Weekend shopping

Our friends Vidya and Vedham visited us on Saturday with their son Niyol who is 15 months old. It was really cool to see a slightly older kid to see what Abhay might be up to at that age.
Both Abhay and Niyol had a good time playing with the race track and car toy.

The funniest part was Vedham was feeding Niyol and Abhay kept going upto Vedham and pointing to Niyol's food like he wanted it even though he had just had lunch.

He also had a another playmate in the evening. He did not get to spend much time with Sasha as he was sleeping and after he woke up it took him some time to warm up to her. By then it was time for them to leave.

All this makes me want to expose him to more kids and activities. Once winter is over we will try and do more.

Abhay is 8 months old today.

Abhay had not been out of the house for 2 weeks due to the two swim classes. So yesterday (Sunday) we stepped out with Abhay to do our weekly shopping trip which included a trip to Costco and whole foods.

For the first time he sat in the shopping cart and he was just thrilled to be able to see everything without any restrictions.

8 month status update

Abhay is well into climbing stairs these days. He loves to climb the stairs leading upstairs. He loves it when I sit on the top of the stairs and call out to him.

His latest game is to sit inside the plastic bin that we use to store his toys. There is one such box downstairs and he insisted on opening the lid and try climbing into it.

And the other thing is love to play downstairs in the basement.We try and avoid going there as we feel very cold but he is really happy there even though his hands and legs get cold. This and the fact that he does not like being covered at night leads us to believe he really likes the cold.

He also loves playing " Piddi.... Piddi..." (catch me if you can) when we are going up the stairs. He hangs on tight to the person carrying him as well as laughing at the person following him.

Sleep still seems as elusive as ever. There is no definite sleep patterns nor does he sleep through the night. We are winging it as of now. People said he will sleep better when he reaches twice his birth weight, 6 weeks, 4 months, when he starts eating solids, drinks formula, eats rice. All these milestones have come and gone but he still is not sleeping at night.

As for the indian food, we have tried rice/daal/ghee/salt, rice/daal/gerber peas ( his fav for now), idli, yogurt, mango/yogurt.

When it comes to food my hubby is a traditionalist - he loves his rice/sambhar/rasam. So, today Abhay was eating and infact relishing his avacado. Sampath was telling me - " paavu - ariyade kolundeke emithinde erike" ( you are cheating the innocent kid) and that as soon as he learns to talk he is going to say "amma - please do not give me healthy stuff".

Indian food for Abhay

Happy Sankranthi and Pongal to all!

Abhay is crawling very well as well as standing up pretty quickly. He climbed up 3 steps today. He is now trying to cruise.

We decided to start Abhay on Rice and daal this Sankranthi.

Yesterday evening we gave him his first taste of Indian food with Rice, daal, ghee and salt. He seemed to have liked it pretty good - did not make his traditional face he makes when trying new foods. We are glad he liked it. Now starts the journey of introducing him to new indian foods.

He also met Divya Chitti and Kishan Chittappa this morning. He was ok with Divya but started his crying when he saw Kishan but adjusted to him pretty quickly.

We are back to our water excercise class today.

Pool experience

Happy New year to everyone!

Abhay got used to having so many people around during the holidays. On Monday morning when he woke up it was just the two of us. He kept looking around thinking everyone is playing "peekaboo" with him.

I had to take him around the whole house and tell him that it is just the two of us and no one else is at home.

We were very glad to have Revathi back on Wednesday.

We were very excited when Friday rolled around as we were enrolled in a swim class. I thought I had registered for the water babies class but then realized that it was actually a Aqua mommy (exercise for mom) class that I had registered. That apart, it was a awesome experience.

It was a great way to introduce Abhay to the water and he loved it. He was the youngest baby in the class. He was cooing all through out and smiling. He chased some balls around in the water, crawled in the play area, kicked his legs as soon as I had him in the water, almost floated on his back with very little support from me, splashed the water in the falls. We made some new friends. We are looking forward to the next class. I am going to try and register him for the water babies class in spring.

The last two weeks have been very eventful. Abhay started crawling forwards in the third week of December. The very next week he was trying to stand up holding on to things. I left him in the crib and went to the restroom. I did not hear any noise all of a sudden. I rushed out as quickly as I could and a good thing I did too - Abhay was standing up holding the side of the crib. He had this look of achievement on his face. He was surveying the room and smiling. I had the shock of my life as I had not expected it to happen so soon. We lowered the height in his crib that very day.

This week he is trying to cruise as well as hold things standing up. He stands up using his hand and whatever is vertical. Then he forgets he needs his hands to keep standing. He lets go off whatever he has used to stand up and starts reaching for other interesting objects. As somebody aptly said " The motion has started".

The next big project for us - CHILD PROOFING.