29 December 2012

' Eeehhh :).. I now have 4 teeth and I can walk too' says Riya. Her teeth have given a new look to her face. She looks a bit different but one thing about her face hasn't changed and that is her cuteness :).  She has been walking a lot everywhere on her own and also falling down a lot. She had a couple of accidents last week. She is always in a hurry to walk and reach her destination. She is still very wobbly but still she wants to walk everywhere.

Her 1st b'day is being celebrated thrice :). She has had 2 parties now and another one to go next weekend. She has had a lovely time at all her parties. She also had a lovely time with family in Wales. She enjoys the company of my aunt and she loves her. When there were other kids around my aunt she went to her and asked her to be picked up. Looks like she didn't want to share my aunt whom Riya calls ajji with other children. She has had nice gifts for Christmas and her bday but this year she was more interested in the wrapping paper and the tags than the actual gifts. Next year she will may be wait for her bday presents and she might also have a wish list of what she wants.

She hasn't got rid of the cold completely and it has been sneaking in and out. Its almost a month now since she has had cold on and off. There are a few good days and some bad days. She has been a lot of trouble to feed since a couple of months now. THE big problem is she does not chew the food. I am sure she understands the concept of chewing because she chews on other foods like a crisp, a corn tortilla(another of her new favorite) , any spicy Indian snack. Right, she has started loving spicy snacks and she has started loving strawberries too. The liking has just sprung up all of a sudden. I have given her strawberries before but it has never been like this. This time she has started loving them. When she sees me taking them out of the fridge she starts crying because she wants to eat them instantly. She does not want to wait for me to wash and chop them. It's funny to see her do that. The other day she saw a picture of strawberries in my aunt's house and started crying saying she wanted mummum. Funny girl :)

The worst nightmare of starting work is yet to begin. I start work next week and I am feeling terrible about leaving Riya. I am going to miss every little thing, every little moment of fun, happiness, argument, fights , everything. I can't imagine how it is going to be at work and how I am going to concentrate but I am going to give it a try. I can't write anymore about this as it is very hard to even think about it. I wonder how I and Riya are going to deal with this.

Daddy's working from home..Yay..!!!

22 December 2012

I and Riya went to the park yesterday. I saw another mum with a baby who was about 7 or 8 months old and playing the swing. I instantly remembered the first time I took Riya on the swing. She was about 6 and half months old and could barely sit other own. But she had enjoyed sitting on the swing the very first time. She had smiled and was happy to play the swing. And yesterday all she wanted to do in the park was walk around. She looked at all the older kids in amusement as they ran and jumped around in the park. I am sure she was wondering when will she able to do all that they were doing.

She is now trying trying to play different things. She is now stacking her rings on the pole in the right way. She stacked the whole set for the first time last week. She is also learning to do her shape sorter. She has also done a couple of drawings and artwork :)

She keeps saying daddy , daddy all day now :). She tries to repeat lots of words after us. Today she was trying to say cat. She said tat,tat,tat though :).

She will be 1 tomorrow. If it were in India we'd have a biiig party with all the family and friends. But here it's an odd time as its going to be Christmas vacation and everybody is busy with their own plans. We are off course going to have a party later on with some friends but its a shame that we won't have much of our family around for her 1 st bday. Though we are not having a big party tomorrow but we a going to have a couple of neighbours and daddy is now busy blowing some balloons. We are going to do little decoration and we have a little present for her. We have also bought her a Minnie Mouse card which seems to be favourite character these days. Hope she likes them all...

16 December 2012

Last week has been the most tough week of our lives since I have had Riya. I can imagine how busy and tough the last week has been as I have not even found the time to click photos of Riya throughout the week. I have always been doing so many photos and videos of her since she was born but this is first week when I have not taken any photos :(. It has not only been tough for me but also on Riya. Riya went to the nursery for this whole week. I sat with her on the Monday but on all other days I dropped her off for an hour. She is not very comfortable in the nursery yet. I have no idea how will she manage without me for several hours. As the D day approaches I have more fear and anxiety filling up in my heart. Sometimes I don't want to think about it. I feel like shutting that thought off and enjoying to the fullest with Riya.

Riya is lot more fun now. She understand almost everything we say. She screams at us when one of complains about her to the other. She makes sad faces when we scold her. She tries to make us laugh when we scold her. She gives it a very good try twice or trice but if we still don't laugh she then knows that we are really angry and then she starts to cry. But most of the times we end up smiling and she succeeds in her goal to make us smile and escapes getting scolded. She is becoming very smart these days.

She has started loving having pictures of Minnie or dogs or anything on her dresses. She pats her tummy and shows us that there is a 'woof' on her top. The way she says 'woof' is just so cute. She loves dogs at the moment. We have a neighbour who has a small dog and Riya was very happy to see that dog yesterday. She did not fear even when the dog came and smelt her. She just stood there with all the excitement in her eyes and watched him. She likes her plate and glass which has a picture of a Minnie on it. She is also very playful now and very mischievous. She loves pulling out clothes and dropping them on the floor from anywhere like the washing bag, washing machine, chest of drawers, her changing bag etc. She is a handful now. But she is just a joy to watch. Today when Vaishakh took her inside to change her nappy she was being very naughty and they both were laughing and playing and having loads of fun. I didn't want to go and interrupt the daddy and daughter time so I just stayed out and heard them.

I have been thinking that it is the start of the December and the countdown to Riya's birthday starts. But the time has gone by so quickly that we hardly have a week left for her birthday. I can't believe she is going to be a year soon. We are eagerly waiting to celebrate the day which changed mine and Vaishakh's life. This day brought more joy yet more tears, more fun yet more responsibilities, more dreams and the willingness to fulfil each one of them. Its heavy on the pockets yet light on our hearts ;). It's the day our little angel came into our lives!

11 December 2012

My eyes filled up with tears again and again today on the way to the nursery on this cold and frosty morning. I was supposed to drop her off and leave her on her own in the nursery for an hour. It's her first week in the nursery. We started a settling process where we would settle her down slowly in the nursery building up hour by hour. We started yesterday but I stayed with her yesterday. Today I dropped her off and I feel terrible. It's just for an hour though. I am not sure how I will mange when I have to stay away from her the entire day. As I dropped her off and walked away I felt as if my hands were empty and I felt very strange as if a part of me which i was carrying with me all this time was missing. Do I have to do this? Is it necessary for me to go back to work ? This is the question I have been asking myself again and again in the last couple of months. The only thing that consoles me is that I am not going back full time and I will still have lots of time to spend with her. I feel that she will also enjoy there at the nursery playing with other kids. It will also make her more outgoing and she will able to connect with children her age and with others too quickly. I only hope this helps her in building up an outgoing personality. I will know how she was when I go and pick her up . Am sitting in a cafe near by now and sipping some coffee and thinking about all the lovely things she does.

As my mom is a housewife I always had the luxury of coming home from school and finding my mum waiting for me with some delicious snack or food and a cup of milk. I always enjoyed this hour of the day as I got time to sit with her and tell her about what happened in school and have a chat with her. I did this until I was in my engineering college. It's just that a cup milk had now turned to a cup of tea :). We sat on the swing that we still have in our balcony and chit chatted over some tea and snacks. I always wish I have such time to spend with Riya! Hope it will happen some day.

When I went to pick her up after an hour the scene was something which I had not expected. I was expecting that she will be playing around with something but she was cuddled up with one of the care takers in the nursery and was almost dosing off. She looked like she was a bit tired with crying. Her eyes were wet too. I guess this is what is going to happen for a few days or few weeks. It's not as easy as its said to be. The girls there said she was alright in the beginning but had slowly started getting cranky and had started crying. She cried on her way back to home as well and her mood wasn't great the whole day. We re going to try this again tomorrow and I hope it only gets better!

5 December , 2012

Riya had her first professional hair cut yesterday :). I have given her a hair cut myself thrice before but this time I was a bit tensed to do it myself. She does not sit still for 5 seconds these days , so it's hard to play around with a scissor around her cutting her hair. So I decided to take her to a parlour. It was a kid's parlour. Very neat and tidy and was set up like a kid's room. Having seen other babies at the saloon I was a bit nervous wondering how Riya behave but she was not as bad as expected. She was a bit cranky in the beginning but then when I gave her my watch to play with she was alright. She now looks very neat with the new hair cut. It was a nice experience taking her to a parlour.. Like a girl's day out :).


And her love for cuddly toys continues. She has so many cuddly toys now at home. Her new possession is a cute Dalmatian puppy and we have named him Jimmy :). When I showed her that puppy at the shop she jumped and hugged him. She would not let him go for any other toy. I tried showing her different cuddly toys and other toys too but she didn't want anything else as much as this one. So finally daddy had to buy it. She was not happy letting him go even at the till.

Another Wednesday and another Gymboree class. Managed to get a small video of her today playing with bubbles which is her favourite activity.

http://youtu.be/ZbLSJRB6uZU


We had the first snow of this winter today. It didn't last long, just about 20 minutes in the morning. I am not sure if Riya will understand the concept of snow this season but if she were feeling well I would definitely take her out. She has a bad cough. Poor girl. It's the second time this winter that she has caught a cold. The first time she escaped without much trouble but this time it's bad. It feels horrible to see cough and cry because of the pain. We cannot do anything much but just pray and hope that she gets well soon. What amazes me is that even the cold and cough doesn't stop her from being a pleasant girl. She still smiles at people and waves at them to say hi and bye. When I took her to the doctor today morning she smiled at people there and waved at them and immediately made some friends :). They came and spoke to her said goodbye before they left. Somebody also asked me if it was a 'he' or 'she'. How lame ! With those little earrings on, those beautiful long eye lashes and such a pretty face how could somebody mistake her to be a boy. Very silly of them :P

1 December 2012

Another milestone is what I thought when I saw Riya 2 days ago. She is now 11 months and almost 2 weeks and her teeth have finally decided to pop out :). I can see 2 tiny white dots in her lower gums. She has also been very irritable this week. Probably because of teething. She has been very cranky last couple of days and has not been sleeping well. Hope she gets back to normal soon. It feels very bad to see her in trouble.

It has also been a busy week as I took her out to her play and learn class and to another play group. She enjoys going to these playgrounds and classes. She loves the parachute game which they play at the play centre. They have a big parachute on which we sit all the toddlers down and they blow bubbles. Riya loves the bubbles time. This time she stood on the parachute instead of sitting and screamed with excitement. She stood for the whole time. And then all the toddlers go under the parachute and we wave the parachute up and down and she absolutely loves this game. She giggled and laughed. She used to go to level 2 play and learn but this week was her level 3. I remembered how we grew up from one class to the next in school and wondered if my parents felt the same. It made me realise that Riya is growing up and there are younger babies now. Also that Riya is not a baby anymore. She is a toddler !

Riya also her first session with her would be nanny :). I am planning to settle her down slowly with her nanny instead of leaving her with an unknown person and disappearing when I start work. I was very worried thinking about how she would react but this time was alright. We spent about 2 hours with her and I also left Riya with her for half an hour and Riya seemed fine. She was playing with her and didn't cry for me which is a good thing. Will she not miss me? Will she love me less than before if I start going to work? Will she love other people more than me? I will need to wait for my answers.

While I sit here and write this bit, Riya woke up from her sleep and Vaishakh said he would out her to sleep and went in. It now looks like Riya has out her dad to sleep as well as I can cannot hear Riya crying anymore but I can sure hear Vaishakh snoring :)..