Santa chronicles

Last year the little one had found out that Santa is not real. Somehow she has forgotten that realization this year.

Today she came to me and said "Daddy, I know Santa puts our gifts under periamma's tree but will he still come into our house through the chimney and check our Christmas lights? What if he comes and is not happy because we don't put milk and cookies for him?"

Me : !!! I don't know. Maybe he will come to our house

LO : He comes to every house anyways right? even if we are good or bad girls?

Me : go to sleep. Santa will bring you gifts. Just don't worry about it.

On the other hand, Jr. is growing up a little too soon, and when this is happening with her mom as a role model.. that means trouble for Daddy.

Jr.: Daddy can you do this for me?

Me : Iru, idho varen (wait, I will come now)

Jr.: I know what that means. You will take an H O U R to come. I am going to go ask Amma!

Me : NO that is not true. I am almost done here. Just give me a minute.

Jr.: You are on your laptop! Every time you are on your laptop and say "a minute" it means a hundred minutes. You won't come. I know you..

LO : Yeah Appa. you take a hundred million thousand minutes!

Me : (shut down laptop) Okay, tell me what you want?

Jr.: See, you did that just to prove me wrong. If I didn't say what I did, you would have kept working.

Me : Ennadi aniyaayam (this is not fair). I don't come to help, it is a problem. If I come to help, I am doing it to prove a point?

Have a lot of work ahead to change the little girls perception!

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Party time, taking some things for granted

This is our fourth year at the annual IBM Christmas party for Children. Those of you who have been reading this blog long enough know that each year we put a caricature comparison of the kids done by the same Artist year after year..

This year is no exception!

Big Al actually remembered the kids this year! This year they have finally outgrown those same tee's they wore three years in a row. Both of them have mature faces now!

We also did the usual face painting, cookie decorating, getting balloons etc.

For the first time we attended the magic show and it was a ton of fun. Have never seen the kids this animated or happy in public in a long time. At Disney it was awe and wonder struck faces. Here is was pure glee!

Jr. gave me a nice pose. The little one erased part of her X-mas tree and was refusing to pose.. she is turning into a mini me. Cannot stay still in any place for more than a few seconds... she was just whizzing through the whole thing!

They do a really great job of decorating the place each year with a different type of tree (one year is green, one year is white, etc.) and the whole thing is extremely well organized!

We are all aware of the real Santa. Still the allure of sitting on Grandpa Claus and getting a picture is fun! The kids loved it.

If you do look at the youtube video link in this post, have tried to explain the issue on the video in the Youtube description. If you have any pointers towards the real problem or a fix, please let me know...

Another year has almost rolled by and is coming to a close. It has been a tough year that is coming to a close. Counting days at work, at home, over the phone with relatives..

Hope we count down the remaining days without any major issues!

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Santa is just a guy in a suit

Till last year the little one was so sure that Santa was real. Even this year at the IBM party she was happy to meet "Santa"!

All it took was one careless Santa who didn't know how to wear his costume and now the magic is gone! (this was the school Santa). Eventually it would have worn out anyways, just that we were directly being approached for gifts!

LO came to me and said "Daddy, do you know? Santa is really just a guy in a costume!"

On the bright side, daddy's stock value with LO has increased now that she knows he is the real Santa.

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Life is..

"Life is Searching for the constant in something variable and searching for the variable in what is constant" - Sundar Narayanan.

(do not know if a quote like this exists already, but writing this independent of any quotes that may exist along similar lines that are out there. If not, this is my quote!)

An otherwise monotonous routine life, and we can still see changes!

Take for example, the annual IBM Kids Christmas party we attended for the third continuous year.

This year, we knew what the kids liked to do and we got them to do everything they liked, at the party. The constants were the photo op with Santa, the big tree, ballons, the clown, the cookie decorating, the caricature stall where they got to pose..

The variables were the hat decorating and the fact that the girls are older by a year!

We have been going to this one person (Big Al) to get the caricatures done for the last three years. We get to see how the kids features change, "in caricature"! He does an amazing job and the kids know they are posing just to find out how different they are compared to last years caricature..

Here are this years pictures..

and here is a composite of the last three years caricatures...

The kids really enjoyed the party, just like the previous years!

Sometimes we should be thankful to powers above and beyond that we are blessed with some sense of monotony and order and at the same time have changes over time that make life interesting for us.

Wishing one and all a wondeful holiday season..

-The Traveling Narayanan's

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