Kedaar art collection

Kedaar does a lot of art as part of his regular class and also as part of the art classes he is attending. Just wanted to remember some of the art work he did in the last few months so that I can protect them against the wear and tear of paper.
Here is an albumn of this collection.

How to be a good boy?

As usual Kedaar is cranky, loud all of a sudden. After calming him down with hugs and kisses, we put him to bath. During bath, we asked him to stay in the tub for some time and thing how he can be a better kid to parents while relaxing in water.

Later we got busy in some thing else and we are thinking that we have to go and bring him out from bath.
Then to our surprise, Kedaar was before us, all nicely dressed up and he says "mommy, I thought how I can be a better kid for long time, then I got a great idea, so I came out, wiped myself with towel, took my night dress and wore it by myself. I also dried up my hair myself" !!!!

Today, he comes home and says , "mummy, I was thinking about how to be a better kid for 3 hrs in green art class and I have more great ideas".

Lets see what those are :)

Monster Jam race event

Kedaar and dad attended the monster jam event. This is a race of the monster trucks.
Kedaar had super fun looking, touching the giant trucks and the races. Apparently the whole event was full of huge bunch of excited kids.
Here are some pictures from the occassion.

Caring and concerning

Mommy has been sick for almost a week now and the first thing Kedaar is doing after coming from school is touch momy's forehead and check, "mummy , how are you feeling, you feel still hot". While he is at home , he always hangs around me, sitting so close. Though it is worrying that he might get the fever too, it is a nice feeling to have such as caring and conerning kid :)

Valentines day

Valentines day shots..

Russian ridge hike

Finally, we found a place in bay area where we can do some good trails. This is in Palo Alto hills (Open space preserve) and our first one is Russian Ridge. Kedaar had good time doing the hike of around 2 mile round trip on a sunny saturday morning.
We should do more of these in upcoming weeks.

Super citizen

After 6 months of filling the citizenship sheet from the Gold Medal Taekwando school(which include questions like "Listen and respect parents", "complete homework" ,
"cleanup personal belongings" etc), getting punches on chest from Mr.Perez every month for the number of crosses on the sheet, getting 6 little medals one per every month upon submission of sheet, Kedaar finally got the award of "super citizen" from the school and got a free uniform. This is something which helped streamline a bunch of things (though it is sometimes hard on us/make us guilt for making him do all the things by himself after coming home after long day). Out of all the questions, the hardest one for Kedaar is "listen and respect parents". Lets see if we can do this for 6 more months. All the best Kedaar! We are so proud of you!

Kedaar name in telugu

Kedaar manages to copy daddy and writes his name in telugu for first time.

Kedaar razor dirt quad ride

1/1/2012

A couple of pictures of Kedaar on Jan 1st.

Happy new year 2012

Welcome to 2012.

New year started with a fun party organized by friend and a picture people photo session.

2011 At a glance

2011 has been an interesting year overall. It had a mix of positive and negative experiences. The biggest decision we took in this year is to move out from Seattle. This was critical considering how depressing the seattle weather was and the frequent illness the chilly weather has been causing to us especially Kedaar. The new jobs in California, having some closest friends around , great weather, Kedaar joining Kindergarten turned out to be some of the positive experiences. The Seattle house which has been on market for 9 months (and hopefully closing in Jan) turned out the worst experience of all where our dreams of having that as investment shattered down and that because a liability for us. Additional cons of our CA decision include things such as cost of living here, missing friends from Seattle (both us and Kedaar) and probably the least number of vacations :)

Kedaar seemed to have a blast this year. Having some close families and frequent visits to their houses build nice friendship for him with the kids. He was able to bike a lot, go out locally to several locations around CA, loved his Kindergarten school and made some friends.

He grew up a lot , became very very smart and imaginative (did lot of of art and drawing work), knowledgeable, acquired vast vocabulary, improved great in education (Kumon didn't work for him well, work but the school did), making conversations/answering questions, very affectionate, talking on any topic instanteneously.

He tried out extra curricular activities yoga, dance, soccer, drawing and he is still going on regular with the Taekwando (for almost 11/2 yrs now). He loves the Taekwando teacher Mr.Perez and wants to get a olympic gold medal too :)

He also became a expert iPad/Phone gamer (acquiring some highest scores with games like angry birds/istunt2/car racing/fruit ninja etc) and developed new tastes for TV (with Wild crafts, sid the science kid, word girl, Arthur, dinosaur train etc). Something must be said about this.. Kedaar became expert in spotting and naming the cars. He can literally name every single car on the road, model and some times year too whether the car is near or far, day or night. He can name 3,4 cars for every single letter in alphabets :)

The number of soft toys friends he got this year ("called as babies") grew a lot too and he named them as Ryan, Polar, Polly, Pooh, Shamu, Kelan, Kubby, Rex etc.

Overall I think he loves california much better compared to Seattle. His constant 3 wishes (having mom and dad who keeps him happy forever, having a happy sunny day every day and a house as big as seattle one)

The sad part for me was I have been so busy with the move, work , chores etc this year that I couldn't capture any of his growth or discussions in blog at all (I started sharing some updates to friends through Facebook more :)). This year was very interesting and awesome the best so far in age in terms of imazination.. Hopefully mom should do a better job at at-least in 2012.

Here are some picture albumns of photos we took this year. There are a lot more, but here are few we had time to upload :)

Ice skating : Kedaar tried out iceskating during his winter camp and loved it. So we took him again and he enjoyed it. We enrolled him for few skating classes starting Jan.

Birthday: Kedaar had his milestone birthday (5 yrs) this year. This is a cars a birthday and he had a blast with the celebration in school and in "Bounce U" (San Carlos).

Halloween : Kedaar became a race car driver this year and the school celebrated Halloween. He also carved a pumpkin at home.

Sandiego and LA trip: Went with Neelima's family for Christmas holiday. This was very fun for Kedaar being with kids and they had a blast. Sandiego is awesome!

Las vegas and Grand canyon : We did a short 3 day trip to Vegas and Grand canyon.

Takewando: Started at Yellow black belt and cleared 3 exams this year to get to orange, orange black and then Green. Great going here !

Foster city is a fun place for kids with the beautiful central park closely. This is Kedaar's standard summer destination with biking, boat trips etc

CA visits – Here are some albums of few local places we visited. CA is awesome in terms of places around.

Mystery spot, 17 mile drive to Pebble beach, Coyote point, Monterey bay aquarium, California academy of sciences, twin peaks, Golden gate bridge, Half moon bay, a mini golf trip, SFO downtown etc

Birthdays and at home – Lot of Kedaar's friends had birthdays while we were here. His friends include Isha akka/Sreeram (Saritha/Chakri's kids), Anushka akka/Neerav (Neelima/Arun's kids) , Vishal(Sreerama/Goutham's kid), Vinay/Ajay (Jayashree/Pari's kids), Shreya/Kavya (Naren/Lalitha'kids) etc

Neelima aunty and Arun uncle gave surprise parties to mom and dad for their birthdays. Here are some pictures from the occasion.

Temple visit : Bay area has beautiful temple that feels like India in Livermore. We haven't too regular in going there, but visited it 3,4 times after we moved here.

Seattle move memories: We started trying out for jobs in March and once jobs are finalized by March end, we spent 15 days in rigorous packing. We got rid of around 50-60% of house items including one of our favorite items, the bed set and some of very nice Kedaar's toys, kitchen items etc. We donated hugely as well. This was a serious physical exercise. We met some of the closest friends before we left and Sharmila/Rajesh and Aparna/Raghu helped a lot during the move time with various things. Here are some photos from the move, meeting friends, microsoft and in general Seattle..

Citizenship