Restrictions

Daddy is allowed to wear one of eight or nine T-shirts, total!

Anything else is not allowed.

The little one screams her head off!! if daddy wears anything else.

Turns away from daddy. One minute she is clingy and the next minute she is absolutely horrified that her daddy has become a shirt, coat, different color T-Shirt wearing monster!

We had observed this once before when daddy took a red T-shirt from the "archives", and wore it for old times sake, and she screamed. So, the T-shirt was changed again quickly, just to stop her. Not much was made of that incident.

At a company anniversary party, daddy decided to wear his old Tuxedo and she would refuse to come to him. To daddy's horror, she never came near him at the entire party and clung to mommy the whole time. Everyone called daddy a horrible liar for claiming that the little one was attached to him at all times!

Today, it was a 100+ degrees here! Came home and removed the T-shirt and stood in the hallway for a minute in my baniyan(in shirt). The little one starts panicking again.

LO : "Daddy, please wear the shirt. Dont be nanga thanga!(naked)"..
Me : But I am wearing a Baniyan! I am not nanga thanga. It is so hot..
LO : Please wear T-shirt back, NOW!!

and then goes to Mom and complains that she is scared of daddy not wearing T-shirt.

Next minute, I removed the baniyan and wore the T-Shirt and she ran back and climbed on my shoulders, smiled and gave me a big kiss.

Strange.. very strange..

Need to find a way to get her used to a multi colored daddy!

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Beach heaven!

As most of you must know by now, Daddy's favorite spots are beaches. There is something to be said about the sand, the water, the waves, the vast expanse of sky, the people, the sundal(substitute with cheese sandwich, soda, home made mullu murukku or what have you) and the experience is usually a great one!

Last week a friend told us that he took his kids to this beach in San Mateo with the backwater or creek and the kids had lots of fun! We had been to this place once before, five years ago to show MIL california beaches on her first visit to the US of A. Unfortunately we did it in January when it was really cold and there was no one at the beach.

This time, different story. We went there(San Gregorio State Beach) and the cousin family joined us within an hour after we settled down. It was a lot of fun. The San Gregorio Creek joins the sea after making a couple of bends. The water is only a few inches deep and the flow is minimal. The water in the estuary is also warmer than the sea water.

The San Gregorio beach is right at the intersection of route 84 and route 1. I always take 84 to hit route 1 instead of the 92 because it is less windy and more scenic and today for the first time we stopped at Alice's restaurant (a very popular place with a lot of history) and had coffee, ice cream and snacks. It was wonderful!

Once the little one got in the water, there was no stopping her!

The original plan was to go to the Santa Cruz boardwalk and that said, we were definitely not packed for a beach trip. We winged it anyways, thanks to a few towels and the Sun shining brightly on us.

Our fun filled afternoon came to an abrupt end when the Beach Patrol came and asked us to leave. A helicopter was to land on the beach to do an emergency medical transport.

So we rushed out of the beach. All said and done, a day well spent!

On a side note, Wishing all of you a wonderful "Tamizh New year" (yep, starts tomorrow!).

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Who are these "guys"?

Just as I was breathing a sigh of relief on account of saving the "guys" topic with Jr. on the previous post, the little one decides to overuse the word "guys". We must have heard it a few thousand times in the last 48 hours!

Still do not know where she heard this. Obviously she picked it up from someplace. Keeps talking to these imaginary "guys" on the phone, sometimes more than 10 minutes at a time.

Here is a secret video of the little one talking to her imaginary...

Do you notice her say things like "He was so rude. I dont like that!"

The little one was roaming around the house in her "jatti" because we were potty training her and were pretty much under house arrest during the weekend. Thanks to her phone call and the secret videos, we were not bored one bit!

Who are these guys? Why am I being given a sneak peak into the future? Why this early? What is the rush to have these coy conversations with imaginary dudes? Maybe she is breaking me early?

I stand no chance!

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Hype, Hype, More Hype

First, a Belated

"Happy Valentines Day"

to all of you!

To a desi family, Valentine's day is as important as Halloween, President's day or MLK Day. The socio-cultural tie is missing, but the same goes for Republic day or Independence day for most of today's generation for countries which got indendence before their parents were born. In short, we celebrate Valentine's day very seriously!!!! Serious enough to make Mr. Valentine proud!

Thanks to this little custom, and its hidden implications of love, we managed to create a baby six years ago and repeated the feat three years ago. Being an engineer who has a tendency to graph things in his head, I extrapolated the line and was agahst! The next data point on the "Baby as a function of year" graph was 2008!

This thought was still resonating in daddy's head when something happened. A virus hitherto unknown to daddy's body, played havoc with his respiratory system earlier this week. He was pretty much bed ridden, just him and his little virus.

Now this post is more about Valentine's day hype and the cards that were purchased, filled out and sent to all of Jr.'s classmates. I am sure at this point that there is a Hallmark Lobby in Congress!

Valentine cards : US :: Diwali Firecrackers : India

Fun for the kids, but not for the parents and definitely not good for the environment!

Today it was Daddy's day out. Mom and the cousin family decided to get daddy out in the open to get some fresh air! Where else but the new combo Toysrus-Babysrus opening day in San Jose!!

Here are some pictures!

They had a huge discount sale, characters dressed up to greet the kids, freebies at the door....

There was a spiderman also, but the line to take a photo with the spiderman was at least 200 kids strong, so we skipped that photo.

Now for the hype part! Dora decided to go on lunch break just as our kids got their photo-op turn. We had to wait for 30 minutes to take a picture with "Dora the explorer" and as people in the head of the line, tell all passers by that the line was for "Dora". Toysrus should have paid us for being their informers!

The funny thing was that Dora was pretty much blind and a helper walked Dora to her designated spot! The kids were all screaming and we had less than 30 seconds to take "one picture per family!" and move on so other kids could have their picture taken!

Unfreaking believable! The queue at Thirupathi came to mind!

What we do for our kids happiness!!! The list keeps going...

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Flying with kids..

In a recent post on kids travelling under constraints, a couple of links were pointed out to me by s.b. These links were good, really good!

Here is how we manage the kids during our flights. We do not let them float in the aisle. We did have two other kids walking up and down on their own constantly, during our last flight. One of the kids actually stopped by for almost 20 minutes near our seat and I was holding his hand so that he wont fall down. Eventually his mom came and took him back to the seat! We do let the little one out of her seat, but she is confined to our row, and sometimes I carry her up and down the plane.

We do not let them open the door hatch! Jr. is entertained extremely well by San and her mom, by teaching all kinds of grandma games on the flight!

This one is Dosai amma Dosai! (Dosa is a south Indian Crepe and amma is mommy).

It goes

Dosai amma dosai
arisi maavum ulutha maavum kalandhu potta dosai
ammavukku 4
appavukku 3
baby-kku 2
Jr. ukku 1
suda suda suttu
neiyla thottu
vayaru romba saapidalam!

(translation)

Dosa mommy Dosa
crepe made by mixing rice flour and lentil flour
mommy gets 4
daddy gets 3
baby gets 2
I get 1
hot hot and fresh
clarified butter dipped
lets eat till our stomach is full!

This goes on for 15 minutes before they switch to ice-cream soda!! Or I play "find that word on this page" with the in-flight magazine.

Point is, our kids are equally cranky, but we deal with a lot less negativity.

I have been thinking of starting a kid friendly airlines!!

1. I will have wide aisles for kids to run around
2. the walls will be painted with Disney , Sesame street, Barney, Dora characters.
3. I will hire daycare teacher turned air-hostesses or air-hostesses turned daycare teachers only!
4. Will not have any carbonated or sugary drinks on the flight that would make the kids hyper.
5. There will be little tables in the middle of the plane and little kid chairs where they can draw, paint etc., once the seat belt sign is removed!
6. There will be music and videos for the kids to be distracted.
7. There will be little beds for them to sleep comfortably instead of trying to lie down horizontally between daddy and mommy with those annoying arm rests pulled up halfway!
8. All adults who board will be asked a few extra questions.
a. do you like kids ?
b. did you let your kids put things in your bag without your knowledge ?
c. do you think kids should be allowed to travel on planes ?
a "NO" answer for any question will promptly trigger a cavity search by airport security and they will not be allowed to board the plane.
9. Instead of the pathetic paper barf bags, there will be a button next to the seat marked "V" which automatically drops a bucket from the top compartment. That way you can save yourself an inflight shirt change!
10. there will be a diaper change area and some special diaper trash containers. Have you ever tried pushing a full diaper into the small rectangle which says "trash" on local flights?

I have a lot more ideas for this plan, but don't want to get carried away! Damn, I already thought way too much about this. Now all I need is some nice billionaire to loan me some money to start Babiaire / Littlewings or Kidsfly Airlines!

Hope this inspires some other parents to control their kids during flights!

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