Singapore - Dec 2012

Adi and I made a trip to Singapore during his XMas holidays. One of my oldest & dearest childhood friend , Divya, has been living in Singapore for the last 12 years and has been asking me to come and visit her since then. I always had the excuse of busy at work, not enough leave, etc to give her but this year, once I quit my job, I had none to give at all. With her calling me every week to book my tickets, I decided that I should make the most of my time off and go see her. And with almost every one telling me that Singapore is a great place for kids, I finally made up mind and Adi & I landed in Singapore on December 17th.

Adi was excited way before we left, mainly because he had heard about 'Underwater world' and also one of his best friend from school was also visiting Spore and was in the same flight as us. Needless to say, we had two hyperactive boys in the airport and in the plane - both refusing to sleep and giggling away! Am not even when he went to sleep as I was too tired and sleepy and crashed out as soon as the plane took off.

The first day was spent shopping for a camera for Adi. He had used our Canon P&S camera during our Rajasthan trip and had dropped it several times. So decided to buy a real hardy, shockproof one just for Adi. After a lot of looking around, I finally settled for the Olympus Tough camera which is both waterproof and shockproof (upto 5 ft). The picture quality isn't really great but I wasn't too worried about that. Camera in hand, we headed to Orchard Road. While I was busy ogling at the massive malls and the designer shops, Adi was happily clicking away with his camera. We admired the christmas lighting, took a few pictures and headed back home as we had an early morning ahead of us.

Bubble Gum

When Adi first asked to have a bubble gum (when he was around 4.5 - 5 probably), we did think for a bit if we should give it to him or not. What if he swallowed it, what if it got stuck in his throat, what if he got addicted to it, is it really good for kids to chew gum? But then, like with most other things, we thought it was probably just a phase when he was curious about everything and we should let him have a try. Who knows - maybe he wont like it at all and not ask for another one. So we explained to him what it was, that it should be thrown in a bin, blah blah and let him have a try. He liked it, wanted more and wanted to blow a bubble too! We gave him his bubblegums whenever he wanted it coz he would never chew it for more than 10 mins and always threw it away. But his tries at blowing a bubble was not proving successful and one day he was quite upset. So I showed how it is done and told him that with practice he will get it. The very next day, the first thing he wanted in the morning was a bubblegum. He got it after breakfast and then with serious determination and persistance he set about 'practicing' to blow bubbles. He practiced all day (with several gums) and by the end of the day he was able to blow tiny bubbles and was delirious with joy!! This is has been one instance where we have seen him persist with something he wanted, wish we saw the same when it came to reading too...ha ha!

Adi still likes to have gum once in a while, we still give it to him and no, he has not swallowed any so far!

Sunny Corner

Has been a while since I have either posted or used my camera (except for yesterday when I took pictures for a friend's products) so decided to do both today. Saw Adi sitting at this sunny corner in our study room and found it to be the perfect time and place to take some pictures. Adi had missed school today - apparently his leg was hurting from a fall that he had TWO days back. After an hour of limping around in the morning (when there was still some scope for me to send him to school), he was zooming around the house in his skates!! The hurt had simply disappeared!! :)

Trying To Fit Into Mama's Lap

Told Adi that yesterday was the day he came to WindChimes home from Ashraya 6 years back and his response was 'Boring'!!! And then he wanted to know how big he was then and I told him that he was so small that he could fit into my lap. He straight away jumped into my lap and wanted to check if he still fit in my lap and could sleep like he used to when he was a baby. In the picture, he is not really asleep but just pretending to be :)

First Recipe

Yes, my little "cooker", as he likes to call himself, wrote his first recipe yesterday. While I was having a little nap in the afternoon, I could hear Adi and his friend cooking up something in the kitchen. It's something they do quite often so I just let them be and carried on napping. In a short while, Adi came in with my shopping list pad and asked me to give him a sheet of paper. Very sleepily, I took one off and quickly sent him out to continue with his cooking. When I was through with my nap, I saw the two kids in the kitchen with the sugar, salt, juice containers around them and 9 ferrero rocher chocolates all smashed up and mixed with various ingredients! And then I saw this sheet of paper lying on the mat and saw that Adi had written the ingredients for what he was making - something that he has seen me do often when I take a recipe from the internet. He said that he left out chocolate coz he couldn't spell it and also illustrated the mixing part coz he didn't want to write it. I saw this bit of paper and the wasted ferrero rocher's were completely forgiven!! :)

6 years today

10th Jan 2006 - exactly 6 years ago - we first held our little bundle of naughtiness and ushered an abundance of love, smiles, hugs, happiness and warmth into our home. Every day since this day has been special so we don't really treat 10th Jan as a 'special' day or celebrate it - in fact, I even forgot about it last year!!

This afternoon I told Adi that it was on this day that we first saw him and how happy we were holding this tiny naughty baby. He was thrilled to hear about this and said that he was very happy to be with Papa and Mama too :)

And yes, I have finally managed to explain the word 'adopted' to him. Did it while we were in Singapore last month - although I guess he promptly forgot the word! But it was a word that I was finding tough to deal with while speaking to Adi (although I am very OK using the word 'adopted' and talking about adoption otherwise) and am glad that I was able to finally tell him about it and what it meant. I also met a dear old friend in Singapore who is a counsellor for adoptive parents and she told me that most of the children start questioning about their 'birth' parents and adoption around the age of 6-7. Adi is 6 now and I have had no serious questions from him yet. I guess it could be because he still doesn't understand what it means or does not want to deal with it or is in a very happy place and not worried about the whole adoption thingy. I would like to believe that he is in a happy place - only time will tell :)

I started reading Steve Jobs biography today and this is what he tells of his adoptive parents - "They were my parents 1000%". I hope this is what our little Brat will feel about us some day too because he is our son 100000000000000000000000000000000000%.

Litchi Juice Made Of Grapes!

Quite like making wine out of water, the Brat and his friend Nidhi made Litchi Juice out of red grapes!!! A bowl full of grapes which I assumed would be used for snacking in between play was thoroughly squashed using a garlic press and apparently what came out was not grape juice but litchi juice!!