Booking the Tooth Fairy

So Tejas discovers his lower middle, left incisor is shaking. He advices Ojas to bite the water bottles to speeden the process. On a whim I checked Ojas' tooth. Predictably the mirror image, the lower, middle but right incisor, is loose.

And as the brother says, the cycle begins. And I add... finally... but for a different reason.

The kids inherit bad teeth from the Dad's side. The husband brushes twice yet he has troublesome teeth.
The kids have a gap that needs to be filled but I postponed the procedure as I know they will never sit still during the procedure. Secondly the permanent teeth will sort the issue.

Aside from the above fact, I hated it when my innocent toothless babies sprouted teeth, albeit much later than normal babies do.

And now I hate this tooth falling phase, as much as I hated mine.
Some tooth wouldrefuse to break off fully and either
we had to loop a thread round it or my mom would suddenly yank it off. I have even gone to the dentist for removal when it refused to come off after being loose for ages.
I hated the blood that would spout or the empty sensation until the day after next or the awful gap until the next one grows.
I hated keeping count of how many remained to get replaced and perhaps until I was 15 I kept on suspecting that some of them have not yet been replaced.
I often got nightmares that my yet to be replaced tooth is shaking and would wake up feeling my teeth and counting them up.

Anyway, perhaps for children it is a phase that they accept which is why I lost count midway of how many I repkaced and when!

The kids know there is a tooth fairy. What they do not know is that the fairy supposedly leaves behind a gift.
Ha!

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Watch Sellers

Asking a customer...what watch you want.
This watch is for 10 rupees.
This is for free.

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Excuses Excuses

The children have forced me to buy an alarm clock that will help them wake up early and reach school on time. However, the only person who wakes up is their Mom. So much so the alarm has been permanently switched off.

Well, here is a book that expresses my emotions truly, only difference being the boy in question offers excuses compared to my kids who do not care to respond.

On Monday Neel decided
He’d be in time for school
On Tuesday he decided
He’d obey every rule...
Neel, has every intention of doing all the assigned tasks on time, however somehow, by some twist of fate or design, things go wrong.
This Dr Seuss style book combines a slice of life happening into a rhyme and converts the entire book into a very enjoyable read.
Sometimes he comes to school with just shoes as he has given his socks to the elephant or he gets mesmerised by something and forgets his errands and his homework has the strange quality of hopping away.
But there is always a tomorrow or a next week when things will be definitely better.

Title- Excuses Excuses
Author- Anushka Ravishankar
Illustrator- Gabrielle Manglou
Price- Rs 375
Publisher- Tara

The Great Race

What happens when Kanchil the deer challenges the animals of the jungle for a race?

Well, the only animal who agrees to accdept is Pelan, the snail.

How do you think Pelan plans to race Kanchil who is so very fast? When all theanimals of the jungle refused to accept the challenged, obviously there is a plan if Pelan is the only animal who agrees to race.

The Great Race is an exciting retelling of an Indonesian folktale featuring the popular trickster Kanchil. Illustrated in the exquisite mata ni Pachedi style of ritual textile painting from Gujarat, this is the very first time that this rare form of traditional art has been used to tell a story.

I simply loved the artistic illustrations, a departure from the usual Indian illustrations.

There is of course a lesson out here for children- a lesson in not being arrogant, but that's just one part of it. The rest is all fun.

A tidbit from the book-

Jagdish Chitara, the artist who painted the illustrations for this book, belongs to a traditional group of artisans known as Waghari. The Waghari people are a particularly poor and marginalised community. Originally nomads, they would roam around the banks of the Sabarmati river in Gujarat, creating a special ritual cloth for the Mother Goddess the Cloth of the Mother – this fabric was washed in the river waters, block printed and painted, then painstakingly dyed with natural pigments. The beautiful swathes of cloth were used not only as offerings, but also draped to form a temporary shrine for the Goddess

Title- The Great Race

Author- Nathan Kumar Scott, Jagadish Chitara

Price - Rs 375

Publisher- Tara Books

The 6th Birthday Post- Belatedly

The 6th Birthday post coming up for record purpose.

I was too lazy to transfer the pictures and therefore the delay.

This time I just decided to sit pretty and not do a single thing. I had been wanting to do a story theme for the birthday party and I felt the time was right for the kids to appreciate stories.

I invited a very talented story teller praba of the saffron tree fame.

Her venture is Little Owl Story Time,...you can see the owl puppet she uses for the stories.

We had a delightful story session starting with a very delightful theatrical finger play where in she uses antonyms to create a lovely finger and body action play which serves as a very good ice breaker.

The kids were in rapt attention as Praba read stories to them. The best part is she makes them informal. Books are strewn around. Musical instruments and props like a globe and puppets were there to create a welcome distraction.

The theme was stories specific to countries and their wildlife and she took them to Africa and the Snowy lands and all.

The cake that the kids selected were Batman and Powerranger. T shirts to match were also worn!

The food was a buffet and bearing in mind the story theme, the return gifts were books.

Light, Camera...

...fashion!
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Gym Lesson of the Day

Imagine you are digging a pit and someone is throwing mud inside it. Will you achieve your goal.
The same if you keep exercising without diet control.

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The Hilton Ayna

In honour of The Reluctant Detective (Kiran Manral), publishing house Westland organised a blogger's dinner at The Hilton in their ostentatious restaurant Ayna.

Ayna meaning mirror is a contemporary Indian restaurant where the blend of tradition and International helps create a meal which Is a gourmand's delight.

The decor reflects the Indian culture yet manages to look stylishly sleek. The decor is predominantly Indian. I loved the walls inspired by the eye of the peacock and the interiors that were done in carved mirrors and rich wood patterns, interspersed with glass and silver ware at strategic locations. The architecture is very contemporary and furniture a blend of modern and traditional.

The best part is that the restaurant has nooks and corners and enclosures that give a fair bit of privacy to the diners, we were seated in a private dining room which seated the 8 of us in a very royal manner, with the chairs laid far enough to allow sufficient elbow room while dinng.

The chef took personal care of us and served us a yummy sit down 5 course m

eal. According to them, they revisit the original recipes and traditional methods of cooking to retain the unique and consistent flavours of the dishes.
In totality, the Ayna is not just a place to eat, it is an experiential dining in its ful glory.

We were given a choice of non veg and veg sit down meal.
The veg consisted of a yummy surprise package of starters served on a skewer...charcoal roasted basil chicken, mutton cubes and malwani prawn served with a strip of garlic naan.

The main course had Goan fish curry, mutton from Bengal, rogan josh, countr

y chicken and prawn served with apam, malabar paratha and a very sinful ghee enriched parantha sprinkled with poppy seeds. There were more...biriyani, daal makes which we declined.

The desserts were to die for. Served in an individual platter we had Malpua, orange kulfi, chenna payesh and sandesh.
This culminated with a platter of create your own paan and that is the only snap I took as this is so very unique.
We ended with, yes there was more, a ginger coffee to help digest all that we had consumed.
I forgt to add, the sweet pickled pineapple jelly was beyond yummy.






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Wildlife Sighting

At IIT Campus.
Visiting the campus was like reliving the good old days of my own campus life. It was like as if an alternate universe existed just away from the hustle and bustle of city life.
I am glad I have lived a life like this once upon a time.
Congregations outside the library or canteens or outside classes.
Walking up from hostel to class and back. As MBAs we were the priviledged lot of being allowed entry into the boys hostel which was a matter of great annoyance to girls of other streams. Not that we utilized that priviledge at all. I mean why would we want to visit the boys messy hostel? And look at the gamchas and chuddies drying outside?
It would have been an overdose of their company after spending class hours with them.
But that didnt deter us from throwing this fact into the other girls faces and watch them go green.
Sigh!

What is your campus memories?

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Blanking Out

Is forgetting to drop the kids to school and discovering the blooper long after crossing the turning.

Another one would be finding myself many turnings away from the veggie market and proceeding steadily to office on a weekend in my gym wear that too. Ughh.

How about wearing slip on sandals from different pairs to office

Where does ulta t shirt worn to gym stand

Or expecting the cab driver to automatically know how to reach your home and wonder why isn't he taking the correct turn?

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Drawing Lessons

Tejas- Mamma do you know how to draw buttocks.
Mamma-no
Teas- first make a D then make an ultra D. That's how you draw buttocks

Munavidu Restaurant

A very authentically created restaurant that serves Tamil Nadu and err Chinese cuisine.
I loved the rustic mud walls painted with intricate traditional pattern.
I loved the terracota carvings on the walls too.

Decent prices, lovely ambience, delicious food.
What else does one need.

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Splinter-Ed

A couple of days ago, Tejas got a longish splinter stuck into his finger.
It looked tiny when I first saw, I actually thought it is a dead skin sticking out but it was hard and so I pulled it out slightly. To my horror it came out a little bit and I could see that it is actually a tapering piece - flat and broad that ends in a needle point. It was deeply embedded and tightly so and Tejas wasn't allowing me to even touch it.
I was afraid I would split it if I pulled it out while he was struggling so much.
For almost 2 hours I chased him.
Finally I checked the internet.
Here's what I got.
Soak it in warm soapy water. It will allow the skin to loosen.
Pull it out.
If it doesn't, stick the sticky side of a bandaid over it. That will keep the area moist and losen the splinter.
Well, the soapy solution part was easy. He sat there comfortably watching TV. But everytime I touched it he would wriggle away.
Then I decided to use the sticky plaster. Now that was an opportunity he would not miss out on.
He was engrossed in watching TV and gave me his finger to put the bandaid. Using this opportunity, I just yanked the splinter out.
Here's a link on the various methods to remove splinters.

Pencil Audit

I am going to conduct a Pencil Audit in my house.

The kids are definitely having at least a 100 pencils of various shapes, sizes, types and colours. Yet when it comes to home work time, their inability to find even a single pencil surprises me to no end. Each time, every time.

But the final straw was when one night, they were sharing a single pencil to do their home work and that too broke and they pushed the tip back in the aping hole and wrote with that wobbly pencil, holding the tip gingerly into its niche.