Photo(s) of the week

Some of these were actually taken last week...

Visiting Mt St. Helens

The weekend before last, we had a family outing to visit Mount St Helens. This was the longest outing we have had with LittleTiger so far (9 hours) and he seemed to have taken it well. It was my first time visiting St. Helens, and the visit left a lasting impact.

Mount St. Helens is an active volcano which erupted in 1980 after more than 120 years. The eruption dropped the mountain's summit by more than 1300 feet and replaced it with a mile wide horse-shoe shaped crater. It wiped away about 230 square mile of forest area and caused a great deal of destruction. Today, almost 30 years later, the impact of the 1980 eruption is still very visible and the volcano continues to spew smoke and ash.

Mount St Helens & Spirit Lake- pre 1980 (courtesy: Wikipedia)

Mount St Helens today - picture from our camera

We spent a few hours at the Johnston Ridge Observatory where we saw a short film that showed us a video of the eruption. In the evening we continued to linger around the site even after the observatory had closed and all the other visitors had left. The place was completely silent. But the image of the explosion we had seen in the film and the destruction we could still see around us left us with an eerie feeling.

View from the observatory

We had the place all to ourselves for some pictures with LittleTiger

I have promised myself to visit St Helens again in the near future and maybe spend a weekend there. Since the last two years, I have also been dreaming about hiking up St Helens. I have not given up on the idea totally yet...just need to get comfortable hiking with LittleTiger and motivate some more friends to accompany us. Hopefully I won't have to wait very long.

Annaprashan

We decided not to wait anymore. It had become obvious that LittleTiger was ready too. So this weekend, we had his annaprashan. There was no formal ceremony. Just a feeding of rice cereal from dadi's hands.

Watching him eat the cereal with such delight made me glad that we didn't wait anymore. He absolutely LOVED it and couldn't have enough of it!

I am excited and looking forward to him exploring the world of solid foods. I can't wait to start making little portions of boiled veggies and daals and fruits to feed him. In fact I just found out about a popular book Super Baby Food that's available in my local public library. So in a few days when LittleTiger's ready for a change of menu, I'll hope to have some delicacies ready for him (the kind of delicacy with no salt, sugar or spices)!

Calvin or Hobbes?

LittleTiger needs to get his passport and the application asks for two passport sized photos. So today we decided to get his pictures taken.

Posing for picture

A picture of the photograph

Don't you think there's a striking resemblance with Calvin?

Interesting because some of my friends call him "Hobbes" the little tiger!

Another one!

I've been having some super busy days at work, so haven't had any time to blog or to take photos/videos. I did want to share one bit of news though. LittleTiger is getting his second tooth! His first one is only maybe 1mm out of his gums, and we can already see another little white line emerging on the side of the first. God knows what he plans to do with so many teeth so soon. He's on a liquid diet (milk only) for atleast another month. Its probably his way of telling us that he can't wait to start on solids. :-)

Got to run now.

Look..

...Tiger has something to show you!


Sorry..I was trying to get him to show his little tooth, but this is all he wanted to show!

Three generations

Some old "three generations" pictures

Taken 6/29/08

Taken 3/23/08