The Adventures of the Little Indian Girl

My baby's a big girl! She continuously reminded me as we walked to her preschool together! She in fact didn't want me walking her to school either. She wanted to go by herself. When I asked her if she knew where her preschool was, she pointed out the window to the church where it's located saying, "it's there in the church!" (We can see the preschool from our window!)

She carried her heavy bag happily. I was so unnecessarily worried. We ran into her close friend (who's attending just the summer camp there but in a different class) too and so both were happy. Once we reached into the classrom, our relationship came to an end. She seemed so annoyed I was still there. She refused to hear me out and realised maybe if she gave me a kiss or two and a hug I would leave. So, I left. I turned around and cried! My girl has grown into such an independent child. Sure, not in every sense of the word.

It helps to remind me that she IS getting bigger and is capable of doing so much more on her own. Letting go. And yet, I keep thinking she is too young. What if they change her, institutionalize her personality, mechanize her. oh but it's silly. It's a good school. It's a safe school. Good teachers. And so close by!

With that, comes today's part of photo challenge. I was going to show the cool nifty feature of opening the car without unlocking doors. As long as I have my car keys in my purse, or pocket, I just need to open the car handle and it unlocks the door!! Technology, how cool!

But I realised, within minutes of coming home, I could share the whole excitement of first day of school by sending photos, video clips, on the phone with parents, parents-in-law, and N even though they are continents away!! Now that is just amazing!



Thank you to the engineers of this world!!!!! Amazing! You don't know how much this means and how much it helps to cope with the fact that family is far away.

And mom leaves this message, which I never knew on facebook (photo challenge is shared there too). Let me go cry some more. Motherhood is hard.

"chitti, the day you left for Honolulu alone, i too cried in happiness. i could not believe that the timid young girl, smitha, would become so courageous one day. You were going alone, with two huge suitcases. You had to stop at Osaka or some where on the way. You were 18year old then. ma."

Day 13: Can't live without

They forecasted a derecho. Severe storms. Stay home. Be prepared. Almost a year ago we had a derecho pass us through. It was bad. So, everyone was prepared. So, this was easy - power!

Living in India power outages are normal on a daily basis. It's normal part of daily routine. But losing it for over 24 hours was hard! Not when we were kids, we didn't have all the fancy gadgets that needed electricity. I am talking now at this age, where I listed my obsession as the internet!! How I have changed!!

(Morning of the forecast, there was some thunder, lightning, rain and wind. I had signed D up for a program at the nature center and almost cancelled. But when I called the nature center they said they were going on with their program, he called the rain, "just run of the mill normal heavy rain, storm is to come in the afternoon!" So, we went. It was great! The storm did come in the afternoon, but it wasn't as severe as anticipated, no derecho!)

So, of course, everyone (me included) blasts the weather service for bringing up our expectations over nothing (they have been bad snow forecasters too, always erring against caution). I guess we city folks like to complain!



Day 14: Eyes

D has beautiful eyes (ok, I am biased). They are very expressive. We get many strangers saying that. I was hoping to capture one when she is having a meltdown, but thankfully she hasn't had one in a while. I tried getting her when she was happy but she wouldn't keep still!!



Day 15: Silhouette - we saw fireflies as we were coming home in the park close by!! D was obviously very fascinated! Then I remembered I didn't have any photo for today's challenge! Well, it truly became a challenge!! She was jumping up and down and running around! Smartphones are not meant to capture kids' photos!! I wanted the silhouette of just the balloons. But there were also vehicles coming now and then, and although D is watchful, I obviously can't depend on that!

And it looks like we captured some fireflies in our balloon!! (But they are the building' lights!)

Day 11: Something Blue - Our blue glass with a blue straw.

This has become D's big girl glass. The straw was originally to try her to get drink other than mom's. It never worked. She now uses it to drink WATER!! She decided that she is done with plastic and time to move on to glass. She walks around holding on to it with both hands...I try not to helicopter around but it's hard. sigh.

She walks around, taking a sip, beaming, declaring, "I am a big girl now!"

I wanted the sunset pic as these days we are outside to see it. But D was done for the day, saying farewell to grandparents who returned to India yesterday, a fun evening in the pool, and no nap to boot (although we seem to be back to no-nap days).

So, we had ourselves a cranky little girl by 8pm who refused food as she refused wanting to change to pajamas and then to sleep! ughh... But the magic light has been a saviour in many ways. It gets her to go potty before bed.

We got this solar-powered light in my India trip. It has the biggest environmental footprint however! Made in China, sold here in the US (as a garden light), imported to India where they added an "on-and-off" switch to conserve the bulb's life and made it back to the US with me! :) My parents' neighbor is selling them as Diwali corporate gift!

So the lid has the solar panel, during the day I put it out under the sun and it has given us so far 3 nights of light!! More than promised!

---

Speaking of bathrooms. I hope to capture this on video, but D takes her own bath (I sit on the toilet lid next to verbally guide spots she missed). She does a cute little dance motion as she scrubs her body and love how she rinses her ears!!