Picture This

Each year for Father's Day we make the pilgrimage to Alice's in Woodside (one of Sameer's favorite places) to eat too many calories and take a photo of him and the kids.  This year we missed the actual day (as we were up visiting with Dada and Bebe), so this past weekend we headed up there for lunch with Grandpa, Grandma, and Uncle Kevin in tow (in town for a visit and a chance for Uncle Kevin to meet Deven for the first time).

Obviously one key difference from this picture and prior years is that now there are two kids.  :-)  Otherwise, I'm struck by how the rate at which Sonia's appearance is changing has really slowed down compared to the first couple of years.  But, I do know that she doesn't come even close to fitting into the shirt she is wearing last year, so she is quickly getting to be a big girl (as she will remind you at every opportunity).  It's hard to imagine what next year's will look like when Deven is a toddler!  Hopefully his chin / shirt will not still be wet with drool.

Happy (very belated) Father's Day to Sameer...I know these kids will look back on these pictures someday and be reminded of just how lucky they are to have him as a dad.

Father's Day 2010

Father's Day 2009

Father's Day 2008

Father's Day 2007

What I did on my summer vacation

I haven't had time to process any of our photos from our week long trip to Hawaii which is tragically over, but we all had a blast. Especially Sonia who *loved* the pool, which is pretty amazing for those who remember her first swim lesson experience (so many tears the place actually refunded our money).

If you want to truly experience what our vacation was like, just watch the video below over and over for hours, seven days in a row, and that was pretty much what we did. Oh yeah, and eat tons of food and drink tropical cocktails at the same time. Good times guaranteed.

Like a rolling stone

As mentioned previously, Deven has known how to rollover (tummy to back) for some time, but we had not managed to catch it on video. Despite being denied his Kodak moment, Deven decided to continue on to the next milestone and recently figured out how to roll from his back onto his tummy. This sounds innocuous enough, but it has had two major implications: 1) Deven is now officially mobile, albeit it involves him rolling across the floor (the days of leaving him in one place and finding him there 5 minutes later are officially over), and 2) Deven can now rollover onto his stomach while he is sleeping in his crib. Every book about sleep you will ever read will tell you that once your child can rollover onto his stomach it is fine if he sleeps that way (as opposed to the instruction that babies must sleep on their back). What the books fail to address is what you do if your child gets onto his tummy constantly, "forgets" how to roll back, but hates being on his stomach so instead of sleeping cries his eyes out. Not fun. Prior to this, Deven was sleeping through the night (albeit waking up very early) probably more than half the time, and now he is waking up every few hours again to cry about being on his tummy (and probably facedown in a pool of spit-up, which I admit would be unpleasant). So, we are back to being sleep deprived parents of a newborn...wah.

Why he is capable of rolling off of his tummy when he is on the playmat, but can't seem to figure it out at 2am, remains an unsolved mystery. Nevertheless, here is finally some evidence for posterity of his newfound mobility.