Gender profiling hits closer to home..

Friday evening. Mom asks dad to stop by the Indian Grocery store on the way home from work. She gives a long list of things to get.  

The kids come back from evening class. It is time to unload the stuff from the trunk and given how the stores don't give plastic bags anymore and also given that daddy is not the default shopper, there are no big bags. All the individual items are just spread across the trunk. So we need as many hands as possible to do the unloading fast.

The kids are helping and Mommy says "I asked for beans. I expect you to buy beans for making curry for the four of us for one meal. Not for two. This is waaay more beans than I would have got"

The little one decides to join in the bashing "If you thought he got too much beans wait till you see how much Vendaikaai(Okra) he got!" which turned out to be a false accusation. When Mommy saw the quantity she thought it was too little.. Nevertheless, you folks get the picture..

Jr. decides to chime in "See, this is what happens when you send a 'boy' to get vegetables!" . This 'boy' is the one making them their special sepankizhangu curries etc. and suddenly this 'boy' is not to be relied on for buying vegetables?! 

It is not easy living with three girls.. When they decide to pile things on, it comes big and deep. Daddy has decided to stop doing a few things around the house till they come around. 

They are watching too many serials on the iPad that designate daddy as the person who takes out the garbage and plays with power tools in the garage. Time to unplug the internet connection in the house. 

West and East

Jr. gets to practice saxophone over the weekends. Her teacher is making sure an email goes out saying she practiced and Jr. knows she has to, if the email has to go out!

I am also making her practice Carnatic music when we get a chance. She knows the songs by heart and it is a question of being able to follow the notation in the paper and translating instantly in her head from a different south Indian classical notation. 

She does a great job of both and has improved a lot.

Next week, Nagumomu in Raga Abheri.. at least the first few lines!

More than her practicing, these videos end up with some funny outtakes. Hope the kids have fun watching this years from now.

The camera comes out, after a long time!

The girls were dressed in matching colors today. This begged for a backyard photo shoot!

The matching outfits reminded me of an old series of photos that were taken years ago!

Jr. is not the same model that she was a few years ago. She either smiles by covering her face or she has what she calls "smiling my way", which I don't understand at all.

The little one loves to pose, but she is so distracted that her eyes move away from the lens to something behind me or around me in a fraction of a second. This must be the impact of being on the iPad all the time, I tell myself. After calling out her name and saying "look INTO the lens" a few dozen times, get a clean shot if lady luck shines on me.

It has been more than two months and there are two snaps of them in the camera. So we made up for it.  Once Jr. got into it she started doing funny poses for me. These days the sum total of fun in the faces of the two kids seems to be a constant. If one is happy, the other one becomes mellow and vice versa. Have not figured this out yet.. but given time, will figure out a fudge factor in that equation.

The dresses are a little on the orange shade, but the backyard light and lens has the white balance adjusted to make them show up like pink! iPhone photos show up as orange. Now I have a new challenge to work on.. understand what is going on with color balance!

Hope the trend continues and they pose for more photos.