School Buddies

Sindhu had her school friends over the next  day. The group gelled really well. They started on the zipline, decorated cupcakes, did their nails, had pizza and played some games. Just before they were to leave, we put on a movie,  they all called their parents so they could stay longer. 

Yes, she let her "hair down" :-)

Why she slouches next to her freakishly tall friend, I don't know (her parents are both short, how did she end up being so tall!? Does it seem fair to you?) Good thing, I hardly know her parents, imagine if they read what I wrote about them?

Sindhu's do

Sindhu convinced me to that she needed a hair cut in Dallas. She wanted long layers at the back and fringes at the front.  If you recall, Sindhu has her hair in a pony tail pretty much all the time. Really, I could just cut her hair myself given her "low maintenance" look . She begged, pleaded and promised that she would leave her hair down once in awhile. Well, here is the picture taken after her haircut, Deepika, Prasad's cousin, curled her hair in the front for the anniversary party, she looked very cute and much older.   Anyway, this is  probably the one and only picture we'll have of her in this look. Next time, I'll cut her hair myself!

Sindhu's 12th Birthday!

Sindhu turned 12 on November 29th!  Her actual birthday was somewhat quiet, it was a school night and we just got back from Dallas 2 nights before.  We baked and decorated cupcakes, she got a  pair of  fake Uggs which she loved and has worn every day since. We also got her a flip video camera, she and her friend Monica like to make kooky movies, I'll have to post a snip one of these days.  I'm hoping she'll film some movies and use her Mac to edit them, let's see.

We didn't get our act together to have her party last weekend so we're having back to back parties this weekend. Her playgroup friends + Nikki are all over tonight for a slumber party. Rushil is staying over at Krithiga's place tonight so the boys are having their own fun.  We started the evening with decorating cupcakes because the girls were hungry and Prasad was a bit late in ordering the pizza. Before the pizza arrived,  they played some games, we  started with the frog game, then  truth or dare game, and  the toilet paper game . They had pizza and then started on their nails. Sindhu and I bought a bunch of nail polish, crackle nail polish and nail art pens at Ulta last weekend so they easily passed an hour doing each other's nails.   Now they're watching "The Clique" and we'll see what they'll do next, I'm guessing they won't sleep for awhile.

Tomorrow her school friends will be coming in the afternoon. We'll probably have to be more organized, I don't know the girls that well so it can't be as informal as her slumber party. Next year, I told Sindhu, she can invite 8-10 girls and have only 1 party !!!

On my own

Prasad and the kids went to Texas for a few days before I joined them for Thanksgiving weekend. It was the first time, I was on my own for over 4 days since Sindhu was born. I filled my days with going out with friends, working, running errands and  watching tv or reading.  One night I went to Santana Row for dinner with friends, another night to Livermore (which by the way has a lovely spruced up downtown with a variety of restaurants) to see  a movie and dinner. We saw "Martha Macy May Marlene", the movie ended so abruptly, it caught us off guard and left us wanting more. The youngest member of the Olsen clan acted in the movie and she is by far the most talented. On Sunday, we celebrated Sujatha's birthday at a Thai restaurant. I shopped, I got my hair done, I ran all kinds of errands, it was a quite a productive few days.  I took Bart to the airport and that was a huge mistake.  Bart is the most inefficient mode of transport. They have no proper connections between trains, the staff is rude, their trains and routes are not properly labelled, it's the last time I'm going to take it to the airport. On top of it, just before leaving for the train station. I locked myself out of the house. I went into the garage to pick up some shoes and locked myself out. Fortunately, I had the keys to the front door but I had the latch "on" so I could unlock the door but I couldn't open it :-(  I panicked, my luggage and purse were still inside the house, the clock was ticking and I was in a bind. I asked my neighbor to help and while he was trying a few options, I ran to the back of the house to see if a window was ajar but I had "no such luck" We were ready to give up and call our handyman for help when Rajiv tried one last time and was able to push the door open.  It was a mad rush to the train station. Bart took forever, I arrived at the airport 25 minutes before takeoff and was sure I would not make the flight. Lucky  for me,  it was Thanksgiving day and the flight was delayed and I made it on the flight to Dallas!  We had a great time in Dallas, more on the trip later.

Glee!!

Did I tell you I'm hooked on Glee?!? The first season was so hilarious!  And the music, some of the kids have incredible voices.  I finshed the first season in a few days and was left wanting more.  Finally after a few months, Netflix posted the 2nd season.  I stayed up till 2AM one night and watched 5 straight episodes. I will have to admit though, the 2nd season was not as good.  But the best part, if I turn up the volume really loud, sing and dance to the songs, cooking doesn't seem so bad.

And Diwali Continues

Our Fremont playgroup has been having an annual  potluck Diwali party for 8 or 9 years. Krithiga has been taking pictures of the kids and adults every year.  Although we don't meet every week like we used to when the kids were younger, Diwali and Christmas are a must every year. In between, the moms meet on milestone birthdays and special occasions and the dads for Mission peak hikes.  I cherish our get togethers and hope we continue to meet.

Sindhu's Halloween Drama!

For weeks, Sindhu has been begging me to go trick or treating with no adult supervision.  According to her, all her friends go on their own.  I was skeptical but I still asked around and most of the children were accompanied by at least one parent. Some of her friends with older siblings were allowed to go TOTing alone but it really wasn't the norm.  The big day arrives and Sindhu doesn't know what to do. She has a few loose invites  to go with friends in their neighborhoods but she really wanted to stay in our neighborhood. Finally she and her friend Sanjana after a lengthy drawn-out discussion decide to go together. But her mother and I agreed that they had to be escorted much to Sindhu's disappointment.

Meanwhile today at 5:30pm, Prasad walks over to our neighbor and asked if their son and Rushil could go together and Rushil's evening was set. That seemed too easy. We suggested that Sanjana and Sindhu go with them but you can guess what Sindhu's response was.


Sindhu and Sanjana  drop in at a neighbor's house and it turns out that Jaishree is going with a couple of mutual friends and they all decide to go together. The irony... Sanjana's and Jaishree's younger brothers, friends  and parents also accompany them. I guess it's ok to go with your friend's family but not your own.



The drama doesn't end here. Sindhu will be a troll for the school play. Since we had to buy a costume for the role, she decided to be a troll for Halloween too. It's not easy to find a "female" troll costume. We found a suitable mask .  We bought a zombie dress online which we thought might work but when she tried it on, it was too frumpy and matronly.  We chopped off the bottom half of it, pinned the puffy sleeves back (we may chop off the sleeves too), pinned it so the skirt didn't flare so much  and she wore a pair of jeans under it. For the play, I'm planning to tie her hair up and colour it white or something for a more dramatic effect.  Hopefully, her teacher will be fine with it.  For Rushil, we went to the store about a month ago and he picked out a Star Wars costume within a few minutes and we were done.

Is it me or is Halloween one of the more stressful events of the year? 

We carved a pumpkin early in the week but it rotted. We bought a few more but never got around to carving them. We did however put up decorations outside our home for the first time ever.

Happy Deepavalli!

The night before Diwali, Prasad and Rushil went to an Indian store to pick up sparklers. Rushil was very disappointed they couldn't find any real fireworks and wished he was back in India.  I was pleased  we were easily able to find the sparklers at all, they're readily available at all the Indian stores. Rushil woke up on Diwali morning and announced that it wasn't fair he didn't get the day off.  He made an executive decision that we must go back to India for a week every year during Diwali season. Not a bad idea if he didn't have a little something called school to attend. A school that is very strict about attendance.  Anyway,  since Diwali landed on a weekday, we were not planning to do anything special however we felt a bit nostalgic about the fantastic Diwali we had last year in Hyderabad so we decided to invite our neighbors and Sri over for dinner. They brought over some dishes, I cooked a few dishes and we pulled off quite a feast. It was a bit hairy, as I burnt the eggplant dish but Sri rescued me by whipping up another dish and it turned out the eggplant was still edible.  Rushil lit candles throughout the house and Sindhu lit the diyas. All the kids lit sparklers in the backyard and it turned out to be a lovely evening.  

Hope you all had a lovely Diwali!

Rushil's Update

Rushil spent most of his summer at tennis camp  - 9 hours a week for 5-6 weeks. He went to a fairly competitive academy that  trains their students to compete at state and national levels. Many of their students received college  tennis scholarships and they run a more serious training program than some of the other schools. Good or bad, I don't know but Rushil's serve improved tremendously over the summer. Early on, he was in the beginner class and he won a few trophies and was riding high. They moved him up a level and he started playing with much older children including some 13 and 14 year olds and he no longer won any medals.   He needs more speed and oomph in his serve and returns, probably some height wouldn't hurt,  but it was encouraging to see some improvement in his game.  Plus the academy is  located less than 5 minutes from our home and you just can't beat that.  

I pulled him out of tennis in the fall so he could join a soccer league,.  It's quite intense with two children in soccer in the same season. They often have matches or practices at the same time and it takes an enormous amount of energy to keep track of their schedules, which color  jerseys they have to wear and when it's our turn to bring snacks.  The kids are having a blast, Rushil's team is somewhere in the middle of the pack so he knows they probably won't get a trophy.

But he still misses tennis.  Prasad took him to the courts a few times over the past few weeks but it wasn't enough. He resorted to playing tennis against our back wall of the house. So we registered him for tennis lessons last week before one of our window breaks.  Now that we've fed his tennis needs, he and our neighbor's son play wall ball every afternoon against our back wall. Maybe I should just give up and budget for a new window.

Ziplining!

If this doesn't convince you to come for a visit, I don't know what will.

An FB friend of mine posted a picture of her son ziplining in their backyard. It caught my eye, we have such a large backyard and most of it unused, this seemed ideal for us. After researching some more, I found that there is a fairly large number of backyard zipline vendors so I purchased one of the more popular ones on Amazon.  I did not realize what we were getting into. It's quite an engineering feat to install it and it costs quite a bit of moola. Even now, I think the line could be tighter and we need to buy a better handle, it starts hurting my hand even before the run is over.  It's a lot fun though!!  I'll have to post a video one of these days.

We had the platform built and had to make it higher to accomodate adults.

Rushil has to climb the tree to reach the handle.

Going right side up has lost its appeal.

Megha when she came over for our koluvu

2 year old Roshu got the hang of it.

Sindhu's First Dance

Sindhu's school had their first "social" on Friday. I wasn't sure if she was going to attend but on the day of the social, she called me up to say she wanted to go. I presumed she would go  in the same outfit she wore to school, but she actually changed. Although comfort is her first priority, she has recently started to put some thought into her outfits.  That evening, I asked her what she did at the "social" and she said people were dancing in the hall and talking outside. I asked her if she danced and she said," Everyone was mostly jumping so I also jumped".  It sounded like she had a great time.  So there you have it, my baby went to her first dance. 

I'm curious to know if she has started to have an "hyper-awareness" of boys because I suppose it should start at some point soon.  If a boy comes up in a conversation, it's usually because he has done something annoying and she's irritated by him.  She doesn't have any "male" friends that she mentions however I see her talking to them comfortably when I pick her up from school or a class.  When she and her friends talk, boys never come up but perhaps that's because I'm there. The next few years will be interesting.

Out of context I know

Captured elbowing someone :-)

Sindhu's Update

Sindhura has been having a ball since we came back. The summer was filled with playdates and sleepovers. Yes she did have to attend a math class 3 days a week and with that came some homework but for the most part, she had a pretty fun summer. It was  busy so she can't complain that she was bored. She took swimming classes and after 5 weeks, she is finally able to do laps and has mastered all the strokes. Both S & R's swimming really suffered over the past 3 years so they caught up somewhat over the summer.

Middle school started and she reconnected with many of her friends. She has a busier social life than all of us and still looks for more opportunities to socialize. She is allowed to take one elective at school  and she chose Drama and was lucky enough to get her first choice.  They will be doing a play in January and she is thrilled to get the part of Gertrude, a troll.  On the whole, she seems to be able to handle the academic load. They have 2+ hours of homework every day so she really has to keep on top of it. She often forgets she has to study for a test until the last minute, or forgets to turn in an assignment, let's just say we've had some hairy moments we really would rather not discuss.  The best part is that she has PE every day, with all the cuts in funding, I'm pleased to see that they get some physical exercise every day although she complains that she's not good at any of the sports they have been focussing on and that I should be prepared to see some poor marks in PE. They have also a no homework policy on weekends and for the most part, the teachers seem to adhere to it.

She started playing soccer and absolutely loves it ! I begged her to take soccer at school in India but she refused because there were hardly any other girls playing it.  She plays a defense position and although it's her first year, she's pretty good at it.   Sindhu came home after the first 2 practices saying she ran so much she feels like throwing up, music to my ears.  It's unfortunate they don't have soccer all year round, I have to find something else for her to do in January. 

Last but certainly not least, Sindhu has braces. I remember telling Kavita that it seemed like the dentists in the US overly prescribed braces and yet somehow I was convinced that Sindhu needed them too.

Dassera 2011

I've decided to break my silence and finally get back to blogging after much encouragement from Teju and Raji. I'm not still sure if I should close this blog and open a new one or just continue with the same blog.   I never really finished the posts on Europe, I have so many pictures from the trip, it will take days to sift through them. I'm taking Garima's advice and cutting my losses for now, otherwise, I may never get back to blogging. I'm starting with our Dassera celebration last week.  I've amassed a fairly large collection since our last Bommala Koluvu in 2007 so we needed more steps. I sent Prasad out to  buy more planks from Home Depot. Prasad tried to pawn off the job to Raul, our handyman, but I objected, "You have to integrate back into society, you can't just hire someone all the time:-)"  He grumbled a bit but then did an excellent job with Rushil as overly zealous helper. In case you were wondering, the steps we had in India were falling apart, the construction was so poor, last year, we had to screw the structure to our wall or it would have toppled. It had so many sharp edges, every year, I prayed none of the children would get hurt from it, I was happy to be rid of it.  Prasad finished making the steps on Friday. Saturday, my cousin's wife, Namrata came from Sacramento and she and I arranged the dolls and finished sometime around midnight on Saturday.  Everything was scattered all over the house and I had to open many boxes to find all the pieces I needed. Sunday, we cooked and at 2pm, our guests started arriving.  By Sunday night, I was so exhausted but happy that we pulled it off. The dolls are still sitting in our living room, I don't know when I'll get to packing them up.  Now that everyone has seen the dolls and I probably won't be able to add to the collection, what do I do for next year?

I grew grass from methi seeds and Rushil added sand for the pitch and sticks for the wicket.

Grew grass from mustard seeds for the village scene.

Juhi, Kalpana, Nithya and Manju

Manju, Juhi, Sri, Namrata (at the back) and Kalpana

Sri and Prasad

Wish I took more pictures of the kids, there were so many kids that came. Here, we have Nikki, Nithya, Megha and Roshu

Roshu - the zipline daredevil (Zipline post coming up soon)

Namrata .... yes, she's 5'10", you can only imagine how short I feel next to her. She was tremendously helpful... couldn't have done it without her.

Gautam and Garima. Garima looked stunning in her sari and accessories.

Sonu, Garima and Kavita

Rushil chilling with Ajay.

Sweet little Anjali who gave me a peck on the cheek before she left.

Meena and Krithiga