Friday, September 10, 2010

22 mths: Gadhaaj (garage) bandh, Gadhaaj open!!

Hey All,

Isn't the title of this post interesting / intriguing?? Yup, it is something I was totally obsessed with at my masi's place at New Jersey, during my vacation last week. I and mumma left for NJ on 31st Aug. and this was my 2nd experience of traveling in a plane. The 1st one being my trip to India when I was barely 13 mths old. So it was kind of exciting for me to go through the whole check-in, security check and boarding process at the airport. When they took my stroller for scanning at the security check, I yelled and cried thinking that they would take it away forever from me! Anyways, it was mind boggling for me when the plane took off and we reached the high skies amidst the clouds. I was sort of restless during the flight since I had some cold and also because there was less space to play and move around :( But finally, when we reached, we saw Mauna masi and Noopur didi at baggage claim and felt a lot better and more after seeing Harshad masa outside.

I pretty much slept that nite, although gave some hard time to mumma for that. Next morning, I saw the backyard with Manju ba, saw the colorful birdies there, tall trees, tomatoes, green peppers and some other stuff and had fun. My daily routine was to wake up around 10:30 am -ish E.T. and then go to the backyard with ba, then have breakfast, shower and play (read explore masi's home). Then I would eat some lunch, play some and have my nap. After that, milk around 4pm -ish and lots of play in the front yard or climbing up more stairs (my another obsession) and then snack at 6pm. More of play with Shaili didi and Noopur didi and masi and masa and ba and then dinner around 9pm. Then would be the laughing spurts for me. I would keep circling from their kitchen to the drawing room to the formal dining room and back to the kitchen and while doing this, laugh laugh and laugh. It was such a funny yet enjoyable thing to do! Mumma loved it with me :) :)

And yeah, just like I 've named all cars in my home here (eg. kaka car, dada car) I named their car as masa car. So if I wanted to go out I would say 'masa car ma bah bah chano (chalo)'. Then comes the magic..the first time I saw the garage door opening automatically, I was dumbstruck. It was like magic or miracle for me, and since then I would say 'gadhaaj bandh, gadhaaj open' meaning 'garage close, garage open'. Masi took us to a big park close to her home and I was thrilled to be there, the long tall slides the big swings and the rock climbing place. I had fun there. We also went to see a nicely lit big fountain at the NJ downtown at nite and all the time I was concerned about a ball that was in the fountain pool, floating there :)

Then daddy came on 4th Sept. and joined us in the fun. We went to see the Princeton University and downtown that eve. and clicked lots of pictures and ate cool ice cream. I tasted from everyone's cup and it was so nice of Shaili didi and Noopur didi to feed me their ice cream till I was done :) We also visited New York the next day, boy it was a long day!! We went for the ferry ride to Statue of Liberty which was again fascinating for me. It was nice weather then and a good view of the skyline from the upper deck. We also went to the Empire State Building and watched the city from the 85th floor, it was such a bright view cuz of the lights everywhere. There was a 1.5hrs of wait time for the queue there, and thankfully I fell asleep right at the beginning of the wait till the end :) Then at midnite, we went to Times Square and just drove through and clicked some pics from sun roof of masa car. We finally returned home at 2am and I was all energized after a long nap, so didnt want to go to bed. Poor mumma and daddiz had a hard time ;0

Next day, we went to Priyal masi's place, she is a childhood friend of mumma's. Both masi and Parth masa had cooked good food and I especially enjoyed eating the gulab jamuns made by masi. I also had some strawberry ice cream and 2 chocolate candies there. They also took couple pics with us. And the next day, we went to see daddiz's school time friend Bhavin kaka and his wife Shweta aunty. They were also nice and we all went to eat out at a desi place where there was variety of food (indian-chinese, indian-italian, hyderabadi, gujarati, punjabi, bombay ishtyle, etc.). Everyone had paan at the end and I had the red tiny balls of jin-taan. I had ice cream at their place too, mumma says I am as much a fan of ice cream as her :)

And that very last nite, we had ton of fun at masi's place clicking pics. Especially with masa's tripod, it was a new toy to explore. He would place the camera on it and then set the auto-click and once it would flash and the pic was taken, everyone would clap including me. I was so excited doing this, that we did it again and again..almost 4-5 times. I need to collate all the pics from everyone and then upload them, so you can see how much fun we had this vacation.

I miss u all a lot, masi, masa, both didis and ba. Come soon to see me again and we'll have more fun together!

Love ya all,
Anay betu :)