Award time

Jo was kind enough to bestow me with these awards. Thank you Jo. It has been very long since I got an award. Let’s not talk about my absence in this space.

 

Here are the questions she asked:

• What do you love most about the city you live now?
  • I am thinking hard. Seriously. We moved to this city around one year ago and it has not actually grown on me yet. Maybe the easy access to India groceries and restaurants. But, if you ask about US in general, I love the public libraries here and the easy access to books.
• What did you want to be when you were a child?
  • I never thought about it but I knew it is something to do with Maths as that was my favorite subject all through school and college years. It is Aptitude mathematics skills that fetched me the first job though my current work doesn’t require mathematics skills. I always jump right into solving math involved puzzles that fall under my ability.
• Do you collect anything? If so, what?
  • I used to during school days – fresh leaves/flowers and press them in a notebook, my bus/train tickets, recently started collecting magnets but the new refrigerator doesn’t have space for magnets so I may not collect it any more. Any suggestions as where can I place my magnets?
• Which is (are) your favourite online shopping website(s)?
  • One and only amazon. I hardly do online shopping.
• How do you handle a stressful day?
  • I don’t know. I always focus more on completing the tasks for the day which pretty much takes my whole day that stress goes unnoticed most of the days.
• In your opinion, what is the best blog post you’ve written so far?
  • Not one but many. All my birthday letters to my kids and posts that talks about amma, maternal grandma, mama’s house, pongal celebrations. Any post that rekindles my childhood memory. They are treasures.
• Can you tell me something about your dream house? (even if you already own ur dream house)
  • I like houses that are decorated with antiques at appropriate places but to me a dream house will be any house that is spic and span and has my loved ones. The minute I think of a beautiful house, the fear of maintaining and cleaning it occupies my mind more than its beauty. This is what Us of A offers you. Scrubbing and cleaning yourself.
• What is your favorite social media?
  • WordPress.
• When are you homesick?
  • When am I not? Seriously?
• Three things you like about India in three words.
  • I will write about Chennai as to me Chennai is my India. Have not ventured much into other states of India.
    • Life. Chennai is where my heart and life is. That sense of calmness when I land there is irreplaceable.
    • People. people everywhere. It is hard to see anyone on the road when you step outside. But, in India I can see at least 10 people anytime I step out. I like crowd.
    • Access to places. I feel I am more independent at Chennai and I can go where ever I want to with less dependency. Thanks to my Alto.
• What do you like more: sunshine or snow?
  • Sunshine always.

I enjoyed answering these questions. Thank you again Jo. My blog circle is limited and Jo has already nominated most of them I know. So, skipping the nomination part.

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Award time – A very long pending one

First and foremost, my sincere apologize to techie ZM for accepting the award so late. It has been more than a year since she awarded this to me. Thanks much to you techie ZM.

 

Rules of the Award:-

1. Write 11 random facts about yourself.
2. Answer the 11 interview questions you’ve been given by the person who nominated you.
3. Fabricate 11 new questions.
4. Nominate 11 bloggers who have less than 200 followers and mention them in your post.
5. Tell the person who nominated you, along with the people whom you’ve nominated.

11 random facts about myself
1. I am not a morning person. It doesn’t matter if I sleep at 9pm or 2am, getting up at 6am is a big deal for me.
2. I cannot skip a meal. Its more of a mental block than tummy’s need. As M says, I do more of emotional eating.
3. There is a huge gap between what I am and how I want to be and I am not doing anything about it even though I am well aware of the gap. Say I want to drink a bottle of water as first thing in the morning, I want to make the kids go to bed by 9pm, I want to spend 30 minutes every morning to do yoga. The list is calling for a separate post.
4. I love to keep string of jasmine flowers in my neatly plaited not so long hair and wear those stiff cotton sarees but it never seemed as easy as its said.
5. I love to decor home and keep it organized but I am far away from that as I have been living out of suitcases for a long time now. Just seeing the big suitcases stacked in the room and boxes around puts me off from decorating/organizing the home. I secretly wish for our next home to have plenty of storage closets.
6. I don’t enjoy cooking. I do try different dishes for kids but don’t prefer to go that extra mile to try difficult dishes. I would always settle with easy route on cooking.
7. I am more comfortable with planned executions when I am the organizer. I love to strike out the items in the list as they get executed.
8.I love surprises from friends and family and love even more to give surprises to them.
9. I had never felt good about myself. Neither had I expressed it nor I let it affect my daily life. I have had my share of feeling inferior since childhood and there are strong external reasons for it. There I said it.
10. I have faced few cross roads in the past and now sometimes spend my lonely time thinking how my life would have been today had I taken the other road.
11. Until 2008, I never thought even in my dream that I would own a blog and write so much. Thanks to Adi. I can call myself a mommy blogger.

11 interview questions form techie ZM
1) What do you cook when suddenly some guests appear at your doorstep?
Fortunately I have not encountered such situation yet. But, if they do, then below is the list
Breakfast – poori/aloo masala or dosa/chutney with kesari followed by ginger chai.
Lunch –  veg/egg fried rice or veg biriyani, white rice, rasam, curd, appalam.
Dinner – uppuma or poha with dosa/chutney.

2) How do you like to celebrate your b’day?
With non stop phone calls and wishes from friends and family and may be a surprise. I hardly get phone calls on my bday these days leave alone surprise. Signs of getting older!!!

3) Your favorite book?
Shiva Triology from what i have read so far.

4) What are the qualities that you admire the most in people?
Honesty and kindness.  

5) How did you meet your spouse?
Matrimonial site. Ours is 100% agmark pakka arranged marriage with its twin sister aka confusions dancing away to glory 🙂 

6) Do you plan for future? if yes, then what do you see yourself doing in after 20 years?
Not at all. In 20 years I will still be the mother of two kids expecting them to beat me in reciprocating love. Adi would have moved out, LHB in his final year of college. But, I am determined about doing my own things once they start their own life. This list of own things is still in evolving stage.

7) What do you like the most about yourself?
I feel happy and content when I am able to help someone in need or when I am the reason for someone’s smile.

8) What do you like the most about your spouse?
I can go on and on if you had asked “don’t like” but now you make me think very hard. Jokes apart, he never badmouths about anyone. If he doesn’t like, he just stays away but never passes unnecessary comments or pickup fight with them.

9) Would you like to change something about your life? If yes, then what’s it?
Life is good. Touchwood. 

10) Do you easily get angry or are you one of those saints? What’s your trick to keeping calm mind?
I get irritated a lot especially at home when there are pending errands and M is on that Sri Ranganathar palli konda posture with his laptop. My blood boils then. No trick yet to keep mind calm in that situation. Can someone help?

11) What is your favorite comfort food?
curd rice with pickle.

Fabricate 11 new questions.
I cannot think of better questions then what techie ZM had asked me. I had fun answering them so I steal the same set from her. Please pickup the questions from above.

Nominate 11 bloggers who have less than 200 followers and mention them in your post.
I am not sure if 11 bloggers read my blog and also guess almost everyone that I know have already been awarded. If any of you reading this have not received this award yet, please accept it and do the honors.

Tell the person who nominated you, along with the people whom you’ve nominated.
Techie ZM awarded this to me. Thank you lady!

Maya, your tag is next.. I want to think of more facts about me, kind of self realization you see. So, I promise to come up with new set of facts about myself for your tag.

School updates and a rant

Keeping up with the tradition the girl received the “Most caring/loving award” this year too 🙂

Read the 2011 story here. Its no way different this year.  She is still the girl who throws all sorts of tantrum at home, refuses to cleanup but gets the most caring, loving, best helper, cleaner, scrubber and what not award from school. I go back to square one with the same question again “Is it normal for kids to behave this way?” though this time after lot of thinking especially after my recent posts I confess that at my childhood days I was almost like her throwing all the tantrums to amma where as trying to be in good books of every other possible outsider.  So, I don’t blame her. The genes are playing at full swing.  But, I blame myself for a different reason.

She was awarded this certificate at school assembly on Friday along with the First Honors award she received for academics.  Did I tell you guys? She scored A+ grade in English and A grade in all other subjects for this quarter so she was eligible for First Honors. We received the report card few weeks back and were informed that the award will be distributed on last Friday at third grade assembly.  As any other proud parents we attended the assembly to see the girl receiving award and took some pictures and I left to work right after her class has been awarded. Blame it on my meeting that was later postponed to today 😦  Adi had received the Student of the Month award after we left. The first thing she asked when I picked her up in the evening was “Mommy why didn’t you stay back? why did you leave in the middle? You know I got another award today. I was looking around for you guys when I got the award”.  I felt terribly bad and cursed myself enough. The very thought of her searching around for us in the crowd while receiving the award added more fuel to the fire.  I slapped myself in front of her and ranted enough that at one stage she started consoling me.  I told her that I am not going to have my dinner as a punishment and she was very sweet to say “No amma. don’t do that other wise you will feel very hungry. You just skip the evening snack okay?” 😀

She declared Friday as her lucky day as she got two awards, her name was selected in the lucky draw that happens at her class every Friday (the one in which she was expecting her name to be drawn for past few months) and had an impromptu play date with her swimming mate. Separate post to follow on the play date.

Over weekend we made her first formal project requested by school. A poster about Augusta Savage.  In order to honor the African American history month each kid at Adi’s class was assigned and asked to make a poster of an African-American woman who had struggled and excelled in their career.  We googled researched about Augusta Savage and made this poster over the weekend. For the records I drew lines in poster for Adi to write neatly.  She wrote the letters with pencil and then traced it with black pen. Still we scraped the first poster as she didn’t leave enough space between words and made few spelling mistakes (though she copied the sentences from my rough work). We bought the poster sheets on Saturday. Started the project on Saturday evening and finished on Sunday evening with all shouting and whining. I mean she whines that her hands are paining and asks for a minimum half hour break for every two lines.  How am I expected to react? I succumbed/screamed/lectured depending on my state of mind.  Thinking about it now I HATE myself for all that shouting and the recent post by SnS filled me with more guilt.  This is not to offend you SnS. I definitely need some clarity in this topic and totally appreciate the effort you have taken to address it so well in your post.

SnS – I can’t agree more with your point and would love to implement it but how is the million dollar question as one size doesn’t fit for all. Doesn’t our reaction depends on the opposite party’s action or the history we hold with that person. No one would like to shout at first sight or rather at first incident. I believe that shouting happens only when you get frustrated and give up on the other person though I totally agree that this is not the right solution. Shouting happens when you feel helpless. Shouting happens when you feel trapped. This is just my two cents based on my personal experience. I am basically not that shouting type but sometimes I feel that I am forced to raise my voice otherwise I have he fear of not being heard. I am clueless on how to handle these situations. I don’t mean to hurt you or anyone else here. Hope you understand.

Alright where was I oh yeah the poster, it is done and ready to go to School this Wednesday.

 

Another interesting thing I did this weekend is to revisit the photo collections. Adi’s class teacher had asked for 6 to 7 pictures of her milestones to create timeline.  After a long time I browsed all the pictures from the day she landed on this earth to till day to gather those 6 to 7 pictures. It took almost two hours but was totally worth it.  Her first day, first walk, first tonsure, first bike, first day of school, first snow, Adi in pattu pavadai (silk skirt), in halloween costume, birthday snaps of every year.. A trip down the memory lane filled with mixed feeling and emotions especially when I saw my mama (amma’s brother who passed away few years back when I was at US)  on one of the picture…

 

 

Double dhamaka

Yayyyyyy we won the prestigious artsy craftsy challange award this month.. Thanks Shruti.. Adi was mighty happy when she heard this news as first thing in the morning. Thanks to summerscript for informing me.

 

And Adi has been selected as the student of the week at school.  She received a pencil, bookmark and bubble blower as gift from her teacher.. 🙂

 

P.S : I have created a page for her first grade art works..

 

Versatile blogger award

Thanks a bunch Shruti for passing on this award to me. This award means a LOT to me.  A proud moment.

RULES

1. Thank the person who awarded you and link back to them in your post
2. Tell 7 random facts about yourself
3. Pass the award

7 random facts about me

1. I wake up (most of the days) before M and Adi on weekends for one main reason. To enjoy my cuppa filter coffee leisurely with no hurry either by standing next to my living room window or lazing on the couch. I wake up before them on weekdays too but that’s not with a joyful note

2. I have witnessed both the best and worst of my birthday. Best  in 1999 and worst in 2009.

3. I absolutely cannot spend a day without talking and cannot hide my emotions.  My face reflects my heart.  If at all there is a need to hide my feelings I will rather hide myself..  There are many situations when I cried facing my office desktop though the cubicle is shared.. I am trying for more than a decade now to control my tears but all in vain.

4. I love sweet surprises (both ways 😉 ) Is someone hearing me? I had given many surprises to my kith and kins in past and still remember those happy faces… Bliss..

5. I am very poor in reading between the lines.

6. I wish to speak fluently in Hindi. abhi thoda thoda malum hain. I can understand 75% when two people converse in Hindi but cannot join the conversation confidently.

7. The best time of my day (most of the days) is when I read a story book for Adi at Night and then tuck her into bed. I usually kiss on her forehead and say “Good night pattumma. Hope you get nice and sweet dreams”. I know she loves this too.  This is when she shares the most about her day.  I just let her speak and be a good listener (for a change ;)) …

When I started this post I was like 7 facts? what can I write about myself? I cannot even cross 3. Now I feel like is it only 7.  Self analysis done after a long time.

Passing on…

I pass on this award to all my sweet blog friends in no order

1. Ambulisamma

2. Swaram

3. Vidya

4. Anirud

5. bitsofchocolate

6. Titaxy

7. Utbtkids

8. Shree

9. Suganthi

10. The Print Lover

Congrats guys…

Most caring and loving friend

Who could it be?  It is the girl who pushes me every know and then,  who pretends to kick me when I say may be or no to anything, who says “I am not your friend” at the drop of a hat, who can not call it a day without getting on to my nerves, who makes a mountain out of a mole hill, who gets mad if I win a game with her. No I am not overstating anything. Okay at least most of the days.

Adi came home with this award on Friday

I had no clue about this award and mailed her class teacher to gather more details. Here is her reply

Student of the month is awarded at the monthly school assembly for one student in each class. It is chosen by the teacher to award a student in a particular area. This month it was for the most caring friend. I think that Adi fits this category very well! She is consistently getting along with all of her classmates and congratulating them when they get an answer right or accomplish a task. She is always using nice words with her friends and always saying please and thank you to me as well.

I am confused. Is she pretending too much at school? Is it normal for kids to be like this? Have you experienced this? Your two cents please…

Star Student

yes she was selected as the star student of the class last week.  She is the second to get this title in a class of 12.

This is the bulletin board at her class that features the favorites of the start student. (appa – please note her favorite color)

 

What does the star student do on this week. They will share their

Monday – photos of friends, family and pets (Adi took around 8 to 10 photographs of us, grand parents, cousins and our sweet neighbors)

Tuesday – favorite book (She took two of her books – Busy bus and Very hungry catterpillar)

Wednesday – favorite toy (Snowman and Barbie dolls)

Thursday – most prized possession (Missed this as the school was closed due to inclement weather – heavy snow 😦 )

and Friday – a special guest to either read a book or make a craft.  Can you believe she was threatening me all week that she will take her dad as guest every time I disciplined her.  It ended up like I am begging her to be the guest. I have become a easy peasy for her available even before she need me anytime :(…  Anyways we then discussed and decided to make a craft matching the season.

I bought the materials needed on Tuesday night. Cut out the hearts around 75+ small ones and 15+ big ones on Wednesday night. Cutting was started around 10pm and it took almost two hours  to complete it. One minute Adi will be like “Oh my mommy you are the best cutter in this whole world”  and the next minute “I don’t want you to be my guest. I will take appa with me”…

This was Adi’s idea to arrange the hearts like a flower while taking pictures 🙂

 

Packed all stuff on Thursday evening and was excitingly looking forward for the craft session on Friday… I also took some snacks for the kids to enjoy after craft time.  Myself and her teacher mailed back and forth and fixed the session to be at 12:30 pm.  It was a one hour session and I took two hours permission from office.  The kids were awesome.  I first explained to them the step by step procedure to make the craft and then distributed the materials as they needed. Adi was my helper to check each table if they have sufficient materials. All kids followed the instructions very carefully and  made the craft in a perfect way. The pride on Adi’s face was priceless and her happiness was boundless.

the crafts made by all kids for your glance

 

Guess how she attended phone calls in this week?  Hellooo this is start student Adi speaking who is on the other side? We hated that week to end is the least to say…

Coming up next – post about book reports…

 

 

So we are

now the proud owner of this badge as we won the user choice award for artsy craftsy october 2010 challenge… Adi is super excited about this… Thanks to all who have voted for us and special thanks to Shruti for organizing this amazing challenge.

Our entries are here and here

 

Blogger buddy award

I am simply bowled over with this award. Thanks a ton AA . Never imagined I would get one. I was introduced to the blog world by my friend Sugan. Then, blog hopping helped in a great way on my baby steps in Parenting. I had been a silent reader of many blogs (my list was growing every day) for more than a year. Many times it was so thrilling to know that someone elsewhere is experiencing the same as you. At last the day dawned when I started blogging. Though I don’t remember the trigger for the first post I(we) know that the trigger for keeping it alive is the one and only – my cute little angel. On initial days I thought I would give up soon but now my blog is 10 months old. Can’t believe it. I started with rediff blog and then moved on to wordpress based on Sugan and Meera’s recommendation. WordPress is cool. Thanks to Sadish for this beautiful theme. My goal was to do at least one post a week and guess I am doing okay job so far.

Blogging is no doubt a revolution and it has brought in many positive changes inside me. It helped me

To change my perception at many things
To capture my little angel’s special moments
To express and enjoy life’s little happiness
To set self targets and achieve it (at least for the sake of blogging about it)
To share common thoughts with better half
To learn there are people around the world sailing in the same boat as you

And to get wonderful friends like you

Thanks to all my readers especially AA, Meera, Swaram, KK, Suneetha and Chakra.

Keep visiting and I will try my best not to disappoint you.

Once again thank you very much AA for helping me with a topic for this week 🙂

 Have a good day all.