Bedtime Giggles

One of my favorite parts of the day is when Suhana and I close the door to her room and we get ready for bed. It's our alone time for 20 to 30 minutes. I have to admit that its a much better situation now that I don't have to wait until she falls asleep, she does that on her own now. So, the routine is as follows:
-Turn on the sound machine
-Turn on the green clover lights ($1 section of Target)
-She picks 1 book and I pick the other. (mostly so I can put some variety into the usual rotation)
-It takes about a minute for her to get settled and sit next to me. And this is usually where I either tickle her, snuggle on her, and cover her with kisses. She is squeaky clean and I love to just eat her up!!!!! She ends up laughing so hard that she can't take a breathe!
-I read the two books
-I then turn off the light and tell her one of the three stories: 3 Piggys, Goldilocks and the 3 Bears or Princess Suhana from the Kingdom of Ooogly Boogly Googly.
-She usually wants to hear the Princess Suhana stories, which I am not creative enough to make up, so that gets told every other night.
-I pat her back and sing her one song.
-Lay next to her for a few minutes (trying not to fall asleep)
-Tell her I love her, tuck her in and she holds all the animals that stay on the bed. Sometimes they are rotated or ignored, depending on her mood.
-I get up and close the door as she yells "I love you mommy!" melts my heart every time!

This is our routine and I love it. She is usually in bed at 8 and sleeping (I think) by 8:40 or so. She has evolved so much from the times where it would take almost hour to put her to sleep every night and I would end up falling asleep with her. I was tired, you mommas know how that is!

Suhana loves her school and she takes dance classes and sports classes there every week. We have a recital coming up in June, more on that later! She also loves to pretend she is teacher and make us all, usually her Dad, Jiana and myself sit around as she leads us in songs and then reads books to us. It is amazing how kids can memorize books after reading them so many times. I want to share a video here of her reading "Brown bear brown bear" to me and Jiana. Jiana by the way, LOVES that book. She will go and pick it out of the bookshelf and give it to me with pleading noises until I read it to her. Or Suhana does in this case. Just click on the link below.

http://youtu.be/CaQRfK5EGL0

Life in Pictures

I recently cleaned out pictures in my phone and there were such good ones in there. I needed to get them on my blog. With smart phones that have really good cameras I find myself taking less photos with my big camera because of the convenience of the phone. Anyways, here are some of my favorites.

Showing some Laker Spirit

Suhana at gymnastics class

Jiana, Buama and Chachu

Playing dressup at Lily's house.



Playing with her big sisters castle. Jiji doesn't look scared.

My newest niece. Dahlia Richardson. She is so sweet!



Suhana drew a picture of Daddy. Apparently he is a pirate.

A rare sister photo when they are both smiling.

Watching Toy Story. No one said a word for a loooooong time.

You want chippy?

Jiana - 15 months

Jiana is growing up so fast! She is almost 16 months much to my angst. But at least I am soaking all of her in. She is really yummy. Yummy in that you want to take a bite out of her. :) Here are some of the things she is doing now and her developmental milestones:

1. If you say "nice to meet you" she puts her hand out for you to shake (with a huge grin)
2. She says the following words: cheese, momm(y), nana, and hi.
3. She makes animal sounds: dog, crows, and lions.
4. She has this hilarious walk that picks up speed as she starts walking, with her arms stuck straight out behind her and her neck tilted. Cracks me up every time!
5. She eats chicken but no lamb. (Suhana doesn't like meat) We give her mixed food which is rice, butter and shredded chicken. She gobbles that up!
6. She has four teeth on the top and bottom and her left side molars are coming in! Poor thing has been teething since 3 months and they still aren't all here.
7. Suhana also loves to play mommy to her now too. She will mother her like I do asking things such as "jiji, do you want food?" "jiji, come with me, okay, I will take care of you" It's really sweet. And Jiana soaks it all up. she will follow her sister anywhere. Sisters are cute.
8. She is also Miss Independent. She knows what she wants and that's it! I cannot believe how stubborn she is. If she wants to walk and you pick her up, NO way, she throws herself back and gets put back down.
9. She also has a memory like an elephant! She will not forgive and forget. Right now she is super attached to me..I can barely leave her sight. Even going to the garage, I have to sneak out of the house otherwise she starts screaming. So, you can imagine that leaving for work, makes her really mad. When I come home, I go and try to give her a hug and kiss, and she doesn't even make eye contact with me! She will continue playing and go around me!!! Attitude!
10. Jiana has the sweetest smile. She is truly adorable!

Anyways, I'm not really good at remembering all the things she does but some things are better than none. Bottom line, Jiana is pretty amazing!

AT-TI-TUDE

Who ever said the twos were terrible, hadn't seen the threes. I figured it would catch up to me since I feel like I breezed through the twos. (well, it seems as such in hindsight) Suhana is almost 3 1/2 and acts like a 13 year old. It really is something! This kid has some attitude. Like the other day she had woken up from her nap and was sitting on the couch watching something on TV and I told her to finish drinking her milk, (God forbid that's too much to ask) and she looks at me, while slouching and with a bored look on her face, and says "Whatever you say mom"  WHAT?? Aren't I supposed to hear that 10 years from now? I mean I like spunk but wow! Avikar and I exchanged an incredulous look mixed with a little bit fear.

We pick our battles you see. Otherwise we would all be yelling at each other constantly. Suhana has tantrums. There I said it. At first when I started seeing them, I would act how the blogs, websites and bestsellers on parenthood told me to act. Don't raise your voice, maintain eye contact, and give them space to cool down. Well, that lasted a whole two seconds. I mean I try to still use the second one, but it gets REALLY hard to be the sane one when the 3 year old is screaming at you for the littlest thing, I feel that my biggest challenge is to explain to her that this is such a small thing in the larger scheme of the world. That there are bigger things to cry about. That if you put your clothes on you get to go to a birthday party where there is cake and face painting. But who am I kidding??? I can't reason with her. And I constantly am reminding myself after the screaming, from me too, and the frustration that she is only 3 years old. I'm not using that as an excuse, trust me because I believe in disciplining my child. But the tantrums that come from the smallest things are sometimes her only way of expressing her frustration. It's hard being 3. I don't want to be 3. DO you?

And then there are days when she is the sweetest most obliging child in the WORLD. And those tantrums are a distant memory. I guess this is the universe's way of telling me that in the grand scheme of things, a few tantrums didn't hurt anyone. Get over it mom.

Happy New Year! In pictures

Life has been pretty crazy the last few weeks, but as I was sorting through all the pictures in my camera from the last few months, I found some great photos of the girls, mostly goofing around and hanging out. So here they are!

Morning snuggles. Melts my heart!



Jiana's new favorite place is under the Shiva table.



Being goofy, what else?



A-D-O-R-A-B-L-E

Chilling out

This is so cute.. it doesn't happen often.

I had to include these next sequence of photos! They crack me up!

hahahaha!



Finale!

Strongman Dad!

Her first official stick figures! Who knew I would be so excited about these?

Christmas 2012

Christmas is a fun time with the girls and this year was no different. But the one big change was that we didn't get a real big tree because Jiana is at the age where she would pull everything down and it would have been more trouble! So Avikar got a small fake tree (I am a little embarrassed to admit this) and it sits on our coffee table. It actually is really cute and the girls helped decorate it. I can't wait for next year when we can get the BIG one!
Christmas Eve was at Mum and Dad's house and we had dinner together and opened presents before the girls went to bed. It was mellow but it was fun and spending time with family is always special.

All done!

Our beautiful little tree.

Family picture! Hey we are all looking!



With Chachu

Getting her medical kit.

Joy Preschool Winter Wonderland Festival

One of the things I love about Suhana’s preschool is that they put on seasonal shows for the parents followed by a potluck dinner. It allows all the kids to get on stage and sing and showcase their beautiful voices and it gives the parents of those kids a chance to see each other and talk rather than the normal “Hi, how are you? Good, thanks bye” routine. And I can’t say enough about the teachers at this school. They really do give their all and make it so special for us to watch our babies on stage.

Suhana is in Joy 3 now (ages 3-4) and her class got up on stage and sang songs and one of their songs was Barneys’ “I love you, you love me”. This is Suhana’s very favorite song and it was really cute to see all her friends holding hands and swinging them really high as they sang. As loud as she is at home, she is much more timid on stage. She looks around for her family and doesn’t sing as loud. I think staring into the audience where there are a lot of adults beaming at you can be unnerving! And probably the funniest thing was that Jiana kept running to the steps of the stage and sitting down by the kids and then climbing the stage to explore. I had to run up there and grab her and bring her back! It’s hard to keep a 14 month old in one spot!  

Posing with the other star!

Suhana sitting with all her friends.

Don't mind me!



Suhana's class singing songs.

The star of the night!

Her teacher, Miss. Ariel.

 

Suhana-isms

Lately Suhana says some pretty funny things. Lately we have started going back and forth with “how much do you love me?” statements. And out of the blue she said this to me one day “Mommy, I love you more than all the animals in the zoo”  I was left open mouthed! How did my kid get so smart? She had to think that there are a lot of animals in the zoo, a lot is same as loving mommy so much. I was really amazed. So now, we play this game and she comes up with a lot on her own. The latest one was “I love you more than all the sand in the world” Well, I will take that over any present every day.

Glimpses of the last few months.

As I said in the earlier post, I have seriously been lagging in blogging duties due to a couple hectic months. So here are a few highlights.

Thanksgiving 2012

Thanksgiving weekend was eventful! We had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner at Molly’s house where there was plenty of good food, a perfect table setting filled with friends and family. Suhana and Lily had a blast playing together and Suhana was pretty love stricken by all the dogs there! She was following Kajos (Molly’s German Shepard guard dog) and Chuck around and saying “Mommy look how big he is!”  Its always so great to see Molls and the family.

That Saturday, Ayushka’s friend had a wedding at a local restaurant. It was really fun to get the girls dressed up and have them experience an Indian wedding. Not saying they understood much but exposure is best when it comes to seeing our culture. And, Suhana being 3 now likes to makes requests for her outfits and she had told me she wanted to wear an outfit like Radha. Radha is character in an Indian movie, Student of the Year. She dances wearing this pretty yellow and pink lengha and that’s what Suhana wanted. Luckily we live close to Little India where I was able to go shopping for an outfit. I went to Raas and found her a beautiful green and blue Punjabi (they didn't have the Radha outfit). She looked SO BEAUTIFUL!!! I can’t get over how grown up she is! And Jiana wore a beautiful lengha outfit that I had from when Suhana was small that she never wore. As you can see in the pictures, my babies are too cute!

 

6-year Anniversary

Avikar and I celebrated our 6^th wedding anniversary on December 2 and he surprised me with a 3-day cruise to Ensenada, Mexico! It was very fun, as we had never been on a cruise AND we weren’t taking the kids! Mum and Dad watched them for the weekend and we got a much-needed break. We got to relax, and just hang out without a schedule as you parents know that is unheard of! I read a whole book (gasp!), Avikar played in a mini golf tourney and won second place. We had nice dinners and saw comedy show and reveled in the fact that 6 years of marriage had already gone so fast. I am so thankful for him and recognize that I am very blessed for this partner that I have in life.  On Monday when we returned we were really happy to see the girls and I like to think they missed us a lot too.

 

Nutcracker Ballet

The Long Beach Ballet Company hosts the Nutcracker Ballet annually and I wanted to take Suhana this year. She is getting interested in dancing and ballet and thought what a great way for her to see girls her age up on stage. I really wasn’t sure how it would go, but off we went. We had amazing seats in the second row and for the entire first half she sat on my lap and watched with amazement. The ballet was done so professionally and the dancers all ranged from 4 years to professional ballerinas. And there was a full orchestra for the music. The backdrops and sets were incredible. It started at 2pm, which is right in the middle of her nap, and I was really hoping she would power through. She lasted through the intermission and fell asleep with 20 minutes left in the ballet. I was so happy she loved it and was able to expose her to some theater. We will definitely will going next year, a tradition has started.

My date for the ballet.

Jiana's 1st Birthday Party

This post is so overdue and I am a little embarrassed but better late than never!

Jiana’s First Birthday Party was celebrated in grand style at Heritage Park in Cerritos, on November 4, 2012. The theme was Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (Hot Diggity Dog!) with Baby Minnie as part of all the decorations. It was an obvious choice for a theme since Jiana loves (an understatement) Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and it was really fun to plan a Disney themed birthday.  We had a guest book in the front for guests to sign and write a note, there was a life-size Minnie Mouse doll at the gift table greeting all the guests (thanks Tash Chachu!) We had beautiful white tablecloths and baby yellow and pink overlays to cover the park benches, with Minnie Mouse centerpieces. Streamers were placed all over with balloons secured to the ground. The park we chose is really great because a large kids play area is next to the tables and there are a lot of waterways with ducks swimming around. There was a bounce house, an amazing face painter Carol and we had little packets of food for the kids to feed the ducks. Enough activities to keep them busy!

The morning of, Jiana woke up with a terrible cold (poor baby) but she was still a trooper and look so beautiful in her red, white and black party dress! (compliments of Dadi) My little 1 year old was a true sport. All of our family and friends came and we ate sandwiches, salads, cookies, cake and chips. Everyone had a good time and Jiana had a great time in the bounce house, where she would sit inside and we would all jump around her. Big sister Suhana had a blast because a lot of her friends were there too. Avikar and I had a lot of fun planning our little angels’ 1^st birthday and hope everyone enjoyed the party. Here are the photos. Love you, Jiji.

Decorations!

BIG MINNIE!

Minnie cupcakes

Birthday Girl!



Party area.

Carol painting Leah's face.

Only decent family pic! Believe me!

Amy and Quinn.

Suhana and Lily discussing the face painting. Serious business.

Make a wish!

Family picture!

My beautiful birthday girl!

Work peeps!

 

Presents yay!!