celebration

Daddy world

The second week of June is the most anticipated week for me. 

It involves three things..

1. Kids graduation from school.. or like we used to say when we were kids "last day of school"!

2. Father's day

3. Our wedding anniversary

We did the last day of school on Wednesday and it was special this year because Jr. finished Elementary school and moves to middle school next year.

This also marks a huge gap when the two girls will be in the same school. In the US we have 6th to 8th grade as Middle school and 9th to 12th grade as high school. In three years when the little one goes to middle school, Jr. will already be moving out of that school to high school. 

The last year of school for Jr. will be the next time they are both in same school and that is 6 years away. So we are back to two pickups, two drop offs and different school timings etc. Our hope is that Jr. becomes more responsible and starts walking or biking to middle school! 

Now.. Father's day is always nice. My kids give me the extra huggies and kissies and this year I already have my gifts. The school has a limit to creativity (and budget) for the father's day gifts. So guess what the little one gave me?

Same Frog! well, it does not seem to have any storage value given the small mouth but the little one tells me it is a paperclip holder.. Well, now my office will have two frog paperclip holders! Funny thing is I wont know who made what because they both have the same initials and they both were in Room 12 for 2nd Grade! 

(Note for posterity : one on left is Little One, right is Jr's)

They also make me nice cards which really make my day! This year they put a lot of effort into it and was really happy to read /see what they gave me..

I did not get the boat and the caption first..

till she told me that I had to flip the flags over to see which my "Jobs" were!

As you can clearly see, my jobs are all non critical functions which involve the fishes and plants. In other words, I am a "Uppukku chappani" or the twelveth man in a cricket team. Nevertheless, yours truly is happy to play any role as part of the crew! 

The letter was clear but "What in Perumal's name is a woodly?" I asked and the reply was :

Daddy, I really wanted to say "you are cuddly like my cuddle bear, but what can I do?! There is no C in AWESOME! so I changed the W to say Woodly instead of Cuddly!" .  While the concept is baffling to me, the way she said it in all seriousness with her hands waving wildly will stay in my mind forever. 

Next was Jr's turn and she gave me this nice heart and card to put in my office! 

She painstakingly created the logos for the Yoga studio, my work etc and put them there. The cartoon of me on a yoga mat with a small water bottle cracked me up! 

They have both promised to behave their best tomorrow to celebrate Father's day.. will hold them to it, given yesterday evening and most of today was a blur with yet another migraine. Feeling good now after all that sleep. Daddy day promises to be interesting!

As for the third thing that makes our week, we have our Aussie relatives visiting us and it has been a blast! So we celebrate with a larger family this year!

Here is a video of me dancing with the little one and her cousin at a local restaurant.. 

It is just great to see the kids happy! 

We have now crossed two 7 year itches and still "itching for each other".. so that must be a good thing! There are no secret presents planned for San this year.  When the whole NSA Prism scandal came out, I realized that San knows every little move I make.. she has all the passwords for the credit cards, amazon, ATT sites etc. and I have none. No wonder I can never surprise her with anything!  

Maybe I will handcraft her a card that says "You are my NSA and I still love you!"

Happy Father's day to all the dads out there!

Mothers day

Every day is mother's day.. but when you live in a world where only one day is made special to mothers, one tends to go with the flow!

The kids made a cake, decorated it and let Mom cut it. By the time they were done fighting over who gets to write what on the cake, mom had pretty much given up hope on the cake's cuttability if such a word exists. 

Apparently it came out good and the three of them ate a sizeable portion of it. Daddy was happy to just play photographer as all those colorful things on top cannot be good as they are all some concentrated form of sugar!

In case you are wondering why Jr. has a big "bindi" aka "pottu" smack dab in the middle of her forehead instead of the tiny dot right between her eyebrows (mommy style).. she was posing for me earlier!

You see, these days it feels like I am 14 years old again because Jr. has a scary resemblence to my sister at the same age be it both at certain angles or her mannerisms.  To prove my point here is the picture of them around the same age, give or take a year difference!

Same controlled smile, same donna kaadhu, same collar bone showing, same type of earring choice.. just simply scary! Don't think I ever yelled at my sister that much when she was at that age.. but feels like I am making up for that by shouting at my sister's look alike! 

Here's to Mom's! If someone made a movie called "Mom's" the tagline should read 

"MoM's - terrorizing sons and daughters since the beginning of time"

My mother still has a superhuman ability to remote control me from the other side of the world. Not that it is a bad thing because chances are San has that magical ability and will exercise it when time comes on Jr. and the little one! Daddy Narayanan is counting on it!

On a side note, it feels like I have 34 mothers now. Every teacher at BYSJ reminds me of my mother. Almost makes me think that that my mother is giving them some secret coaching classes on how to push me past my limits. They all pick on me in class, somehow know I am trying to take it easy on some pose and call out my name and say "smaller step", "higher", "more".. and I go "how could you have possibly known that I did that? Touched my head to the floor with that wide a stance only yesterday and it was not your class. How could you possibly know! How?" .. that kind of thing happens only with Mom, because she has eyes on the back of her head and can know! 

Hope all those mom's out there had a great Mother's day. Tomorrow is unfortunately... just another day!

Happy New Year 2013

Yes.. it is the New year for south Indians and we had the usual good eats and spent quality time with family. 

We want to wish everyone a wonderful Tamil New Year, Ugadi, Vishu and anything else the New Year goes by in different parts of India.

This year is named "vijaya" for Victory. Hope truth and righteousness emerge victorious this year!

Here's to 2013 from the Traveling Naryanans.

Learned earlier this year that folks in the west used to celebrate their New Year around April 1st as well a long time ago.. then they changed it to Jan 1st. In order to discredit some folks who refused to change the New Year from first week of April to January, they called April 1st "April Fools day".. don't know if this is true, but thought of sharing this interesting tid bit. 

Apparently the atheist government in Tamil Nadu tried to move the New Years day to coincide with the Harvest Festival and that is being ignored for now. We live in a funny world with all these changes, daylight savings time etc.. Don't know how things will change in another 30 years. 

Hoping it is for the better! Happy 2013!