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.