For papa'...

... who should be landing in Chennai in a few hours.
(In fact he is the one who took the photo, last week)

Bye bye Papa', see you soon...

Today papa' is going back to India and that means you can probably expect more frequent posting for some time.

The kids are at daycare today and said their goodbye to papa' when he dropped them off in the morning.

Here they can see them getting ready for school.The first step is convincing the kids to surrender the balloons left over from the birthday party.

Next is convincing Rajiv to wear his new blue shoes that fit just right instead of the green ones that are still too loose and make him fall.

Then, out of the door. But wait... too much light... "I want my sunglasses!" (Too bad, I think we left them at school last week..)

And now they are almost ready to go. Note the birthday banners still on our fence. Nothing is cleaned up right away at our house, it's a matter of principle.

"Bye!"

And just like that, he was gone...

Sorry, we are busy

I know I haven't posted in a long time, I am sorry about that, but we are really overwhelmed.
Things we are doing right now:

1. Organizing a yard sale for TOMORROW to get rid of stuff we won't take with us when we (sigh!) move
   
2. Arranging for someone to rent our house after we (sigh!!) move
   
3. Organizing (can you say 'disorganizing' in English?) Rajiv and Rohan's joint birthday party for NEXT WEEK - and our guests don't know that they will be our guests, yet
   
4. Arranging for packing and shipping of the stuff that we do want to take to India
   
5. While doing all this and deeply covered in too much stuff, still shopping for a few essential children's books that we don't own yet (ok, that's just me: dad is innocent)
   
6. Doing some of the work that we are actually paid to do?
   
7. Planning a week in Paris on our way to India at the end of August. Ehm, this doesn't sound so necessary, does it?
   

Meaningful - so to speak - posts will resume as soon as I don't need two Starbucks Double Shot Vanilla drinks a day to keep going :)

Papa' is coming!

Papa' ha appena telefonato dall'aeroporto e sara' qui tra un'ora.

Papa' has just called from the airport and will be here in an hour. Appu has decided that the best way to wait for him was to take downstairs his own suitcase and his brother's. Maybe in case papa' needs to leave right away? He had a small accident while pulling his suitcase and banged his foot on a piece of furniture. Normally that would require a kiss, but this time he said that maybe papa' can give it to him, when he arrives.

What is it?

Well, if you are curious you are not the only one: apparently yesterday when the package arrived the two little monkeys tried to open it with (unsharpened) pencils.

I can't tell you what it is yet, but I can show you a pictures of the little brothers in their new Thomas pj's. Too bad they just couldn't sit still, this is the best I've got.

And by the way, papa' is coming tomorrow! We might open the box with him when he arrives, unless he prefers to crash directly on a bed.

Edited to add: ..we did both :)

Chicha's wedding

With the fact that I didn't tell you much about our trip - and just showed you our photo album instead - I almost forgot to share the little video I took at Vijay's wedding in Guruvayoor.

As you will see, I better hold on to my job, because it's unlikely I could make a career as a wedding reporter. I must say though, that I could have been placed in a more favorable spot (you know, somewhere where I could actually see the couple) had I not wasted valuable time looking everywhere for my husband to make sure that he didn't miss the ceremony.

I later discovered that he was there, just on the other side. Unfortunately, he is not in this video, but almost everyone else is. Even the - by then - married couple, in the last few seconds.

To Vancouver or not to Vancouver?

Sono molto indecisa. Verso fine maggio c'e' un venerdi' di vacanza, S sara' qui e potrebbero essere i giorni ideali per una gita sull'altra costa del Canada, che pare sia splendida. Andare o non andare? Si tratta di un lungo viaggio in aereo e non so se ne abbiamo voglia. D'altra parte pero', questi sono i nostri ultimi mesi in Canada: chissa' se si riproporra' l'occasione?

Very undecided. Should we plan a trip to BC for the Victoria day weekend - with papa'!! - or should we just stay home and rest?

Photo Album - Rohan and Rajiv in India

Cliccando su "Read more" piu' in basso potrete vedere le pagine di un libro ricordo del nostro recente viaggio in India. Per ingrandire ogni pagina basta cliccarci sopra, pero' purtroppo per caricare le immagini sul blog ho dovuto ridurre la qualita', quindi le foto non sono nitidissime. Sono graditi commenti! E chissa' se riuscite a scovare nel muchio le foto scattate da Rajiv?

Maybe you have been wondering when I was going to start posting some photos from our recent stay in India. And probably you kind of expected me to start my usual 37 part series of "Pics you have missed" posts. I admit such a thing was on my mind, but then it occurred to me that I could save myself some work (this somehow ended up being a wrong estimate..) and you some pain by showing you the book I have made for Rajiv to share with his friends here in Canada.

Below the fold you will find all the pages of the book in individual jpg files. You can click on the picture to make it bigger. The book was made using iPhoto with one of the standard templates. Even so, it did take a long time to make; and converting each page to jpg format and uploading them on blogger was another epic enterprise. Just to say, I hope you appreciate my efforts :)

Some final notes and disclaimers (see how professional I'm getting?):

Please consider the target audience for the book are Rajiv's teachers, friends and some of my friends here in Canada. If you are a family member you will find some of the captions unnecessary and if you are Indian you might find that I have oversimplified some things or maybe made some plain mistakes - in that case please forgive me and then let me know..

I really like some of the photos. Some other ones are of poor quality, but the purpose was to collect some nice memories and to give a more or less full coverage of the whole trip, so quality was not a very important factor. I have also included a couple of photos taken by Rajiv: I wonder if you can spot them? Let me know in the comments and the winner will get a hard copy of the book or a signed hand print from Rajiv, you choose :)

We have been back for more than a week

But it feels more like a month. Time flies when you are having fun - and when you are coping with two little people and monstrous jet-lag.

Anyway, I still owe you a lot of pictures and stories from our trip to India, but for now let me share some photos that were taken last week while we traveled back to Canada.

Un po' di foto del nostro ritorno in Canada. Le prime tre sono state scattate da Rajiv mentre ci imbarcavamo a Bruxelles. Le altre foto sono state scattate da me durante il percorso in macchina dall'aeroporto a casa. Come si puo' notare, un paio di giorni prima una poderosa tempesta di neve aveva colpito la zona. Adesso il paesaggio e' molto meno invernale, ma la neve cade ancora di tanto in tanto.

The first three photos were taken by Rajiv, with his own little red camera, at the time of boarding the second plane in Brussels.

All the remaining photos instead were taken by me, on our way home from the airport. Just in case you are wondering, no, this is not our car. We haven't fully embraced the suburban lifestyle cum SUV yet..

A couple of snaps of the outside as well, just so you can see the snow left from the recent massive snowstorm. This is the Waterloo exit on the highway. Can you read? As Appu pointed out, we were going "very very fast"... :)

Almost home. This is a view of the new part of the place were I work, to be inaugurated soon-ish. We are a couple of minutes away from our little house.

Bach

Long plane trips can do strange things. We just came back and my older son decided to put some music on. He picked a CD (at random I'd say, but who knows) and seemed to struggled with the player, so I helped him. When the music started he said "Ah, a violin!" and very satisfied he brought a book to the couch to "read" while listening to the music. After fifteen minutes, he is still there.

Archaeology for beginners

Last week we went to Mahabalipuram for a little field trip. I wasn't sure how the kids would behave, but it turned out to be quite a nice outing for them. Rohan was a little suspicious and preferred to be carried most of the time, but Rajiv behaved like a little explorer, climbed here and there and was really sad when he realized that we were heading back home.

The Five Rathas:







Arjuna's Penance carvings and the balancing rock:




The lemonade is almost over - time to go home?

Big Butterflies

We are in Chennai right now. Nonna was with us for a few weeks, but now she is about to fly back home. We traveled a lot and had some trouble being online (think laptop crashing on the floor and internet key breaking into small pieces - the joys of parenthood...) but I have truckloads of photos to show. As usual though, don't wait by the modem.

Just for cuteness, a small anecdote:

We took the kids to see some elephants. Rohan was very impressed and screamed "Butterflies!".

Papa' is The Greatest Dad

Tomorrow we are flying to India to be reunited with papa'. To celebrate, let me bring up a couple of memories.

Italy, Rajiv, three years ago:




Rohan, India, eight months ago:



Papa'- never leave home without him :)

Photos you have missed - part 6 - the final chapter :)

Foto della mattina di Natale e foto della nostra gita a Toronto nei due giorni successivi. Le prime foto sono dello zoo, dove Rohan e Appu hanno trovato le loro due anime gemelle in due cuccioli di orangotango. Le altre foto sono del Science Center, dove Appu si e' divertito a giocare con le dighe e molto altro. Anche Rohan, dopo un bel sonnellino in braccio a suo papa', e' sembrato sodisfatto del nuovo parco giochi.. :)

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Here come the Christmas photos, with only one month of delay.


The first photos are from Christmas morning. I really had to push them to open the presents at first, but then they understood that it was supposed to be fun and played along. Appu of course immediately took complete control of the situation, but we managed to save something for Rohan to unwrap too.



Of course some of the presents were new trains and here they are trying them on the track. Unfortunately, the Thomas train carrying a snowman that Santa had hunted down on ebay for weeks doesn't seem to fit under all the tunnels, so it wasn't as much of a hit as Santa had dreamed. Sigh..




The next photos are from our trip to Toronto, a last minute idea to get out of town around the holidays. We left on Christmas day and spent two nights at a hotel (known in Appu's language as "the biggest tower").

One day we went to the zoo. It was cold, but some of the animals didn't mind and other were kept warm inside. We saw a rhino indoors and as you might imagine his presence really fills the room. Hard to feel fully at ease... :) We saw a beautiful tiger (below) and wolves and polar bears in the arctic section.


But our favorite were hands down the orangutans. There were two little ones climbing around and playing like toddlers. The moms (you see one in the photo) were sitting quietly on the side and every now and then the kids would go to them, drink some milk and then go back to play. Just like Rohan and Rajiv :)
I am sorry for the quality of the photos, the (not so clean) glass between us and the orangutans made it difficult to take good shots in a hurry.





The next day we went to the Science Center. It is a lot of fun for kids and they also have a specific wing for children under six where they can play with stuff that in principle could also lead to an understanding of some science principles. We didn't even try to put it that way to Rajiv of course, but he sure had a lot of fun! His favorite part was playing with canals and dams in the water.




Rohan took a long nap in the carrier with papa', but after that he enjoyed himself too.




Then we concluded our trip with a stop at the Mississagua Ikea store on the way back, as a Christmas present for mamma :)

Papa' is building a house

Yesterday S left for India and we will follow him in a month. Among other things, in this month he is going to make sure that our new flat is finished, so we have told Rajiv that papa' is building a house for us and we will go when it is finished. Of course he already asked "is it finished yet?" after a few hours, so it's going to be a long month.

We are feeling a bit sad, but our friends Andrew and Anna Marie invited me and the kids to a little children party for new year's eve, so yesterday night we weren't alone in an empty house. They are the parents of Kalena, who is Rajiv's best friend - he told me :) . Other two kids were invited and some relatives and we all had fun.

Unfortunately Rohan was sick during the night and Appu doesn't seem to be in great shape either, but we still managed to have some bright (figuratively) moments in our day. It was a rainy but surprisingly warm day and Appu wanted to go out to make his balloon fly in the wind. Finally he decided that the balloon should not get wet, but we still went out, with the boys wearing their rainsuits.



Appu had fun and kept saying "I don't get wet" but as you can't see from the next picture, Rohan wasn't so sure :)




We took a short video for papa'. Enjoy!

Back in Canada

We came back yesterday. The trip was smooth. Some sarcastic genius at the airport looked at our six suitcases and commented "Traveling light, eh?", but his life was spared. Our house is looking good and Appu seems very happy to be here.

We went to see his school today morning and he ran right in. He seems to remember the place from last August - could it be? It was a short visit though, we will see how it goes on Monday when he starts for real.

Pictures from Ooty - Round 3

Last batch of photos!

Ultime foto di Ooty!

The first group of photos is from a little family walk, only the four of us. We saw the train coming out of the tunnel down in the valley and that cheered up Rajiv who had woken up from his nap very pessimistic about life.

Le prime foto sono di una breve passeggiata con solo noi quattro. Con la partecipazione straordinaria del treno che esce dal tunnel! Ovviamente Appu era al settimo cielo.







Papa' is walking Rohan to sleep.

Papa' mette Rohan a dormire.



Bubbles early in the morning.

Bolle di sapone la mattina presto.







And then we run (literally) to have breakfast.

E poi di corsa a fare colazione.




Later, we ride on the little toy train - you have seen the video already.

Il trenino - quello del video.





Just before leaving: Appu with his "ouch" taking gardening lessons.

Appu e' caduto poco prima di partire. Per consolarlo, gentilmente il giardiniere gli ha fatto vedere come si innaffiano i fiori.


And to conclude, a couple of experimental shots with Rohan.

E per concludere, un paio di foto "artistiche" con Rohan, sempre disponibile a fare da modello.