Kids & Percentages

Me: Howz your pain? Do you want to take the pain medicine?

Shaurya: Naah.. today, it has not been more than 18%

Me: 🙄

Last weekend, Shaurya fell while playing and has ligament damage on his left wrist. He is doing fine and recovering slowly. His response reminded me again of the funny ways in which he sometimes assigns totally random and seemingly accurate percentages to stuff. It's never 10% or 20% or 80%. It's 12.5% or 18%(like above) or 82%. 

Once I had tried to understand how he reaches these figures; he had a pretty logical reasoning. For example, he comes to 18 because it's more than 10 but less than 20. However it's tending more towards 20 - nearer to it and hence the number.

Kids I tell you; you learn something new everyday!! 😂

We will see

These are strange times that we are all in; with a focus on keeping ourselves and our loved ones safe from Corona. The lockdown has been a great opportunity; fun at the start, difficult in between but now we have all started accepting it as the new way of living. It's been even more challenging for parents of young kids - keeping them entertained while trying to keep them away from gadgets.

My 8 year old is having his regular school online since end of March. He is online from 9am to 2pm. Thankfully he has lot of breaks in between but it's still a lot of time in front of a laptop. After school hours are spent reading, playing with his board games, legos, etc. But with no more playtime with his friends, some more time is spent in front of screen - Netflix, Video calls with family back home in India and online game with his friends.

We try our best to reduce it and he tries his best to get more :-). So one day, he asked me if he could play one round of a game and then have video call with his mausis (my sisters) in the evening. I told him we will see later. He immediately started quoting a scene from 'Pursuit of Happiness'. He told that in the movie, when the kid asked his father if they will go and watch the football match, his father told 'We will see'. Then the kid told 'That means No'.  I told my son it's a movie, then he threw back my own statement that it's based on real life. He went ahead and gave another example from the book 'Chronciles of Narnia' - when parents say 'We will see', it means never. ;-p

I have to say he's not exactly wrong! But M told him when your parents say 'We will see', it means we will discuss it later and agree with conditions. M to the rescue as always :-D

Done & Dusted.. And Super Happy!

On 10th March, I completed by first ever 10K Run in the Pune Womens Half Marathon. Yeaaaaaaa!! :-D As you can see, I feel super happy. 

In my earlier post, I had outlined a somewhat practical plan that I had put in place to prepare for it. Though to be honest, I could not stick to it to the T. The plan to increase my running sprints could not be achieved; in fact it reduced as I caught cough and even making 1-2 rounds made me have fits of cough.  But my walks were regular and I used to walk 4-5 kms at a stretch for at least 5 days a week. 

As the D day approached, I had my reservations but then my aim was just to complete it and hopefully have a decent time. I wanted to avoid being the last one to cross the finish line :-) The reporting time was 5.45 am and flag off was at 6.45 am. We put 2 alarms - 1 for 4.45 am and 1 for 5.15 am to wake up and start from home respectively. Though we woke up as soon as the alarm rang - we realized it was 6 am. Both I & M had somehow missed the earlier 2 alarms and woke up later to another one set by M (for God only knows what!). We scrambled to get ready and reached the venue just on time. I reached the start line at 6.43 am.. phew!!! :-D

Since there were 3 different categories of event - 4K fun walk/run, 10K Run and 21K Half marathon, there were so many enthusiastic participants for the event. The energy level at the venue was amazing. Women and girls of all age groups, shapes and sizes had participated. There were a few mother (late 20s-early 30s) - daughter(6-8 yo) duo as well as few old ladies (in there 60s-70s). It was quite motivating to see a new mom participate and she completed her Run pushing her baby in a pram along with her. 

As soon as the run started at 6.45 am, I started with full josh as well. Started with a Run and then slowly once I tired, I started brisk walking. After a couple of minutes, I again started running. I did this intermittently till the Finish line. The venue as well as the stretch where we had to run was a beautiful road lined with lush green trees; the weather had a nice little early morning chill; at regular intervals, there were people cheering us on; and coupled with the spirit of the participants, it was a great experience!

M was so excited as I finished the run; he was waiting for me at the finish line.. ready with his phone camera :-D. I took 1hr 29 min to finish & feel quite ecstatic as my goal was to complete in 2 hrs. The sense of accomplishment I feel is frankly a little too high. :-p Can't wait to participate in more such events..... have too many changes going around right now and life's hectic but am so looking forward to taking it up again once everything settles down. Fingers crossed!

Khub Ladi Mardani..

Not really satisfied with the title of this post but can't really think of anything else.. Anyways here I begin.. So Shaurya's school - TAS had their annual concert on 26th Jan last month. This is the second annual concert of the school since he started Primary in here. Even last year the event was amazing and we were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the event and how the school management, teaching and non teaching staff handled everything. They actually give you a program schedule as you reach the venue :-D. The more I say about how great the school events are, the more I will miss... Let's just suffice it to say that it continues to improve year on year.

Program Schedule

This year, keeping in sync with the Republic day spirit, the theme was India's heroes. 4 Heroes from the annals of our history were shortlisted for different grades. I loved the performance of each & every grade. Though my son is in Grade 2 and their play was great as well, I absolutely loved the play of Rani Laxmi Bai by Grade 1.

It covered all the major aspects of Rani Laxmi Bai's life and the girls who acted out her character were brilliant. The dialogues were superb, the music hauntingly beautiful, the LED back-screens that were used to show the location of the various scenes were selected with great care and made you feel as if it was being played in that actual place. One of the things that I like best about any TAS event is the music. The music teacher - Savio Sir is amazing. In all the plays, at the end they have curtain call and then all the participating kids come on the stage together and sing a song based on the play. At the end of this play, they sang "Khub ladi Mardani... " The kids sang the entire song.. I have just put a few lyrics of the same below.

The play was so heart touching, I got overwhelmed in quite a few scenes.. believe it or not, I cried in those scenes. :-( And when the kids sang the "Khub ladi mardani" song at the end, tears were continuously streaming down by cheeks; I had to bite my fingers to ensure I don't start sobbing and hiccuping. I dread to imagine what the parents sitting behind and beside me thought of me. Good thing I didn't know them!! Grateful for small mercies ;-p

In a nutshell, a great play and even greater event that was done beautifully under the leadership of their Principal. Mrs Neerurkar Ma'am. (On a side note.. Shaurya says his principal ma'am walks like a Queen.. and she does; guess the effects of having a military family.)

On another side note... I am so looking forward to watching the movie Manikarnika over the weekend!

Aiming for My First 10K

On an impulse, I have registered for a 10 KM Walk/Run at Pune Womens Half Marathon 2019, though it will only be walking, no running for me ;-p. I registered at the end of Dec and at that time I was regular at my morning walks and thought setting a goal of this 10K event will be a good motivator. As it is scheduled in early March, it would give me some 8-9 weeks to prepare.

We had gone to our hometown in Odisha for December Holidays and after a good break of 3 weeks, I fell sick once back home in Pune. It took me a week to recover from viral flu, post which I caught a nasty ear infection. I had to start antibiotics for this and again it took me some own good time to bounce back to normal. 

So now with 4 weeks to the 10K event, I have started on my regular walks again. Though I will not be running, I have started short sprints of 1-2 mins of Slow Run aka Jog followed by 1-2 mins of walk. I do about 5 sets of these. And remaining time, I just concentrate on walking. My plan is to gradually increase the slow runs to 2-4 mins, with 1-2 mins of walk in between. I have not walked 10 km at a go yet, usually its a walk 3-4 kms at one go, but I hope to target to walk 5 km next week and then slowly increase it by another 2-3 kms in the next 2 weeks. I don't know if I should try & walk for 10 km before the event as well. Lets see, my training is evolving as I go. 

I want to be practical in my approach - just aim to complete the 10K event in a decent amount of time. On the D day, I want to complete it and not give up midway owing to fatigue. Wish me luck!

Our own BBC

Let me begin by clarifying that this post has nothing to do with 'The BBC'. Since as long as I remember, we have used the term 'BBC' to describe a person who cannot keep in any information or news and just broadcasts everything to each and everyone.

At our home, we have our very own BBC aka my son, Shaurya. With Shaurya, both M and I have a rule of not keeping any secrets or information hidden from him. If we are planning something which impacts us as a family, we share it with him and involve him in our excitement. In view of this, we tend to discuss things freely in front of him. M and I are careful not to talk about private stuff in front of him. However there have been few fun and few not so fun instances where Shaurya has announced stuff to all and sundry about the happenings in our life! '. 

In my last post, I mentioned about how he could not contain his excitement over M's birthday surprise and just blurted it out at the last moment. :-) Last year, we bought a bigger apartment in Pune and had plans to move in there this year. The day we booked the apartment, we were super excited and so was the kiddo. And he went ahead and told this to few of his friends (and their parents) in our current apartment society on the same day itself. So much for sharing this with our neighbours gradually. 

A not so fun instance happened in our recent trip to our home-state for the December holidays. M was driving my papa's new car and it got a little scratch on it from a motorbike. As haurya was also travelling in it when this happened, we told him to let M break the news to nanaji and not him. He agreed to it. We reached home and got out of the car; papa was standing in front of the shop. As soon as we got out, Shaurya starts with 'Papa, now tell Nanaji what happened!. Tell now! Tell! Tell!'. Though I felt bad for M & papa (for scratch in the brand new car), I immediately went inside the house before I burst out laughing. :-D

You would think that by now we would have learnt our lesson but guess we are late learners. In our professional life, we are getting a very good opportunity for which we may need to move out of India. Since this is a major change for us, we have been discussing the pros and cons of this. We asked Shaurya as well how he would like to move to a new place and kind of getting him to look up to the possible change. We should not have been surprised when one of our neighbour (parents of Shaurya's friend) asked us if we are moving to so and so country.

I guess we need to start working on telling him about the concept of 'family surprises' and keeping it a surprise till the 'right time. Will begin to start working on it ASAP.

PS: I can't believe..actually, you know what.. come to think of it, I CAN believe the last post I wrote was in Aug-17 and nothing since then! I just have one reader and she kept on encouraging me to write something. But being me, it just kind of skipped from my radar. And honestly 2018 just flew by! This post is for you Amu... :-); I will plan for some late posts from 2018.

Surprise Planning & Shaurya

So it was M’s birthday on 9th and I was working along with Shaurya for a surprise midnight celebration – it’s not exactly a surprise anymore though as we do it every year... maybe I can skip it one year and then it will truly be a surprise when nothing happens at midnight!! ;-p

On the evening before, I & Shaurya went out and bought a cake and flowers. Shaurya had already made a greeting card.. he made the card, decorated it with my help and wrote the birthday message himself and his gift to M was “200 kisses”. When we reached home, I kept the cake inside the fridge and hid the flowers, cards & our gift in Shaurya’s room. I had been telling Shaurya that it’s to be a surprise and we will celebrate the birthday at night. Frankly he has been doing pretty good in keeping the secret and I was pleasantly surprised when he didn’t tell M about his card or the Gift that I had ordered.

Since he was holding it all in really well, I was not at all prepared for what happened when M reached home. No sooner had M crossed the door, Shaurya jumped up, ran to the kitchen and covered the fridge with his arms yelling.. “Don’t look here.. there’s nothing inside”. We were so surprised that it took us a minute to realize what he said and then both I & M burst out laughing!! :-D He went on to uncover yet another surprise by running to his room, blocking the entrance and saying – “Don’t come inside this room either” :-)

In the end, I am just thankful that he held on to it for so long.. we had been planning for the gift (photobook and coupons) since 2 weeks and it was great that it did not reach M's ears till the last day. Shaurya was super excited on the last day and getting the cake just did it for him - he could not contain it within him anymore. A memorable uncovering of the surprise to be sure!