Birthday Boy!

Our little man is one! Unbelievable! It doesn't seem that it can possibly be so, but it is! We had a birthday brunch with babies from playgroup and a few other of his girlfriends. Everything was monkeys - check it out:

Monkey Invitations

Monkey Decorations (made by Amiya and her friend Aubrey)


Monkey Cake

Kev's Cake



Kev enjoying his cake! He had a very big smile on his face when we sang to him and he picked one ear off the monkey to eat first. Then he very delicately ate bits and pieces of his cake. I was expecting a huge mess, but aside from the crumbs, he did pretty well! You can also sort of see the monkey on his shirt - it was a very monkey day here today!

Kev got some great presents, too, even though it was a no presents affair! A monkey backpack, a book about the zoo, a LeapFrog Fridge Radio and a gift card or two! He's set for awhile now!

Happy Birthday Grandma!

Grandma and Grandpa came into town Tuesday afternoon, six days after Grandma's birthday. Amiya wanted to have a tea party for Grandma, so off the three of us went for tea. It was a very nice lunch and I'm happy to report that all three of us used our inside voices and our best manners!

Amiya wearing her tea party dress and jewelry whilst (isn't that a very tea party-ish word?) sipping milk in her tea cup. Please note the partial extension of pinky finger - she's working on perfecting this skill!

This is a fabulous picture of two very proper ladies at tea! I think Amiya really loves her Grandma and her Grandma really loves her! It was a very sweet afternoon!

Cakes and cakes and cakes!

This is my sous chef Amiya helping me out, it's a big cake week at our house. Besides Kev's birthday cake this weekend, I've got a very chocolate cake to go to a friend's teaching staff and a baby shower cake. Both to be delivered Friday. This is the most I've ever done at once and Amiya is loving licking the spatulas and beaters (nothing with raw eggs - don't worry!) and only immediately before they go into the sink - never when they're about to be used again.

When she finished licking the chocolate frosting off the spatula she told me, "Mommy, I'm your little dishwasher!"

Promise

In the event that something happens to me, I would like any and/or all of you to assist my husband in either finding a new wife or, at the very least, finding someone to come and dress our children. I love my husband to pieces and I think he's a very smart guy, but he can not dress our children in coordinating outfits to save his life.

This is an actual Vinay created ensemble. Stripes. Print.
Don't look too long, you might go blind!

Promise me you won't let him dress our kids like this!

Zoo Trip

Kev and Daddy checkin' out the okapi. Kev loved the zoo but only the
animals that were big and obvious.

Kev and Amiya grooming the goats!

Amiya saying hello elephant-style!

Amiya feeding a three ton rhino. I couldn't believe she got this
close to it, much less touched it. But she did!

Happy Valentine's Day (Late!)

A few pictures of our little loves from Valentine's Day:

Kev checking himself out in the bathtub. He does this over and over and over again. Adorable.

Amiya with her crown from her Valentine's card from Mommy and Daddy. And with the highly anticipated Diego Rescue Radio that she earned after a week of no tantrums and excellent behavior when Mommy or Daddy uses the telephone (a big struggle for her).

He walks!

It's been over a week now. We thought the day would never come, but it has! Kev wanted nothing to do with little practice walks here and there. His first steps were not just steps, but part of a baby journey from one end of the playroom to the other. And now there's no stopping him! He's had a few knocks and a pretty strong bump to the head when he fell into the train table, but other than that he's rocking!

And no, our kids don't own any pants.

Tell me this never changes...

Early Monday morning. Very, very early Monday morning.

Amiya woke up in the wee small hours yelling for me. She needed a cuddle. Ok. I crawled in next to her and we snuggled for a few minutes. As I was getting up to let her go back to sleep, she told me, "Mommy, my heart is beepin' so fast because I love you so much."

I almost melted.


Monday night, Amiya's room for cuddles before bed

Amiya and I are laying together, talking about the good parts of her day, getting in good dream wishes and so on. She has her arms wrapped around my neck in something somewhere between a cuddle and a chokehold. I told her that my heart was beepin' so fast because our nighttime cuddles are the best part of my day.

She replied, "Mommy, my cup runneth over."

And that time I did melt.

And then she says, "Anyway, what's my cup runneth over mean?"

It's the way she says "Anyway" that kills me everytime. It's so offhand and nonchalant and so stinkin' cute!

She got "my cup runneth over" from Grandma and she's had it explained to her several times already. I'm sure with Grandma and Grandpa's impending visit we'll be hearing a lot more of it!

Recent Pictures

The general state of our home after Kev has passed through any given space. He loves to empty the drawers of Amiya's dresser, the magazines from our baskets and all the burp cloths and books from the coffee table.

Our adorable little man, asleep on the playroom floor. I brought him in from the car and wanted him to wake up, so set him on the floor in the playroom where Amiya and I were reading a book. He slept for 45 more minutes. Of course, had I put him in his crib, he would have been awake immediately.

Don't you love his little tummy?

I love this picture - he reminds me of a 37 year old man from Des Moines, Iowa who is visiting Cancun and feels the need to wear a tropical shirt. The hair only adds to the effect.

Doesn't it look like he is calming down and getting ready for bed? This is our new bedtime ritual and it works a charm, although it does get him all wound up for a little bit. Dinner, baths, and then we all head to Kev's room where he throws his rings out of the crib and we put them back in. Then kisses and cuddles and to bed he goes like a dream.

Kev loves to jump in his crib, too, and gets some pretty good air. And so far, only one busted lip. Whoever said raising a boy is different than a girl was entirely right!

Proof of Amiya's engineering tendencies - this is the chair she designed so Ellie could join both Amiya and I at the breakfast party last week.

I'm still not sure if Amiya's outfit was Princess or retired Vegas lounge singer, but whichever it was, she wore it to the grocery store and got lots of smiles and smirks.

Amiya and Ellie at our breakfast party. The dominoes and cards you see were our meal - some sort of fantasy sandwich and fruit.

Maybe the outfit was Paris Hilton-like socialite at 6 in the morning?
And finally, Amiya on ice. January was the month to study polar things at school. In Florida, nonetheless. Anyway, her class went ice skating and it was a trip! The kids were pretty brave about all of it and Amiya was a good sport about it. A few falls in the beginning, but towards the end there was less stomping and more semi-gliding.

New Year's Resolutions

So we haven't really made any this year because it seems like I never follow though on them and Vinay is an engineer and making a resolution is silly. Anything an engineer sets his mind to is pretty much a done deal.

In light of that, we are trying to make some healthier choices including a whole lot less carb-y comfort foods and a whole lot more exercise. The exercise bit is the challenging part with two kids. It's either at 8 PM and we're conked or at 5:30 AM and we're usually still pretty conked. But, we're getting it done.

Today we convened in the garage for some free weights and we had our very own cheering section:

Every.single.time we picked up a weight to do something, Amiya informed us that we were doing it wrong and that she knew the right way to do it. Nevermind that she couldn't even hoist the two pound bracelet above her head for more than two reps. When finished instructing us on what to do and how to do it with weights that weigh almost more than her, she ran into the house to find a silk scarf and proceeded to show us some stretching/Pilates type exercises that make no sense but seem to keep her in great shape. If only I had known this whole time that only silk scarves are needed to weigh 32 pounds and have the sweetest little buns this side of a French bakery.

The Birds and the Bees

Thursday, 2:30 PM

Christy walks into Amiya's classroom to pick up Amiya and her buddy Aubrey.

Miss Clare pulls Christy aside, laughing. (That's important.)

"I forgot to tell you. Your daughter is teaching us about the birds and the bees."

Christy almost drops Kev. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuudge.

"Really? What did she tell you because she doesn't know much."

"She just told us that a Mommy's uterus knows when it's ready for a baby and then the Mommy and the Daddy have a special hug and then the baby is there."

Laugh, laugh, laugh.

Thank you very much. Ok, so I guess we're the parents of the kid who knows some of the birds and the bees but not enough to really pass around naughty words at the playground.

Please, please help us because when it comes time to talk about what exactly a special hug entails I might just lose it.

Happy New Year!

I hope anyone still reading has a very happy new year! If you've braved the google process, I appreciate it!

We had a fabulous, fabulous trip to Wisconsin for Christmas. We left Wednesday the 20th at roughly 6:30 PM and pulled into Champaign, Illinois the following day at 11:30. That was largely due to Vinay's driving - I could not have done what he did. Amiya didn't fall asleep that night until close to 10 - "I just have too much excitement in my body!" We had a lovely, home-cooked meal at my good friend Jacki's house. It was wonderful - good food, nice conversation and Jacki's two darling children for our two darling children to play with. Amiya and Carli got along perfectly - odd for two type A kids, but I'm definitely not complaining! Here you can see Carli and Amiya posing in front of Jacki's tree. Carli looks bright eyed and bushy-tailed, Amiya like she just got out of a 1,000 mile car ride. That's about right, so I suppose we can't tease her too much about this picture in the future!

We pulled into Minocqua shortly before 6-8 inches of snow fell. It was a perfect white Christmas for Amiya. She built a snowman with Uncles Jon-o and Andy, Grandpa and Daddy. She went sledding with Uncles Jon-o and Andy, Grandma & Grandpa and Daddy. Ice fishing with Grandma and Uncle Jon-o. Making doughnuts with Grandma. Tea parties with Grandma. Filling the deer feeder and watching the deer with Grandma and Grandpa. And undisclosed quantities of hot cocoa and cookies. There are more photos coming soon in the mail and I'll upload a few when we have a chance.

While in Minocqua, Santa made his visit. One of the things I told Vinay before we went to Wisconsin was that I wanted Amiya to worry about if Santa would find her away from home and then marvel at the fact that he did. That almost didn't work because Mommy forgot to put the "Santa" presents in the car. And while I never thought I would say it, I was very, very grateful to Wal*Mart. A quick trip to Wally World saved the day. We had a lovely time visiting with my Mom's parents on Christmas Day, as well. Amiya spent most of that time badgering Super Grandma to play Candy Land (thank you Wal*Mart) and have tea parties.
It took Kev quite a while to warm up to Grandma and Grandpa, but once he did it was all good. You can see him staring adoringly at Grandpa here - he knows who has the hammers and saws and blocks of wood to play with! And below he cuddles with Grandma. He was "walking" back and forth between Grandma and me and would give whoever he was walking to the biggest cuddles as soon as he got there. Hopefully he won't lose this familiarity with them and Vinay and I will be able to sneak away for a weekend when my parents visit in March.

Santa came through for Amiya with a red scooter - "just what I always wanted." He dropped it off before we left Tampa since he knew she wouldn't be able to ride it in the snow. She quickly mastered scooting around and has discovered the thrill of the slight decline of our driveway. She wears her helmet faithfully and even the smallest bump causes her to yell out, "Good 'sing I had my helmet on!"

In other news, Kev has, in fact, started to toddle around as long as he's got someone's finger to cling to. He seems far, far too young for this. It's odd the way we relate to him v. Amiya. We cheered her walking on every tiny step of the way. With Kev, we help him out and cheer, too, but inwardly we're sad about it. (I am, at least, Vinay denies it.) He's our last and growing up way too fast. We had to start him on PediaSure at the beginning of December as he is so tiny, so our nursing is finished. Again, growing up way too fast. On our trip he learned how to wave - an emphatic thrusting up and down of his entire right arm (a little Forrest Gump, honestly) and how to clap. Since returning home, Vinay has taught him to do a "big stretch" during which Kev throws both arms up over his head and pulls on his hair. He's almost got it!

Amiya finished up the year at school with a pajama party. Big, big excitement for the preschool set. She absolutely had to wear her plaid pajamas that Grandma made for her and take Clifford because "he matches, Mommy!" She spent her morning watching Pooh's Christmas, running around on the playground and snacking on tepid cocoa and popcorn. Her teacher had plans for grander things, but gave up and took the path of least resistance.

Before leaving on our trip, I had two big cakes to make. The first is for our pediatrician's office as a thank you - they always are able to fit us in and give great care to our children. The second was for a teacher's luncheon where I used to work when we first moved to Florida. It was fantastic to be able to put my ex-boss' name on the naughty list. Everything in each picture is edible except the medicine cup and the note. I also had about six bags to sew and ship - it's kind of fun to think that "my" bags were under the trees of about 15 different Moms and Grandmas this year. All the profit from sewing and cakes goes directly to the Three Day walk and I'm happy to report that I'm just shy of 25% of the total I need to raise. I'm looking to find a team to join to train with and get to know. If I'm going to be spending three days with all these walkers, I'd like to know a few of them beforehand!

All the news that's fit to type....

Big changes around here this week! Kev is officially pulling up with some ease! Today I was typing an email to someone and noticed that I wasn't hearing banging, clanging, etc. I looked next to me and there's Kev, pulled up and playing with the "good" toys on the train table. And the best part is that when he wants to get down, he just lets go. It doesn't matter where he is, he just lets go and falls down. Ah, to have that much cushion with no nerves!

And, we can confirm that Kev has his first official word. It's Didi and it's because he loves Amiya just that much! It's not pronounced exactly deedee, more like eeeedeeedeee. Add a few more dees on the end if he's particularly excited to see her. He yells for her in the mornings if she isn't up when he gets up and bangs on the front door hastening her return when she's away at school.

In other news, Carters clothing line has just issued its' first ever line of ethnic teddy bears. View Indian Ellie:

She comes wrapped in her very own striking yellow sari with orange zucchini blossoms and green vines. A must have for every Didi. And if the Didi doesn't have her own sari, never fear, she can make one. A baby blanket wrapped around her and a scarf thrown over her shoulder and casually knotted make for a demure and dashing ensemble. Amiya has been battling another cold this week. It started off as a cough that seemed to be a reaction to running around in semi-cool, yet humid weather Sunday afternoon. Everything with this child goes directly to her lungs! Now it has turned into a definite cold with runny nose, glassy eyes and general unhappiness. Poor kid. She has got to get better soon or we're not hauling her to cold weather. Send healthy vibes our way, please!

She missed most of school on Thursday - we went in only for the holiday performance. You may know that Amiya lives for shows - I'm forever bellowing, "Ladies and gentlemen. Presenting the amazing, fantastic Amiya Clare show!" We play show daily. The poor girl couldn't miss her first chance to be on stage. I was set to be a mean, stickler Mommy and keep her home, but her teacher called and said we should really come in. So we did. Of the two songs, I think she sang four words. She had a serious case of stage fright. It was cute nonetheless. And I did get video of the little boy next to her picking his nose. If she ever dates him I've got the goods on him!

So you're probably wondering...

...what in the (bad word) is going on?

We have always had this blog unlisted on blogger, making it very difficult to find via search engines, etc. But, if someone left a slip of paper floating about with the address on it, anyone could type it in and get to read all about our lives.

Not that we're doing anything sordid or extra exciting, but if you follow the news lately, you know that there are a lot of sick-os in Florida lately and so we just feel it's best to be as private about this as we can be.

Blogspot has recently been bought by Google and with that comes the ability to only allow people to view the blog whose email addresses we have pre-approved. That's why you got an "invitation." I added your email address to the "approved" list so you can still stop by and browse when you're interested.

Unbeknownst to us, you have to create a Google account to be able to read here once your 30 day guest period is up. Harumph we say to that. But it's free, it's quick, it's almost as easy as kissing a baby. And if it means we all feel a little safer with our kids pics and information only being seen by those we know and trust, well then, we're ok with having you make an account!

So, you've got 30 days to be our guest, but then, according to the new rules of the land (in which we are merely pawns!) you must create a google account.

Thanks ever so much,
The Guptas

Update

Vinay is working diligently on the computer to check whether we shall drive or fly to Wisconsin in a few short days, so I thought I'd hop on this one and give you a little picture update of what we've been doing.


Those are no-good photos from trying to get a picture for a holiday card. We had fun, though. You'll have to wait for your card to see the good one!

My how I've changed as a Mommy. Once upon a time I would have felt terrible about sticking my child in a room full of baby-proofed toys and putting a gate up to keep him in. Now, not so much. He played happily in the playroom for about 45 minutes on Thursday while I cranked out a whole lotta stuff. He'd commando over to the gate every ten minutes or so and pound on it to make sure I knew he was there and then off he'd go again to regale in getting all the toys to himself for a bit.

That's all for tonight. Blogger won't let me upload anymore pictures. So.... you'll have to tune in tomorrow to see Amiya latest dress-up outfits and to find out if the Guptas will be driving to Wisconsin or flying the friendly skies!

A Sad, Sad Day

The world is reeling over the news.

Our children are no exception.

Amiya:

Kev:

So the pictures might be a bit old, but you get the general sentiment. Oh, woe is he who tries to replace Greg in the hearts of English-speaking toddlers the world 'round.

Close, but no cigar!

Sometimes when both kids are home and I need to do something in our den (computer lives here as well as all the toys), I put the big gate up to keep Commando Kev in the room. But then I end up lifting Amiya up and out and up and in at least one million times per hour. And I get nothing done which is generally ok, but once in a while I actually have something that others are waiting for and so I must must get it done.

So, I came up with this.

It worked brilliantly all morning long. From Kev's perspective, there is no straightforward way out so he stays put. Amiya was at school all morning, so he didn't see her exiting and entering.

And then she came home. And it all went south from there. One time. Just one single time did she exit the playroom (to get her cowboy boots, thankyouverymuch!) and he had to follow her lead.

He folds and curves his little body like a snake, slithering all the quicker when he knows he's been spotted. It's clear that Mommy is not the engineer in this family!

Guaranteed Laugh

Check this out.

Did you miss us?

Holy mackarel (as Amiya has been known to say) have we been busy! Life is going just fine around here, there's just not a lot of time for blogging!

Grandma and Grandpa came for a visit and we all had a lot of fun together. Amiya spent a few nights in their camper, kicking them and just generally making sure no one got more than a few hours of sleep. Apparently grandparents thrive on that though as the big Gs kept coming back for more.

They came loaded with gifts of all sorts and sizes. The favorite, hands down, is Amiya's new pair of cowboy boots. Not a day goes by that she doesn't wear them. And if a friend should come to play, they are a highly contentious item. Everyone wants 'em. Check Amiya out, wearing her Salvation Army hat, her new boots, and riding the horse that Uncle Jon-o gave her several years ago!

Kev is doing well. The commando crawl is in full force and he's good, so good. He doesn't even need to use his left leg. It just sort of hangs out while he pushes with his right. He's not sure what to do with it yet. We're working on getting a digital camcorder and when that happens I'll upload it and you'll get a chuckle!

He has his 9 month appointment on Thursday and once again I'm a bit concerned about his weight. He's just such a mite. Like his sister he's go, go, go all the time, so it doesn't seem to matter that I feed him the most nutritious, high calorie stuff I can think of. He's still little. The poor guy is also cutting 5 teeth! Four on the top and one on the bottom. That'll give him a grand total of 5 - that's right - his first experience with teething is 5 teeth at once! No fun for him and no fun for us as he's pretty unhappy at times! His new favorite thing is zooming around the kitchen in the walker - he really gets it going and strategizes how to get where he wants. Here you can see a bit of man v. machine - he chases the roomba around. If only I could put mini-mops on his feet, I'd have the cleanest kitchen around.

In other news, I'm officially a year older. I had a lovely birthday with lots of kisses and cards (including one very special Valentine/birthday card!). We had dinner at an Indian restaurant and Amiya later told me that her chana (chickpeas) were not as good as the ones I make. How's that for a nice present? But the best present of all was the ouster of a certain political party from wearing all the pants in DC. And then, like a surprise present the next day, Rumsfield was axed, too. Oh, finally!

I've been busy baking and sewing to raise money for the big walk next year. Here's my latest cake - I think it's the one I love the best of all of them so far. I can't take credit for the design, but I like my interpretation!

Vinay is doing well. We've recently signed up for cable. If he had known Giada De Laurentiis before we moved I don't think we would have ever gone without!

Other than that, all is as usual. We're gearing up for Christmas and working the naughty/nice thing with Amiya as much as we can!