Its been a mixed bag of year for me. We had a new baby in the family and moved into our own house. Itwas a tough year professionally but somehow I am able to tide overthings and move forward. Biggest joy of the year was Vanathy. She hasbeen too goood and Sibi has taken a very strong liking to her. Sibi hasgot a few prizes this year in fancy dresses and treasure hunts. That wasfun as well as something to be happy about. Hope he continues to do thatin his studies as well. All in all, a good year.
And hoping everyone has a very Happy new yearahead!!

Sibi, trains and stories

One of the things I do on a regular basis is to narrate a story to Sibi before going to sleep. The stories are normally about 4-5 minutes of narration and usually I make up stories as I go about saying it. There are only two types of stories he is interested in. One is any story of Krishna and the other is a story involving one of 'Thomas and friends' characters. Krishna's stories are the easier ones as I know them already. For Thomas stories, I usually make it up with some situations which Sibi faces in school or at home. Like his fights with his friends. Sibi usually sleeps once the story is over. Its kind of a cue to him that its time to sleep. And of course, I let him guess what happens next and some times you get some amazing things from him. Like this one time, when I was narrating a story about Krishna taking butter from a pot with great difficulty and eating it, Sibi asked 'did he eat with the paper?'. All Sibi knows about butter is the Aavin pack of butter sticks (which he usually takes it from the refrigerator and eats) and the sticks are wrapped in a thin sheet of paper. It was kind of sad that he probably may not even know that the real butter (churned from buttermilk) but think it’s the price for living in a jungle like Chennai.

Another regular father-son thing that we do is to go to the Guindy railway station (or sometimes the Alandur railway gate) to watch the trains. Sibi gets excited so much about trains and in fact, has drawn hundreds of pictures of trains in the notebooks, terrace and wherever he can. It is a great experience to let him watch the trains. He knows the electric trains, the 'blue' trains (passengers, super-fast trains etc). I usually end up talking to the others who are there a catch a train and look at me like a moron for wasting time at a station at the whims of the kid. But then what do they know, anyway? I even had a guy telling me the ways of bringing up children and he was drunk up to his brain. So its a mixed experience for me and a great feeling for my son anyway.

There are other things that we do together regularly (like going to the Fish market at Saidapet or to Food world for some vegetable shopping etc) and am waiting for the time when Vanathy will be able to join the fun...