Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

We got a huge snow dump today, just in time for a lovely white Christmas! We can always count on the weather gods in Boston.

It's Play Time, Folks!

(Facebook readers: click here for the link.)

Roll Over

It's so amusing to watch Rhea roll over again and again, and every time she does it, her expression says - "What just happened? That felt weird!" Enjoy!

Table Manners

From Rhea's Videos

(Click the image to watch the entertaining video)

Our Caribbean Vacation

We are back in Boston after a week in San Juan and St. Thomas. It was our first big trip with Rhea, and we were a little apprehensive about how it would turn out. The trip was absolutely great - with Rhea behaving herself (except for one big bawl - sorry folks - but we are "those" parents) on the flights. It was a relief to take her out in just a onesie and not layer her with a thousand jackets.

It was our first time in St. Thomas, and it did not disappoint. It rained every day in the afternoons, but was a welcome relief from the hot sun. We were even able to take Rhea on the beach and in the crystal clear water (more on that in another post). For now, enjoy the slideshow!

Push Over!

Rhea's not rolling over yet, a mile stone that I can extol on and on about, but she's certainly moving and vigorously jostling her entire body...it seems like she is going to roll over any day now. In the meanwhile, she has started pushing her toes and heels when lying on her back, pushing herself up with her chin (chin-ups :)) when she's picked up and creeping in her crib till she is horizontal. Enjoy this video. She ended up creeping at least 6-7 feet and she was panting at the end of it. She sure earned her cereal that day!

Smarter than you think!

I took Rhea to a study at Harvard's Laboratory for Developmental Studies recently. The lab does fascinating work in developmental psychology, and really confirms what parents have known for a very long time - babies are much more intelligent than adults tend to believe. Rhea participated in the "Music & Space" study which is investigating whether infants use spatial metaphors to represent music (over your head?? - it basically sees if high-low tones in music relate to "high-low" spatial positions of objects). Rhea was shown flowers dancing up and down along with high-low musical sounds. I have to admit - being tone-deaf, I wasn't able to distinguish between the sounds (again, maybe all these responses are involuntary and not trained responses; so in my defense even if I couldn't "tell" the difference, my brain might have known it). "Boredom" signaled that she wasn't terribly excited in the tone-flower combination, and that they could move to the next image-sound combination. The findings so far suggest that infants do in fact prefer to look at the matching space and tone combination. More such fascinating tidbits and studies are in their newsletter.

Diwali and Halloween Dressup

What a joy to be able to share Rhea's Halloween pictures...we had an extended photo session because the package from India did not arrive in time...so Diwali spilled into Halloween. Some of the pictures are from an evening session of book reading, that became a session of dress-up just because she was wearing a top from Fab India. She looks like a Kathiawadi goat herder in these pictures. Which reminds me of something really funny - we have put up L's pictures on our walls - one of the pictures is this one; and our nanny asked me if he was my grandfather. These cross-cultural anecdotes are hilarious!

A Typical Weekend

Weekends are a god-send, and come Friday night the entire mood in the house is different. We have now even managed to take Rhea out for sushi on a Friday night to our favorite sushi restaurant near Porter Sq. The weather gods have been kind so far, and except for a weird snow day a few weeks back, we have been blessed with sunshiny weekends. So we head out to Harvard Sq. most weekends for some lunch, strolling, shopping and coffee.

Flat Pillow

I call Rhea so many different things that the poor girl is going to grow up with an identity crisis...most of them don't mean anything other than cute in Pig-Latin I guess. Bubuli, gubuli, gubbu, munu, pupu - anything that sounds cute and cuddly works. This confuses my nanny a lot - and in an attempt to add words to her Marathi vocabulary, she keeps asking me "what did I just call her?" - to which my reply is - "Oh, don't worry about it, I just made it up!". "Pilloo" (meaning a little pup) is my most-oft used name for Rhea among others. So I did tell her that I call Rhea "Pilloo" and what it means.

The other day, Rhea was behaving very badly - throwing tantrums, fussing around, being very antsy. So I kept hearing Alicia say how she was a flat pillow, how she wasn't fluffy - and all kinds of negative adjectives you would associate with a pillow. It was only after about 5 minutes did I understand that she was referring to her as a flat "pilloo". Aww...does it get more adorable than this?

Diwali Wishes

Here's wishing you a wonderful Diwali! It's a mix of snow and rain here, but nothing's going to dampen the season's spirit for us. We're having some friends over on Sunday, Rhea gets some traditional wear stitched out of mommy's Indian clothes, and another package is in the mail.

And yes, Diwali wouldn't be complete without some cleaning. Here she is helping Alicia fold some clothes and chew them and make sure they're washed and dried according to her highest standard. A little bit like Shabari's story, eh!

3 Months

Anuja visited us last weekend; it was Rhea's 3-month birthday that day as well. The rain-gods cooperated with us on Sunday, and we headed out to Newbury St, for some brunch, window shopping and people watching. It was a wonderful afternoon, and we "bumped" into Tom Cruise! He was having brunch at the same restaurant as we were, and our server whispered to us that he was sitting inside. Anuja got some other gossipy pics of Tom-Kat as well...will have to wait for her to upload the pics.

Laugh Rhea Laugh

Hope you enjoy this video as much as we did. What a real treat it is having this beautiful girl in our lives!

Stand By Me

"Stand By Me" brings back wonderful memories of our wedding planning. L wanted it as our first dance song, but we ended up choosing "Wonderful Tonight" instead. Here is his rendition of this wonderful song. Rhea, as usual loves the attention and is chortling away.

Apologies for the poor lighting. I realized that I was pointing at the source of light after I shot the video.

When Rhea met Anika...

Uma got her a new friend yesterday, Anika. She was quite apprehensive initially, but later she really took to it. Here's what happened:


Uma and I really love these toys that are supposedly "ugly" (UglyDoll is the brand) . However, I tend to think that they are quite cute and are quite imaginative (cue in Monsters Inc.)

Some more cuteness online...

Rhea's less than 3 months old, but she occupies all the space in our hearts and in our computer hard drives :) We have so many pictures, sound bites, videos of her - yet so many of them don't get put up online. When I talk to my mom on the phone, I have a very lame excuse - yeah, we have taken new pictures/videos - they're just not out there in cyber-space. Here's my effort to share some of the cuteness online with friends and family.

Girl in the Mirror

Rhea has a new fascination these days...her own reflection ! Her new friend plays with her tirelessly, smiles back at her when she is smiling and reacts to her instantly. I wonder what is transpiring in her little mind when she sees her own reflection. Does she see herself ? Does she think there is another baby in there mimicking her every move ? What happens when she sees Mommy and Daddy holding the other baby? Recognizing that it is her in the mirror is a very important part of developing a sense of self. At what point does this switch happen? And how?

Very fascinating don't you think?

Rhea Goes Crimson

Last Saturday, being a beautiful sunny day, we decided to take Rhea out for a photo shoot. We ended up on the lush green grass at Harvard yard. Rhea was very excited with all the sounds, the people, and the colors. It was fun watching her bob her head from side to side trying to soak it all in. Wish we had more such sunny days left. The summer seems to have just flown by !

Good Night and Tough Luck

Absolutely delightful blog post by Christoph Niemann. He's a genius, and I can't wait to buy his creative books for Rhea...highly recommend "The Police Cloud". L is so logical with everything - when I told him the story of "The Police Cloud", he said that if the cloud is happy he can't do his job anymore, so he has to remain sad...I hope Rhea is not so logical when it comes to understanding story plots otherwise it will be hard to read her a book.

"Getting a good night’s sleep is actually a lot more complicated than one would think."

In spite of telling everyone how well Rhea sleeps through the night, the "through" part is 5 hours on her best night.

"Next up: a visitor from the kids’ room. They start all sweet and cuddly, but their little bodies become more brazen by the minute."

We're guilty as charged; Rhea sleeps in the bed whereas the co-sleeper and crib lay empty. She can't turn yet to her side yet, but in a few hours, she's managed to snuggle so close to me that I am left with about four inches of space between her tiny hand and the edge of the bed.

P.S.: As you can tell, I have plenty of free time on my hands right now. Hopefully, I will remain diligent with the blog even after I start working.

A matter of perspective...

We get toys & books for little ones that we look at from our perspective. I thought it would be fun to take a series of pictures from her perspective though. I was surprised and quite happy that toy makers actually think about these usability (?) issues and design accordingly. In this rainforest mobile, there are quite a few of these animals facing down. How cute!

More cooing

Thanks to US immigration, L was in India when I went for my second ultrasound in January. He bought this dress for the little one the day we found out it was a girl. It was a very emotional time for us, and we count our blessings that everything's turned out great since. Notice how Rhea goes from being a happy camper to a whiner in a matter of seconds!

Blog Update

The anonymous comment posting is now working properly.

New Discovery!

Rhea has discovered 10 new toys (8 fingers and 2 thumbs). Her favorite is her right thumb. She sucks at it with great interest and I don't have the heart to frisk it away from her mouth. In any case, my pediatrician is a strong proponent of "giving the thumb" so she can soothe herself. So now I have two things to deal with - her little binky (which she doesn't care for too much yet) and her right thumb. Oh well!

** Update: she misses her fist-mouth connection about 90% of the time, so it ends up looking like she's talking on a phone :)

Some Thoughts

This week, I'm going to hold the fort alone with Rhea, with the nanny starting next week, and mom missing from action. Several thoughts that I've gathered in this time (Rhea doesn't give me too much time for introspection, but her feeding sessions give me lots of time to make notes on my iPhone).

• It's not necessary (or possible) to entertain/stimulate a baby whenever she's awake. In that sense, I feel more like being best friends with her than acquaintances. With the latter, one tends to fill up silence with small talk -but with friends and family, you don't need to do that.
  
  
• She really enjoys watching me do the household chores - I carry her in a car seat in the kitchen as she watches me do the dishes/have lunch or clean up.
  
  
• Even after a good two months, it fascinates me that for so many months she was an abstraction; she was inside me, and now she is breathing and soaking in life outside the womb.
  
  
• I understand her instinct to suck, but I still don't get why she scratches her face, eyes and pulls her hair when she's tired.
  
  
• I'm very curious about her dreams and her thoughts, especially when she smiles or cries in her sleep is she dreaming about her jungle gym or Thai curry flavored milk or her favorite nursery rhyme or her boppy pillow and binky?
  
  
• Babies are definitely smarter than we think they are - even at a tender age of 10 weeks. Rhea knows when I'm around and gets up from her nap the minute I leave the room. This happened several times today; I finally gave up and decided to just lie next to her and take a nap myself.

This is the way we wake up...

Before

After

Birthday Weekend

I've been missing from blogging action for a while. We've been interviewing nannies, preparing mentally to resume work and getting Rhea used to a bottle. We finally landed on a nipple design that she's taken to (Nuk for those who care to know), and decided on a really confident and experienced nanny as well.

We took my birthday weekend off to Ogunquit, a beach town in Maine. Rhea was a darling throughout the trip, and let us enjoy our lobster rolls, beer and fried calamari without any fuss at restaurants and lobster shacks. Our hotel room had a jacuzzi, and she had her first swim in it. L just held her head above the water and off she started swimming. She has a strong backstroke! She even beat her little froggie at it. (Will post a video soon. I am still trying to get around to learning some "editing" skills).

Blast from the past!

Poll of the week: who do you think she resembles the most?

A little piece of heaven

From Rhea-Week8

Rhea is 8 weeks old now. She has started becoming more responsive, coos a lot more, smiles often and is more attentive to the sounds and people around her.

Things she likes:

1. mommy (all the) time
2. massages by her grandma
3. tub bath by dad

Things she dislikes:

1. sleeping in her crib
2. being fed with a bottle
3. car halting at red lights

Mom and Dad love getting a slice of heaven :-)

Smart Babies

Talking of precocious babies, here's an interesting link from the New York Times about how babies as young as eight months can understand probabilities. Sounds a bit hokey, says Dr. Mathias. Me thinks - Rhea has a high likelihood of having a "probability gene" in her DNA.

In other news, I have been watching a lot of movies in between her feeds and naps, and the absolutely wonderful "The Incredibles" never gets old.

Social Smiling!

Rhea has started smiling (a real smile as opposed to the facial expression when she passes gas!). The Baby Center newsletter tells me this is a "social smile", and right on target for the 6-week mark. It's fascinating and heartwarming to see her react to us...she seems to reserve her smile for Aai though.

Tiny Turtle's Turn

Rhea's started turning her head and pushing herself already. We give her some quality tummy time after the resident masseuse (aka Aai) gives her a massage with some really delicious body butter. Here she is doing the complete 180 degree turn, with the ecstatic parents encouraging her like a racehorse.

Baby's Day Out - II

Sonali visited us from Seattle to give a lot of "traas" to dear Rhea, and now confident with our excursion to the Common, we decided to go for a day trip to Rockport, a beach town close to Boston. It was a lovely day, and the skies were just right (blue oh so blue, just like L likes them for the lens). This time, we were brave enough to go to a restaurant with Rhea. Fried clams, fried fish, and a seat right next to the ocean. Does a beach town trip get better than that? Oh, and some more lovely pics are up on Flickr.

Baby's Day Out - I

Livia visited us to celebrate Rhea's one month birthday, armed with goodies and lots of baby tips. L was impressed with his little sister dispensing such valuable advice. One of the evenings, we went out to Boston Common, and had a great time. It was Rhea's first trip out of Cambridge. Of course, she slept through it all and protested profusely only when the car stopped at traffic signals.

My Dancing Princess

L comes back from work and asks me if I "stimulated" her. I say not really, but I did play with her. Rhea has been listening to a lot of music since she was about -5 months old, and her favorite so far seems to be Dave Brubeck. But for "stimulation", she listens to Abba. Here she is frolicking, and looking quite stunned as she dances to some groovy music. Oh, and I had to do some major video editing to get my shrill voice out of the video :)

Being a petite little baby (by American standards), we are now used to having Rhea measure up in the 20-25 percentile growth range in terms of her head size, weight and length. Today was her one month wellness visit. Rhea had shot up to the 70th percentile in length in just 15 days! Both the nurse and the doctor were so surprised with her growth spurt, they measured her 2-3 times each! L's now happy and hopeful that she will be (much) taller than I.

1 month birthday slideshow

t'was a month ago...

From Rhea-1month

Rhea came in to our lives. She was born on the 3rd of July and every moment since then has been of pure joy and love. Coincidentally, Livia flew down from Mumbai for a short visit and we celebrated with some chocolate soufflé.

Happy 1 month birthday my dear munchkin!

Week Four Slideshow

Hammock Fun

Our hammock in the backyard is our latest hangout. We go there most evenings to relax, get in some fresh air and take gorgeous pictures of Rhea and the summer in all its magnificence. Needless to say, Rhea sleeps through it all.

Week Three Slideshow

Look what arrived in the mail the other day!

What better a gift than the experience of parenthood! It's the single most fulfilling experience that I've had - in some sense all parents are selfish because they get the joy of unconditional love from a new person in their lives...on the other hand, when it comes to protecting and nurturing Rhea, I'm almost territorial. So, like L likes to say, we have now completed our evolutionary goals. (can you guess that he's very task oriented?)

Tummy Time!

Rhea is L's latest muse now. Here she's having a snoozy tummy time. She's just a little more than 3 weeks old, and she's already started lifting her head up and propping herself with her tiny feet.

Starting Early.

Early Education! Next up - sign language training :)

Week One

Yesterday the pediatrician performed a small experiment - made me call out to my munchkin to see if she would turn and look around. And turn she did! So heartwarming and amazing to have a tiny person respond to me.

Week One Slideshow

Elastic Time

How time flies - just a couple of weeks back, I was getting antsy about waiting for the big day; wondering if I would feel the contractions in my sleep! It feels like months have passed between the waiting and this wonderful experience of motherhood.