Happy birthday, dear

Krithika...who calls herself thithika, who cries 'Ammeeenaaa in the morning, noon and night for me' who when feeling an excess of love grinds her teeth, pulls my eyebrows and yells, 'Achodaaaa'! Who imitates whatever her god like anna's (elder brothers) do and still find it in her to pull their hair and scratch them when irritated, who is the apple of her dad's eye, who looks her best in any dress or without! who does something naughty and then refuses to look into your eye for a while, who broke my cup yesterday and ran out of the kitchen and sat down meekly by my feet, who removes all her dresses in the blink of an eye and wanders around in her birthday suit, who falls asleep in a second when put in her car seat, who says hi and bye to everyone on the road, who cries only when hit by her brothers and sleepy, who is 2 years old, but still wakes up in the middle of the night to have her milk, who just needs her brothers around to be happy and constantly playing, who speaks almost as much as them, who sings and dances so adorably, who has brought the maximum smiles on our faces the past two years, who has given us the best years of our life,
darling Krithika, May you spread this happiness and joy all your long life through, may you be happy and contended all your life through, may your parents and brothers have the good fortune to see you grow as beautiful as you are now, and may god bless this wonderful creation of his.

A week on..

and I am a lil bit tired of the beautiful Apartment we are in and long to move into the house we have rented!! It is beautiful alright, but, it somehow lacks the warmth of the English cottage I have been wanting to live in! Anyway, our furniture is due to arrive day after, and after that begins the huge task of setting up the house, a task I have always enjoyed. Every year after our marraige we have moved houses, and this time, it is a country as well, so, you could call us a sort of moving experts by now! We went to the other place, lets call it FC for now, to arrange all the grociries we had got from India, which was quite a lot, considering that five of us had 30Kg allowance each, most of which were filled with rava, semiya, rice and so on!!!! We have a rented car for the month, Ford Mondeo, and had an inital fight fitting in three car seats at the back. After some shop hopping, we finally settled for two slim car seats (more like booster seats) for Kachi n Kautu and a good car seat for baby! See, what all advantages are there in being the youngest!
I was a bit down the first two days, the climate is freezing and once hubby dear has gone to office, the kids and I are pretty much stuck at home. Now that a few days are gone by and I have managed to see quite a lot of cambridge and taken the kids to a beautiful park by the cam river, and have shopped half the hubby's salary out, I am back in spirits! But truly, nothing like nature and shopping to uplift you, is there?
Kids have adapted really really well. They love the river and go for long walks feeding the ducks and swans. They keep running all the time, so I guess the cold is not an issue at all. I am the only one still wandering around with a frozen face and hands. But over all, its a sea change from my mother land, and I have done fine so far. My brother and his wife are with us, so, probably that helped a lot, but all said and done, I do miss India a lot. I miss its temples, its people, my loved ones and the chatter. I miss the gang in Bangalore and I miss our weekely poker nights. I miss the restaurants and I miss the climate. I miss our unplanned weekend trips and I miss the A2Bs on route to Chennai. I miss...........
Well, I might get over this in a few days, for, the wanderlust in us will kick in and relieve any boredom, but till then, it is a pleasure to blog and crib about how much I miss India.
And it is a pain to think that you can't see the parents when you just feel like it! Other than these minor things (!!) I am enjoying this place quite a lot. Especially the amazing clothes and accessories, and the beautiful English countryside, and the lovely quaint cottages. It is as picturesque as it can get and especially when it snowed yesterday, ahhhh...I melted right out there in the car. Those lovely snowflakes on that beautiful road and river, stirred me as nothing much else has in the recent past. Wish I had a few pictures to share with you, let me take a look...

At Jesus Greens, the part with the river Cam for a boundary


Feels much like Venice, doesn't it? This is just a walk from Jesus Greens and the wooden pathway we are on is right above the river and really really slippery. Kachi fell down three times and I was almost on my butt too!

we are off!!!!!!!!!

We reached Cambridge late yesterday night...still feeling like a Queen with the chauffer driven BMW that came to pick us up at the airport and the wonderful apartment we are in, courtesy of the company. It has a wide balcony with a beautiful view of the cambridge river and furnished very asthetically. Kachi and Kautu were so thrilled with their experience, that they slept together leaving karthik, me and baby the other bigger room. We are still exhausting the welcome pack that we still haven't wandered outside. When our shipment arrives, we will be moving into the house we have taken for rent, so, it is a case of enjoy the good thing while it lasts..I am too tired to even think about opening the door and looking outside, so, sleep, sleep and eat is going to be the manthra for the day!

On route in Dubai
Kids had a blast exploring the airport. Took us more than an hour to reach the departure terminal from the arrival one. I dragged my feet near the duty free shops and the kids dragged theirs all along.


On the flight. Emirates had a wonderful collection of movies, and the guys ended up watching ants and cars throughout. They slept for most of the journey and watched the movies for the rest, so, things were fine for us.


More pics n updates coming on...

The best gift i could give them..

is themselves! What a company and what a sheer delight it is to see them play among themselves. I have often just sat there beside them, watching them play games of make believe, assuming characters and enacting their favorite stories, with a never ending chatter and watching baby's innocent face reflect the moods of her brothers and wondered at the beauty of watching her pick up roles as though she was a year older and silently join her brothers in all their games......and sent a silent prayer of thank you to whoever it is that made me blessed enough to watch the three play and felt that this is the biggest gift i could ever give them...company for life.

They have never needed any one else to play with. They make friends easily, but don't really need them as yet, they are always supporting each other the moment one of them is hurt by an outsider, they make houses and sleep inside it and name them 'kachi,kautu and baby house', they scold me when i reprimand another - baby even cries if one of her brothers are hurt, they have enough numbers to play ring -a roses on their own, they eat competing with each other and even sleep all cuddled up in their house on some days. They are now an entity and baby is no longer a baby to me. She is a part of THEM. I dread the day when the boys will go to school leaving her behind, for she's never been without them for a long period of time. Whatever the future holds, let it at least hold that these three remain together and with the rapport that makes them play for hours on end without a single call for help. This is the silent prayer that i send up everyday and the silent gift that was given to me over the last 3 years.

Amma...your food is yummy!

They say this for a few of their favorite food...Well, like almost everyother kid, they gobble up what they like and hmmm..hawww over the others! So, i try my level best to cook up something their varied taste buds will like. Its better now, since all of them kindof like similar stuff, but a year back, kachi, kautu and baby had their own tastes that were mutually exclusive!! A mothers nightmare!
Here are some stuff they love as of today

1. Pasta with white sauce (I sometimes grate carrots or potatoes, or add finely sliced tomatoes, or at times, put in a vegetable mix to make the white sauce healthier)
2. Birpulao - kachi was asking for this again yesterday! This is a mixture of biryani and pulao...ie, Biriyani without the spices and pulao with briyani base!)
3. Microwaved french fries - which are in reality just potato pieces finely cut and microwaved with butter!
4. chapathi and subzi- as long as the subzi has a tomato base and is non spicy
5. Potato bhajji - deep fried potato with besan coating. They love this, and consume almost half a bottle of tomato sauce.
6. Muesli - yeah..from when did kids start liking my non sugar fat free muesli?? Well, they seem to love it and would have it any time of the day!
7. Brown rice - finely cooked, they like eating it plain, with just ghee and salt. No side dishes allowed.

And i get a praise for any of these, even if it is the muesli that I told them the shop uncle makes! If they don't like something, its just a gentle shake of the head. So, i'll just bask in their praises till they grow up enough to tell me ...mummy, this food s**ks!!

Winds of change

have swept through my land...we had planned a relocation to UK for a while and now its all falling in place!! Karthik has already left and joined work in Cambridge and we hope to get the visa for me and the kids by december mid...Five years and growing up three kids in Bangalore later, we wound up our house and bid goodbye to friends and the city last thursday. In the two weeks after we got his visa, we visited all the favorite hangout places in Bangalore, (they turned out to be mostly hotels!!) brindavan, woodys, krishna cafe, little italy, ramanas and then chilled out in RMZ infinity where we must have spent atleast half our parent life chasing the kids around the fountain and watching them dive and jump from the small inclines, given them dripping icecreams from MacDs and delved into our subs. We hosted all our friends one saturday with almost 10 hours of rigorous Poker (Ah..I was winning till the dinner break, and wosh....lost all my money after that!). We went for dinner to a friends place almost every day and treated others on the rest. We went shopping in the morning, afternoon and night and bought a lot of stuff which made us feel like the newly weds. Wardrobes, cloths, utensils, vaccum cleaner, mixie, grinder..and so on...we are discarding most of our old stuff here and getting new ones...for a new beginning, not that we will not miss the old one, just that a change is always refreshing! Kids are missing their dad and wake up in the middle of the night crying. He came on skype yesterday and had to see Kautu weeping his heart out for him. Krithika and Kachu were fine, they chatted with their dad and kept asking him when he will be applying visa for them!! Now begins our next target, find a good house next to a good school, close to grocery and office and within our budget!! Hah..quite a lot of conditions, huh? Anyway, one thing I am sure of, the house should be isolated enough to give us and the kids the freedom to yell our hearts out!!

Now, thats the update for now, quite a big one, isn't it?

Celebrating the 3s

I missed writing a post on their third birthday and was waiting for this milestone to give an update...Kautu and Kachi are 3 years, 3 months, 3 weeks and 3 days old. The only thing they have common between them is this, their age. Kautu is forever upto mischief, his latest today was mixing turmeric and mustard, mustard and urad dal and spilling a lot of the turmeric around. Other activities include tearing the page of the calender and stuffing it in the sink, brushing his teeth five times today just because he loves the strawberry flavor, throwing a stick, measuring cup and spoon into the grinder while the batter was being prepared and finally, opening the shower on Karthik when he took baby to the bathroom!! Thats a small sample of what all he can be up to in a day. On the other hand, he is the entertainer of the family, with his antics on his pushing car ( I don't what its actually called, its this thing which you sit and push with your legs), he comes real fast and then turns the thing around on one leg ... I nearly fell off my chair the first time I saw it! He dances a weird dance every time we ask him to, but almost never when he listens to music, but hums along with every song. And...when he cries, he really really cries, like in cries his and my head off...the loud wailing goes on for hours and what it originally started for, is forgotten by the end of it! Everything he talks becomes a cry and god help and forgive me, my itching hands do get an outlet once the patience has worn thin. Well, I am able to write with such feeling cause he's at it again ... in the background and I am venting it all out here!
About Kachu... he's such a darling,..... when he wants to. But an equall 'noi noi' case..yeah thats what we call him, cause once denied something, he'll go on cribbing about it, till, like his brother, he makes you want to stuff cotton in your ears and dream of retiring to the Himalayas. But, he's the one who takes care of his sister, calls her pet names (Kutta) and even puts her to sleep. He is deeply ashamed if he drops something, or does anything that we would not be pleased with (unlike his brother, who gives a damn) and I have to put aside my rage and quitely tell him, its ok, nothings happened, else, I'll have a crying boy in my hand for the next half a day! He says the cutest thing, in the best possible grammer and when everyone else are asleep, he'll just hang around with me, sitting by my side when I read, looking on when I cook and giving his opinions in that quiet way of his that I feel at those times, that I've made a friend for life!!! At the same time, once his brother and sis are awake, he does refuse to share his things, like the way Kautu does too, and Krithika is forever trying to get things away from her brothers that, all the good things vanish and I am left with the urge to bury myself and plead I don't know these kids!!!!!
Anyway, this is the terrible 3s post...and I know it does sound terrible....but my fingers are crossed, maybe, it might get better by the 4s!