Friends and Fun!

Aashini's buddy Hannah came through town the other day and they got to play together. It was so fun to watch them interact! They were even talking to each other - it was so fun :) They even attempted to share with each other :) haha!!

Aashini has had some fun new experiences - like riding in a backpack :) She only liked it for about 20 minutes!!

Lots of fun new adventures for this little 2 year old!

I haven't taken many pics of Diya - poor little 2nd born :( I'll take more soon :) I promise ;) For now, here's a Diya crying picture :)

Firsts & Fun :)

Diya had her first bath the other day... she wasn't a big fan... Aashini is just now starting to like baths! haha! Hopefully Diya will like them earlier than that :)

Aashini's buddy Meri came over the other night - this picture is too cute :)

And this just made me laugh... I know some people have corns on their feet... but my daughter has whole ears of corn on her feet - haha!

Outtakes!

We had quite a few funny pictures that I thought definitely needed posting :) I like to call them the "outtakes" :) haha! Remember that awesome rangoli that our friends the Washas made? Well, it was very tempting for a 2 year old :) After looking at it for a few days, she decided that she ought to play with it :) She had a lot of fun! :)

We have a couple of hats for Diya that are from a store here called "Mothercare". This store has the biggest tags for the things they make! In this pic it was hanging out of her hat and I thought she kinda looked like a rapper :) haha!

Diya always wants something in her mouth. It's funny b/c here if a baby puts their hand in their mouth, they will take it out of their mouth as fast as they can. It's a cultural thing (and I can't quite figure out why)... anyway, Diya tends to end of with something in her mouth throughout the day. This one made me laugh :)

Not sure what happened here, but it made me laugh too :)

This face cracked me up! Too funny!

Definitely more outtakes to come!

Taekwondo!

Aashini's preschool is really great! We're all loving it! It was perfect timing to put her in school, because she has something she can go to that's "normal" every day, and gets out a lot of her energy too. She really loves it! On Fridays they do Taekwondo and are supposed to wear their Taekwondo uniforms to school. I haven't taken any pics of Aashini in her uniform yet, so we took some this morning ;)

Here is Aashini showing off one of her kicks (and a punch too I think) - haha! I love it!

This picture is totally my favorite. I love the pose she's doing (and the awesome view of her mullet :))

This picture scares me a bit :) haha! It looks like she's saying: "Come and get me!"

I know, I took a ton of pictures (and I'll post more on Facebook too!). This one was cute :)

I think she was actually dancing in this one...

I'll post more pics on Facebook in the next day or so :) Until then... watch out for this toddler! :)

One Week!!!

Diya is one week old now! It's hard to believe that it's only been a week :) haha! A lot has happened in just one week :) Diya is a lot of fun :)

She really makes a lot of funny faces (I'll have some funny face pictures posted soon :))

As of now she has those baby blue gray eyes. I'm interested to see what color her eyes turn :) Her cord fell off yesterday (well, sorta, she still has a little piece of it there). This isn't a great picture, but I wanted to post it anyway :)

I had people requesting feet pictures :) I haven't been able to take any great ones yet, but here are a few :) Her feet are sooo different from Aashini's. When Aashini was born her feet were chubby. The top of her feet are "puffy"... and still are. It seems like Diya might have my feet... long flipper feet with long toes!

She is always wiggling her toes and it's really cute!

... and one last foot picture :)

More pictures to come!

Sisters!

It's fun to have 2 girls :) Aashini LOVES her new little sister :) (Although from the picture below, it's hard to tell if Diya feels the same way) :) haha!

Aashini has had a lot of fun being the big sister :) When she wakes up or comes home from school and sees Diya she comes running and says: "Baby Diya!"

Last night Aashini got to hold Diya for the first time. She was so proud of herself!

When Diya cried or moved Aashini would say: "WOW!" It was so cute!

Aashini loves to "pet" her sister. It's pretty funny. We tell her to touch her softly, and Aashini puts her fingers all together and "pets" her (see pic below). It's cute :)

She also loves to give Diya kisses!

Yesterday we had to take Diya to the doctor to check her billirubin levels (she looks a little yellow), so they took her blood and she had a bandage on it. Aashini kept kissing Diya's "boo boo". It was sweet.

So there are some fun sister pictures :) I guess I need to post one of just Diya :) I'm going to take some better pics of her soon, but right now we have a million things going on! I'll post some better pictures soon :)

It's a GIRL!!!!

It's a GIRL! I'm sorry I haven't been able to post (no wi-fi at the hospital) :) On Wednesday (Nov 25) I had started to feel worse than I had before. My vision had blurred a few times that day and my blood pressure was getting higher, so we called my doc that evening and she said we needed to check in. We checked in and they monitored me for a few hours (and my BP kept slowly climbing) and my doctor decided we needed to go ahead and have the baby. Since I had a previous c-section, she didn't want to induce, so we scheduled the c-section for the next day. It was a TOTALLY different experience from last time! If anyone is interested, I'll write about it, but I was totally lucid during the entire c-section (which I wasn't last time) and I was talking with the attendants about Bollywood movies while they were stitching me up - it was fun :) (until the numbness wore off....)

Anyway, here's Diya's Info (if you can't read it, you can click on the pictures to see them bigger):

Here is Diya right after she was born:

And another one Adam took right after she was born:

Here she is on her 2nd day :) She looks a lot different from Aashini. She has dark hair and different feet, hands and mouth. She also looks a lot more darker complected (and as of now doesn't have any jaundice)...

Aashini got to meet her for the first time on the 2nd day. Aashini was so excited! She kept poking at her and naming things (eyes, nose, mouth, etc). At one point Diya moved and Aashini was surprised and said: WHOA! (maybe she thought she was a doll before :) haha!). Aashini really loves her baby sister! She's also pretty protective. Our neighbor came by today and was holding Diya and Aashini kept crying. She was afraid they were going to take her.

In this pic you can see her baby bracelet. Most people here wait a while to give the baby a name (or wait for the Hindu priest to name the baby), so they call the babies: b/o (baby of) Andrea.

This picture made me laugh :)

We got home today and our house was decorated so cool!

Our friends the Washas and their kids decorated our house to welcome in little Diya! There were fun decorated diyas all over and paisleys. It was really fun :)

So, she's here now- we have our very own special Thanksgiving Turkey and we're super happy and excited!

More pictures to come!

38 Weeks!

So I thought I needed to post another belly picture :) We were checking out some goats today (for a holiday coming up this week - I'll have a post up about it in the next couple of days)... and thought that goats would make a belly picture more interesting... BUT they didn't really show up in the pictures :) haha! All you can see is me and a bunch of men staring at me ;) haha!

So here is my 38 week belly picture!

Traditions!

So we have a fun tradition in the Capital here in South Asia :) It all started with the Caskeys (in the pic on the left). They were pregnant with their first when they lived here in the Capital and she was ready for the baby to come, so our friend Mandy sang her a special "baby come out" song. Within 48 hours the baby was out :) (Right Kelley?). It worked for the Roberts too and just the mention of the song had me in the hospital having a baby :) haha! (OK, so I know it didn't have to do with the song, but it's still funny how it worked out!) So now it's become a tradition we sing to all pregnant moms that are ready to have their babies :)

The Caskeys and the Roberts got the opportunity to get together this week (the Caskeys had surgery on their unborn twins this week - check out their blog and please pray for them!!!) and they made this awesome picture for me and "sang" the song for me on Facebook :)

Baby Pop Rock... won't you come out?

Baby Pop Rock... You'll be so much fun!

Baby Pop Rock... You'll be number one in your family...

Oh Pop Rock Baby, Oh Pop Rock Baby

COME OUT BABY POP ROCK!!

Thanks guys! You guys ROCK!!!

Children's Day!!

Children's Day is a very popular holiday here :) It's celebrated internationally on November 20 but our country celebrates it on November 14 (it's the birthday of the first Prime Minister and he loved children). This year it was on a Saturday, so the mall near us had all sorts of fun stuff for the kids :) Inside one of the malls (it's actually 3 different malls all stuck together, so they're are constantly competing) they had DORA the Explorer!

When she first came out, Aashini was really scared of her!

Then, after some time she was very interested and wanted to see Dora ;)

She was still pretty scared though and parents couldn't come up with their kids, so Adam gave Aashini a piece of candy to give to Dora. She was excited after that! I think she liked having a "job" to do :)

She was so excited to give Dora the candy!

Aashini was amazed at the size of Dora. She kept saying: "Big Dora" :)

Afterwards she was so excited. She kept telling us the story over and over again about giving Dora the candy. She was so proud and excited :)

After that we went to the courtyard of the middle mall (they're all connected, but the middle mall has a big outside area that they have stuff at all the time). They had rabbits in one section for the kids to look at. Aashini was in heaven!

I always had rabbits growing up, so I loved seeing them too - haha! :) Aashini was soooo happy!

They were just out of reach though :) She wanted to try to get them :) After some time, the guy that was in charge of the rabbits brought one over to her so she could pet it. She loved it!

They were giving out all kinds of cool snacks for free! (not super common here) :) Aashini got to try her first Cotton Candy :) The cotton candy machine was different than I had seen before :) It was cool looking and he used a hand-crank that was attached to what looked like a bicycle wheel - very neat ;)

She loved it!!

She had a great Children's Day!