Last of the single digit birthdays!

 She is nine!

At home celebrations again this year - as everybody continues to mask.

- She is growing and every now and then I observe the baby face fading away. Tall but very huggable still :).

- Lot of missing teeth - finally!

- She's doing very well in school - Has joined the high capability - Discovery program at school and is acing it. Loves to read and write. Her writing has just flourished - her vocabulary, complexity of thought and emotion portrayed just blows me away! So very proud of her.

- Wanted a black bike with gears for her birthday - Though she still loves the occassional dresses, I can see the pink and glittler moving into oblivion on most days. Has her own sense of style - for some reason she loves sunglasses :). Still kinda likes jewellery and accessories.

- Minecraft has been big this year. Lot of online gaming with friends. It can be very educational mom, she tells me. Oh well, we know how that goes!

- Restarted swim after the pandemic break, piano doing great. Two big new additions this year - horseback riding and gymnastics!

- I see the obsession with politics easing off as the election madness has died down.

- Guess who is the new selfie queen in the house? My phone and ipad are filled with tonnes of selfies she's been taking! It's very very amusing.

Can't believe we are at the end of the single digits already!

Back to In-Person Learning

 Grade 3: First day of in-person learning in forever.

Echo what a friend remarked, it’s like sending these kids to war or something. Masked, armed with sanitizer, and instructions to keep a safe distance and follow directions at all times!

Oh this world, you have my heart and break it too…

Also, it's a new school for Manya. Earlier this year she got selected for the Discovery program at the school district and while I was on the fence about whether or not she should enroll, Manya wanted to give it a try. All the best, love! You rock!

From the 1900s...

Manya and I were having some sort of an argument (nothing new there) earlier in the day on something totally non consequential when she goes:

“Mom you will not understand because that’s not how it was waaaaaaay back in the 80s”

Me: “what do you mean waaaaaay back”

M: you know like the last millennium, the last century - you were born in the 1900s right!

Me: okay, not really, let’s go back to referring to the time as 80s.

And now I am sitting here and thinking - we were the young teenagers that heralded the Y2K. Remember? This millennium was supposed to be ours but by the time we could make any sense of it we are like already touching 40s. Anything recent in memory is already 20 years ago!!I feel cheated!

Bringing up kids in a racially diverse community...

This article reminded me of the time my daughter thought she couldn’t be a princess and wished she too had blue eyes, blonde hair, and fair skin. Oh how far we have come from there...

We as adults think race is not an age appropriate topic to discuss with kids, surely not preschoolers - but that’s not true. Kids see color - it’s only us adults who are great at pretending that we are blind to it.

It is important to discuss color and race and differences as the conversations organically come up - to brush away our children’s observations as “oh no we are all the same” is not right. Understand the context they are coming from, acknowledge how race and color can affect relationships and reactions in the real world, and then assert that that is not right. Educate them about the science - melanin duh! Based on their age, talk about the economics of race.

And very importantly, tell them stories and history of their own culture - let them see not just the oppression but the success stories - the heroes and the heroines from everywhere.

And finally teach them love and kindness and acceptance for all - we are raising our children in a shrinking world - they are going to show us how to embrace and celebrate differences and thrive because of them, not inspite of them.

Isn't white a color?

The other day, my 8 year old asked me why Kamala Harris was considered the first person of color to be the US Vice President - surely there were other people before her and what if they were white - Wasn't white a color - like black, and brown and yellow?

That was a difficult question - Why do we use the phrase people of color for non whites? Isn't white a color? 

This conversation inspired the poem here. 

Hope for 2021

Manya: Mom, once all this COVID is behind us, my arms are going to be so tired and sore.

Me: Arms? Why?

Manya: Because I will be hugging everyone!

Here's hoping for a year with more hugs and less bugs. Happy New Year!