It shows how much he loved...

...his earlier daycare "Pink Elephant" when

- he doesn't let me throw the old envelopes of the old daycare.

- he remembers the route to the daycare even now, almost 2 years after he last went there.

- he was in tears to see a new building in place of the old building.

- he says "mujhe Pink Elephant ki bahut yaad aati hai"

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Chand taare tod layoon...

It could very well be my son singing this song for me :)

Betu: "Aapko moon chahiye?"
Me: "par moon to bahut door hota hai. Aap to wahan tak pahunch nahi sakte."

Betu: "main ja sakta hoon"
*made a funny sound and said*
"yeh lo. Moon"

*again made the same funny sound*
"yeh lo star"

*again made the same funny sound*
"yeh lo ek aur star"

:D

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His summary of the Manali Trip

On the train from Chandigarh to Delhi (Shatabdi Express), our seats were right in the center where we get a table. So the crayons and paper that I had carried came to the rescue and I managed to keep the kids busy for good 1 hour.

There was another kid besides Anirudh and Prithvi and I'm sure his parents must be thanking me in their hearts too :D

The first thing Anirudh asked me when get got paper and crayons was "Main kya banayoon?" I told him if he wants he can draw whatever he saw in Manali. The idea really appealed to him and he got down to it. And this is what he made -

There is the sun, the clouds, the mountains covered with snow(blue bit on top of mountains) and with fir trees growing on them.

He drew a horse (pink one) and a monkey (blue one). he also drew the big boulders he saw near the mountains and in the river Beas (black and brown ones).

I think he did a splendid job of drawing a summary of his Manali trip. What says you all?

Craft time - Making a goat mask

On Tuesday evening I got a note in Anirudh's school diary that we have to send him dressed as a farm animal on Friday, Jan 30. So I asked Anirudh what he wanted to go as. Pat came the reply "Goat" along with the baa sounds. :)

So I started to think of the various ways I could manage that. The first thing that came to my mind was to make a goat face mask. And for the rest of the body I thought I can send him dressed in white or brown. Since I didn't have anything brown, I decided to go full white way. But by Wednesday morning the whole dress up activity was out of my mind until yesterday evening. And then I was kind of stuck what to do with so little time on my hands. I started to search the internet for goat masks outline. I managed to find only one decent mask but that was way too small. And then Photoshop came to the rescue and I enlarged it and did some tweaking and lo and behold I had a face mask which I could use for making one of my own. But somehow it wasn't looking good enough to me. And then I suddenly remembered Rohini's trysts in dressing up her son as a goat for his school activity. And there I found another goat mask which she had put together wonderfully by taking bits and pieces from 2-3 goat images off the internet. So when I saw this mask, I was sure I want to use this one and not the one I had found.

With the mask ticked off the list, now it was the turn of the dress. After humming and hawing I thought I will just send him in regular clothes. And then I remembered his dress from his annual day function at his earlier daycare "Pink Elephant". But that was 2 years ago. Since the dress was quite big (read that as 'QUITE BIG') for him that time I thought I will give it a try anyhow even if the chances of it fitting him were not even 5%. But the biggest hurdle was to find it. I vaguely remembered putting it in the loft of the guest bedroom. So when I reached home, I searched for it there and actually found it there!! I quickly undressed Betu to try on the dress and it was short at the legs and the arms. It was fitting just perfectly on the rest of the body. I heaved such a big sigh of relief.

So with everything in place, me and Betu went to the local stationer and got white ivory paper, traced the mask outline, cut it up and then colored it. This is how it looked once done.

And this is Betu err..a little cute goat today morning :D

When I was done coloring up the goat Betu said he didn't like it. I was pretty upset hearing this and said that he cam make his own and sat holding the mask with a pout. Within seconds he came to and hugged me and said "Yeh bahut achha hai. main isko hi pahnunga." Par main bhi kum nahi hoon. I told him "Nahi aapko pasand nahi hai ko mat pahno." but he insisted and we both smiled and hugged each other.

These are the sentences that I taught him to say

I'm a goat

baaaa..

I eat grass

I give milk

baaaa..

I kept telling Betu that he can slide up the mask a little up but he was adamant on wearing it on the face so I let him. I just hope he remembers to say these lines when his turn comes.

Here is the face mask that I used to make one -

And here is the other mask that I got from the net and modified to fit my requirements -

Reading sentences

Now that Anirudh's school is coming to the end of the nursery session and he knows the phonetics pretty well, he is able to read some basic words that they have been taught. The school calls it "sight" words. And now he can read sentences using these sight words. I didn't know this till I got this sheet to practice with him on a long weekend and he read them all correctly minus a few mix-ups. I was feeling so proud of him and rewarded him with a KitKat chocolate for reading so well.

Here is the picture displaying some of the sentences that he got as holiday homework. There were 20 sentences like these that he was to practice reading.


I can't describe how elated I was thinking "My son can read!!" :D

Marriage talks

We were discussing about our marriages with a friend of ours. And discussing how long it has been since we have been married when Betu suddenly pipes in "Meri shaadi kab hogi?" leaving us laughing out loud.

Betu, your time will come soon :)
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Imagine this

Imagine two 4 year olds singing the song "Talli..main talli..main talli ho gaya..."
Anirudh and Prithvi, his daycare friend, were singing this song enroute to Manali. The most inapproriate song they could have chosen. :D
Jan 24, 2009 8:25 am

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Amused

While driving on the way back to Delhi from Jaipur on Jan 19, Betu saw these buffaloes being transported in a truck. Our conversation:

Betu: "Yeh buffaloes truck mein kyun ja rahi hain?"
Me: "Kyunki jiski buffaloes hain, woh unhe kahin le ja raha hoga."

Betu: "Par truck mein to samaan le jaate hain. Inko kyun le ja raha hai?"
Me: "Truck mein saman ke alawa bhi le ja sakte hain."

Betu: "Hum logon ko bhi?"
Me: "Haan bilkul. Log bhi ja sakte hain"

Betu: "Par woh truck mein kyun ja rahi hain? Chal kar kyun nahi ja rahi?"
Me: "Unko door jana hoga isliye."

Betu: *no response and with the same amused expression on his face looking at the truck*

Bagawat

..abhi se.

A while ago hubby was telling betu about some rules because he was behaving badly.

After listening for a while he goes "No Rules!!"

Looking at him I worry about his teens. What will happen then if this is how it is now?


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All this just for not wanting to go to school

Yesterday morning Betu didn't want to go to school. He was cribbing and fussing about getting ready. When I made him stand at the basin to brush his teeth, he finally said, "Main ghar chhod kar chala jayunga. Fir aapko meri yaad aayegi, main fir bhi nahi aayunga."

So you see these threats start so early in this generation. Sigh. Anyways, hubby got angry hearing him say all this but I talked to him very calmly about it

Me: Ok. Par aap kahan jayoge?
Betu: Kahin bhi. Aur aap udaas hoge, par main fir bhi nahi aayunga.

Me: Its ok. Aapko jane ka mann hai to chale jayo. Par aap jayoge kahan?
Betu: Main prithvi ke ghar chala jayunga.

Me: Ok. Par Prithvi ki mumma to usko pyaree karengi. Uske saath cuddly karengi. Aap kya karoge?
Betu: Nahi uski Mumma sab bachhon ko pyar karti hain.

Me: Haan. Woh sabko pyaar karti hain. Par raat ko to woh apne papa mummy ke saath soyega aur aapko aapi aapi sona padega. Fir kya karoge?
Betu: *ponders for a minute* chalo achha..main yahin rahunga. Aap udaas ho jayoge na isliye nahi jayunga.

Me: Nahi. Aapka mann hai to chale jayo. Mujhe koi problem nahi hai.
Betu: nahi par aap udaas hote ho to mujhe achha nahi lagega.

And the topic got closed as he went for his bath. But did you see how he very cleverly I was made to be the reason he was not going :D

Aajkal ke bachhe, baba re baba...

My sweet little guy

He packed me 3 of his chocolate creme biscuits saying "Aap office mein kha lena" :D

I love you jaanu!

Making Pop-out cards

Me and Betu made these pop-out cards recently using rough paper. Betu was mighty thrilled while making these and even more thrilled to see how they finally turned out.

I would draw the outlines and he would color them up. And then it was my job to cut at the right places. I did get a good scolding when I didn't cut the aeroplane properly and actually snipped the plane.

We first made the Christmas tree and then all sorts of ideas kept popping in his head which I was totally incapable of making. His ideas included a frog, a a crocodile, a ship and this aeroplane also. ALthough I was not sure if I could make an aeroplane one but still tried. Although it didn't work out as expected but it was good enough to make him happy. Here is the pic of the ones that we made -

Next in our to-do list is to make a rocket and a dolphin. I will have to wrack this rusty brain of mine to figure out how to make these.

Tryst with numbers

Teaching needs LOTs of patience! And apparently I don't have enough. I have written about it earlier and here I'm writing about my trysts in teaching some rudimentary stuff to Betu.

Yesterday I was trying to teach Anirudh the counting in tens - verbally as well written.

He could recite it upto 80s if he started from 1. It was kind of learnt by rote. However, when I asked him what does 3 and 0 or 6 and 0 read as? He would look at me blankly.

So that's how we started with the number practice session. Somehow I was able to make him understand how to figure out 60. I told him if its a 2 digit number, and 0 is in the 2nd position it makes the sound of "tee". He caught that concept after trying for 30 min. Then I stared to focus on the first digit and how to recognise and read the tens. If the first digit is 6, pronounce it usually way and add "tee" in the end. It works well for all but for twenty, thirty and fifty. Even though forty also doesn't work exactly the same way but it makes quite a similar sound.

Anyhow all went well except for these different sounding numbers in tens. This is how the rest 1 hour proceeded. I would say the number first and then he would repeat.

2 0 - twenty
3 0 - thirty
4 0 - forty
5 0 - fifty

After we did this for 5-6 times I asked him to recite it himself. But he would keep getting stuck at pronouncing 'thirty' and 'fifty'. I kept helping him but after trying for another 30 mins trying to make him remember to say "thirty" and "fifty" I had started to lose patience and was getting quite angry.

This is how it went
Me: 3 0 - thirty
Betu: 3 0 - thirty

Me: 4 0 ?
Betu: Fourty

Me: 5 0 - Fifty
Betu: 5 0 - Fifty

Me: 3 0?
Betu: *looks blankly"

Me: *after waiting for 1 min" 3 0 thirty
Betu: 3 0 - thirty

Me: 5 0?
Betu: *looks blankly*

Me: *again wait for 1 min" 5 0 - Fifty
Betu: 5 0 - Fifty

Me: 3 0?
Betu: *looks blankly*

Again I tell him and he repeats after me

Me: 5 0?
Betu: *looks blankly*

Again I tell him and he repeats after me

This went on for full 40 mins and I was at my wits end by this time. I ended up giving him a tight slap and sent him off to bed. He cried really hard for good 5-10 min. I don't know if I should have felt bad for slapping him but the truth is I didn't. I was way too angry then. Hubby tried to intervene but I told him to just go away and not interfere.

About 15 min later when I joined him in the bedroom to read my book, I could hear him talking to himself in whispers. I ignored it and went on with my reading. He was facing the opposite direction all this while. After about 5 mins he turned towards me and said -

Betu: *in a whisper like tone* 3 0 - thirty *paused for a while for my reaction*
Me: good!

Betu: 5 0 - fifty
Me: very good! *hugging him tight*

And at that point my tears started to flow because of happiness mixed with a bit of remorse. And we both dozed off hugging each other.

Next day morning while we sat drinking milk and tea, hubby asked him -
Hubby: 3 0?
Betu: *after thinking for 2 secs* thirty

Hubby: very good. 5 0?
Betu: fifty

Hubby: very good!!

The happiness, the jubilation we both felt that time is beyond words. It was actually a feeling of a battle won!

And now the situation is that since he has figured out how to read 2 digit numbers, he randomly asks me to practice counting with him all through the day :D

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Scenes from my childhood...

As I am writing this, Anirudh is listening to a story from Amma - my dadi. Just the way I used to when I was smaller. And I just smiled looking at this scene playing in front of my eyes. It is giving me a strange feeling of happiness.

But there is a difference between those days and now. As Amma finished just now with her story, he asked her if she wants to listen to a story. She said yes and now he is telling her a story. And he is making the story all from his mind at runtime. :D

I was not as creative as Betu is when I was his age. And that is a big difference now and then.
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Shaitani dimmag!

Yesterday morning I went for my bath after Hubby had given Betu his bath.

The moment I reached the bath mugs I let out a big gasp. WHy? Because this is what the sight was...
Can you guess what it is in the those bath mugs? No? Look closely and see whats similar in both the things. Yeah..may be you are getting an idea now :)

Those are his pair of socks. The ones that he was wearing when he went for his bath. Both socks have been duly thrown into each mug.

Sigh...main kya karoon is ladke ka??

Aap meri step mom ho?

This is the question I was asked couple of days ago by my dear little son Anirudh. Surprised? Even I was. So I asked him why do you ask this? He had a very simple answer to it "Kyunki aap mere se itna kaam karati ho. Aur step moms bachhon se bahut kaam karwati hain."

I was initially a little aghast at this statement but the moment I realized why he asked me this question I was really laughing away. It so happened that I was making him clear the mess of his toys when he made this statement in full seriousness.

But I didn't leave it there (but obvious..isn't it? :D) and I asked him who told him about step moms.

It seems in the school that day the story of Cinderella was narrated to them. And that story has a step mom who is very cruel to Cinderella and makes her work really really hard. And because of THAT story, I was asked THIS question.

Sigh..what do you say to this question and more so to this logic!!!!

As per his logic...

...I must have been very naughty and would not listen to my Mumma, so I got scolded by my Mumma a lot and that's why I came to the house in which we are living currently :D
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