On the move

As promised, here is a video of Deven crawling...actually "crawling" may be a bit generous given the lack of coordinated movement. Perhaps "lurching forward" would be more accurate. Whatever we call it, he is definitely on the move these days and in search of all of Sonia's toys, the smaller the better.

Photos Galore

I keep meaning to put up new pictures on this blog, but I am always behind on actually getting them off of my camera and into an online album.  This is complicated by the fact that we now store all of our photos on our home computer, so I can't deal with it while on my work computer, which is probably a good thing since it forces me to actually do work while I'm there.  :-)

So, without further to do, here is a collective set of pictures which randomly starts some months back and takes us up to present day, including photos from just yesterday which I remembered to download this morning.  Highlights include:

• Mother's Day weekend adventures at Filoli Gardens and the Monterey Aquarium (some photos posted previously, but more here for the true Dholakia family fans)
• Deven's first visit to Dada & Bebe's house in Tracy
• Deven posing with lots of visitors
• Sonia's ballet recital (a.k.a. standing around in a pink tutu)
• Our trip to Hawaii (sadly, a distant memory at this point)
• Grandma, Grandpa, and Uncle Kevin visiting
• Sonia's first bike
• Deven's first attempt at solid foods (not very successful at first, but he is now a pro)
• Sonia given Deven a "rakhi" (bracelet) for Raksha Bandhan

Because we are terrible about taking pictures, sadly you will not see any of the following:

• Sameer and I taking a solo (!) trip to Mexico to celebrate our 5-year anniversary (super fun, crazy relaxing, but apparently not very photo-worthy since I have zero pictures to commemorate the occasion)
• Deven crawling -- we are now into a state of mobility, albeit a bit more army-style crawl than coordinated movement.  Nevertheless, little objects on the floor beware...he is coming for you.
• Deven spitting up constantly now that he is scooching around on his stomach and essentially squeezing out its contents onto our floor.  Actually, it has been a conscious decision to not take photos of that so I can hope to forget it later.
• Deven's first swimming "lesson" -- I know, I know...we are paying for organized splashing, but we are bound and determined that he will not fall into his sister's pattern of hating pools for the first 2 years of life.
• In general, countless days of sunshine and hanging out Chez Dholakia or at friends' houses.  How convenient would it be if we had these devices that we carried with us that had cameras in them and we could take pictures to remember things by?  Oh, wait, hmmm...guess we are just lazy.

Video posting of crawling to come soon, I promise, since I know second children need their milestones documented too.  :-)

6 months old!

Yesterday Deven turned 6 months old, which is amazing since it both feels like time has flown by, and also that I can no longer remember what it was like before we had him.  While Sonia was less-than-impressed by the 6-month milestone (seeing as she has no concept of "months", "years", or "half" this is perhaps not surprising), nevertheless I thought I would interrupt this long break from our blog to note a few things I hope to remember about this time.  And maybe a few that I would probably be better off forgetting.  :-)

First, of course, the stats from today's visit to the pediatrician:

• Head circumference: 44.4 cm (69th percentile)
• Height: 26.25 in (44th percentile)
• Weight: 15 lbs 15.75 oz (23rd percentile...and seriously, something like one wet diaper away from breaking the 16 lb barrier)

We were pretty excited that Deven is keeping pace with his weight gain and perhaps gaining some ground on the other metrics seeing as he continues to be a "happy spitter", refunding a decent percentage of his intake each day.  So, just putting on weight is victory in our book.  

Other fun facts / key milestones about our little guy:

• As mentioned above, he continues to spit up like crazy.  After going off of it for a while, we are now back on baby Zantac and contemplating some more tests (he's already had an ultrasound, but there are some more thorough things they can do).  While Sonia was a legendary spitter-upper herself, she had mostly outgrown it by 6 months, so the fact that Deven shows no progress is a real bummer.  Almost certainly he will outgrow it (i.e. there is no real cause for concern), but needless to say sooner would be better than later.  But, in other news, P&G is making out like a bandit as we buy Tide by the case, so at least someone is happy.
• Deven is definitely not in any hurry to talk, or even approximate it.  While by this age Sonia had long since mastered "ah goo" and was on to the occasional "ba ba", Deven is content to stick with his pterodactyl yells.  So much for the second-children-talk-sooner theory.  
• I fear a potential identity crisis for Deven in that he doesn't get to hear his name very often.  Instead, he is pretty much exclusively called various things Sonia has come up with, which these days include "bobo", "bug", and "bugaboo".  As someone who has been a lifelong "sis" due to a childhood nickname from my older sibling, I am already imagining calling an adult Deven at college some day and asking if "Bobo" is in.  
• While Deven isn't much of a talker, he is a *huge* laugher and it is one of the true joys of life to hear him absolutely cracking up.  Best of all, his favorite thing to do is laugh at the funny antics of his sister, who is constantly performing to see if she can get a good giggle out of him.  In general, he is an amazingly happy baby, which is pretty remarkably given his spends a decent percentage of his time throwing up what he just ate.
• Part of the reason he continues to spit up is that he is never, ever just resting.  Unlike Sonia who would lie in the swing for long stretches (and in general was a lazy...er, I mean restful baby), Deven is the definition of constant energy.  The second you set him down he rolls over and is ready for action.  His favorite thing in the world is to be in his Jumparoo (pictured above) and jump up and down endlessly with no sign of ever getting tired.  He has recently figured out how to get up on his knees and rock back and forth, and we are literally days away I fear from some serious crawling action.  I suspect once he is on the move, he will never stop and our restful lives will be officially over.  Here's hoping he has at least some hand-eye coordination and can channel that energy into some sort of sport in the future.
• Perhaps because he has so much energy, Deven is definitely not the sleeper his sister was at this age.  His average night still involves at least one wake-up (although occasionally he does sleep through, I'm convinced when he can sense we're about ready to embark on some serious "sleep training").  While it's hard to complain about a kid who sleeps for 9 hours, eats once, and then sleeps for 3 more, unfortunately those 9 hours don't come even close to lining up with when we sleep, and thus we remain in a constant state of slight zombie-ness in our house.
• Deven is just now a few days into starting on solid food (we were in no rush to see him spit up solids, but alas at the 6 month mark you basically have to start or you get officially indoctrinated into the "bad parent" club).  While he has been very interested in watching us eat of late (a sign of readiness), he seems to have no sense that he is actually supposed to swallow what we are giving him on the spoon, so I suspect a long journey ahead of us.

All in all, he remains a super baby and a source of infinite joy and endless laundry...a pretty good tradeoff, to be sure.