My little princess turns 7 today !

Happy 7th Birthday to my little princess, Kavya ! I still remember the day she was born.

We had a nice small celebration at our house with few of Kavya's friends today. We did a bake and decorate themed party where we baked and decorated teddy bear shaped cookie pops, baked rainbow cupcakes and decorated chocolate cake pops. I also baked a surprise rainbow cake for her birthday. I think the girls had fun. I definitely enjoyed the planning and interacting with the girls.

Here are some of the pictures from her birthday : https://plus.google.com/photos/114562332300579308736/albums/5822788222370220561?authkey=CIrHt_7Oy-qpWg

How do you write thirty ?

Ishaan is learning the 2 digit numbers lately. His teacher said that he gets stuck with some of the numbers, so we are trying to practice writing and reading numbers at home with him.

For numbers above 20, Gaurav taught him how to identify the 2 digits in the number. For example, for 23, since you say "twenty" first, you write 2 and then you say "three", so you write 3 : 23. Ishaan seemed to gradually understand that.

Today, I asked him to write thirty. So, he said "Thir" and wrote 3 and then said "ty" and wrote t : 3t instead of 30. He started laughing realizing that he had done something funny :)

Ishaan and his Gujarati !

Before Ishaan started going to preschool in July 2011, he could only talk in Gujarati. He had a tough time the first month in school because he couldn't communicate. After few months, all he spoke was English. He could understand Gujarati, but he communicated in English (often broken) for most part. The change is understandable since he spent most of his day at school and playing with Kavya and all that communication would happen in English.

Over the past year, we have continued to speak to him in Gujarati and he understands it all, but he replies back in English. Sometimes, we ask him to repeat whatever we say in Gujarati. If the sentence has more than 4-5 words, he says "Its too hard." :) His Gujarati accent is also funny sometimes. And we recently discovered that he cannot say "kh" properly. Here is how we found out.

Ishaan told me that his principal, Ms. Geeta also knows Gujarati. I asked him how he knew that. So, he replied "Because Ms. Geeta says 'caw' at lunch time.. Not the cow in farm, but 'caw' means to eat" :)
He meant to say "Khaw" which means to eat in Gujarati, but it seems that he doesn't speak or understand the letter "Kh" :)

He has been going to the Gujarati class at temple for past couple of months. Hopefully, that will help a little along with some more push from our side to keep the Gujarati language alive in him :)