The girls go sky diving with Varun uncle..

This weekend was interesting. Came back from Asia and was still recovering from food poisoning and jet lag. Sangeetha's baby cousin (not a baby anymore, just like how the Little One is not little anymore!) came to visit us. I decided to make the most of his visit and cheer myself up. This kid was seven I think during our wedding and somehow I still see him as a seven year old. . . as usual I digress.

He came for a weekend visit from Melbourne. So we decided to go take him bowling and then Indoor sky-diving.

He won the bowling by a wide margin and beat everyone in our house. Then came the sky diving..

he did great! He was startled at first but adapted well and went up the wind tunnel! 

but we had some unexpected surprises.

We learned that Jr. is a natural at this!

The little one surprised us as well.. 

Jr. went up the wind tunnel on her second try and that was something to watch! 

They all came out with certificates and coupons for future visits. Something tells me that we will be going there again. The place is 35 minutes away from home and if we can reserve a spot (which was available that morning) it is a good deal.. especially if you have had a rough three days and just want to watch some smiling faces and family members have a great time! 

Have not been in this tunnel in almost nine years! "Damn I looked young once!" was the thought that came to mind after looking at that old post from 2008.. maybe will go again to celebrate 10 year anniversary of first indoor sky-diving experience in January.. and maybe, maybe, will take Sangeetha with me!

At this rate, not sure if I will ever get to post things from the Pittsburgh trip. It is going to be another hectic week.. maybe this weekend... lots of tea, sit outside and blog! 

Books Books Books

We go through an average of 8 books per child per week. Mostly thanks to the local public library.

As usual the books are spread on the living room carpet and the house looks like some trinket store on North Mada street in Mylapore during off season where the store owner spreads everything too thin to make it look like he has many items.

An inventory of sorts is done by the kids (mostly the little one) to verify that all books that she picked were indeed checked out! Then the books are all put back in the bag and are brought out in the order in which they were prioritized. Top seeded books come out first!

Keep telling myself to write reviews for some fantastic books that come our way and some books that are really not tasteful for 5 or 8 year olds that end up in that section of the library or at least drop a short note in the blog about the books.

Never seem to take that note to self very seriously...

These two are so good that they need a mention.

The first one is "Miss Nelson is Missing". A fantastic book (which also happened to be the play that the little one got to see as part of her school Kinder field trip). She can read the entire book (has probably memorized it by now).

The funny thing about this book was that it was part of the blue book project for Jr. two years ago! However Jr. never understood the surprise in the book, or forgot about it. She had a "oh.. so that is what happened" light bulb moment last week on doing a second read.

The second book is "Sometimes I like to curl up in a ball". This is a rhyme or "intro to poetry" book that is very well written and beautifully illustrated. The wombat is incredibly cute and both Jr. and the little one love this book.

There should be a service (maybe it exists already?) where all books for kids get two questions..

a. how old is your kid?
b. on a scale of 1-10, how does your kid rate the book?

with that info we can figure out the ideal age group that loves the book and how much that age group loves that book on a scale of 1-10..

On a similar thought blockbuster/netflix etc.. have a rating scheme for movies. If only they had the age demographic to go with it we can go straight to

"movies rated by people in your age group" ranked by number of stars... that way the movies favorited by young teens won't be recommended to me strongly by Blockbuster!

As usual, I digress for purely selfish reasons.

These two books are great for 5-8 year olds. Now that is a wide spectrum these days considering 3 years is a big gap in that age group when it comes to book trends based on our observation in this house!

.