Picture with friends

Found this picture going through old pictures we never got chance to upload. Posing for the photo, kids are Atharva, Rushaan with Kedaar.

Cancun trip

We went to Cancun vacation from Dec 4th for 11 days. We stayed in Grand Caribe Real Resort, an all inclusive placee. I should say that this is our first time "relaxing" trip where we didnt use hotel just as pure accomodation but rather a place to have fun. The place is luxurious with bunch of things to do including every night shows in their own theatre, access to beach directly from hotel, 5 restaurants open all the time serving food, people serving you juices/drinks while you enjoy on beach, beds/swings/messages right on beach, entertainment folks organizing sports on beach/at swimming pool, kids club, 24 hr room service one can really see what "being pampered" means here. We went for day trips to XCaret (a nature theme park), Chitchen Itza temple (one of the wonders of world, ruins of Mayan coluture representing a calendar) and a submarine trip. Other than these 3 days, rest all days we had fun pretty much at the resort.
Mexico felt so close to India with the weather, trees/plants/informal people. We all loved the place and Kedaar didnt even want to come back to Seattle.
Pictures from the trip

Short stories

A new thing started recently, telling short stories. This started in recent Cancun vacation. All of a sudden, he came to me and said "mom, do you want to listen to a story". Then he started with "Once upon a time,..........., the End". The story lasts for 2 lines or so and the "Once upon a time" and "The end" are the most important parts of it.
Sample stories
----
Story on mom: Once upon a time there was a little boy who has a big mom who took care of him. But the boy called her "bad mom", mom felt bad. Then the boy one day shouted "Mommy", the mom came and hug him. The End.
Story on mouse: Once upon a time there was a little mouse who went to eat a carrot and he couldnt because he is not a bunny. The end.
Story on Beach: Once upon a time there is a nice beach where a little boy and his dad went, They played in water, collected lot of shells , got them home and showed to his friends. The end.
.. and the list goes on and he can tell interesting short stories about any topic realy, car, tree, TV, food etc.

He also assured me that he can tell more longer stories when he grows more bigger :)

Madagascar

Kedaar makses his mom and dad realize the meaning of MadGasCar.
"MadGasCar is a car that runs with gas. The more gas you put in it, the faster it goes. Thats why it is called MadGasCar".

Snow & holidays

Seems like the holiday season started much earlier and going on for us. We took off from Nov 9-12th just like that and stayed at home to relax. Then we went to work/school for a week. Again on Nov 22nd, there is a huge snowfall and the whole week is off due to the snow as well as Thanksgiving holidays.
Back to work this week after long break. Once more,this is going to last only a week because the trip to Cancun is coming soooon (we will leave on Dec 4th and back on 15th)

Kedaar saying some telugu slokas

Milestone

Recently I and a couple of Kedaar's friends moms were talking about how the kids are doing at school. Everyone's feeling is that kids are not enouraged/stretched enough whether it is in reading or math and hence we were thinking whether to change school/join Kumon etc.

I also started to worry about Kedaar not showing too much interest in either reading or writing. Then to my surprise, all of a sudden, kedaar started telling spelling for 3 letter words and spellings for some straightforward 4 letter ones. . Cat, hat, fix, mom, dad, lamb ... all by himself. Wow, thats a real surprise for me. A great milestone and another milestone for which we didnt have to either try or worry too much (just like his potty training, teething etc)

HAPPY 4TH BIRTHDAY KEDAAR

Many Many Happy returns of the day little Kedaar Nandan!

Kedaar's cute videos

Swimming first time without help


Walking styles


Karate

Indian independene day celebration

Longtime since Aug 15th. Its worth mention anyway.
We attended Aug 15th celebrations organized by EKAL Seattle along with Kedaar this yeat.There was 5 Km, 1Km independence day walk organized after flag hoisting.
Chandra went for 5Km walk. I and Kedaar wanted to do 1 Km walk. We both started walking.It was very sunny , we kept on going with realizing the 1/2Km point which is when all the 1Km walk participants returned. Eventually Kedaar got tired and then w realized at we are at 11/2Km point. That was very hard walking coming back , but Kedaar managed it with few breaks. Overall that day Kedaar walked for 3 Km and he was very proud of his achievement.

Kedaar's singing songs from music class

Kedaar started going to music classes for a couple of weeks now. He is trying to sing these songs at home.
Here are some bits of his attempts.
Vara siva balam


Syamale meenakshi


Subramanyam


Narayana manthram


Om gan ganapahaye namaha



Raaravenu

Visit to Olympic game farm

We went to a 2 days trip to Olympic Game farm in the long weekend last week.
We went to ferry from Edmonds to Kingston and the farm was just 50 miles from there. The farm was great. Lots and lots of animals , There were bears, zebras, rhinos, peacocks, goats etc along with caged animals like tigers etc. Bst part is that you can buy bread packets and feed any un-caged animals walking freely on roads (like goats, horses etc) and sitting by side ways (like bears)
Kedaar was little bit scared few mins and then he started his feeding by giving few bread pieces to small birds, peacocks, rabbits and then slowly started giving to other bigger animals.
Interesting part was tjat he feeds them a piece, says that "I will wait for birds to finish" and then feeds second one. He carefully tried to feed most of animals and it was a very god experience. We spent 4, 5 hrs there and then stayed in a hotel in Port Angeles. Next day, we saw hurricane ridge, crescent lake, ruby beach and reached home in the night.
It was a pleasant trip, relaxed trip and was good break.

Kooza tricks

After we saw the Kooza show by Cirque De Soleil, Kedaar got really interested in acrobatics and he kept on asking us if he can join a acrobatics class.
Along with asking those, he started demonstrating few circus type of acts on sofas, chairs and some times on daddy.
Here are some pictures of few tricks dad & boy practised recently.

sad sad..

Its a very sad for me today. I have been not getting time to write Kedaar's blog, so I had a draft email "Keduisms" in my outlook where I was just writing down a bunch of interesting things Kedaar said and Kedaar usually says to keep a note. I was planning to put them in blog some time.
Today I just looked at it and to my surprise, my drafts folder is empty.
I just cannot find the drafts any more any where. Worst. I am going to call Microsoft support guys. But I am pretty sure I will not get them.

3 little monkeys

"Chedu vinavaddu, chedu ana vaddu chedu kana vaddu"