40Q on 2006

I received these questions from a friend and normally I won’t bother completing something like this. But this year has been full of many first’s so why not.

1. What did you do in 2006 that you’d never done before?
   Change a diaper.
2. Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
   I don’t ever make any. Let's try this year.
   - Try to survive on my own and not ask mom to return, pronto.
   - Visit Avi when he moves to Shanghai.
   - Cut down on the carbs and get back in my size 8's.
   - Do more things together as a family.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
   Other than ME?? Let's see. Srikanth & Padma had a baby girl. So too Sharda & Bala. The Breedorf's had a baby boy.
4. Did anyone close to you die?
   No, thankfully
5. What countries did you visit?
   India and a brief visit to London.
6. What would you like to have in 2007 that you lacked in 2006?
   A waistline
7. What date from 2006 will remain etched upon your memory?
   Jan 4, 2006 8:30pm - the day Tara was born.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
   Experiencing labor for 16 long painful hours and surviving it.
9. What was your biggest failure?
   Inability to get into my pre-pregnancy clothes.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
    No
11. What was the best thing you bought?
    A breast pump. It let me get back to work and still feed Tara for 10 plus months.
12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
    My brother for becoming a responsible adult, caring uncle and naming Tara.
13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
    The US voting public, at-least one half of it.
14. Where did most of your money go?
    Innumerable diapers, toys and baby clothes.
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
    - Becoming a parent
    - Tara meeting her great-grand mothers and aunts
    - My mom’s sister, Dada, Lulu & Joythi visiting us
    - When Tara’s poop turned from green to yellow
    - Getting our greencards
16. What song/album will always remind you of 2006?
    Only cd I bought: Live From The Mountain Music Lounge Vol 12
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
    happier or sadder? Happier
    thinner or fatter? Thinner (I was extremely pregnant last year)
    richer or poorer? Richer, in lotsa ways
18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
    Spent more time in the kitchen with my mom.
19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
    Surfing too many message boards that freaked me out every time Tara sniffled.
20. How will you be spending New Year’s?
    Hang out at Arun’s condo and watch the fireworks. It was great to walk a couple blocks and be at the bottom of the space needle and not have to deal with the traffic. Thanks Arun, even though my daughter had to keep occupied with your ipod, keys, New Yorker and Jazz Book we had a fun time. And oh, she fell off the bed - let's say she started '07 with a bang, literally.
21. Who did you spend the most time on the phone with?
    My brother
22. Did you fall in love in 2006?
    Yes (It’s still you Mr.Shandekar, only you, always you, ok I’ll stop)
23. How many one night stands in this last year?
    WHAT?! I’m a good girl, I am.
24. What was your favourite TV programme?
    The Wire, Sopranos, Boston Legal, Project Runway, Entourage & Rome.
25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
    Krispy Cremes. I want my figure back, damnit!
26. What was the best book(s) you read?
    The Baby Book by Dr.Sears. Thanks, Alyssa!
27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
    Those singing puppets on Baby Einstein Videos.
28. What did you want and get?
    A baby. Also a long maternity leave so I could go home.
29. What did you want and not get?
    An end to the Iraq disaster.
30. What were your favourite films of this year?
    Girl in the Café (Maybe it was from 2005)
31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
    I turned 33 and I spent it with all my relatives in Bangalore, India.
32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
    If Mr.Shandekar and my brother had come to India with me.
33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2006?
    Whatever little fits. Mostly stretchy workout gear used for covering up the hips rather than actually working out.
34. What kept you sane?
    My Mom
35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
    Sasha Baron Cohen. Personally, I prefer him as Ali G than Borat.
36. What political issue stirred you the most?
    Renewing the horrible Patriot Act
37. Who did you miss?
    My father
38. Who was the best new person you met?
    Elmo
39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2006.
    Your heart grows 10 times larger once you have a baby. You also worry 10 times more.
40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year?
    Baby mine, don't you cry.
    Baby mine, dry your eyes.
    Rest your head close to my heart,
    never to part, baby of mine. – Baby Mine by Bette Midler
    

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas

Much Happiness to you and your family!

Affect,
-The ShanDekars

Pohey to the milestones

In the past year I have read countless baby books, visited numerous websites and gone to message boards that say things like "Oh, my DH is so cute. My BB are dropping. My DB's poop was yellow, yah. Sorry TMI. LOL :)" and not put a gun to my head and called it quits. I'm serious go read some of the posts here and you'll totally understand. One thing I obsessively read about are milestones. Each book, site, doctor, BTDT Mom and person in the checkout aisle asks whether Tara has reached a certain milestone. The answer most times - No. She only held her head up at 4 months, rolled over at 7 months and crawled at 11 months. I wanted to brag like every parent about how ahead of the curve my little one is but no such luck. Tara has a schedule of her own and doesn't get the message that her mom wants to show-off sometimes!!

So now I can brag on one, just one, thing. Drum roll please. Tara has totally got the signing thing down. We took a Signing with your Baby class back in Oct at our friends Jen & Matt's place. The kids were more interested in slobbering over each others toys then paying attention. We enjoyed the classes and would come home and wow my mom with signs for Milk, More, Eat, Water, Beer, Vodka, Wine & No-Touch-Dirty-Diaper. We were pretty skeptical on the benefits of the class, honestly we took it to meet other folks with babies and also I've had a thing for learning to sign every since I saw Children of a Lesser God. We did continue to sign a couple words to Tara and voila she signs back now. It's the cutest darn thing. She signs Milk, More, Water and Airplane pretty consistently and not randomly. When she hears an annoying Kiro 5 News helicopter fly by she points to the sky and signs. Did you just rub your eyes and re-read?

But ....

wait .......

I have more. Tara is teething. Finally for real compared to the 1,001 times when we only thought she was. One top tooth has made it's appearance. The other night she looks at me with a serious face and makes the sign for "paining". No way. We haven't done that sign too often. I gave her some teething tablets and she didn't repeat it(translation-she knows the purpose of the sign). When she bums her head which is pretty often these days she touches her head and then signs paining. I have descended from my brag-box.

Girl, we couldn't get much higher

What was I thinking? I mean really what was I thinking?! Everytime we'd take Tara to her gymboree class I'd see kids her age crawling, cruising, rolling, basically moving in some fashion. I'd lament why does Tara just sit on her ass all the time, I wish she'd crawl. I was told that crawling is no longer a developmental milestone and some kids just skip it altogether. Still. Tara's first attempt at crawling was not towards me or towards the toys but up the stairs. Grreeaattt. One of us has to constantly be on Tara-Watch these days. She wants to not only climb up the steps but climb pretty much anything. She pull up on the shaky stereo cabinet, the wobbly bookrack, the edgy center table and oh my drawstring pants that have since lost elasticity. Gone are the days when she'd sit content like little Buddha.

Tara understands the ASL for 'No'. When we say No Tara, No touch she screams in defiance. It's amazing how she has grasped the word and associated it with the sign. When we say No Tara, no going toward the tv stand she looks back gives us a sly mischievous glance, screams Aaacckkk (like those creatures in Mars Attacks) and then moves two paces ahead. We act as if we are chasing her and the joy she gets is unbelievable (until we take her away from the TV and then the screaming starts).

She totally interacts with us now. She directs us around saying there-there and even points in that specific direction. I thought kids say ba-ba, pa-pa, or the all important mama as their first word - this one's is There. There? Yeah there. How boring. But from Tara's perspective it's a brilliant first word. All she has to do is point and in the cutest mouse-like voice say dthere and we pick her up and take her dthere. No effort required on her part. Currently she is fascinated with the only 2 kiddy ornaments on the still alive xmas tree and is forever pointing to it.

In unrelated news, today was my company's holiday party where we had a calendar exchange. When it was my time to pick I looked at the 20 plus neatly wrapped calendars and randomly picked one. It turned out to be the Mickey Mouse & Friends calendar. Everyone went, aww, what a perfect choice for a new mom. They thought I had special mom-ESP. I was frankly shocked myself, who would have thought in a zillion years that I would pick a children's calendar and not want to get rid of it!! The calendar is going in Tara's room, she's been playing with it all evening and muttering there-there. Maybe we should go to Disneyland, I'd like some of that California weather right now.

Santa Anxiety

You know how we've been bragging about Tara not experiencing any stranger anxiety, well it all ended today. We met up with Alyssa and Bryn to take Santa pictures. The little ones were dressed up and ready for the photo shoot as the mom's fidgeted with their cameras waiting for Santa to show up. He did, they cried, end of story. Correction, Byrn very politely told her mom she wanted to go see the reindeers instead while Tara yelled her lungs out. I'm convinced that anyone who's taken pictures of their kids with Santa have photoshoped it, for sure!

We've gotten into the Christmas spirit as well. I wanted to pick up an artificial tree with the lights already on it while Mr.Shandekar and Mom kept raving about waking up to the smell of Fir in the Morning. They won out, we hauled the 6 foot plus tree into our house with enough of pine needles to keep Tara's mouth extremely content. I had the "I told you so" look on my face all evening as Mom and Mr.Shandekar constantly picked up and vacuumed needles just to find Tara chomping on one. Another mistake we did was let Tara pick the decorations. What we didn't realise is she points to everything in random order. Like, Duh. Parents thinks their kid is an interior decorator until you end up with a bunch of multi-colored lights/white garlands/red ornaments and an x'mas tree that can only be looked at wth sunglasses on.

Martha Stewart, help!

Tara had her first official play-date this weekend, outside our house. We've had friends visit for the most part as Tara sat around with the look of what-you-on-about. She's grown up now (crap she'll be a year in less than a month...a MONTH!!!!) and totally enjoyed herself in the company of Tanvi. She also found new pencils and toys to chew on & new people to carry her. The two girls were so into each other that we had time to ourselves and what did we talk about, no not politics, but how cute the girlies look in pink.

I'll leave you with a conversation between Mom & Tanvi while Tara was on the potty:

Tanvi: Will Tara fall into the Potty?
Mom: No I'm holding onto to her
Tanvi: Why is her kaka not smelly?
Mom: Haha
Tanvi: She has done soooo much kaka
Mom: Yamu come hold Tara I'm laughing too much
Tanvi: Who's going to wash her
Me: Uh, not me
Tanvi (singing): Tara's done ka-ka, Tara's done kah-kah

Oh the joys of parenthood.

I Luv Baby Einstein

The number of opinions of mine that have changed over this past year is countless. I never thought in a zillion years that I'd miss an episode of The Sopranos, go "aww soh sweeth" and not get physically sick, examine the color/texture/consistency of poop and get excited when the color is all mustard 'n' sh*t.

When I was pregnant, someone told me that children are not supposed to watch any TV till they turn 3. Supposedly they get ADD by their 7th birthday. I told myself my baby was not going to watch any tele even though her Mom watches each and every single lame-depressing-how-can-you-watch-this reality show (except The Biggest Loser, uh-uh I have some standards).

Tara comes along and I, yes I, Me Moi turned off the TV whenever she was in the family room. This lasted a few months before all that bang-bang on the Sopranos got her attention! One day I randomly flipped through the On Demand menu and landed on Teletubbies. Woah, I mean what concentration, what knitted eyebrows, what staying in one place and ohh what silence, sweet silence.

Tara has a lot of toys, books, clothes from the Baby Einstein company. She got most of them as gifts and she took a liking to them ever since she was able focus her eyes on something more than 5 inches away. I'd never heard of this brand except for seeing a 10 pack DVD collection which cost 100 bucks at Costco. I used to pass by it and shake my head and think who in the right mind would pay so much for this when the Six Feet Under collection lay right by its side. That was the pre-tara me. We picked up the DVD collection last week and Wow, Scarface Platinum Edition step aside. Tara is mesmerized for a whole 33 minutes. They have snotty names like Baby Wordsworth & Baby Da Vinci BUT it's nicely done, rather educational and I can't stress this often enough keeps her quiet for 33 whole minutes!!!

Check back with me when Tara turns 7 but as for now, Baby Einstein & Co I love you and if I could marry you I would. For those of you who gave Tara the Einstein gifts, sorry for that small thank you card, I owe you so so so much more, you GENIUSES.

(You ask where did you get that cute chair, I answer from Baby Einstein naturally.)

Tara's IM

Happy Birthday, Avi. We love watching you grow too.

Can I have some rain, please

I am so DeeOhNnEeee with the snow. Enjoyed it for about a day and then it got plain annoying. I've always cribbed about the rain in Seattle, in fact I refer to it as damn rain. Well not anymore. I'll take rain anyday over snow not over sunshine, don't get me wrong. I was trapped at home for most of this week and although the snow looked all white & pretty and the snowflakes glistened in the sun, waiting for the snow to melt got boring (if I could hum the Jeopardy tune here I would)!

We've learned Mr.Shandekar's spanking new Mercedes does not fair well in snow. The car actually got stuck in the snow. I mean STUCK. The wheels kept spinning and the behind kept swaying like the behind of an xxl person in Costco. I mean how can a car get stuck?!? It's not an ol' piece of crap like Mark's red-stolen-by-a-crack-addict car for God's sake. Mr.Shandekar had to put sand, deicer and shovel the snow out and then it barely moved. So he didn't take his German piece of **it to work instead took my smooth cruising watch-me-on-ice Japanese car.


I figured I'd take the bus in, no sweat. I bundled myself up with down jacket, gloves, cap, umbrella and entered the bus. There was no seat to be had. I guess everyone and I mean EVERYONE decided to bus it to work. So I waddle my way to the end of the bus and find one tiny middle seat free. I stood there for a while and examined it thinking - will my 20 pounds heavier self be able to squeeze into that spot? I took the chance and squished my way in much to the displeasure of the 2 people. And then it started getting bloody hot. I didn't want to move to get all the gloves, jacket etc off so I baked in silence. I got off one stop too late so had to walk all the way from Westlake to work, which on any other day would have been just fine. To add to my misery Le Panier was baking the best friand I've ever smelt but I had to suck it up and walk past it. Worst of all the socks that i put on had no elasticity so I had to stop like every 2.01minutes take off the gloves, take off the shoe and drag the sock back up!!

Dear Snow thank you for showing up but take your fluffy little white ass back to Montana where I'm told they drive in 3 feet of snow without skipping a beat.

November Snow

It's been snowing in Seattle for the last few days with more snow expected in the forecast. While Avi was here he kept rolling his eyes, held his big belt buckle and said - You wussy Seattlelites, can't handle a couple inches of snow. Arrgh. Sorry to break it to you Avi but I AM FROM INDIA AND NOT USED TO DRIVING ON ICE, DAMNIT.

Mr.Shandekar and I are both at home today, doing the working-from-home thingy just like every other person who lives here. It's beautiful looking out of our windows, sunny but heck freezing cold. Tara has been pointing to the window and saying be-be, be-be constantly. It took us a while to figure out oh, ba-by wants to go outside. She is having a blast eating the snow, if only we could put some peas in it.

Here are some pictures I've taken over the past few days from the confines of our warm home.

Everything but the Turkey

This year we couldn't use the same sentence we've used since we moved to the US - "We don't celebrate Thanksgiving, we are HI-B visa holders". With the addition of a US citizen to our family I was told I had to cook a Thanksgiving meal or report for work. After making a mess in the kitchen, burning my ankle (yes you read that right...my ANKLE) the meal was served.

Mr.Shandekar: Looks good
Me: Whatever
Mr.Shandekar: What's this greeny thing
Me: It's leek soup
Avi (spitting out a mouthful): cough, choke, it's salty
Me: Those soup cubes are salty!
Mr.Shandekar: What's that burnt thing?
Me: It's not burnt, just crisp it's bread stuffing
Avi: Stuff it into the garbage can
Me: Whatever, have some potatoes
Mr.Shandekar: Did you put a whole rosemary plant into the potatoes?
Me: No, but the can of herbs kinda fell in, have the cranberry sauce
Avi: It's sourrr
Me: Then have the corn bread with it
Mom: Yum, now this is delicious
Me: It's outta a bag, I just added water and baked it
Mom: Don't worry Yamu I'll eat it all
Me: But it all looks so good ......
Avi: Yeah but far from good
Mr.Shandekar: Glad we are going to Bob & Kristie's for a real meal later
Avi: Glad I'll be in Shanghai next year



PS: Tara slept through this whole meal, isn't she smart.

Talking about Tara, I cannot end a post without saying something about the girl. She got into the turkey spirit this week, watch here as she says gooble, gooble, gooble.



It snowed for the first time this year. We buddled Tara up and took her into the yard. She was besides herself and wanted to eat the snow (she pretty much wants to eat everything but food). I've posted all the pictures in the Month 10-12 album. And yes Roma, we put the mittens on right after I took these shots.

I'd like to thank ...

1. My brother for graduating, growing up, getting a job and cutting up my credit card all in a year. For buying Tara this (OMG!!) and for spending the holidays with us
2. My DVR for not missing a single show, so I could miss them and not sweat it
3. HBO for putting the episodes of The WIRE On Demand the very next day
4. My audience of 2 who read this blog and don't pass comments like ... Whatever, Big Deal, As if you are the only Mom in the entire world, That's just cheesy ... instead send me delightful emails making me feel like the only mom in the world.
5. Roma for leaving her expensive taste behind in Seattle. She has convinced Aditya that every bottle of Evian is a miracle.
6. Grape flavored Tylenol for helping us when Tara is sick, going through a growth spurt, teething, getting her flu shots and for whenever we want her to shut the heck up!
7. My Mom for changing 1,999,999 diapers and letting me change only 5 not-so-stinky ones. (Yes I'm a terrible, terrible mom but oh so happy)
8. My Urban Yoga Lotus drawstring pants that look so cool and yet cover up my child bearing hips
9. The folks on Craigslist who post here and not here
10. All the strangers in the supermarket, the mall, the long plane journeys who put up with Tara's chripy grins and actually talk back to her in the cutesy baby voice, so I don't have to.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Bed Head

Tara was born with a good mop of hair. I have faint memories of yelling with labor pains and the Doc telling me to hang in there as she could feel a whole head of hair. The Doc obviously did not see my get-the-baby-the-HELL-out look on my face!! When I first looked at Tara I went oh-no i've had Marge Simpson.

As Tara has grown her hair has made me envious. I have the almost Sai Baba hair - wavy, thick and difficult to style. I spend hours washing it, putting all sorts of gunk in it, blow-drying, then some more gunk followed by flat-ironing. All for kinda straight hair which when exposed to the Seattle moisutre goes frizzy in a second. Arghh.

My daughter on the other hand has lightish brown, straight hair which has grown to a point that it's touching her eyes. Mom combs it to the side which I don't like. I prefer a center parting which Mr.Shandekar doesn't like. He prefers it like a golly-wog which Mom and I don't like. Depending on who's carrying her she gets her hair jouged-up constantly.

Take a look and let me know what Jonathan would call BANGIN'.

1) Neatly combed to the right
2) Parted right down the middle
3) Waking up curly head and sweaty
4) Cover it up with a ridiculous cap

Hello, mah bahbee!

It's been busy in a nice sorta way at the Shandekar residence. This past week our relatives Lulu and Joythi came to visit from CA. The magnetic power that Tara possess is unbelievable. I mean who'd thing of leaving sunny CA for crappy SEA?! She's managed to convince folks to visit within 9 months of her existence compared to my 9 years here.

Tara was fascinated with Joythi. His Hello-Mah-Bahbee greeting was recieved with outstretched arms, toothless grins and frantic kicking. Tara protested vehemently if any of us even went close to her leave alone try to take her away. You can image the state of my bruised ego. Is this MY child, I ask?

Lulu saw the amount mom does for me and got petrified. In the brief time she was here she taught me how to make some quick dishes which involved everything but the microwave. She kept Tara entertained during the day while Joythi was in class and even managed to get her to sign back the word "more" as in "Read more books to me, Agi Lulu".

The weather was typically Seattle - stormy, windy, sunny, stormy. They've promised to return that one day in July when the sun is actually out and you can see the elusive Mt.Rainier. Until then the cute Elmo puppet and hand-stiched blanket will keep Tara's memories of tha-tha alive.

Say What

Over the last few weeks Tara has been using her vocal cords to no end. She has lenghty conversations with her Teletubbies and when she gets bored beats the crap outta them. She lets out a short shriek followed by tightening of the fists, gritting of the jaws (no teeth yet!) followed by some more bursts of shrieks.

Sidenote: I've updated the site to the latest version of the Blogger and now the header is all screwed up. I'll try and tool around with it later.

Here's looking at you and you

I whisked mom and Tara off to Vegas on Wednesday for a 3 day trip to celebrate mom's birthday. Had planned it a while ago but kept it a secret from mom. She's had her fare share of surprises so this time I told her a few days in advance as we had to get Tara's stuff ready. With all the new airline restrictions, we were told that we'd have to taste her milk in front of the TSA prior to clearing security!! Glad Tara is taking formula now, as we didn’t have to do this ridiculous thing. Although, we had to keep stopping by Starbucks and asking for a hot glass of water (the highness drinks only hot milk) as we weren’t allowed to carry any liquids.


Tara had a blast. The constant lights, multitude of fountains, slot machines going ting-ting-ka-ching and the hoards of people kept her occupied. Tara loves to be in the company of people, lots of people. At traffic lights when some random drunken dude is standing next to us moaning over his losses here's Tara enthusiastically grinning at him going LOOK AT ME, I'M CUTE!!! The next second she turns to the old lady with her bag of coins and gives her the same joyful expression. She wants everyone to talk to her, play peek-a-boo with her, touch her nose and say you-precious, and cuddle her. She goes to anyone who stretches their arms out except of course her most upset/annoyed/dissapointed mom & grand-mom. She literally pushs me aside with her hands and turns 180 degrees to the ignorant stranger. Where is the Stranger Anxiety that all the books had warned us about???


We stayed at the Aladdin which was directly across from the Bellagio fountains so every 1/2 hour we'd peek out the window to show Tara the fabulous musical fountains. By the second day, Tara was pointing to the window every 10 minutes, clever girl. So we’d put her into the stroller (have I told you the ruckus she creates to get into it, she screams bloody murder, arches her back, stiffens her legs and waves her hands frantically all at the same time) rush downstairs run across the huge crosswalk on the strip and find a place to watch the fountains. She HAD to watch it from the first row not from the 30th floor of our hotel, because it’s just not the same as watching it Live.

Vegas should be renamed scam-city. The hotel did not have a mini bar nor a coffee pot even thought I paid some major $$$ for the room.. I checked with room service and it would have cost me 19 bucks for a cup...not a pot...of tea (teabag 8.50, milk 3.50, service charge 2.50, and 19% gratuity). By the end of the stay I was wondering how the ginseng flavored body wash would taste with some milk. All said, Vegas is still Vegas. There is nothing quite like Vegas. I'm glad we took Tara at such a young age as she won't remember a darn thing. Mom was in shock & awe for most of the trip. I got tired of saying yes mom the ceiling is fake, yes mom the plants are fake, yes mom the river is fake, yes mom the lady is the tight shirt has fake....you get the picture. One of the fringe benefits of Tara is the annoying men with the “girls in 30 minutes” flyers stayed away from us, so too the waitress with the free cocktails....dang.

Happy Birthday Mommie, sorry I didn't get you a cake but I was afraid a girl in a bikini would jump out of it and that's one surpise you wouldn't be happy about. The ice-cream was a wiser choice.

Where's Quack-Quack

Roma left last nite and we are all missing her dearly. It was such a fun week, especially for Tara. Roma used to sing this song to Tara and at the end of it Tara would point at her with the index finger and go Quack-Quack (more like Qua-Quaaa)

"5 little ducks went swimming one day,
Over the pond and far away.
Mother duck said QUACK, QUACK, QUACK
And only 4 little ducks came back"

So today when Tara woke up and looked over her crib for Roma there was no quack-quack to be seen. It's amazing how Tara took to Roma, she didn't want to come to mom or me (which kinda ticked us off). I'm happy though, as Roma said she'll be here in a heartbeat whenever Tara needed her. Boy, am I gonna use this trick to make her visit again...soon!

It was Tara's first Halloween last week. A bit of a downer as we were planning to take Tara out Trick or Treating but she had a terrible cough. We just dressed her up in the Devil costume and proudly displayed her to the little kids that stopped by.


We also took Roma to the season opener of the Sonics basketball game. They gave us free shirts and towels on entrance, we were all completely into the game. I even heard Roma follow the cues and yell DE-Fense between her naps we caught her taking. The sonics lost by 2 points. Tara just sat on our laps with a frown on her face and her hand streched out for the ball. We were amazed at how focused she was for the first half of the game and then she joined Roma in snoozing.


We hope to see you back soon, Ms.Quack.

Sheer Excitement

Roma picked up a hair clip for Tara at Nordy's and at the checkout counter saw these ducks and bought it, on impluse. Tara was ecstatic. We've never seen her so excited over toys. Take a look.

Star Attraction

For the past month I've been keeping a big secret from Mom and it was so hard to keep, well, not anymore because the surprise arrived on BA flight 49. Mom's sister Roma is here!! I had duped mom into thinking a friend was visiting for the weekend so when Roma entered the house and stood in front of her, Mom looked like she has seen a ghost. Mom just stood there frozen while Roma approached her and gave her a hug. Mom was icy cold. Tara took to her immediately and hasn't left her side since. Last nite it was way past her bed-time and she kept playing pee-a-boo with Roma and gave her the biggest smiles she could muster up. She's still pretty weak after the stomach flu which she successfully pass onto me.



It's so nice having Roma in town. I've been bugging her to visit for the longest time and she always told me once I have the "kutties" she'll be here. Tara leaps towards her and gleefully tugs on her glasses. Roma brought some lovely toys and gorgeous dresses for Tara. Dresses you could only get in Europe, they are go classy I'd like to wear them. She also got her a lego kit and knowing Tara she enjoyed chewing the box rather than playing with the toy crocodile.



With daylight saving time kicking in today we all were up early. After dolling Tara up in one of her new dresses we set off to show Roma Seattle. We drove past Microsoft then made our way to Kirkland and landed up at Cheesecake Factory to get her an American sized meal. "On-God-Yamu look at the portion size, yah" - was her reaction.

HooBoy, indeed

Tara is sick, horribly sick. It was a normal Tuesday afternoon at home, mom was feeding Tara and suddenly out of the blue she puked. We thought nothing of it, until she puked again and again. I got home from work and she was still puking. Doc determined it's probably a stomach flu. Asked us to keep Tara hydrated and offer her only water and Pedialyte (Gatorade for kids). How did this happen? Where did she get this? Started to think back and the only time we took Tara out was to my colleague Matt's house on Sunday for the Sign Language class. I pinged Matt's wife and awkwardly asked her if anyone was sick. Her reply in a nutshell "HooBoy". Turns out she and Matt had the worst stomach bug and Tara's managed to pick it up!

Last nite was hard, so hard. Tara was cranky and in so much pain it was unbearable to see. She slept on my shoulder or mom's lap the entire nite. Waking every half hour, screaming in pain and then crying herself to sleep. She isn't keeping anything down, so is hungry, tired, weak and sick to the stomach literally. Now to the icky part, her pooh is so foul smelling that the whole house stinks. I almost threw up a few times as it was so bad. My poor sickly-pickly baby as Shamu used to say.

This is Tara's first illness, not a milestone to look forward too. She's been such a happy, healthy baby. I guess it was a matter of time before she caught a bug, but HooBoy I didn't expect this.

What about the Toys?

It seems like we buy toys for Tara everytime we go out. It's more for our excitement than hers. I've noticed that she likes everyday ordinary things more than any PlaysKool overpriced toy. The top on her list is Adit's laptop ... it's amazing how much she likes hitting the keys. One of our friends told us to lock the computer and then let her go at it, brilliant idea! Before we knew the CTRL+ALT+DEL trick, she has nicely messed up my desktop as we can't seem to fix the darn thing. But I stray from the point, which is no more toys for you Tara, here take yesterday's newspaper and chew it.

She likes tapping away on Adit's laptop,


she loves to press all the numbers on the telephone,


she enjoys making music on the utensils,


and munching on my keys, while all the toys lay around sad and ignored.

Deepavali Day

Tara's first Diwali went off not with a bang but more of a ring-a-ding-ding. While Mom and Mr.Shandekar were doing the pooja Tara was gleefully trying to ring the bell, swallow the bell and bang the bell. She did fold her hands together for a brief second before returning to banging the bell.

Our great plans of decorating the entire front of the house with tea-lights turned into just decorating the front porch. The wind got the better of us. After the futile effort to keep all the lights burning we headed to the Vedic Cultural Center for the Diwali celebrations. We entered the house to the chant of Hare Rama, Hare Krishna with the smell of incense heavily coating the air. Tara had her knitted eyebrow look, not knowing whether to cry or to jump up and down like the dude next to her. The incense smell was so intoxicating, I got a mild headache so we left pretty quickly. Tara on the other hand got a boost of energy from the incense and did not stay in my arms. She was waving both hands and kicking her feet furiously until we reached the car and then promptly knocked off asleep.