Kavya and Ishaan : Getting along ?

The ideal answer to this question that would make everyone happy is yes, ofcourse !! But the real answer is yes and no :-) That means that Kavya becomes the most caring and loving sister some times and at other times, she just gets jealous and tries to hurt Ishaan.

When she is a good sister, she makes Ishaan laugh, offers him toys, even lifts him and brings him to me or Gaurav, feeds him, entertains him, plays with him, hugs and kisses him and becomes very happy when Ishaan smiles or does something and even helps us out with Ishaan by either fetching things for him or watching him for few seconds.

When she is not so good and caring sister, she will take things away from Ishaan, push him, scold him, hold his hand or head really tight or make faces at him. Once or twice, we even saw her stepping on Ishaan. It is really hard to explain her not to do that without getting mad at her. She even scribbled on his hair-less head with chalk the other day :-)

Hopefully, as Ishaan grows bigger, they will start playing together. There will be still be fights, but not the jealousy type.

Weekend full of fun activities

This past weekend was full of activities. It started with Kavya's swimming classes on Friday evening. Saturday morning, Kavya and I went to watch Disney on Ice Princess classics show at HP Pavilion with other friends and their kids. Then on Saturday evening, we all went to the park - with Kavya on her bike and Gaurav and Ishaan on Gaurav's bike. It was lot of fun. Then on Sunday morning, we went to the Uesugi pumpkin patch in Morgan Hill with Anu, Naresh and little Anirudh. It was our first experience of a pumpkin patch. We all took a train ride and Kavya also enjoyed the carousel.
Then in the evening, I took Kavya to her classmate Drew's birthday party at Pump It Up. Junior in Sunnyvale. Kavya had lot of fun jumping and going up and down the slides there. The day ended with pizza from Papa Johns.

What a weekend it had been - full of activities !!

Ishaan's first experience of formula

Ishaan is already 9 months old now. I have been thinking for almost past couple of weeks to start giving him formula once or twice a day. While this was technically not the first time he was having formula - he had it during his first week after birth and then couple of times during emergency situations when we were out, I was very skeptical about it since I had heard about the experience of couple of other folks whose kids had refused to take formula after getting used to mom's milk and even to the extent of throwing up.

Finally, today I offered him formula for his late afternoon milk time.. I just offered him 2 oz at first.. but to my surprise and relief, he took it without any problem.. and when he finished it all, he started crying; asking for me. So, I gave him 3 more oz and he drank all of it too. So, the plan is to start giving him formula once a day and gradually increase it to two times a day.

Somehow I am feeling little bad in giving him formula.. but at the same time I am happy and relieved that he did not have any problem with formula.

Ishaan's first ride with Daddy on his bike

Gaurav has been taking Kavya with him on bike rides for a while now. Today, he wanted to see if Ishaan would sit and enjoy a bike ride with him. First, we did a small trial round around the community. Ishaan seemed to be doing fine. So, we decided to go on a longer ride to a near by park. Kavya rode on her bike and Gaurav and Ishaan were on Gaurav's bike and I was on foot walking/running with them as needed.

Overall, it seemed like Ishaan was enjoying. He cried only two times - first when Gaurav rode over a small ditch and Ishaan was scared of the sudden jerk and the second time was when he heard a dog barking in the park and he got scared :)

We are now looking forward to more bike riding experiences with Ishaan - even considering to finally buy a bike for me :)

Kavya's love for bed time stories

Our everyday routine is that sometime between 9 and 10 pm, I will take Ishaan and feed him and put him to bed, while Gaurav will take Kavya and get her to brush her teeth, get her to change to night dress, read her a story or two and then put her to bed (and most of the times, go to sleep in the process :-) ).

Today, Gaurav got some dental work done. So, he had some pain in his teeth and hence could not talk. So, I was explaining Kavya that she should be a good girl and not trouble daddy since daddy has pain in his tooth and cannot talk. On hearing that, Kavya started crying. When we asked her what happened she said she wants to hear story before going to bed. Gaurav and I started laughing - Kavya had thought and interpreted so much and she looked so cute when she was crying for such a silly reason :)

Kavya's 1st rangoli

This Diwali, I really wanted to do a rangoli with Kavya. I got some colored sand (US equivalent of Rangoli colors :-) ) from Michael's and then was wondering how/where to do it. I did not have the time to do a big one on the patio and I figured that if I did a smaller one, Kavya will get somewhat frustrated if she cannot fill the color within the rangoli design properly.

Finally, I decided to just let Kavya do it on a paper. I printed out some cool rangoli designs from the web. Then today, I set it all up for Kavya. I poured the colored sand in 4 bowls and gave her the paper with the design. To make sure that she does not get frustrated, I decided to use some glue. So, I first applied glue to some part of the design and then asked Kavya to put sand over it. I then helped her to clear out the unwanted sand that was outside the rangoli pattern.

It turned out to be pretty quick and neat. I enjoyed it and Kavya did a good job too.

Kavya's first bingo/housie experience

Today we had a Diwali gathering with the godfather family at Amit-Pooja's place. After the lunch, fireworks and picture session, we played housie/bingo. Kavya was excited and wanted to play. So, Gaurav bought 2 tickets (one for himself and one for Kavya). Amit gave a crayon to Kavya and we explained her that she needs to circle the number that I call out.

The game started and as we started calling out numbers, Kavya was carefully marking the numbers in her ticket with Gaurav's help. Very soon, Kavya stood up saying she got one of the 3 rows. She won 2$ for it. She came happily to claim the prize and I asked her to go back dancing and she did :-). She won one more prize for full house towards the end. Another 4$ win. She was very happy. I am sure she is going to remember this experience for a while.

Curriculum Night at Kavya's school

Today I went for Curriculum Night at Kavya's School. I wasn't sure what to expect, but it was really good. Her teachers had basically laid out the toys/tools and different activities that they will be using during the entire year for learning. This included different activities/tools provided by 'HandWriting without tears', easy reading books, coloring/learning sheets, etc. The teachers explained how they would use those to teach the kids. The goal is to have the kids write the upper case letters clearly by the end of this school year.

It feels good to know what Kavya is going to be learning throughout the year and how. It also gives us an idea about what we should work on at home.

Recently, I bought an activity workbook for her that she loves doing. It has activities like matching, spotting the difference, connecting the dots, finding the right path, coloring based on the marked number or color names, tracing, etc.

It is fun to watch her grow and learn new things.. but it is also scary in a strange way..

Dandia 2009 - Kavya in the news :)

We were debating if we all should go for garba this year or if Ishaan and Gaurav should stay at home while Kavya and I went with friends. Since Gaurav does not like garba too much, he was in favor of staying home with Ishaan, but I really wanted them to come. So, we decided to go this one time and see how the experience is with Ishaan. We went to the Sankara Eye Foundation (SEF) garba in Santa Clara Convention Center on Sept 19th. It was Ishaan's first garba experience and he did very well. He went to sleep on the way to the event and continued to sleep for a while. But the music was too loud. So, he woke up quite a few times.. The good thing was that he did not cry.. although he was not in good mood either. But Gaurav would just hold him and rock him or do some dandia and he would go back to sleep. No fuss - No crying. I was really happy and surprised. I got to do some garba and Gaurav and I also did some Raas (Dandia). Kavya also danced a little and participated in the choo-choo train. So, overall, it was fun. And Ishaan was cooperative enough to give us courage to go one more time this season :)

So, we went to the Bay Area Vaishnav Parivar garba in Fremont on Oct 2nd. We reached little late since it was Friday - So, we got little late is leaving home and then we had to go to Dharti's place for dinner. While this was a much smaller place and crowd, Ishaan did not cooperate very well here. He cried quite a bit and Gaurav had to take him outside the hall and make him sleep. Kavya and I could do some garba, but after Ishaan woke up the second time, we decide to leave. Even though we were there for a short time, Kavya made it to the news (She is in the 3rd picture from the top - wearing orange/brown chaniya choli )

Hopefully, we will be going for more garba/dandia in next couple of years.

Ishaan is crawling like its supposed to be..

Ishaan started to crawl as if he was swimming on the floor. As a result, he had already tore couple of his new clothes by rubbing them against the floor while crawling. However, now he has learnt to crawl like its supposed to be. I hope he does not get too comfortable with crawling like Kavya did. Kavya started to crawl at 6 months and got so good and fast at it that she did not have any motivation to learn to walk. She started walking at almost 14 months.

Cookie baking project

I had been thinking of baking some cookies with Kavya for sometime and it finally happened today. All of us were very excited. Gaurav and Kavya started by mixing the Betty Crocker Cookie mix and butter and egg. Then Kavya and I laid them out on the cookie sheet and even added M&Ms to some of them.

Few minutes later, the cookies were warm and fresh and awesome. Ummm... very very yummy. I plan on doing more of cooking/baking projects with Kavya.