Snow Day!

Today Jason and I are home with Sonali for a snow day. To be accurate, the school was to be open until noon, but we decided that with the driving time, it wouldn't be worth it to take Sonali in for such a short day. We had a grand plan to take turns getting some work done today, and true enough, I did do some amount of work for today, but somehow, it is hard to motivate on a snow day to tackle the big jobs! Plus, this is the last day of a bizarre Massachusetts-specific calendar issue called "vacation week." Twice, during the school year, all of the public schools cancel classes for an entire week (once in February and once in April). The result is empty offices because most parents are home with kids or away in some sunny, warm destination. Sonali's school is open during vacation week, but once we get to Kindergarten, she will be off, and we will be juggling.

Ah well, it gives me a long overdue chance to catch you up on what we've been doing. Last weekend, Jason and I were battling a brutal flu/bronchitis/laryngitis/all-around-nasty bug. Sonali, luckily, was perfectly healthy, but this meant that we didn't get much downtime to recover. We are mostly well at this point, but we did have to miss Saraswati Puja celebrations on Saturday due to illness. Saraswati Puja celebrates the Goddess of Learning, so we put a stack of books and an offering of fresh fruit near her image upstairs. Sonali was intrigued by the idea that this was a celebration of curiosity and had many things she wanted to learn about...so, when no one was watching, she got loads, and loads, and LOADS of books for each of us and carted them upstairs to the Saraswati stack of books. It was very cute.

By Monday, we were feeling well enough to venture out of the house again and made it to an Indian Classical Dance performance by the MIT dance troupe. This was an "only-at-MIT" interpretation of biology - evolution, DNA, etc - as told through classical dance. It was surprising and enjoyable.



Sonali, of course, being completely addicted to Indian dance, was entirely mesmerized by the performance. Afterwards, we had Mexican food for dinner, stopped by the great dome at our alma mater, and headed home. It was a dream night for Sonali. She couldn't stop talking about it!



By the way, she chose her own fancy Indian clothes for the performance. She always likes to dress appropriately for the occasion, and generally, the fancier, the better. Imagine our surprise when, after putting her to bed 4 times last night, she ventured downstairs after 10 pm wearing this same skirt and her red robe. She had taken off her PJs, changed into a fancy outfit, and gotten ready for who knows what event! Jason started cracking up as soon as he saw her, and Sonali said sadly, "Please don't laugh at me, Daddy." We assured her that her choice in attire was gorgeous, but that it would be tough to sleep like that. Luckily, she actually fell asleep after we got her back into her PJs that time!