Merry Christmas

I Am a PreSchooler

Last Name , Vanmali.

First Name, Ankush.

Date, 12/12/2011.

And I AM A PRESCHOOLER !

Yeah, My li'l baby boy has so grown up that he now goes to a preschool.

And he was all soooooo, soooooooooooooooo , sooooooooooooooooo excited like a monkey , about going to school on his first day.

Can you believe that?

Look at him..

Nooooooooooo. I lied.

This was the real him on his first day. All so grumpy.

OH how cute he looked with his new bag on his back.

Ok so lets head to his school now.

Ankush goes to 'Adventure Bay School' in Pembroke pines, Florida.

This huge christmas tree was in the entrance. He was very excited looking at it.

Now lets go his classroom, which just has ten students in his section.

This is the entrance to his classroom.

 

As soon as we entered, he started pointing the door. 

"Amma, let's go out", - No he didn't say that, but I'm sure he was thinking that!

He then started looking around and was pretty amazed to find so many toys around.

His eyes then met Thomas!

No, it's not the class teacher.

No, it's not another kid there.

And No, it's not his friend either. Probably he is:)

It's Thomas, the Tank Engine !!

 As soon as he saw it, he went to play with it. He was so busy with it, that me and his dad deliberately moved out his classroom.

After a while I heard him crying a bit. We heard from his teacher in between that he hardly cried and playing around with all the toys.  And then it was finally 12 o' clock. After 3 hours of impatiently waiting to pick him up outside his class, We finally went in . I guess all of us were now impatient.

He turned his head and looked at us.

No expression on his face.

He turned his back.

He then bursted out crying loudly :(

I don't know if he was happy or angry or tired or hungry or missing us or scared or....Oh I don't know

Probably all of these. There was so much of emotion on his face.

We then took him home and fed him food 'coz it was lunch time.

So this was his first busy day in preschool.

And not to forget , his teacher's name is Miss Caroline and also Miss Nadia.

Wait!!

Wasn't my first teacher name Miss Caroline???

Lemme go and call up mom now...

Yawn

My first try in cartooning titled 'YAWN'

Enjoy.

What a bubbly ride!

So here's the thing.
Give a 2 year old a gun, and he's gonna like it.
Give a 2 year old boy a gun ,that too a one that shoots bubbles, and he's gonna love u, love u, love u forever.
(FYI: 3 love u's in a sentence sounds better than one !! ;))) Go try on someone!)
There's something about bubbles and kids that's so amazing.
Either it's the 'pluck' sound when you burst a bubble or because it flies up in the air with shiny colors on it.
Anyways you never know what goes inside a child's head.

Thinking about the bubbles, it suddenly occurred to me that it's already 1.30 PM and it's december 3rd and it's our wedding anniversary.(Of course there's no connection between the two, but...) It's 5 years already, with the amazing, charming soul mate of mine . Happy Anniversary to us. yippeeeeeeeeeeeee:)) 5 years and a 2 year old addition already! How bubbalicious :) (Ok now don't ask me what it means.)

Think I should go and sleep. It's 1.30 AM for god sakes. Pack up.

It's 5.30PM december 4th. I always try to conclude writing my blog in one sitting, but never happens most of the time. 2 yr old's you see, can be so dire demanding. :(

So everynow and then , my son wants me to shoot the bubbles from his gun.
So I keep shooting and shooting and shooting .
He keeps bursting and bursting and bursting them.

Shoot

Burst

Shoot

Burst

Shoot

Burst ... and on and on and on until I get tired, not him.

It's like maze where you are trapped in it and you do not know how to come out of it.

I keep chanting "Please leave me, I've got work to do" !

And I somehow try to escape from this fiasco. I  try to divert his attention to some other toy and hide all his bubble stuff!

I bet if you're a mom/dad, you must be facing the same!!
If you're not yet a mom/dad, be ready for this!

So that's this big story about a our bubble times.

Ankush is 'Two'

Today my sweet heart of a son turned 'Two'.

He is the spark of my life.

His big little eyes melts my heart all the time.

I baked a chocolate cake covered with mint chocolate ganache.

He was just eager to pull out the lollipops, but he was least interested in the cake itself.

So my little Hero has been making us run around him, worry about him, play with him, dream about him and many more things that nobody else could ever make me do.

It's gonna be double dhamaal from now on.

Rock On Ankush.

We all Luv U:)

Momma Loves u:)

Dadda Loves u:)

New Work...

Having practiced quite a few portraits in acrylics as well as oils, I've always wanted to paint a portrait of my son ever since he was born. Back in India and  I couldn't miss this opportunity to do some painting since my mom's here to take care of my son.

So here's the oil painting of my son.

 

So here's my almost 2 year old grinning away to glory.

You can have a look at some of my other(old) works here.

The other sunday, he was in the park.
He was in the park, in his blue jeans and blue t-shirt.
The t-shirt had a print of a tiger on it's right.
But it was misspelled as 'tigger' on it's left.
But me thinks he doesn't know yet what a tiger is.

Food on his face. Mmm hmmmmmmm .

This is when he gets busy with the birds.
Son turn back. Don't u dare 'Do not disturb me' to me.

This is when my son runs away from his Momma.
Bcoz Momma knows best when to feed him.
And he thinks it's best to run away when Momma wants to feed him.

Is there a smile on your face?

yes, yes, I know that!

Was it my son?

Oh no. I now its me.

Oh sorry.....

It was the  'tigger' , isnt't it?

:)

Crafting for a Wedding

New dresses, New sarees, New shoes, New cosmetics, New jewellery, new this, new that...Pheww......
There was a wedding in the house starting of september and it was helluva fun. We bought all new stuff for my cousin sister's wedding. My vacation has been mostly shopping and traveling until now. Frankly, less shopping and more traveling.

Decorations are prerequisite for a wedding. Be it arathi thali/tatte or gifts to be given to the bride groom, everything is decorated in our household. I managed to do some of the decorations.

Kumkum and turmeric packed like a fish underwater.

Arathi thaal/tatte.  Blue and White are all expired tablets which was lying lazy in the closet.

Another aarthi thaal.

Jaggery blocks decorated as a chair.

Saree Palloo crochet for silk sarees.

Vacation in India has been so occupied until now. One more month to go. Hope this month passes by slowly.

Portrait of a Serial Charmer

My Hubby.

A pencil sketch.

Collages

We moved into a new home recently. Lots of throwing out unused stuff happens before moving out. I had a huge pile of my son's old clothes, card board boxes, scraps of old crafts, this and that which were about to be buried in the dumpster forever when a bolt of lightning struck me.

Yes, I fell on my knees on the floor trembling with a horror on my face, pearls of sweat running down my neck.  And then a moment of silence passed. A silence soo dead that not only could I hear my own heartbeat but I could also hear the acids in my stomach sloshing against its walls. Only then did I realize what a grave mistake I was about to commit. A mistake so unacceptable which would give me a life long  pass to the gates of hell.

How could I? How could I even think of throwing away all the old stuff? Those old stuff which had been someone who had helped us soo much through those times? How could I? (Weeping...)

OK Mrs .Vanmali, Thats enough of fabricating the whole scenario so much so that my monitor just shattered into a million pieces, each piece falling with such a high frequency that the sound blew off my ear drums!!

Anyways, So my idea was to come up with some collage for the new house. And I did this.

In detail.

I cut up my son's old clothes roughly a square/rectangle. And then folded it to give a puffy character. and glued together all such hundreds of pieces.

This green fabric is my son's old blanket. Cute, haan?

Here's another collage that I made with my son's first birthday decorations.

The decorations which I had done are these.

I cut all those triangles into smaller triangles, rolled the wollen thread into a circle. Glued all these together.

Another piece of decor I made ,but it isn't a collage. It is something I did with a gift wrapper and  pieces of cardboard from a diaper box.
I have also used the same gift wrapper in the collage above.

Home decor for less. Who could say that? Elegant, right?

Hope you liked these collages. There is really no need to throw away everything. Most of it could be reused. Only one needs a motivation and creativity to do so. Reduce your waste. Reuse and recycle. Do your bit to keep Mother Earth filth free and clean.

Signing off.