One day... he will go to "basketball classes"!

It’s Tuesday.  I pick up my daughter from school at 2pm.  I bring her home.  She grabs a banana for a snack.  She asks me, “What else can I eat?” I give her two blocks of cheese and some chiwda.  She finishes it while I finish my perfectly hot cup of tea. She prepares her water bottle while I use the restroom.  Together, we leave for basketball class.

She is one of the first few kids to get there.  She starts practicing the hoops.  She proudly tells the coach she got 6 hoops.  The coach celebrates her and asks her to keep going. 

Slowly the other kids start coming in.  Realizing that they are shooting the same hoop, she starts taking turns with them.  When it’s too crowded she runs to the other side of the court and shoots the hoop at that end.  After a while she goes and tells the coach she has done 17 hoops.  The coach celebrates her and asks her to keep going.

In a few minutes the class begins.  The coach gets this highly energetic group of 20 or so kids to do lots of different exercises!  She does most of her exercises correctly, some not. But she tries to do all.    She is an average runner.  You could say she is in the 40th percentile.

Soon, the group is divided into two teams.  A friendly contest is setup-- -something like a relay race.  Our group wins!  Our kid runs a little slower, but does not become a liability for the group.

The only problem… there is no wifi here.  So I cannot work while I am watching all this. 

Okay, I made that up.  I do not want to work while watching him… I mean… her… play!

Oops… I gave it away!  But if you stayed with me,  congratulations!

Now find and replace all of the occurrences of ”she” and “her” with “he” and “him”.

You got that right!

It is in fact Aditya who is attending the second session of his first ever basketball class!  No need to pinch me.  I am wide awake, and taking it in:)

Summer Fun

Today I am publishing a draft saved from June 27, 2013....

I have been having a ton of summer fun with the kids since the end of the school year. This summer, Shreya will be taking a break from attending summer camps. Till last summer, she had no choice but to attend  camp so I could play with Aditya and train/ feedback volunteers. I decided that this year would be different. With both kids home, we all wanted a little structure to our day. I came up with the idea of having my own summer camp with a different theme each week.
The first week, we started with the theme "India". We learnt to read and write Marathi, played games typically played in India, cooked Indian snacks, dressed up, played Bollywood music and danced! A fun four hours each day!
The theme this week was "Play to grow" We played, played and played! On Thursday, we went on a field trip to the Tech Museum. This trip was miles removed from the one we took about 6 months ago! I cannot contain my excitement and decided to share it with everybody here!

I started off asking the kids how long they wanted to be at the museum. Shreya wanted to spend three hours, Aditya one. We negotiated it to 2 hours. Aditya would have a turn to pick activities for the first 30 minutes, followed by Shreya and then keep going in 30 minute increments. We left around noon, after a heavy brunch. We also decided to have our late lunch (which I had packed) on our way back, to save on time.  With all agreements in place, we headed out.

Walking to the museum after parking the car, I happened to mention that the building in front of us was the downtown library branch, the one which had Mickey Mouse books available when we had last checked online. Aditya jumped up with joy and wanted to change the plans for the day! But we stuck our original plans:)

Once inside the museum, Aditya chose to go to downstairs, I guess, because he loves the earthquakes exhibit. As we walked by, I encouraged them to read about the different hands-on activities going on. He saw a hands-on workshop designing doodling robots! He chose that as his activity for the first half hour. He was completely engaged, enthusiastic and raring to go, asking volunteers appropriate questions, not holding back if he didn't understand and clarifying if he had a doubt. I have never seen him as proud as today, when he built the robot!

Shreya then got to choose her activities. Aditya was fully engaged and enthusiastic about her activities too. When he saw that the next activity she was moving to was crowded, he decided to stay where he was and later joined us, when the crowd had receded. Just like Shreya, he was fascinated by the Google Earth app where he could go places like Mount Everest, Taj Mahal and his own home :) He even explored the various land forms on Mars and wondered how they took pictures in valleys on Mars!

By the time he chose his next activity, we were at the museum for almost an hour and a half. He voted to stay longer. Since we had left our lunch in the car, I surprised the kids with a visit to the cafe. We haven't had random outside food for a really loooooong time and both were amazed that I got an order of French fries for everyone to share. (To be honest, this was the second time ever we ate french fries!) Then I gave them some organic mint I pulled out of the purse :) I decided to keep my beliefs about food away and see how he did. And guess what, he was teary eyed and said that he felt like any other family!

We then moved to the energy exhibit. He approached it like a science experiment and was so absorbed in changing different parameters and analyzing the results that it amazed me. He also was able to clearly explain what his hypothesis was, how it was wrong (or at times correct), why he thought it was wrong and how he changed the next steps based on the results he now saw. I had never seen him give so much thought to the whys and relating them to the results before!

We ended the day experiencing earthquake simulations based on actual earthquake data, including magnitude, movement, and duration of the earthquake.
As we walked out, sister asked to visit the gift shop. Aditya wandered around till he found a "Motors and generators" kit on sale. He wanted to use his money to buy it. I suggested that we look up the price online. We entered a deal that he could get it here if it was cheaper than Amazon. He then called up Baba to find out how much it cost on Amazon. Beaming with joy as he hung up, he announced that he could get it!

We got back home really exhausted but sooooo happy! As soon as we entered, he was so charged up to start his experiments that he walked into the kitchen, looked around and came to me saying, "Thankfully you cooked dinner before we left, now you can supervise me while I work on my experiments :)"

As of now, he is through with 20 of the 25 projects! He is reading instructions, UNDERSTANDING what he reads and following directions .. simply AMAZING!!!

Puzzles, Nerf battles, and Reading!

All three were huge challenges, just weeks ago.

He showed no interest in doing puzzles for the last 8.5 years.  This week, he did three puzzles with Baba.  Priceless!

He had shown major signs of anxiety around anything called a gun.  He played nerf guns with Shreya, Baba, and even his volunteers all this week!

He never showed any interest in reading books although he used to love reading take out menus a year ago!  But this week he is glued to his book about the "1001 whys" gifted by Aai.

After dinner tonight, he AND Shreya both read in pin drop silence for 15 minutes straight.  I had to request them to go to bed at that point.  Shreya LOVES to read so this is not new for her.  But Aditya?  You couldn't get him to read even a few lines, only a few weeks ago!

Thank you Aditya, for showing us that change is easy!  Provided you want change really strongly, without needing it (i.e. making your happiness conditional on it)!

In other news, he is trying to crack jokes all the time.   They are totally un-funny at times, but we are loving them anyways!  We have no doubt that with his amazing sense of humor and his enthusiasm in learning anything new, he is going to "crack" this one too:-)

Shreya is showing increased enthusiasm in joining Aditya and inviting him to play too.  She is showing amazing consistency in saying "Okay" if she invites him to play and he says no.  She is showing even more consistency in trying again after a while:-)  (And being okay if he says no again!)

We are blessed to have you Shreya!

End of the school year, Team meeting, Fathers' day!

The school year came to an end.  Aditya, who attended only 4 hours of school per week last year, finished the year attending 30 hours a week, every single week, except for the weeks we were in India!

His year end progress report spoke of remarkable improvement in all areas between the winter and the spring semesters!  For us, the coolest part of that report was a mention of Aditya taking inititiave and choosing his own activities to do in unstructured time, Aditya playing a variety of games with other kids in the class, and Aditya beginning to voice his disagreements (WOW!) in a respectful manner.

Go Aditya!

Shreya earned a rave review from her teacher too.  She is taking on new challenges, learning, and growing tremendously, and having fun at it!  It shows in her continued enthusiasm and energy about school, as well as that of her teacher's words about her.  

As her token of gratitude for the twins who did so well, Aai gifted Aditya and Shreya with Time for kids' "Big Book of Why - 1001 facts" and "Big Book of How - 501 facts".

Once the summer began, we had a bit of a breather and we held a long pending team meeting in which we played a fun game of putting together a story with 3 random words picked from the dictionary, by the rest of the group  (e.g.  wishbone, insincere, tetanus  or  snowflake, navy, defraud).  It was a hilarious and reassuring reminder that we all know how to let go and have fun-- no matter what! 

On Sunday,  Aditya and Shreya insisted Baba stayed in bed until they got done with baking special coconut flour muffins with Aai's supervision (but practically without her help).   Aditya also brought a hot cup of tea to Baba in his bed (as he knows BABA LOVES BED TEA:-))  It was hilarious, though, when he earlier tried to keep Baba from waking up by putting a pillow right on his face!

Later that day,  Baba spent an hour each playing with the twins.

Baba also re-introduced Aditya to jigsaw puzzles.  He showed a lot more interest and readiness for doing puzzles than he has had in the past! The past is the past,  it has no relation to the present!

After having cracked a smaller "Disney Cars" puzzle, this morning,  he attempted a 100 piece "Spongebob Squarepants" puzzle with Baba. He could not finish it but he got done with about 25%.  Bravo!!!

In related news,  Baba and Aditya also play the Nerf guns  regularly now.  He appears less and less anxious every time we play.  The last time we played, we took turns pretending to be the cop with his Nerf-gun catching the robber who is scaring Mickey Mouse with his pistol to give away his money!

Nerf guns!

A few months ago, Aditya saw kids playing with toy guns at a social get-together at our friends' house.  He appeared super anxious... and said aloud that he was worried about the guns killing someone.

In April this year when we went to India, he got a chance to see up close what someone can (play) and cannot (kill) do with toy guns.  Then he tried using it!  He saw how it worked! Hurrah!

This week, we got our own nerf gun and nerf pistol, and we spent this morning playing with those!

Little things we could not take for granted... are coming true... one by one!

Frisbee

Arjun has been volunteering with us for about a year now.   One of the gifts he gave Aditya recently was inviting him to play outside, and then inviting him to play Frisbee!

These days, when he is free, Aditya is found practicing his Frisbee skills in the backyard.  In the last post we described how we played the mini-Olympics.  If you recall that post,  Aditya won the Frisbee contest beating Shreya and Baba!

On the weekend, he did something even more amazing.  He said he wanted to go to the neighbors' house, to see if his lost Frisbee was in their backyard.  He did all of that plus entered their backdoor and retrieved his lost Frisbee with our neighbors' help, and found even Shreya's pink Frisbee right there:)

And then he did that again when he mistakenly threw his Frisbee in their backyard... again!

The first time he went to the neighbors', Baba was there to back him up.

The second time around, Baba "thought" he was there to back him up.  He didn't have to.  Aditya said fluently, "I am sorry but my Frisbee is in your backyard again."

Their son who had opened the door the first time too, got exactly what Aditya was looking for, and asked, "You know how to go into the backyward right?"

Both his dad and Aditya's dad were all smiles, as Aditya swiftly found and picked up his blue Frisbee from their backyard. 

Way to go, Aditya!

Congratulations Arjun and everyone else on the team.

Inviting your friend to do something new (without "needing" it ) is the most precious gift you can give your friend!

Wall Ball, Four Square, and mini-Olympics!

From playing wall-ball we have already moved on to playing Four Square. 

2 volunteers + Baba + Aditya
1 volunteer + Aditya + Shreya + Baba
Aai + Baba+ Aditya+ Shreya


So many fun teams to play with!  We play this now as part of almost every play room session!  When there is no 3rd and the 4th player available,  Aditya plays 2-square with his volunteer!

Yesterday, we tried something new!

Totally inspired after watching their first Hindi movie "Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar",  the kids agreed to play a "mini-Olympics".

Aditya, Shreya, Baba all participated in the following 7 games:
1. Running race from one end of the backyard to the other and back.  Shreya gold, Aditya silver, Baba who walked instead of ran, got the bronze.
2. Throwing a Frisbee (Oh... by the way... a new post on this topic coming up soon!)  Aditya gold, Baba silver, Shreya bronze.
3.  Taking aim with a tennis ball to knock out cricket stumps.   Baba gold, Shreya silver, Aditya bronze.
4. Soccer style free kicks.  Baba gold, Shreya silver, Aditya bronze.
5. Hockey style free kicks with a cricket bat.  Shreya and Baba shared the gold. Aditya got the Silver.
6. Hula Hooping.   Baba participated and got a bronze medal:)    Aditya did 7 seconds for his Silver medal.  Shreya had to be stopped at 140 seconds.
7. Gymnastics.  Baba opted out.   (No medal.)  Shreya got the gold with her amazing hand stands and flips.  Aditya was cute in trying to imitate her and got the silver!

We had lots of fun, and finished with fresh home-made strawberry banana ice cream!