SFO trip

we visited SFO for 3 days last weekend. It was a sudden trip where Chandra was going for a conference for a couple of days and I & Kedaar joined him to use it as an opportunity to see Neelima (my friend)'s son Neerav.
We stayed in SFO for 3 days. Along with Neelima, we also visited several other REC friends. Kedaar met lot of friends namely Anushka, honey akkalu, Neerav, Nikila, Pranav, Sandilya, Sindhu & Veshaal.It was a fun trip without any touristy activities.

Tulips 2010

We visited Tulips this year as well. It was nice, colorful as usual.
Kedaar really wanted to pick some flowers while walking in the fields , but controlled so much so that he can be a "big and good boy" :)

Mothers day celebrations

Kedaar's schools had a mothers day teas party last week. The party was from 10-11.30 in the morning. When mommy arrived, each kid picked up their mommy from door, showed her the chair she needs to sit in. It was 3 presents for mommy, a tea pot shared greeting card,a mom card and a vase. Then all the kids sang 4 rhymes that they have practising beautifully ( I am very little tea pot, Hickory dickery dock, fuzzy little caterpillar, littfle ms muffins). After that each kid, said a statement about their mommy and gave flower. Kedaar said "I love my mommy because she gives me kisses :))". Some kids said "I love my mommy because she cooks food for me, she plays memory game with me" etc . After that we had cake, tea. I have been getting hints about the party, the songs they are going to sync, the gifts from 2,3 weeks before , so I know how much they prepared for it. It was very nice party and lot of fun.

Phonics , Rhyming sounds.

In the past 2, 3 months, Kedaar really got into the phonics and also learnt rhyming sounds. It just came so naturally without us putting any special effort at home. Related to phonics, for all the words, he started saying the starting sound like "ka ka Kedaar" , "la la lunch" etc. For any word we speak, he will try to get the starting sound and try to say the associated letter. He also wants to play the game of me or Chandra saying a sound and he will tell several words that start with it. His school teacher has been doing sounds/words during circle time over several months and now they are doing blending sounds like 'sm', 'fl'. This week their sound of the week is 'cr' and I asked him on last friday on what the sound of the week is. He said "mummy, it is 'cr', 'cr','cr', crawl, crash,crab,crocodile,cry" etc. He could come up with so many words instantaneously and it was lot of surprise to hear that many words from him.

For rhyming words, he would ask us to tell one word and he will come up with rhyming words like cat, bat: snake,cake:later,matter etc. During the process of coming up with rhyming words, he is also inventing some words :) He invents the word and sayd "Mamma, this is a very good word".

I love the way kids learn things here, so systematicaly, so naturally that I dont think they will ever forget. Not sure about other schools here, but I really like the montessori system for the way they teach things.
Without a doubt, we will continue him in the same school, same class in next year as well.

Race Race

Kedaar is fairly good in eating food that he likes, but he is not open at all to try new things. Specifically he doesnt eat anything other than waffles (no bread, no cereal) for breakfast, no curries with rice, no curd rice. He doesnt even want to try taking a bite irrespective of all dynaosaur, scary things, strong boy stories. So the only thing he will eat with interest is lentils and often he used to get bored just with one variety at food. It is also so frustrating to see him rejecting all the things I spend so much time and effort to prepare. We tried eating together at dining tables, doing the tasting bite strategy and nothing worked. In the past 2 weeks, we are trying a different thing which is racing. So Chandra and he will sit at dining table for breakfast and every day we will have a different type of race (Idli race, cheerio race, breaf race, pancake race). Kedaar started enjoying thing althought we have to keep on encouraging that he has to win over daddy. So after 2 weeks, he is in a state where he puts few bites in his mouth for breakfast. Also for curries in dinner, I started "3 yr old, 3 bites" game where he has to try to 3 bites of every curry I make even though it is difficult for him. He is managing to try that also. We eventually have to extend this for curd rice slowly. I am very happy with the progress and hopefully it lasts for some time.
In general, the racing is working for other things too like taking bath before daddy does his bath, sleeping before mummy sleeps etc :)

Best mom in the whole world

After we finished dinner yesterday, Kedaar came to me and said "mamma, you didnt sign up for mother's day in school. we are making nice cups and sticking colorful papers on them with glue, decorating them, let them dry. we will not tell mummy because its a surprise, we will fill water in cup, ask daddy to put flowers in the cup and then give it as a surprise to you because you are the best mom in the whole world" :) He said this whole setence without break in the morning also and reminded me again to sign up on the sheet on his classroom door when I dropped him in school (I signed up finally).
The best part in this whole thing is his innocence of revealing the surprise to me with twinkling eyes and also with wide open hands saying that "you are the best mom in the whole world". He talks, expresses so many things these days and this seems like the best age of childhood and we are just loving it.

Flights, jets, rockets, space shuttles..

We visisted museum of flight last month. We didnt expect Kedaar to have so much fun in there, however Kedaar had a blast there. Especially he was extremely attacted to the space portion of the museum and carefully looked through, asked questions related to rockets , how they launch space shuttles, astronauts, planets etc. He also bought a book about these. Now he is able to name the planets and also talk about for long time on the space things. He also learnt some complex words like space capsule, proble that takes pictures of planets etc. Once in a while he will shout "4,3,2,1, blast offf" and says that he wants to be an astronaut when he grows up.
It was nice to see him having fun with these stuff. He also bought a plane, space shuttle as memories from the museum visit.

Can you put that song again?

One fine day we played the old telugu classic "Raagam thaanam Pallavi" from "Sankarabhanam" movie while going to school in the car. I think we just did without too much intention rather just got bored of all the other songs in the IPod.
So one of the lines in the song is "Sasya Kedaaraalu Swarasa Gandharalu". Just listening after the first time, Kedaar said "daddy/mamma, its my name, can you put it again". Kedaar listened to this again and again and started singing that song. Whenever the word "kedaaralu" comes, he says "its my name :))". Basically "Kedaara" is a raaga in Karnatic music and the song has that word in that context.
Anyway, he loves listening to that song again and again.
Daily atleast once he has to say that "Daddy, your name is Chandrasekhar, it means lord shiva. Mummie's name is Neeraja, it means Lotus and I am Kedaar Nandan, it means Ganapathi". In all the songs he listens, he carefully watched for these names :)

Little doctor

When I was young, I always wanted to be a doctor. I think there is lot of fun in being close to "real" world. So every opportunity I get , I keep telling Kedaar how interesting it is to be a doctor (and as usual he says that he will be an astronaut and go in rocket like zoooooom :))
Recently, the famous hospital "Childrens" Seattle had a health fair where little ones get to be a doctor and learn/experience several things hands on. They also focussed on some other aspects like water, car safety etc.

Kedaar really liked this fair and the place was packed with children. Kedaar got a new bike helmet, new car seat, did lot of treatments to his teddy bear by being different types of doctor.It was personally amazing for me how creative the folks can be, first of all with this idea itself and the way they implemented it with focus on details.
Here are some pictures from this fair.

Mommy's helping boy

Kedaar gave me a very delightful surprise yesterday. As is he is not a very organized boy at home. Though he apparently does everything correctly in school when it comes to hanging jackets, putting toys back in their place etc, he doesnt demonstrate the same things at home. Yesterday night, I just asked him to keep the book we got from library in a bag as they are lying down on the floor. I told him this when i was in kitchen and after few minutes he called me saying 'mamma, see, what I did, I made the house clean'. To my surprise he put all the books in teh bag, put the bag on his study table, also cleaned up a bunch of toys from the floor.
When I came to see this, he found a small paper on the floor. He took that also and ran to dustbin and proudly said 'see, I made it so beautiful'.
It was really delighting to see that kind of thing from what, something I always wanted my kid to have (being organized :)).
Hope he continues this on regular basis than giving me occassional surprises :)

Goda meedi bomma (Picture on the wall)

Snow tubing

Some time in the last month, we went to snow tubing near Snowqualmie. This was the same place we went last year as well but this time the place was fairly sunny and much more enjoyable.
Kedaar had lot of fun while going down the snow and the coming up on through the rope.
Here are some pictures

Thinking hat

During dinner time yesterday, Kedaar asked me to put video of the horse, fox story.
It is a story from Panchatantra. I knew what he wants but didnt want to put TV during his dinner time ( because he is highly addicted to watching TV during dinner time and I want to change this habit) So I started to act asking some stupid questions like "do you want the story where tom & jerry go on horse", " do you want the story where you saw a fox in park" etc. He patiently said "no" to all my stupd questions. At some point, I think he got frustrated and said "mamma, no, its not that, wear your thinking hat and then you will remember". I was surprised. I asked "how do you wear thinking hat", he enacted putting something on my head and said "this is how you do it". Later he told us that Ms.Indu tells the kids to do so if they make obvious mistakes, forget something etc.
This is just one of the several titbits of knowledge he keeps learning at school. The part I am impressed is his ability to apply those things at home when needed :)

AllGoRhythms

We went to a music show by a group called "AllGoRythms" in Seattle.
Kedaar's friend Atharva's mom is singing in that show and we came to know about the show through her. It was a nice show. Kedaar listened to each and every song carefuly for the whole first half. Even when his dad wanted to take him outside for a break, he just ran back into seat saying he wants to listen to 'music".
In the dinner break time, the much awaited thing happened. Kedaar found his friend Atharva and Atharva's dad said Atharva has also been looking for Kedaar and they both can sit together for the second part of the show. The second part of the show was full of masti, dance type of songs. Kedaar and Atharva started having fun, playing in the seats. Eventually they convinced me, Chandra to go near the stage because Atharva's 2 other friends also came and these 2 can play with them. After that, all of them started running around, playing, crawling onto stage, dancing for songs, oh, they just had a blast for almost 2 hrs. Chandra dedicated a song "mastkalandar" for them and both Kedaar, Atharva are excited to hear their names on mike.
Overall, that was a fun blast for the kids and a nice break for mom and dad.

Incident reports

Rock in ear: Last week when we were coming home from school, Kedaar said “mommy, I have a rock in my ear”. I asked him if he has really rock in his ear and he said “yes”. Chandra &I were talking about something else during that time and I didn’t pay that much attention to it. In the evening, Kedaar did everything normally, had dinner. When he was just about to sleep, he said again that he has rock in ear. This time we took it seriously. He didn’t allow us to even touch the ear. We saw inside his in ear with torchlight and to the biggest surprise for us , there is really a small stone stuck in his ear. We turned him that side and tried to get it down, but it doesn’t come out. That was really a scary thing. Immediately we took him to emergency in Swedish. Doctor tried to pick it up with small vacuum and it never came out. Finally doctor had to numb his ear little bit, pour some water into his ear, used a sharp needle type of thing to push the stone from back. He said it is very common for kids to put rocks in ears  After some effort, the stone came out. When we enquired, it seems Kedaar said that he did it when he was in playground and told us hundred times that he will not do it again because doctor uncle will “poke” him. He also started repeating the process of taking out rocks from ear on us as part of his favorite “doctor” game.

Knee scratch: Another thing happened today. Kedaar had his pant torn at the knee when we went to pick him up! His teacher said that they just came from playground and he fell while running. Pant was torn and he has a fairly big scratch with some blood there. The teacher cleaned and put bandage on it. Kedaar had some more pain with it after he came home. He said it happened when he was running superfast in playground.

As usual I told the lessons of why he should not run fast, why he should not put bad things in ear, nose and eyes. He listened to it, he repeated what I said, but then we know that it will not stop. We just have to be prepared for such things as he is growing up.