Gone to Grandma's

This is a picture of Town Lake Saturday morning. Followed by a picture of Crazy purring on my belly after she and Jo and I napped later that morning.

Your excellent observations will no doubt lead you to conclude that Town Lake looked beautiful and that Crazy is an exceptionally pretty kitty. But even more so this weekend. Because you may notice that there are no children in either photographs.

Gone to Grandma's! So Jo and I went to a party on Friday evening. A relaxed lunch with Jen on Saturday. followed by a lovely long dinner with Amanda and Gordon. And plenty of naps in between.

Meanwhile, Carol's house is surely a mess from Vivian's constant projects and her (Carol's) ears are probably hurting from Evan's constant yammering.

Our Weekend Their Lives

The kids' school celebrated Peace Day and Vivian and Evan wore white shirts to school on Friday. This is the before picture. A parent from school who saw this posted on Facebook said that I should have posted an after picture too. True - the shirts didn't look very white or peaceful by the end. But Vivian is learning about Hiroshima and the atom bomb and it's all good. 

And on Monday after school and taekwondo and new braces for Vivian, we went to Teo's for gelato to celebrate Eleanor's ninth birthday.

In between we had a 3rd grade social at Central Market, drinks and socializing while dropping Vivian off to a sleep over, more drinks and dinner with Vivian and Evan's Grace Garden friends' parents, even more drinks and a pool party while supposedly planning a Girl Scouts camping trip, and an event to dedicate the new fake turf on the football (of the soccer variety) field at the school.

I need my life back. Don't do it, Chase!

Homework Blues

My level of hard-ass-ed-ness and poor attitude got me fired from asking Vivian to do her homework pretty soon after the start of the new school year. Jo is my replacement. This is the note that Vivian handed Jo before marching off to her desk and slamming the door behind her.

For those without dyslexia, I will translate:

"I was having a fine day when you had to just come in a say all that stuff about home work and now my whole day is ruined and it is all because of that"

 To Vivian's credit, this is a far better option that throwing her self down on the floor and crying. And she did get the homework done by herself.

Evan on the other hand finally has real homework and doesn't need to fake it. And he relishes doing it joyously partly because he likes to but mostly because he gets to rub it in Vivian's face.

Reader

In addition to understanding sarcasm Evan is growing up in other ways too. Suddenly he loves to read. Spanish preferably but English too. This afternoon I caught him reading the school year book while waiting after taekwondo. Vivian got him into it. She pulled out her old Spanish books and started reading to him. Then she encouraged him to read by himself and patiently helped him and gently corrected his pronunciation. She's surprisingly a good teacher though it does help that he's taken to it very well. 

Ding Ding

A few months ago Jo got the first of Jasper Fforde's books. Since then we got the second one, and number three is on order (it's not out yet). The books are funny. In the second book, Jennifer's young assistant Tiger (Jennifer is only 14 herself) is given a magic sarcasm globe as he is lowered into a dark well using magic. To light his way down the well he has to say sarcastic things (like "Oh - I feel so safe here"). This sparked something in Evan and he began to understand the concept of sarcasm which has completely baffled him thus far. In the last few days, when I say something over the top sarcastic, Evan yells "Ding ding! The sarcasm globe lit up". But it really has to be over the top.

Yesterday after lunch Jo and I were talking about an email exchange with Chase about kids. I had told him that if he decided not to have children it wouldn't be the end of the world. Jo sweetly said "But it would be the end of the world if we didn't have our wonderful children."

And Evan yelled out "Ding ding!"

Vivian's humor is getting more sophisticated too. Last weekend Jen and Travis were over for dinner. After dinner Evan politely asked "Can Evan have another cookie?" Jen asked "Does he usually talk about himself in the third person?"

And Vivian responded drily - "Yes. Just like The Donald".

Tooth Fairy

Evan lost one of his bottom incisors finally. It was practically dangling for days and then it finally fell off one evening. He has two other wiggly teeth that are taking their time. Meanwhile Vivian finally asked me to pull out one of her dangly canines which I did by grabbing it with a kitchen towel and yanking while Evan and Ava held her hands for moral support. Which left her with two more wiggly canines that needed to go.

Till this afternoon. The dentist obliged for a fair sum of money what I did with a kitchen towel for free. And he used nitrous and Jo got a taste of a tipsy Vivian - very giggly and silly. Then the dentist attached Vivian's brand new braces. Vivian is excited and has a great attitude and we joke that given all the metal in her mouth she'll need extra care to get through airport security.

Here's her selfie with braces.

Now we have a long list of things Vivian can't eat, a more prosperous dentist, and a super busy tooth fairy. 

Head Found

In better times I would have posted this photo on Facebook with a caption like "Head Found in Laundry Basket". Vivian and Evan have found new joy in doing laundry because they get to play this game before they drag their dirty clothes to the washer.

But it's been a hard year for children, specially migrant children. Several months ago we saw a wave of kids from central American making an expensive and hazardous journey to the US border, their parents scraping together money from selling limited family assets and gambling on the lives of their children because this path at least had hope. Now several million people in the middle east and north Africa are on the move, thousands dying along the way.

Vivian and Evan - in the time you grow up, how will history consider the lives of these humans? Did we fail and is the world a more wretched place? Or did they succeed in securing a future for themselves and hope for their children? 

Ewdards

Yesterday we sat out and had a slow dinner for about five hours on the back deck. Wine and grilling and smoking cigars. It will get warm again, but it was a first whiff of fall.

This morning Jo and I checked the temperature - it was 61 degrees a few minutes before seven. Normally after a late night we'd let the kids sleep in a bit. But we opened all the windows and hustled the kids out doors so we could enjoy the coolness. After eating Taco Shack tacos in the back yard we headed to Edwards park with Karen, Ava, Zinnia and Tulip and Nala.

It was lovely outside. Physically, I suppose the place looked very similar to how it did yesterday morning when it was almost 20 degrees warmer. But it felt so much nicer being outside this morning.

After splashing around in the creek for a while we walked up the chalky limestone escarpment. When we came to a nice viewpoint, I asked Ava, Vivian and Evan to pose for a photo. Even flatly refused. I had about taken this photo of Vivian and Ava when Evan jumped out in front of them yelling "Photobomb!". Karen's photo follows - which captures that moment. 

Khannas

This is Simran and Vivian from this summer at the Belmont - a nice grocery store in Wakefield, Rhode Island. I agreed to Vivian's pleas to let her walk across the parking lot to a Starbuck's with Simran and get herself something to drink. Non-caffeinated. When they returned to the Belmont I forgot to check what she had bought. Being around Simran makes Vivian feel very grown up.

Simran was about a year older than Vivian is now when Arjun was killed. I didn't see much of her before then. Even when she was around, I didn't really pay attention. Then Arjun died. A few months later Vivian was born and I became introduced to parenthood. And I looked at Simran with more interest as she grew.

Yesterday Simran and I got tea at the Steeping Room. Simran has turned into a confident and intelligent young adult somewhere along the way. And she is heading off for college abroad tomorrow. Good luck Simran and your father would be very proud, just as I am sure your mother is.

But, as one young Khanna leaves Austin, another one arrives. Arjun's nephew is going to "gaming school" at UT. When Vidhvat was about 17 and Vivian was a year and a half old and we met his family for lunch at the Delhi Golf Club, Vivian famously rested her chin on her hands and looked Vidhvat over and said, quite loudly, "What a man".

Here's a rare photo of the next generation at Torchy's Taco from last weekend. Evan isn't morose. He just has his photo face on.  

Dresserology

There are many ways to predict one's future. In ancient Rome, haruspicy was used (study of an animal's entrails) to warn Caesar about the Ides of March. Tea leaves, bumps on your head, your poop, your bottom, as well as more traditional methods like reading your palm have been and are often used.

I am proposing a new one. A study of a person's dresser. The top photo is of Evan's dresser. The bottom one is of Vivian's.

I predict that years from now Evan will have a clean desktop. And Vivian won't be able to find her car keys frequently.

Old Monk

On August 13, Manju (aka Mummy, Rajeeta's mother) turned 80. To celebrate, after cake Vivian and Evan put up a little show with some help from the ladies. The music they selected was "Mother Earth" - a new agey favorite that Vivian and Evan often dance to when at the Shah's.

No formal choreography or preparation preceded the dance. Evan spontaneously draped himself in this scarf and sat down in the middle of the carpet just like that and the others danced around him while he assiduously maintained his little Buddha pose.

I should worry more about this little one.

(thanks to Preeti Masi for the photo)

Tito

Vivian can spend all day listening to someone else read to her, but she is not naturally inclined to read except when it's past bedtime and she uses the feeble glow of her nightlight to read another few pages of a Cam Jansen mystery.

Even more so with Spanish. But that hasn't stopped Jo from buying up every Spanish book at or around Vivian's reading level - which arrive via Amazon in the mail daily. Once recent delivery was a beautifully illustrated book on Tito Puente. Each page had a couple of paragraphs in English and then the same thing in Spanish. We were at Carol's on Sunday morning and Jo asked Vivian to read for a few minutes before her cousins arrived from church. No go. Even some tears.

So we switched tacks. "How about a play? You and your cousins can act out Tito's life and you can read the Spanish portions of those pages by way of explanation." 

She agreed with some enthusiasm. So this is them later. They are doing a mambo dance. Vivian has borrowed a shirt from Carol's closet because it must be what she thinks women wear when they dance the mambo. And she got Grace and Kai and Evan (with a wooden spoon and a frying pan, as in the book) to help her enact the life of Tito. 

Getting Old

I'm not sure whether it's Vivian and Evan going to school or Jen reintroducing me to my workout after a two month break but I am napping a lot. I found this photo in my phone the other day. Vivian later admitted to having crept up and taken it while I was napping on the couch.

Meanwhile Jo is getting into the swing of things. Here are her notes from her proposed itinerary for a trip to places that are disappearing. The Taj Mahal shows up though we've been there twice because "Evan was so young he doesn't remember". I propose we take Vivian and Evan out of school for a year, get ourselves a Spanish speaking travel companion, and go for it. We'd be happy to meet up with friends and family at different places. It'll give Jo something to do while I nap.

Random Drivel

Crazy refuses to not lay in the newly planted grasses in the front yard that we are desperately trying to keep alive in Austin's scorching summer heat. Jo has resorted to putting tiny twigs in the ground so they stick out like sharpened stakes to discourage her but so far this strategy isn't working. Crazy is now spending all her outdoor time in the grasses.

Meanwhile I found an email with this subject line in my mailbox. "Putin Forewarns: Obama Will Not Finish His Second Term Church Leaders Secretly Preparing Treacherous Takeover Of The U.S.". I wasn't curious enough to open it. In hindsight, Crazy destroying the grass won't seem like a big deal, at least not in the world according to Vlad.

Now that school is in full swing Vivian and Evan steal playtime with Ava, Eleanor and Theodor when they can. Homework is already a sore topic. The Mandarin teacher is a hard ass and she wants the kids to practice 10 minutes of Mandarin each day. Vivian doesn't mind that. It's reading Spanish that she hates. And Evan is getting completely exhausted by this Kindergarten thing. He falls asleep on most days in the car on the 10 minute ride back from school, naps for an hour or more, and still gets to bed and crashes when it is his bed time.

We are getting used to school schedules slowly. I am not dropping or picking the kids up as much as I do because Jo seems to have a meeting or a need to see someone at school after drop-off or before pick-up often. She is on the parent association board and is no fun to talk to after these meetings. At home laundry has taken over our lives and if our fair decorator could see how we have redone the living room in shabby laundry style, she'd have a conniption. 

Today I turned on the radio just as I pulled into the driveway. Terry Gross was chatting with Louis C. K., who said "The biggest gift about becoming a father is knowing that you are the second most important person in the world". When I see Vivian or Evan being selfish or petty about something, I get impatient. But then I figure I'd better not hold my breath. It's going to be a while before each of them come to the point in their lives when she or he isn't the most important person in the world.

Day Trip

Last Saturday after the visit to the Thinkery to see Google's self driving cars we drove on to Katy for Hailey's birthday party. I managed to avoid Chuck-e-Cheese's for most of the duration of the party and hid out in the Starbuck's next door but eventually but did go over and meet the kids there. Evan and I played a shooter game. We were escaping pirates and had to shoot our way through giant crab and piranha attacks. Fun. Then we took our "annual professional photos". As you can see, the photo booth at Chuck-e's had a hard time adjusting to the difference between Jo and my almost identical skin tones. Evan and Vivian's photo turned out much better.

Back at the Petrino's, Patrick and I watched the season opener for Montana while Laura and Jo chatted and Vivian got dressed in Hailey's dress-up dresses and the kids played. Then we overstuffed ourselves with Patricia's most amazing roast beef and dumplings, had a rare cup of coffee, and drove back to Austin while Vivian and Evan gently snored in the back seat.

Self Driving Cars

Google has brought it's fleet to self driving cars to Austin to expose their algorithms to some friendly Texas driving. And the good folks from Google at the Thinkery one recent Saturday morning were more than eager to explain the wonders of the self-driving car to the kids.  But then a Thinkery person brought out a dollar bubble maker and the kids were instantly disinterested in the billion dollars of research that the self driving car represented.

Afterwards we walked across the street from the Thinkery to the park (dodging cars in the crosswalk that wouldn't stop, and wishing for self driving cars) where the kids played. Then they posed for a photo by Nessy in front of the park - you can see that Evan has his photo-posing face on.