The tasting umachchi

August 9 2014

Another snippet that I better put down before it is "lost"
Rummaging in the kitchen, while racking my brains over what to make for the kids, my thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of a very disturbed Sharanya. Mommy, I do not like this tasting umachchi!!, was what she said in between shaking from sobs, tears flowing freely.
What on earth could have affected her this way? Usually, my mommy intuition would lead me to guess pretty accurately about what had disturbed her, but this time, I was entirely puzzled. Leading me by the hand she led to the living room couch where a page from a children's book (Tenali Raman, Panchatantra) lay open. Look, Mommy, Look, tasting umachchi!!
"On it was a picture of Kali, the fearsome goddess with her tongue out. The illustration was from a story about Tenali Raman and his encounter with the goddess.
Ah, mystery solved so that is the tasting umachchi!
Both her dad and I wondered at the three year old's ability to correctly identify the picture as that of an umachchi when we do not have any pictures at home of Kali.
Another name for Goddess Kali given by Sharanya, "The tasting umachchi"

From the mouths of babes and nine year olds

From the mouths of babes and nine year olds

I have to write this down. Although we are used to Sharanya, almost three year old now,  coming up with some pretty funny stuff, this one was simply hilarious. Now that we are pretty regular visitors to the Naperville Public Library, she has drawn a conclusion. The other day she announced "Babies live in the library! " and then added "in their strollers". Now Sharanya has never sat through the story times at the library but some of our visits having coincided with lots of babies and toddlers emerging from the story telling room has led to this thought, we surmise!

Now to turn to  nine year old, Ananya. She has taken to listening to some music channels on the iPhone. Once they played Mamma Mia. My ears perked up at this song because of the few music "cassettes" (more on that) that we had at home, there were a few of Boney M and ABBA. Hey Ananya, I said, I used to listen to that song when I was young. Yeah, she said, it is a song from the 1800s (the eighteen hundreds!!) before quickly switching to the next song.
 Ouch, Ananya those were the eighties not the eighteen hundreds and well, how ancient I feel now.

More from Ananya. "This year a lot of us had to be excused from sitting on the ground in class. That's because, many of us including Ms. Kalantzis (class teacher) have been having "growth spurts" making our legs hurt".
Well, I have pretty temperamental knees too, wish I could say it was a growth spurt!