Tuesday, July 12, 2011

This n that...

Saturday was a relaxing day doing stuff at home.  Usually summer weekends I have this feeling that I have to utilize it by taking the kids out some place - usually some place outdoors.  Hiking, zoo, botanical garden etc.  Last Saturday I decided I had to clean out stuff from the garage and so I stopped myself from planning some outing with the kids.  Instead they went with B to the skating arena and roller skated for a couple of hours.  I had to make a couple of calls and then got to work cleaning out at least a part of the garage.  I got rid of a ton of awesome carnatic music cassette tapes.  I had kept them with me not having the heart to throw them out.  But it didn't make sense to keep them for ever since I don't even have a cassette player anymore.  Gosh how times change.  To think that my children would never have even seen a cassette!   After the kids got back, we had lunch and tea and just lazed around doing stuff around the house.  KB wanted to buy basket ball shoes for himself since he has now joined a basket ball class.  So we went to buy him shoes and then on the way decided to eat at a local south Indian restaurant.  We usually don't eat out that often partly because most of the time my mother or my FIL are with us and they can't really eat out.  Plus KB is such a fussy eater that I am always afraid that he will go hungry.  But he agreed to eat dosa and he did OK - at least had half of the kids cone dosa.

Next morning, Sunday, we got an early start to the day and went to the zoo.  KB and KG's good friends came along and we had a great time.  By the time we got back it was close to 9.45 p.m. and the kids were exhausted and fast asleep.  Today, I decided to check out a Montessori school for KG that I had been meaning to check out.  She seemed really comfortable in the pre-K classroom.  I am not happy with the stand offishness of the teacher. There are two teachers and an assistant in the classroom.  The second teacher was friendly and showed KG around the classroom.  KG was in there for about an hour and half.  The director of the school took KB to the KG/first grade classroom and gave him this game to play on his own.  After sometime KB and I peeked through the window to see how KG was doing and she was totally fine.  The director of the school was talking to me while we waited in the playground.  KB was bored but did not want to go inside again to play on the computer.  He stood around following some cotton seeds that were flying around.  We had been talking for about fifteen minutes when suddenly KB came to me and said, "Excuse me, Mamma" and mumbled a whole bunch of numbers in my ears.  I had no idea what he was talking about and told him so.  He repeated it to me a little louder and said, "Mamma, eighteen thousand eight hundred and sixty three plus eighteen thousand eight hundred and sixty three is thirty seven thousand seven hundred and twenty six".  I was totally confused as to why he was suddenly telling me this and I had to quickly add it up mentally to see if he was right.  And he was.  I said, yes, KB, you are right.  He then asked me for a piece of paper.  The director told him to go to the KG classroom and get it from the teacher.  He ran in and wrote it down and brought it to me.  I guess boredom helps! He just randomly picked his huge number and did a mental addition while chasing cotton seeds to kill time!

Tomorrow morning KG's classmate has a birthday party, so KB will also come along.  Summer is just the best! Nearly one month since KB's school ended for the summer and it has been so relaxing.  I thought being home all day with both kids at home would probably drive me nuts.  They do drive me crazy at times with their fighting but overall it has been so awesome.  Just having the time to go places with them without much planning and knowing that we don't have to rush them to school the next morning - it has been so lovely.  Knock on wood!

8 comments:

Padhu Sankar said...

Well written .Drop by my space when you find time

Cantaloupes.amma (CA) said...

WOW .... KB did that math?? God bless ....

Summer is indeed very relaxing ... just the absence of morning madness is a blessing.

You threw the cassette collection ?? It must have been very hard .. right? I hope you converted all those lovely songs to CD before disposing the cassettes ?
You know Noonie, I used to buy empty cassettes from Costco and taken them to India just few years back ... and now they are already extinct !! Technology has grown so much in this decade.

noon said...
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noon said...

Padhu - I love food blogs - will keep checking yours for new recipes.
Thanks for your comment!

CA - CA - yes, he tends to do that. Suddenly one day when we were lying in bed, he said to me - Mamma, I can count by 9s really fast - he just zipped through the 9 times table upto 9x13 in like 7 seconds (he told me to time it!). But I was surprised when he did some random five digit addition mentally when he was chasing cotton seeds. But he wants to do every problem mentally that it stresses him out if he gets something wrong by mistake. He gets so upset with himself. He writes down the answers but he will not write the steps.
Cassette collection - no, I have bagged it all to throw into the recycle trash - but I did not make copies. I don't know how to do it and don't have the energy to fig it out and copy so many of them. So unless there are takers it's sad - they go to the bin. I know - when I was in India I always got my blank tapes from my siblings in the US.

Neera said...

2 posts so close to each other :) Now please don't ask me about my next post!! Please let me have a wonderfully relaxing summer as u r having ;) I can see that KB thinks a lot ..my god reminded me of Ramanujam. He is used to write these letters to Hardy, another great mathematician in England filled with numbers and just theorems and maths facts without any proofs and explanations. And when Hardy would ask him for proofs, he would say I just know these are true ..what proofs! Read another anecdote here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan#Ramanujan-Hardy_number_1729

may be u could tell KB abt these :)

I too hope his phase of nightmares gets over soon. I can feel ur anxiety. :(

noon said...

Arre Neeraji - come on - have your relaxing summer - but tell us (me) about it also every now and then. :) Am going to shame you into posting more often by posting every day! :) Heh heh! Anything to torture you!
Ramanujan - God - KB is nowhere near that kind of amazing genius - he just seems to have a liking for numbers that seems to be emerging now...a little more than for his age but nothing like Ramanujan. God I just don't know how it feels like to be someone like him...to just know proofs in his head...amazing right. You are yourself a Math cat! When you visit us I should hand over KB to you for a few days for him to enjoy some math! :)

BangaloreMom said...

Wow...how do you do this noonie? where do u get your supply of patience from? 2 months of vacation with the kids and i was ready to jump off the nearest cliff!! Am so amazed to read about KB's arithmetic abilities...smart, huh??

noon said...

BM - I don't know why - but I am really actually enjoying it - much more than I thought I would. It is crazy at times when they fight but I still am totally loving it - feel as if this is the best time of my life. Knock on wood.