Santa Claus is coming to town

It's that time of the year again..... days filled with holiday lights, candy canes, cookies, cakes, pies, gifts and of course that very special picture of the kids with Santa which you want to take every year.

But meeting Santa may or may not turn out to be a pleasant experience. You get in the long line and hope that your child's meeting with Santa goes well. Some times it does and sometimes it doesn't. For some reason young kids, especially toddlers find Santa very scary. Anvika too is afraid of such characters. When we went to Great Wolf Lodge, she was so scared to be even close to their mascot. Keeping this in mind I did not want to stand in a long line, pay 25-30$ only to find that my dearie gets scared by the sight of the big fat old man.

With Prateek gone to India these days and the weather so cold, it gets hard to keep the kids engaged and entertained. Come weekend and it gets even more challenging. So I am always on a lookout for some fun things to do with kids. Since it is December, Santa pictures are in great demand. I took the girls to meet Santa Claus and hopefully get a good picture of them with him. I am so glad the picture turned out nice without a single tear.

Santa was super friendly and the girls loved to chat with him. Anvika also gave a high 5 to him. Since pictures with Santa are in vogue in December, everywhere we go we always see Santa house. The other day we went to Cougar mountain zoo and we had a Santa house there as well. It was a fun day. The line was long but there were reindeers along the way and the girls were super excited to feed them along the way up to the Santa house.

Santa asked Anvesha what she wanted for Christmas and she replied that she wants ear rings that glow in the dark. That was a wonderful moment and I am glad I was able to capture it.

One thing tick marked in my December to do list :) I am sure the girls will love to watch these pictures when they grow up. 

Wishing everyone a fun filled holiday season and warm hugs from all of us here :)

Baby Dolls

A favorite doll is the child's first best friend, often much before they actually develop real friendships. To some kids it's a cherished security that they find in snuggling them and they begin imitating how their parents care for them, eventually playing out real life situations that sometimes astonishes you.

As a child I loved playing with dolls, combing their hair, giving them bath, changing their dresses. I remember while playing games like family, I actually had my doll get married to a friend's doll :) So when it comes to my girls, it's no surprise that they love playing with dolls too :) May be it's more of  a girl thing. Don't get me wrong, I want them to have interest in sports, board games too, but believe me, Anvesha and Anvika are both naturally drawn towards playing with dolls. They have a huge doll house where all of their Barbies are kept- Elsa, Anna, Beauty, Supergirl, Snowhite, Ariel..... and many more.

Speaking of dolls, their current favorite is playing with baby dolls. From the moment they both wake up in the morning, till the time they sleep, it all about these silicon creatures. And we have these baby dolls in various shapes and sizes too :) In order to avoid any conflict among the two (which of course will still happen no matter what we do), we have a baby designated to each one of them. These days the baby dolls come with a magic milk bottle where the milk magically disappears when you feed the baby. Isn't it so cool?

So the way it works out is that Anvesha is responsible for HER baby and Anvika is responsible for HER baby and by responsible I mean feeding their babies, putting them to bed with blankets and pillow, giving them bath, reading a book etc. One day I was really amused when I found all the babies next to each other and I asked Anvesha what was going on. Very innocently she replied that our babies are having a sleepover :) 

Conflict arises when Anvika takes away Anvesha's baby and the two get into a fight. So, no matter what we do, they will still fight. 

Keeping the fun part aside, I feel there are also some developmental benefits of playing with baby dolls that apply to girls as well as boys. One main one is that they develop caring and nurturing skills. Looking at the adults, the kids learnt about caring for their baby- feeding them, keeping them warm, cleaning them etc. Some dolls come with zippers and buttons and that is one great way of helping a child learn how to button- unbutton, use zippers, tie a knot etc. With the help of Anvika's baby I am also able to teach her about the body parts and to Anvesha I am able to teach her about the 'good touch' and 'bad touch'. 

 I don't care if people call my girls doing only girly stuff and I do not want to develop any kind of pressure on them to play with something else too. If that's how their personality is shaping up, so be it. Yes, sometimes it does get overwhelming to watch my girls play with only dolls, but I just want to cherish this phase. I am pretty sure when they grow up, they will have a smile on their face watching the old pictures of them with their babies.

Anvesha's Ballet Recital

Anvesha has been doing ballet ever since she was 3 years old and I can't help recall my old post, "Anvesha learns to dance". She has come a long way from a 3 year old ballerina to an almost 6 year old ballerina. Her dance movements are more refined now and she loves to do her courtsey in style at the end of each dance.

Yes, she still goes to learn ballet and tap from Miss Sue and she absolutely loves her. I like her too- very professional in her teaching approach and young girls are very fond of her.

Every year Miss Sue runs two ballet recitals- one at the end of school year around June and the other one is mid year around Nov- Dec which is called the nutcracker.

Yesterday was Anvesha's nutcracker performance. We were not sure if we will be around during the recital so I had pulled out Anvesha's name from the performance list. It was so kind of Mss Sue to add her back in the list at the last minute.

Anvesha performed on the tunes of "Spanish Chocolate" and it was such a delight watching her on stage. She looked more confident and her movements were more refined.

And here's  the video of her ballet earlier this year in June. She danced on "Let's have fun". I loved her costume. All the girls looked adorable, but my eyes were glued on my butterfly :) She looked so pretty in her pink ballet dress.

I hope to post more videos of her performances. Over the years it gives such joy to watch these videos. I am sure Anvesha would love to watch them too.

Love you sweetheart. You're the cutest ballerina in town. All the best for all your future performances.

Hugs, Mamma