Idiocy is expensive

A long time ago when Sameer first started to use Quicken, he created a category of spending called "Idiocy is expensive" to track expenses that were due to stupidity. Things like the fine you pay when you have to turn your cable back on because you forgot to pay it for months (not that that ever happened). We don't track things that way anymore, but if we did we would definitely be over budget on that account this week.

The first example of this was our attempt to donate the Honda to charity. You would think giving away a car would not cost money, but you would be wrong. First off, yes, we still had the Honda. After we bought the Prius, we were trying to decide what to do with the Honda (sell it, donate it, leave it on the side of the road far from our house...). While we procrastinated, it sat on the street in Palo Alto and we moved it occasionally. Apparently we did not move it often enough, because eventually the battery died. Then we had to figure out how do you donate a car that can't move (turns out not that difficult), and again we procrastinated. Finally, last weekend we got our act together and shipped the title away to Habitat for Humanity (the lucky recipient of the Honda) and waited for them to contact us to arrange pick-up. Apparently karma is not our friend because, no joke, the day after we finally mailed the title away the car got towed by the police. Apparently you cannot park your car on the street in Palo Alto for more than 72 hours (truth be told, it was probably closer to 72 days than 72 hours). So, we were then in a situation where we had to pay the police to give us a release form to give to the towing agency (whom we also had to pay, including the daily rate for storing the car) to get the car back that we were trying to give away. Ugh. Long story short, $300+ later the car is now off our hands. Good bye, Honda, the last evidence that remained that I have at least once been frugal. How ironic that you were so expensive to get rid of.

Today we added to our running total of stupidity expenses, although truth be told it is hard to blame us for this one. We rushed out of the house this morning to head for the mall, and when we finally made it home in the afternoon I walked into the living room to find the glass covering our gas fireplace completely shattered (rest assured, it is brand new and made of safety glass, so no little pieces of glass on the ground). Sameer and I were convinced that Sonia was incapable of doing this (no way she could be strong enough to shatter it, surely we would have heard something or seen something if she did it this morning before we left, etc., etc.). It has been cold (by California standards), so we were generating these elaborate theories of the flume being open and the warm air hitting the cold air and causing the glass to shatter...all very scientific, of course. Finally, on a whim, Sameer asked Sonia if something had hit the fireplace this morning, and she says "yes." Hmmm, suspicious, but not completely damning because she says "yes" to all questions she doesn't actually understand. So, I asked her to show me what hit the fireplace. Sure enough, she walks across the living room, picks up a red plastic hammer (part of a toy toolkit she has) and brings it to me. I felt like we were in some episode of CSI and we had just found the murder weapon. So busted. I asked Sonia to show me on the table what she had done, and she starts hammering away at the table like she is a master carpenter. At this point, all we could do was laugh, tell Sonia to never touch the fireplace again, and "misplace" the hammer after she went to bed. I can't even imagine what it's going to cost to replace the glass...I think that may be what Sameer and I are now getting each other for Christmas.

I guess this is just our way of doing our part to help the economy!

Bye-bye binky

It's been ages since we posted. I can't even begin to remember what we've done in the last month, so I guess I won't even try and we'll just skip ahead to this weekend.

The big news of the weekend is that we are now a binky-free household. We took it away on Friday (coincidentally a night where Chuki was babysitting as we went to my office holiday party -- yes, we are cowards). In any event, there was a fair amount of crying the first couple of naps / nighttimes (we had long since taken away the pacifier for anything outside of the crib), but as of Saturday there have been no issues. I'm almost embarrassed by how easy it was and how long we put it off dreading the day. What else should we tackle? Potty training, here we come! (Actually, no, waiting on that one until we are home after Christmas with no trips planned.)

In the category of non-news, we did not buy a house. You might say, "uh...that is not news," but it is because we actually made an offer on a house (a bit of bargain shopping in this rapidly sinking economy). We got close to actually buying the house (going back and forth with counter offers), but in the end the seller must have allowed his subscription to the Wall Street Journal to lapse because he seems to think there are buyers who will be materializing in the next month who have a down payment burning a whole in their pockets. Meanwhile, we continue to enjoy the family bonding that you can only get when 3 people live in a 2-bedroom condo. Nice and cozy.

Sonia's latest obsessions are floor puzzles (the thick cardboard kind with big pieces that take up lots of space in the aforementioned tiny condo) and learning songs with hand motions. I will try and get her attempting to sing "Itsy-Bitsy Spider" on video before she actually learns the right words (it is far more amusing when it is sung in non-sensical toddler phonetics). She also is really into counting, so we spend a lot of time reciting our way from 1 to 10. Eleven is a foreign concept, which suggests that it is more about memorization than actual numbers.

We did enjoy a great Thanksgiving with Grandma, Grandpa, and Uncle Kevin paying us a visit. Once again, we let Whole Foods do the cooking while we focused our our sommelier duties -- a division of labor that is rapidly becoming a tradition. We did visit the new California Academy of Sciences the day after Thanksgiving, where we stood in line for 45 minutes to get in (despite arriving before it opened and purchasing our tickets in advance), stayed in the museum for probably less than an hour before realizing that it was physically impossible to get near most of the exhibits. From what I saw of it standing in crowds 4-deep in front of every attraction, it looked pretty cool, and we look forward to visiting again in 10 years when the excitement has worn off.

I hear our non-binky-using sleeper waking up...will post more (and yes, I know, more photos) soon!

Delayed stats

[Back-dating this post to when this actually occurred...]

Still catching up on posts I've missed in the last couple of months (I promise that we will post pictures again...just as soon as I find the cable that connects the camera to the computer). But, in the meantime I wanted to post the stats from Sonia's 2-year-old check-up since this is our de facto baby book.

Height: 34 inches (55th percentile)
Weight: 26 lbs 1/4 ounce (41st percentile)
Head circumference: 48 cm (64th percentile)

All in all, pretty much average although the noggin continues to outpace her body. I saw a child height predictor online, and entering Sonia's stats predicts she will be 5' 5" at 18. Maybe I don't need to get that wedding gown preserved afterall. :-)

Sonia Turns Two!

As of yesterday (when apparently Mommy was too busy to post to the blog), Sonia is officially two! She has been saying she is "two" for a while, so everyone is glad she is no longer lying.

Last weekend we celebrated a bit early with a party at MyGym with all of Sonia's friends (or maybe the children of Mommy & Daddy's friends, but for now those are the same). It was a blast to see all of the little kids run around, and there were no tears in contrast to her 1st birthday. Maybe by the time she turns three she'll actually enjoy having people sing "Happy Birthday" to her and maybe even try a cupcake.

Here's the birthday girl in the ball pit at MyGym


An example of some of the mayhem (Sonia is somewhere in the middle of all of this)


Daddy "helps" blow out the candle


Here she is the morning of her actual birthday with her Elmo card from Dada and Bebe (she definitely didn't have bed head like this a year ago!)


On her actual birthday, she received some new toys, including a Percy and a James train to go with the Thomas she already owned (if you don't recognize those names, you don't have kids). As you can see from the video below, she is a marketer's dream having memorized each of their names, which is her absolute favorite thing to say these days. [Note: Sonia was supposed to be taking a bath, but wanted to keep playing, which is the reason for her diaper-only minimalist wardrobe in this video...I'm sure she'll thank me for this one when she's 13.]

Mademoiselle Butterfly

Just a quick post to say we had a great Halloween, despite the less than great weather. Sonia was very excited to wear her butterfly wings, and even agreed to wear the skirt when told she would get to go to MyGym. Here is a picture of her in her costume hanging off of the overhead bar at the gym.


Sonia was particularly excited that Daddy joined her at MyGym for the first time, and as you can see from this photo he got quite a workout too.


Later Sonia ditched her skirt and practiced her gymnastics. If I wasn't already convinced that she was no longer a baby, seeing this photo would certainly convince me of that. What a little kid she has become!


Finally, we took her to the Stanford Shopping Center which was packed with kids trick-or-treating. Sonia showed no interest in accumulating any candy, so instead we had pizza and called it a night. I can only imagine that Halloween next year will be all about candy, so perhaps this was our last time with a quiet sugar-high-free night!

Weekend in New Hampshire

A couple of weekends back, Sameer, Sonia, and I ventured east to celebrate Amit and Beejal's engagement...which was great because it gave us the perfect excuse to finally introduce Sonia to the extended family in the area. Lots more pictures to come when I get around to uploading them into an album, but here are a few of Sonia meeting Sameer's grandparents and posing in her fancy outfit.




In other news, we are gearing up for Sonia's 2nd birthday party this weekend (a few days before her actual birthday next week). To make things easier, we've already just taught Sonia to say "two!" when asked how old she is, so she is looking forward to telling everyone that this Sunday. Her other favorite phrases these days are "I saw Minnie Mouse" (true - Chuki took her to some sort of Disney on Ice promotion at the mall, which made quite an impression as she has talked about it every day since) and "Hand stamp all gone" (pointing to her clean hand, which is missing the hand stamp she gets each Friday at MyGym).

Fall Daze

The month of September flew by, a blur of too much work and too short weekends. We did manage to get in a few fun activities, most notably a day trip to Half Moon Bay and a great weekend away in Carmel with the Dodsons. But, for the most part, it was filled with futile house hunting (just today an open house cancelled because the house sold the day it listed...take that, recession!), DVR-filled weekend nights, and lots of take out dinners. In short, business as usual.

Sonia continues to remain obsessed with "pillows" (playing on our bed, especially when accompanied by tickling), peek-a-boo (and its close variant "gotcha", which seems to be the exact same thing to me, except she yells "gotcha" instead), and her stuffed dog. Probably the most uttered phrases in our house these days are "no" (constantly), "more tickles", and "I want..." followed by pretty much anything.

Below are the pictures from September -- as always, we are vowing to post more often next month.

Gone baby gone

There's no denying it anymore...Sonia is no longer a baby. Yes, I know, this has been true for a long time. But, somehow in the last few weeks it's like she has suddenly turned into a little kid with all of the, uh, charming characteristics that go along with that. A few examples:

• She has decided she cares about what she wears...a lot. We bought her what I thought was a cute brown vest for the fall, and you would think the thing was made of Kryptonite. She wails whenever we have the audacity to try and put it on her. And literally when you walk into her room in the morning oftentimes her first words of the day are "pink shoes" (a request for her pink Crocs).
• She is starting to do a lot more destructive things around the house. Like breaking things. And drawing on our leather chair with ballpoint pen. And, no, the cushions do not flip over. Anyone in the market for a slightly used Pottery Barn leather chair?
• She has become seriously attached to her stuffed dog, to the point where he now has to come everywhere with us. It's like Linus and his blanket from the Peanuts, except I never realized that Linus's blanket must have started to smell after he slept on it and dragged it around constantly. Needless to say, despite the little tag on "Doggie" that said he was not to go in the washing machine, he has been through the cycle a few times.
• She's starting to tell those little lies that kids always say, like telling you at 3am that she has a "poopy diaper" so you'll pick her up, unzip the sleep sack, and check it (of course she is lying), at which point she then reveals her true request ("pillows" -- code for take me to your bed so I can jump on the pillows and kick you in the face while you try to sleep). At one point last week we gave up letting her cry it out (hard to do when you have to get up in the morning and go to work), so we let her sleep in our bed. Of course she was way too excited to actually go back to sleep...after 40 minutes of being poked, I actually vacated the room and went and slept on the floor of her room (man, do we need a guest room). Sadly, I got more sleep that night than most last week.

Lest you think we are living with a small terror (we prefer "Tasmanian Devil"), she is starting to do more and more cute things too. She is starting to actually pick up being polite ("please", "no thanks", and "excuse me"), which is nice. She is becoming more and more playful, with her favorites being peek-a-boo behind the curtains and chasing Sameer and yelling "gotcha!" when she catches him. She is learning real things too, and it's fun to teach her new vocabulary words and see her pick them up right away. The latest addition to her vocabulary is "Whole Foods" (as in "take me to..."), which is both sad and funny. Sameer continues to "teach" her to count, and she is dutifully memorizing the words, although since she uses "two" for anything more than one, I think actual comprehension may be lacking (not to mention she thinks "eight, nine, ten" is all one word, kind of like I thought "LMNOP" was when I was little).

I'm too lazy to actually post pictures, but will try and get some up soon of our recent adventures...we took a quick trip to Half Moon Bay (involving both seeing dogs and riding a train, so quite a hit with Sonia), saw Dada and Bebe's new house in Tracy, and visited more parks than I can remember. Sameer and I also came very close to making an offer on a house here in Palo Alto, but chickened out at the last minute. So, if you're worried the housing market is going to collapse, rest assured for another day, as that will at least hold off until we take the plunge into home ownership.

Can I get a "woof woof"?

A short but sweet post about our weekend trip...

We had a great, long Labor Day weekend visiting my parents and Kevin up in Oregon. We flew up in time to celebrate my Mother's birthday with a nice dinner out (and Sonia managed to make Grandma and Grandpa proud by being on her best behavior). We also managed a day trip to Corvallis to see our extended family, including Sonia's Great Grandma -- lots of family portraits ensued, including a rare photo of the three of us where we are all managing to look at the camera at the same time.



While we did lots of other fun activities (visiting the vineyard, planting flowers, going to the bookstore, etc.), Sonia's favorite activity *by far* was standing close (but not too close) to my parents' dog and yelling "woof woof!' over and over. Seriously, like very 30 seconds, she would get an excited look on her face and shout "woof woof!" While very cute, it did get a bit old, even for Grandma and Grandpa who are easily charmed. :-)

The one sad moment of the trip was when our curiosity got the better of us and we decided to pick up one of the flyers posted on the "For Sale" sign on a home in one of Portland's better neighborhoods. Let's just say that 0.3 acres and 5,900 square feet (with a view of downtown!) costs about the same as a mid-century fixer-upper ranch house in a so-so neighborhood in Palo Alto. For a minute, I thought perhaps Sameer would make a spur of the moment decision to move, but then it rained on Sunday and he remembered what it is that keeps him from living in the Northwest.

Below are our photos from August, including our pictures from our trip. We can't wait to see the Johnson clan again at Thanksgiving!

Letter Imperfect

Sameer has been determined to teach Sonia her letters, even though it will literally be years before she can read. Oh well, I think he must secretly harbor visions of her appearing on ESPN as the winner of the national spelling bee (and, really, with my genes in the mix, that may be her only shot at ESPN).

So, attached is the first evidence that she may actually be learning the letters. Here she is at the park today identifying each letter in the name of the play structure, or at least a few of the letters. I'll spare you the videos of her counting...suffice it to say the performance is similar ("one, two, five, eight").

July Photos

Well, we're already more than halfway through August, and I am just getting around to posting our photos from July. Pretty much par for the course for us these days. Life is good, just too busy to post all of the fun things we are doing! In the last few weeks, we saw Thomas the Train live (or, "blue choo choo" as he's known at our house), enjoyed a fun weekend in Tracy with lots of family, visited an actual farm (turns out that turkey are terrifying), and made literally countless trips to various parks, restaurants, and grocery stores. Sonia's vocabulary continues to expand (latest favorite word: "elbow") even if her food repertoire does not. We talk about taking the pacifier away at night, but don't actually do it. Sort of like how we talk about potty training, but then decide that she is "not yet ready" (or is it us who isn't ready?).

All in all, not exciting times, but good times. Here are our photos from July...hopefully we'll do a better job at getting some August shots up soon.

Catch as catch can

Sameer is a pretty coordinated guy, and he is determined that Sonia will take after him and be at least moderately athletic (needless to say, if she got my genes she is doomed). So, he has started to try and teach her how to catch a ball. If early attempts are any indication, he has his work cut out for him.

Comings and Goings

Alas, long time, no blogging. Lots to catch up on....

First off, we had a great trip to Napa over the 4th of July with the whole Dholakia clan. Sonia especially enjoyed getting to play with Maya, and from the moment she woke up in the morning she would start calling out "Maya, Maya, Maya...."

We spent our days hanging out in the pool, touring wineries, and cooking yummy dinners at home. I managed to find some time to actually read for pleasure, which is a foreign concept in our day-to-day lives. Best of all, since our whole vacation was driving distance away, it was completely low-stress to pack and travel, which made me think that we may never leave the state again. And, Sameer "I-don't-know-how-to-stop-working" Dholakia could bring along his printer/scanner/fax machine "just in case" he had to do some work (for the record, he never used it, but we did all enjoy getting to mock him at length).

Since our trip, it has been back to business as usual, working a ton during the week, and trying to do as little work as possible on the weekend. The weekends have been a blur of going to the park, library, farmers' market, and looking at houses we can't afford (yes, amazingly, the house hunt continues...really more of a long term hobby now than anything I expect to actual result in a purchase). Today we went to Alice's Restaurant and tried to recreate the photo we took a year ago at Father's Day of Sonia & Sameer (we had intended to do the same this year on Father's Day, but it has taken us this long to get our act together...and unfortunately it was a lot colder this year, so the background is a bit different). Sonia refused to cooperate by smiling big, but nevertheless it's pretty striking to compare...what a difference a year makes!


In the category of new changes, there are lots of little things that probably only we care about remembering, but since this is essentially our baby book, it all gets noted here.

• Sonia is now reliably putting two words together more and more (as in "Hi Mommy!" instead of just "Hi!"...or, more notably, "Red Sox" as Sameer has been teaching her). Mind you, at the gym play area the other day there was a 21-month old (1 month older than Sonia) who spoke in full sentences in two different languages and was potty-trained...oh well, we're still pretty fired up about this whole new 2-word phase.
• She has completely switched over to calling us "Mommy" and "Daddy" (instead of "Mama" and "Dada"). I'm not sure when this happened, but I guess that must have been what we were calling ourselves.
• She has zero interest in getting potty trained. Everytime we say, "do you want to go sit on your potty?" she yells "NO!" and runs away. Not encouraging.
• Sonia is oddly obsessed with wearing our shoes. If she ever sees them in the living room (which is pretty much all the time), she yells out "Daddy shoes!" and runs over to them and puts her feet in them. If you take them away, she acts as if you've stolen her favorite toy.


• Sonia is pretending a lot more than she used to. At night, she takes her binky (yes, she still has it while sleeping...yes, I know we should take it away) and pretends to give it to her stuffed dog. When Sameer was away this weekend at yet another boys' trip boondoggle, Sonia spent a good portion of the time talking to "Daddy" on her play phone. And she absolutely loses it when she pretends that "baby Elmo" (a small, stuffed version) is drinking water from a straw.
• Finally, Sonia has really learned her colors, which makes us feel like we're not completely bad parents (look! she knows it's blue...we've taught her something!).

I'm sure I'm forgetting other things...one of the hazards of posting too infrequently!

Busy, busy days

We are just wrapping up over a week of vacation, so before work strikes tomorrow (so soon!), I wanted to catch up a bit on our comings and goings since Hawaii. First off, we enjoyed a great Father's Day weekend. On Saturday night, we went up to San Francisco to see our friends Samantha and Collin get married in a totally unique and fantastic ceremony. Sameer and I enjoyed catching up with Amanda and Matt, and a real grown-up night out on the town in the city. Dada and Bebe came down to watch Sonia for the night, which was perfect since it meant we were all together to celebrate Father's Day the next day. We decided to eat lunch at Saravana Bhavan, which has fantastic dosas and (for our resident picky eater) rice. Here's a photo of three generations of Dholakias enjoying a great day together.





The next weekend, we motivated to take Sonia to Vasona Park in Los Gatos which has a miniature train and a merry-go-round. While Sonia enjoyed the train ride, the carousel was the big hit of the day. On her first go round I wasn't sure she was enjoying it because she wasn't smiling (in hindsight, I think she was too busy taking it all in to remember to smile). But, as you can see from the picture below, someone was pretty upset at the notion of having to get off of the horse and leave.

Of course, we're suckers, so more tickets were purchased and the tears quickly turned to smiles and waves for the camera.

Finally, last but not least, we wrapped up the month by spending a long weekend up in Sonoma with some of our old friends from Trilogy (who, with the exception of Sudhir visiting from the east coast, have all managed to find themselves in California). It was such a blast to see all of these kids playing together (although the comment "how did we all get so old?" was heard more than a few times). Perhaps the best part of the trip was when the dads motivated to take their girls to Train Town in Sonoma to give the moms a bit of downtime by the pool. Here's a picture of three intrepid fathers about ready to brave trains, petting zoos, and carousels. Miraculously, there were no injuries.

I didn't manage to get a group photo of everyone on the trip, but leave it to Jason "Ansel Adams" Weiss to come through, so click here to see the whole gang. Definitely this will have to be an annual tradition, although not sure the home owners will rent us the same place once they realize that Sonia spilled a yogurt smoothie on one of their lovely seat cushions.


From there we transitioned to yet another great vacation, this one up in Napa with the whole Dholakia family over the 4th of July, but that will have to wait until the next post. Here are all of our photos from the month of June...what a memorable, busy month!

No means no

It's been a while since I posted a video of Sonia, so thought I would put up a short one from our trip to Hawaii. Rather than share a shiny, happy moment, I thought I would include something a bit more typical of our "Little Miss Stubborn". So here is Sonia refusing any assistance as she cares her pool floaty (nearly as big as she is). She refused to be carried or to let either Sameer or I carry the floaty as she walked the entire way from the pool back to our room (not a short distance). Needless to say, "no" has become her default answer when asked any question these days. Depending on which one of us you ask, you'll either here "she's stubborn just like her mom," or, "she's stubborn just like her dad." :-)

Aloha from Maui

I am finally getting around to posting some photos from Hawaii...we got back late Tuesday night and I think we are still recovering (at least one of us still seems to be on Hawaii time when it comes to taking naps). We had a great time in Maui, and it was really the first time Sonia was so active on our vacations and you could imagine a whole future of family trips together.

First things first, the resort was incredible (thanks work!) and our room had a spectacular view (see below...photo taken from our balcony).

One of Sonia's favorite activities was to stand on the balcony and watch the people on the beach or the fish in the pond right below. Good thing she liked hanging out there since her father ended up doing...ahem...quite a bit of work while we were there (read: hours of conference calls -- at least he had a good view to enjoy while he had his cell phone to his ear).

While hanging out on the balcony was fun, Sonia's absolute favorite thing to do was go to the pool. I'm not sure why she felt so differently about the water than she does here in Palo Alto, but she absolutely *loved* the pool in Maui. It helped that they had a "baby beach" where the water was shallow and the bottom was lined with sand, which made walking in the water very easy. The first day we had to drag Sonia kicking and screaming out of the pool (literally -- a few of my colleagues later commented that they had "heard Sonia" when they were hanging out at the pool, and I don't believe I have fully recovered the hearing in my left ear which was closest to the wailing). After spending a couple days in the baby pool, we inflated one of those floaty inter-tube like things for babies, and Sonia enjoyed floating around with Mommy & Daddy in the bigger "lazy river" pool around the resort. She ended every day in Hawaii with prune-like fingers from logging too much time in the water, so to say that we have conquered her fear of the pool would be an understatement. Here's a photo of one happy toddler floating around the pool.

We did manage to get her out of her swimsuit occasionally, and as proof here is Sonia with Sameer on our last night in Hawaii (Sonia is showing her new camera-ready smile). BTW, I swear that I was on this trip too, but somehow didn't manage to end up in any of the photos. ;-)

The trip home was a bit rough as Sonia was not exactly on her regular schedule. Sonia threw a world-class fit when she and doggie (her stuffed animal) were separated at the security checkpoint (multiple security screeners were reassuring Sonia, "Doggie is almost out of the x-ray machine...look, here he comes!"). We knew we were in trouble when before we got on the plane she literally just laid down in the middle of the airport out of exhaustion.

Sure enough, we had seriously missed the nap window, and a fair amount of crying ensued on the plane (belated apologies to anyone in hearing distance of row 29!). But, she finally did manage to get herself to sleep, and we enjoyed a relatively uneventful plane trip home after that. Wednesday morning came too soon, and we are all now back into the thick of things at work...but counting the days until our next vacation (thankfully later this month!).

Army of One

I remember the Army used to have the slogan "we do more before 9am than most people do all day." I always thought that was not that appealing, especially to someone like myself who is not exactly a morning person, but perhaps that was exactly who they were trying to weed out.

In any event, I guess last Sunday was my day in the Army. Unfortunately Sameer was out of town in Florida for a conference (I would complain about him being gone on a weekend day, except he took a red-eye out on Saturday night to stay as long as possible, thus taking away my ability to whine about it). Sonia must have sensed we were in a man-on-man defense situation because she decided to go ahead and wake up at 5:30am (more than an hour earlier than usual). I tried to ignore her, but hearing an 18-month old yell "up" over and over from the next room is hard to sleep through. When I did finally get up, as I was changing her diaper she looked me in the eye and very clearly said "park." I had never heard her say this word before, but it was obviously a request to go to the park, although I would say it was more of a demand than a request as it was certainly not in the form of a question. To make a long story short, by 9am I had showered, bathed Sonia, made breakfast for both of us, gone to the park, Walgreens, Starbucks, Whole Foods, and made it back home. Literally all by 9:07 am. I remember when I routinely used to wake up later than that. Guess there are no advertising slogans for parenthood. :-)

Tomorrow we leave for Hawaii for just under a week (thank you work for deciding we should have a retreat there!). We basically couldn't be less prepared, but ready or not we're going.

Here are our pictures from May...lots of photos from Santa Barbara, and a few other miscellaneous ones including a (somewhat) happier Sonia in the swimming pool.

Weekend Getaway

We had a great long weekend in Santa Barbara, hanging out with our LA-based friends and pretending for 3 days that we were in a permanent state of vacation (alas, the work week is rapidly descending upon us). Before the memories fade too fast, I wanted to capture a few of our favorite moments. And, if a picture's worth a 1,000 words, then hopefully posting a handful here will make up for the brevity of this entry. :-)

Here's our favorite strawberry-eater enjoying the Santa Barbara farmers market...as you can see, someone perhaps abused the "free sample" policy a bit.

The whole family enjoyed our walk along the beach...although I must say we discovered on the way home that 24+ lbs of child is pretty heavy when she decides she is too tired to walk.

And finally just one of the many, many smiles we saw this weekend...I can't believe it's already over!

18-month Check-Up

We are way, way behind in posting, so I'm a bit delayed in writing up the numbers from Sonia's recent check-up at the doctor. She went in for her 18-month visit on May 14th, complete with vaccinations and measurements. For the record, here were her stats:

• Height: 33.25 inches (89%!)
• Weight: 24 lbs 4.5 ounces (49%)
• Head Circumference: 47.6 cm (78%)

Sameer is convinced the height measurement was less than accurate, so perhaps it is too soon to start planning for basketball scholarships.

Family Visit

This weekend was a great combination of fantastic weather and visitors, as Grandma, Grandpa, and Uncle Kevin made the trek down to Palo Alto to visit us. Sonia for the most part was far friendlier than she was at Christmas, blowing kisses, bestowing hugs, and feeding people Cheerios, whether they asked for them or not.

On Saturday we had a very Stanford-focused day, with a visit to the bookstore in the morning, the Stanford Museum around lunchtime, and finally to the Sunken Diamond for the afternoon baseball game. By this time it was so hot, and there is literally no shade in the stadium, that "the girls" ended up bailing in the 2nd inning to return to our air-conditioned condo (not before seeing one guy collapse on the stairs from heat stroke). Since Stanford ultimately won the game 26 to 5, needless to say we did not miss a great contest. On Sunday we collectively had a very lazy day, with a trip to the park, the traditional basketball contest between "the boys," and brunch at the Peninsula Creamery. We were so lazy we somehow managed to not even cook dinner, thus completing our 100% take-out / restaurant food visit. Actually, we did grill pre-made hamburgers once...does that count as providing a home-cooked meal? :-)

Sonia did manage to learn to say "please" (or, as she puts it, "peez") just in time to impress her grandparents . She also wowed everyone with her ability to spot cars (the word "cah" must have been uttered 100's of times), and was deemed to be a genius for saying "mama" instead of "car" everytime she sees a Prius (admittedly by a pretty biased audience). Perhaps the most exciting moment of the weekend was when Sonia, while playing with my locked cell phone, managed to execute its "emergency call" function and dialed 911. It's not every day that I have to sheepishly explain to the Palo Alto police department that my 17-month old has called them in error, and no they do not need to rush over to the house.

Here are a few pics from the weekend...

And here are our pictures for all of April...

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

Sonia's current age (17 months) seems like such a great age, and there are definitely days that I just want to hit "freeze" and have her always be her cute little smiling self. So, before I forget what these days were like, I wanted to take the time to note a few small things that are just too fun to forget. This has become our defacto baby record, so of course they get noted here. Unfortunately, this is also starting to be a bit of a tougher age as Sonia develops a (strong) will of her own, so there are some not-so-fun things to make sure I don't forget too. :-)

A few "best" things I want to remember...

• Sonia has her little nighttime ritual established, which ends with her going to the crib where she lays her head down on her doggy blanket (this sort of half stuffed animal / half blanket thing that looks like a golden retriever) and we start the 5 minute countdown of "Baby Tad" playing lullabies. Like her father, she loves to sleep, so she is usually really happy to go to bed. In the last week or she has started waving goodbye and blowing us kisses after we lay her down in her crib. And every single night I am struck that it is the cutest thing ever (slightly biased opinion, perhaps).
• Sonia is starting to imitate us more and more. Lately she is obsessed with locks. Obviously she has seen us put our keys into locks countless times, and she has finally found a lock on her level (a filing cabinet in our closet). Whenever she can get a hold of our keys, she immediately runs to the closet and attempts to put the keys into the lock on the filing cabinet. I'm tempted to actually give her the keys to the filing cabinet, but I'm afraid she would actually succeed in locking it, and then no doubt lose the keys immediately. She also intently watches Sameer put on deodorant, and has now taken to getting his deodorant out of the drawer, lifting up her own shirt, and rubbing it all over her stomach (thankfully with the lid on). Good hygiene starts early!
• She has figured out what to call the moon (thanks to Chuki) and whenever she sees it during the daytime she points to it and yells "moo!" She never tires of this, so she will walk 15 feet, see the moon again, and yell again like it's the first time. Similarly she yells "cah!" nearly everytime she sees a car, which given where we live (in a condo that faces the Whole Foods parking lot) is pretty often. It's like she has figured out she knows what a few things are called, and she is really excited about it. Either that, or she has no short-term memory. :-)
• Sometimes when we hug Sonia we pat her on the back, and she has now adopted this herself. It was so cute when she first did it that we started to say, "oh that's nice, you're giving us 'pats.'" Now sometimes she skips the hugging all together and just walks up to us and pats us on the back. It's like having a tiny little child come up to you and say, "there, there...you'll be fine."
• Sonia has figured out how to open the doors in our house. What little privacy we had left is officially gone. This morning Sameer got up with her (saint-like behavior given she decided 5:30am was a good wake-up time). I could hear her running around and saying "mama", but was doing my best imitation of someone still sleeping. Then I hear the door open (after a number of failed attempts to get the handle to turn), and sure enough tiny little feet scamper over to my side of the bed. I open my eyes and there is her smiling face about 2 inches from mine. The fact I thought this was adorable at 6am is pretty amazing.
• Finally, Sonia is also a big kisser, having been taught by Sameer from early on to give lots of kisses. She knows the routine now (if she gives me a kiss, she immediately goes and finds Sameer and gives him one too, since she knows she's supposed to give one to each of us). This plan of Sameer's may have backfired, though, as our nanny recently showed us a picture of Sonia kissing her little "boyfriend" Jay (her playmate from the park). So, I guess let the record stand that the first time Sonia kissed a boy was at 17 months. Sameer is already looking into convents.

Some "worst" things to note so that when Sonia is older we can tease her mercilessly about it...

• Sonia absolutely loses it if she sees something she wants and doesn't get it. This typically involves the camera, the laptop, or some kind of inappropriate snack item. If she sees one of these things and then we say no, the crying and whining start almost immediately. I realize that this is partly our fault for sometimes letting her have these things, and partly just a function of the age, but still a very bad sign if this is what it's like and we haven't even made it to the "terrible twos" yet.
• The flip side of knowing what she wants is knowing what she doesn't want. She remains an incredibly picky eater (yes to spaghetti, but no penne...yes to cereal, but must be Daddy's cereal...will eat yogurt, but only the small drinkable kind, etc.). Her new MO is to shake her head and yell "no" if you try and give her something new. I'm sure we are to blame for this behavior and that we missed some important window of getting her to like new things, but needless to say this is not in the "cute" category.
• Sonia is a binky addict. There, I said it. We have limited the use of the pacifier to only when she is sleeping, and in fact when she gets up in the morning she hands me the pacifier because she knows that it "lives in the crib." We half-heartedly tried to break her of the habit about a week ago. We put her in the crib at night without the pacifier, at which point she looked at us and said, "uh oh." Uh oh, indeed. After 30+ minutes of non-stop crying (which we are so not used to given we typically have no crying), we (really, Sameer) caved and gave it back to her. It doesn't help that she is teething a bit, so that when we didn't give it to her she started to suck on her fingers, which seemed potentially a case of going from bad to worse. Now our logic is to wait until we can actually discuss that the pacifier is going away, since we are at sort of an awkward age where she can really remember it and wants it, but is not yet capable of conversation. Yes, I realize this is a justification of ignoring the problem, but I'm okay with it.

[One note related to the title of this post...for those of you anti-public education folks, I would like the record to show that having been required to memorize the first paragraph of A Tale of Two Cities in the 8th grade, I can still remember it 21 (!) years later. Of course, I can remember exactly nothing about the plot itself or any of the major themes of the book, so maybe that whole rote memorization thing wasn't too effective after all.]

Eating it up

One more quick post to note a couple of milestones of late. First off, Sonia is making good progress on learning how to eat using utensils. 80% of her attempts result in a mess, but 20% of the time she actually manages to get food into her mouth. As you can see in the video below, cereal is her specialty, although she also attempts rice (a clean-up disaster) and any fruit she can spear with a fork. Of course, she lacks the dexterity to actually get anything onto the fork, which makes for very long mealtimes.



The other cute milestone is that Sonia is starting to actually do "pretend" play. Today she was sitting in the living room playing with one of her 3 toy phones (no joke) and staring at her reflection in the fireplace. After a while of watching her, I realized she was pretending to talk to the little girl in the reflection (she would pick up the phone like she had received a call, jabber for a while into it while gesturing to her reflection in the fireplace, hang up the phone, then repeat). I've seen her "pretend" to talk to the phone a million times, but it was the first time I had seen her pretend to have a conversation with someone else. Kind of a sad only child moment that it was her reflection in the fireplace glass, but still very cute. As I write this I realize that it doesn't sound that amazing once I described it, so perhaps this falls into the category of "only impressive to people related to Sonia." :-)

Testing the Waters

Sameer and I have been talking about taking Sonia to swimming lessons for literally months, but it wasn't until last weekend that we finally motivated to do it. (Note: "swimming lessons" at this age is basically just organized fun in the pool, but since we have a trip to Hawaii in June, we wanted to make sure that Sonia was used to the pool by then.) First, I did a bunch of homework online to figure out the best place to go, and finally settled on an indoor pool in Palo Alto that has a parent / tot class on Saturdays and is heated extra-warm. Next we had to assemble all of the paraphernalia (in this case, a new swimsuit, and two different kinds of swim diapers since the pool requires triple layering of diapered swimmers). And then we had to procrastinate for another month or so just because we are lazy.

But, in the end, last Saturday we went. I was feeling pretty optimistic because Sonia is a big fan of bathtime, and I was convinced that she would love the pool. Boy was I wrong. To say it went poorly would be a huge understatement.

Standing on the side of the pool looking in, she was mostly just making small sad noises, but once Sameer took her in the water the real wailing began. Serious, wide open mouth, almost "silent scream" style crying. Except not silent, more like reverberating off of the walls loud. Needless to say, the other parents were not too psyched that Sonia had joined the class. She lasted about 4 minutes in the pool before we finally decided she was being too disruptive, and it was so obvious she was not going to stop and start having fun, that Sameer got out of the water. Sonia continued to shriek while we stood on the deck of the pool, at which point Sameer and I had to just start laughing. It was so ridiculous and embarrassing that it was hilarious. A couple of the parents offered helpful "advice" such as, "isn't she used to the bathtub?" (no, she's 17 months old and we've never bathed her), and "my son was in the ocean at 4 months" (not sure how that helps me, but good for you lady). The people at the pool took such pity on us that they actually refunded our money (which somehow seemed to contradict their statement of "don't worry...this happens all the time").


Our failure at the pool last weekend somehow kicked in Sameer's competitive instincts, so he was determined that we were going back this weekend to conquer Sonia's fears. This time we decided that success was just getting Sonia to stay in the pool (we didn't even dream of actually joining the class). Sonia started by crying just like last time, but Sameer "I can't stand losing" Dholakia stuck it out in the pool, playing with her in the super shallow area. Sonia finally realized that this was kind of like the bathtub, and even relaxed and smiled for a picture. We got a bit brave and let her walk around a bit (it was seriously 1-foot deep), at which point she slipped and fell into the water. Of course she was fine, but that shattered our hard-earned calm and the crying began again. We decided to declare success (15 minutes in the pool!) and packed up our stuff and left.

On our way out, we signed up for a 10-class pass. At this pace of progress, that's about how long it will take for us to actually get to participate in the class we are paying for, rather than just watching it from the side of the pool.

March Photos

Here's a quick post with a link to our pictures from the month of March. We didn't manage to get the camera out as often as we should have (and when we did, we had to fight Sonia for it), so there are not as many pictures as we would like.



One quick anecdote -- Sonia continues to expand her vocabulary (her latest is almost shouting "no!" if we try to give her food she doesn't like...lovely). But, despite adding a bunch of new words, lately she has been sticking with her old favorite "mama" like she is a broken record. She seriously says it over and over again ("mama, mama, mama, mama...") like it is her meditation mantra or something. I said to Sameer at dinner last night that she was saying it so much that there was no way that she meant me, at which point she continued to say it, but added pointing at me to the mix as if to say, "yes, silly, I mean you." So, I was kind of touched by that and thought that she was maybe becoming a mama's girl afterall. But, this morning when I was holding her and Chuki walked in the door, she reached out for Chuki, happily settled in Chuki's arms, and then turned to me and waved and said "bye bye." Yes, as in, "You can leave now, Chuki is here." I would like to attribute this to the fact that Chuki has a much better track record of quickly making Sonia breakfast in the morning, but it is clear that at best all I have done is pull ahead of Sameer in the stack rank. :-)

She's all ears

One last video for tonight...

Sonia recently has been both talking a bit more, and showing how much she understands us a lot more. It has become a pretty regular occurrence that we will say something to her, which before would have fallen on deaf ears, and now she will actually react to it in a way that makes sense. When we're at the park and we say, "Sonia do you want to go on the swings?" she turns and walks over to them. Two days ago she gave Sameer a kiss good-bye when she was leaving for the park, and after she walked away Chuki said, "Give Daddy one more," and Sonia turned around, walked back to Sameer, and gave him another kiss. Earlier today I said, "If you want to go outside you need to put on your shoes," and Sonia walked into her room, opened the dresser drawer, took out her shoes, and brought them to me. It definitely makes us wonder just how much else she understands...we're certainly going to have to be more careful with what we say around her. :-)

She is doing a bit more talking, which is lots of fun. She always waves good-bye, but today for the first time when she did it she said "bye-bye" (or, really, "buh buh"). She always says "flower", "uh oh" (constantly), and "down" ("duh"). She also says "bo bo" all the time, but we still haven't figured out what that one means.

Below is a video of Sonia showing off how many words she knows (even if she can't say them). Clearly we need to buy some video editing software, because, a) this video clip is way too long, and b) then we could have cut off the part at the end where she shows that she's not exactly 100% accurate just yet. :-)

Future Mia Hamm...or maybe not

Despite my last post, we have managed to sneak in a few videos of Sonia in recent weeks. In this one you can see that Sameer has already begun his focused, but I suspect ultimately futile, quest to make Sonia athletic. He has put up a toddler basketball hoop at home, and Sonia (a glutton for praise if ever there was one) happily makes baskets and then turns and looks at us and waits for us to clap and cheer. So, having met with success there, today Sameer decided it was time to take on soccer. We purchased a small soccer ball from the local toy store and hit the park. As you can see from the video, I must admit that Sonia did seem to show some natural skill for the first 15 seconds or so, but then it was like she had an epiphany and said, "This is stupid...why don't I just pick up the ball and carry it?" So, she did, and that was it for soccer (at least for today).

I'm ready for my closeup

There has been a request (really, more of a demand) from my mom for more videos. :-) Unfortunately, this may prove to be difficult as Sonia has become rather fixated with the camera which makes taking a video of her pretty tricky.

It started off cute enough...whenever we began to take a video of Sonia doing something, she would stop in her tracks and instead pose for the camera (as in the video below where she loses all interest in the balloon she was playing with once she realizes the camera is on).



Unfortunately, like idiots, we started showing Sonia the videos of herself on the camera after we took them (a seemingly harmless way to distract her when necessary). To say she has become obsessed with the camera would be an understatement. If she ever even catches a brief glimpse of the camera, she lunges for it, grabs it, hands it to you, and starts making the sign for "more" so forcefully that I think she might injure herself. (And, yes, she basically thinks more means "I want" and doesn't get the concept that you have to already have something to then have "more" of it.) This makes taking a video of her very difficult, as you can see in the next clip where she is trying to grab the camera out of my hands so she can see the pictures of herself on the display screen.



So, needless to say, we've been taking fewer photos lately. :-) It's scary to think how comfortable this child will be with technology if at 16 months some of her favorite "toys" are the camera, our cell phones, and any laptop keyboard she can get her little fingers on.

Odds and Ends

Way behind on posting, as usual, so I thought I would write a quick one detailing the miscellaneous things going on with us...

• We finally bought a new car! The "good old Honda" was starting to really just be the "old Honda", and the last straw was a scraping noise everytime you hit the brakes. Since we didn't want to put any more money into the car (I literally hesitated to even fill the gas tank at times), we decided to finally just call it and buy the new car we have been talking about for ages. We decided to get a Prius, not just because we are cheap, but also because we thought it would feel right at home with the 5 other Priuses (if that's a word) in our building's garage. So far, it's been great...not exactly a luxurious feel, but I've driven it 70 miles and the fuel indicator hasn't even moved. Stay tuned for a farewell tribute posting for the Honda once we finally figure out how to get rid of it (and yes, I will shamelessly copy Molly's ode to the Maxima).
• Sonia continues to show more independence (which is a euphemism for "bossiness" or "stubbornness"), which is pretty impressive given that she has yet to really latch onto this whole talking thing. Essentially it involves a lot of pointing, a fair amount of whining, and the occasional teensy-tiny tantrum. Ah, a sign of things to come, no doubt. Most of the bossiness centers around going outside, which she wants to do all of the time. She starts by bringing you her shoes and pointing at her feet. If you don't get the picture then she walks into her room, points at her jacket in the closet, and starts to whine. We really encouraged Chuki to take her out as much as possible so she gets lots of activity, but we've definitely created a monster in the process. On the weekends when we are in the living room she just looks at us like, "What's wrong with you people?! Why aren't we at the park yet?" Of course, we typically cave in to her requests to go outside, which explains why last Wednesday Sonia was the only child already in her pajamas at the park around 6:45pm.
• Sameer recently showed me a video online of a baby on the Today show who at 17-months can read (no joke, check it out). Of course this kid is some sort of freak of nature, but in the whole "nature vs. nurture" debate it's hard to ignore the fact that both of her parents are speech pathologists, so maybe they were a bit more focused on this whole language thing than we've been. In other news, Sonia has added "uh-oh" to her vocabulary (whenever she drops something). I'm sure the Today show will be calling any minute. :-)
• The house hunt continues, but with no luck. We saw one last weekend that we actually sort of liked -- it had a huge lot and the house itself was nice (albeit small). It was more money than we would have liked, but that is always going to be the case, so we were considering it. I'm using the past tense because it sold over the weekend, before our realtor even got a chance to see it, so apparently others were "considering it" a bit more seriously than we were. Oh well...the hunt continues this weekend.

Other than that, life continues as usual. Work has calmed down considerably for me, which has all sorts of good benefits in terms of getting enough sleep, actually getting some items on our personal to-do list done (next stop: taxes), and hopefully more regular blog posting.

Look who's talking (or maybe not)

Despite the fact that Sonia is very "talkative", for the most part she doesn't really talk...or at least not words that we recognize. She says "mama" and "dada" pretty regularly (and of course occasionally "go go" for dog), but that's about it. Sameer and I do a very good impersonation of parents who are laid back on this topic, except occasionally one of us will say to the other "why isn't she talking yet?!" in an exacerbated tone. Since's Sameer's nickname when he was a baby is a word that translates to "mute", I don't think we should hold our breath waiting for more words from Sonia.

So, when Sonia does say something that sounds like a new word, we get very excited. Recently we've convinced ourselves she is saying "diaper" (more like "die-puh", but close enough), "purple" (only Sameer has witnessed this one), and smaller words like "yeah" and "up." This weekend we added "baby" to our list, although you can see from this video that if she is indeed saying that word, she certainly isn't very reliable as she seems to use it to refer to the pictures of flowers and rubber duckies as well. Oh well...close enough in our book!

Fun-filled Weekend

We had a great weekend relaxing together as a family, despite a bit of a rocky start. We had to cancel our planned date night on Friday when worked reared its ugly head (Friday night...is nothing sacred!). After that inauspicious beginning, the weekend took a turn for the better when on Saturday we motivated to take Sonia to the Children's Discovery Museum in San Jose. At first she was a bit intimidated by all of the noise and other kids, but she quickly settled in, climbing around like a little monkey and grinning the whole time. Or should I say grinning most of the time, except for when it was time to leave when she threw a fit like the little kid she is rapidly becoming. A vision of the future, for sure.

We thought we would beat the crowd by heading over to The Old Spaghetti Factory that is nearby at around 5pm (admittedly, Saturday night in our world has changed a bit in the last year), but when we got there it was completely packed with young girls running around in princess costumes. I thought it was one very large, very surreal birthday party before I finally realized that this restaurant was the closest to the HP Arena where "Disney On Ice" was playing that night. Talk about a vision of the future -- there is nothing like seeing 100 6-year-olds running around in full-blown gowns and tiaras to make you ponder how you should raise your young daughter. Or at least make you wonder why you did not buy stock in Disney when they introduced this whole "princess" theme a few years ago. Unfortunately all of those princesses led to a very long wait time, which means Sonia had a mini-meltdown from hunger in the waiting area and basically ended up eating Pirate's Booty for dinner while we waited. And then of course the kitchen was "a little backed up" getting our food when we finally did get a table, so needless to say by the end of the night our "no binky except for sleeping" rule was broken and Sameer and I set world records for how quickly one can scarf down spaghetti and meat sauce.

On Sunday we drove up to San Mateo to split the distance with the Glotzbachs (who live in SF) whom we had not seen in ages. Despite the fact that the park I picked out online turned out to not be exactly as advertised (the park's "train" turned out to be only slightly larger than a toy train), it was still tons of fun to see them and watch the kids play together. After a brief lunch where Sonia refused all food besides Cheerios, we then drove back to Palo Alto and went to a handful of disappointing open houses. Then we closed the day with another visit to the park (and another tantrum upon leaving), before Sonia finally collapsed at the end of the day exhausted. Mission accomplished.

I guess we missed the memo about resting up for another crazy week at work, but it was well worth it.

Below are our pictures from February...and yes, Mom, I will post another video very soon. :-)

The bigger they are, the harder they fall

For most people, "falling flat on your face" is just a concept. Unfortunately for Sonia, last Friday it became a reality while she was in Tracy visiting with Dada, Bebe, and cousin Maya. I can only describe what happened second-hand since I was in Palo Alto, but according to Sameer (under whose...uh..."watchful care" this happened), Sonia was chasing Maya out into the backyard and failed to notice the step down, so she wiped out onto the concrete and basically caught herself with her face. Sameer neglected to mention this to me when we spoke on the phone that night, but since the next day she awoke with what was essentially a shiner, he had to come clean. The good news is that Sonia seems basically unaffected by the whole thing (it certainly hasn't slowed her down any), and now the bruising is all gone and all that is left is a scab from where she scraped herself on the cement. I don't have any pictures of the day-after bruise (somehow Sameer failed to get any photos of it...how convenient), but as you can see from this picture from this morning she is well on the road to recovery.

The other thing we quickly found out is that if you take your child out with bruises / scrapes on her face, everyone feels the need to share with you their horror stories of childhood injuries (except those people who don't talk to you because they're trying to figure out if you're an abusive parent). Based on these lovely tales we've heard all weekend, we are apparently lucky that, a) she didn't hit herself an inch closer to her eye, and b) she didn't knock out her teeth (which, according to this helpful real estate agent we met, happened to her grand-daughter who had to live with the knocked-out teeth until her adult teeth grew in years later...brutal). I know that childhood is all about getting bruises and scrapes, and our friends who are more seasoned parents are old pros at this, but it's just hard to believe that we're already at that little kid phase.

In other news, the house hunt has begun anew, but with no success. We didn't make an offer on the house we were considering last week, which was just as well since four other people offered far higher than asking and we would have lost anyway. This weekend we saw four more houses, decided that none of them was "the one", and so we await next week's inventory. To kill spare time, we like to sit around and discuss which houses we saw in the last year that in hindsight we should have bought but didn't. Good times.

That's one way to cure a bad hair day

We had a great, relaxing weekend enjoying the incredible weather we've been having lately. On Saturday we went to a Chinese New Year get-together at Janet and Andrew's, and then we had dinner with some friends from work and business school who were in town visiting (both of whom have kids that are within 2 months of Sonia's age, so it was great to see all 3 kids playing together). On Sunday we went and looked at a couple of open houses, including one we are actually considering putting in an offer for because we are idiots and want to time the market as badly as possible (stay tuned for updates here). But, I think Sonia's favorite part of the weekend was our trip to the park, where she repeatedly went down the "big girl" slide. I'd been trying to figure out what to do with Sonia's hair which is becoming crazier and crazier (she is starting to look like Krusty the Clown from the Simpsons), and as you can see from this photo from the bottom of the slide, I think we may have found a solution.

Since that's maybe not the most flattering photo, here's another one from a shoe store we visited (someone just keeps getting bigger!) which is a bit cuter.

January Photos

Well, this is about as anti-climactic as posts come, but below are our pictures from January. Too bad we only managed to get the camera out a couple of times...we'll have to do better this month!

Not much new going on Chez Dholakia. Sonia has learned to point to her nose (or ears, mouth) when you ask, "Where's your nose?" But, she does all of this quietly since she is still in no hurry to talk. She continues to be a picky eater, although oddly mixed veggies seem to be one of her favorites (after grapes, raisins, and Cheerios of course). Her hair is getting crazier by the day -- I keep waiting for it to become a bit longer and be ready for pig-tails, but instead it just gets curlier and sticks out more and more. I'm not sure if cutting it would "fix" it or not, so we just pretend that it's cute. :-)

"More" videos, as requested

Well, I promised my mom (a.k.a. Grandma) that I would post a video of Sonia, but somehow I haven't managed to actually take one recently (reference my previous post about how our work / life blance is a little off these days). So, here's one from the beginning of the month where we captured the first day that Sonia successfully signed "more" (with a little coaching from Sameer). Strange how she picked up "more", "milk", and "eat" so quickly, but I can't seem to teach her "please" or "thank you." :-)

One crazy month

Hello to the two people left who probably are still checking this blog! It has been a tough January at the Dholakia household, as both Sameer and I had big meetings on the 22nd and worked like crazy to prepare for them. I don't think I've worked that hard since about 1995 (and maybe not even then), and it turns out that I don't like it. Sameer, on the other hand, is a closet workaholic, so actually seems to thrive on it a bit. The good news is that both of the board meetings we each had on the 22nd went very, very well which at least somewhat made up for the long hours. And I at least have had a bit of a break since then (including taking Thursday and Friday off this week for some serious Mommy-Sonia bonding time).

Anyway, despite the craziness, there were a few highlights from the month. Most notably, we made a trip to Austin to attend Patrick & Heather's wedding, and it was a great chance to catch up with all of our old friends there. We left Sonia at home with Dada (who managed to watch her all by himself for the entire weekend!), so it was like one big date night. Friday night we hit Sullivan's, which is no doubt not the cool place to go in Austin anymore, but we did see Michael Dell there and they are still serving the pineapple martinis, so I was happy. It was like we got in a time machine and went back to about 1999, and for one night it was great fun. The next day we had brunch with BJR and Lisa (breakfast tacos being just what the doctor ordered after a late night) and then went to the wedding, which was a very nice affair. On Sunday, we met Isabella R. (such a cutie!) and also got to see Ben R. and Peyton P. (and their parents, sans Andy who was at home watching Sloane). We even saw Thad, which was kind of pathetic since he actually lives near us and we had to go all the way to Austin to grab lunch together. But, best of all, they all met us at Freebirds, which was my other can't-be-missed Austin meal. Yum. I must admit seeing all of our friends and imagining the house we could actually afford to buy in Austin made for quite a bit of conversation about moving back there (compounded by me being cranky about having to work so hard). I can't imagine that we would ever actually motivate to move, but it's always fun to think about returning to the land of margaritas and queso.

Sonia is getting more fun by the day...you'll have to take my word for it since this entire month we've managed to take about 5 photos. She is picking up more signs, still doing "more", but also now "eat" and "milk" (the latter one about every 5 minutes, since she is a milk addict). Sameer also taught her to shake her head for "no" -- I can't imagine why he thought that was a good idea -- and she is now doing that all of the time, especially when you try to get her to eat anything that is not fruit or Cheerios. On Friday she and I took the train up to San Francisco (which Sonia thought was great fun) to meet Sameer who was up there for a meeting, and then we headed to the Discovery Museum in Sausalito for a quick visit. Despite being a "museum" it turned out to involve a lot of going outside, which in the pouring rain was not tons of fun. But, Sonia did have a great time in the room dedicated to toddlers, and because of the rain we had it mostly to ourselves. Sameer in his suit was definitely the best-dressed dad there (admittedly, since there was only one other dad, it was not stiff competition). After the museum we headed over to the Dodsons, where we got to hang out with the whole family plus the Glotzbachs. I'm not sure Molly's kitchen has fully recovered from 5 kids attempting to eat dinner (with varying degrees of success), but it was certainly great to see everyone and catch up in small bits in between chasing the kids. :-)

Here are a couple of pictures from our outing to the Discovery Museum...for those of you wanting to replicate my awesome hairstyle, the secret is to stand out in the rain for 30 minutes and then let it air dry.

Happy New Year!

We've had a great holiday season, which has been a nice break from the absolute craziness both Sameer and I are experiencing at work (we both have big meetings on January 22nd, so I wouldn't expect much blog posting between now and then). For the holidays, we traveled up to Oregon to visit Grandma, Grandpa, and Uncle Kevin. Sonia had a great time, clearly reveling in the joy of literally being able to run laps around my parents' much larger house. Yet another reminder that we need to move out of our 2/2 condo into something with more running room.

Another big hit was my parents' dog, Muffy, who has been perhaps permanently rechristened "Go Go". This is Sonia's most reliable "word" (meaning dog, used for live dogs, stuffed dogs, and pictures of dogs) and we heard it a lot while up in Portland. From the moment Sonia woke up she would start to say "go go?" over and over until finally we took her to see Muffy. Everytime she heard the door open she would walk over and say "go go" anticipating that Muffy had come back into the house. It was sort of like living with a catatonic patient who can only utter one phrase -- she would repeat it over, and over again, all day long. To say she was excited to be spending the week with a real, live dog would be an understatement. Sameer has pretty much acknowledged that it is quickly becoming a matter of when, not if, we will get a dog. (For the record, given where we live and how we work, no time soon.)

While up in Oregon, we got to catch up with both friends and family. We hung out with Charity and Kellie and Kellie's whole family, most notably Jayna who is just a month older than Sonia. We definitely had baby-feeding envy as we watched Jayna happily eat anything they put in front of her (Thai food!), while Sonia would eat only Cheerios and freeze-dried bananas.

On Christmas day, Sonia was a little too young to really "get" the whole presents concept, but nevertheless she cleaned up with lots of new toys and clothes. In a questionable call, Santa brought her Tickle-Me-Elmo, which has to be perhaps the most demonic toy sine Chucky. There's a possibility that it may have been accidentally left behind in Oregon. We also took advantage of the fact that Powell's Books was open on Christmas day to make a family pilgrimage there, where everyone (including Sonia) spent their gift certificates from Santa. Sonia was so excited about the store that she skipped her nap, not too surprising given that one of her absolute favorite pastimes is pulling books off of shelves. Sameer and I picked up a few books for ourselves with thrilling titles like "Coping with a Picky Eater." (It appears the likely culprit is that our child has a "drinking problem" in that she is a milk addict, so we have a whole new set of to-do's involving getting her completely off the bottle which so far is not going well, but that's another story.)

The day after Christmas our family came to visit for our big get-together. It was fun for everyone to see how much bigger Sonia had gotten since they last saw her in July, and Sonia watched with big eyes as Arthur (my cousin's son who is 2.5) ran around the living room and talked up a storm.

For the rest of the holiday season, I decided to celebrate by coming down with a nasty cold, which had me sleeping most of the hours and had my husband dealing with Sonia and everything else so much to the point that I think he may be up for sainthood. We rang in the New Year at home, sober (unless Nyquil counts), having watched a Netflix movie and gone to bed before midnight. Nice.

On the development front, Sonia is starting to get more communicative, which is great. In addition to endless pointing (has no one told her that pointing is rude?), she has somewhat expanded her vocabulary. In addition to "go go", she pretty reliably says "da da" for Sameer, occasionally says "ma ma", and now says something that sounds like "may may" for milk. Yesterday for the first time she repeated back the sign for "more" (of course requesting more raisins, her current favorite food), which was pretty great to see. Perhaps her funniest "sign" is that she mimics Sameer who must constantly say "Daddy" and point to himself, so Sonia now says "Dada" and points to herself. Too funny. So now we are working on learning "Sonia", but that is kind of a mouthful for a 13-month old.

Below are our photos from December, and then below that a recent video of Sonia that proves that she does in fact eat sometimes. Lately she is refusing mac n' cheese, but has decided that she likes spaghetti with tomato sauce, which is as messy as it sounds.