One small step for a man...

Clearly we need to post more because our last post was that Deven had started cruising, and low and behold today he took his first steps! Well, maybe it was more like repeatedly stumbling, but he was upright and no one was holding on to him, so it counts in our books.



Since we're doing such a great job of keeping track of milestones, I should also mention that Deven got his first tooth...uh...and then four more. Whoops. Must post more often. But, he is now happily chewing his first finger foods and already is developing a love of macaroni and cheese just like his father.

Not one to be left out of the milestone game, Sonia decided now that she was four she would no longer sleep wearing a pull-up. For the most part this has been a success, but the occasional accident in the middle of the night is not making anyone happy. But, such is the price of progress.

Busy times!

Cruising Along

Even though today was all about his sister, Deven is deserving of some attention too since he has recently started "cruising". One of his favorite pastimes is doing laps around our coffee table (enticed by an ever-moving toy), or going back and forth between holding onto the couch and holding onto the table while standing. Everyone who sees him remarks that he will be walking soon, which is meant to be exciting, but is mostly just scary. Here's hoping his balance catches up quickly with his desire to be on the move.

Pump It Up

For anyone who missed Sonia's birthday today and wondered what it was like, all you need to do is watch the video below repeatedly for about an hour and a half and then you will have lived the same experience. No, four year olds never get tired of going down slides. Over, and over, and over again.

Good times had by all!

Happy Birthday Sonia!

If you have seen Sonia recently, she has no doubt told you that she was "almost four."  Today, after much anticipation, she finally got to drop the "almost" and celebrate her birthday.  Truth be told, the celebrations started on Friday when she was feted at preschool (where we celebrated, of course, with pink flower cookies as is traditional).  On Saturday, Sameer convinced her (for the second year running) that going to the Stanford football game was part of her birthday celebration.  And, finally, today was her actual birthday, and we celebrated at Pump It Up with many of her friends.  Given that it was pouring down rain, we were pretty glad that we had decided on an indoor venue.  For those of you not aware (i.e. not the parents of a young child in the Bay Area), Pump It Up is an indoor bouncy house extravaganza, and as soon as we entered into the first "arena" the squealing began, and did not stop for the next 90 minutes until finally complete exhaustion set in.  Then, of course, we countered that with juice and cake (sorry other parents!), so predictably everything was all smiles until the inevitable meltdown struck (sobbing tears at the thought that she would not receive a goodie bag at her own party...I guess rookie mistake to not have realized that when everyone else is receiving a bag fully of random party favors, the birthday girl will want one too).

The rest of the day was filled with family visiting the house, much excitement at the opening of presents, more sugar highs and lows, and a final collapse out of complete exhaustion (I'm referring to Sameer and me, of course).  It's hard to believe that it's been four years already since our lives changed forever, and seeing all of the smiles and hearing all the laughter today just reminded us again how much they have changed for the better.

Happy birthday Sonia...we love you!

Celebrating Sonia's birthday at preschool (cookies for everyone!)

Even Sonia enjoys being the center of attention when it means getting a crown and a pink flower cookie

Opening presents on the  morning of her birthday (thanks for the piggy bank, Grandma & Grandpa!)

Climbing through the obstacle course at Pump It Up

Getting ready to climb the rock wall

Smiling as everyone sang "Happy Birthday" (in front of the world's largest Hello Kitty cake...slight miscommunication with the bakery)

9 months old

Yesterday Deven had his 9-month check-up (a bit early, but close enough).  We learned several things at the appointment:  1) it is difficult to give a child a flu shot who will not stop squirming (thankfully we are not nurses), 2) if you tell a 3-year-old once that if she is "brave" at the doctor's she can have a lollipop, she will assume this is a permanent rule and cite it during future visits (Sonia was there too to get her flu shot), and 3) Deven has been busy growing for the last three months.

For posterity, here were his stats:

• Head circumference:  46.1 centimeters (76th percentile, slightly up from his 6-month checkup)
• Height: 29.5 inches (90th percentile, which is way up from his 6-month checkup...we're still a little suspicious of the measurement, eventhough they took it twice, because again he is a moving target at all times)
• Weight: 17 lbs, 15 oz (14th percentile, which is down from his last checkup, but also somewhat a function of essentially growing taller while his body mass doesn't keep up)

The doctor laughed outloud at Deven's "squirmy wormy" nature and kept repeating things like, "Boy, are you in for a fun ride."  For the record, this was not reassuring.  :-)

Happy Halloween!

We had a *great* Halloween season (since Sonia wore her costume on 5 separate occasions, it hardly seems right to call it just a "night" anymore).  Deven wore his costume for approximately 30 seconds before spitting up on it, but such is life.  After multiple parties, many visited houses, and one candy-induced meltdown, we're ready to call it a year.  Sonia is already thinking of plans for next year...Daddy will take her trick-or-treating, and she will be Ariel, "except in the dress, not in the fishy costume."  Lovely.  :-)

Ready for Halloween Party #4 (this one had a bouncy house, so was deemed "the best" by Sonia)

The whole crew is dressed up (per Sonia's "request" that Mommy be a witch to match her kitty cat costume)

Wrestling Deven to try and convince him to let his picture be taken, right before he spit up all over the place

One happy kitty cat

Sorting her loot

Our cat pumpkin to match our little kitty cat 

Until next year, Happy Halloween!

Taking a stand

As noted in the last post, Deven is indeed on the move these days.  He is now a master crawler, and as a result can be found in any room of the house without warning.  His favorite things to do are spit up on nice rugs and find tiny objects on the floor.  Yes, we are vigilant about watching him.

While he remains in no hurry to talk, I think he has decided to pour all of his energy into everything physical.  So, without further ado, here he is performing his latest trick...standing!  Yikes.  Given that he will also "walk" around the house if you hold his hands and help him, I predict our days of easily keeping up with him are numbered.

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.

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.

One Little Monkey Jumping On The Bed

We've been terribly remiss about posting videos of Deven (not unrelated to the fact that he refuses to rollover whenever we get the camera out, although he has rolled over several times).  But, tonight we managed to catch a bit of him "laughing" (or at least a good baby snort or two) thanks to his tireless sister who jumped up and down on her bed for a good 15 minutes just to keep the good times going.

Hard to believe that just a few months ago he was so tiny, and now he is a smiling, happy little guy!

Mother's "Weekend"

We had a great Mother's "Weekend" (my shameless attempt to suggest the holiday should span both days, not just Sunday) and even managed to take a few photos that I appear in.  Somewhat miraculous given during a recent attempt to complete my classbook page for our upcoming reunion I could find only one photo of me taken in the last 5 years that I did not hate.  But I digress...

On Saturday, we met up with Sanjay, Melissa, Maya & Kai at Filoli Gardens.  We had never been there before and the place was absolutely beautiful with the flowers in bloom and the sun shining.  Sonia enjoyed running around with Maya, and Deven even managed some big smiles when close to his cousin Kai.  We attempted some family portraits, with the usual results of at least one person not looking at the camera (typically Deven) and one person not smiling (always Sonia).  Oh well, A for effort.  Here are a few highlights...

Sonia & Maya

Moms and kids

An attempt at a family portrait

Stars in the making

For Mother's Day itself, we decided to motivate to visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium since we hadn't been there since Sonia was 18 months old (and it was a good indoor activity given some dicey weather). While we left an hour later than scheduled (things run a bit more slowly when Dad is doing the packing), we made it down there with plenty of time to tour and enjoy lunch at the Aquarium's sitdown restaurant with a view of the seals lounging outside.  Sonia's favorites of the day were the sun fish (a prehistoric looking fish that is really flat and "looks funny" according to Sonia) and the seahorses.  She even talked us into getting her a pink stuffed animal version of a seahorse that she intended to "keep forever" (but has already been abandoned in our family room).  Best of all, both kids collapsed in exhaustion in the car on the ride home and slept the entire way, making it an easy drive back.

Sameer gainfully made sure the camera was around his neck most of the day, so here are some rare photos of me and the kids (and maybe a couple where Sameer managed to sneak in)....

In case you forgot where we were going...

Deven managed to actually be awake for some of the visit

Someone enjoys being the center of attention

Remarkably, we are both looking at the camera

Sameer teaches Deven about fish and warns him there will be a quiz later

All smiles in the splash zone

Last year Disneyland, this year the Aquarium...Sonia is quickly deciding that Mother's Day may be her favorite holiday of the year.  I have my work cut out for me for Father's Day!

Life (and death) lessons

Sonia, like every other 3-year-old, likes to ask lots of questions.  Her favorite question is "What are you saying to Daddy/Mommy?" which she will repeat over and over if you dare to have an adult conversation in front of her that does not include her.  But the other day her questions ventured into new territory as we were discussing Christmas.

We were going through each Christmas she has been alive ("When you were one, we went to Grandma and Grandpa's..."), and as part of that the topic of whether we would again go to Grandma and Grandpa's for Christmas came up.  Out of the blue, Sonia says, "But if we go, the dog won't be there," and I say, "That's right," (because my parents' dog passed away last summer, and Sonia remembers that there was no dog when we went there for Thanksgiving last year).

I thought that was the end of the story, but little miss inquisitive then busts out with the obvious follow-up question (never before asked), "What happened to the dog?"  I debated for a split second going with some elaborate story about going away to some mythical "farm", but decided just to go ahead and tell her that the dog had died.  She looked a bit confused by this, so I launched into a description of how great the dog's life had been and how happy she had been ("got to sleep on the bed!"), etc., etc.  The subsequent exchange was classic Sonia:

Sonia:  "So the dog won't be there if we go."
Me:  "That's right.  But Grandma and Grandpa are thinking about getting a new dog, so maybe they'll have one by then."
Sonia: "But it won't be the same dog because that dog is died." [sic]
Me:  "That's right, it would be a new dog."
Sonia: [long pause, looks thoughtful] "Maybe the new dog could be pink or purple."

So, in the end, she appears to have accepted the notion of death and moved immediately on to how this might allow her to upgrade the dog to be one of her favorite colors.  I subsequently explained that dogs do not come in pink or purple, and honestly she seemed more upset by that revelation.

Oh, to be three years old again.

Springtime photos

Finally catching up on posting our photos...here are a bunch of shots dating back to March.  Probably you have to be related to us to want to see this many photos, but highlights include:

• The Holi Festival at Stanford (Sonia is still talking about how maybe she'll get "dirty" when she is "older")
• Sonia and the rest of the family playing in the yard...finally the sunshine has arrived!
• Easter at Burgess Park, or as I like to call it, the "running of the yuppies"
• Sonia "swimming" (really, just very expensive monitored floating)
• Lots of photos of Deven either lying around or coming along for the ride to various events -- I think patience and low maintenance may be a requirement of all second children (or at least we have been lucky that he is just happy to come along for now)

Rhymes with Shamu

Lately Sonia has been developing her own vocabulary and cracking herself up in the process.  It involves mostly rhyming, as in calling Sameer "Daddy baddy faddy."  Unfortunately, in the process of riffing on various combinations of syllables she landed on "boobies" as a word, which of course must have gotten a reaction, because she now says it all the time.  We are trying our best not to laugh and act like it is any other word and hope that the fad will die off soon.

Before I forget, here is a vocab guide for the uninitiated:

Laura = "Mamoo" (not sure why I only get one word, and why it had to rhyme with Shamu like the whale...sigh)
Sameer = "Daddy baddy faddy"
Deven = "Deveny Heaveny Keviny" (combining her other favorite of adding "-y" to all words)
Chuki = "Chuki bo-Booky"

In other news, I'm way behind on posting photos, but rest assured Deven continues to get bigger (and sleep a bit more, although not as much as we would like).  He remains a sweet, smiley baby who if he could just figure out how to keep his food inside his body would be perfect.  But, at least he gives you a big grin after he finishes spitting up the contents of his stomach onto your shirt, so that's something.

Holy Holi

Despite the recent wintry weather, we have managed to start celebrating Spring's arrival with a couple of fun events, and rack up some multi-cultural points as well. (How many families celebrated both Holi and Easter?  Okay, come to think of it in the Bay Area probably lots.)  For starters, last weekend there was a Holi Festival at Stanford (a few weeks after the actual holiday), so we trekked on over to campus and managed to convince Melissa, Maya, Kai, Dada, and Bebe to join us.  For the uninitiated, the main activity at an Indian Holi celebration is dousing each other in "color" (handfuls of colored powder), so that by the end of the event everyone is covered head to toe.  If you have met our OCD daughter, you will not be surprised to learn she would have nothing to do with this activity (this is a kid who washes her hands constantly while playing in her sandbox because they are "dirty").

Here are Melissa, Maya, and Sameer who had a blast getting each other nice and colorful:

A still pristine Sonia clearly disapproves of Daddy's dirtiness:

This past weekend brought another holiday, and Sonia was very much looking forward to Easter (not the least of which because she was told she could not open the candy-filled eggs Chuki bought her until the actual holiday).  We went to the Menlo Park Easter egg hunt, which despite the cold weather was a complete madhouse.  Even though the kids were divided by age and they repeatedly said over the loudspeaker that each child was limited to 4-5 eggs maximum, the hordes of small children and their overly aggressive parents mostly ignored this instruction so there were too few eggs for too many kids.  The picture below tells the story of poor Sonia who because of a poorly timed bathroom break found herself at the back of the pack, and sadly only got one egg as a result.

The good news is that all kids upon exiting the field were given candy, and it turns out that a whole thing of Starburst candy is *way* more appealing than plastic eggs, so Sonia did not mind the turn of events at all.  (Side note -- what kind of an adult takes pride in "winning" the egg hunt by allowing their child to take way more eggs than is allowed?  Seriously, people,  you need to find an outlet for accomplishment in some other facet of your life.)  We did also get to see the Easter bunny and jump in a bouncy house, and by the end of the event, Sonia was all smiles (no doubt fueled by all of the sugar in her bloodstream).

A fun day, but someone please remind me next year to find a less crazy Easter celebration (and didn't I resolve to do the same thing last year?).

Getting Bigger

Deven is rapidly approaching the 2-month mark, so he went in to the pediatrician to be checked out and receive a bunch of vaccinations (we went a bit early as our pediatrician is going on vacation for 2 weeks).  The good news is he is growing like a champ and received a "he looks perfect" review from the doctor.  The bad news is that despite switching to new medication (Prilosec) for his acid reflux / spit-up issues, he remains our little Vesuvius -- reliably refunding a decent percentage of most meals.  Since he is gaining weight at a healthy pace, the doctor said that it is probably just something to live with, and never fear he will likely outgrow it by 6 months (ugh).  Given the next step would have been to have him do a "barium swallow" and subject him to a bunch of scans, it is probably just easier to buy more burp cloths and laundry detergent.

He did show off his growing muscles to the doctor, including propping himself up on his arms and rolling over onto his back from his stomach (alas, not captured on video and not repeated since).  The doctor said he was a pretty strong little guy for his age and predicted he will be more mobile and active than Sonia was.  Our days of leaving him on the playmat unattended are numbered.

For posterity, here were his stats:

Weight: 10 lbs, 8.25 oz (32nd percentile)
Height: 22.25 inches (56th percentile)
Head circumference: 39.1 centimeters (38th percentile)

While he is by no means a big guy, he is putting on weight faster than predicted (going from 25th percentile to 32nd), so we are all hopeful that will lead to less spit-up and longer stretches of sleep at night.

On the sleep front, this weekend we decided a small amount of "tough love" was in order when it appeared  he was actually trending backward and waking up more often at night.  So, we decided that we would try for a 3-hour minimum stretch between each feeding (yes, a low bar).  We took Sonia out of her room for two nights (since it neighbors Deven's) and let him cry as required, but it turned out that there was very little crying involved, and indeed he even went 4+ hours at times.  It is remarkable how 4 hours of sleep can feel like a lot, but it is a welcome trend for sure.  Sonia is now back in her room and Sameer and I are slightly more capable of coherent thought.