The Case of the Lock and Key

It's spring. Here in Texas, its also the season of bluebonnets. Fields full of flowers. Green turf taken over by purple bluebonnets, as far as the eye can see.

I had been prepping Little Miss Haana to go to the nearby bluebonnets and partake to just laying in the flowers and seeing cotton puff clouds move in the sky, while also taking a few selfies. A couple years ago when we were trying to do that, little Miss Haana pretended like the grass was coming after her, and was about to go get her! There were no good pictures or peaceful moments that year. Last year, i was just late.  I waited too long, and the bluebonnets were all gone. This year, i was determined not to let them pass!

Miss Haana and I found our favorite patch, and walked around, sat and lay in the flowers for sometime. Then, after selfie time, we headed back to the car. But there was a problem. I didn't have the keys with me.

Oops! They must have dropped out where I lay down in the flowers. But there was a field full of flowers, and we sat at several spots, all of them looking just like the others. Sun was low on the horizon and we didn't have many more minutes of daylight left. We walked back retracing our steps, eyes glued to the ground.

After several minutes little Miss Haana found the keys!!! What a relief! I thanked her for being such a great helper! We headed back to the car again. When we sat in, little Miss Haana said -"Mumma, can you get me a car?"
"Like this car? You want my car?"
"No, I want a toy car, for which i have a key, and when i turn the key the car starts. "
Now that little Miss Haana had helped find my key, she wanted a key of her own. And for that, she wanted a car to go along with the key.
"But you can get a key to lock your bicycle.", said the voice of reason!
"Really? A can have a key for my bicycle? How does that work?"
I tried explaining to her how the bicycle lock works. She liked the idea. I had her approval! Now i just need to find the lock and key.

A few days later, a cute bicycle lock with one end shaped like a red dog (his name was Biscuit) got delivered. Immediately the key chain was embellished with a key-chain tag. And then i showed little miss Haana how to lock her bicycle and how to unlock it.

Over the last few days of bike rides, every time little Miss Haana had to stop for a water break, or just for rest, the bike had to be immediately put on a stand and locked. In fact, since the garage can not be considered a truly safe place either, the bike is locked up even in the garage.

One cannot be too safe these days! I'm glad we found the right lock for little Miss Haana's key!

Easter Egg Rewards

Easter egg hunt is a serious affair at our house. Mostly for me. Remember a few years back the egg hunt had not been all that smooth? Read about it here and here. Luckily in those egg hunts the organizers had folks doling out eggs to kids who's baskets were empty, to ensure all kids leave happy -a very smart move indeed! We were saved by doled out eggs. I realized hence forth, I shall need to take such important affairs into my own hands-to ensure adequate amount of pressure has been created and that little Miss Haana has been sufficiently psyched up for such events! Certainly parenting at its best!

So, couple days before the egg hunt, in perfect parenting mode, i reminded Miss Haana what the Easter egg hunt is all about - fill the basket with many eggs as she can! Rrruunnn, jump over the hurdles (we all know who they are!), grab the eggs, secure them in the basket and runnnn again!! I repeated for good measure. She was with me!

The day of the hunt came, and little Miss Haana and I placed ourselves on the white line in the field, looking out at the field full of colorful, candy filled eggs, waiting for the hunt to begin. At 5 minutes before the hunt, little Miss Haana needed a bathroom break. I could barely believe it! But then, we turned around and ran towards the restrooms. I thought that was the end of our egg hunt. They'll probably start while we are in the restroom, and all the eggs will be gone in seconds. 'Oh well', i thought to myself. But miraculously we returned just in time, seconds before the count down for the egg hunt. Little Miss Haana's buddy Maurya joined us too.

The hunt began and all the kids were running around grabbing eggs. I followed Miss Haana with my gaze and laughed at how incredibly cute and hilarious these kids looked. Maurya's mom and I laughed enjoying ourselves in the spring sunshine. The egg hunt was a success afterall, both kids returned victorious with numerous eggs. They both sat on the grass, opening their prized eggs, fishing for candy from inside. I made a mental note to make the candy suspiciously disappear once we get home. For now, Miss Haana and Maurya ran around in the sun, there was jumping  at the bounce houses, more running around, more candy eating, ice cream, and the world's tiniest donuts (for which we were in line for a good 30 minutes). Finally, it was time to head home. All with a basket full of eggs; a sign of a very successful and rewarding egg hunt 😊. Happy Easter everyone😊.

Shopping

This is why i don't shop much.

My usual perfume was about finished, so I had to run by the store to grab a new one. I asked little Miss Haana to come with me. She agreed but with demands. I had to get her some glue and craft sticks. This is not the first I had heard of these things, so I agreed.

I made the first stop at a small convenience store, thinking they'll have small craft supplies. I found us some glue. Little Miss Haana ambled in nearby aisles asking me to take more colors (No, you already have too many), or a velvet coloring book (No, we already had one just like that, earlier), or sunglasses (No, you already have these ones) or a kitkat (simply, no). I paid for the glue and we hurried out.

Next pit stop was the store where i get my organic perfume. Little Miss Haana and i made our way to the aisle with a section for the perfumes. I started testing some thinking i may be ready for a change. Little Miss Haana began opening tester bottles, spritzing some perfume mist or rolling some roll-on sticks, on left arm, then right, then both hands, then both wrists. Maybe even the arm pit! By now i could barely smell anything at all!! Now, little Miss Haana was holding 3-4 different perfume bottles in her hand,  "These are for me", she declared. "Gugu, we can't take so many. I'm going to take 1 between the two of us". After more negotiation, she now had 2 separate sized bottles. "Ok, we'll take one of each kind". I looked at her exasperated. When had we ever decided she gets to wear perfumes? We hadn't😋. "I'll take 1, that's it". Now, she wanted to take this one perfume that didn't smell great at all, but had unicorns on the bottle. I somehow got her to choose a different one that i liked, and we hurried out of the store. By this time it was hard to tell if it was the right choice or not, cause I could hardly smell anything at all in the medly of all the perfumes we had sprayed. When we sat back in the car, little Miss Haana told me this was her perfume and only she would use it. I laughed at her!

We headed next to Michael's to get the craft sticks. These are the sticks that are inside popsicles. On the way, i kept suggesting we should just get lots of popsicle and eat them all and save their sticks for crafts. She was not so sure about my capacity of popsicle eating. At Michaels, we both ambled through the store- me browsing through all the Easter decor and activities while Miss Haana was throwing about a hula hoop that had just found a new perspective buyer. We headed out eventually with the craft sticks and hula hoop.

Back home, little Miss Haana immediately acted very mysterious and quiet. My perfume had been taken over and hidden at a safe place. Safe from Mumma's prying eyes or hands. It was gone! Now I'm not laughing at her anymore😊

So, this is why i don't shop much anymore😊

Bird House

Following up on the Tree House story with a Bird House.

Little Miss Haana's friends came over last week eager to build something together. Although, let's be honest here, mostly they were just eager to run around, jump around and play!

I had gotten Dad to order bird houses that they can build and then paint. They started on that right away with excitement. The bird houses were built soon enough and then came the coloring. I left them to work on it, and hoped while they worked on the coloring perhaps i could catch some TV time. After a few minutes, i  heard some giggles and playful banter. I had to forfeit some of my cool mom status to warn them not to play games with each other while they're coloring. After some more close circuit hovering/monitoring (no TV time for me), the coloring was done.

Then the three of them were back to running around and play time. Out of the three of them, we had a knight, a horse (little Miss Haana's fixation with horses continues) and a monster with a sword. After some time the monster wanted to switch roles, but niether the horse nor the knight wanted to be a monster. They came to me with the proposal that i should be the monster. I politely declined. Somewhere in there, they did some math games (strange kids). And then Miss Haana turned on some music. It was around this time that i was made the DJ and requests were made to songs i had never heard of before, and I'm still not entirely sure they actually exist. I don't think i got rave reviews for being a DJ. Few chocolate chip cookies and chips' snack later, the playdate came to an end.

A colorful bird house is hanging on the tree outside. 😊

Tree House

Upon reading several books from the Magic Tree House series, little Miss Haana must have decided she had had enough.

Magic Tree House is a series of chapter books where 8 year old Jack, and his 5 year old sister Annie find a tree house in their neighborhood. They climb in and find several books inside. When they find a picture in one of the books and say i wish to go here, pointing to the picture, everything would swirl around and voila, they would find themselves there! Every book is about a unique adventure they have where they visit different places in all parts of the world, even go back in time. And it all starts with the tree house.

Miss Haana decided she's done just reading about the adventures of Jack and Annie. She needed a tree house of her own. Her dad and her had had some initial conversations around building a tree house one weekend. But then, i heard about it last weekend, when her school friend's mom texted me. Ishaan wants to come over to help build a tree house. That's when i realized she's been recruiting her entire class to build a tree house.

We are going to start small, build a bird house first. Let's see how next week goes!

MAP

MAP stands for Measured Adaptive Progress. It's a test designed to gauge a student's grasp on reading and math; and designed to measure student's growth in the subjects over time. Little Miss Haana's school had them take the test at school for their kindergarten class. I hadn't even heard about it till this Tuesday, when they had an open house. The school had several informational sessions of 10-15 minutes about the MAP test scores. The parents had been give a flier the previous week to register for a time slot for these sessions. I never saw the flier. I think the pet ate the flier (thats my story, although we don't have a pet.. not one that's alive anyway). We went and sat in one of the informational seasons anyway, where the lady talked about how the questions get harder if the child answers correctly, or easier if the child answers wrong- to gauge the level of mastery in the subject. The test is conducted multiple times in a year to map the trend of how the student is doing. The scores are mapped against the district and national averages. And finally the students score is reported with their percentile.

I find myself half cringing at these occasions. I did my K12 schooling at one of the best schools in Delhi. Grades were very important in high school. The value of getting good grades was obvious all along. But what was not so obvious was the value of self reliance; to value what you personally like and pursue that. I do believe different kids have different skills, and not every skill scores high on tests. I don't think children or what they can achieve should be equated with a number/score. For that reason the test scores and percentile numbers make me cringe just a little bit. Hard work is important. But for parents to believe in their little ones' abilities is way more important, i think. Human capability is beyond miracles. Numbers, tests, statistics and even science cannot fully explain how we are able to achieve what we can achieve.

We didn't get Little Miss Haana's test results that day since we hadn't signed up for the session (pet ate the flier;) ). Miss Haana showed us around the school, her classroom. We saw her family tree on the wall, her flip book on Texas where she'd researched and taken printouts of various aspects of the state. We saw her write up about how to learn how to ice skate. We saw her art work. We went to music room. It was a fun visit! She raced around with her buddies like she's never seen them and they'd never been to the school at all!

Today her MAP test scores were sent home. I was telling her they obviously have not been able to measure how naughty she is. That would have broken the test ;)

Meditation

This is a scene related to me, between little Miss Haana and her dad.
Dad was sitting in his room for his evening meditation. Little Miss Haana had been instructed to not disturb Dad while he's meditating. So, she's working on her new app on the iPad where in she can design colorful pages for cards or book covers and print them out on the printer.

At some point little Miss Haana decides to quietly go up to her Dad while he's sitting with his eyes closed. She goes up and sits right next to him for sometime working on her iPad. Then she crawls up to him and taps him.
Little Miss Haana- Papa, Papa!
Dad- (opening his eyes) Suhaana, I'm meditating, don't bother me right now.
H- But Papa, i need your help!
D - Not right now, give me 15 minutes to get done.
(Dad closed his eyes, goes back to meditating.30 seconds later, another tap on the shoulder. )
H- But Papa! I need your help.
D- Suhaana you have to wait, did i not tell you to not disturb me?
H - But the printer is not working. I switched it off and on, but its still not going to printer. It's not working, Papa.
D- Ok, do you like it when i bother you? When i snatch your iPad?
H- (head shaking to a vigorous no)
D- Ok, so don't bother me right now. Wait till I'm done.
H- But Papa, I'm trying to get this to work. But the printer is not working.
D- Are you even listening to what I'm saying? Can you hear me?
H- (weak nodding with ahmm).
A minute passes by. Dad is back to closed eyes attempting meditation. He can hear the little girl sitting next to him tapping furiously at the iPad screen which is obviously not cooperating. Another obvious fact - the meditation is not really working out today!
H- (She's back tapping on Dad) Papa? Papa? The printer is still not working Papa!

Dad decides to give it up for this evening. Goes to check on the printer. 🙄