When Shue Came

Sue was here in the weekend and we decided to meet at my place.
I spend a day preparing the kids, telling them about the new friend who was going to come.
Me- His name is R
(Incidentally the other set of twins in my building are called R & S)
Ojas- what about S?
Me- no only R is coming
Ojas-Lekin uska S kahan hai? (But where is his (sister) S?)
Me- About time Sue About time!

I did a cheat menu- meaning either assemble stuff or have stuff which are easy to cook. And did lots of preparatory work- made lists - to buy, to make tomorrow, to make today type of lists. And I must say the lists helped (and off course I forgot to carry the list with me when I went out to shop)
So the menu was balti chicken, chicken roast, chole (which according to me is a wonderful cheat dish- easy and quick to make), raita- which according to me is even easier than cutting loads of salad, parathas (and very cleverly I let Sue make the parathas which I rolled out) and brownies and the famous assembled fruit salad with brownies and icecream.

As V, R & S trio walked in, and before I forget, I must add that the short crop really suits her, r gathered all the 4 new dinosaur toys and Ojas began to sulk as a result.
So this is what R explained- I have taken all the dinosaurs as these dinosaurs may bite Ojas Tejas!

Naturally we expected that V & K will bond instantly and so will R, O & T. It took a while before conversation began to flow and the kids began to laugh and chase and share toys and at one point, I said to Sue- psst psst.. we two are unable to get a word in now....
So much so, it became tough to get one picture of her and me together!

Lunch was easy peasy because the kids were given their own low table with a bed sheet to cover the carpet.
R held the paratha against his face much to our amusement - we assumed he was copying O & T as they often bite bits of paratha from the centre and pretend that the paratha is a camera. But V & S were not so amused.
Turned out that R said to O & T- I just wiped my face with the paratha- now you also do that.
There was also a general community chewing of the chicken bones with the bone moving back and forth from one plate to the other.
The kids finished their lunch in record time and so Sue said- Tejas first, Ojas second and R third.
Tejas - no, Ojas also first
Sue- ok, Tejas 1st, Ojas 1st & R 2nd
O & T- he he, R is second R is second.

And so it was time to leave and we dropped the trio back and went up to say hello to Sue's parents. Turns out that the Sue's Dad was the husband's client in his previous company! Small world eh!! And off course the kids had a good time getting the grandtour of the place by R and appropriating his toys this time!
Somehow, it already makes me sad that after her parents move from here, she wouldn't be having a valid excuse to come down to Chennai!

Place Mats

Kiran gifted these lovely placemats for the kids- Their favourite cartoon characters customised and personalised and laminated.
These have become permanent fixtures on my dining table and Ojas & Tejas are very particular about eating with their plates on them and sometimes even using them to keep their color books.
Thanks Kiran- they are lovely and a wonderful idea for gifting!

The Mother of all Meets

Can I safely claim that it was so as there were people who particularly flew down to make the meet happen in a happening fashion.

DesiGirl and Boo (who was definitiely missed) are vacationing here, the mad momma was already in town, Sue & Dipali flew down from Calcutta, Ro with Blobbie flew down from Mumbai, Mallika & Kiran intended to do so but could not ( the intent definitely counts), and Poppin's Mom came from Bangalore!

From Chennai- we were IBH, Crazymum Nisha, Artnavy & Kenny.

We were plotting and planing for 7 months for July 19th and I can't believe it's over in a flash. Feels like the home is empty now as they all left right after lunch!!

We met at Barbecue Nation - got a room to ourselves!!! The room is henceforth named as Itchy's room for your records!!! As apparently some of them were directed to the same when they asked for the table booking! And that would be the room that overlooks the juice bar!

And there were gifts and more gifts!!!

The evening ended with a tiny cake (top left in the heavily edited collage) brought in honour of Ro & Blobbie!

What I am most touched about this one? The husbands were such good sports about it. Obediently coming with us and bonding with each other, Probably the piddly 5 of them talked with each other as much as the combined lot of us did!! And we girls do need the husbands to drive us around, take the kids to the toilet etc etc .... don't we?

Ageless Bonding

With Usha in the true sense as she was bonding equally well with me as well as Ojas & Tejas. From the moment we met till the moment she left home, we were chatting non stop. She even managed to play cards with the kids. To think she came to Chennai often lived next door to me and we had never met all these years!
Ojas & Tejas say thanks for the story CD and Mamma for the Krishna!

Meeting the Kolkata Ladies

This Kolkata trip was extremely fruitful- and no, I am not talking about the mangoes & lichis that I bought but that I got to meet Sue & Dipali & SRE (missed meeting Eve's Lungs as she was naughty enough to catch a fever from Aila)
It was not the first time I meet Sue but it was definitely the first time I was meeting Dipali I am certain, but somehow it did not seem like that wonder why!! ;)
Sue came armed with a box of yummy chocolate cake from Cakes & Dipali brought me a lovely green tangail and books & puzzles for the kids which was incidentally read cover to cover instantly. Many thanks Dipali aunty- they say!
The gossips and talks just flowed as we moved from one venue to another- from BigBoss Palace where I was staying to Kewpies Bengali restaurant to Dipali's lovely home...and swear- we were not ready to leave even then! And was I meeting Dipali's SRE for the first time? no? yes? dunno... I can't quite place!
Kewpies is an authentic bengali cuisine restaurant with terracotta plates/ tumblers and bowls- think Amethyst in Chennai- a similar home converted to a restaurant, ancient style, art on the walls, alcogol bottles and other ceramic pottery on display, slightly musty, subdued lighting...

As I studied the menu, to my dismay Sue & dipali suggested that i take the thali- now I am not the kind who can brave a thali - and moreover it usually has a host of vegetarian stuff which to me is not needed at all. So I dithered and protested as politely as I could that I would rather pick and choose than let them serve me a thali. And the lovely ladies insisted that the thali is well balanced - bitter/ sweet/ spicy and all! On hindsight (realised exactly 15 minutes after ordering) I am glad they forced me to take the thali
My favourites were-
banana flower curry
fried brinjal- see below
prawn with lots of mustard oil
Bhetki steamed in banana leaf- I devoured the entire thing and did not share with Sue as originally intended
fluffy pooris- see below
mutton curry with the bone -I slurped the entire bone marrow!
mishti doi...yummm
green mango sweet chutney- to be eaten with papad


And while I am on food- I had lunch the next day at Jimmy's Kitchen- oldest Chinese restaurant in Kolkatta!
Deep fried chilly chicken- I took the entire plate - the colleague was kind enough to notice my greed and pick only a couple of pieces from that! Immensely satisfying - fried, flavourful !
If you come across it get in and try it! Small but popular place!

And this post gets a mentione here moments after I posted it! Thanks Sue for pointing it out to me!

Long Overdue Blogmeet Report!

Crazymum has done a great job of this so I wouldn't dwell on details...Just that a promised play date morphed into a blogmeet and a delightful one indeed.

and left me wondering whether the playdate was for the kids or the moms!

Look How We Have Grown

When K's mom came to Chennai last year, we had our first ever blogmeet. And we have come so far now more than a year later.
So this time it was at Coffee Day with K's mom, crazymum, Art, Lavs, DC and Timepass.
I took the tough decision to go without the kids and immediately regretted the same. Felt totally out-of-place without them and useless when I saw the rest of the moms handling their kids and carrying on the conversation.
Well, and the best part of all was meeting Plane Papa at last!

Another Blog Meet

The friendly, talkative and extremely busy Choxbox was in town and she was sweet enough to make time to visit my home. She says that this was the first time she was meeting a blogger in person! Isn't it strange that we make an effort to meet people whom we know only through the blogworld? and we can start off on an easy note as if we have known each other for years!
She gifted the kids an exciting picture-story book- Ed and Mr Elephant- The Big Surprise by Lisa Stubbs. This is a simple reader with pretty pictures that look like line drawings coloured in pastel shades. No wonder my kids thought it was a colouring book and made a few marks in pencil on a page. The story is about the red car Ed that takes Mr Elephant on a ride to the "big surprise" through a series of situations like railway crossing, ducklings crossing the zebra crossing, fire engine, rains etc. The fun part is not everything is narrated - some of the scenarios have to be interpreted and explained and the pictures are cues to many side plots in the story- like count the number of ducklings, or what can you see inside the park or who is the engine driver etc. A very interactive and child friendly book.

Girls Know Best

That a combination of Mommy bloggers, their husbands and kids is really a great idea.
So for the first time the Chennai Mom blogger's meet included either by default or by design or by force the man of the respective families.
When the Mad one and the other celebrity came to town, how can the Chennai bloggers not gear up to meet them?
Art generously invited us all to her lovely home, totally undaunted by the number of people coming over including Minka with Bubbles, Lavs with Lil Buddha, IBH with her oh-so-professional Nikon, Koushalya with Abi, Nisha with the Brat, not to forget the famous brat, bean and Ashu of the above mentioned celebrity blogs.

Welcoming balloons, the blog meet den with our blog banners displayed on the window and lots of french fries, smileys and pasta...thanks Art for making it all so much fun So little time, so many toys to play

The famous kids and the famous hand in profile...
Historic snap so well taken by the Boo

The spoils of the war To many more blogmeets...here's a toast to 2009!

Coffee, Tea and Us

One afternoon, 4 ladies vanished from their respective workplaces. Giggling like truant teenagers they met at Cafe Coffee Day looking over their shoulders, just to meet a certain lady from Kolkatta.
To their credit, they behaved quite decorously, save for the fact that they bullied the servers to move the luxurious sofa to accommodate one of the ladies as they were meeting at a time when "nobody would (bunk work and) come" and chatted extremely noisily.

They got talking like old friends, for old friends they were after having met each other atleast 3 times and having been in constant touch over a Certain Talking Team group...or otherwise. Anyone would have thought these were a bunch of mad old friends meeting each other over coffee, tea, cakes and sandwiches and not caring at all about decorum and talking of breast feeding, being bad mothesr and getting ready to become even worse MILs especially the mothers of boys.

They talked right through the afternoon until family and duty called. At 5.30 pm the truant Cinderellas were ready yet so reluctant to leave the party.
Clearly sharing tales of rearing the kids are as satisfying as the actuals.

I was on a High

The whole of Friday evening and part of Saturday, just because we did a mini blogmeet-
with Sue& R and IBH at my place.
I had Sue met before and was all eager to see R, who turned out to be a real doll! a very quite (it seemed) and outgoing child who tried his best to feed potato chips to Ojas & Tejas. I was hoping he would succeed where I have failed!
IBH & I had spoken over the phone and she sounded really smart & interesting. Well, I was not disappointed. She is a very interesting, gregarious and chatty lady.
We talked and talked into the evening and the 3 of us made the most noise compared to the 3 kids who formed individual groups of their own in the living room- as usual Ojas & Tejas fiercly guarding their tricycles much to my shame.
It was so strange that we were not running out of topics to discuss. Sue has written in detail what we did. We discussed our work, the hectic life, our dreams & ambitions, our kids and their strange milestones of self discovery.
Thanks Sue for the puzzles & IBH for the chocolates. Both were devoured with equal pleasure

Bloggers Meet @ Fruit Shop @ Greams Road

Yes we did it- finally a large enough gathering.
As discussed bringing the kids in was optional and since Kowsalya & Nisha said they are bringing theirs, Tharini was mentioning that our hero Winkie could possibly make it and I was sure that Anush would definitely not come without bringing her Mom Art , how could I be left out?
So I took Ojas & Tejas along and reached a good 15 minutes after 4 pm because a meltdown was staged right before leaving home. I walk in to see Nisha & Tharini like old friends in deep conversation and Art all over the place with Anush. It didn't take me long to recognize Nisha because of the pic she had shared on our Mom- group.
Kowsalya walked in without the kid and while we were wondering who she was because we usually connect the Moms by the kid's face, Tharini exclaims- oh this is Kowsalya!
Amidst snap taking & juice ordering Minka & Bubbles made an entry with a huge bag of goodies in tow. Bubbles and not just Bubbles but also his mother were truly bubbly. We moms struggled hard to seat all 4 kids and face the camera long enough to get a perfect picture for the blog - the things we do for the sake of our blog posts!
Sometimes I feel I really don't make full use of the blog meets. There was so much I wanted to talk and share but did not. Perhaps one hour is not enough. We know the blog persona so deeply that we don't know where to start and which topic to choose. Sometimes I don't want to confuse and reconcile the blog persona & real life persona at all!
Ojas & Tejas thank Bubbles for the lovely gifts- a dress up puzzle- this is a set of 2, 10 piece each puzzle that has shots of a boy & a girl dressing up (for school). You need to fit them in series. The kids loved it. And off course a play dough which is anyway a big hit- you can never have enough play dough sets I feel. The more the better!

Virtual = Reality

What is height of commitment to the blog?
Taking off from work to meet a blog friend.
Believe it or not, we just did it.
Sue, ArtNavy with Anushka & Self met up at Coffee Day yesterday evening.
As I walked up to the restaurant I saw a girl sitting by herself deeply engrossed in her book. I almost went up to ask her are you Sue?
But got sudden jitters as what if she is not. And there she looked younger than what I had thought her to be and even the hair she claimed she had cut looked long enough, I took the easy way out of calling her mom to check what she has worn. Her description matched with what I was seeing and I got the courage to walk up and make the aquaintence just as she herself looked up.
Art joined later and I was pleasantly surprised that Anush remebered me well. The young lady enjoyed her Frappe along with us and Sue & I marvelled on how good it is to have a daughter as a companion and how boys are designed to be nasty.
We talked of books, our work, our blogs, our husband and even bird flu and how it affected we chicken eating public...
One thing about meeting a blog friend is that you have a lot of background about the person and you can take off from any point just as you would with a long time friend.
The blog and motherhood is such a grand unifying force that it overrides everything else that is not common among blog colleauges- be it work, education, family, age group, attitude to life etc.
An hour and some more spent well!

Virtual is Reality

This is Ojas & Tejas reporting from ITW. Finally the Chennai Moms got their act together and made it possible for us blog heroes/ heroines to meet up with our other Virtual friends.
There was Kodi & Kodi's Mom Aunty, Anush & Artnavy aunty, S & Has to Be Me aunty and Us & Mom at the pot-luck-snack party at our place on 9th Feb. We are told Lavs Aunty missed the fun as she got unexpectedly tied up with something else.
For starters, Mom was completely hassled the entire day busy doing nothing except putting our toys away. Don't know why she bothered because we promptly scattered them all over the place again. Clearly our idea of creating an atmosphere for our friends did not match with Moms but we persisted. Normally she likes us to play in the garden and mess around in the sand, but that day when we scattered sand in the corridor and garden right after our bath, she went mental. We saw her sweeping the corridor in vain after that.
The party started with Anush and us and Kodi joined soon. Sad that S and Kodi missed each other by a few minutes. He was one older bhayia among all of us. We had a tough time guarding our toys and tricycle but we were ok with sharing the jigsaw puzzles. Forgive us, it will take some time for us to get used to sharing our stuff. Maybe next time we will be more civilized.
We know Anush well, and she looked extremely comfortable with the setting enjoying her snacks and puzzles. Kodi was a little shy, and stayed near his Mom on the tricycle observing keenly everything around him.
We freaked out on wafers, murukku, samosa, juice, corn-pineapple-cheese.
We will look forward to more of such parties to catch up with our peer group