Super hero

Scene - Neev and I are locked out of our house . Anurag arrives with his set of keys and lets us in.
Me (saying to Neev with a sigh of relief) - Daddy saved the day !
Neev - Where is his cape?

Weekend of September 25th

Scene - Family trekking in Bond Park on a gorgeous afternoon followed by paddle boating in the Bond Park. In the middle of the lake Anurag stops paddling and Avi does not like the idea of just floating in the middle of water not heading anywhere. He's had enough of nature's dose and wanted to head back home and play at playstation. Anurag and I were savoring the time in the warm sun and were not ready to leave yet. Avi, frustrated tried to paddle himself and boat started moving a bit.
Anurag - What are you trying to do ?
Avi - What I am trying to do is to get all of us to shore. If you don't help me, I am going to have to do it myself.

Funny Neev

The other day my perfectly potty trained toddler got rather busy in playing with friends , ignored nature's call until the very end and barely made it to the bathroom. Later the big bro could not stop lecturing him on how he should listen to his body to avoid accidents. Somehow the lectures continued for a bit more than Neev's liking and finally when he could not take it any more, he told Avi, 'You don't want me to go here in my pajamas, do you?'. Avi said, 'no' and he replied. 'then stop talking about it'. Hard to express how funny the conversation was between two brothers.

Reverse Deja-Vu

Something interesting happened last weekend. We went to Lazy Daze festival of our city, hung out for a while and then headed to the mall to cool off and grab a bite. As I hauled my 3 years old on my back , I promised myself to remember to take out the cell phone out of my jeans pocket to put back in my purse after buckling him in the car seat. By the time 'click-it' happened, the thought flicked out of my head. The uncomfortable bulge of the cell phone also somehow did not do the trick to pressure my brain to put it back in purse. We drove to the mall , walked in Sears and Neev had to use the bathroom. I took him with me to the ladies room in the store and as I was helping him to use the potty, he went, 'mommy your cellphone' and pushed it out of my jeans pocket. I found myself picking it up and putting it up on the toilet roll cover and imagining in flash of a second that I am going to forget to put it back in my pocket/purse , lose it and then be miserable because it has so much stored on it. I tapped myself back from the imaginary world to reality and thought, its only for 10 seconds, how can you not remember to put it back when you are thinking about it already.
Next thing , we washed hands, zipped out from the restroom and went to the food court for Italian. Neev guzzled mango-peach iced tea by gallons , did not touch any food and by the time we were done with lunch, he was ready to go pee-pee again. As I rushed him to the restroom , Wham, I realized that I did not pick up my cell phone from the rest room earlier. I could not believe myself. Anurag tried my cellphone and obviously it was turned off by whoever had got it. We went to Sears, checked the restroom, asked the janitor who happened to be cleaning and he said that he did the last cleaning 20 minutes ago and found no cell phone. We tried the customer service desk , nobody had turned in anything. We still gave our contact no. in case someone returned it later. So here I was sitting in a chair in the middle of the mall, watching the carousel go round and having a spin in my own head , thinking that I had visualized all this was going to happen and its actually happening. It was a nice Nokia E series cellphone, not a black berry or i phone but I loved it. More importantly it had some cute pictures of my boys , of moments that I wanted to capture when I was not lugging my over sized camera , some sweet messages that I liked to read whenever I needed a pick me up. And it had phone nos of people, important and also those who are not. It was my true companion when my husband could not travel with me to India on our last trip. It served its purpose when our Cathay Pacific flight descended at Tai Pei instead of Singapore because of a technical problem and I was stranded with 2 kids , trying to make head or tails of Mandarin signs at their airport, fearing I was going to lose my connecting flight from Singapore to Delhi because for sure I could not make it to Singapore on time. Thank God for my ever so smart husband who was tracking our flight online and was aware of this little mishap and his call at the right moment was a God send on that cell phone. I was literally in tears as Neev started feeling feverish. To be able to just hear Anurag's assuring voice on that cell phone was good enough to pull myself together.
It was this cellphone that I used to frantically call our family doctor in India at 1 in the morning because Avi had the worst stomach ache.
It was this cellphone that I used in India as a night light to trace my steps to light a candle when the power outage was so severe it made our back-up inverters cry.
It was this cellphone that I used to plan my little sister's wedding, to talk to my best friend, to my family and last but not the least to make Neev calm down in a difficult moment with his favorite 'hippo and leo' video that my brother's wife downloaded for him.
All in all it was simply not just a cell phone !
While I was lamenting the absence of my phone, Anurag went over to a couple of security officers and apprised them of our loss. We knew nothing could be done and were told so by those officers. I was upset and in no mood to use the Groupon coupon for Gap. We started back for home and I could not get over the fact that I practically saw all this happening in my head , and still could not stop it from happening. Mid-way Anurag's cell phone buzzed. It was Sears, telling me that my cellphone has been found , apparently in some other rest room which I never used. Never minding the twisted story, I was just happy to have it back.
This for me was a very interesting experience, to have this feeling of knowing what was going to happen, to live it the next moment with an unexpected happy ending.
In the end I am going to say, 'all's well that ends well' !

Year 2010 so far

This should have been my earlier post than 'my kindergartner" since I have not posted anything in 2010 what do ya know, children always come first.

This year so far has been a year of BIG changes for us. It started on the new year's eve with a move to another apartment only 2 miles away from our current apartment because we wanted to be eligible to apply for the lottery school Milikan plus in Santa Clara. Knowing our luck we should have known better before playing any kinda lottery but like I said above , you would do anything for your children so not only we believed hard that we will be the one chosen in the lottery against 80 others but we also incurred all the insane moving expenses to move into our new residence in the city of Santa Clara. You never know what would have been unless you tried it , right (?) we told ourselves as the movers finished bringing the last box up in our new apartment sometime around 9 PM (really we did not schedule them to come in PM hours but apparently things got messed up and they ended up moving someone else in the AM hours). Being this the new year's eve and thinking everyone deserves a little break , we did not make an issue out of it. Tipped them well - they worked really hard and it was new year's eve. Looking at those boxes we wondered if we both liked drinking, this would have been the night to just let go. Turned out we could not find the glasses to even have water. Well, oh well.

January 1st doubles our joy since its also our little boy's birthday. We woke up really late and stayed a bit more in the bed for birthday & new year wishes, kisses and tickles. Headed out for birthday breakfast and had best pancakes and omlates ever. The waitress brought coffeecake for Avi to cut when she learnt it was Avi's birthday. Avi enjoyed all the attention in the restaurant. Later we picked up our favorite cake and cut it one more time in our apartment full of boxes. Thank God for my ever so wonderful husband who came up with a brilliant idea and made Avi's day super special by making a land-rover with empty tape rolls (used as wheels), a tin box (used as body of land rover) and a paper cut-out man holding a small US flag (which Avi found as we started opening the boxes). We counted our blessings , kissed our children, said happy birthday , happy new year and good night as we curled up in front of the fire-place and slept in the warmth of burning wood. Was having the fire place in this apartment worth all the expense and pain of moving ? (it turned out couple of months later that Avi did not get his name in the lottery) - may be !

In February kids and I traveled to India. Originally a two month long planned trip turned out to be four and a half months stay. The stars aligned and joyous event of my sister's wedding got planned in May. Wonderful times of celebration !

We savored the times with our family but heat not so much. Kids fell sick many times and I better not recall those really dreadful nights of Avi's stomach -ache and vomiting. If you are a mom, you know there is nothing more horrific than watching your child in pain. I missed Anurag terribly.Thankfully the sickness turned out to be all heat induced diarrhea and fever ( the doctor's assurance that it was a very common illness during summer did not laminate the fact for me that the kids suffered so much and lost a lot of weight).

The greatest outcome of our long visit is that my boys are talking in Hindi. Its AMAZING how Avi who understood a lot but never uttered a Hindi word is now primarily conversing in Hindi. They got to celebrate Holi in India, spent a lot of time with their Baba, Dadi, Bade Nanu, Badi Nani, Nanu, Mama, Mami and Masi and a lot of other extended family. As Anurag says, those memories and bonds are going to stick with them and not the bout of diarrhea.

Meanwhile here in USA, miraculously our request for transfer to NC got approved. We have been wanting to settle down here for a long time and it finally happened. I will bypass the details by just saying that sometimes things really work out and when they don't, having faith that such was not meant to be gives us courage to move on.

Now we are proud home owners in one of the best rated cities to live in USA and our children will be going to one of the top three, a blue ribbon public school in NC state. None of it guarantees happiness I know but for now I have it. The rest will follow.

My kindergartner

Scene - Dinner time before Avi's first day of kindergarten

Me (in rather sentimental frame of mind ) - Oh Avi how I wish you could remain as little as you were as a baby. Look at you, you are now big enough to start kindergarten.

Avi (without missing a beat but pausing eating to speak) - Don't you worry, I still am the same person.