New Year!

It is still january, so i think i can post about new year! :)


Last year on new year eve, ashu wanted to stay up late and i let him. He waited and waited and when it was 12 and when we wished him Happy New Year, he said That's it and was disappointed and went to sleep. He was way too sleepy to have any excitement at all.

It reminded me of an episode of Arthur. This year, AJ decided to join the fun too and we were watching t.v. and at 11, they were showing new york and the ball dropping at the timesquare and the excitement caught on the kids as me and Balaje were doing the count down too..And then when they showed nashville at 12, they both were jumping with excitement and AJ ran up the stairs and stood midway and he said mommy it is 2011 so i climbed 11 stairs. This made ashu crack up! :) This time they were pretty excited about new year since they were both up :)


With new year, they went to school for a week and the schools were closed for 4 days the next week. They had a break after the break..Lucky kids..now, why would the offices not do that too? It snowed quite a bit and the snow stayed up for the whole week..It has never happened before..The temparature usually rises in a day or two. Anyways, instead of sulking, we built a snow baby. B was not in town. If we had one more pair of hands, we would've built a snow man! :) Kids had a blast outside and they wanted to do it every day, but i was not ready to let them do it everyday and fall sick. So,i got boxes of snow inside and they were playing with it, using cups and pans as moulds. They had this colours kit that their athai had sent a while back and they added colour to the snow and were mixing colours and experimenting. It was a fun activity for them and i could work form home peacefully :)


After the break, when they had school the next week AJ asked, "Are they not cancelling school today?" My kinda boy!! :)

Break is never enough!! :)

Phew!

December was hectic. Had to wrap up so much before the xmas shut down. Was not well the week before the break and that made me even more desparate for the break :) The break was good. We drove to florida..Went all the way till Key West. It was beautiful..and we didn't do a whole lot. We decided to take it easy and do things at our own pace. Everyday we got up only around 9.30 and it was really refreshing :) Only thing is we couldn't go on any of the boat rides as it was too windy and they cancelled them all.


As usual, we left without any plan or any hotel reservation and we reserved on the go and found a resort in keylargo. Most hotels/ resorts were booked and this was one of the few decent resorts that came up in hotels.com. Resort was okay, but the room was really small. I was little bummed about that..but then we hardly stayed in the room..so no one other than me cared about it.


We stayed at keylargo and drove to Key west next two days. The drive was beautiful. We took so many scenic breaks. Beeeeautiful drive and even Keywest was so beautiful. If Chennai was maintained well - atleast the besant nagar tiruvanmyur area, it would look like keywest. Sigh! We spent some time in the resort too before we left. They loved it as there were lot of hammocks :) They also loved throwing stones into the water!! Boys! It was in 70s and very nice. We even had icecream in December. There was one flavor called mamey and the picture of mamey they had looked like mangustan and tasted awesome. but, when i searched in google it says mamey is sapota. i dont think it tasted like sapota though. We got a carribean fruit cake there and they had used rum so it tasted like it was made out of benadryl..so that went to the dump straight.
We also got cuban plantain chips. Awesome again. So spicy and yum. We got lime and chilli wheat puffs. Loved that too. I ate so much of it..it's all sitting in the waist now :-( The kids didnt like it..but we both loved it.

On our way back, we went to Miami and spent a day there. We went to the south beach and kids had a blast. It was a little chilly, so we asked them to not goto the water..but they still managed to get all wet!! The beach had a nice play area for the kids as well. If we had not had plans to goto Orlando, they would've refused to leave that place. We left in the evening and reached orlando that night and going to Orlando during xmas break is a BAD BAD idea. It was toooooo crowded. Like Pondy bazaar and ranganathan street during Diwali time. We went to islands of adventure and universal studios (took park hopper) and felt so lost inside. Horrible!!!  We went to Jurassic park ride and then to Seuss world and then decided to goto universal. We saw Shrek again and this time AJ finally enjoyed it and didnt remove his 3 D glasses :) Then we went to terminator 3D and it was okay and we wanted to goto MIB, but we stopped for the Macy's parade and it was time to go back IoA as we had taken the return ticket for Wizardly world of Harry Potter, one thing that Ashu was desparte to see :) We skipped MIB and  went back IoA and there was a lon.....g queue in front of the WWHP. There was no meaning to the return ticket. no one was checking anything and it took some time to enter the Harry potter world..after that there was a longer queue inside to goto the castle and the ride. We made a mistake and got into that queue and midway aj asked us to carry him. I really felt that if i had stood in the line at Tirupati, i would have got some punyam atleast. 1 hour in the line, i started hating it already..but being a parent isnt that easy right? Didnt want to feel guilty and continued and somewhere close to 2 hours we finally made it to the castle. It was pretty..they had the talking pictures just like the movie. Fascinating. There wasn't a whole lot, but whatever they had was good. They even had HP, Hermione and Ron show up on the balcony (Laser, i believe) and while i was waiting at the child swap room with aj who was pretty upset because they said he cant go on that ride as he didnt meet the height requirement, B and Ashu went on the ride and B said it was awesome. Ashu looked quite scared when he came out. I had the option of leaving aj with B and going alone on the ride, without having to wait in the line, but i freaked out at the thought of going alone and left. I think i should've gone..too late to think of it now!! Will i ever go back to IoA? I doubt that. AJ was crying so much since he couldn't go there..so we took him back to Seuss world and he was so happy when he went on the Red fish blue fish ride and the cat in the hat ride. It was also funny that he didnt get scared at the jurassic park ride. I screamed bloody murder at the drop and ashu was scared too. He didnt admit it, but when i saw the picture they took just before the drop, he was clenching his teeth and the expression on his face was priceless..AJ was sitting quiet as he had no clue what to expect and i think before he realized we were down anyways..Or maybe he is okay with those kind of rides! We will find out when he is little older.

We decided never ever to go back to orlando during holiday time. We saw the mad rush and cancelled our plans to goto Magic kingdom and returned home. Ashu's friend who also went during that time said that they couldn't even get tickets as it was full!!

Overall the trip was good and relaxing..didnt have the heart to come back home to the 30s.. It was in 70s in keywest, you see :)

Compliment and Advice from the big boy!!

I made Karthigai vadai on Karthigai and the kids loved it. As soon as Ashu took one bite he said, "Mommy you are the best cook in the whole world and this is the best vadai i have ever had" and i was flying high for a while and he bangs me with "You know, you dont have to make these things only on festival days, we will eat if you make it on a regular day also!!" LOL!


I am finally glad that AJ has slowly started enjoying the indian food now. He loves all deep friend batchanam and love idli and dosa as of now. No fuss there. He still has no interest in rice, but if i make daal he doesnt fuss a lot. Ashu is typical southie..enjoys rasam and sambar a lot!! :D He loves all batchanam and he lovvvvvvvvves puliyodarai and lemon rasam so much!

On Sunday, i made pooris as it has been quite some time since i made them and both the boys like pooris.I decided to make something very light for dinner and when it was time for dinner ashu asked me for vadais. I told him it is not that quick and easy and we shouldn't have too much of deep fried stuff on the same day and he was very upset. He was almost in tears that i refused to make vadais for him. So,i said i will make some quick namkeen and i made kaara biscuit (dont know what it is called) out of left over chappati maavu and he was quite happy. It was really funny for me to see his reaction when i said no and also it easily made me feel guilty for saying no!! The kids know how to play the card already!! :D


AJ found one of ashu's worksheet book and told me that he wanted to do multiplication and "Dive"ision before going to bed. I told him that he has to master addition first, then subtraction and then need to move on the multiplication and division and he was very upset and even in that bad mood he said mommy it is "Dive"ision and not division. LOL! When i checked on him after a while he was sleeping with an angry face and was holding on the the worksheet. It was so sweet :) He is doing addition quite well..actually i should say he was.. Ashu taught him 2 times table and now he is all confused between addition and multiplication. Sigh..i have to start over! :D

Friday funny - Marriage life

On our wedding anniversary i worked from home and AJ didnt goto school either! So, in the evening i told AJ that we will be going to the temple after appa comes from work because it is our wedding anniversary and he asked me what is wedding anniversary and i said we got married on the same date 12 years back and he said..oh i want to marry you on the same date too. I said Sorry dude..you cant marry me coz i am your mom, so he goes, can i marry Janani? I said nope..she's older than you and then he said..okay okay i will marry Tanya!! :D Ofcourse, i was happy with his choice as Tanya is such a darling..and as much naughty as AJ!! :D But dude didnt stop there..he added one more of his classmates!!!.. I asked him what about Srinithi, he said she's older..what about harini and he said she's a small baby!! Konjam nyayam therinjavanaa dhaan irukkaan!! And he didnt mention Aparna and Ananya..as they are not morai pons..but made me wonder how he knew! :D


Then i said let's go pick up ashwin and he said..what?! You are taking me to his school? I thought you were taking me to the marriage life!! What he meant was "taking me to the temple for wedding anniversary" It was hilarious when he said marriage life :D

AJ the lawyer

I think i have mentioned this before that my paternal grandpa was a lawyer and my dad once mentioned that it is his wish to have one of the grandkids become a lawyer just like his dad. I dont know why he said no when i wanted to become one...Hmm!! Anyways, i used to think Ashu had the potential to become a lawyer with his non stop logical questions and his habit of correcting us technically..but after some time i started thinking he sounded more like a walking encyclopedia handing out facts than a lawyer. Or in short, a  professor and that was his nickname in the previous school too :-) Couple of days back AJ made me realize that he is my dad's dream! Read this to understand what i mean...AJ was troubling Ashu constantly, so i scolded him. No,w AJ is a menaa minukki who doesnt like to be scolded. He gets upset even if we say a loud MMMM and we end up with a Llama llama what a drama! ;-) So, when i scolded him he was so upset that he came to me and said, "I am not going to talk to you" and i was not in the greatest mood either and so i said "Fine. Me too". For that he said "Mommy, i said i am not going to talk to you and you said Me too, does that mean you are not going to talk to yourself?" I could not answer at that moment..That was the first time where i couldn't come up with a smart alec reply!! So, we have my thaatha's vaarisu now!! :D

Thanksgiving break

We stayed at home and relaxed for the most part. We did some shopping on friday and had our friends for dinner in the evening. Kids enjoyed the most. Ashu even told me he had too much fun on friday. Saturday was a lazy day. did nothing. had leftovers, so didnt cook either. Browsed and watched t.v. happily. Kids were happy to be at home too. I taught ashu to fold t.shirt the japanese way and that kept him amused and busy for a while. he was very proud and kept doing it again and again..and the little copy cat was trying to do that too :D If only he had followed my instructions he would've got it too..but he told me to stay away and said he will do it himself!! The little brat! :)



On sunday, it was quite nice n pleasant. (Now Sudha, if you are reading this..i am NOT rubbing it on you..hehehe) We didnt miss the opportunity and went to a (not so) nearby park and it was very nice. They had a big horse arena and the park looked pretty. Boys were running around and all of a sudden the temp dropped down and we had to walk quite a bit to get back to the car as we got carried away and walked quite afar. From there we went to Panera's for dinner. AJ just ordered a kids grilled cheese sandwich and 2 giant cookies. He got a kids yogurt with the sandwich.. Ashu ordered grilled cheese and kids mac n cheese and got two yogurts. One was red and one was blue. AJ asked ashu very nicely that he wanted to exchange his red with ashu's blue and ashu gave his blue. After couple of minutes, he said i want my red back and took it and didn't bother to give the blue back. When i asked him he casually said both blue and red are his and ashu got only one!! Ashu was quite nice and said he can have it..so no tantrum there!! Phew!



B and I watched "Boss engira Baskaran" on thursday and it was quite entertaining. We watched it quite late after the kids went to sleep..so we really couldn't make it to the Black friday shopping early in the morning..Aadi asanju when we went most of the doorbuster stuff were gone!!

Baby Genius

Some time back, when i went to pick up AJ, he had a new teacher for SAC and she was going gaga over how brilliant AJ is and said she was spelling out lot of words and AJ got them all right, right away. She said i even spelt big words like Montessori and he said That's my school, Montessori :) She should've stopped with that..she said she spelt Genius wrong and he not only said the word, he also corrected her. This, she said in front of him and he was grinning..I dont know when this will come and bite her (or me) back!!