Kedaar and Thomas :)

We took Kedaar to Library recently. We didnt take him to library after he turned 2 and we thought we should cultivate the habit of reading books and also to try get him out of Thomas world little bit.
I and Chandra went around and picked few books, Kedaar also started looking at books in the kids section all by himself. After 1/2 hr so, all of us had some books/DVDs. What Kedaar had is the "Thomas and friends" big book with complete list of stories in it. We dont know how and where he saw it and how he picked it among so many other books. But it was so funny that among the huge list of books , the one that attracted him is again "Thomas" :)

Its my favorite song

Situation: In car, while going to school.
[K]: I want a song
[Daddy/Mummy] Which one?
[K]mmmm, O piya piya ("O Priya Opriya" from Gitanjali). Its my ffavorite song?
[Daddy plays the song, song finishes}
[K]One more time O piya Piya,I like it sooo much.

I think recently he said this for several songs including "X pichi Y pichi (he calls this "Pichi" song :)) frm Ghajini, "Ghanan Ghanan" from Lagaan etc

Raising hands

Kedaar was playing today after dinner with Lego blocks. I was checking laptop for something. Suddenly Kedaar asked, "mummy I need your help to put the lego blocks". I told him to try by himself first and then call me if he has questions. Then immediately he raised his hands and looked at me. When I asked him, what he is doing "he said I am raising hand because I need help". Apparently in school, the kids have to raise if kids need any immediate help in doing their activity. I think as the teacher have to deal with around 15-20kids, they have this rule.
It was so cute. Kedaar surprises us with some interesting act every day.

Keduisms

I was clearling up my mail and I found this draft mail I made long time back just to remember few interesting sentences of Kedaar.
Thought I can share them through this post.

• This is "no ter" (No tear) shampoo. This is "no ter" body wash. It can never hurt me. The green one hurt me, the white one hurt me. but this one never hurt me
• You got a surprise Jeremy the jet for me, Oh, man, but why? Why you get me a surprise toy, where did you get it (shouting out of happiness when he got a surprise jet during a trip)
• Daddy(mummy), I calling for you (if we dont respond even after he calls for few times)
• Daddy(mummy), I was searching for you, then I found you.
• Daddy, don’t ethuko me
• I angry with you, I sad with you
• you messy boy, mummy
• Can I not take bath
• I want a kiss kedu, sure mummy , here you go
• I want to get out, run and find daddy
• Kedu, I don’t see where my glasses are.[K] Mummy, I can check for you
• Kedu, are u ready to go.[K] after this story one song will come, once that is finished then we can go
• Daddy is taller, I am as tall as daddy
• You are bigger, stronger than me, I small
• Who can help, daisy, Harvey, may be Harvey can help (when stuck in traffic)
• Mummy, I blocking u. Solve the riddle to go inside house.
• I found 15 trains, I will tell daddy that I found
• Nanny svella told me that I am a good boy
• Sugreevas story, ramas ring
• I moving away, now you can sit (giving some place to mummy in chair)
• I have mighty mac at my home
• My mummy my daddy said we will go chucky cheese (He says this to us )
• I good boy, I not doing anything bad
• mmmm I like it soooo much
• Surprise Terence, surprise George. Daddy can I get a surprise Terence
• Are you feeling better now, u have to feel better, OK?
• Why scream at me, why shout at me, mummy? (When I was angry with him because he is not trying any new food)
• No do that, you are a bad boy, no, you good boy, I good boy daddy good boy, u good boy too
• Ramayana story
• Daddy, its manchi cheema. Its not bad cheema
• I will not be scared if you hold me daddy, then we can go for walking
• There is one moon next to our house, one moon on our road, one moon near hyson’s house , there are 3 moons. (Once daddy says that there is only one moon) there is only one moon , there are no 3 moons
• I will not go there, I will very careful, cars are coming
• No step on mummy,
• Kedaar, can you please move, Mummy, I want to sleep next to you, that’s why I am not moving
• I cannot catch Oliver, I am not that tall, can you please help me daddy
• Nanny is not happy with me. Mummy, are you happy with me.
• Hyson, kedaar draw this one, this one too, they draw all the lines
• Say sorry to me daddy
• Lets go ahead and take bath. Daddy, we can switch off water at that time.
• Oook, buddy
• Mummy you are falling, thats why I hold you OK (holding mummy’s hands in sitting, standing)
• Daddy, do like this (skipping rope), if you do like that you will fall, if you do like this, you will feel better, ok
• Make sambar, do you want coffee (pretends to make sambar, coffee and gives us)
• daddy, I dont want to go this way, i want to go that way. I want to go shop, fred meyer, trader joe,target (Kedaar has a lot of road sense, he recognizes all roads. Some times , he doesnt want to go home, rather go to shops)
• [Daddy]which road is this.[K] This is the road to krishna temple
• Can you scoot little bit please. You are squishing me (new words from school)
• "Naanna" (calling daddy in telugu)
• Daddy's name is Sekhar, mummy's name is Neewaja

Fun Fun

Here are some pictures of kedaar having fun at Aditya's birthday party, and at Issaquah Salmon festival.

Cris Cros Apple Sauce

Kedaar always used to be an "On the go" kid and doesnt want to sit one place for more than few seconds. One change we noticed in him after he joined the school is that he is actually open to sit in one place and he himself asks us to play with him games like memory game, sequence, put together puzzles etc after finishing dinner. The other day he was sitting nicely "Cris cros apple sauce" and trying to build a plane all by himself and mummy & daddy didnt want to miss the pose. Here are some sitting poses of Kedaar & some work Kedaar has been doing in school recently (poking with push pins, cutting in shapes)

Los Angeles, Sandiego trip

From Aug 25th-Sep2nd, we did LA, Sandiego trip. This is officially second trip to Sandiego for Kedaar because we went there when he was 2 months old with my parents :)
We stayed in LA for 3 nights and visited Disneyland theme park for 2 days. Kedaar had a lot of fun disneyland (we were kind of skeptic because Kedaar is not great fan of disney characters).He did every ride, show allowed for his height. This includes some simple rides like Jimbo the elephant etc in FantasyLand, but also some more difficult ones like Autopia in TomorrowLand. He enjoyed the train ride, pony ride,Jungle cruise,Mickey Minie's house,Fantasmic show,Finding the Nemo,Winnie the Pooh etc. One ride he enjoyed most is the "Its a small world" one, We went there twice.The best part I think for him is the street party which we went on both days. He also met lot of characters, the standard thing he did with each character is give them shakehand,hug them fondly :) One thing Kedaar did for mummy though he is very scared is "boating" . Kedaar didnt want to go initially becuase he has to wear life jacket and have your own paddles, but then he said "mummy will be happy if I go" and then came. We were surprised. He is extremely tired on both days because of heat, lack of proper food etc, but I should really appreciate him for not giving up in hsving fun. Some rides he got scared , but still did are the ones in which you ride a car or something and in close space there is a story or some type of character (like Alice in Wonderland,Peterpan. I think he got scared because it is dark inside. Overall, disneyland was good.
On third day, we had lunch and reached Sandiego around 3 PM. We went to beach immediately after checking in and putting luggage in the hotel. We knew that that was our only day for beach as the next 3 days are going to be packed. Beach was awesome, Kedaar was little scared to go little deep into water first, but he did hold mummy, dadddy's hands and did that. He enjoyed a lot.
Next day, we went to SeaWorld. SeaWorld is a place that is so fun to visist any time. They also started the Sesame street zone and a couple of rides which I think is fairly new (not there whwn we went 2 yrs back). Kedaar had a blast in Seaworld, he loved all the shows (pets one I think is his favorite). He also liked seeing Penguins,big doplhins,colorful aquarium, touching startfish etc. That day we reached home around 8.30 or so.
Next day, we went to Legoland. legoland closes by 6 PM, so we went there as early as we could. Legoland was the surprise pack for us and I didnt expect it to be so cool. Kedaar could do so many rides there and almost all of them are his favorites (safari,lego express,sky cruise,getting driver license,playing in water,waterguns ride,horse ride,mini cruise that goes around Miniland,Firefihgting experience etc).Legoland is full of creativity I think and we loved the way they have created a mini USA (Las Vegas strip,Newyork skyline,SFO, WA DC) with Lego blocks. There was a little boat ride which took us around and there were famous structures like Taj Mahal,Eifel tower etc built of millions of Lego blocks). That was awesome. Kedaar was super excited to see "Taj mahal" there and kept shouting the name.
Next day , we went to the most famous Sandiego zoo. Zoo was fun and we also saw lots and lots of animals. They have a 1/2 hr bus ride which takes around the zoo and we saw lot of animals clearly in that trip itself. We were so tired and Kedaar in particular that day and I think we could have enjoyed the zoo much better on a different day. Kedaar liked the elephant zone,Pandas a lot. He slept in the evening by the time we went to see turtles, Tapirs etc. We took a video of it so he can see at home.They also had a children's zoo which we got to only at the end of the day and it was closed by then.
Next day was our flight back to Seattle around 7 PM. We had lunch in Sandiego,went to Legoland for a 3 hs or so again and then started back to LA. We reached Seattle that night.
Few things that really worked well in the trip.
1. Taking hotels with Kitchen. We made reservation for the place we stayed in LA vrbo.com. In Sandiego, we took Homewood suites by Hilton that has full kitchen. Kedaar doesnt eat a lot outside and having kitchen worked very well. The Homewood suites in particular is awesome place, they have great breakfast (also dinner it seems on weekdays), the quality of the hotel is really super. It felt better than home some times :)
2. We took 4 surprise thomas friends to Kedaar and gave them one day each (Jeremy the jet,byron the truck, butch the lorry etc).
3. In each place, Kedaar bought one toy or something to remember the place. He made sure he gets it by saying "may be I want to get something here" :). He got Pooh,car in dinsey land, Shamu in Seaworld,Pecy&Tidmuth shed lego blocks in legoland,Pandas in zoo. The new toys also kept him sort of interested through out the trip.
4. Taking stroller was life saver. Kedaar used to get tired a lot and he sat in stroler all the time when he was not doing rides.

Here are some pictures from the occassion.

Seaworld


Disneyland


Legoland


Zoo


Beach

Child of the day

In Kedaar's class, one child each day will get to be the "Child of the day". I think child of the day gets preference in all the activities they do through out the day. Only children who come exactly on time for the "circle time" at 9 AM will get to be the "Child of the day".
Last week, one day we returned home after school, offices. Kedaar played for a while with daddy and then all by himself while mummy is cooking food. Chandra went up for few mins and then Kedaar started following me whereever I go. I didnt notice him, he did this some more time and finally caught me and happily said "mommy, I am child in the day today". I didnt understand this for a min, then he told again and said he also did "calendar" (In their school, the child of the day puts that day's date in calendar). Then I understood that he is coming behind me for so long to tell this new exciting thing happened to him :)
His expression, his happiness were so cute & innocent and I keep remembering it.

Is this the right song?

Kedaar is very fond of music, songs, probably like several other kids.
He knows lot of songs by lyrics as well.One of his habit is to sing a song with wrong lyrics and then ask us, is this the right song? When mommy or daddy says , "Nooooooo", he feels it as very funny and comes up with more and more wrong words but sings the song with the same tune.
In this process, he uses all the things he sees around him, some imaginative words as the replacement word. One common song he uses for fun is
"If you happy and you know , then you clap". He sings it as "If you happy and you know, then you TV(road , signal light, sofa,bed,tree,house,doggy etc)".
He does this with several other songs like "Om namassivaya","Hrudayam ekkadunnadi",alphabet song (he makes this as something like A, B,C,D,E,F,Jigla.. or some weird word).
Kids are so naughty and I think they keep doing funny funny stuff to grab attention all the time.

Ringling circus, Portland trip

We went to the Ringling Bros&Barnum Bailey in portland few weeks back. I think I have seen this kindof circus probably when I was in school.
We went to Portland to visit our friends (Kusuma,Madhu & Upasya)and also see the circus.The circus was lot of fun, they also had animals acts by dogs,cats,elephants (painting by elephants was nice),horses,zebras and even tigers. Kedaar liked the circus.We took lot of videos and he likes watching them alot. We went to see the Multinoma falls the next day. Me& Chandra have been to Portland before, but this is first time for Kedaar. Kedaar also had good time playing with Upasya (who is just 2 weeks older than him). That was a short trip, but was fun.
Here are some pictures from the trip.

Kedaar & big nice school

Its been a week since Kedaar started in the new school.
From the second day onwards, Kedaar started saying that "I dont want to go to Nanny's day care, I want to go to the big nice school" on his way to school (the day care and school are same route, so he thinks that he might still go to day care). We generally drop him in his classroom, but today for the first time we dropped him with a teachers assistant who picks up kids from school entrance itself. Kedaar just took his water bottle and happily walked into his class room even before the teachers assistant dropped him. It was so cute to watch that.
He seem to like the school as there are lots of kids to play with and also lots of activities to keep him engaged for the whole day.
In the last week, they let him do some activities to generally explore around and also few things to help him to build focus (like putting push pins in apple shape etc). He learned his teachers names (Ms Indu, Ms Ginger, Ms Mary), school name and tries to tell us what happened in school in the evenings. He also sang couple of new songs (naming days in a week etc). Overall he seem to be liking the school.
We packed lunches for Kedaar in the last week and most of the days lunches just came home as is. He didnt seem to like some common stuff he eats at home as packed lunch(like rice, pasta etc). Yesterday we tried a chapati wrapped with black beans curry (and called it "Enchinada" which Kedaar tasted in Trader Joes one day and liked it). He had that wrap for lunch without complaint for whatever reason and we are super excited about it.
However we don't think we have creative ideas to make his lunch interesting, so we are ordering the hot lunches for him from today onwards (a service(myorganicmeals.com) provides the hot lunch for several schools in this area). Kedaar doesnt eat several items in their menu also (like burger, tofu etc), but we are just hoping that he will learn to eat as he will get hungry otherwise.
Overall we are still happy with the decision to move him to Montessori school and we think he is having a lot of fun.

Aksharabhyasam ceremony

Yesterday as it is an ausicious day (Saraswathi puja in Dussera festival), we did Akahsrabhyasam for Kedaar. We need to do this when the kid is in his 3rd year. The pandit in the temple did this as a group and we joined it. The ceremony was done traditionally and everything went nice.
Here are some pictures from the occassion.

Nursemaid Elbow incident

This happened when we went Victoria trip in August.
Kedaar as usual was running superfast around the inner harbor in Victoria. I tried to stop him by holding his hands, during this time his hand was pulled hard unintentionally and he immediately started crying with pain.
Kedaar had hit so many things and got hurted just like any child, but that was the first time his pain just didnt go away. He couldnt move his left hand and did not even let us touch him. He became week through out the day and did not eat anything. Our return ship (victoria clipper) was at evening 7 PM, so we took a Victoria sight seeing bus trip so it can help him to take rest. But the pain was so bad that even the slightest bumpy road hurt him and he continuously cried. We explored some options to take him to doctor, but we didnt have car in hand and we couldnt figure out a children's doctor. Chandra kept carrying him all the day and even in the return ship. We went to Children's hospital emergency that night immediately after we came to Seattle directly from the port. They already had 12-14 kids in queue for emrgency service at 10.30 PM in the night and we waited till 11.20 or so without being called . Finally after a big argument/discussion with Children's doctors , we could raise the emergency of the situation. Kedaar was crying all this time. A doctor came out and said that it could either be a fracture (in which case needs x-rays etc) or could be ligament dislocation (happens when kids are pulled hard by hands as their bones are not completley developed). He held Kedaar's hand and gave it slight twist at elbow and told us to wait for 5 mins and see. I went to bring water for Kedaar. By the time I came back, Kedaar was smiling after 14, 15 hrs of pain. He said "We can go home mummy, doctor uncle did magic and my neppi is gone". Doctor said that we need to be careful with his hand as there is a chance of repeating it easily as he got it once. Kedaar got 2 red color popsicles from the nurse, ate them in car happily. We returned home that night at 1 PM.
2 things that I think will never forget from this experience.
1. Be extreme watchful when handling kids. The temporary frustration when kids are uncontrolable can really hurt them.
2. Kids emergency situations should be dealt by pediatric doctors. I dont think any other emergency doctors could have dont that as a first thing before doing x-rays etc.
Its there on my mind in the last 1 month all the time and I thought I should probably have it in this blog.

First day of school

Kedaar started school at American Child Montessori, Bellevue today. We have been preparing him for few days now by telling him why school is fun, teachers names etc.
He cried for a min when we left him in the morning. In the evening teachers told us that he did great at school (he did course work nicely, slept, played like a good boy etc)
We have been very worried from several days about the decision to join him in school before he turned 3. Now we are just happy to have this good start.

Vinaya Chaviti 2009

We celebrated Vinayaka Chavithi at our house this year. We did most of the prep and decoration for the pooja by the time Kedaar got up (we also put one of his books this time at the pooja :)). Kedaar was very excited to see everything when he got up and was eager to start the pooja. We had to engage him with Thomas & trains for an hour or so so I can wind up the cooking :)
Later we did puja followed by he himself doing the gunjillu, pradakshinam and sashtanga pranamam. Overall everything went well that day and Vinayaka Chavithi is always a fun for him and us to celebrate.
Here are some pictures & videos from the occassion.