Pooneet meets Aadvik!

Pooneet is in India for work and got to meet Sarayu, Eshon, and cutie pie Aadvik!!! Ananya, Amisha, and I are totally jealous that we didn't get to be there for the fun but we're so happy that Aadvik finally got some hugs and kisses from someone in our family!

Here are some pictures:

Happy Halloween!

This year, Halloween was a SUPER fun event for Ananya and Amisha. For months, Ananya has been saying how she wanted to be a giraffe, which was, for me, such a great choice because almost every option for little girls has to do with fairies or princesses. For Amisha, as it was her first Halloween, we wanted to get her two costumes because Ananya had two costumes when she was a baby. So this year, for her first Halloween, Amisha was a cow and a pumpkin.

Ananya & Amisha spent a fun-filled afternoon, in full costume, with Connor and Chloe in downtown Los Altos' Halloween festival. All the stores were open and handing out treats, candy, and toys so Ananya came home, hours later, with a huge bag FULL of treats! She was so giddy with delight, she literally couldn't stop dancing around, laughing, and clapping!

In the evening, despite me being totally sick (I'm drugged on tons of medicine so hopefully in a few days, I"ll be feeling much better), we took the kids trick or treating. Thatha and Anju Mausi came to join in the fun, and we dressed both girls up again and they went down our street. Even from our house, you could hear Ananya screaming, "Trick or treat!" Poor Amisheeee must have been wondering what on earth happened to her normal routine, as she was dressed in multiple costumes and being carried through the dark streets during her bedtime!

Then the next round of fun for Ananya was when she was done trick-or-treating, and she came home and started opening the door and handing out candy for people coming to our house! Every time there was a knock on the door, she'd literally jump up, race to the door, and squeal. Lots of excitement!

At the end of the night, we took stock of all her candy, blamed her nut allergy and took out almost all of her candy (we let her have the lollipops), and let her dance around and release her sugar high before tucking her into bed. Oddly enough, she had the best night of sleep she's had in a looooooong time.

Hope you and your family had a fun Halloween!

Our "Ananya and Amisha" pumpkins that Pooneet carved


Amisha's first Halloween as a cow and as a pumpkin




The giraffe and the pumpkin






Trick-or-treating!

~Happy Diwali~

We really enjoyed celebrating Amisha's first Diwali! After I got home from work, we all got dressed up in new Indian clothes (including Ananya and Amisha wearing matching lenghas that Shashi Dadi made for them!). Thatha, the grandparent representative this year, came over and brought a ton of adorable Diwali gifts for each of us!

Ananya and Thatha went for a walk in the backyard and picked flowers, and then we began our Diwali puja. Ananya loved singing all the bhajans she knew and I told her a very brief version of the Diwali story and why we light all the candles. After our puja, we lit candles and put them everywhere in the house...Pooneet was worried that this would be a fire hazard so for the rooms with no candles, we just turned the lights on (should be a fun electricity bill to get!). We cooked lots of yummy food - mattar paneer, bisi bele bhath, rice, kheer - and Ananya insisted that we sing a "Happy Diwali to you" song (to the tune of "Happy birthday to you"). After we put the kids to bed, we finished cooking and then had Pooneet's sister and brother in law over for a yummy Diwali dinner!

Hope you and your family had a very happy Diwali!

Pumpkin Patch

We took a trip to the pumpkin patch with Ananya's friends Connor and Chloe. What a fun day that was! Ananya picked out pumpkins for her and Amisha, she jumped in the bouncy house, went for a pony ride despite her fears, and enjoyed the haunted house. Amisha looked around, seemed mildly interested, and then fell asleep ;)

Random pictures

I was going through our other camera and realized there are some cute pictures that I wanted to share :)

Ananya with her beloved cousin, Vunshi:


Tushar & Yamini's engagement party, where Ananya was attached to Tushar Uncle's hip!




Amisha wrapping her hand over mine, as she always does when she's sleepy


Ananya and I going to Deepa's mehendhi


Amisha's first solids

7 months old!

Amisha turned 7 months old last week and we're amazed by how many new fun tricks she can do! She has started solids and just loves eating. Yay! She rolls around all over the floor and can easily cross an entire room by rolling. She has a blast playing on the exersaucer and in particular, relishes the taste of all the toys in her mouth! She laughs, giggles, and smiles a TON, coos constantly, and shouts to get your attention. She adores her big sister, loves grabbing her hair and trying to eat it, and seems fascinated by anything and everything that Ananya does. She's a total diva and needs your 100% attention...many a time, Pooneet will be playing with her and if he even glances at the tv or his iPhone, she'll scream! I keep telling people that she's the one who will rule our house ;) She loves to stand, hates to sit, loves to suck her fingers, spits out any and all pacifiers. It's fun watching her grow, especially because she is so different from Ananya! At any rate, it's been a fun month for all of us (especially since we're sleeping a lot more) and I can't wait to see what next month brings!

A new friend!

Welcome to the world, Baby Kaysan! Ananya & Amisha's close friends, Zayan and Kenza, welcomed their little brother to the world...and we went to go visit the Verma clan yesterday. We had so much fun reminiscing about Amisha's birth, since it was in the same hospital, and Ananya loved seeing the new baby. Kaysan is a total cutie pie and we are so excited about a lifetime of playdates :)

Congrats, Kapil, Aila, Zayan, and Kenza!

Silly sisters

Ananya and Amisha love laughing together and they do it all the time - when they eat, when they play, when they wake up, when they go to sleep, and especially when Amisha is swinging.

Here's a video of the two sisters:

Solids are SOOOOO yummy!

Amisha started solids today and to say she loved it is an understatement. She DEVOURED her rice cereal, smacked her lips, laughed with delight, and wanted more more more! Granted, since she hates sitting she stood for most of it (something we'll have to remedy really quickly) but all in all, major success! (And can I just say that I'm feeling slightly sad that she's growing up so fast?)

Half a year old!!!

Amisha (aka. Ameeeesheeee and Ameeeeshooooo) is growing up so quickly!!! She just turned 6 months old and I'm in shock and how time flies! She's such a darling and I'm so crazy about her :) She talks a LOT, kicks her legs when she's really excited, loves sucking on her fingers, prefers standing to sitting, has the softest smushiest cheeks, and visibly lights up when she sees her big sister.

Here she is!

Fun times!

We've been really enjoying our summer this year with the two kiddos!

We attended the beautiful wedding of Melina Wadhwani and Patrick sans kids:


Dadi and Dadu joined us on Labor Day for Amisha's first official picnic (which, of course, she slept through):




I celebrated my first birthday as a mom of two beautiful girls :)






My good friend, Deepa, got married last weekend and I took Ananya for her very first Mehendhi. She LOVED it and was first in line to get BOTH hands done - a flower and a butterfly!




And our week got kicked off to a great start with Steph, Jean (aka Eemo), and Baby Leah visited and spend a day of fun with us!

Aloha!

To celebrate several wonderful things - our 6th anniversary, Ananya's love of the beach, and Amisha's first vacay - we decided to take a summer trip to Kauai! It was fabulous - so relaxing with the breeze and perfect weather, amazing beach, incredible seafood, and yummy fruit. Our days were very hectic - wake up, eat breakfast, go to the beach, eat lunch, nap, wake up, go to the pool, shower, eat dinner, sleep :)

My parents and Paddu Aunty/Avva and Murthy Mama/Thatha also joined us, which added to the fun! It was Paddu Aunty's first trip to Hawaii and she absolutely loved it!

We visited the Waimea Canyon, hung out at the beach and pool, tried all the restaurants in our area, and ran into a bunch of Pooneet's college friends for the first few days (so random, so fun!). He always manages to run into people he knows, no matter where we go!

The first day, poor Pooneet totally crashed his head into a random drop-down part of our minivan, so he has a nice scar now as proof. Thankfully, that was our only calamity. Ananya had a wonderful time playing on the beach - splashing in the waves, building sand castles, getting into water fights with her dad and my dad. Amisha, to her credit, was a great baby on this trip - slept on the flight, slept on the beach for hours on end, and really had fun splashing in the ocean for the first time!

Here are some pictures from our trip:


And here is a comparison of Amisha and of Ananya (in the same swimsuit) on both of their first vacations to Hawaii!

6 years

Pooneet and I recently celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary! We've had such an amazing time together - traveled the world, lived in different cities, and experienced the joy of having two lovely daughters. Can't wait to celebrate our 50th!

5 months old!

Happy 5 month birthday, Amishooooo!!! You can now do so many things - suck your toes, roll, coo nonstop, laugh, kiss, blow spit bubbles, sleep (yay!), drink from a bottle (yay!!), and are so much better coordinated than last month!

Look ma, no hands!

Sleep and school

Thanks to sleep training, Amisha now loves to sleep and prefers her
fingers to a pacifier (so different from Ananya)

And Ananya started a new preschool yesterday and here's a picture from her lunchtime! She'll be attending two preschools so that she'll be in school every day of the week in the morning. What I love about this new school is that they have a wonderful garden in the backyard, lessons in Spanish and Mandarin each day, and they feed the kids a yummy, healthy lunch! Ananya was SUCH a trooper - within 10 minutes of me showing her the new school, she told me "Mama, I'm ready for you to go! I'm ready to have fun!" And when I picked her up, she said she loved it and wants to go there every day. Gotta love a kid who loves school :)