Lessons In Manipulation

Here’s how li'l one tried to manipulate her father yesterday. She was watching her current favorite ‘Tin Tin’ and I guess was feeling too lazy to get up:

Li'l one: Daddy, if you get me a glass of water I’ll be your darling…. more than mummy’s!!

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Li'l one is extremely fond of her grandfather. Whenever she goes over to spend the weekend or holidays with them, she always has to be in the same room as he (or, at the very least, he has to be somewhere in sight). Even when he goes out he has to take her along. The other day he tried to leave while she was still asleep. But the minute he started the engine, she was up.

She ran out and asked, “Papa… You’re leaving without your princess?”

Needless to say, he had to come back in, wait for her to get dressed, and then leave, taking her along for a drive.

Homework – 1

The holidays have started and Thaïs has a week off from school. Now that she has settled in to the normal school routine, she almost looks forward to her homework everyday.

For example, the other day she switched off the TV on her own and asked me, “So Tana, what’s on for homework today?”

“What?” I asked in shocked surprise.

“I want to finish my homework now so you don’t disturv me when I’m watching Mr. Bean later!!!

Looks like she has her priorities in order already :-)

“Okay,” I said. “Let me get your homework book. What did you do in school today?”

“Teacher… umm… umm… learned us twiangles.” :-)

“Oh… she taught you to draw triangles?” I asked.

“Sorry,” she said, slapping her forehead. “I forgot the word… No. She didn’t er… taught us to draw twiangles. She drew them… I only colored them!”

Who Needs Tissue?

I’m back after a long break.. almost two months, I think! I was just too busy. Illness.. examinations… no internet connection… illness again… they all came one after the other… (This paragraph should have appeared in my last post, but as I keep saying, I’m not that organized!)

Anyway, I spent the last week or so catching up with my RSS reader, now I’m taking a break to write a few lines… a quick update on the latest howlers from li'l one.

Now that she has settled in to the daily routine, I thought she might like to carry a napkin in her school bag to wipe her face and/or her hands after she finishes her mid-day snack. So I asked her whether she’d prefer a napkin or tissue. Her reply, “It’s OK mummy. I don’t need it. I wipe my hands on my dress!”

Ferragosto In Goa - 2008

A couple of times in the past, I’ve referred to this Italian club that I’m a member of. Recently, on the occasion of ‘ferragosto’ which coincides with our independence day, we had a little celebration. We cooked different types of pasta, and also made a Goan sweet called ‘patollio’. We had an extremely enjoyable day.. it was a fun learning experience for many of us. So without further ado, here are some pictures…

We started with the preparation of the sweet. It is a mixture of jaggery, which is basically unrefined sugar, mixed with coconut. I don’t know the exact quantities and what else goes into the mix because it was made a day before by one of our members. (This is not a cookery blog, neither is it a recipe archive… just FYI  )

So anyway, a description of the sweet – a layer of rice paste filled with a mixture of coconut and jaggery spread out over turmeric or jackfruit leaves and steamed. First, you wash and trim the leaves and spread a layer of rice paste over each one.

Then you put some coconut and jaggery mix on top of the rice paste and fold the leaf over to ‘close’ it.

These stuffed leaves then have to be steamed. To eat, simply peel off the covering leaf.

And now, onto the pasta… Make a well in the white flour and pour the eggs into it.

Mix well till it all comes together. From what I remember, there’s no need to knead the resulting dough. In any case, after all that wine, I don’t think we would have noticed the difference 

But you can play around with it, though… 

Divide the dough into smaller, easier-to-handle portions. Depending on the size of the portions, you may need to cut them up to make them a little smaller…

Then take each portion and roll it through the pasta-making machine… Careful! You may need some help here. You don’t want to end up with flattened fingertips… 

There… that’s the way. Now, that’s just the first run through the pasta-maker. You’ll need to put each sheet 3-4 more times to flatten it out to the desired thickness. Or thinness.

In fact, it was so much fun even the kids wanted in on the action.

At the other end of the table, the pasta was sauce was being prepared by our Italian teacher. Here she is, smashing the life out of those tomatoes.

During the entire process, some of us were busy chatting…

… and others were clicking away… 

Since there were about 25 of us, the pasta dough had to be made in two lots.

Ah.. finally we get help from some of the men…

Pretty soon almost everyone wanted to have a go at the pasta-maker.

The kids kept coming in from time to time to make sure everything was moving along smoothly… 

Meanwhile, the salads were being prepared…

… and salad dressings were laid out…

Finally… all the pasta sheets are ready.

And the final product… uncooked, that is.

Now all you have to do is dunk it all in boiling water, a little bit at a time.

Uh.. Where’s the cheese?

I guess it turned out OK…  Kidding… It was fabulous!

My Little Pre-Schooler

Li'l one started pre-school on the 5th of June. It’s been just about 3 weeks and she has started grumbling already. Everyday we pick her up from school and she asks, “school again tomorrow?”

It’s amazing – in two short weeks she has grasped the concept of a weekend. She calls it her ‘holidays’. Every other day she asks, “When are my holidays?”

This is all quite surprising, since she was the one eager to start school. In fact I had planned to hold her back another year, and teach her at home what she would have learned during her first year at pre-school.

Looking through her syllabus for the year, I found that she is already familiar with half of what they’re going to be doing. But ever since she was two, she had been asking about school and how soon she could start. Seeing her cousins go to school, I guess she wanted to start, too.

Her attitude towards school changed once she actually started going. First it was the uniform. She HATES dresses and absolutely refuses to wear them. A three-year-old with a stubborn mind of her own! What’s to become of me as she gets older?!?!?

Anyway, when she found that she had no choice, she relented and agreed to wear the ‘stupid’ dress. (That’s what she calls it! I actually asked the school authorities if it would be OK for her to wear shorts like the boys do, but they refused. Yes, I’m crazy… I know that.)

Second, I think she’s getting picked on in school. This, in itself, is surprising, because she’s normally quite a bully. ;-) Everyday she comes back complaining about how the bigger children pinched her or pushed her. I’m not sure about the pinching bit, but the pushing bit is true since she came home that day with her uniform all muddy. She had obviously fallen down. So we questioned the teacher. Her reply? “Oh, they were just playing.”

And so begin the quandaries of parenthood. Do I step in and let it be known to the bullies how I feel exactly? Maybe shake them till their teeth rattle?? Or do I do nothing and let li'l one handle it herself? Or do I tell li'l one what to do the next time she gets bullied? As in, ‘an eye for an eye’ kind of attitude…. Hmm.. any suggestions?

OK.. enough about school for today. Now, this post seems incomplete without me making fun of my little angel. Here’s a new excuse for not eating that she came up with recently:

Li'l one: But mummy, I can’t have dinner now. I just ate some biscuits.

Me: You ate those biscuits hours ago, it’s dinner time now.

Li'l one: But please… I’m not hungry. If I eat now, they’ll fight..

Me: What?

Li'l one: They’ll fight.

Me: Who’ll fight?

Li'l one: The biscuits… they’ll fight with all the food… in my ‘stung-up’ (stomach)! I might get a ‘stung-up cake’ (stomach-ache)!

License To Drive

Our place is a mess… I guess you could say we’re redecorating. Anyway, after about 5-6 days of not having her toys easily accessible, lil one got creative. Here’s what she did when she felt like going for a drive:

All that driving must have really tired her out…!

Household Chores – 1

In an effort to encourage li'l one to be independent, we had bought her a couple of plastic stools so she could reach the taps to wash her hands, brush her teeth, etc. by herself. Now I’m beginning to wonder about the wisdom of it all.

Yesterday, when I realized that she had been missing for a while, I went around the house looking for her. I found her in the kitchen, standing on her stool at the sink.

I had opened a new bottle of dish washing liquid the previous day. The level had now dropped to the half-way mark. There was a bowl in the sink. It had some a lot of liquid mixed with water and the scrub pad and sponge were soaking in it.

Me: What are you doing?

Li'l one: I’m washing my hands.

Me: With the scrub pad?

Li'l one: No… I was washing my bowl with that. The bowl was dirty, mummy… I’m just helping….

Well, I guess it’s the thought that counts!