Surprise from Portland

Last afternoon, we received a wonderful surprise. Our door bell rang and guess who was at the door?

Our friends from Portland - Sujata, Dipto and Sara!

They were visiting the IIT campus and dropped in to say hello. It was wonderful seeing little Sara again and felt great catching up with Sujata and Dipto! What a lovely surprise :-)

On the move

Anu has started crawling! He is doing a commando-style crawl which is quite funny to watch, but it gets him where he wants to go. He is still a little wobbly when sitting unsupported and I can't leave him sitting unsupervised. But I suppose he decided he was ready for the next milestone without trying to master the last one. Kabir, of course, is thrilled with this development and keeps running to me to say - Mama, Anu is in the balcony! Look, he is under the sofa, etc :-)

My bright spot

Travelling to Udaipur

I spent the last three weeks in Udaipur with the kids. We had a big Diwali celebration there and took lots of pictures that I will post soon. This trip had a lot of firsts - first Diwali for Anu, first Diwali crackers for Kabir and the first Indian train ride for the kids (on our return journey).

It was also the first time I flew alone with the kids (Mumbai-Udaipur). They were surprisingly well behaved. I was VERY impressed with Mumbai's domestic airport, especially with how kid-friendly it is! In this regard it beats most US airports hands-down. They had a play area for older kids and a nice and clean mother's room with very helpful staff. Here's a picture of Anu napping in the mother's room (since we had some time to kill at the gate).

More pictures from the trip coming soon :-)

Happy Halloween

Halloween had become my favorite US festival in the last few years (ever since I had Kabir) and one that I'm really missing this year. I used to enjoy planning and stitching Kabir's costume and getting together with friends for a Halloween party. Here's a picture of Kabir from last year as a little pumpkin which I realised I hadn't posted on the blog. This year, I would have had two little kids in costumes had we celebrated Halloween.

To Kabu's dear friends back in Portland - Srimayi, Sahil, little baby Eera, Shreyan, Vihan, Shriya, Arav, little baby Vahin, Arjun, Lilly and Lucy - wish you all a very happy Halloween! We miss you lots.

Good news!

For the last two years I have been hoping and waiting for the day when I could say this and today I'm absolutely THRILLED to report that Kabir has outgrown is dairy allergy! I started suspecting this a few months ago, when I realised he could eat dairy based chocolates without any problems. Gradually we started introducing more dairy in his diet. We had to be tactful though because Kabir has been conditioned to say no to anything that looks like milk, butter, yogurt or cheese. We tried home baked pizza with a tiny amount of cheese, eggless chocolate cake made with butter and then some khaman dhokla made with yogurt by his dadisa. Since he did great with all these, we offered him some icecream a few days ago. And finally, we had to bribe him this morning to try some plain yogurt. Encouraged by the results, we again bribed him in the evening to try some cheekoo-milk shake. He finished an entire glassful and announced that he liked it! We are SO happy and relieved! I do think he is still allergic to eggs (and potentially nuts) because he recently had a reaction to it, but I hope that with time that will go away too. For now, I am going giddy just thinking of the possibilities that await him - icecreams, kulfi, paneer, dahi-badas, cheesy pastas, eggless cakes, puff pastries, gulab jamuns, rasgullas and all the diwali sweets that he wants to have!

Anurag's Mealtime

In true Indian style, Anurag was introduced to regular adult food as soon as he was ready to start on solids. He now eats sabzi, daal or yogurt for his main meals and fruit for snack times. Here he's enjoying hand mashed potatoes.