Pranav After 14 Months

Pranav completes 14 months. He is now able to point at few things and try to show us. He asks for water going near the refrigerator. If he is in good mood and we carry him, he thinks we are going out and starts waving hand saying 'ba ba' meaning bye bye.

Pranav After 13 Months

I did not get a chance to post Pranav's photos after 13 months.

Halloween 2010

For a week Nikila has been talking of Halloween in her school. She wants to buy a princess dress. There is a parade in her school on Friday before Halloween. We went to Party City the previous night to buy costume for Nikila and Pranav. The crowd there is huge and the lines ran through the entire store. Finally she got a Cinderella costume and left the store almost after 2 hrs. At home she tried and found that it was big. We went back to the store and late in the night there were almost no crowds. We took this chance to buy one for Pranav. We got a bumble bee dress for him. We took Pranav to school the next day and he enjoyed there looking at other kids.
Back at home, there was a Halloween party in our park. There were many people and lots of games for kids. Its the first time I saw so many people on the hill. It was very well organized and kids had a lot of fun. In the evening we went for a round of trick or treat.

Nikila's Aksharabhyasam

We performed aksharabhyasam for Nikila today. This year when we went to India, we wanted to go to Basara, but could not go. We were looking for doing this since then. We called Lakshmi Ganapathi temple at San Jose for an appointment and they said they are doing group Aksharabhyasams on Dasara day. It was performed very well for almost an hour. There were lots of people and almost 7 batches performed every one hour.

Nikila 4th and Pranav's 1st Birthday

View Photos Inline

Today is Pranav's first birthday party and Nikila's 4th. We thought for a while if we should combine both the parties or not and decided to do combine. We were a bit lazy in selecting the hotel and finally chose Athidi in Sunnyvale. The party hall is big here. We engaged an entertained that dressed as snow white and did some magic show and balloon twisting for the kids. We ordered balloon from Party Fiesta in San Jose. They came and arranged the balloons before we came to the hall. Since the hall is a big one the decoration seemed a little less. The cakes were ordered at Peacock Santa Clara. Nikila wanted Thomas train for her and Cars for Pranav.
We were in the party hall around 11.30 AM and Bharani and me did a few decoration arrangements. Pranav was good most of the party time and was almost getting ready to sleep around 2PM. We hurriedly arranged for cutting the cake as we thought he might sleep soon. He cried a little bit around that time. The food was very good but we did not get a chance to have it. Thanks to Bharani, Sai and Baker for taking pictures and video.

Pranav turns 1

Pranav completed 1 year today. Its been amazing that time flies so fast. We got a small cake and make him cut it. I will upload the photos after the party

Pranav gets first Rakhi from Nikila

Today is first Rakhi for Pranav. I did not remember this and never thought that we can make Nikila tie Rakhi to Pranav. The previous evening Neelima called me and told me to get Rakhi. It was fun seeing Nikila tie Rakhi to Pranav. She asked us why she needs to tie Rakhi. Neelima told her that its for being happy forever. Nikila immediately said "we are happy".

Pranav After 11 Months and first professional photos

Pranav completed 11 months and he is now able to walk mostly without holding anything. As soon as I come home in the evening, the first thing he does is show me that he can stand and walk and as he does this, he gives a big smile and shouts. He is getting bigger every day.
We never did a professional photo shoot for Pranav and all of sudden decided to do one this weekend. We got ready and went to Kiddie Kandid at Babysrus and they said that they don't have any free time for the day on Saturday and asked us to come on Sunday. Since we got the kids all ready, we went back home and got a few pictures for both Nikila and Pranav. On Sunday we went for the photo shoot and got a few more pictures.
It became very difficult for us to make him smile at the shoot. We tried a lot and he would not smile at all. After almost at the end of the shoot, I was holding a cap and dropped it. He then started laughing a lot. Only if we knew this trick at the beginning...
The last few pictures in the album are from the professional shoot.

Half Moon Bay

This is purely coincidental that we always make a trip to Half Moon Bay in August. It was very clear all the way but once we reached Half Moon Bay, it was cloudy and a little cooler but was manageable. This is the first trip to beach for Pranav. Initially he was hesitant to get into the sand (like Nikila was at this age). But after a while he had no hesitation to get covered by sand. We were there for almost 3 hours and had fun. There were big waves. Usually after the beach we go to the Peet's coffee and have a nice hot coffee. But I miss the coffee now as we stopped taking coffee. But still went there and got milk for Nikila.
BTW, the parking fee is now $10 at Francis beach and I felt it was like a big hike.
Nikila slept on the way back around 6PM and did not wake up till the next morning.

Los Angeles (Disney Land, Legoland)

We had a shutdown for a week for the July 4th weekend. Nikila has been asking for going to Disney Land for some time. We were not sure how Pranav is going to handle such a long journey. So we did not confirm this trip till the last minute. We booked our hotel in front of the Disney (Ramada Maingate). This is is nice hotel and very convenient, just walk to Disney. We started on 4th of July and the onwards journey was very easy with no traffic. On 5th of July we took LA tour from a company. This tour takes you across nice places in LA. This is not very good and would not recommend this. One place that was very good though was Rodeo Drive (Costly shopping). On 6th we went to Disney Land and spent the whole day here. The crowd was moderate (I would still call it heavy). On 7th we went to California Adventure. This is the first time for us here and we enjoyed a lot. There was minor earth quake in the evening and all the rides were shutdown. These were re-opened after an hour or two. Pranav was eligible for many rides and he enjoyed. Nikila did not enjoy anything that was in the dark rooms. On 7th we went to Legoland. This is mostly very very small rides and strictly for little Kids. Surprisingly Pranav is not allowed in any of the rides. Nikila had fun but waiting in the lines for such small rides is not very good and especially after visiting Disney land. On 8th of July we started back home early in the morning. But wanted to take another tour: Star Homes. This is a 2hour tour from Kodak theater that takes you around many stars homes. This is another boring one and I won't recommend this one too. We went to Madamme Tussads after this as it was include in the Stars Homes tour. This is OK and a bit of time pass, not very great. We started late in the evening back home.
On the last day Pranav showed us what he could have done the entire trip: Cry a lot. He had some discomfort and does not want to sit in the car and cried a lot, I mean a lot. We were worried if we can make it home that night or halt some where and start the next day. But after a while, he settled into sleep and we drove back.
The weather was not July like. It was cloudy the whole time and was very good, as hot weather would have tired us out.
This is the first time for Nikila to be away from home (other than India trip) for so many days. The last day she started saying she wants to go home and does not want to see anything else. The lines in Disney bored her and she said Disney is boring. May be the long journey and long lines took her patience out. Watching Disney castle on TV, she thought its some where around. The next day after we came back, we were to go to a party and she asked me if its near by or drive a long way.