11
December

Giving back

Now that we are somewhat settled back home, one of the things that I hope to do more often is contribute to Kids in the Capital, an awesome website for Ottawa families.  The post that I have up there today is on Giving Back at the Holidays. It’s an update of a post that I wrote two years ago, inspired then by some discussions about how to involve really small children in some charitable giving around the holidays.   When I got involved in some similar conversations last month, I figured that it was time for an update.  It was also time for me to look for inspiration for our own family.

This is the third year that our family is following Missfish’s twist on an advent calendar, where we do twenty-five days of Christmas-y activities in the month of December.  We have planned for at least one third of the activities to involve a charitable giving component. This year, the lils have asked many more questions than the last two years, and have really started to think about what the giving means.  Like when we were sorting through old snowsuits for The Snowsuit Fund last night, and Woo came across a toque that just fit his head.  He insisted on keeping it, so I asked how many toques he had and he answered that he had about eighteen (the real total is three). So I asked him how many he could wear at once, and if he thought that a boy or girl who didn’t have a hat would like a warm head on cold days.  He thought for a minute, brought it back to the pile and helped me count up the toques to see how many little people could now have warm heads.  He got it.

Many of the activities that we are doing as a family are listed in the post on Kids in the Capital.  Please check it out if you are looking for ideas for your own family.

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6
December

Wordless Wednesday – Cookie Monsters

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28
November

Biriyani

One of the things that I developed a great appreciation over the last year was a good biriyani.  It’s not just rice; there is so much goodness there… Living in Bangalore. we were lucky enough to have access to a really good selection of various types of biriyani, and to learn how that truly appreciating a good biriyani involves raita mixed in and no bread at all. It really makes it all that much better. Trust me, mix it in.

Lakshmi, our awesome cook, taught me how to make this veg biriyani in the weeks before we left.

I hadn’t made it until this week, as I was afraid that it would not taste just right.    While the rice was not quite perfect (I think I need to fry it at a slightly higher heat..), the flavour was great. My house still smells of India…


Veg Biriyani

1 tbsp ghee
1 tbsp sunflower oil
* ½ cup cashews (optional)
1 cardamom pod
2 cloves
2 pieces of cinnamon, about 1½ “ x ½
1 star anise (optional)
1 tsp fennel seeds
2 bay leaves
5-7 black peppercorns
1 – 1½ tsp garlic-ginger paste
1 onion, chopped
¼ green chili, seeds removed, chopped (optional)
2-3 mint leaves, chopped finely (optional)
1 tomato, chopped
2 carrots, chopped **
6 green beans, chopped **
¼-½ tsp garam masala
¼ tsp turmeric
⅛ – ¼ tsp salt (to taste)
1 cup basmati rice, washed
½ cup frozen peas
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tbsp cilantro, chopped very fine
2 cups water

** Note that you can vary the vegetables, but don’t use mushrooms, they alter the flavour too much **

In a medium saucepan, heat ghee and oil on high. *If you are using cashews, add to hot oil and fry for a minute or two, then remove and set aside to be added at the end.*

Add cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, star anise (opt’l), fennel seeds, peppercorns, and bay leaves.  Stir and cook for 1-2 minutes to roast (don’t burn, you should be able to really smell the spices when ready)

Stir in ginger-garlic paste, onions, and chilies and mint (if adding) and cook until golden brown (about 3 minutes)

Add beans and carrots and cook until tender, about 3-4 minutes.

Mix in garam masala and turmeric.  Stir well to coat everything.

Add tomatoes and cook for 5 minutes – until soft.

Reduce heat to low, add salt and cook for 5 minutes.

Add rice to pot.  Cook for 3-4 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add peas to rice and cook for 3-4 more minutes.

Add powdered coriander and cook 2 minutes

Add water and simmer covered until water is gone, about 15 mins (rice is slightly under cooked at this point).  Stir in in cilantro and turn off heat.  Leave covered on hot stove for at least 15 minutes.

Serve with raita.

 

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23
November

The garbage pickers

It started when the lils were infants. As I walked them around our neighbourhood, I would stop and throw any garbage that I found on the street into the bottom of the stroller. As they got bigger, they started to point it out to me, then started to collect it themselves.  I wanted to teach them to have a little bit of pride in their community, and it worked. A little bit too much.  I had to start setting limits on how much they spent picking up the trash when all we would do is pick up litter at the park, instead of playing on the play structure.

Living in Bangalore was incredibly hard on us all because of the trash.  There is litter everywhere that you look.  We all wanted to do nothing more than clean up the city, but we couldn’t.  We actually didn’t even feel comfortable cleaning the trash, as it was really dirty.  There are many stray animals, far from healthy and clean, that lay in and on it, men and children were often seen going to the washroom anywhere and everywhere, and the volume of trash was mind blowing.  The lils always asked “why do so many people litter, don’t they care?”

The answer is that it’s complicated.  The areas of India that I lived in and visited lack the infrastructure and facilities to collect and process the garbage.  If there was collection, it was generally in the gated communities, and almost as much fell off the trucks as was collected. Once collected, I am not sure where it was taken to be “processed”, but I can guess that it was likely just incinerated in the open somewhere. In addition, modernization and rapid growth in the cities has meant that there are a wealth of products that are now made available at prices that many Indians can afford, they all come over packaged, and these cheaply made goods break easily. There are very few public spaces that have rubbish bins, and if they are present, they are old and damaged (or so was my experience). There are the people who don’t have space in their tiny dwellings to store trash for a collection that is never going to happen. Finally, there are the people who just don’t care, or come to feel that way after living with all the trash.  The end result is that it gets dumped on the streets, in the parks, the open fields and in the waterways.  It’s one of the factors that contributed (albeit in a minor way) to our decision not to stay in India.

We were happy to come home to the land of public receptacles, regular collection (well in Ottawa its semi-regular now), and a renewed interest in cutting down on the trash that we produce.  We’ve done pretty well, but the lils have noticed that there are still people in our community who, either intentionally or unintentionally, litter.  We notice it most on our walks to school, are really aware of the garbage that stays on the sidewalk and peoples lawns for days and days.  The lils started asking me to carry a trash bag a couple of weeks ago, and after about a week of false starts, we finally remembered to bring it with us.  Sure, our walks to school are a little bit longer now, but the lils are pretty proud to be cleaning up the ‘hood.

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22
November

Wordless Wednesday – It bothered him that it was wrong, so he fixed it!

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20
November

My not so little girl is four!

Dear Goose:

Happy birthday!  A part of me finds it hard to believe that my little girl can already be four, even though you have been counting down to this birthday for months.  You have grown so much in the last year, however, that a part of me regularly thinks that you were already four. At least.  Every day with you is filled with your sunny disposition, the fearless way you tackle every adventure, and the love that you give so freely to those around you.  You can bring a smile to my face without trying, or knowing that you are doing it.

This past year was a whirlwind for you. You experienced more in the last 365 days than I did in the first 20 years of my life, on some levels.  Most of the year was spent in India, so there were transatlantic flights, trips in an around India, the Taj Mahal, the Maldives (twice!), new people, and many, many, hours logged in the car.  You handled it all like a pro, especially the sleepless night in Puducherry when you gave your dad and I a play-by-play of the cyclone making landfall and destroying the resort that we were staying in.  After that, not much from our adventures fazed you.

School and learning quickly became one of your favourite things. You were very keen to learn your numbers and letters, and then to start to read.  You can now write all of the letters and numbers, count to ten in four different languages, and read many words.  You’ve mastered biking and swimming, and look forward to doing the same with skating this winter.  Although you experienced your first lost finger nail and first stitches, among other bumps and bruises, you still want to dive right into new things.

This year you also learned how hard it is to leave people behind that you love.  You made excellent friends while we were in India, and I know that you miss them still.  I am happy to see that you are settling in to your new school here, and starting to connect with old friends and make new ones too.

I can’t wait to see what this year brings!

Love,
Mama

learning the harmonium

new scooter: mastered!

beach chic

hanging with one of my besties!

admiring the Taj Mahal

waiting to go home to Ottawa for a visit

I can stand!! 🙂

lil fishie

waiting for the sharks to swim by in the Maldives

celebrating India’s Independence day

I like to take pictures too

reconnecting

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15
November

Wordless Wednesday – three new pairs

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14
November

No more secrets

From the time that the lils first began to really understand us, Willy and I would switch to French when we wanted to discuss something that we didn’t want them to hear.  This most often surrounded what vegetable was hidden in their pasta sauce, whether or not it was bath night, or who would be putting which child to bed.  None of these were really conversations that the lils would have been harmed by if they had heard them, but they were occasionally tantrum inducing, so we played it safe.  These weren’t secrets, per se, it was just convenient.

As they got older, we began to use French more and more. They were starting to get more independent, and our conversations no longer revolved around what they had eaten , who had pooped last, or how many times either had gotten up I the night, so we started to talk about life and the world around us more.  Some things, like things from my work and some current events were too much for them, so we spoke French.  I needed the practice, so we ended up talking French more than we needed to.  It was nice, actually.

In the last year, Woo started to get upset with our use of the secret language.  He knew that we were talking about things that he was not allowed to hear for a variety of reasons and it frustrated him.  We got a bit of a reprieve when he started learning Spanish at school, as it gave Woo and Goose a secret language of their own, a language that we did not speak or understand.  They reprieve ended when we returned to Canada and he was no longer learning Spanish.

The demands to know what we were talking about increased.  We were no longer able to have even the most innocent conversation in French without Woo and Goose being curious.  Then one day, after they had been in school for about three weeks, Woo interrupted our conversation to ask what was “red”.  He’d been paying attention, and picked up on the word “rouge”. Several days later, they asked me to count in French for them, and when I got to trente-huit, Goose interrupted and told me that I had reached my age (she was right). Now it seems that every day they identify more in our conversations and learn more words.

Now we have no secrets.  We have to be really careful when we chose to use French, and more often than not we chose to defer conversations that are sensitive to when the lils are not within earshot, and hope that we remember to resume them.  A lot of the time, I don’t remember.  I think it is time that we learn a new language.

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13
November

The money game

It seems that there comes a time in every lils life when they are curious enough about money to want some of their own.  For us, this came in the last six months of our time in India. I guess that the lils had heard enough of us converting prices and exclaiming over the relative price of things, and wanted to have a little bit of pocket money of their own. I was surprised that it came this early, but saw an allowance as a good way to teach about managing money, so we agreed to start contributing.

I had put a good deal of thought into how they could earn the allowance already, and talked to Willy about paying them for special chores.  I didn’t want to be giving them money just so that they could have money, and felt that they shouldn’t be compensated for chores that were part of their regular contribution to the household (ie clearing their dishes after a meal), so we started to pay them for special chores, things that weren’t part of their regular routine.  Chores like pulling the laundry out of the washer and bringing the basket to me, or bringing me one of the endless things that I had forgotten elsewhere in the house but was too lazy to go and get myself.

For the most part, they loved it.  We were living in India, so they were paid in rupees.  The rate for a chore was in the neighbourhood of 2-5rs (or 4-10₵), which might seem really low, but actually allowed them to but tonnes of stuff. At first all they wanted to do was play with the money, which was fine until it all gravitated to Woo’s secret hiding place.  We redistributed and eventually convinced them to go shopping and see what they wanted to buy.  They knew that they could buy ANYTHING they wanted, but both wanted books. I felt bad that they were using all of their allowance on something that I would have bought them anyway, so we struck an agreement. We would subsidize the cost of anything that we would have normally bought for them, like a new book they were keen to read or art supplies, but that they had to pay the full price for toys or treats.  We were all happy.

The allowance practice has continued since we have returned to Canada, although we have converted to Canadian dollars and upped the rate a bit.  Their willingness to do chores is pretty sporadic at best, but so is my ability to remember to come up with chores for them.  They actually haven’t had a chance to spend any of their allowance since we moved home, and, given that they seemed to care more about getting a coin that was from their year of birth than they were the value of the coin, I was beginning to worry that I needed to rethink allowance as a way to educate them about managing money and it’s purchasing power.

That changed this evening when the lils were sent to tidy the play room.  It had been well played over the course of the weekend, and needed quite a bit of work.  I was curious when Woo returned to the kitchen after just a few minutes in the basement.  He was looking a little too pleased with himself, so I asked him what was up.  He replied that he had made a promise to his sister.  He convinced her that she should clean the mess in exchange for some coins from his piggy bank! I did not expect that he would be paying her to do his work at such a young age, but I was impressed that he had negotiated it with little fuss.  I wasn’t sure how to react, so I headed down to check with Goose, and make sure that she was aware of what she had agreed to.  I found her in the basement, happily tidying and singing to herself.  She recounted the same story that Woo had told me, and seemed to be happy.  When the tidying was done, Woo did pay her 51₵, an amount that pleased them both.  Maybe they are getting the hang of this money thing.

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2
November

The 100

It’s no secret that I love to take pictures.  I have been taking them since I was a wee girl, and hope to still be taking them, like my grandfather is, when I am well into my nineties.  As such, I tend to have a number of friends who are photographers (birds of a feather and all that), and I read a number of photo-related blogs and publications.  Some of them are serious and some of them fluff so they give me a good cross section of what is happening in the photographic world.

I was pretty excited when, in June, I saw a post on PhotoJoJo that was talking about a neat project being run out of the UK.  The premise was that 100 people around the world would be sent disposable cameras, and they would have a week to take pictures of whatever they wanted before sending them back for processing and publication.  The angle that intrigued me the most was that the photographers would be selected on one main criterion – their age.  The organizer of this project wanted to see the world through the eyes of all ages, so 100 cameras were sent to people aged 1 – 100; one camera per year.  I loved the idea and immediately applied for myself and Woo (Willy and Goose’s ages were already assigned to photographers).

Life went on, and I forgot about the applications after a few days.  I’d seen a few messages that the project was inundated with applicants after the PhotoJoJo plug, so I figured that there was little chance that either of us would be selected.  I was shocked to receive an email in mid-July letting me know that Woo had been selected!  Apparently having an interesting story, like being a Canadian boy living in India for a year, helped to tip the balance in his favour.  I guess it wasn’t quite as interesting to be a 38 year-old Canadian living in India for a year!!

Woo was just as excited when I told him about it, and wanted to start right then and there! That proved to be difficult, since we didn’t even have a camera yet.  I had some back and forth with the curator, and decided that the best course of action was to have me pick up the camera in Bangalore.  We didn’t want to risk it never getting to us, or have it damaged by some of the extreme temperatures that it likely would have faced on it’s journey through the Indian Postal System.  Of course I failed to have a contingency for when I would be unable to find said camera in Bangalore, and sent one last ditch plea on a local message board as to where to find one. A good friend, who happened to be in the States at that time, saw it and offered to ‘import’ two for me.  We were good to go!

Woo shot his pictures in Mysore and Bangalore.  He LOVED the idea of taking these pics, so much that we had to restrain him from shooting off the entire roll in one outing!  He did have a hard time working the view finder, and accepting that he could not just see the picture after he took it.  My explanation about how that was “old school” didn’t really cut it with him, but he pushed through.  He saved his last three pictures for the last day of his week, so that he could take the camera to ‘show and tell’, where he proudly told his classmates all about the project.

With the camera completed, we faced the challenge of getting the camera safely back to the UK.  Thankfully a friend was travelling there from India, so she popped it in the mail once she got there.  The photos were posted online this past week, and Woo and I sat together to review them and have him narrate some comments to accompany each picture.  He loved reviewing each one, and has been through them several times, reliving the experience.

We have loved being part of this project, both as a contributor and an observer to the process. There are some great images being posted most days on the website, with many more to come in the next few weeks.  For a variety of reasons, there are still three slots available – ages 77, 94, and 96.  If you know anyone who fits the bill (turns that age on their 2012 birthday), you should encourage then to apply! There is a REALLY good chance that they will be selected, as the project wraps up at the end of the year. Woo’s pictures, if you are interested in having a look, can be found here: http://the100.thinkplaymake.co/the100/5/. Can you guess what his favourite is?!?!

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