Sachin raced today on the Wii with Sanya watching him and I had to participate in watching the race and then had to interview the winner while reviewing the replay of the race.

The highlights of this interview are presented here below:

I was getting back from school on the bus where Sn and Ad were on the bus too, on which I was. So when I was getting back home by myself, a cat pushed me. Oh my Gosh I have never seen a cat push me in my life. The cat was no ordinary cat, it was a black cat!
I asked Sn’s mom if Sn and Sr could come to my house. Their mom said yes. We went by our house to tell Sr and Sn of what happened.

Sn and Sr were surprised. ‘A cat pushed you?’ Sn said. ‘Yes, it did’, I replied.

‘But how can a cat push some one? ‘, asked Sn.

We called Ad’s mom, so he could come to our house too.

Ad said ‘Whats up?’. We called all our friends who had a cat. When we were calling, we missed someone. We did not notice that we missed someone to call. Then we heard two meows at the door. We went to open the door and see who it was.
We saw a black cat, the same one that pushed me and a white cat. There was a girl behind the two cats. There was some one that we forgot to call and we know who it is. The one who we forgot to call was Ni.

There was a big fit of battle against more robots, because Chitti is a robot who made the multiples, that made him angry because he wants Sana as his wife, but Sana was pretending that she was in love with Chitti and for her real boy friend’s plan to defeat Chitti’s army and we are going to say the plan next.

The plan was that Sana’s boyfriend made up this: he turned off all the power in the whole of his country and so the robots could not get power if they are losing battery power. They found out that the generators were filled with water and other electronics were turned off too, but they noticed that the cards have electricity too, so they battery powered themselves.

Sana’s boyfriend was pretending to be a Chitti’s robot to defeat Chitti because he got a plan. The whole army has suprise attacks defeating the whole army of Chitti’s because they had low battery power. So the police were blasting bullets at the Chitti’s, but the Chitti’s are magnets themselves as robots, so they connected themselves into magnetic shapes. These are the shapes that they connected into: a snake, a sphere, a spiral, a big giant ‘transformer’ like chitti, connected together.

The whole army tried to defeat these shapes but they could not. There were more and more guys to fight. Sana and Dr.Vaseegaran, Sana’s boyfriend, went into a truck where they delete all the magnet power that the robots had to go into as the shape. It looks like they turned into that big giant robot Chiti that I told you about – it tried to defeat the whole town ie. India. There is a magnet in the front of the truck and inside the truck there is a magnet. They got the real leader Chitti and removed the red chip from him, that was a very bad and destructive chip.

Now what happened is, all the Chitti’s were disabled and destroyed as what has to happen. So Chitti was disabled as India did not need the robots. This is the info of who made Chitti bad:
The Chinese guy (Danny Denzongpa) he put the chip inside Chitti to make money, but it was destruction of whole destruction and Chitti destroyed this Danny. Chitti was disbled based on court orders and that is how he was disabled and you can listen to me the next time on the next blog.

As always, I started the day earlier, and it was later at around 10 am or so that we realized that we are going to be home alone the whole day. So at around 11am we started planning the activities for the day. Sachin came up with his list – watching tv, playing Wii, then watching TV again and then the play station – he was disappointed that mummy did not leave her iPhone behind. As you can see, his plan is fully based on electronics only. I had to scrap out a few of the items from his list and add some from mine. So our plan was finalized as given below:

Getting ready (shower, etc)

Lunch at Subway

Going to the library

Playing on the Wii

Afternoon Nap

Watching TV

Dinner at Applebees

Playing Chess

Reading a Book

Bed

We started our day by getting ready and by the time we went to Subway it was around 1pm. I got my usual Veggie Pattie Sandwich on Honey Oat Bread and he had his Cheese pizza. He took some extra cheese and we were discussing how he is called the ‘Mouse’ in his school for his love for cheese. (Reminded me of my days at home in Madipakkam, when we used to eat Aavin Butter as soon as the box came home – by the time they melted it into ghee to be used with food, we used to eat up one fourth of the box.) Sachin and I are having lunch at a restaurant alone after a long time and it was interesting to see how his topics of conversation have changed. He was asking what I liked in my sandwich and what I did not like, etc. This gave me a good idea of the style of conversation he should be having at lunch with his friends. We also discussed about how lunch breaks are in his school and how it was in my school in India – we used to eat quickly so that we can get enough time to play cricket . He was not sure how someone can run around and play after having lunch!

Later we went to the library and he picked up two books – one easy and one difficult. Since I liked reading the Famous Five from Enid Blyton, I asked the librarian if she could find one for Sachin. Since we could not find one in our library, she ordered one to be sent to our library from one of the other libraries in the area. (I love this concept of libraries in the US and how they are interlinked – I hope this can be implemented in India some day).

http://www.enidblyton.net/famous-five/

Then I went to my usual section (Computers) to get a MySQL High Performance book. While Sachin was waiting, he had already finished reading the easy book that he had picked, so we ended up checking out just two books – one for him and one for me.

Once we were home, I started reading one of the books I have already started reading – it was about Warren Buffett. Sachin wanted to play on the Wii and by accident, found his Mario Cart game, which he thought he had lost. So he started playing that I was reading my book and watching him play. After some time, we realized that he was not winning as often as he used to – I immediately said may be it is because he was tired and he should take some rest. So we decided to take a afternoon nap and ended up sleeping for more than four hours.

When we woke up, it was time to go to Applebees. Radhika had called up earlier and mentioned that it was very cold outside, so we decided to bundle up in layers. As usual, we stepped out of the house, ran to the car, he won that race (as always), and then were busy talking about our favourite games. Once we reached the restaurant, we were greeted by the waitress, who introduced us and gave us a very quick list of all the specials of the day. I did not understand most of what she said and thought may be Sachin understood it. He was quick to tell her ‘You are talking so fast, that I could not follow a word of what you said. It was really fast.’ I could see the look on her face, but realized at that time that may be I should have told her that – but in any case, it was good to realize it was not just me, but it was the way she spoke. He had chicken fingers and I got the Spinach with Artichoke dip. After eating it, we had the Triple Chocolate Meltdown – our favourite ice cream at Applebees. Both of us agreed that we missed Mummy while we were eating it as in the past Radhika used to nicely say ‘No Ice Cream for me’ and then used to eat from our share after our desserts came.

During our dinner, Sachin and I also spoke about the world cup football that is coming up in South Africa in April this year. We then started talking about Africa and how people go hunting. Sachin thinks everyone in Africa go hunting every day I had to tell him about my visit to Kenya in 2000 and how it is not all hunting, but there is a good amount of wild life safari there.

We went home after dinner and played a game of chess. The magnetic chess board is helping us a lot as it helps avoid the pieces from falling down everytime we move the board around – which we do a lot, especially when we keep the board on an uneven surface like a pillow. The game was going quite tough, as surprisingly Sachin realized how easy it was to control the board, once you take control of the central squares on the board. After a while, we decided it was time to watch some TV and we were watching ‘Under Dog’, a movie where a dog is a super hero. We went to bed after sometime and I vaguely remember Radhika come in sometime later. Overall, it was a wonderful day together and I started thinking that I should do this more often.

Sachin and I have become very busy (even before Radhika came back) starting with the preparations for mommy’s return, then the actual surprise party and then enjoying the time with mommy.

Radhika is back now and Sachin and I are sooooooooo happy that we could not find time for anything else.

In any case, I thought I should provide my feedback on how it is going.

Sachin has continued to do some of the things he learnt while he was alone with me, such as praying to God before going to bed, eating four nuts each morning, managing his own items, etc. Radhika was quite happy to see it and I was very happy about it too.

I am going to India for 10 days in April and I hope to continue this blog to write about how I feel while I am away there.

Will try to continue to update as much as I can.

Sachin and I had a big debate on what ‘Reading Time’ means.  While I said it stands for ‘Sachin will read his book and daddy will read his book’, Sachin claims that it stands for ‘everyone will read a bed time story book’.  We decided to ask Radhika for her comments.

Will update tomorrow on the decision on this.

I managed to get out of work by 5pm and picked him up at 5.30pm. He was quite happy when I told him that I was early today. He has always asked me to come early, but I could not do it before. We came home and did quite a lot of things together: watched tv, had dinner, worked on the home work, read a book and finally spent about 30 minutes on the phone with his thatha.

Sachin was not very happy with his thatha’s stories about animals (eg. cock and bull story) and also about how dinasour ate vada from the old lady. He also got very angry when thatha asked sachin to send the new car as a gift to him when daddy comes to India in exchange for new dinosaur toys he is sending with mummy.

I felt quite happy that Sachin and I did most of the things together yesterday, but am still worried that we are lagging behind in the robot activity which we have not yet started.

We have just four more days before Radhika will be back. We are both looking forward to Sunday

He came home after school and was quite impatient – so i realized he must be hungry and gave him some snacks. He immediately wanted to watch TV during his game time. I let him do that while he was eating his snack.

He wanted to drink milk shake from McD and so we thought it might be easy if he also has his dinner there. He was quite happy. So we left for McD. He brought his Nintendo DS along with him and started playing the game in the car. I told him that he should stop after 5 minutes and talk to me. (I realized we had not made any progress with his ‘Robot’ project at school and we should start it somewhere.) On the way, I asked him to pause his game for 10 minutes and talk to me about the school project and then continue with his game. I paused it, but kept opening the game console frequently during our conversation. I told him that he is not getting the happy meal if he does it again – he did it again. I turned the car around and came home – I also let him know that he is not getting his happy meal because daddy is not happy.

Once home, Sachin ate 3 idlis (thanks to V…tha), one roti (thanks to Bhavani Cash and Carry) and the tomato-dal curry (thanks to P…tha). I guess in future also he will relate Indian food as ‘punishment food’, but I did not know of any other option..remember I was hungry too..and a hungry man is a angry man..imagine two of us . I also had my dinner along with him.

After dinner we did our home work review and Sachin fixed all the mistakes he made in the home work done at after care.  We did not read the book today as both of us were very sleepy.

Oh I forgot to mention..yesterday his major complaint was that I was on the phone when he is about to go to bed and I am on the phone when he wakes up. So Sachin complained that it was bothering his sleep. I decided not to attend any phone calls in the night and have not spoken to anyone in the night when Sachin and I are ready to go to bed. Radhika also used to complain that no matter which room I was in, upstairs, the entire conversation could be heard in all the other rooms upstairs. Her advise to me was to go downstairs to talk.  I prefer not to talk..I hope that solves the problem.

After the confrontational incidents yesterday and today, for a minute I thought the honeymoon period is over – I hope not!

I also thought about why he was so cranky and thought one reason could be the day light saving. He has been waking up one hour early in the past two days and by the time it is 7pm – he is actually already awake for one hour extra. May be not. I dont know, but I know I have to help him get his comfort level back with me.

Will try my best today.

We had a regular working day and at the end of it, we came home and started doing our usual routine.

Since Sachin completes some of his home work at after care, I review it at home to see if everything is ok and if something is not, I try to help him learn the correct way of doing it.

I noticed that in one page he had made a mistake and his teacher had circled it. So I asked him ‘Sachin, how come your teacher has reviewed it, Daddy did not check this page before.’ Immediately, Sachin said ‘Daddy, you are so bad..I wish Mummy was here…you forgot to check my bag on Friday, Saturday and Sunday..today I went to school without completing my home work!!!’. Then he explained that the homework was from Fridays and I had not checked it.

I was puzzled as I remembered asking him on Friday evening while picking up at the after care if he did his home work. He said ‘Daddy, on Fridays we dont do our homework – it is no home work day on Fridays’. I felt good and thought ‘Wow, I wish I had this when I was a kid’.  So I asked him – ‘Sachin, do you remember you told me that you do not have any home work on Fridays’. He immediately replied – ‘Noooooo. I did not say that. I said we dont do home work at after care on Fridays’.

It was then that I realized the mistake I made – I assumed that when said no home work there was no home work to be done, but he in his own simple way said no home work at after care.

I felt very bad after that. On top of it, I also realized I missed checking the Friday Report which they send once in two weeks. I signed it today and also met his teacher and apologized for the follow ups related to Sachin that I missed doing during the weekend.

I still feel bad about this, but this learning experience has made me stronger in my role as a parent and I feel proud of it.

Thanks to you Sachu

I did some of the laundry work today at home and realized how much of work Radhika has been doing all these days without saying a word. Man, this is one of the most boring things in life and yet I was so ignorant of this task that she did every time without saying a word about it.

Sachin and I went to Costo and then Walmart and got his Bakugan game today.  I told him that this is his Wednesday toy given to him ahead of time.  I also told him that he has to be a good boy this whole week or I will take the toy away from him.

We practised out E-i-e-i-oops tonight also and recorded it. Havent had the time to publish it yet to the site. Hope to do so very soon.