get anybody else and I want James to be comfortable." She did end up holding one session with him and both of them took it very seriously. She thought that his photography had improved considerably after the class.

Some friends visited last winter for a few days. The friends were Michael Senior and Michael Junior from the east coast. While they were here, they came to be known as "Michael and Michael" by Sanjay. After they left, Sanjay said, "I wish Michael and Michael were here because I love those persons. I even like the kid of Michael and Michael."

I cannot remember the significance of this one really... but I do remember it was an after dinner conversation we were all having. I think Priya told a joke or two and then Sanjay wanted to get involved. So, he made this one up... and seriously, I don't think he knew the punchline himself until I suggested it. For some reason that night, he kept going with my answers only.
Sanjay: "How does the monkey get across the river?"
Daddy: "Swings on vines?"
Sanjay: "No, there's no bines."
Priya: "Swims?"
Sanjay: "No, he can't swim."
Me: "Walks on the rocks?"
Sanjay: "Yeah, that's it."

For some reason this year, Sanjay was really into my birthday. It was so sweet. The night of my birthday he kept going on and on about it and I jotted down this sequence of ramblings. "On your next birthday, I will love it. Your birthday was beautiful. I loved it. Mommy's birthday comes first. Priya's birthday comes next. Mommy's birthday was so sweet. I loved it. When Mommy's birthday came again, I will love it."

Sanjay talks a lot. His mind is very creative. Here's an example: "What if your printer was a money printer? Like... pennies come out the side and dollars come out the middle? And, if you want gold, you just press both buttons on the computer and gold comes out. That would be awesome."

We had dinner at a friend's place about a week ago. The festivities ran late so we drove home around 9:45pm. The kids were exhausted, in fact, Priya had fallen asleep on the friend's couch. In the car on the drive home, Sanjay announced, "Everybody be quiet. I need a nap."

Sanjay telling his playdate friend that his older sister is in 2nd grade: "She goes into two-th grade".

I was trimming Priya's fingernails last week and I was particularly rough on one of them. She suddenly blurted out, in a very believable British accent, "Be nice on the old granny". I started cracking up.

The prime example of why I should really blog them as they happen. This, I think, came out of Sanjay's mouth, but I have absolutely no idea what he was saying or what was happening at the time. "I dropped an airnaut, then I got it."

Sanjay touched my arm and got shocked. He immediately said, "I got a snatch from you." (This one happened more than a year ago when he was still sorting out his vocabulary.)

Legos come with instructions on how to build what's in the picture on the front of the box. Board games, too, come with instructions on how to play the game. Sanjay has always and still refers to these as "constructions". It still cracks me up and I've stopped trying to correct him. Sometimes I'll even join him. He'll say, "Wait... put the constructions in, too", when we are cleaning up.

I don't know if it was the Summer of 2009 or Summer of 2008, but when we returned home from our annual Maryland trip, Priya said, "Nana's house is like a wonderland for me". I love that her time with Nana and Pappy is so precious. She treasures it so much.

Sanjay's calculated method of choosing friends, which he discussed with me on the way home from preschool one day:
"First, Matthew was my friend. Then Kyler was really great at art, so I wanted him to be my friend. I knew he would be my best friend in the whole entire class. Hmm... I thinked about it. So, I got him to be my friend. He made much beautiful art."

And, I end with my new favorite quote which I found on the Internet recently...
"You cannot take back or return lost time. It's history, so walk on." - Anonymous