Astrophotos
Back from vacation
We are back from vacation after spending a week in Washington DC and New Jersey. Here are some highlights:
Ashwini
- visited her first aquarium at the National Aquarium in Baltimore.
- went on her first ever subway train ride in Washington.
- went on her first ever paddle-boat ride in the Baltimore Inner Harbor.
Adit
- went on his first long-distance road-trip (1650 miles in 10 days).
- got to see the ocean for the first time.
- stayed in a hotel room for the first time at Hyatt Inner Harbor.
V
- went to Flushing Meadows, NY to watch Roger Federer beat Andy Roddick in the US Open final.
- drove us back from NJ to MI all through the night. Her first 8 hour/500mile stretch. We tried to switch, but the kids threw a tantrum. They didn’t want me to drive.
I
- went to see many memorials (Lincoln, Jefferson, FDR and Korean War) in Washington for the first time in over 15 trips during last 10 years.
- sat in the car for 8 hours without driving for the first time.
Adit at daycare
Some photos of Adit sent by his teacher.
eating lunch
lounging with a book
finger painting
out for a ride
smile smile smile
Hey Big Sister, stop embarassing me in front of my buddies
Watch out!
The little monster is on the prowl. Adit has figured out how to roll, crawl, sit up and lie down all by himself. Last night he was so happy when he could go anywhere he wanted to pick up anything he wanted to put in his mouth.
I can’t imagine how much more work this is going to be for us to keep all the rooms clean and clear of things that Adit shouldn’t put in his mouth. Earlier, we just had to push everything out of his reach. Now, everything will have to be moved vertically.
Ashwini dancing to music to entertain Adit… Asha Bhosale sings: tan ki jwala thandi ho jaay aise…
A: Aai, she is feeling cold. She said thandi again.
How do you answer to that????
Vacation Plans
We’ll be travelling next week to visit friends and family. We’ll be in Washington DC area from 4th till 6th Sept. follwed by a stay in Princeton/East Windsor ares in New Jersey from 7th to 10th Sept. If anyone in the area wants to meet, please reply to this post or send me an email.
Happy 0.6667th Birthday, Adit!!!
Adit, just a few seconds before he pulled out some grass and put in his mouth.
All through this month, Adit was troubled by a bad cold, but he kept fighting it and was as smiley as always. He started eating a lot of new solid foods. To rice cereal, carrots and sweet potatoes, we added squash, green beans, pears and applesauce.
Rice cereal must be his current favorite. Like Pavlov’s dog, when he is put in a highchair with straps on and with a bib around his neck, he knows what’s coming. In his teacher’s words: “If his cereal is not ready when I put Adit in the chair, he gets really upset”. His eating speed is just amazing. His mouth is wide open even before we can scoop up the next spoonful.
Adit loves green beans just like his sister, but didn’t like the applesauce at all, which was surprising. This was his reaction to applesauce, which is probably sweeter than anything else he eats.
Right now he eats the solids twice a day, and slowly we’ll increase it to 3 times: breakfast, lunch and dinner. Adit likes to put everything within his reach in his mouth. Doesn’t matter if he is hungry or full, everything must go in his mouth. Every object in our house is now officially covered with his saliva.
Adit is starting to roll over and trying to crawl these days. Very soon, everything of value will have to be moved 3-4 feet from the floor. He likes to play with balls a lot. He also likes to sit and bounce in the exersaucer like Ashwini. Adit sits up and plays with his toys. But if he falls down, he can’t make himself sit up from sleeping position and just gets upset. Lately, standing up by holding our hands is the favorite activity. He continues to enjoy being out on the swing. Ashwini is more than eager to push him on the swing-set.
Eventhough Ashwini just tortures him, Adit adores his sister to no end. He is happy to see her around. If she starts to sing and dance, he stops crying immediately. They seem to have developed a special bond already. I can imagine that he is going to learn everything from his sister; good and bad. If she says it is cool, he’ll do anything. Here you can see Adit admiring Ashwini as she does peek-a-boo to him.
Butterfly release
Last Sunday, after keeping the ‘Painted Lady’ butterflies in our house for a week, we decided to let them go. Ashwini reluctantly agreed to do so. She opened the basket, and to my surprise, picked up the butterflies with her fingers and let them go.
It was a fun project to watch them grow and undergo metamorphosis for about 3 weeks. We were ready to order another batch of caterpillars to start all over again, but found some colorful ones in our yard. We were very excited to find free caterpillars to make butterflies. We decided to wait for them to make cocoons and then, we’ll bring them in. Currently, they are feasting on my redbud tree.
After doing some research, it turns out that these are redhumped caterpillars, Schizura concinna. Unfortunately, they metamorphose into very ordinary looking moths. Next time, I see these caterpillars on the trees, I’ll have to deal with them harshly to protect my tree.
There was a survey in Time magazine that asked questions to find out how healthy you are. One of the questions was, “How often do you have bowel movement?” According to the authors of the survey, if you poop at least once every other day, that means you are eating enough fiber and have lower risk of colon cancer.
You are considered healthy if you do it every other day!?! Can’t think how long the unhealthy people are storing it inside of them… Yuck!
While growing up, I was taught that you have to do it every day. If you can’t, there is a problem, take medicine. What is your take on the issue?
Fortune
Fortune from my fortune cookie at lunch:
You are soon going to change your present line of work.
Home schooling, here I come. Should I call myself homemaker or househusband?
New family members
Please welcome 3 new members to our solar system. International Astronomical Union decided to bestow the status of ‘planet’ to three celestial bodies in our solar system:
- Ceres, the largest asteroid in the astorid belt between Mars and Jupiter
- Charon, which was considered as Pluto's moon, but it is upgraded due to its size. Now Pluto and Charon will be known as twin planets.
- Xena (aka "2003 UB313"), another icy planet like Pluto, but larger than Pluto, found in the Kuiper belt.
Here is what defines a planet according to IAU:
- The object must be in orbit around a star, but must not itself be a star
- It must have enough mass for the body's own gravity to pull it into a nearly spherical shape
Wipe out the old list of planets from your memory and commit this new one…
Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Charon, and Xena.
This IAU decision couldn’t have been more timely. Just yesterday, we were talking about making a chart of planets for Ashwini. She wants her own telescope and we set a condition that she has to know the list of planets before she can get it.
Sex: Everywhere we look
These days, it is so difficult to raise kids in a clean environment. We try to keep sex and violence out of the house by not watching much TV. We never put on Fox news, CNN, E!, Discovery or National Geographic channels while the kids are around. But, it seems like the world is hell bent on teaching them about birds and bees. Here are just a couple of examples…
On Saturday, we went to the zoo. It was Adit’s first visit. The first ever zoo exhibit that he saw was of “African Wild Dogs”. The mommy and daddy wild dogs promptly demonstrated their process of making baby wild dogs.
In Ashwini’s Butterfly garden, the caterpillars turned into cocoons and finally metamorphosed into butterflies last Friday. Since yesterday, they have been showing us how to make eggs to make new caterpillars.
Wonder what we will witness next…
We have two happy users in our house
Ashwini's dream
Two nights ago, Ashwini woke up crying/screaming in the middle of the night. V went to see what happened. Ashwini was crying out: “my fins fell off… my fins fell off.”
All V had to do was pat on her back while she said, “here… I put your fins back.”
Ashwini was asleep the next moment, back to whatever she was dreaming about.
Acura MDX
My impressions after driving first 1000 miles…
- It is a bloody gas-guzzler. After driving a compact sedan for 10 years, every time I fill up gas is a shock. High gas prices are adding to that. 17 to 19 mpg in the city and 22 mpg on one long mainly highway trip. That is quite pathetic considering what I was used to: 25 in city and 30 on highway. But, I knew what I was getting into when I bought an SUV. No use crying over it.
- I love all the gadgetry, especially the navigation system. It is very cool and an essential tool for every driver. Every car should include this as standard equipment.
- Bose sound system is quite good. In-dash 6 CD changer is very handy. I am also planning to get the dealer to install a iPod link to the sound system. The car came with 3 month subscription to XM satellite radio. I don't plan to extend that. Wasn't impressed by the music channels. Only ones I liked were Deep Tracks (Rock), Public Radio and BBC news. Considering the little amount of time I spend in the car, the monthly subscription is not worth it.
- Built-in bluetooth hands-free phone system rocks.
- The best part of all is that everything in the car works with voice commands: from controlling the A/C to sound system to navigation system. Just talk to the car and ask what you want done. It has some problem with my accent, but I am getting used to saying certain things a certain way for the car to understand. If it fails, I just ask Ashwini to say it, then the car understands. :)
- It runs fairly smoothly. The V6 engine with 253 hp and 5 speed automatic transmission is very quiet and powerful enough for the car. There is some road noise at high speeds, but it is nothing compared to what I was used to with the Jetta.
- I am not very pleased with the aesthetics of the car. The zebra wood accents are just horrendous. Don't know why people like these laminated wood pieces in the cars. To me, they are just unnecessarily expensive and look ugly, just like Paris Hilton. Even the leather interior doesn't look like the same quality as our other cars: VW Jetta and Volvo V70.
- The body doesn't seem as solid as our other cars. The doors are very light comparatively. Hope they have enough strength to withstand a crash.
Overall, I am very impressed with all the electronic gadgetry, engine and the ride. The body and interior is alright, but not great. Hopefully, I’ll get used to it in a few months.
Metamorphosis continues...
Ashwini’s pets, the hungry caterpillars ate, ate and ate a lot of food and have turned from the larvae stage into the pupae stage. There are five chrysalides hanging from the top of the cup. We shall transfer them to the butterfly garden and wait for about a week to see them open.
Ashwini and Swati
Swati was one of the names on the short list when we were thinking of names for Ashwini. I had put all the names of stars and constellations in the hat for consideration. Ashwini recently met a girl named Swati at her school and it is funny how she pronounces the name… something like… “suvadi”. We had a hard time figuring out what Ashwini was saying.
We are glad we didn’t name her Swati. She would have butchered her own name.
New pets
Recently, V bought a nice gift for Ashwini (and me). It is called, Butterfly Garden. The kit had a coupon to get live caterpillars by mail. They arrived here last Friday. We were all excited to see their life cycle unfold in front of our eyes. Here is Ashwini inspecting them very intently.
Right now, the caterpillars live in a cup that is sterile because bacterial infection can kill them. The cup has some tiny holes for air and has enough food supply for all five of them. Within 3-4 days, they have grown really large.
This is so exciting. Can’t wait for them to make their cocoons. V says that sometimes she isn’t sure who she buys some things for: Ashwini or me? This is one of them. :)