Playtime outside

Let me start with a few action shots.









In the next photo, the tall building on the back is Home.



And here are the two scooting wonders, up close.







Next, a couple of rare instances of mamma being in the photo too. (Thanks, S, this time you did a good job!)





The rest is Lila trying to keep up with her brothers - and she does that quite well.

A week ago in Ooty

A few photos from our trip to Ooty:

Homeschooling in pictures

In case you are wondering what our homeschooling looks like, here it is:

This would be on a good day. I don't think I want to show what it looks like on a bad one.. :)

Football (or soccer, if that's how you like to call it)

Now that we have settled back into our routine after the trip abroad, we have also started to look for some extracurricular activities for the children. Homeschooling frees up a lot of time for that and it is good for them to meet other people, both children and adults, that are not just mamma and papa' (incidentally, this is also very beneficial to the parents' mental health).

As a start, we have signed up the children for a couple of after school classes at Lila's daycare, which used to be their daycare too and is therefore not a scary new place. Rohan, I think,  was especially happy to see a few of his friends and teachers again. So far they have art on Mondays and freestyle dance on Fridays. Art is going very well, but the dance thing was probably a little too complicated for them last time and they are not so enthusiastic about a repeat. Still we have paid for a month and so they will give it a try for a few more weeks, then we will reassess.

The best catch though, was being able to enroll Rohan and Rajiv for football practice right here on the institute premises. This kids football group used to meet for practice in a different area and just moved here, where we have a half decent field next to the hostel and the canteen. Some good luck, for a change! The children just went for the first session today and if it works out they can practice three or four days a week. I didn't want to be the mom with the camera on the very first day, but maybe tomorrow I will try to casually get a couple of snaps. Now I am off to take a look, more later..

Playing on the couch at the Musee d'Orsay

I want one of these at home..

Little Explorers at the Jardin Des Plantes

We are in Canada at the moment. I thought I would be able to post regular updates about our trip, but as you may have noticed I am a little behind schedule. While I get it together, I thought family and friends might enjoy some videos we took in the past two weeks. I will start with one from Paris, at the Jardin Des Plantes. Enjoy :)

Early morning

A few photos taken while getting ready for school in the morning. We ended up being a bit late out of the door, but I couldn't resist Lila in her new dress :)

Stomping Song

A video from September 2012. Appu sings for us a song he learned at school. I think it is in German, but nobody knows for sure.

Deer hunting

My current excuse for not updating the blog is that my hard disk was completely wiped out by accident while being repaired about a month ago. Fortunately I had almost everything backed up, but and I am still working on putting it all back together.

I can, however, show you this picture taken by S with his phone.

Last Saturday I gave a talk at a conference at IIT Madras and while I was speaking S took the kids for a walk in the beautiful IIT campus. Here you can see them "hiding" to observe a deer without scaring it away. It helps that the animals are used to having people around and are not easily alarmed :)

Miscellaneous cuteness

Rajiv-in-the-box (and Rohan-in-the-box a little too) at achamma's house

Baby Lila, five days old, under the mosquito net tent - still achamma's house

Little brothers sleeping side by side.. yup, achamma's house

Dad put together a great outfit here, I think (and you are never too young to start accessorizing). Under her is our living room rug, my fourth baby.

And don't tell me this is not how you watch your favorite tv shows (this was Rohan home from school sick a few days - weeks? - ago, watching Little Bear on papa's computer)

You can(not) stand in an artist's way

As is the trend these days, I made sure the kids have a little corner of their own where they can write, draw, paint and generally express their creativity - and plenty of supplies. And yet we don't really seem to have art time very often around here.

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Why?

Three brothers

Last week we had company. Jayadev, velliamma and velliacha staid with us for a few days and I don't need to say how excited the kids were to have their cousin here for the first time. We had ups and downs, the way you would expect when you have three boys but not three exact replicas of each toy car, but we also had a lot of fun.

We hit a low when Rohan asked me to send his cousin back home, but even while he was saying that he was also already elaborating on how much he was going to miss him after he was gone.. That's when I thought of taping a huge long sheet of paper to the floor so that they boys could color together. I was really proud of my craftiness, until I heard the first "He is coloring on my picture!" scream.

They also played pirates, cars, puzzles, cars and other fun stuff, being very loud most of the time. Just like brothers.

I thought I would show some drawings that Jayadev made while he was here:

In the first he is with his two little brothers and in the next picture you can see that there is a car for each of them - at last.. :) The boys got to choose their hair color and Appu is wearing a shirt of his favorite color, which I think is a really nice touch. Appu and Rohan were quite happy with all of this.

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Viola's birth

I haven't written about Lila's birth yet and given that this blog is supposed to be first of all a way to keep memories for us, that doesn't feel right. There are many things I am not happy about and I might even talk about that at some point, but that shouldn't come in the way of the things that I am *very* happy about.

These first photos were taken about a week earlier, at achamma's house and on our way out to dinner. I thought that this was going to be our last chance to get a snap of Picu still inside, but she was not a eager to leave her bubble as we imagined.

In the end Picu was not given much choice and made her appearance at night on May 21 2012, after a day filled with small disappointments, via a cesarean section. It is a quite weird experience and I didn't really get to see my baby until a bit later. They did however tell me right away that it was a girl and I remember feeling quite shocked, because that is the last thing I expected at this point. It took more than a week for us to stop saying "he" - which annoyed the grandma to no end.

S saw his baby girl before me. I don't remember much at all until dad and baby came to to me in the post op area some time later. Weird experience, really.

And here we are:

And a few more flattering shots taken later by dad in the room alone with her.

I have a complaint, though. We have a little family tradition of dressing our babies in the same little red pajama after birth, but there isn't a single photo of Lila in her red birth day dress. I suppose we must take pride in being disorganized down to the smallest details..

The children came the next morning to meet their sister and they have been in love with er ever since. Here, however, they can be seen opening their Picu Day presents, at last. They were really beginning to fear the day would never come :)

We stayed at the hospital longer than I would have liked but the room was very comfortable - choosing a posh hospital was good, at least for morale - and the kids could visit often.

In the end we had only one good birth experience out of three, but obviously we had three out of three good baby experiences.

From the first day back at the grandparents' house:

I think they were all saying "foof".