We love it in Victoria

It snowed in Victoria, on and off for a whole week! Winters in Victoria are not normally like this, I was told. About 10 cm snow covered the roads. I was advised by Sana's daddy, who was in Toronto for two weeks, by continuous phone calls, not to drive on snowy days in Victoria. And to protect my poor ego in driving, he made it very clear that it was not me, but the drivers in Victoria he did not trust simply because they were not used to driving on snowy days and snowy/icy roads. So me and Sana walked in the snow and enjoyed the walk and the bus rides, tremendously.

Sana had a Christmas party at the daycare today. I didn't realize it was such a big deal until I saw the other girls coming in beautiful dresses. I should have dressed Sana up! When I went to pick her up in the afternoon, it became an even bigger deal that she actually got presents from Santa and the teachers. And I just have to mention her primary care giver Shirley. She was so sweet that she actually knitted a pair of wrist warmers for Sana and hand made a Christmas decoration with pine cones to give Sana as her Christmas presents. She also wrote nice words on a Christmas card to all of us. It was really nice of her and the daycare staff. Now more than anything, I hope the cake I ordered would arrive there on time tomorrow as they are open only for the morning and it is the last day of daycare before winter break.

We also got a call from campus housing. They told us that there was a two-bedroom townhouse coming up in February and we were the first on the list for that. I already scheduled a viewing for next Monday. They would paint the place and renovate the inside before handing it to the next tenant, which in this case are us. So again we got lucky!

spice girl and strategy

Being born to me and her daddy, Sana actually did not have any choice, in terms of dealing with spicy food. Pakistani food is known for being spicy, my food, on the other hand, is only spicier than Pakistani food. Sana seems to enjoy spicy food to a certain degree by now. She does find food spicy, but shows no sign of stopping eating it. She also seems to have developed some kind of strategy to handle the heat that comes in our daily diet.

Tonight, we had pan-fried cod, stir fried celery, and stir fried spinach, with rice. She loved the spinach and fish. Daddy was in class that time so when he came home and had his dinner, Sana went to the table again and demanded exactly the same thing that daddy had, which was the same as our dinner earlier, but with hot sauce. So daddy squeezed a little bit of hot sauce into her plate, then she asked me to put a cup of water right next to the plate. Now she was fully prepared for the spiciness.

screaming

Sana developed a new "strategy" of turning herself down. She would talk/sing/scream loudly and put her index finger right in front of her lips with a "shhh", then started talking nicely. She came with me to the laundry room. The moment we stepped out of our door, she called out for me, loudly. Then she looked around and put the finger on her lips with a "shhhh", and walked toward the laundry room. When we got out of the laundry room, she did the same ritual.

Today when I went to pick her up from the daycare, I was told that she screamed in the daycare playroom as well. When they were outside playing in the sand, she was all fine, nice, peaceful, and quiet. So they were working on reducing the screaming.

So we will see what happens now.

2.

We got up early this morning. But daddy decided to shave (after three or four weeks) and wanted me to take a few pictures for him before the beard is gone, so that he could post the pictures on facebook. Well, as a natural consequence, he wanted many many different pictures from which he could choose from (the root reason was that he did not trust my photography skills), and, we ended up leaving home late. Then Sana and I missed the bus by five seconds. Then there was an accident somewhere on the way so it took another 40 minutes (the normal bus interval was 5-7 minutes) for the next bus to come. Sana and I were just playing at the bus stop for the whole 40 minutes. It was a beautiful experience on a chilly Victorian winter morning, after rain.