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A play, a letter and some cards

That’s exactly the kind of a headline that would have drawn the nastiest of frowns from my editor way back when I was working. How cool is it to be your own editor! While on headlines, even the biggies get stuck sometimes. Why else would Shakespeare call one of his works “As You Like It”.

Anyway it’s Christmas and there really is no time for rambling. Since you already know the three things on my mind – a play, a letter and some cards read on..

First – The Play

I haven’t been posting about the Book Club for sometime now. That’s not to say we’ve been idle. There has been plenty of activity. In fact that is exactly why I haven’t found time to post.

Yes, finally the children are putting up a play this Christmas. In the spirit of the festival and in trying to keep everyone happy and involved I’ve gone over the script scores of times to weave in parts that each child wanted. Finally, everyone is pacified and reasonably happy. We now have …
– two narrators (because two kids would be nothing else), 
– a number of good fairies (ALL girls wanted to be fairies), 
– a bunch of evil goblins (Yeah, you’ve guessed it – the boys would be nothing else, much as I hate stereotyping!) 
– and two leads!
Whew!

My door bell hasn’t stopped ringing with queries and complaints. The evil goblins are proving to be really evil and the fairies are giving them fair competition. However, I would like to look at the positive side – the kids ARE working together despite it all. There are walkouts each day and yet the next day they are there again trying to practise, with barely much adult supervision. That’s something that makes me very very proud of them.

Look at the lovely invites they readied.

We’re waiting for D-Day with crossed fingers hoping there are no casualties along the way.

A Letter

This year H and N discovered that there’s no Santa. And so there was much protesting when during a book club meeting I suggested everyone write a letter to him. After some cajoling (encouraged by the pretty printables I downloaded from here) they came up with some interesting ones. I did tell them to think of intangible things. (I heard one of the older ones explaining to a younger one – write about things that are ‘untouchable’ :-)).

I loved what some of them wrote. Much venom was directed at the security guards of our apartment building, who are all just doing their duty, poor souls. Among other requests for craft sets, chocolates and good grades we also had some for a neater country, more respect for girls, help in making their grandma’s room Christmasy and even one for snow in our city!! Awww!!! Isn’t that really sweet.

Do try to get your kids write a letter to Santa. It’s just so much fun and makes for a wonderful read when they grow up.

And finally the cards! 

In case, like us, you have lots of cards to make and are struggling with a deadline you could try this. All you need is some coloured paper, stars to go at the top and a ribbon or simply some more paper for the stems. Cut out triangles, stick them overlapping each other for the tree. Put up the star and the stem and you’re done. Ours are all ready. Don’t they look great?

We’re all set for Christmas. So what have you got lined up? A craft, cooking or baking or carol singing? Do share with us here.
If you’re short of ideas you could check out some of the posts from my fellow bloggers. Do take a look.

Come join a set of fabulous bloggers sharing their Christmas moments – Easy Holiday Crafts, DIY ideas, Recipes , Decor ideas and book recommendations with you .

http://www.artsycraftsymom.com/?p=4396

Starting from today till Christmas and beyond, each one of us will be writing a post related to Christmas.
Participating blogs
ArtsyCraftsyMom – munniofalltrades – hfareensspace – roohiscollections – hellomommyhood – attachedmoms – totschooltotallyawesome – Themomviews – bumpsnbaby.com –
rugsoflife – oneandahalfminutes – shishuworld – ruskandtea – aspoonfullofideas – orangekitchens – obsessivemom – rachnaparmar – parentingmantras –
onboardthemommyship – kwikdekoblog – thekeybunch – momzspace – whatscookingmom – coloursdekor – happypeopleevents – fantastic-feathers – beingzoesmom

So sit back, relax and check out all the fabulous Christmas Bonanza posts from our participating blogs in the linky. Support us by sharing our posts using the hash tag #ChristmasBonanza

This Linky is for participating blogs only, but We would love to see your Christmas Crafts too. Come and link up your Christmas post at ArtsyCraftsyMom.com

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Pigeon mums don't quite make the cut

I am just so glad my mum’s not a pigeon. No offence to the pigeons but I’ve been watching one of them and I don’t think I would have made it with a mum like her.

This year the children painstakingly painted a bird house hoping to have some of them make it their home. 

However ignoring the birdhouse totally (and rather rudely) one day, a lady pigeon laid an egg in our Tulsi planter.

The ‘nest’ was just two or three haphazardly placed twigs. Such careless parenting, I thought. Even if one doesn’t have the dexterity of a weaver bird one can certainly do better than this. Check out the picture below and you’ll know what I mean. Perhaps, hearing me rant and rave she dutifully placed a few more twigs after laying the egg. Some mother, this!

I was pretty outraged on behalf of the unborn offspring but then I thought maybe pigeons just didn’t make nests (at least it was better than laying your egg in someone Else’s nest), or maybe this one was exceptionally lazy. Or, thought I (when in a charitable, non-judgemental mum-to-mum frame of mind) maybe she was a single mum – which would explain a lot, including the absence of any kind of a father figure hovering around the ‘nest’.

She would periodically fly away presumably in search of food, leaving her egg totally exposed to crows and mynahs. That might have been forgivable, but she also took off each time we went even close to the balcony, heartlessly deserting her egg. While such shoddy mothering annoyed me no end she seemed pretty satisfied with it. So much so that the next day she went and laid another egg!!

The eggs would have long gone had I not taken over her mothering duties. It was I who tiptoed into the balcony, I who told the maid to stop watering the poor Tulsi, I who left piles of grains for her and I who shooed away myriad predators including two excited, clueless but very curious children and their bunch of bird crazy friends. One of them wanted to stroke the bird, another wanted to ‘just touch’ the egg and yet another wanted to check if she would eat from his hand. Whew!

All I didn’t do was sit on those darned eggs to hatch them. No sir! That easiest bit was all madame ‘real mum’ did. For over three weeks she sat on them when the fancy took her, while we waited, looking out each day for the new arrivals. 

Yesterday, finally, we saw some activity beneath her wings and out peeked one tiny pink headed chick. The kids (mine, not the pigeon’s) literally went berserk oohing and aahing. H ran to call his friend, an aspiring vet, and N chucked her books, while I rushed for the camera. There really is no sight more wonderful, more heartwarming than that of a newborn baby – human or bird.

And today there was another one. The mum in the pigeon finally seems to have awakened. She is refusing to leave her chicks now even when I go out into the balcony or when I sit right next to the planter. When I trained the camera on her for a longish time she moved over in a proprietorial manner to take the chicks under her wing, hiding them from view like they were all hers, like I had no hand in their existence! But I couldn’t help going Aww!!! I just wanted to hug all three of them.
Check out how they feed. At first, given her mothering history, I thought she was eating them up. But she was just feeding them. I wish I could upload the video but for some reason that’s not happening.

I am now waiting eagerly to let my (almost) first set of twins fly the nest with a little help from their pigeon mum.
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The Koyri girl

I have a friend, a friend called ~G. Funny name I know, specially that thingie before her initial. God knows it took me ages to find that on my tablet. 


I ‘met’ her first when she dropped by my blog commenting on some silly H and N antic and telling me she was a masi to a similar munchkin. She stuck when I read her post on how she’d given up watching the tele and was putting her time to better use, leaving me awed and inspired.
But that was nothing compared to what I felt when I found what she was doing with her time. Check these out…

She is the Koyri girl.

When she turned entrepreneur with this venture guess who was one of her customers? Yeah Moi! 

She’s fun and smart and oh so creative. The specialest thing about her creations is the ‘you’ that you find in them. If you have a dress and have gone crazy trying to find a pair of matching earrings – she’ll make them for you. See a design and don’t know where to find it? She’ll make that too. Your friend wants it in another colour? Done!

Do check out her creations online here.

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#Microblog Mondays- The Pink Run

If you’ve bumped into me on FB you’ll know already what this post is going to be about. Yes yes yes!! I did the Pinkathon! I ran the 5km marathon to raise breast cancer awareness. I wrote about it earlier here when I registered.

We woke up to a perfect weather on Sunday morning – cool and dry with a gentle breeze. The reporting time was 5.30 am, which meant we needed to be up by 4.30. Gawd!! The thought was enough to make me want to not go. But am I glad I went!

I’m really just not good enough a writer to put into words how incredible the experience was. The warmth, the bonhomie, the energy – incredible. Women young  and old, women in saris, girls in hot pants, moms with strollers, sisters, daughters, buddies, even a pair of girl-dogs (I presume) in glittery pink collars  – all together in a wonderful glorious sea of pink and white.

And then there was The Handsomest Brand Ambassador ever – Milind Soman – who I had the hugest teenage crush on. Still have it! Sigh! He’s way way more handsome up close, if that is even possible.
Sigh some more!!!

My dancing-in-public debut happened at the warm up Zumba session. I found myself following the instructor on stage, with gusto, I might add. It helped having a bit of a crazy friend by my side, and that the music was familiar from our Zumba class. Feet were stamped, elbows bumped and eyes were poked. Sorrys flew around and were waved away with smiles.

From 89 years to 18 months – there was a range of participants. I found myself running next to two five year olds egged on by their mom. Each time their steps flagged the mom would say, ‘You want that medal, don’t you? Come on!!’ And they’d double their efforts. Once they sat down by the road but two minutes and a few sips of water and they were up again. Dads, husbands, brothers, friends and sunny-smiled volunteers lined the roads clapping and cheering and clicking pictures.

The run itself was hardly a little over 40 minutes. Before we knew it, we were jogging towards the finish line and we had the medals and were munching on biscuits and sipping hot tea.

Just perfect!

Yeah I’m a finisher.

Linking to Mel’s # Microblog Mondays at Stirrup Queens. 

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Sunday Breakfast

Sunday morning I woke up craving Upma – a savoury dish made from semolina with peanuts and loads of veggies. I set out chopping carrots and defreezing peas. 

As I started roasting the semolina in walked N. 
‘What are you making mama?’ she asked, ‘Halwa?’ 
Halwa is a sweet preparation also made from roasted Semolina, a huge favourite with both the kids. H followed soon, sniffing, ‘Ummm I haven’t even smelt halwa for soooo long.’ He’s such a sniffer, this one. He goes around smelling flour and dough and sugar and raw vegetables. 

The halwa used to be a breakfast staple till The Husband turned diabetic. I, in any case, am a perpetual weight watcher. Besides, I’ve been in consultation with a dietitian for the past few months and am allowed a ‘what-I-want’ breakfast only on Sundays.

Anyway, even as the kids hung around the kitchen, before I knew it, just like that, I was pouring ghee (clarified butter) in the pan, then the roasted semolina and the sugar and making halwa.


Instead of this..

Doesn’t the upma look great with all those colourful vegetables?
Photo courtesy: Dreamstime.com

I ended up with this.

That’s halwa – Sweet and nutty and delicious.
Photo courtesy: Dreamstime.com

That’s what kids do – saunter into your lives without as much as a ‘May-I’ and change your plans completely. What’s stranger, you don’t realise it for a long long time and when you do, you don’t really mind it. They do bring along lots of sweetness, right? 
That kind of makes it all worth it.
However, what they do not do, is stave off Upma cravings. And so after I was done, up went another pan and I set out roasting a fresh batch of semolina and made the Upma too. No point stifling your cravings.
The Sunday breakfast table was one happy place yesterday.

Linking to # Microblog Mondays hosted by Mel at Stirrup Queens.

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