Kedaar singing songs from latest movies

Kedaar practicing and singing some masti songs from latest movies 3 Idiots, Leader, Namo Venkatesa.

Kedaar into writing & drawing

Recently Kedaar started showing interest in writing and drawing. By the time we go to pick him up from school every day, he will be sitting with 3,4 kids at his table and seriously will be drawing something. His favorite objects for drawing are volcano, mount rainier, face, train :) He is also able to write some letters (he used to write 1,2 letters before but now he seems genuinely interested), 1-6 numbers. He is also tracing with his fingers while he is reading small words. Its fun watching him to be getting into this new interest so naturally.
Here are some pictures of his recent work in school.

Kedaar and Atharva

Kedaar has friend in class by name 'Atharva'. He is a five yr old and one of the few 5ys old kids in class (class has 3-5 yr olds) and helps the assistant teacher in some of the acts like keeping the students in line when going out, taking the smaller kids to rest rooms etc. From the day 1 of his school, Kedaar started treating Atharva as his role model, best friend. At home, we have to hear Atharva's name atleast once the evening after he comes from school before he sleeps.
Some funny things I remember related to Atharva in Kedaar's conversations..

[Mummy]Kedaar, can you tell me the names of the kids in your class?
[Kedaar]Atharva, Ali,Rakesh, Kareena, Atharva,Shreya,Shivani, Atharva..
[Mummy]Count how many kids are there with your fingers.
[Kedaar starts counting] Atharva, Ali, Rakesh, Atharva .. (same story as above, all of a sudden during counting, he shows his middle finger and says] Mummy, this is Atharva, he is a 5 yr old big boy, the little finger is Shreya, she is only 2 yrs old.

[Mummy]What is the scratch in your palm Kedaar, how did you get hurt?
[Kedaar]I got hurt while running fast
[Mummy]Why did you run fast, I told you to go slow?
[Kedaar]but, but, but, Atharva was going like this..

[Daddy]Kedaar, come and sit in car seat, we are getting late
[Kedaar reluctantly gets into car, mummy wanted to give company to Kedaar, so she sits in backseat] mummy, I am 5 yrs old ..
[Mummy]no, you are not
[Kedaar]But I am 3 and quarter, I will turn 5 tomorrow, when I am 5 yrs old then I dont need to sit in car seat. I can sit just like you. Atharva doesnt sit in car seat.

[Kedaar in sleep] Atharva, excuse me, can you scoot :)

[Mummy] Kedaar, what did your friends get for lunch today
[Kedaar] mmmm, Ms.Mary gave Atharva chicken

[Mummy]Kedaar, do you know Atharva's little sister name
[Kedaar]mmmm, [smiles]
[Mummy]Its Neeraja [her name is really neeraja]
[Kedaar]yeeaah, Mummy's name is Neeraja, Atharva's sisters name is Neeraja. 2 Neerajas, one small like this, one biiig.

So many incidents like this where he has to mention Atharva's name . Now a days Kedaar desperately want to become 5 yr old so that he can just be like Atharva. :)

I am learning

Kedaar surprises with some interesting statements once in a while.
We watched "Leader" movie by Sekhar Kammula this weekend. We have been hearing to the songs from the movie from several weeks now and finally got to watch it. Kedaar loooves several songs in this movie and he can sing atleast few sentences of each of them. One of the songs in the movie is "vande maatharam". Kedaar was singing that in car today as "Bande maakaram" but with the same tune. We could adjust with "bande" as the bengali version of "vande" :) , but I had to correct him saying that the other word is not "maaKaram", but "maaTharam". He sang it as "maaDaram", then again "maaKaram" , again "maaDaram" several times and finally got to "maaTharam".
In the process, he corrected "Bande" also and sang a good "vande maatharam". Seeing the smile on my face he started happy smiles "mummy, see, I am learning, see, vande maatharam".
It was very cute. I noticed this few other times as well, he really tries hard to do right things if he thinks that it will make us happy and he tells us to be little tolerant while "he is learning".
I think he is a mature kid and at every such instance we just keep reminding to ourselves that he is a baby and we should learn to be patient not with trivial things like songs, but any mischivious acts he does.

Happy Valentines day

Kedaar's school had valentines day celebration this year. Probably a couple of weeks before the valentines day, they gave us the list of the names of kids (around 20) in the class and said that we need to get that many number of valentines for the celebration. In those 2 weeks, Kedaar got several heart shaped work home saying that he made it for mummy :)
Anyway, I and Chandra didnt have any clue on what valentines are. We did some research and went to Target just to find out that they have special aisles for these and all we had to do is just choose. Life is simple. We never knew it since 6 yrs because we never needed it. Kedaar picked the disney valentines and 2 nice greeting cards for his teachers Ms Indu, Ms Ginger. The day before valentines day, we did prepare the cards by writing names on them, sticking hearts to the cards. kedaar did a lot of work specifically he chose which card he wants to give for which kid, sat in daddy's lap and helped to write the names. He also traced the teachers name, his name in the cards he gave to teacher.It was fun and kedaar enjoyed it a lot.
Chandra stayed for the celebration in the school the next day and apparently all the kids had great fun at the little party with activiities like cookie decoration giving valentine cards etc
Kedaar was a super happy kid after he came back from school that day as he got a bag full of valentines from the other kids, some candy and fun stuff.

Soccer boy

Kedaar started going for soccer classes in Arena sports since 2 weeks. He was little shy in the first class for few mins and then started playing nice. This weekend, it was his second class and he had a lot of fun.
Here are some pictures, video of his soccer team/game.

Kedaar acting as daddy

Here is a video of Kedaar acting as daddy and picking up Chandra at school :)
He is trying to enact all the typical activities he does when we go to pick him up and on the way home in car (like first wearing his jacket, picking up sharing toys, saying bye to his teacher, eating something in car etc)

New song interests

After we came back from India, the only albumn we started hearing is "Paa". Kedaar likes listening to all the songs in the movie, specifically "Gum sum gum" and "Hitchki Hitchki" songs are his favorites. He hums both of them very nicely.
Around 2 weeks back, we went to the telugu movie called "Namo Venaktesa" in theatre. For the first time, Kedaar sat and watched the entire movie. He liked those songs as well as they have some kind of beat, especially "Namo namo venkatesa" song. he remembers it as the "Deva" song.
Last weekend , we also saw the "3 idiots" movie and from then onwards "All is well" joined his list of favorites.
Today just after dinner, we put him "hakuna matata" song from Lion King and he has been singing it in my ears while I write this :)
One fun thing happened the other day. kedaar was about to sleep and mummy was singing "rama kathanu vinarayya" song from Lavakusa. One of the lines in that song was "Janakuni yaagamu choochu nepammuna" which describes Lord Rama going to Sita's place. Kedaar was almost asleep and all of a sudden he woke up and said "mummy, did you say "choochu", meaning "choo choo train?". it was funny, he was really capable of relating anything to his world of trains :)

I like watching him develop some interest in music and really enjoying it.
Kedaar's school as some piano classes for 3 yr and older kids. We might actually join him there soon.

Kedaar's train ride

Last week we took Kedaar to a small train adventure in the Seattle Link rail from Seattle to SEATAC airport for a round trip. Kedaar really felt this as an adventure and enjoyed it thoroughly.
Here are some pictures from the trip

Deal or no deal

Kedaar is showing deal or no deal (This is how they show it in the deal or no deal show that comes in Gemini TV)

Kedaar's new train table

A new addition to Kedaar's train family.
Kedaar got a surprise gift from mummy , daddy one fine weekend.
Kedaar spends hours when we go to toy shops just playing with the train tables they have there. We have several sets of tracks, bridges as indepdnedent pieces, but train table as a whole has been still a missing piece in kedaar's view so far.
Anyway, he loves the train table so much and spends a lot of time there. Luckily the table is compatible with Thomas trains as well, so he can play with all his 80+ trains in there.

Kedaar's cycling videos

Kedaar cycling outer circle


Kedaar cycling inner circle

India trip

Kedaar had a lot of fun this time in India trip. It was a long trip and he is still getting used to the routine of having to go to school not just play after we are back :)
Few things to share regarding the trip.
1. Just like last year, he is super interested in going in the elevator in our Hyderabad flats . He made friends with one of my brother's colleague's family who lives in second floor. He spent so much time playing with their kids (calling them Sai annayya, Chintu annayya). He doesnt even want to come back home and wanted to eat there, sleep there all the time.
2. Kedaar watched lot of TV. Interestingly several kid's channels come in even local languages in India now. Kedaar's most favorite channels are Pogo, Cartoon network,Disney XD. He used to watch the "Chota bheem", "Krishana and Balaram" type of mythological stories endlessly in one channel and enjoyed "Tom&Jerry" tirelessly in another. We saw him so many times laughing out loud while he wa watching Tom&Jerry. Interesting to watch him get involved so much into those.
Other than the kids channels, his favorites were watching singing reality shows , mainly the Saregamapa-Little champs on Zee telugu, maa TV-super singer. He used to not even allow us to change channnels when these shows came. Additionally one more favorite show for him was the "Wow" show in E-TV. They have a round in that show similar to the "hole in the wall" show. Whenever it comes he used to put pose like that hole shape immediately. :)
3.He played a lot with his cousins, my sister's son, brother's son and also chandra's sisters sons. They visisted us in Hyderabad, Kurnool. He just wanted to go with who ever is leaving. For everyone, he used to ask "mummy, daddy, can I also please go with them, can you please come with me". When my brothers family was leaving, Kedaar went to extreme and was just ready to go with them and got into car saying "bye" to us. He didnt care to ask us to come with him. My mother arranged a small family get together when we were in Hyderbad, so Kedaar got a chance to meet with my cousin's families and kids as well. Needless to say that he was super busy that day and played a lot with eveyone. He basically likes a lot of people around him. He maynot necessarily play with them all the time (and just spends time with his car or train), but he just enjoys people presence around him.
4. Kedaar had a good/fun time with grandparents. He used to help rolling chapatis, cutting vegetables ,drying clothes, taking bath etc from my mother, reading books, learning telugu alphabets etc from my father. I also took lot of coloring papers for him so he doesnt forget totaly about his school in Seattle. He did some coloring for the first 2 weeks and then stopped. He used to stick all his coloring papers in the main hall in my parents flat and then show them to everyone. One day he was saying that "I have so many Thaathayya's and so many ammamma's , nanamma's here, I like it :)
5. We watched one movie "Katha" in theater whie we were there. We watched it incidentally 2 times. Kedaar was there with us both the times. He watched some part of the movie and then slept off, However he clearly remembers the songs from that movie. Whenever the ads come in TV or even when we play songs here in car, he says "It is from Katha, the story movie, I like it so much". He also sings the song "taka taka taka evaro" song.
6. We didnt visit any places during this trip other than Hyderabad and Kurnool, mainly due to the agitations in Hyderabad due to Telangana issue. However we went to some local places like Birla mandir, birla science museum/planetorium, necklace road eat street etc. We also made sure that Kedaar went atleast one time in Auto per day while we were there. For some reason, he likes travelling in auto so much. This was the case last year and contiinued to be same this year too.
7. Kedaar also learned few bad habits while we were there. The first and foremost is hitting people. I think he was not engaged with lot of acitivities during that time other than having fun and playing. Also having watched all the "Bheem" kind of stories (:)), he learned how to hit people and become excited for small things. We see that he is still showing this tendency even after coming back to Seattle.ng that tendency. We are trying our best to control it.

Bhogi Pallu, 2009

Here are few pictures of Kedaar's bhogi pallu this year. We just did this at home in a simple way.

Back from India

We came back from the India trip last Friday. The trip was long (49 days for me and kedaar), nice and relaxing. We are back to work and Kedaar is back to school without complaint or crying. Kedaar clearly knows that India, Seattle are 2 different places and many things are different in terms of weather, daily routine, transportation mechanism etc. So we didnt have too many things to worry about getting him back to the routine here.
I will write about India stories, Kedaar's new friends in a separate blog post soon.