Astrovelo

• Ashwini slept in her own room, in her own bed all night long; two nights in a row. First time since we moved to CT.
• Adit slept through two nights without waking up, although next to me.
• Adit got his flu shot this morning without any screams or tears. That nurse was very good. It was over before he knew what was going on.

Follow-up to my new telescope post:

The package is on the UPS truck “out for delivery”. It should be waiting for me when I get home in the evening. As expected, it is raining today and will continue for the next three days.

This should be used as a remedy for droughts. Make people in the affected area buy some telescopes, the rain and clouds will definitely follow.

It was unseasonably warm yesterday when we went out for apple picking. Probably for the first time ever, we were not wearing jackets but, were in shorts and t-shirts for apple picking. This must be the Indian Summer.

At the orchards, they had hayrides in a very nicely decked out carriage. It was far from being a farm hay wagon, but was a nice ride. Both the kids were excited to see and touch horses.

Apple and raspberry picking was good. Adit was eating juicy and sweet raspberries right from the bushes. Must be their freshness, because he doesn’t like to eat any store-bought berries. The fresh taste of apples plucked from a tree is so much better that it keeps us going back to apple picking every year. We must have missed this fall activity just a couple of times in the last 16 years.

We’ll make another trip next week with the kids' wagon to get pumpkins, so I don’t have to carry those heavy things to the car.

After a long wait of about 5 years, just ordered a new telescope: William Optics Megrez 90 doublet APO.

Can’t wait to put my hands on it.

Summer officially ended last week and so did the “Summer hours” at work. No more Friday half-days. Will have to work five full days every week. Hmmpff!! ‘tis so not fair.

Nike Freestyle must be one of the coolest TV ad ever. I remember watching in awe, every time it came on about 5-6 years ago. The person in this 30 sec version is not one of the NBA superstars, but 19 year old amateur, Luis DaSilva. He just handles the ball in an amazing way. He was interviewed on one of the episodes of my favorite radio show, “This American Life”. This is the first act of the show. It is about 17 minutes long and starts after about 3 minutes of introduction.

Here is the longer two and half minute version with the NBA and WNBA stars. If you have never seen this before or don’t remember, it is definitely worth watching. I bet you’ll watch it at least 3 times before you can stop.

Ganapati Bappa Moraya!!!

Modaks: Ganesha’s (and ours, too) favorite food.

Kids in festive spirit wearing Indian clothes.

Adit’s first Churidar set.

Ashwini’s beauty spot is getting more prominent.

Taken at “Birds of the Outback” exhibit at the Mystic Aquarium.

Ashwini talks and acts so much like an older kid, that we sometimes treat her unfairly as if she is older than her actual age of four and half years.

It is conventional wisdom that men go into public restrooms, finish their business as fast as possible and come out without even making eye-contact with others in that place. It is women who go in and socialize and make life-long friendships with fellow restroom users.

The details that came out in the Larry Craig (republican senator from Idaho) incident shattered this image of men’s public restroom. It seems like it is a very romantic place where gay men are involved in very intricate and playful flirting. It is really shocking that gay men who are stereotypically very clean and neat-freaks would choose a dirty place like men’s room for romance.

Here is an excerpt from a NY times article about the restroom mannerisms:

... the description of Senator Craig’s behavior given by the police. First is the approach: Mr. Craig allegedly peeks into the stall. Then comes positioning: he takes the stall next to the policeman. Signaling: Senator Craig allegedly taps his foot and touches it to the officer’s shoe, which was positioned close to the divider, then slides his hand along the bottom of the stall. ..... Mr. Craig was arrested after the officer presumed he had “signaled.”

Adit turned 20 month old yesterday. It has been 4 months since I wrote his last progress report. Our move from Michigan to Connecticut completely turned our lives upside down. Also, two kids take up so much more time than one kid, that it is hard to write these posts more frequently. I hope Adit will not take this negatively when he grows up. He’ll probably say that it is good not to have too many of these reports with embarrassing details about his childhood.

Adit continued on with his physical growth and has gotten better with his balance. He can run up and down all the inclines around our new house without any problems. Going up and down the stairs is not a problem and same with climbing down from sofas, tables and other places that can climb onto. His motor skills have also improved in terms of handling small objects and feeding himself. He can use a fork and a spoon properly to pick up food. But, after awhile he ends up with just holding fork/spoon in his right hand and picking up food with the fingers of his left hand. Adit is such a fast eater that he is almost always finished by the time Ashwini eats less than half of her food. He is not as fond of vegetables as Ashwini, but they share their love for fruits. His molars have come out within the last month or so and now he can eat everything that Ashwini does. No more jars of baby foods!!!

The most improvement in these last few months is with his verbal skills. Lately, he is trying to say more and more words. He likes to copy whatever words that he hears from us and sometimes, if he can’t say the exact word, he at least gets something that is similar sounding. It is funny when he tries to tell us something and we just can’t make out what he is saying. After we make 2 or 3 wrong guesses, he gets very upset, but is pleased when we make out his words. He also understands when we are talking with him and answers our questions with ‘yesh’ or ‘no’.

Adit calls me, “Dada”; and even after V tried to teach him “Aai” a million times, he calls her “Mama”. Ashwini is too hard for him to say, so, he calls her with a gutteral sound that I can’t type with a keyboard. His teacher’s name is Kate. Adit calls her “cake” or “tate”. I guess it must be difficult for toddlers to say the ‘k’ and ’t' sounds together, because some other kids in his classroom do the same with her name.

We have a book about trucks that describes all kinds of trucks such as dump trucks, bulldozers, backhoes, frontloaders etc. For some reason, the word ‘backhoe’ was stuck in Adit’s mind. No matter what kind of vehicle he saw, it was always a ‘backhoe’; even cars were ‘backhoes’. Within last few days, he has started saying ‘truck’ and cars are ‘vroom vroom’.

“How about thish?” is the longest sentence that Adit can say. He brings things to us or points to something that he wants and says, “How about thish?” It took us awhile to figure out what he was saying as it was totally unexpected.

Adit isn’t afraid of animals. (NO! That ^ is not a real fish.) He always enjoyed our visits to the zoo in Michigan and was very thrilled during our recent trip to nearby Mystic Aquarium. He liked to watch all the fishes and other critters. We promptly bought a family membership and hope to visit there again and again through the year.

Adit likes watching Dora and Diego with Ashwini. He gets very involved with the show and answers to the questions asked by the characters or follows theirs directions to act out things.

He likes to listen to music; not just kids' music, but any music. It is a surefire way to calm him down if he gets upset in the car.

He still loves his baths. It is hard to get him out of the bathtub. while giving him a bath, I sit on the edge of the tub with my feet inside. As he plays about things in the water, he sometimes sits on my foot. No wonder that that is the softest thing my feet have ever touched, considering his bottom has always been covered with a diaper and untouched by the world. Talking about bottoms, recently, he found a body part that was unknown to him as it was always out of sight behind a diaper or obscured by his belly. ‘nuff said!

Adit is getting more and more interested in books. He asks to read certain books that he likes. He is also doing ‘match the shape’ kind of jigsaw puzzles and playing with stacker toys. He used to dislike all stuffed toys, but that is slowly changing. Hiding and playing peekaboo are his favorite games. Thankfully, his interest in trashcan has reduced.

Our transition to the new school/daycare is going well. Adit still gets sad at the time of drop-off, but within minutes, he is happily playing around with his teachers and other kids. Hopefully, he’ll get over this drop-off trouble soon.

This is so hilarious. Heard about this on the NPR news quiz show, “Wait Wait Don’t tell me”, and then saw it in co_techie’s post. This is a video of prison inmates from Philippines recreating Michael Jackson’s Thriller. It seems that activities like this led to reduced violence in the prison.

While I was at Youtube, found this video of the third runner-up from Miss Teen USA competition. Is it PC to call her a dumb blond? But, she is not even a real blond.

A documentary about cotton farmers in Vidharbha airs next Tuesday (Aug. 28) on the PBS show, Wide Angle. I was aware of farmers committing suicide because of failed crops, low cotton prices and burden of debt, but didn’t know how big the problem has become. The numbers are just astonishing with a farmer suicide every 8 hours. I hope someone is thinking about improving the situation.

We have been blessed with cooler temperatures for the last few days. It almost feels like Summer is gone and Fall is here. But, that is not true. This is just a teaser. I know the heat will come back, but the end is near. Shalom Auslander wrote an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times a couple of days ago, expressing similar sentiments.