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!

This is why I love my blog

though I am quite irregular in writing and even more in checking out my favorite blogs. I just happened to read a post of mine written a few years ago, and there....I find a lot of my questions answered, a lot of doubts cleared and memory refreshed. I have just forgotten how Kachi n Kautu were when they were less than a year old. Yes. If not for my blog, I would not have even recollected a single character trait of theirs. Do all mothers forget their kids early stages, or is it because I had Krithika when these guys were just coming out of theirs and so, hers and their childhood have all merged into one? Don't know.

They seem to be frozen at 3 for me, but equally, krithika seems frozen at 1.5! Now I can't seem to remember her little traits, brought back to me when I found a long lost video (in fact the only one we have of her the first year!). She had a peculiar habit of hitting her mouth with her hand periodically, and it looked just damn cute. Will it all come back to me when I am 80 and dying, like in your life flashing by you moments before the final call? Then the wait is well worth it, such beautiful memories for me to recollect. Or, will it happen when they get married and go away, or when I see their kids? Maybe I should ask my parents, but I wonder if they have ever thought about it. Their generation, without generalising, have generally been concerned with making ends meet and providing sustenance rather than think deeply about stuff that we seem to have ample time to think about! Anyway, I have tried to follow "Think deeply, yet live lightly" principle and what better way to have an outlet than this blog!!!

cheers!!

So I ran to Chennai

to see my cousins, born to my mom's brother after 17 years of marriage and innumerable difficulties! Its not my story to tell, but its a difficult one with a twin happy ending! A boy and A girl. And I was in an elevated state for most of the afternoon after hearing the news. When I heard that my bro and his fiancé were driving to chennai, I just had to hitch a ride. So, Krithika and I left the boys here in bangalore and went to chennai. After an eventful ride, wherein we went half way up to salem and then took the rustic village road to join the highway 3 hours after we left it, we reached Chennai late saturday night. I went the next day to see the kids, spent a lot of time giving unwanted advise on bringing up twins and came back the next day by bus. Travelling with Kishu is a lot better than travelling alone! She provided ample entertainment for most of the co-travellers. First it was pulling the little hair left on bald head of the person in front. Then it was playing hide and seek with someone right at the back of the bus and then hiding away shyly when the guy next to me so much as smiled at her! The rest of the time, she slept peacefully, giving me my much wanted rest.
Now, what were the guys upto in my absence? Having a ball of a time here! The three of them were out the entire day...first they went to our old house, met up with all the neighbours, then went to their dad's friend's house for lunch and then spent four hours hanging at RMZ mall by the fountain. Leaving you with a few pics of the boys day out...maybe I should go away more often!!