Hanging Around

Here are just a few random pictures :)

The other day the girls both wanted to lay on the couch and watch a movie (getting over jet lag)... I thought they were so cute!!!
Here's a pic of Aashini & me at the mall this past weekend :)
I LOVE this picture! Aashini cracks me up!! This past Sunday after chuch we decided to go out to lunch. We were going to go get pizza (one of Aashini's favorites) but asked her if she'd rather have South Asian Food or Pizza... she chose South Asian food :) This is what she picked instead of Pizza :) She was super happy :) I asked her to smile for a picture and she kept making this face :) She said this was the face I made in pictures - hahaha! :)

Hangin' Around - America

Just a few fun pictures of the girls :) Aashini is a little jungle girl :) She loves wearing leaves and things on her head as she hunts for bugs :) That's my girl! haha!

Diya likes to do what Aashini does :)

Aashini in her bath towel :)

Diya in her bath towel :)

We went at had South Asian food one day. The girls were super happy :)

Here's Diya chowing down on some roti :)

Aashini's roti was well done - but she didn't seem to notice - she was so happy to eat South Asian food and had really been missing it :)

Here's a Turtle Aashini drew - I thought it was so cute :)

EATING!

On Saturday we took Aashini out to the mall to eat hoping she would eat more - she hasn't quite gotten her appetite back yet from the dengue. Anyway, we got there and gave her the choice of pizza or South Asian food. She chose South Asian food hands down! She was soooo hungry! She said: "Mommy, buy my food - I'm so hungry!!" I got her an aloo parantha (potato filled flat bread) and some chole (chick peas). She chowed down! She finally has her appetite back!

This picture made me laugh! She was so hungry and was just shoveling the food into her mouth :)

Adam bought a masala lemonade for some reason. It's salty lemonade with black salt and roasted cumin seeds, chat masala and other stuff in it. I can't stand the stuff and Adam didn't like it either but Aashini wanted it and drank almost the whole thing! She's a little South Asian Girl :)

Diya has been eating a lot more finger foods lately. She really likes rice. Since garlic keeps the mosquitoes away, we've been giving her garlic rice and she loves it :)

This face cracks me up :) I love it :)

All About Diya :)

Diya is growing up and getting big!! She loves to play! She loves dolls and talks to them and pokes at their eyes. She has this toy (shown above and below) that she used to lay under and look at or play with the toys. Now she likes to sit up and play with them :) Sometimes she'll grab onto one of the toys and lift her whole body up and slide under it - it's hilarious! I've yet to be able to get it on tape :)

Diya really likes to headbutt things! It's hilarious :) If we're sitting near her she will headbutt us. If there's something she likes, she'll headbutt it. She's hilarious. Anyway, here's a quick video of her playing with her toy and headbutting the toys :)

The other day Aashini had some little stickers... :)

Diya is a SUPER eater!!! She is always hungry and always wants to eat. We make our baby food here (because it's pretty easy to do, it's yummy and because I don't want to pay $5-8 a jar!) so after I make the food, I freeze it in ice cube trays. When Aashini was this age, she ate about 3 cubes per meal (about 3 a day)... Diya eats 6 and is still hungry afterwards! She loves food! Here's a picture of Diya with one of those mesh feeders with banana in it ;)

Diya is a lot of fun :) She's been saying "dada" a lot and she even says "Diya" at least once a day. I don't know if I can count those as first words yet but it's fun :)

Diya waves now too :) I haven't been able to get it on video just right yet, so I'll have to post a video of that later, but she'll wave both arms at the same time a lot too and she looks like she's flapping her wings - we call her "little butterfly" a lot :)

She LOVES bending her wrists. She does this funny thing.... she'll wave with the back of her hand over her mouth - it's funny - I can't explain it, so you can see it on video :)

That's some fun stuff about Diya right now :)

First Food!!!!

Diya had food for the first time this week!!! She has REALLY been wanting food! She's hungry all the time. Whenever we eat, she follows our food and licks her lips.... she really wanted to eat! She was wanting to eat every hour for over a week, and she 5 months (I'll post those pics soon), so we thought it was time for her. I thought I would wait for 6 months, but I was kinda tired of having to feed her every hour :)

So... here she is before eating :)

When we first gave Aashini food, she kinda spit most of it out and took a couple of weeks to really "get it", so I was expecting Diya to be the same way. The minute I put the spoon up to her mouth, she slurped the entire spoonful up and wanted more!

Not a great picture, but I thought it was a funny face :)

She LOVED it!

This picture makes me laugh :) I love her little tongue sticking out :)

All Done! She cleaned the bowl!

I think Aashini was jealous of all the pictures we were taking of Diya and wanted us to take a picture of her too :) She said: "Ni-Ni's Turn!"

Right now Diya's favorite food is Avocados & Bananas mixed :)

Cooking!!

Aashini LOVES cooking!! She always runs into the kitchen and asks me if she can "do cooking". We always have to come up with things for her to cook. Here she is "cooking chai" :)

Making popcorn is one of her favorite things to make!

There's usually a fun mess when she's done cooking (you can see the seeds going everywhere in the pic below) :)

Here she is showing off her new apron :)

When she makes popcorn, Adam always makes her stand back from the stove (keeping her away from hot oil!), but she still directs from behind! (see her little first finger up - she knows how to use that finger!!!) :)

So fun! :)

Well, after writing that post on McDonald's, I was really wanting to try the breakfast :) So... we dropped Aashini off at school on Tuesday and went out to find a McDonald's that serves breakfast. There aren't any that are close to our house, but we found one that wasn't too far away :) We were both really hungry by the time we got there so we ordered one of everything they had on their breakfast menu :) haha!! Now, don't get freaked out, there are only about 7 things on the breakfast menu here :) They even had hash browns!!!!!!

One of the things I got was the Veg McMuffin - I just had to try it :)

I was a bit surprised when I bit into it and corn popped out :) haha! It was good though :)

And yes, I'm pregnant and puffy in all those pictures - even my wrist/hand in the pic above! ahhh... pregnancy :)

Aashini is TWO!!!

Today was Aashini's 2nd Birthday! It was so fun to celebrate it with her this year ;) She had fun last year but didn't really know what was going on. This year she knew it was her birthday and kept talking about it and really had a lot of fun! She was hyper all day long!

The night before, we made cupcakes for her birthday. We made regular ones and ones without eggs to share with our neighbors. She loved getting to lick the beaters! She thought it was so fun!

Then she got to decorate her cupcakes :) We made a bunch of mini cupcakes. We gave her a little bowl with sprinkles in it to decorate them and I told her what to do. She stuck her hand in the bowl and got out some sprinkles and ate a handful - haha! Then she decorated... and ate some more ;) haha! She loved the sprinkles!

This morning she woke up for her birthday and was surprised. We decorated the whole dining room area and she loved it! (you can see my packed hospital bag in the background :))...

We decorated her high chair - she thought that was great :)

She LOVED it and started pulling all the balloons down ;)

After she ate breakfast she got her first cupcake :) Every time she got a cupcake we gave her candles to blow out. She loves to blow out candles!! When Adam first lit the candles this was her reaction:

She was so excited and happy!

She had fun blowing out her candles :)

Then came the presents :) She got some fun gloves and she wanted to open her presents while wearing them :)

The rest of the day was filled cupcakes and fun :) She got to play with some of her friends tonight and eat cupcakes with them too :) She had a fun birthday! Yay Aashini!

Don't forget to comment and say your Pop Rock birthday guesses!! :)

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!