Lo! and behold

October is Balloon Fiesta month here in Albuquerque. Followers of this blog may recall that, last year, we went to the fiesta and really had a good time. Nevertheless, this year we had initially not given any thought to going. However, we now live almost due south of the Balloon Fiesta Park (about 8 miles away). So once the event started, every morning from one of our north facing windows, we could see hundreds of balloons in the sky, scarcely bigger than pinpricks in the distance, but brightly coloured and exciting. Shreya saw them first. "Lo!" she said to us, pointing. "Lo! Lo!". "Yes, they are balloons, Shreya," I said, and thought no more of it, but after this happened the next day and the next, we decided that we should take her out to see them. Fortunately the event spans two weekends. So we made plans to meet some friends at the balloon park on the second Saturday, bright and early for the 7a.m. mass ascension.

Since Park-and-Ride had been so grueling last year, we decided to drive this time. On Saturday morning, we left our home around 6 a.m. Initially the drive was quick, but as we got close to the park, suddenly we were in the midst of a lot of cars (Surprise!). At 6:30, we were passing a small private parking lot about a mile and a half away from the park. We briefly considered just parking there and walking, but we were in the wrong lane for it, so we drove on. At 7:30, we had moved forward somewhat,  but were still waiting to park. Balloons filled the sky around us as we sat in the car, fuming. In the back, Shreya was asleep in her car seat. At 7:55 we were just arriving at the place to pay and enter the parking lot, but by that point we were really frustrated and decided to just go home instead. (It later turned out that our friends had left home even later than we did, but they had aggressively changed lanes and managed to park in the distant lot, probably just a few minutes after we had passed it up, and made it to the park by 7:10.)

As it happened, it was a good day to be at home. Previously we had just seen balloons on the horizon, but on this particular morning, the wind was blowing due south, and just as we drove up home, we saw dozens of balloons flying over our house! So we stood outside for a while and watched the balloons, feeling that the morning was not totally wasted after all. A couple of balloons even landed in the park a few block away, and we went and got a closer look at them, and watched them deflate.

The house on the right is ours.

Lo!

Pfffffft.

Still, we remained enthusiastic about going to the park, and the following day (Sunday), we got up even earlier, left the house at 5 a.m. and at 5:30 we had parked and bought our tickets and were wandering into the park. What a difference being early makes! We watched the "dawn patrol", a line of balloons tethered to the ground, which lit up and glowed in the morning darkness. Then as day broke, we watched balloons take off to the skies. Maybe there weren't as many balloons because it was the last day, and maybe some of the coolest shapes did not ascend that day, but there were still a lot of balloons and we walked among them and waved and had a good time!

Dawn patrol.

It's very early for these two.

Mr. Mojo rising.

The bee family has a new addition this year.

Lots of lo's.

Attack of the 100-foot tall rooster!

Summer Days

Fall is here. As I enjoy the cooler weather it occurs to me that once again, I have allowed a large interval to slip by without regaling my gentle readers with tales of Shreya's young life. Maybe I am really not cut out for this blogging thing....

Anyway, here are just some of the highlights of summer.

We went to the park.

We went to the pool.

We played at our new home.

We went camping and hiking. (Forgot to take pictures of the campsite, but here is one of Shreya on the trail.

We befriended our new neighbours.

Shreya enjoyed Grandma's visit.

Shreya's first sentence

For a while now, Shreya has been expanding her vocabulary, pointing at object after object, saying their names, and paying rapt attention to what we say back to her.  Sometimes she babbles several "words" in a row, but it is generally not intelligible.  This is the story of the first two word sentence that we could actually understand.  Read on, gentle reader!

We just put Shreya to bed, a moderately short ritual that begins with cleaning her up after dinner (a bath in this case), and ends with a nursing session after the lights are out.  She then lies in bed by herself, and is usually asleep within five minutes or less.

Tonight, when she was done nursing, she pushed me away and said "Dow," which presumably is telling me she's done.  Then she said, "Hug?" and gave me her version of a hug, which involves presenting her face for a kiss, while putting her arms around my neck.

Then she said "Poke eye!" and poked me in the eye with her finger.  We're so proud!

Our Little Monkey

As I mentioned in my previous post, Shreya has been doing a lot of climbing. I did eventually manage to get the following video of her climbing into her car seat (although not of her doing up the buckles). Notice that she is comfortable performing this trick with a pretzel in one hand. She did ask for a little help on this climb; I don't know if it was on account of the pretzel or because she is self-conscious on film. Usually she can do the whole thing on her own, even if the photographic record doesn't show that.

Seats, at the dinner table or in the car, are by no means the only things Shreya has been climbing though. I was really not ready for her to be grown-up enough to climb this play structure at the park, and the first few times she did it, my heart thumped so hard  I could hardly hear anything else. I followed her around with my arms outstretched below her, ready to catch her if (when?) she missed her footing. However her personality is such that when she learns to do a new thing she keeps doing it many, many times, to the exclusion of all other activities until she is quite good. So after the first twenty or so times, I stopped holding my breath and felt confident enough to use the camera instead. Tom, who wasn't present to witness this, expressed disbelief at my filming this rather than imitating a safety net! The following week, he came along and made his own video. Here they are!

More on Independence

A few weeks ago, one night I was in the kitchen putting the last touches on cooking dinner. Shreya had been milling around me earlier in the evening, but had gone off somewhere by then. Tom was getting plates and things to set the table. Gathering them all, he walked into the dining room, and I heard him say, "Did you put Shreya into her high chair?"
"No, " I said, "didn't you?"
But there she was, sitting in her chair, all ready to eat, even though neither of us had put her there. She was even buckled in. Unbelievable as it seemed, she must have achieved this herself! Here's a picture. She looks pleased with herself, doesn't she?

The next day, armed with the camera on video mode, I tried to coax her into repeating the performance. And sure enough...

Needless to say, since then, she always insists on getting into her chair by herself. She has now also perfected the technique of getting into her car seat and strapping herself in. (Hopefully we will catch this on film before she is tired of it!) Fortunately she hasn't figured out how to undo any of these buckles (yet!)

An Independent Thinker

Shreya is definitely starting to show signs of her individuality. Since about last November, when she started going to preschool three days a week, she has wanted to do things like eat by herself instead of being fed, even if it makes a huge mess. Last week, we saw another aspect of her wanting to do things for herself. On Thursday morning, after she had had breakfast and been washed, she walked determinedly to the dresser that holds her clothes, opened one of the drawers that she could reach and pulled out an outfit, which she then handed to me to put on her. It was a two-piece set: full length pants with a long-sleeved top. Definitely a good fall/winter pick, but we were supposed to have close to 90 degree weather (32 celsius for you metric types). "You will be very hot in that," I said to her, offering her a summer dress. But no. Perhaps she didn't understand what I meant by 'hot'. Or perhaps she knew better than me what the temperature indoors at her school would be. In any case,  she had chosen, and she was sticking by her choice. When I dropped her off at school, I took the summer dress along, and suggested to the teacher that she could change Shreya's clothes if she showed signs of being uncomfortable. But when we picked her up in the evening, she was still clad in long sleeves, and looking thoroughly pleased with herself.

The blog returns

I realized with a shock that it has been nearly a month since I last posted something here! (And much longer since I posted anything about Shreya...) There are a number of reasons for this: we moved houses, we didn't have internet access for a while at our new place, even after we got it, we were (and in fact still are) behind on so many things we need to do, one thing after another. But somehow I hadn't realized quite how much of Shreya's life was going undocumented. So in the next few weeks, I'm going to try to bring this blog up to the present (not chronologically though -- this has always been a somewhat loosely ordered timeline, so why change that now?)

That being said, I'm not actually going to embark on this tonight, because it is late, and one of the things I am behind on is downloading recent pictures from the camera to the computer! But for now, here is a picture of Shreya, as a promise of more to come.

The friend who hosted our last playgroup (and sent me this picture) was intrepid enough to organize a painting session for the kids. All the little ones painted picture frames to present to their dads for Father's Day. Here is a picture of Shreya with the frame that she painted (and I did not help her with this; it is her own effort). As you can see, she has also painted her tummy, her wrists, her diaper, and the table! All that creative effort has caused her hair to escape her ponytail. This is the picture that is going to go in the frame that she painted. Tom is pleased as punch with his gift!