Astrovelo

• Ashwini has been doing a lot of new things everyday. It is becoming hard to keep track. She also surprises us with new words that she learns by just listening to us or other kids in the daycare. Should watch what I say.
• She is starting to associate two words together. Instead of saying just 'Bye', now it is 'Bye Cow'. She instists on saying Hi and Bye to all animate and inanimate objects around her. It is just funny to see her say bye to the diaper as it goes in the diaper pail.
• All the 'NO's from last month are now replaced with 'yes', 'oh yeah' and 'OK's. All the 'do you want....' questions are answered with a 'yeah'. Still says 'No' but, now she means it unlike earlier.
• She hasn't eaten any Gerber food for more than a month now. Wants to eat everything we eat. We went for a potluck picnic at her daycare last week. When asked her teachers about what foods she eats there, they started saying 'other than fruits', she likes pasta, pizza, green beans, chicken nuggets, fish sticks, etc. Pasta and Pizza right after fruits. Must be encoded in her genes considering all the pizza and pasta we eat. Fruits still occupy the top spot on her favorite food list. She really enjoys eating all kinds of fruits (apples, pears, peaches, nectarines, apricots, plums, grapes, cherries, blueberries, mangoes and bananas). New fruit tried today was pluot, a cross between plum and apricot. It was OK. Should try it again.
• She is becoming an expert at walking and running. Starting to climb up on furniture that is low like coffee-tables and futons. One more thing to keep a lookout for.
• Knows many of her body parts: hair, ear, eye, nose, tongue, teeth, hands, feet, tummy. Recent addition is belly-button, which is quite hard as she has to bend over to see it. She fell over first couple of times when she tried it.
• Comes and tells us when she has dirtied her diaper. A good first step in potty-training.
• Still loves her books. Now, she knows how to say 'book'. Follows us around the house with a book in her hand, chanting 'book, book' when she wants it read. It is really funny how she backs into our lap with a book if we are sitting down on the floor. If we ignore her or run away, she finally sits down with the book herself and pretends to read it. She recognises all the books by name. If told to bring the 'caterpillar book' or 'ladybug book', etc., she goes to her playroom and brings the correct book.
• Likes to go out for a walk in her stroller or for a bikeride.
• Knows the difference between a truck, a car and a bike on the road and can identify them as they go by.
• She is just crazy about all kinds of animals. Knows a lot of animal sounds. She was very happy when her daycare brought in a pair of guinea pigs a couple of weeks ago. They are planning a trip to a petting zoo next week. Don't know how her teachers are going to control all these toddlers there. V is planning to go along to help out.

It was one of those perfect summer afternoons when you just want to stand still, do nothing but be glad and enjoy being alive.

Here is a video of Ashwini (1.7MB) that I took without knowing that it can’t be rotated. Does anyone know how to do that?

This railline runs about a quarter mile away from our home. It is not very busy; maybe one or two freight trains per day that serve some factories in the neighboring town. In the winter, the trains can be seen from the house, but, right now the woods are so thick, we occasionally hear them go by.

Absolutely amazing picture of the Sun…

V and I amuse ourselves with this new timepass that V has found. Everytime you load the front page of Rediff.com, a new matrimonial ad (Rediff Matchmaker) gets loaded in the top-right corner. Click on it to read a detailed description. Some of them are absolute gems. Reminds me of the fun my cousin (who was of marrying age at the time) and I used to have with matrimonial ads in ‘Rohini’.

Create a new folder under bookmarks and put all the webpages that you open ‘first thing every morning’, in it. Under ‘general’ options, choose that folder as default home page. Whenever you start Firefox, it will automatically load all those pages in different tabs.

Cool, eh?

Thanks, Patrix for the tip.

Create a new folder under bookmarks and put all the webpages that you open ‘first thing every morning’, in it. Under ‘general’ options, choose that folder as default home page. Whenever you start Firefox, it will automatically load all those pages in different tabs.

Cool, eh?

Thanks, Patrix for the tip.

Just upgraded to the latest version of Mozilla Firefox (0.9). Only 4.7MB to download. It is amazingly easy to install and fast to use. It allows tabbed browsing with built-in pop-up blocker. There is a huge list of extensions that can be installed with it to do different kinds of things such as a gmail notifier to a built-in text editor. I am using one such extension (Deepest Sender) to write this LJ post.

I would highly recommend everyone to try out Firefox, if you haven’t already. I bet that you’ll not go back to Internet Explorer.

Just upgraded to the latest version of Mozilla Firefox (0.9). Only 4.7MB to download. It is amazingly easy to install and fast to use. It allows tabbed browsing with built-in pop-up blocker. There is a huge list of extensions that can be installed with it to do different kinds of things such as a gmail notifier to a built-in text editor. I am using one such extension (Deepest Sender) to write this LJ post.

I would highly recommend everyone to try out Firefox, if you haven’t already. I bet that you’ll not go back to Internet Explorer.