Hamara Chotu Desi Babu (Our Little Indian Man)

Aiden's Auntie Baizine lives in India and they have not yet met though they talk on the phone all the time. She's so enamoured with her new nephew that she made her brother (Lac) change his skype profile picture to one of Aiden so she could look at him when they talk instead of Lac. It's sort of a long distance version of everyone greeting the parents only after they have oohhhed and ahhhhed over the new baby.


A couple of months ago Aiden's Granny, Auntie Baizine and Uncle Vijay sent us a package from India, no larger than a shoe box. It had been expertly wrapped by Uncle Vijay and there were an insane number of things in an impossibly small space. It took us a good 20 minutes to open. Inside we found 2 packets of cinnamon, 6 cricket bat grips, 1 grib applicator, a tender coconut and 2 traditional Indian outfits for Baba. OK, I'm kidding about the tender coconut but you get the idea.


Here's Baba modeling one of his Kurtha and Pants.

Big Smile

Do you see that whitish spot in the middle on his lower gums?  That's tooth number one.  This picture is from a month ago and that spot is whiter and bumpier these days.  I'm making bets if its going to poke through by next Saturday (Aiden's 1st birthday ...YEHAWWWWW!)  I'm gambling no and that we'll be able to say that he had this beautiful gummy smile for an entire year.  I'm going to miss it terribly and am enjoying it while I can because Aiden's smile won't be this big and toothless for another 80 years!

Small steps for Baba, giant leap for Mama

Aiden has been practicing his walking the last couple of weeks. Smart kid that he is, he figured that the best place to practice walking, is the bed and not the hardwood floors. When I'm trying to put him down to bed he does this thing where at first he stands up using me for support and then slowly lets go. He then tries to stand for as long as he can on his own before falling on his bum. Once he got comfortable with that, he incorporated a few small steps into this exercise. He has since gained enough confidence to try it on the floor.

Just the other day I got home from work and he was really excited as always to see me. He was sitting with his Mommy on the floor, so I sat a couple of feet opposite from them. The next thing you know, he lets go off his Mommy and walks up to me. It all happened so fast and unexpectedly that we both started looking at each other with OMG written on our faces. And then off course he got this huge adrenaline rush and could not stop walking back and forth from one end to the other until he had completely exhausted himself. We were too excited and caught in the moment to even think about recording it. Fortunately it's almost become a routine and we finally managed to get it on film.

Since the time he started getting mobile his independence streak has started to show up a bit. He no longer sits in a place and cries like he used to. Now when he needs something, he just crawls over to us and demands attention. This has made life a little easier for Mama in one way because she can let him play on his own while she attends to her very important chores (mostly playing with her Mac). But of course it has opened up this whole other world where nothing is safe from him anymore. He's putting our minimal child proofing skills to some serious test.

Aiden Pulls a Fonz

With just a couple of weeks to go before his 1st birthday, Aiden is taking cuteness to a whole new level. We're on the verge of real communication, spoken and signed, and real walking (!!!). Baba has been practicing the walking part every day and can take several steps before plopping down. He usually takes one good stroll and then is so proud of himself and so excited about what he's done, he starts falling left and right. It's the most adorable thing I've ever seen. We haven't been able to take a video of it yet but we're working on it...We're still too excited about it to look for the camera when it happens.

Lately he wants to do everything himself and he's picking up a new trick every day. Yesterday....he pulled a Fonz. His dad was getting him ready for bed and brushing his hair with a pick (you have to protect the curls!) and Aiden took the pick and brushed his own hair. These are the small moments when I beam with pride....my baby brushed his OWN hair! It's even cuter because he knows he's doing something special too.



Check out his smile as combs his locks.

Exploring the capital of the free world

Some more info about our recent trip to D.C. A week before we left there was a heat wave going on there but the much respected weather people had assured us that it would get more pleasant by the time we got there. Either they got it completely wrong (as usual) or the bay area fog has turned us into complete weather wimps. It got so unbearably hot that we could barely stay outside exploring the monuments on the national mall for more than a few minutes. But when you are on the mall, you can't help but feel a certain sense of patriotic fervor that you are bound to weather the elements to do the customary pilgrimages to some of the famous sights. Also, since we are required by law to document every living moment of the kid's life, we had to take him to see the white house in case he decides one day that he wants to be the leader of the free world.






When things got a bit heated (literally & figuratively speaking), we scurried back to either the relative safety of the shaded trees or the luxury of D.C.'s umpteen air conditioned museums. At a certain point Aiden had had enough of being caried all day in the baby carrier and decided that all he wanted to do is squat on the ground and interact with random people passing by.






While were were in D.C., we made a side trip to visit Eli (a.k.a. Surant from Goa) in Richmond. At first Aiden was a bit suspicious of Eli and kept a safe distance away from him (Can you blame him?), but then as time progressed, he slowly warmed up to the Surant. We went window shopping at the boutique shops on Cherry avenue in Richmond and had some sushi & gelatos. Aiden's still not allowed to have any sugar, so he was not all that thrilled about it. With wonderful role models like these, we don't need to worry about the kid getting off the wrong track, do we ?