Family Photos

One of my new year's resolutions was to get back into a regular pattern of blogging updates, and since it's now February with no updates, it's obvious that that resolution was as successful as all of the others.  :-)


But, you've got to start somewhere, so going back in our time machine to last November (where we last left off), here is the next post I should have written....

Just in the nick of time for holiday cards (and with the weather only somewhat cooperating), we managed to get our "annual" family photos taken (annual in quotes since we don't seem to manage it every year, but two years running is almost a pattern!).

Here were our favorites...

The whole family, in our attempt to be coordinated in our outfits without being too "matchy matchy"

Two little munchkins (Deven's strange expression due in part to the fact he is chewing a pretzel)

"If I look at you long enough with my large eyes perhaps you will give me anything I want."

"Who me? I couldn't have done it...I look so innocent!"

Praying for divine intervention as Deven declares that the photo session is officially over

Sonia turns 5!

Earlier this month, we hit a big milestone in our house when Sonia turned 5.  This is a day that had been eagerly anticipated for months. I think it may have even taught Sonia to fully grasp dates and subtraction, as in, "My birthday is on November 7th, which is only 8 days from now." We were able to gently steer her in the direction of wanting to have a party at Pump It Up! again this year (yes, we outsource), and she took to the planning process in earnest. She helped pick out the proper Evite to send, confirmed the guest list (everyone from school plus a few others), selected the cake (Ariel the Mermaid, of course), chose the treats for the goodie bags, and helped pick out a new "5" t-shirt to wear to the party.  The day of, she was like the proverbial kid in the backseat asking "are we there yet?" -- literally counting down the hours until it started. We were all ready for it to start (Sonia) and be over (Sameer and me) when the time finally arrived.

The party itself was a blast. Sonia enjoyed running around and reveling in silliness with all of her friends...I don't believe she stopped moving once. Deven was considerably less excited about all of the people and screaming preschoolers, and had a true moment of terror when he went down the slide with Sameer. But, it all ended in pizza, juice, and cake -- smiles all around, especially from the birthday girl.

A few photos of the happy occasion...

Wheee....down the slide

Taking a breather in the middle of the obstacle course

A brief sneak preview of what Sonia will look like in 5 more years

Everyone making their "silly faces"

Admiring her very large Ariel cake (complete with Ariel candle!)

Now that Sonia is officially 5, I wanted to note a few things that I'll want to remember when some day she is 25...and maybe a few things I'll have happily forgotten.  :-)

• Sonia is the "biggest" (oldest) kid at her school, since she has a November birthday and thus is quite close to the cut-off to go to kindergarten.  We had decided it would be great for her to get another year of social confidence under her belt, but I think we perhaps underestimated just how confident she would get. Not a day goes by where we do not review the relative ages of everyone in her class, and note with pride for the millionth time that she is the oldest. At our parent-teacher conference this year, the feedback was across-the-board positive, except the new issue of Sonia becoming a bit of an instigator of silliness in the classroom combined (ironically) with her tendency to proactively enforce the rules on the little kids since she "knows everything about school." We now receive a daily report where Sonia self-grades whether or not she made "good choices" (and receives a stamp / sticker if she does). Yesterday Sonia told me she made "a few bad choices" but still gave herself a sticker. Grade inflation starts early.
• As noted in our Halloween post, Sonia is obsessed with Ariel (and pretty into princesses across the board). I have decided to just roll with this, citing the fact that I too had a pretty mean Barbie habit when I was little, and have somehow managed to not have warped views of gender roles as an adult (I can almost hear the snide comments on that front ;-)). Nevertheless, I do hope that we outgrow this phase soon, if nothing else so I never have to answer the question, "Mommy, who is your favorite princess?" again.  For the record, it's Belle because her favorite thing to do is read (like me). Sameer pointed out that I should have said Tiana, because she is an entrepreneur, but it was too late and Sonia requires that I always answer the same.
• On that last front, it is still remarkable to me what an incredible memory Sonia has. I imagine this is true for all little kids...maybe their brains are just super efficient because they're not yet full of decades of junk. But, whatever the reason, Sonia can recall long past details in an uncanny fashion. So, if your favorite princess was Belle five months ago, and you answer Tiana this time, she will correct you. Or if you said in January that when she turned 5 she could get a 2-wheel scooter, then she will make sure you know it when the time comes. Or, if you say that she has not read a certain "Fancy Nancy" book, she will correct you by reminding you that two years ago at Thanksgiving she got it from the library in Beaverton when visiting Grandma and Grandpa.  How foolish of you to forget.  It is like living with a stenographer. She does seem to forget when we make new rules about whether or not she is allowed to eat dessert, so there are some unexplained lapses.
• While Sonia is seemingly doing well on all cognitive fronts, she is [ahem] perhaps more like her mother when it comes to all things athletic. This is of course quite troubling for Sameer, and perhaps it is too soon to say how it will play out in the end. She has started taking "gymnastics" (read: mostly somersaults) and her teachers have reported back that she is showing much better balance of late. But, her pace of learning to swim remains glacial and I don't see her cruising around on her 2-wheel bike anytime soon. Peer pressure is a strong force, though, and it is sad to see her near tears when she realizes that Leah (her 4-year-old friend) can ride a bike and she can't. But, apparently peer pressure is not a strong enough force to get her to continue to try things she is not good at (like practicing riding a bike)...perhaps she has a bit of Sameer in her after all.  ;-)
• Sonia is a fantastic big sister, almost all of the time. She really loves her little brother ("gaga" these days, although nicknames change often in our house), and is clearly adored by him in return. Deven cannot say "Sonia" (or many other words, for that matter), so calls her "Nana" which I think is him trying to say "Nia-Nia" (the end of her name). One of the first things Deven says every morning is "Nana?" to ask if Sonia is awake yet. He almost always hears back, "No, Nana is still sleeping," (because of course he is awake too early), and he is visibly sad. When it is an acceptable hour, all you have to say to Deven is, "Go wake Nana up!" and he will run to her room, push open the door, and run over to the bed and start to make noise and touch her until she is awake. Sonia pretends to be annoyed, but is clearly pleased that she is Deven's favorite. At nighttime, she will sing him songs, and then gives him a hug and says, "You're my favorite thing in the whole world." Every time it makes me want to just hit "pause" on life and stay in that moment forever. 
• Despite being a great big sister, there are (of course) the occasional moments of not being so loving. Sonia does like to take advantage of their height difference by holding toys Deven is interested in well above his head and watching him reach up in vain to get them. When you scold her for it, she quickly says, "What? I'm giving it to him!" in an indignant tone which does not bode well for future teenage encounters. Whenever Deven gets a new toy, there is also quite a bit of jealousy and tattle-telling ("He won't let me play with it!"), which we are actively trying to curb. But, in general, they are two little peas in a pod, and it is easy to imagine the future when Deven is bigger and more articulate and her little partner in crime on all fronts.
• Sonia is also becoming quite opinionated about her own appearance, putting together some very interesting outfits (her ideas of what goes together and my ideas are quickly diverging). Also, she really wants her hair to be long ("really, really, really!"), so we are slowly growing it out, despite my efforts to convince her that it looks much better when in a short bob. Clearly, the days where I get to choose what she looks like are officially over. At least Deven is happily still wearing whatever I pick out (but does think his Thomas the Train PJs are the best).

All in all, Sonia is fast (too fast!) becoming a fantastic big kid. Quick to giggle, eager to try out her new jokes on you, loyal to her friends, and a remarkable combination of silly and serious all at the same time. She has all of our best traits, and some of our worst, but is already her own person. I can't wait to see what the next year brings, and all of the ones after that.

Happy birthday, Sonia...we love you!

Ariel for a day

While in typical fashion, we are way behind on posting to the blog, I did want to make sure that I had a chance to go back and write about the fun Halloween season we had.  And I say "season" because Sonia has obsessed for so long about her costume (literally months and months of anticipation), and there were so many activities, it is hardly just one day at this point.

First off, we had to decorate the house (Sonia was quite insistent on this as she saw more and more neighbors get in the spirit of things).  After putting up our "Happy Halloween" sign on the door and our ghost lights, of course the critical missing ingredient was pumpkins.  Slight complicating factor was that Sameer was out of town on an epic European tour for work, so Sonia, Deven, and I hit the pumpkin patch without him.  Deven was a huge fan of the outing, Sonia enjoyed the bouncy house, and I was proud that I managed to wrangle two kids and a cart full of pumpkins without incident.

"I am smiling to distract you, then I will run off and see how fast you can chase me while not losing my sister or dumping all of the pumpkins on the ground.  Weeee..this is fun!"

After acquiring the pumpkins, of course it was required that we carve them.  Sameer was back at this point, but quickly declared himself to have no skills in this area, mostly because he seemed a bit squeamish about reaching into the pumpkin to scrape out all of the seeds and guts.  Cross reference his "inability" to carve a turkey at Thanksgiving.  In a fit of stupidity, I told Sonia that she could pick out the designs she wanted from the book that came with the pumpkin carving set.  Mind you, when we were kids, we cut out some triangles for eyes with some huge chef's knife and called it a day.  We were lucky to manage one snaggly tooth in the mouth.  Sonia instead elected for a cat pumpkin again ("because I still like cats"), and also the "castle" pumpkin (I think because somehow this could be princess related?).  By the time I finished both, I have to say that I felt like the Michelangelo of pumpkin carving, so wanted to make sure to preserve for posterity these masterpieces...

"Cat Pumpkin" makes an appearance for the second year running

That's right, be impressed, because it was a complete pain in the you-know-what to carve "Castle Pumpkin"

More important than pumpkins, of course, are costumes.  They are so important that a 4-year-old will talk for an entire year about what she wants to be for Halloween.  Sonia's latest obsession these days is Ariel the Mermaid, so despite my constant efforts to encourage other ideas, she was determined to be her for the day.  I ultimately relented, spent an hour (no exaggeration) going through every possible mermaid costume possibility online (holy cow are there lots of choices...trying to get to the right level of cute but not weirdly adult with spaghetti straps), and in another fit of stupidity (a trend?), acquired an Ariel wig at Target to complete the look.  Go ahead and judge, but Sonia was glowing with happiness as she was magically transformed into Ariel for the day, and happily endured the itchiness of the wig and her inability to take normal size steps (oh, the agony of the mermaid skirt) without complaint.

Ariel graces our doorstep...needless to say, the wig was a hit at preschool

Sonia and her friends during the preschool Halloween "parade"

Finally, Halloween itself arrived and it was time for trick-or-treating.  It was Sameer's turn to take the kids out (while I stayed home to hand out candy), so he was asked repeatedly by Sonia what his costume would be.  He finally relented to wear a set of ghost deely-boppers (?) and a glow necklace.  We also put Deven in his train conductor costume (given his obsession with "choo choos"), although he refused to wear the hat for more than two seconds. 

Off they went (with our neighbors who have two kids the same age), and Sonia was a pro this year at rapidly going to each house and acquiring candy.  Deven (in his rookie season) was a bit slower to pick up on the pattern.  At the first house he accepted the candy, but then tried to hand it back.  At another point he tried to give his entire pumpkin bag full of candy to the person who greeted him at the door.  But, eventually he got it, and seemed to really enjoy running up to new houses, ringing the doorbell (admittedly, a favorite pastime), and then accepting gifts from strangers.  Not sure why we are teaching him this is a good thing.  :-)

Sameer and his "costume"

The only photo we managed where Deven is wearing his hat

The whole family

Of course, the night ended with the ritual sorting of the candy.  Deven was asleep, so not there to complain when his big sister swiftly combined his candy with hers and declared it all one big collection from which she could choose her favorites.   I suspect the dynamic will be different next year.

Sorting through the bounty...Skittles were declared "my favorite"

Sonia was allowed to have a couple of pieces of candy right before going to bed, which turned out to be as smart of a decision as it sounds.  Oh well, once a year, sugar highs are allowed.  Sonia is already planning her costume for next year (current leading contender is Minnie Mouse...a return to old favorites!).  Only 11 months more of debating this topic to come...