Our walkway aka Art Gallery

Most of the artistic creations of Jr. and the little one from their school work are displayed on the doors of our cabinets in the garage. Granted it is not organized neatly but it is a treat to pull into the garage and stare at some of their early work. Brings back memories and makes you forget long work days at the same time. 

We do update the garage drawings on a rotational basis, once a quarter or when daddy feels like it.

The inside of the house is another matter. The walkway is reserved for work they do in art class and we are adding to the collection every month or so. 

Here is the little one's latest work .. 

and our walkway as of today

The display helps motivate them because everytime someone visits our house, they go to the walkway to see the additions and ask the kids questions and encourage their work. 

In the process, I am also learning how to improve the "display" by spacing things out right on the walls and re-arranging pictures in portrait vs. landscape format etc.

They do have other works on glass and on "rocks". They are both painting rocks now. Those are going to be tricky to display. Planning to buy little ledges that go on the wall and put the rocks on top. 

That will have to wait for a few weeks!

History projects

The little one has a school project where she has to be a person of historic interest, dress like that person and do a report, 5 minute speech in front of the class etc. 

The two most popular picks for desi girls ? Sacagawea and Pocahontas! 

Jr. was Sacagawea three years ago and the little one is Pocahontas. San found an old tops of hers that fits like a gown on the little one and with some creative touches with feathers from three years ago, we present to you an authentic looking Pocahontas.. well, as authentic as we can make her..

The sepia tone doesn't do justice to the colorful feathers, so here is a full color picture of the little Indian. 

We hope she does her speech with the same enthusiasm she showed for dressing in costume. 

Conversations with the little one

Recent happening in our Kitchen. San is getting ready to make a special dish for Tamil New year (Vadai's, a spicy south Indian donut) and the little one tells her :

"Amma, please give me the salt so I can put it in the batter"

San : Why?

Little one : So eveyone will know "I cooked it"!

San : Why do you get to say you cooked it just because you put the salt in?

LO : Madras Paati (her grandma .. my mom) told me that it doesn't matter who does the cutting, mixing and other things. The "real" cook is the one who puts the salt! 

We were laughing out so loud after hearing that. She had completely missed the point. My mom had told her that the real skill was in judging how much salt and spices to put and that is where the true cooking expertise is. The little one intepreted that literally as "the person who physically puts the salt in". She did get it after we explained the devil in the detail of Madras Paati's words! 

Now she is working on guessing the right amount of salt for various things and she is not far off. This one is going to be a great chef! 

Over the weekend, we visited the Great Mall and as usual we shopped for the kids when there were no plans to buy them anything. Spent 2 hours buying unplanned things and 10 minutes at the store in the last minute on the intended purchase! 

The little one lobbies the parents individually over a space of 30 minutes and gets herself a pair of Converse shoes. Apparently these ones have a special name as the shoe has a small piece of canvas covering the ankles. I already forgot what that name was. Anyways, she goes "Appa, these are the best shoes. Everyone (lists 10 friends) wears them at school and they have a STAR on them and by the way, they last longer".. The last longer part was added for my benefit so it would clinch the argument. She knew the price tag would not allow the "it is less than 20$ limit" arugment and played it safe. 

Me : These are canvas shoes. They were like "economy class" shoes in India when I was growing up. We used to wear this from 1st grade to 12th grade in school as part of our uniform. They are the same as Bata shoes!

LO : NO! They are not. That is CANVAS. This is CONVERSE!

Me : Look, this IS made of canvass.

LO : No, canvass is what I paint on in art class.

Me : Same thing. Look, we used to put white polish and paint our shoes. It is the same material, just not hardened wiht starch on the back.

LO : I have been to the Bata store. Those shoes don't have a STAR on them that says converse. Anyways you don't get the Bata thing here you know! 

Me : by the way, when I was in Europe, I saw that every street corner had a Bata store! Next time I go, can buy one for you from there.. 

By now she was worried of losing some argument somewhere and did not want to walk out without the shoes. I could see it in her eyes. So we got her the shoes and made her day!

I still don't get why a pair of canvass shoes should cost 25 bucks. Anyways, they have done a good marketing job capturing the 8 year old third grader market.

The little one always amazes me with the way she tries to reason with me. We used to watch Jr. go through this phase. Now we watch the little one. Just a question of time before this innocence will be lost to cold hard reasoning! 

The photo is courtesy of Jr. who is now into this Sketch art thing. Starts taking random pics in the house and works on a software in the iPad and makes them into sketch drawings. Some of her work is very good. We might even end up framing a few!

The girls are growing up too fast to my liking. Sigh! 

Happy Tamil New Year !

Time flies. We are at yet another Tamil New Year this weekend. The girls dressed up nicely to celebrate. San also did a marathon effort in the kitchen this morning to make some amazing food. I must have added 4-5 pounds just at lunch and to compensate for that did three hours of hot yoga instead of the usual 90 minutes.

The back is also hurting after being squeezed in cramped quarters on long flights next to oversized folks whose bottoms spread laterally into neigbouring seats. My strong recommendation to the good folks who make the 74(+)7's and Airbus equivalents is to create a solid barrier between seats instead of the hand rests. Then again, if a skinny guy like me is suffering, it cannot be too great for said oversized folks. As usual I digressed at the first paragraph.. Tsk!

Where were we? Ah, the new year! Got back home just in time to see the cuties dress up and have fun. To celebrate the new year, I got myself a pair of Bose headphones that are expected to do wonders for future air travel. Don't ask me what Bose has to do with Tamil New Year. It has as much to do with a Toyota or Ford Car sales event has to do with Memorial day! 

This year we celebrate the girls growing older by one more year and the fact that they still pose for daddy when begged to do so.

Had to capture the earrings she is wearing.. they are made of Terracota apparently! 

For once I wished there was a picture of me with the kids to post! Maybe we will take one over the week. 

Happy New Year to all of you. May this Tamil new year bring peace and happiness!

Questions

We visited the Livermore temple earlier this weekend. Before we left there was a lot of drama. The little one demanded that we pray at home with all the idols in the prayer shelf. We said "but we want to go to the temple and pray" and she goes "what difference does it make? we drive for one hour, stay there for 20 minutes and drive back in the hot sun for another hour! It is boring to drive like that. I want to just stay at home". 

While fundamentally she was right, we still wanted the temple ambience. Telling her that she was conceptually right somehow worked. She came as a favor to the rest of the family!

The Balaji idol was decorated beautifully with a big white "naamam". The little one goes into to sanctum and asks "Why is he having a big tooth on his forehead?"

She has been preoccupied with a tooth that is about to fall and to her credit, the Naamam with the black line in the middle(usually it is a red thilagam) definitely was not a well defined Naamam.

This reminded me of a conversation we had witnessed many years ago in that same sanctum..

She goes on to whisper a long secret of sorts into the ear of the Nandi (bull) in front of the Shiva idol. She was hugging the thing and everyone was watching her as it was unusual. Guess my mom had told her that if she wants to wish for something, or cannot hold a secret the best place to wish or say secrets is Nandi's ears. I asked her "what did you say to that Nandi for such a long time?" .. "I told him to make Jr. stop bothering me!" . Sure there was more to it than that one sentence.

Jr. was easy on us, but the little one seems to be different in her thinking.  She also seems to be the creative genius in the family. Never stops amazing us with her thought process, be it in the kitchen or at solving problems. 

The good thing is that she takes my side all the time!