Happy thanksgiving! Time travel weekend...

This year, my birthday was a simple affair with both the kids making a flying visit for the long weekend. 

After the celeberations were done, jr. and me decided to have some fun. She saw an ad for a service that gets old tapes , negatives etc. and gets them digitized. We had a lot of audio cassettes and video cassettes to be digitized.. but after realizing that the service was ripping us off in shipping fees, decided against using it.

We did however find the old Cassette to MP3 converter and put it to good use. It took us some time to download Audacity app on the Mac and then set it up right so it could read the device! Once we figured it out, it was fun to check what was in those cassettes. 

Most of them were tapes I had accumulated to practice dancing.. one was full of Latin songs, one was all waltzes, one was a mix tape that simply said "To Miss. Smooth, with love, Part 1" and Jr.'s looks at me with raised eyebrows and asks "so I take it that it is a mix tape you made for your girlfriend?". Told her it was for a friend and she did take the part 2.

Then I found two cassettes from Sruthi, an organization in Philadelphia which had organized a Lalgudi concert with his kids in 1993. Remember setting up the mics for it and getting free admission to the concert. We also got to spend the evening with the artists at a professors house. In India, I could never think of being up close and personal with greatness like that! 

Brought back so many memories of how my association with music has always been touch and go.

There was a cassette with Tamil movie songs which my Chitti's had recorded and sent me as a gift. Even today my Chitti's (mom's younger sisters) are my biggest supporters when it comes to encouraging me to sing in Smule! I recognize my Lalli chitti's handwriting on that list.. she would write so beautifully and fast! 

30 years later have sang a lot of those songs.. the ones I missed, will definitely sing! Did not know this cassette was still around till today!

 

Used to get 20 cassettet tapes as a package at Sam's club (think Costco in the early 90's). Had the habit of recording radio stations while sitting alone in the lab doing experiments.. kind of a time capsuley thing.. 

Some of them were from 1993/94, then 96, 98.. It was wild listening to the commercials from those times (mostly beer  and car commercials!). Jr. was having so much fun Shazaming the songs and got a taste of what music daddy was listening to 30 years ago! There were multiple radio stations in PHiladelphia/ Wilmington Delaware, then Albany/Troy NY.. and some Latin tapes that were too rare for the Shazam app!

Then we found some old gold!  There was a copy of me singing Kandar shasthi kavasam at 4 years old. It was the first time my voice was recorded on the cassette player that my Ambi mama bought. The whole family was impressed with the ability to record and replay.. and my reciting slokas was used as the trial run!

My grandpa had saved that cassette and given it to me in 1995. It had made it through all the moving over the years and is now an MP3 .. better a Youtube video. 

Then we found my Naadi Josiyam tapes.. which was one of the reasons for starting this exercise. A long conversation with my friends mom yesterday on how things seem to be predetermined to a large extent in our lives and the best way to use this knowledge wisely to navigate through life.. even if it is all meant to be! 

A separate post on that later!

It has been a fun weekend so far, going back in time with my kid!

Black Friday..

We went shopping yesterday. All day!

Either looking at what was there or actually buying things that were part of the plan.

We spent a lot of time with the four of us not throwing tantrums, all smiling and happy, eating out, checking out things to the point where it was our best day in a long long time that we can remember.

Daddy got an iPad, to replace lugging the laptop and power cord around office and for future travel. To complement it, we now have a futuristic keyboard that opens out like a Nissan Z from below the iPad. Way cool and nerdy!

The kids got some clothes and the boots they have been bugging us for the last six months..

Mommy got herself a hair clip for 3 bucks but was content with it! So we will leave it at that.

We as a family, are thankful for black friday!

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We are Indians?!

The little one tells Jr. during our Disney trip "We are Indians.. we helped the Pilgrims.. that is why everyone should thank us during thanksgiving!"

Me : !!!???!!!! Who taught you that?

Little one : My school.. I know all about thanksgiving!

Jr. : The Indians in the thanksgiving story are native Americans who wear feathers on their head.. not people from India.

LO : So nobody is thanking us? (looks sad)

Me : guess not.

LO : I was wondering because we don't eat turkey and live in teepees!

Now that we have the Indian side cleared up we might have to dispel doubts on who the pilgrims were...

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Happy Thanksgiving

From the Indian American American Indian.. aka Little One who came home like this..

and Jr. who was thoroughly amused by the little one's dressing up in a pasta necklace and brown paper feathers.

The kids are going to give Kollu Paati a cheer up present tomorrow. Tomorrow promises to be an interesting day already!

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The road to happiness

The road to happiness is paved with smiles. Cute little smiles that we get from the little ones.

Considering that San and me have birthday's just around thanksgiving break, we have spent many a celebration at a themepark, and the special ones are in what is supposed to be the happiest place on earth, aka Disneyland.

The irony of it is that as the number of kids went from 0 to 1 to 2, and the kids got older, the happiness somehow seems to be muted, or to be fair, lets say "has mutated"!

This post is a travel through time, to the very same place, over the last 8 years...

1999 : Newly marrieds, jointly celebrating birthdays for the first time, holding hands, walking through the special parade, staying in the park till till closing time, the fireworks, finding out that all it takes to make the Mrs. happy is to get her to toontown, that too after being married for 5 months! The adults could mark the Disneyland map with the best makeout places.

2003 : New parents, taking grandma to show some place outside San Jose before she went back to India.. it was our way of telling the first time grandma that we wanted her to have some fun before she went back with memories of sleepless nights, emergency C-sections and avent bottles! Daddy spent most of the day in the Baby Care room with a sleeping Jr., with two backup bottles of breast milk ready to be warmed up, while mom and grandma went to the various rides and attractions. Finally when all of us stood in the line to take a picture with Mickey, Jr. decided to grab the permed hair of the lady standing in the next section of the serpentine queue and created a little side attaction. By the time we managed to extract that lady's hair from Jr.'s grip, Mickey himself was ready to honor us with some extra photo time! We did not stay for fireworks as it was too cold. Daddy could mark the Disney map with the best Child care places, locations where you could warm a bottle of milk, where to store stuff in an icepack, etc.

2004 : A near miss as we go to Universal Studios and decide against Disney because my parents want to spend a day with my cousin. I told them that the mouse wins hands down, but they didn't listen! Now they have to wait for their turn...

2006: Taking all the maternal great grand parents to see Mickey and Friends, along with grandparents, parents and the kids. An interesting trip where we had enough hands to distract the kids during feeding time, but started having wheelchair issues toward the end of the day. A trip where the parents felt relaxed because the kids were fed and nothing else seemed to matter. By now, daddy had also gotten used to the "we won't be seeing much if we spend all our time feeding the kids!' routine. In short, daddy lowered his expectation on the percentage theme park covered in one day metric. The single brother in law was given some tips from my previous trips, which might come in handy when he gets married! We actually stayed for fireworks and this time, Daddy and mommy know the wheelchair map of Disneyland.

2007: A trip with the cousins, aimed at making the little girls happy. Everything goes well till we go on a ride called "Mr. Toad" and then Jr. gets shocked. She stops eating, has a long drawn face and starts asking philosophical questions like "Why do I have to eat? Why do I have to do ANYTHING?" and freaks us out. We pull out of the park before the evening parade for the first time, with a protesing little one in tow. Jr. has suddenly lost interest in this world and refuses to go on any ride, eat anything, do anything at all, while the little one wants to go on every ride but is either too young or too short to go on anything! We hurried back home, but did manage to break her hunger strike in Legoland the following day. We are still at a loss to understand what happened to her in the park! Did she see something? Did she hear something? Why would a kid suddenly shut down like that? Was it related to the fifth year immunization shot she got earlier in the week? A million questions, none of which matter now, considering she is back to her usual self! We did have some fun when she started smiling again during the afternoon parade but the smiles were few and countable! Daddy and mommy can now show you the fastest way to exit the park!

Guess that shows how a Disney trip evolves with time. Next time (I am sure there will be one more trip, when the little one goes through HER princess phase), we are going to use all the learning from the previous trips and hope to have a great time!

One thing is true, irrespective of the theme park we are visiting. As long as the feedings are on schedule, the kids are okay, the moms are not stressed out and the dads don't have to take the brunt of the abuse for the kids not eating, the trip is a success and everyone comes out happy! If the kids stop cooperating in the eating department, even Disneyland becomes hell on earth!

On the bright side, the whirlwind LEGOLAND trip was good. The girl ate lunch, played, even started dancing again! At dinnertime, she started acting dull again and we just checked out a day ahead and started driving back in the night! Drove through I-5 last night knowing that we could always handle this better when we were home!

Will post pictures and videos of the trip tomorrow.

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