Nanay back with cousins

On 15th Nov after celebrating diwali with us, Nanay has finally ended her Dubai stay and left us here. Just Daddy and Mommy and both of you! It is going to be fun.

Mommy, why you cwying?

Selling Daddy's old house

Hello from the airport - see you in a few hours!

Hope the flight is not as eventful as the last few days. Just had my name announced on the PA system in the airport - they found out the bunch of fire crackers in my check-in bags. Knew those didn't have a chance - but what fun would it have been to play with those in Dubai on Diwali!

Jaipur was fun - me and tinkoo chachoo played video games till late in the night and then went out shopping the next day. What not I bought! Crackers, shoes, books, jeans and stuff. Didn't need to go shopping in Gurgaon - it seems to me a strange town now even though I lived there through yr 2000-2004.

Thus it was good to have gotten rid of the old house. The money would surely help us get through these tough time, and help us further invest in future.

See a picture from India (Jaipur) showing effigies of Ravana selling for the Dussera festival. 

The trip begins

Hello from Jaipur, dear girls!

Every time I have to travel I get a bad case of nervous anxiety. This time coupled with my feeling low about leaving you all alone. As I said in the previous post, the plan was to bring along the whole family. Will have to do that after a few months.

Well now that I have landed here, the anxiety is gone but the sadness remains. Guru Bhai has gone to Ajmer with his mother - your Chachi. So much for planning the trip with the extra days kept for Jaipur!
However, the silver lining is that it leaves me and Tinkoo Chachoo to do the boys things. And he has taken a chutti from the office to spend this time with me.

The travel itself was not eventful, but long. All to save a few bucks - we have got plenty of time! Was great to see the new Jaipur airport terminal, as well as the Mumbai domestic terminal.

Will be off to Gurgaon tomorrow to do the Malibu sale. 

India alone..

Ladies, Daddy has to go to India to finish the deal on the Gurgaon house. The original plan was to bring everybody there, meet the chacha & the buas, cousin Guru and all the Grand Uncles & Aunts. However, due to Mommy's visa and our current cash crunch, I have to do it alone.

Leaving Monday morning - 22nd Oct and be back as the Eid holiday ends. Hope all works out well, and when Daddy comes back our sources of income are put to action. 

Daddy's new job

Well news came from totally unexpected quarters. After weeks of waiting for an advertising or marketing job to work out, daddy had to accept an offer from the agent who sold us our house!
The deal may not be so bad after all, considering that the real estate market in Dubai is picking up steam now. For us it is good news, because not only it is an opportunity to continue staying in the country but also a way to make much more money than was possible in the ad job.
Such good news means daddy goes spending. So mommy and daddy have new Samsung s3's. For the first time in our lives have we spent big on mobile phones. (This being the first post from the blogger app downloaded on the android platform...)

Appy Budday t'you

Today is Tinkoo chacha's birthday. Also Nitin Uncle's. So we called Tinkoo Chacha, and when we gave the phone to miss Cookie, she actually sang a bit - "Appy Budday t'you". Wasn't chachoo delighted!

Baby talks

"Oggurt, oggurt, oggurt..."

Cookie screams at the top of her lungs while pointing at the small kitchen ref. She knows that is where we keep all the sweety goody things, except for cheese cubes on the opposite side in the big ref. The small ref has her favorites - juice, strawberry milk and yoghurt. The cookies and biscuits are all in various colored and shiny packets in the big cabinet under the kitchen counter, along with so many other shiny and colorful packets. Some of them taste piy-sheee - make her tongue burn and make her run crying for "Water, Water, Water". The water from the pink & pretty sippy bottles makes the hurtee less. Daddy doesn't care about the hurtee, he likes to eat piy-shee.

"Aaa ooggurt", she says to mommy who is busy heating the lunch she had cooked while the girls and the daddy slept into the morning. Mommy tells her it is now time for lunch, and she cannot have yoghurt before she finishes her plate of rice & chicken sinigang. She doesn't seem to understand - "Daddy... shill like you weddy!" - she says with folded hands like she is begging. Mommy's expressions don't melt with the pleading!

"A juss! juss! jussa!" - she asks for juice, when she realizes that the yoghurt deal will not work out. Later she will open the big ref and grab a couple cubes of "chiss" in each hand. Food can wait. But hello? What mommy has ready hot & steaming in the plate is "Shikkanna" which she loves to eat. 

Pointing at the cabinet drawer of spoons, she yells, "poon, poon". Mommy takes out a couple while Cookie goes on - "I gib you...!". She means to say give to me. 

They sit at the dining table eating lunch together, mommy trying to feed her with one spoon as she plays & tries to feed herself with the other spoon. Just then she hears a baby in the corridor. Alarmed at the sound of the cry, she says "Titther!" and pointed at the door. Impatient that mommy wasn't moving fast enough, she squeezes out of the bench and runs to the door. "Tittherrr, whey aaa youu?"

Sister comes inside, carried by Grannanay. She has been out for a walk to help her sleep. But here she comes, all awake and playful.

"Look at me!!" - Cookie points at sister Mikie and yells. "Wow, Pinshessh!", she points at Mikie's pink hair-band with the disney characters on it. Mikie looks amusedly at her elder sister's jumping and dancing as Cookie runs inside to find her own princess hair band from the bedroom. 

Mommy isn't happy about all this commotion - "Eat your food!" - she yells angrily to Cookie. She wants Cookie to finish her food, so that she can attend to Mikie whose sleep is overdue. Cookie yells back, "NO NO NO, No eat!! She don't want!!"

I better stop typing this live commentary and attend to the situation!

Abba, Dabba, Jabba!

Unlike Johny Lever's irritating comedy partner (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCql2hV-iWk), both our Abba Dabba Jabba queens are actually funny. The newest little babbler on the block is miss Mikie and there is always the experienced miss cookie, who's been at it as long as we can remember.

Movie Times.

So today we went for the 2nd movie - Finding Nemo in 3D. First the plan was just for Cookie & Daddy - as we felt that little Mikie will find it hard settling in the noisy theater. But Mommy insisted on coming along - and then we couldn't leave the two of you just sitting about in the mall. So all of us went in.

Cookie's first 3D movie was not so much 3D as she insisted on watching it without the glasses - what with them being so big in the first place! Little miss T went to sleep and didn't disturb mommy throughout the movie, who incidentally was watching her first 3D movie!! So not a total loss really.

Cookie went about saying some of the dialogue out loud along with the characters - having seen the movie about a 100 times on her iPad. I want to say it was like Anil Kapoor and Madhuri Dixit in the movie Ram Lakhan - but that wouldn't make any sense to you years later!

Birthday Parties

We drove to Abu Dhabi to join Nenong Rodell for his son RJ's birthday celebration last Thursday, and today was Nitin Uncle & Kamana Aunty's son Jaiveer's birthday party. They celebrated next door at Kidville Motor City.

RJ's birthday was actually on 8th August, but they celebrated late to get some relatives to participate. It was organized to be at 7pm which we thought is very late for kids party, and that too in Abu Dhabi. Mommy thought she could drive a bit, but Daddy was not in favour of that - Abu Dhabi road sees a lot of very aggressive & dangerous driving. During this drive, we found out that Guru has been born to Tinkoo Chacha.

The party itself was fun - we took a lot of polaroid pictures with fancy headgear etc. Cookie even won a prize in one of the games. We've got to teach her how to play musical chairs though.

While that one was a 200km drive, today's one was just a 200m walk. Very tiring though, with Daddy and Mommy's backs hurting. Both of you are getting heavier by the day. Not to complain though, only Phew!

Kidville did their usual song & dance, and it was a not-so-bad party. We took the prettiest balloons home and decorated both yours room with those. It is all pink & pretty with what Daddy's been doing the last few days. 

Good News and Bad News again.

Tinkoo Chacha's baby boy came to the world last week. He's a week old today - and in the hospital like little miss cookie was when she was one week old. He's in for some fluid that went into his lungs.

Mommy and Daddy were placing bets about the gender of the baby. Unlike in the UAE, in India it is not allowed to disclose the gender of the baby to the parents before birth. Daddy wanted a boy, because both of you are girls and Mommy was thinking it would be another girl in the family. They say he looks like me, which is funny because I look like Tinkoo Chacha also.

Not so good news from Parul Bua, who is expecting to deliver in October. Her baby has problem in the brain, so we don't know what's going to become of him/her. Very sad for the parents! 

Mommy's works

So this is how mommy used to look when I first met her - only thinner, almost like a stick. (Well, I wasn't myself Sly Stallone, but!) Today, she's dressed up for an interview. We are thinking that she can go to work now that little Mikie is nearly 6 months old. She should be more in demand now that she's got her driving license.

There is little progress on Daddy's work, but something should turn up soon. 

All dressed up

Daddy and Mommy used to dress up alike during our courtship and honeymoon time. I know, we're such lame-ooos, right!!?

So we did that to you both too!! Ha ha ha - who's laughing now!

Zip, Zap, Zoommmommy!!

Yayyyyyy!!! Mommy passed her exam, and she's got a LICENSE baby! It was a tough process - drained not only both Daddy & Mommy physically and mentally, but also the money pot considerably.

But all is well that ends well they say, and in this case it ended rather nicely with a little die-cast model of an emirates driving institute car. And then another one (just us being us you know!)

Now begin days of Mommy practicing on our own car with Daddy so that she's ready to take you girls out & about when Daddy's at the office. Also hope Daddy's office works out soon. :)

At Home!

Now is the time for Daddy to stay home and look at miss T grow up, as the job has again left me. Same thing happened when miss S was growing up in 2010. They say that things change for the better when Daughters come by - with the new job in 2011 and with the earnings that I managed in the interim freelancing period, we were able to buy our current house in Motor City.

Let's see now what is it that Miss Tanya's luck is going to bring us. 

All the ladies in my life!

So kids, as both of you grow up slowly on your way to becoming beautiful young ladies, daddy has been a bit lazy and preoccupied with many things that a daddy of two beautiful young girls should be. Hopefully daddy will be able to recite most of what's been going on, and also upload pictures, and also keep this blog going till the time it is time for you two to read this and reminisce.

First of all now I should change the opening of the posts from "So kids" to "So Girls". That ways even your mommy can read this and feel that this blog is addressed to her too! Haha.

So Girls, Daddy has been learning some french. The level 2 of the same has started now, and I can now mumble some words and claim to be fluent in French. With Tanys's luck now joining hands with all our combined ones now, Daddy's job is again looking like some change is coming. We will find out what is that in a few weeks or months, as luck would have it.

Mommy has started her driving license attempts again (I told you about the first time didn't I?). We are hoping that she will be able to get her license in the upcoming test and be able to drive your girls to school, tennis, ballet or whatever it is that you chose to do. Talking of school - big miss cookie is going to start nursery this year, and FS1 next year. Daddy has to run around and fix up a decent school for her. Hopefully it will also be one which doesn't burn a hole in daddy's pocket.

We hope to keep both of you looking as good as you do, and make you both into confident young women in the time to come. For now, Mikie is looking like she's going to grow bigger than miss big cookie - mommy says you fit into big sister's bigger dresses already. We've got to get miss cookie's teeth cleaned also. Little as you may be cooks, people still talk and ask about your black front teeth all the time.

News from our family - my side first, tinkoo chacha has got his own baby coming in 3 months. Parul bua is next in line for the baby business. Nothing much on mommy's side. Grannanay is with us here so the tito Michael and tita maricel are taking care of their own there. Will catch up soon then! Hope a lot of good news is around the corner.

Cookie at the movies!

Daddy's cinema going hiatus broke with today's show of Lerox, where I was accompanied by Cookie! She being just so over 2 years, Daddy wasn't sure how she would take it - but isn't that Daddy's girl!

Nowadays, it is easier to bring Cookie out without Mommy - earlier you used to cry when taken away for long. So today was really a break through - you sat in the car without iPad and all, and Daddy took care of you all by himself. We bought caramel popcorn, and we had a booster seat for you. The movie itself was all colorful and delightful. Good fun. 

Tanya?

Naming little miss Mikie has been the easiest. So, hmmm, what choices do have. Let's name her Tanya? Or maybe Tanya? Hey, I have an idea, why don't we name her... you guessed it T..A..N..Y..A. The two Bua's koel and Parul were not so much in favour. But they didn't have so much of a say, once daddy and mommy had put the name down on your birth certificate.

See why we liked it was because it rings so well with the sister's name - Samya of course, and then it is a nice, international, glamourous name! Dont you agree?

The wait is over..

Happy Birthday little mikie! Yesterday after the doctor's visit, Mommy had you coming soon as the grocery run ended and when we arrived at the hospital they confirmed that you were ready to be born into the world. Mommy's tummy started to pain, and just as the clock was about to strike midnight you arrived. 11.54pm to be precise on the 18th of February.

Daddy watched you come into the world - which was a wonderful experience. For Cookie's time, Daddy was not allowed in to the hospital room. So it was just great as Doctor Yamini helped Mommy to bring you in. You came out looking just like Cookie, and didn't cry so much like other babies do.

So now we have the beginning 4 months of the year to celebrate birthdays each year - starts with Daddy, then Mikie, then Mommy and Cookie. Wonder who gets the biggest presents! :))

Girrrrl Powerrrr...

It has now been confirmed without doubt that little Mikie is a girl. Today we went for a checkup and a session with the radiologist. There was a bit of a scare, as Mommy started to feel pains and contractions - just like Mikie was ready to come out. We were at the clinic under Dr. Yamini's care till about lunch time and when all was confirmed to be well, we ate a huge buffet lunch. Burp.

New Year 2012!

We went to Burj Al Arab to watch fireworks again. Last year Ms. cookie was too small to properly enjoy - but this year she tried to look even though scared and she clapped with the rest of the crowd. It was very festive - and cookie got very excited to see everybody whistling and screaming and enjoying themselves.