Happy Half birthday to Anjali

It's already 6 months since my chota bhai became a baap and Anjali came into our lives. A few days ago, we saw 2 pics of her eating. Yes, she is onto cereals now. She was actually holding the spoon, which had all of us oohing and aahing. Aditi Atya was here too.
By the way, Vin did a Birthday Suprise Trip for Adu again. This time it's Bangkok. I am so happy for her.
Back here in Singapore, we had some tame CNY. This year we didn't invite a whole lot of people. Infact K was asking me why we haven't been inviting people these days. I think I am just being lazy. I did have the NUS girls over last Saturday. Sunday we went to Manisha's house. Dinner was awesome with tooooooo many different dishes. It was an impressive spread and too much variety to choose from.
I also had a surprise party for Kushal and I invited a bunch of friends. Of course, they didn't get to savor his cooking. But the surprise was a success because he was genuinely surprised. He has been working so hard. It was a well-deserved break. I wanted to invite a few others, but I wasn't completely sure of what time the birthday boy would arrive.
Our anniversary was a very dull affair as well. Naively enough, I thought I could surprise him with a Rasa Sentosa Sunday Brunch and overnight stay, but it was quite quite full even a month in advance. To top it off, he was sick as well. We managed to go out for lunch with Arya. Thai Express at Paragon. Really poor service, we were ignored for very long after getting to the table. Arya still remembered the worm in her tomato from last time. For K's birthday, we went to Pasta Fresca at Pasir Panjang with the Charis. Another disappointing restaurant. The food was godawful and we really paid through our noses for such lousy food ki kya kahen.
But yes in general, I haven't been the hostess with the mostess. I have been attending loads of parties though. Especially a lot of NUS dos.
Coming back to babies, I went to see PFT's beti on Friday with the rest of the office gang. She is such a cutie. The most distinguished feature was her impeccably combed hair. That's how she came out. All propah and not a hair out of place, and such thick hair too. GB was jealous he said :-)
And to speak of Anjali again, I really miss having her to hold and play with. Although I spent just a couple of weeks with her, it was the most awesome bond. I can barely wait to see her again in December.

So overdue

I never really recovered from the San Diego vacation to write about it.

I must say that Anjali is adorable. It was wonderful to hold her and coo to her and do silly things to make her smile. Atul said they will come to Singapore in Dec this year and I am already counting the days (months, sigh!!)

The 2 weeks with Anjali made me want another baby. More than ever.

We did a lot of fun things in SD and also in LA. We went to Disneyland where all of us had our first ever Disneyland experience and we were lucky to go there at Christmas time so that we could witness the great Xmas parade. Arya, me and mummy saw snow for the first time at Big bear lake. We went down tubing and all that. So much fun.

Arya was Anjali's fairy godmother, she did everything short of changing diapers. I gave Anjali a bath almost every night. How she hates getting water on her face!

Kushal cooked some delicious meals for all of us. Atul and Bhawana drove us around everywhere. They needed 2 cars to fit in everyone, car seats et al.

We checked out the Y! office in SD, do you know they have real orange trees in the courtyard. We picked oranges and ate them on our roadtrip to Big Bear, hehe. Just the sheer glee of it all.

And we all shopped a great deal but not as much as we would have loved too. There was just too much to do.

Atul gave Arya a lot of love and a lot of grief, she became Adu's replacement as the object of his affection and teasing. We did miss Adu several times during the 2 weeks and wished she could have come as well. We taught Arya to play gadav, 5-3-2 and 7-8s.

We went to a lot of parties Atul's office party, etc. Arya was always hovering around Anjali playing the role of the protective older sibling.

For Arya particularly, this trip was so cool, because she got to see zoos galore. The wild animal park in San Diego is really so fascinating. We saw a lot of animals even in the puny Big Bear Zoo that we hadn't seen before. Badgers, skunks, and the like. The world-famous San Diego zoo is not half as good as the Singapore zoo, but hey, it was a zoo and Arya was in raptures.

We also went for the first time to a Costco, and it was amazing to see. Quite a wonder!

So I came back and rubbed off the saying on my cube - When was the last time you did something for the first time? There were so many firsts we did on this trip. And they were all so overdue, like this post is.