Anurag's new bike

Posing with his birthday gift. He loves it and is a super-confident rider.

More Anu talk

Anu: mama, I don't want to die ever. 

Me: Beta, everyone has to die. But don't worry you have many many many years to live before you start worrying about dying.

Anu: Will I die after you and papa die? Where will we live if you die?

Me: Don't worry, mama-papa are not going to die anytime soon (hopefully!). You will have your own work and house by then.

Anu: Mama, I don't want a step-mother.

(ok now I know what is fueling his imagination. Why can't we have less scary fairy tales?!)

learning division

Recently Anurag overheard Kabir and me discussing a division problem. He promptly asked that he wanted to learn division too. So I said

Me - its pretty easy. Let's take an example. When I get anything home, say chocolates (which I never do), Kabir and you insist that the chocolates be shared equally between you two, right? So if I had four chocolates, how many would each of you get?

Anurag - Each of us would get two.

Me - Perfect! So that's division. Now lets try another one. If I got 6 chocolates and we had Anurag, Kabir and Rhiku (their friend) at home, how many would each get?

Anurag - Three.

Me - ummm...how is that possible?

Anurag - Kabir gets three, I get three and Rhiku gets zero.

That's what we get for not stating our assumptions in the problem statement.

Anurag's wisdom

Anurag recently asked me - mama, I don't want to get married ever, is that ok? 

I responded - of course, thats your choice.  (Kabir helps by naming adults that he knows are single)

Anurag: Oh but I will still want to have a wife.

Me (trying to understand): Then why do you say you won't want to marry?

Anurag: I just want to live with my wife without having to marry her. I don't like this stuff about becoming a groom etc.

Me: ok, so you just don't want a wedding, that's good. (I wish I had this wisdom when I was younger!)

As an afterthought, I decided to push this: why do you think you'll want to have a wife though?

Anu: I want to live with her like you and papa. But we won't have children. We will get a dog instead.

Incredible!!

More pics from Anu's 6th birthday

Kabir's 8th birthday

There were high expectations to be met for Kabir's 8th birthday. Both Kabir and his friends asked for another treasure hunt this year. We did a few variations though, and the kids had a blast. We started with Bingo, followed by a game where the kids had to plan and present a skit using all the props that were given to them. We made three teams and each team did a brilliant job (check out one of the videos below)! The final game was a combination of scavenger hunt and treasure hunt where the kids first hunted for various objects such as bird feathers, coloured rocks, bird nests, fruit trees etc and finally followed a map that led them to their final clues to a puzzle which they had to solve. Cake with puri-bhaji and pasta sealed the deal!

Birthday months

Past month has been busy with two birthdays in the house - Kabir's Feb 9th and Anurag's March 8th. They turned 8 and 6 respectively. We had fun parties for each of them. Since I'm terribly behind in catching up with the pics, here are just a few of Anurag's birthday from my phone.

Best friends for life

loving cards from friends

cake-cutting at home

(notice the cake)

Kabir with his best friend M - they baked this cake together for Anurag without any adult supervision (except for the frosting where M's mom helped them)

Celebration in Anurag's school. They have this ritual of going around the candle to signify that he's been around the sun 6 times so far

Cake-cutting at Anurag's school

IITB run

The first ever IITB run was organised last weekend on campus. There were 5k, 11k and 21k runs. Kabir and I decided to run together for the 5k with some other enthusiastic friends. Kabir was such a sport! Ran practically non-stop for the entire 5k, never once complaining (timed about 42 minutes). He was thrilled that there was a medal to be shown off after the run. 

K&K

How to make writing fun

Rote learning has never been Anurag's cup of tea. He vehemently refuses to comply and if forced, comes up with such gems: Kite flying by alphabets.