Tuesday, September 13, 2011

The lantern girl

"Lets go downstairs", I said to the girls yesterday evening. "Children will be bringing lanterns to light up and probably sparklers."

"Ms Audrey gave me a hello kitty lantern to light up today!", said Anjali. She ran helter skelter for a few minutes and then ran back into the kitchen with a paper contraption that had cellophane eyes and nose. "But we need to put something in the bottom" she said "like a cardboard box!"

Ofcourse, my junkpile had just the thing, so I took out the bottom of some milk cartons which I was saving to make literacy blocks and never got around to making them. I had used them as seed starters instead, but had many left over.

The milk carton bottom made an ideal base for the lantern, but we had yet another problem.

Sophia wanted her own lantern. There was no time to make another Hello Kitty and so I improvised wildly by using two more carton bottoms and putting them one on top of another using toothpicks and masking tape to hold. The candle fit and I was rather proud for my kludging skills until husband popped up claiming that Sophia's lantern would burn through since it had a top and look at Anjali's it had no top.

Well, it was too late to make a change in the design of the lantern, so we went outside where Chinese children were lighting up lamps and sparklers. There were even some electric (battery operated) lanterns which blew bubbles when you blew soap solution on them. talk about funny stuff.

Anjali tried a hand at the sparklers but Sophia was content to carry her lantern and walk around the park. I was a bit concerned about her pattu pavadai and since husband wanted to *gloat* about the potential failure of my topped lantern, got him to watch Sophia as she carried it around

Well, it actually held up. And when wew convinced her to leave the lantern near the tree to hold up the bubble one, and it tipped, only the was fell out and even the cardboard wasnt burnt. The kid continued walking with it for a very long while before it burned out and she relinquished it to run to the slides.

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