Another first

It has been a busy November with business and personal travel and the first two weeks of December seem to have flown by as well. 

Now that the rains in Chennai have stopped and things are returning to normal slowly, that is weighing less on our mind. That didn't mean things came to a halt here in Cupertino. It has been an interesting week here. 

The little one has been learning the violin recently. However, she is very shy and reluctant to go on stage. Her message to us has been "I want to learn because I like it. Not because I want to perform. So if you force me to go on stage, I will quit". 

With a lot of encouragement from her teacher and us, she participated in the annual recital.

The best part of this for me was to watch her recover even if she made a mistake and smile through the whole thing. Now that she knows she can do it, she seems to be more confident. 

Hopefully this brings out the Violinst 2.0 in her! Given that she saw the other kids from the school perform for the first time, she is definitey inspired to practice more. 

Funny thing is that Jr. now wants to learn violin too and has been making a stong case on why she should learn Violin asap. We are now mulling that over.. 

Attention everyone: We now have a teen in the house!

Thirteen years ago, something magical happened!

Jr. came out and stared at me with those big beady eyes for the very first time.

The nurse said they were all surprised by a few hour old baby looking up at everyone with her eyes wide open. Given San was so overdue, we treated the newborn as a two week old!

That was my 30th birthday present from Sangeetha! 

Today that present has grown to be as tall as me and is funny enough to pose for a recreation selfie. 

We found her "poobie" for this special photo. 

My grandma used to say "eera peen akki, peena perichchaali akkakara madhiri unna ungamma valththurukka".. it loosely translates to "taking a small thing that lice eat in your head and growing it into a lice, then growing a lice into a large rat.. that is how hard it has been for your mom to raise you". I am sure something was lost in the translation there in spite of my best effort.

Relatively speaking Jr. has been an easy kid. She has been healthy and happy and easy going. She always cares about folks around her and holds us very very accountable whenever she gets a chance to do so.

Here's to our big baby!

It does not matter if you turn 13 or 30. Will continue to save that blanket somewhere in the house and if I am still hale and healthy when you turn 30, we can  recreate this picture on your 30th birthday! 

Here is to many more happy birthday's to my little girl who continues to amaze us everyday!

A quiet halloween

Today we had a quiet halloween. Given it was on a weekend, was expecting at least a dozen kids to show up.. we didn't have a single kid show up for trick or treat this year. Guess that is what happens when the road has no street lights and the few school going kids all move over to the community living complexes nearby to trick or treat with friends.

Thanks to travel, didn't carve pumpkins this year. 

Jr. and the little one did go out with their friends!

apparently her friend  was "thing 1".. the whole thing was lost on me. at least I should have got a picture of her with her friend and captured the "things".

The little one was a cat. 

The kids did their dressing up by themselves and also shopped for the raw materials or reused old costume pieces. Guess they are both growing up to the point where we don't have to interfere in the halloween department. 

The best part of halloween? They came home and said "Appa, we know you like Twix. So every house that had Twix in their candy, we picked Twix. we will put it in the fridge and you can eat it this week!" 

That was priceless !