Amiya Gupta, Graduate

So, today was the day. Amiya graduated from preschool. It was very exciting stuff - for her! Vinay and I were guardedly excited. It's hard to balance our beliefs that finishing preschool is really not that much of a challenge v. the frenzy that seems to be taking place around her. Balloons, flowers, freakin' class rings!!!!! For preschool!!!!!

Anyway, off we went for her little ceremony. She wore a cap and gown and looked like a mini-version of what I imagine she'll look like when she gets her real diplomas twelve and sixteen (and twenty and twenty-three) years down the road. It was a little odd, really. A lot of the girls had curls and pigtails and the like - but Amiya chose to wear her hair down with a string of pearls. She really does look older to me!



Here she is with her teacher, Miss Amina. Miss Amina has been fabulous this year and Amiya is going to miss her terribly. We're almost to the point of tears on a daily basis because she doesn't want to leave Miss Amina.

And here she is after graduation, enjoying an ice cream cone at the ice cream shop. All in all, a very good day!
And, in a very important addendum to the graduation hoopla, we opened Amiya's portfolio to find that she has been given the Math Superstar award by Miss Amina. Vinay, who had been rolling his eyes almost constantly all night long, couldn't hide the way his chest puffed up with pride upon hearing his daughter got a math award!

Love Notes

Amiya is all about writing right now. It's fun, it's a little bit amazing and a whole lot adorable.

I found this one pinned up to the fridge one morning:

I love you You are miye favrite Mom

This was a message written to me one day while on the phone. I was urgently needed in the "livin" room:

Aftr your dun come to the livin room

Vinay and I went out one night this week and came home to find these waiting by the front door for us:

I love you you are sowe impowrtd to me thak you for beeyign such a mucus Momy. Love, Amiya

Her use of a comma completely negates the fact that she called me a mucus Mommy. The next morning she read it to me and mucus somehow became marvelous. I'll take it!

And this was Vinay's:

thak you such a nuyus dady. Love, Amiya

She knows her Daddy! He likes brevity better than almost anything else in the written word! But how come he didn't get called mucus?

And finally, this one is for Miss Amina on Graduation Night:

You are one of my faovrite preeskool teecher(heart period) thak you for beeying such a wardful teecher

This Extremely Long Pause Sponsored By...

Gastroentiritis!!!

That's right. We were all very down and very out. All four of us seemed to have different bugs, so we had varied responses, but it's only in the last two days or so that things are (somewhat) back to normal. That's not enough of an excuse, I know, but we're back (for now) with a big update and a whole lot of pictures!!!

May has been a lovely month - the first part was fantastic, not too busy, not too calm. The second half (minus the bug) has been the same. And right in the middle? Mother's Day!!! My three favorite people made it into a three day weekend with Friday at Disney World and Saturday and Sunday at the beach! It was fantastic! (Although it's hard when four people are in one hotel room and the littlest will only go to bed when the others go to bed. I'm not sure when the last time I was in bed and asleep by 8:45 was, but hey, it's all part of the big picture!)

On the teacups at Walt Disney World. Amiya, excited. Kev, trepidatious.
Trepidatious? Nah, it's all good!

"Miss Mary Poppins? I have to tell you you are my very favorite Disney character ever!!!"

Vinay says he'll need some motion sickness medication before he does this again with Amiya!

Mother's Day Morning. The best ever.

And then there was other stuff, too! April saw Amiya studying the solar system at school and she is very, very into it. We may be heading to the other coast again to catch the shuttle launch this coming weekend. Did you know they're retiring the shuttle in 2010? The timing for this launch (if it isn't scrubbed) is really good for our family, so we hope to make it!

Amiya's solar system project. This was just for "fun" she said - it wasn't a class project. The balls are polymer clay that she rolled and baked on sticks, then the orbital paths are Daddy's idea and not true to scale or shape, but helpful for a bunch of 5 year olds to visualize what is going on. She's very proud of this project!

Kev continues to grow and is slowly adding words to his vocabulary. We had his hearing checked earlier this month and learned that he does have some hearing loss in his left ear, however it is not significant enough to warrant a course of action at this point. We may find out that he has no loss, he just skewed the tests when he wouldn't quit wiggling at the first appointment. His speech is within the normal range for his age and so it seems we're too worried about nothing, but holy crap does he get frustrated when he tries to tell us something and we just can't get it.

Swimming lessons are progressing as expected. He is fearless in the pool in our neighborhood. It's going to be a loooong summer with him if he continues to jump in, walk in, fall in, etc. The good news is that swimming is making him take beautiful naps and lovely night time sleeps:

How can that be comfortable?
And I'll throw this one in just for good measure. How can she sleep like that?

Amiya and Kev are definitely fully into the love/loathe phase. If she even looks at a toy that he's playing with he shrieks like a zebra being felled by a lion. It seems to occur a great deal when I'm on the phone, but it's by no means limited to those occasions. However, upon waking from a nap, Kev doesn't want me - I'm the mean Mom who put him there! He wants Didi and only Didi:

Isn't she the best? She eats this up!

And she pulls him around for hours in his little wagon.

By the way, do you notice her very dirty dress? I sent her to school in that dress in pristine condition and she came home looking like a chimney sweep. She's the only one in her class who can manage that task - her teacher and I are both baffled.

Daddy and Amiya after Vinay's victorious initial foray into the gaming world of Pretty, Pretty Princess. P3 is a riveting game where Princesses race each other to accumulate jewels. Whoever attains her jewels first wins the game and Vinay won masterfully. He was very proud of his earrings, especially.

And finally, the only cake for May! Whoohee! It's a vanilla and caramel IMBC cake with fondant and gumpaste accents.

And 40 sugar cookies to match!

A Picture is Worth...

... a thousand words, especially when I've only got ten minutes before Gray's starts!

Painting on the lanai a few weeks ago. Amiya paints, Kev dumps water. I love that her pictures are now landscapes, portraits, etc. as opposed to blobs.

They can hardly stand to be together, but holy cow try to separate them and see what happens.

If you squint and put your face right up next to the screen, you might be able to see Amiya doing her best princess wave from the front seat of that camel. This was a big deal. Followed by a big allergic reaction. Poor kid can't even ride a camel without getting sick!

The monkey exhibit at the zoo.

You see? I wasn't kidding about the headband thing. Here we see him channeling Jordy on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Swimming lessons. Day 1 - dinosaur trunks, not a tear in sight. Day 2 - surf trunks, cries of terror. We'll be trying the dino shorts again on Day 3 to see if they hold a hidden power!

Kev's artwork. On the floor!!!!!!!

Saturday afternoon naptime. Kev sleeps for about 45 minutes alone and then has Vinay trained to come get him so they can cuddle on the couch.

She's all about writing us notes write now! LOVE IT!!!

And she's all about finding good deals. I looked back the other day while we were erranding around town and this is what I saw. Ha!

This must be from sometime when my parents were here in December. We just found it now - isn't it sweet?

And finally, not too much baking these past two weeks. I took the two weeks off because it was non-stop for a while! Above are the boxes that Vinay took in for the Administrative Assistants during that week. Each had 6 (or 8?) sugar cookies with fondant and royal decorations.

These were the boxes that Amiya took in for all (all!!!) of her teachers during teacher appreciation week. She absolutely positively had to thank 8 of the teachers at her school, so they only got 2 hand-painted apple cookies, as well as 4 more bags of assorted drop cookies. I love these cookies, I think they turned out SO cute!

Hey Moms

Did you ever have a moment where you wanted to smack yourself because you knew you weren't being the Mom you could be and the Mom you should be?

We had a particularly rough afternoon here yesterday. A lovely morning, a shitty afternoon. Amiya needed rest (recovering from a cold) and she needed more attention than I had available to give. She made particularly bad choices while I was on the telophone with another Mom trying to finalize plans for her teacher's surprise party. I got short with her, she had a tantrum (well, hello old friend) and I got even shorter.

And then today, at Muffins for Moms breakfast at school, she gave me a fabulous book. It was fill in the blank - her words are underlined.

Title: My Marvelous Mom

Page 1: Handdrawn picture of me and "This is my marvelou s mom. Her name is Christy"

Page 2: Picture of hearts and "The most beautiful part of my mom is her heart."

Page 3: Picture of us together and "I just love it so much when she kisses me."



In these days when she talks like a ten year old, wants to dress like a ten year old and emotes like a ten year old, it is so easy to lose sight of the fact that she's five. She can only be put off for so long, she can only "wait one minute" for so long.

So yeah, she could have behaved better, but the same can be said for me. And because I don't ever want her to think my heart is not the most beautiful part of me, I'm going to work extra, extra hard on that.