Playing ROCKS!!!!!

We have been "dragging" Aashini around this week - taking her all over the city to different people's house and everywhere else.... and although she loves it, we though it would be good to let her get out and play somewhere fun :) We went to the mall (because then we can eat somewhere cool afterwards :))... This is what the play area looks like. You pay about $2 for an hour to play here. In this picture you can see Adam & Aashini by the balls :)The balls are one of Aashini's favorites :) She's a little scared to be in them, but she keeps coming back to them over and over :)
Her other favorite are the magnets :) She'll put them all on the board and then take them all off - over and over!! :)

She LOVES to climb! When we take her to play at the park in the evenings, she always wants to climb a hill that's in the middle of the park... she thinks climbing rocks :)

The cars are one of her favorites now. She doesn't make them go, and doesn't really love driving around in them, but she loves sitting in them and getting in an out over and over :) haha! She really wanted the door to be on the other side of the car though - she would get so frustrated when it didn't open on that side... She's already ready for driving on the left side of the road! :)

... and one last picture in the balls :) I like this pic becuase you can see her little dimple a little bit if you look closely :)

We head out to Thailand tomorrow (Thursday), and I know Aashini is going to have a blast playing with her buddies all day long!!! We'll have plenty of pictures and posts to come ;)

Friends!

Aashini really loves playing with friends and making new friends. The other day we were at the mall and they invited her and another girl up on a stage to dance. It was quite hilarious to watch. Aashini would dance for a bit when they told her to dance, but then she would stop and try to give balloons to the other girl or throw a ball at her ;)This is Aashini and her buddy Adelynn... I think she was hungry or teething, because she wanted to eat Aashini's toes :) They had fun together the other night and gave each other a lot of hugs :) It was too cute!
Here's Aashini's big buddy Connor... I think she has a crush!
The other day we were at a park and there was a little boy crying. Aashini kept going up to him to see what was wrong. After checking on him a few times, she just came up to him and gave him a big hug. It was really cute.

She got on the Merry-go-Round with a little girl that she really wanted to play with. The entire time they were spinning, she kept waving at the little girl :)

Here she is waving at the girl again :)

She loves her friends ;) I think she's going to have a blast when we go to Thailand and she gets to play with friends all day long!!

Doctor Fun!

Between both me and Aashini having doctor's appointments, we've been at the doctor's office a lot lately. The other day we were the only ones there, so the nurses were taking Aashini back into the nurses' station and letting her play with all sorts of stuff.

Today we had to wait a while for Aashini's appointment - her doc is the 2nd in command for the NICU, so he was upstairs taking care of an emergency situation (our doctor appointments are at the hospital). Anyway, Aashini made a buddy, and they played together for about 30+ minutes. He was so cute :) In this picture, he's trying to show her how to write on the chalk board. They had so much fun running all around and playing :) It was cute! They really played well together.

Aashini had to get a little shot (which she didn't like at ALL!!!), and was still pretty upset about it when we got home - she would point to her little brown circle band-aid and say "boo-boo!"... Elmo band-aids help everything though! :)
We don't' have to go back to the doctor (either of us) for a month, so we have a break :) yay!

Entertainment :)

Toddlers are pretty easy to entertain :) Aashini has a bunch of things that entertain her now :) FOOD is one of those things :) She LOVES Mangoes! She cries for them sometimes. She only says it in Hindi but doesn't have that word down perfectly. The Hindi word is Aam (alm - not sure how to spell it in English) but she says Maam... it's cute ;)

Anyway, this mango was huge!! It's the size of her head!!Aashini loves to color! She has crayons & chalk and goes to town with it. She has a blank notebook that she loves to color in too :) This is an older picture - but that's what she's doing here :)
Aashini loves Elmo! She gets to watch Elmo some afternoons and Adam also has Elmo on his phone. It's great b/c if she's really grumpy or upset while we're out, Adam can hand her his phone and let her watch Elmo and she's perfectly happy :) It's so cute :) We were on a long car ride & it was past her bedtime, but Elmo on the phone saved the day. This day (in the pic below), we had a man come to work on our inverter (our battery back-up for the house when the power is out). I was feeling pretty sick and couldn't keep an eye on Aash, and Adam was busy helping the guy fix our inverter. The power was off and on, so we couldn't just turn on Elmo to entertain Aashini, so Adam pulled out his phone - it was quite helpful :) (notice she's wearing an Elmo shirt in this pic as well as an Elmo bib in the other pics)...
We have some weird corn here in South Asia. You can find Sweet American corn here in frozen bags and there are guys on the street that sell cups of hot American corn, but other than that, it's South Asian corn. It's harder corn - more like Maize. It's chewy too. I don't really like it, but we were wanting some corn on the cobb the other day, so we got some. I'm not sure if Aashini really liked it or not, but she sure loved eating it! I love this pic (below) - she is holding the stick in a funny way - it looks so proper :)

Everyday Fun :)

Well, there's nothing too new going on in Aashini world... she's 19 months now - Crazy!!! She still loves dressing up, playing, eating, going to the park, playing with her friends, etc. I think she really enjoys being a toddler (except when she can't get her way :))

You know those ring-stacking toys? Well, Aashini now thinks that the rings are just big bangles for her :) haha! It's really funny when she wears all of them on one arm :) haha!

It's SUPER hot right now, so sometimes when we have free time we have been going to the mall. Aashini loves it because most of the time there aren't many people there, so she can just run all around the mall! She thinks it's awesome!

We're now at the phase/stage where one nap is too little but 2 naps are too many... One nap is about right now, but some days at lunch she is sometimes too tired to go on and just falls asleep in her highchair :)
Most nights we take Aashini to the park down the street to play. She LOVES the park. She plays with the other kids, climbs around, kicks her ball and has a blast :) Here she is about to go out to the park the other day :) This picture cracks me up!