Thursday, April 28, 2016

Can't have enough of swimming


Its the time of the year when kids rediscover their love of swimming. They wake up bright and early and ask to leave for the pool. I pick them back up before leaving for work.

Here are videos from the summer camp. Anu is still learning to get the stroke right but can swim breadth-wise without a break and most importantly, has no fear of the deep side any more. He can jump into the pool freely and plays with his friends in the 6-7ft deep water.


Here Kabir demonstrates 25m butterfly on the concluding day of the camp

The butterfly is here!

It came out early this morning! We had checked on the pupa at night by when it had turned slightly dark. By morning, the butterfly was already out. We were disappointed that we couldn't see it emerging out of the cocoon. But fortunately got a call from Seema aunty and rushed over to their house in time to watch their butterfly tearing open the front of the cocoon, coming out with its wings curled under and gradually opening them as it walked around. 

Monday, April 25, 2016

A gift from M&M

Close friends M&M have been running this experiment in their home for months now and are lovely enough to share the joy of their success with us. They had planted a butterfly host plant and after months of failure, finally had grand success in being able to observe little caterpillars growing and transforming into beautiful butterflies. They invited us home many times to see this lovely miracle of the caterpillars munching away on the leaves of the host plant (nothing like I had ever imagined!). This time they even gifted a little pupa to us! We are going to observe this closely and hopefully we won't miss the moment when it turns into a butterfly.
(Complete credits to M&M and Seema aunty)

Anu and Chini

Summer time means also more time to play with Chini! See how much she has grown in the past few months.
(Pic taken in Sahana masi's garden where he spent the morning) 

Swimming - summer 2016

Its that time of the year again! Summer vacations are on and the kids spend hours in the pool. The annual swimming camp started a few weeks ago. The boys missed the first week since they both were sick. But they're back in action now.
Kabir is in the intermediate level camp and had his endurance test on Saturday. He swam free-style consistently and completed 1.65km  in 1 hour.
This is Anurag's first real swimming camp this time (beginners level) and he resists going into the pool (which he tends to do for most organised activities where he is supposed to follow rules). But once he is in, he enjoys himself completely. Video to come soon.


Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Goodbye Peace Montessori: Annual day

Anurag bade farewell to Peace Montessori last week. The final event was the school annual day based on an animal theme.





Milestone

Today was a milestone day as both kids finally started going to the same school! Anurag graduated from kindergarten at Peace Montessori last week and started Grade 1 at Pawar Public School (PPS). Kabir also agreed to move from his current school (KV) to join grade IV in PPS. They will now be out for a big part of the day: 7:30am to 3:15pm including the commute time. Its going to take us a while to get used to this.

Triathlon 2016

The annual triathlon was organised on campus last Wednesday. This time Kabir decided to participate in the individual event. It required 300m swimming followed by 4.5km cycling and ending with 1.5km running. It helped tremendously that his close friend M decide to join the race with him. They were the youngest participants and their goal was only to complete the race.  They were the last ones to reach the finish line, but were thrilled nevertheless! (Clocked 36 min)
We celebrated by going to Pizza Express for dinner where the pizza tasted extra tasty since the kids were allowed to make it themselves.




Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Holi 2016!

We had an epic holi this year! It started like every year with holika dahan on the night before holi. On the day of holi, we played in our building and then stopped over at a friends place for a quick "thandai" break. There was the usual music, dancing and jalebi-pakoras at staff club (we played dry holi this year because of the drought).
The rest of the day was spent at S-O's home recovering from the thandai effect. There was an impromptu mehfil with Saurabh on the tabla and hours of group-singing interspersed with loads of eating (and consuming boxes and boxes of bangali mithai).







Monday, April 4, 2016

Shiny tree


Painted by Anurag. He calls it the shiny tree. It now sits on my office wall.