Great-aunts Galore and a Great-uncle

Shreya has a lot of great-aunts and great-uncles. This is by no means the full complement of them!

Kunda-mavashi-aji


Rekha-mavashi-aji


Jyoti-mavashi-aji


Nilima-mami-aji


Somehow Shripad-mama-ajoba did not make it into the photographs, but here he is playing "Lemons" with Shreya.

An Early X-mas at Uncle Mike's

Our next December trip was the 4-hour drive South to El Paso, Texas, to spend the weekend before Christmas at Uncle Mike's house. Grandma and Grandpa Hayes flew in from Michigan as well, and with Mike's girlfriend Toni hanging out with us for much of the weekend, it was a pretty full house.

As we drove across the Texas border, signs advised us to "Drive Friendly, Texas-style!" I interpreted "Friendly, Texas-style" to mean "Give at least one warning volley," but fortunately, nobody pointed any guns at us during our stay...

We had a fun-filled weekend, complete with an early exchange of Christmas gifts. Without further ado, here are some pictures and videos...

Uncle Mike and Toni.


We drove into the nearby mountains for a Nature break.


Grandma gave Shreya a cool ball-run toy for Christmas (pictured in foreground) but Uncle Mike's stereo was so much more interesting!
(Back home in Albuquerque, she really loves this toy now.)

Shreya tries to communicate with Uncle Mike's fish.


Uncle Mike's house has STAIRS! (no sound with this video, sorry)


Shreya opens a present from Uncle Mike.

Unexpected Pleasures

On Thursday, we were just relaxing at home when the phone rang. It was our friends Marie and Adelaida to say that since they were in the neighbourhood, could they come over for a playdate. Of course we were delighted, and a few minutes later, here they were.

Shreya and Adelaida had fun playing duets on Shreya's music table.


Later in the afternoon it started snowing! Yes, snow in October. It had already snowed in the mountains the previous day, but now it was actually snowing in our yard. It melted very quickly, of course, but for a few hours it looked very pretty.


Still later, in the evening, Shreya's grandparents arrived from Michigan for a brief birthday and Halloween visit. This was of course not unexpected, but it was a pleasure nevertheless!

Shreya, come here!

As the reader may have already worked out, this blog is only loosely chronological. Sometimes, one or both of us are working on a post and Something Happens, which interrupts it and puts it on indefinite hold, sometimes to the point where it is easier to do a new post than to resume the interrupted one... Such a thing happened a couple of months ago right after our trip to Seattle. Shreya was sleeping. We had written the following (italicized) lines and were in the middle of editing the video clip which we had filmed in Seattle and that was to accompany them. Suddenly we heard a whimper, followed by a thump, followed by Shreya's howling. Upon rushing to the bedroom and panicking ("Where is she?!") we found her on the floor, in the ten inch wide slit between the head of the bed and the wall. (Yes, she sleeps on our bed, and yes, our headboardless bed was ten inches away from the wall, for fear of dangerous spiders. Needless to say, now the bed is up against the wall.) So we picked her up, made sure she was OK, cuddled and soothed her and forgot all about the video clip we were editing.

Here's a little footage of Shreya from our visit to Seattle last week.

Lately, Shreya has gotten a lot more mobile, and is now a very persistent explorer of her surroundings.

Ah, Irony, how we hate thee!

**********************

Even the above was written some time ago, and remained unposted, because , of course, we still had not finished editing the video, since the main problem with it is that the sound is not good, and we still haven't figured out how to improve it. So, here it is anyway, despite the bad sound. The volume is very low, so you don't have to hear the deafening hiss... This video was filmed on August 6th.



And here is one from tonight!

I Saw Her Standing There

(with apologies to the Beatles)

Well she was just seventeen

You know what I mean

(err... fortnights? months since conception?)

And the way she looked

Was way beyond compare

So how could I dance with another... oooh

When I saw her standing there?

(video is from July 16th)

New Wave Baby

While in Atlanta, Shreya learned a new trick. She has subsequently steadfastly refused to demonstrate it, giving anyone who tries to induce her to perform it a quizzical look and a smile. Nevertheless, here is cinematic proof!



Starring: Pallavi, Shreya and myself (non-speaking role).
Special guest: Tom's knee and Tom's voice.