I have a baby sister :)

Hi All,

As most of you know I have a baby sister and I absolutely adore her.
Checkout her latest pics and videos at her blog at aanyathakkar.blogspot.com.

More to come soon.
Anay

2yrs 7mths: Ame to majha ma chhiye ;D

Hi All,

JSK! :) Kem chho tame?? Ame to majha ma chhiye. By 'ame' I mean me, just me. In gujarati 'ame' is used for 'us/we' but I somehow use it for 'me/I' :) Yup, I talk a lot in Gujarati and English too and have developed my own style and lingo.

We went to the Fair Oaks park that is very close to my house, yesterday morning after breakfast. It was very fun, especially the sliding monkey bar! I am totally a fan of monkey bars, but this one just bowled me :) I slid almost 6-7 times back and forth and made everybody slide through it atleast once. I wouldn't have given up on sliding more on it, had daddy not diverted me to the big swings and some sand play...I missed Anshbhai and Kukubunn (I call her by that name although I can speak Khushi ben) there and generally keep remembering them on other occasions too. Kaka, kaki and them have all gone to India for a visit to our families and their friends and others there and shall be back in about 4wks from now.

At school, I am making new friends every so often. I keep mentioning their names at home to mumma and others including daddy, ba and dada. Khyati, Liam, Miley, Cassandra, Matthew, Kaustav and few others are the ones that come to mind at present. I even know the last name of few!! I particularly like Ms. Maggie and Ms. Alejandra since they are loving, caring and empathetic. Mumma and daddy rely a lot on them too. I am looking forward to two events coming up there, the carnival when we'll have a jump house and the Father's Day celebration. Last year I flew a kite with dada and mumma (since daddy was not able to make it) at the Raynor park which is just behind our school and I hope to fly one this time too, with daddy :).

We had fun during the Memorial Day long weekend, at Newark area. Our hotel room was a studio suite with almost a fully equipped kitchen and also had a small and cozy living area apart from the standard King bed. I totally made use of all the free space, moving and running around with my shopping cart in our room as well as ba-dada's. They also had yummy breakfast buffet which offered more than usual options. I loved my time at the Oakland zoo where we went for: a cable car ride (a first for me), a train ride and also watched the giraffes, elephants, emus, wallaroos, etc. I was excited to be at a different Chuck-e-Cheese's. And I also liked being at Hop-n-Play at San Bruno where they had installed a couple new play structures. All in all, it was a fun holiday :)

I have pictures to share and shall get mumma daddiz to upload them soon, so you all can see'em.

Till then, take care and have fun!

Anay :)

2yrs 6mths: I am 2.5years old today!! :)

Hi Buds,

I have been keeping busy these days learning and mastering a lot of things! Most prominent one being the 'talking'. My mom says I talk so much or rather ask so much nowadays that it exhausts her and she sometimes has to give up by counter asking few questions to me :) for relief..phew!! The most typical question I have is something like this "aapde aam kariye to shu thaaaaay?" That elongation on "thaaay" is intended cuz I speak it that way..ha ha..I know I am funny in lots of such things. And after that typical question, there is a chain of follow up questions to the answer I get. I never get tired of or get satisfied of asking questions, so mumma says my curiosity and eagerness to know about the world is at a heightened state at present!!

Another feather in my cap is that I am fully potty trained during the day time now (yup, I am!! :)) and partially during the night time. Some nights, I wake up whenever I have to pee and some nights I use the potty and my pull-ups both. But mumma, daddy, the rest of my family and my teachers at school are proud of me for getting trained so early! Also, I am now comfortable using public restrooms whenever I have to.

I sing or chant ABCs and numbers from 1-20 accurately (although sometimes I gobble up 15) and can also recognize them most of the time. I like to point out the alphabets and numbers on the board during the circle time at school, dancing with friends is also one of my favorite hobbies there. Painting with poster colors, crayons and scribbling in general are also my biggies.

I have started liking to ride a trike now, we have 3 of 'em at home. I love riding the trike outdoors with daddy and going upto the Columbia Swimming Pool close to our home. Daddy also took me to the park there, which was nice and fun :) I am working on riding the big bike (w/training wheels) that we recently got, since my feet still dont completely and comfortably reach the pedals yet. For starters, I pedaled 2 rounds around our neighborhood with that bike almost on my own!! :)

Weather is awesome these days for playing outdoors and hence, once mom picks me up from school at 3pm, I have to go and play at the school playground for about an hour to hour and a half. I love the swings, the long slides, the tunnels, the circular disjoint steps, the bouncing pony, the circular slides, the bridge like play structure and the monkey bar there. All my teachers and other teachers of the school are now aware that I spend my after school time with mumma at the playground :) It's hard to leave though when other big kids take up the playground for play!

I have been getting ear infections often since the beginning of this year somehow, but in general I am playful and healthy unless the fever or pain wears me down. I have now understood the relationship of getting sick/hurt and visiting the doctor then after. So whenever mumma or I or daddy or anybody else get sick or hurt, I ask "Can we go to the doctor to get checked?" :)

Last but not the least, I have sort of learnt to sleep on my own since almost 3 months now. Mumma and daddy pretend to be asleep or sleepy around me in the bed and talk minimal so that I get bored and give up eventually. It takes me anywhere around 20mins to 45mins to go to sleep once the lights are off and the 'sleep mode' is on.

For now, I am going to sign off and will be back soon with newer achievements and fun stories.

Chao,

Anay :)

2yrs 6mths: It's been long, but I have tons of pics :)

Hi All,

Sorry for not posting for a long time. I will write a detailed post soon. For now I have bunch of pics.

Monterey Bay Aquarium visit

Chuck-e-cheese, Oakland Zoo, and others

LA Trip with Stutididi, Dipti foi, and Hemant fua

More pics with Stutididi

Christmas lights n Christmas Celebration

Halloween n Hop-n-play

Misc pics 1

I have become a chatter box of late and my current rate is 2-3 questions a minute. My favorite question is "Xyz thaay to shu thaay??", meaning "If this happens then what happens?"

More detailed post to come later.

Love u all,

Anay

And few more pictures!!

Hi Folks,

Its rainin' pictures since past few posts :) Great isn't it??

More Oct 2010 pics

My 21st monthly Bday n Rakshabandhan pics

See ya soon,

Anay betu :)

More pics from October 2010

Here are some more pics and videos from October. Hope you like them.

pics

Love,

Anay

My 2nd Birthday Pictures!!

Yay..yay..yay!

Finally mima daddizz got to uploading my 2nd Birthday pictures for you all :)

http://picasaweb.google.com/Anaybetu11/Anay2ndBirthday?authkey=Gv1sRgCPHHgaGouNuPeg#

Have fun,

Anay betu :)

2 yrs old: Yay...I am a big boy!! :) Nov. 7th, 2010

Hey all,

A very Happy New Year to u all. How was ur Diwali, Halloween and Navratri?? There's so much going on off late and its all fun!! To top it all, it was my 2nd birthday on Nov. 7th and we celebrated it with great fanfare, boy I had so much fun with all of that and the presents too :)

Lets start with the recent most stuff first.

My 2nd Birthday @ Kids Castle & @ School

I turned two and it was a nice co-incidence that it was our Gujarati New Year on the same day. We first celebrated my birthday in school on Friday (in advance) with my teachers and friends in class with mumma and daddizz too. I cut a vanilla cake that had party fritters (the colorful dots) on it, with 2 candles. Teacher Marie had made a 'happy birthday Anay' banner n hung it just close to our lunch table for me, very sweet of her. We had the yummy cake and took lotsa pics n videos and then mumma daddizz put the party favors for my friends in their baskets. Then they left, so we could continue with our daily routine. We also had flavored yogurt during lunch time.

At Kids' Castle we celebrated my birthday on the actual birthday, 7th Nov with family and friends. It is an Indian version of chuck-e-cheese and I loved playing there with Anshbhai, Nik masa, Neha masi, ba, dada, kaka, daddizz, mumma and few others. We cut the cake around 12noon-ish and it was of my choice, the disney cars design :) I didnt wait untill we cut it to taste some...I also played a lot with the cars on the cake while having my lunch. I was so much in demand that day that it dazed me occasionally as to why everyone wanted to meet me!! I was also told by mumma that I could wish everyone 'Happy New Year' so I would selectively do it and enjoy it too! I sort of have a notion that every 'Happy' festival now means 'Happy Halloween' so u can go and meet everyone at their place and get some goodies too :) I was so excited about playing and exploring everything at Kids Castle that around 1:45pm I was all done and dozed off. We came home and I woke up and the first thing mumma daddizz got me was all the presents..I loved all of 'em, thank u all so much! We have some pics from this too, that u'll see soon.

Diwali & New Year

Woohooo..'Happy Diyani'..I wished everyone by saying those two words n loved it all the time. It began with wishing mumma daddizz in the morning after they taught me that. Then wished all at home and then went to school and celebrated my birthday there. After school I and mumma went to do Indian grocery shopping at a big store and boy it was damn crowded. But it was nice to see the fervor of Diwali, everyone dressed up, shopping in hurry to go home n celebrate, buying sweets, diwaa, etc. Mumma wanted to buy me some fire crackers but they didnt have any. We stood in the longggggggg line for half an hour for check out and danced to the music while waiting :) Then we came home and ba n dada had gotten some 'tara mandal' that I and Anshbhai fired in the backyard with mumma, kaki, kookoobunn and ba. I was so excited with that, that when there were no more I cried and yelled for more. Then daddizz came home, I finished my dinner and we dressed up in ethnic wear and left for a Diwali pooja n dinner + games at Vidhu aunty and Sandeep uncle's place. I had fun there playing with my yellow toy kitty cat, pushing her on their table, kitchen floor and everywhere. I slept around 10:30ish while dinner was still on. It was a great fun filled day and my first Diwali when I enjoyed stuff.

New year was on my birthday this year, so as I mentioned above, it was a mixed celebration :) But the best thing was that celebrations came back to back and fun never ended! Isn't that awesome??

Halloween

I can't tell u enough how much fun I had..didnt realize it untill I dressed up as a lil cute pumpkin. I had a halloween parade in my school on 29th Oct. and so all my friends were dressed up as monkey, chick, dinosaur, pumpkin, pirate, etc. Mumma and ba had come with me to school to take pics and see me and my friends parade with our vibrant costumes. My classmate and friend Graciela was dressed up as a bright yellow chick and we hugged and walked hand in hand for a while and got clicked like celebrities :) Mumma especially was touched with this and so were Graciela's parents..they all were pumped up seeing us two having fun. Then the parade was nice but it got so crowded that one could barely walk through the place. There was also voting going on for the best pumpkin carved/decorated by each classroom. I was so lost with the amount of people in that small place that I hardly saw mumma clicking my pics :( But at the end of those 20-25mins, we finally went back to our class and had some snacks which was a biggg relief!

Then on the halloween night, we had lotsa candies ready and kids and big people started pouring in starting 7:30pm. I and Anshbhai were so excited about distributing candies and wishing Happy Halloween to all who came that we would rush to the door whenever we knew someone was there! Everyone at home loved the way I was wishing all 'Happy Halloween' and saying 'trick or treat'..after I finished my dinner and all of this for a while, mumma, daddizz and myself left for trick or treating in the neighborhood. Initially I was low tone on 'trick or treat' but after couple homes, I screamed it out and wanted to go on and on. After about 15 homes mumma daddizz asked me if I wanted to continue and I obviously didnt want to give up. But it was kind of cold that day and I had some cold already so we headed back home with tons of candies, play dough and some mini pretzels, etc. in my pumpkin basket. Wow, I had soooooooooooooooooo much fun that night that after that when Diwali and New Year came, I would want to do the same on those festivals too.. :)

And last but not the least my most amazing development update: I am making whole sentences in Gujarati that not only make sense but are also almost always grammatically correct. I exactly know which word to use when and how to speak what I mean. My mumma is very proud of my speaking abilities and also says that I have started to realize how to twist things as per convenience. For eg.: whenever I want to be picked up by her, I say that I am a little boy (she says that only little boys get picked up/held up) and whenever I go to see the gymnastics at my school, I say that I am a big boy and want to join gymnastics and jump like those people (cuz mumma says that I still need to grow big to be able to do that)..U see how I know what to use at my advantage when it's required?? ;) I also like to take je-je bhagaan with me in the bathtub for my morning shower and give him a bath. I have been dancing a lot these days to different music and speaking 'dance, dance' during that. I go out a lot with mumma after school since there's less chance of playing in the playgrounds due to cold and rough weather. We both go to either library, grocery shopping, toy stores, parks, or any indoor place where I can have fun. And I love eating chocolates..mumma had sort of kept me away from 'em till now but now that I know how yummy they are, it's hard for her to do that if I see 'em.

Phew!!! That's a long one...pics and vids coming soon..

Thanks and have fun everyone :)

Love,

Anay :)

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 :)

21 mths 2 wks: I miss u two two Kakas ;(

Hi All,

I have been having a lot of fun time since last few weeks. Especially my last week and weekend were really great with two of my daddizz's cousins who were here from Ohio, Mitesh kaka and Neelay kaka. They were here with us to spend some time of their summer break, and it was my first time with them. Initially, before I got used to having them and calling their names, I used to say "two two kakas" :) They got me and Anshbhai and Kuku bunn (Khushi) nice gifts and played cheerfully with us, took us out in the backyard and played volleyball, basketball etc. And pampered us a lot all the time. We went to San Francisco, Chuck-E-Cheese and Mini Golf with them, apart from the fun time (the best) spent at home. Too bad I couldnt say goodbye to them before they left, cuz I slept early the night after which they were leaving. I misss uuuuuu soooooooo much kakas :( Do come back soon again, or we'll make it next year to Ohio for more fun :)

Now about more things that I do. Mumma says I have a very good grasp of opposites now. I know the meaning of few and use them appropriately during my conversations. Like: chhuttu-bhegu (joint-apart), oppar-neeche (up-down), aagal-paachhal (front-back), hamna-pacchhi (now-later), garam-thandu (hot-cold), open-close, bhamm/chamta/bakku - vahali/kisses/huggie (hurting-loving) and mottu-naanu (big-small). I also say 'next' when I am done listening to some song or reading something. I have learnt to say 'please' when I want something to eat or want someone to do something for me. I know what 'eat' means. I also am helping mumma in meals, by feeding myself more than before. I like to eat spaghetti with sweet tomato n basil sauce, mac-n-cheese, roasted corn, butter, cheese, idlis, pan cake with maple syrup, cakes, raisin bread, chocolate and orange cream cookies, parle-g (my daddizz's fav.), baked paneer, white rice, yellow daal, jeeru powder, maggi, zucchini, green beans, beetroot, and many other foods.

I like to climb up the steps on the slide in the backyard and then slide while screaming 'aaaaa'. There's this park called 'Vasona Park' where I've been twice with mumma daddizz and others too, that I like particularly cuz of the circular pipe type slide that's there. I love sliding there while screaming 'aaaaa'. We had lot of fun there last to last weekend with Mitesh kaka and Neelay kaka and others. I also like the hinkko (swing) in my backyard and love it when mumma plays hide-n-seek with me there. We pick strawberries and I wash them with the garden pipe water and eat them fresh. I also like to help mumma with watering the plants, but nowadays I have gotten naughty and wet my clothes n myself with it too ;)

And the best of all. Mumma says that the best time with me during the whole day are the mornings. Right after I wake up, I crawl to mumma and say 'mumma' very lovingly as if am singing it and then hug her (sometimes 4-5 times to mumma's delight) and kiss her and cuddle with her. Then I crawl to daddizz and do the same and its soooooooo much fun to be together. Sometimes I also ask them to do 'mumma daddizz' which means that we all 3 hug together to each other and just stay that way for few seconds. I love cuddling and being cuddled in general :) And morning reminds me of night, when daddizz helps me sleep he sings 'Shree Ram Jay Ram, Jay Jay Ram' nowadays. I've picked up on that and also hum it 'See maam, jay maam' :) Mumma is so proud of me and happy that I am following daddizz :) :)

And lastly, I had been to Yahoo campus few weeks back with mumma daddizz on one of daddizz' friends' invitation. It was a family fun event and I had ton of fun there doing artwork, playing with the balloons, bubbles, jumping in the bouncers with daddizz, seeing all the stuff around and eating few things. Pictures are here for you on the link below.

Y! Event Pics

Love ya all,
Anay :)