Happy 2nd Birthday NR

NR turned 2 last month. The first call I received was from my periyappa informing me that temple is distributing food to everybody and the kurukkal (priest) came home to give the first prasad . I was pleasantly surprised and  felt very happy . My sweet and thoughtful younger sister had arranged for “Anna dhanam” for NR’s birthday in my favorite temple in Chennai. Only sisters can read our heart and thoughts right?. Here in US, we did the usual routine of visiting temple and church. Unfortunately church didn’t have the scheduled evening mass that day. 

My younger brother had a sudden business trip planned to US and arrived in New York around first week of April. He planned to visit us, a week after NR’s birthday from New York. Since Mamu was the chief guest we decided to have NR’s birthday party a week after his real birth date on the day mamu came home.

We had his birthday party at home this time .We had NR’s favorite “Go Diego Go” birthday party theme.  We arranged the table with Diego themed decorations, wall hangings complete with cups and plates. We invited few of NR friends (well our friends with kids of his age). 

I made “Go Diego Go” themed - 10 inch double layer round lemon cake with coconut pecan filling. I made kids friendly white and chocolate butter cream frosting. When I checked the web for Diego themed cake, almost all the cake had green frosting. I decided to go light on using food colors and decided a butter cream yellow as a background. I baked and frosted the cake two days before the party.  Just an hour before the party, I completed the final decorations on the cake. 

I cooked the dinner at home. I served Indian style Vegetable puff pastry as an appetizer. Main course included Indian style Vegetable fried rice served with Thai Red curry gravy with hard-boiled eggs and potatoes, Idlis with Tomato and Kothamalli chutney, home-made Puris with  Peas Paneer masala. Since there were dozen adults and few kids we ordered chicken pizza for kids along with other party favorites for kids. 

The kids took home goody bags filled with Diego themed party favors. NR received suitcase full of gifts mostly dress and loads of books from his dearest chitha (my younger sister).

My baby boy is Two

I couldn't imagine how fast the time flies. It's feels like yesterday celebrating his first birthday.  As parents we went thru some testing times but faith carried us thru and gave us lot of strength. We also realised the power of hope and positive thoughts.

Baby , I am not at good at putting words to my feeling  neither is your dad. But I am sure you can feel our love with all the thousand kisses, hugs, I love U whispers I give you everyday.  Your dad thinks his only purpose is in life is to serve you , love you and entertain you. I can see the deepest bond you both share. His eyes beaming with  pride when he admires every small gestures you give.  In the last two years since you are born, I have seen him  pushing away all the best opportunities he got with career and sacrificing every single opportunity of attending the top class technical conference to be with us shows/tell  me that "you matter the most" and nothing else.

Our careers, goals, dreams and personal desires have taken a back seat because you are most important to us. Hope you cherish this feeling in your heart forever when you grow up. We may not be having a jet setting high flying  job even in future, but seeing you feeling warm, happy and secure tells us we are doing right thing for you baby. Everything else can wait.

I love the way you listen to  music especially the traditional carnatic music.  I can see your good taste  . That special smile you give me every time when your hear me sing  the last line of your fav lullaby "Ennunnikrishnan Janicho, Parilingane Vesham Dharicho" fills my heart with such joy I cannot express in words. I  (and our family) see "my appupa" in you. Amma is hoping and praying that her secret wish of you becoming a best musician will come true because amma feels music reaches every soul in this world. I want you to pursue things in  life which fills your soul and heart.

The blessings from our family  specially your grandparents would guide you in your life. Amma and Appa is wishing you a very happy, peaceful, long  and healthy life . 

BTW, Amma and Appa are equipping themselves with loads of patience to face your terrible two tantrums and melt downs. So go ahead and be a typical two year old boy NR : ).

Happy Birthday to my dear Kochu monu, unni kuttan NR.

Happy Tamil and Malayalam New year 2010

En iniya Tamil nanburgalukku iniya Tamil puthandu valthukkal (Happy Tamil new year wishes to all my Tamil friends around the globe).

Orayiram vishu asamsakal(happy vishu greetings to all my malayalee friends around the globe).

Vishu brings fondest memories of my maternal grandparents. Nikhil will be missing the sweet traditions of vishu like kaineetam from grandparents and relatives.

We used to give kaineetam to little kids in the family in ten paisa denominations. Imagine the joy of 5 year olds getting handful of 100 mint ten paise coins .oh they felt so happy like they won lottery : ).

My mom and dad used to do the vishu decoration after we went to bed as a surprise. My mom used to wake us up early in the morning and lead us to vishu decoration spot blindfolded to get the glimpse of vishukani . It's considered very auspicious to see vishukani decorations when we wake up .

I used to love vishu's kaineetam since it meant more pocket-money to spend during summers on ice creams and hobbies. Those were the good old days where every kid from our neighbourhood was happy with simple things like camel water color box or playing hide and seek or some pretend play .

Most of my summers were spent drawing lot of pictures from my favorite story/comic books especially the folklore/fairytales books from Russia. We sent most of the illustrations  as birthday/festival greeting to our friends and family. Both me and my sister were good painters.I really wish they had saved all my drawings.   I always had the privelege drawing some art on the board during our first art class after summer holidays since my art teacher loved my art work. Reminder to myself: I need to go and meet her in person during my next visit to India.

My father is a self made book binder , so we had good supply of good quality card board, stock paper (we used call them binding wrappers) and calico. I loved doing pop up books and 2D animated drawing boards like King Arthur castle with characters popping out. I used to painstakingly draw, paint and cut each character then add a board backing. My earliest memory of doing a model was making different styles of miniature footwear using chart paper and sketch pens during my fourth grade vacation. 

End of summer meant getting new books for school and my dad binding all our school books. I learnt the art of binding from my father and I can still bind a book like a professional.

IGot IPad

Guess who is the happy owner of a brand new IPad ?.  I got an early birthday gift from CB last wednesday. I love every bit of IPad and the WIFI amazingly faster compared to our laptops.

I have never felt this excited about tech gadgets lately. Having worked for telecommunication/semiconductor giants , I am trained to find the flaws quickly. IPad is so amazing though fewer users has reported some issues, overall experience overrides any technical flaws. Apple has taken a giant leap in the industry giving priority to customer experience - "An amazing user experience". The form factor is sooooooo cool and I am sure it setting a a standard for future laptop GUI.

I felt this excited about a hardware/software product twenty years back when Microsoft introduced MS-Office.  Having used Wordstar, Lotus 1-2-3 and Dbase III Plus couple of years prior to using MS office, I personally know that pain of using those products. Users need to remember million commands just to type document, or create a worksheet or worked with data storedin a comma separted structure in a file (still so many apps use comma separated data and it's such a pain to parse the file ) . And only people trained can only use those products. MS office came and changed the way normal users used productivity software. "Easy and simple" were words to describe MS experience. Well, today MS has completely deviated from this philosophy and the new OS comes with so many unwanted software bundled into core OS which the users hardly use.

Qualcomm BREW platform had mobileshop even before apple introduced iStore. Have you ever paid attention to the mobileshop when you bought new ringtone or a game app from phone especially CDMA phone running BREW ? Probably NO. Mobileshop or latest one called (mshop) has such amazing business model and storefront to sell such apps where the apps can be upgraded over air and doesn't require internet .  As a person who has worked on BREW mobileshop /mShop and knowing the technology behind it , qualcomm was not able to woo the customers like Apple iStore (I mean billion of customers around the world since CDMA technology is from qualcomm) . I hope they attract great innovators like Apple. I loved working for qualcomm .

Apple has proved yet again amazing technical innovations can succeed even in the middle of recession. Check out the Apple IPad review here .

My current FB status

Thru our children we live our dreams. I have a dream of having a new clean crispy sheets on my bed everyday . Thanks to water works by NR I am fulfilling that dream lately.

Junior mimics Senior

NR is getting up early demanding milk and plays around for two hours  and goes to sleep in wee hours of the morning till 10am . I just don't have a heart to wake him just to change his diaper. So much for pampers overnight diapers .

NR follows me like a pup . He runs infront of to reach the destination first ( Destination as in kitchen or restroom ). His dad's fav song  is this and he used to wait for hours together to meet me during our courtship days like a desparado though I never turn out as promised most of the time. I usually chicken out because I can't lie to my mother about where I am going .  During first year of our marriage we used to have silly disagreements (over my MIL's plan of action for us) and I used to just walk away to our guest bed room.  Guess who will be there just after 5 minutes? So even my fake angers can last only for 5 minutes.  My way of handling disagreements is just walking away not arguing with words(Well that has changed into full on verbal/emotional outburst after NR thanks to my hormones).I just don't like to argue .  There are days where I just wanted to get away for few moments and shut the door to focus my thoughts on what making me so upset . What do I hear the same song. CB is a hopeless romantic still.

After nineteen years  Junior is trying to mimic his dad in every possible way. Eagerly waiting for me everywhere. I could see his future . Waiting for hours together for his girl . Pavam entha ponnu vanthu matta poralo theyreeyalai : ). She will be the one lucky girl to have a loving in laws and ever so affectionate NR just like his dad.

I'm addicted to FB

My current social life is only thru FB else I don't get to meet friends like I used to before NR. I can give a quick one liner updates .  I found my long last college friends . It's such nice and special feeling to see them as moms as opposed to young college girl .

My guitar gladden Anglo Indian class mate has become so mature and philosophical in life . I am so amazed to see her as a proud mom of three. She was very happy girl then and very happy person even after twenty years.  I   don't understand friends who were actively interacting with me then going completely silent. It turns me nuts not knowing what's happening with them. Thanks to VOIP phone I can call them any time  to make sure they are doing ok.

Quick update

I've neglected this blog for last three months . I have had ideas for 100 of post in my head but found no time to sit and write. Just busy being a mom to a toddler and running a house old and maintaining a clean house (well most of the time). I am going to update things happened so far

Chrismas 2009 : NR's first christmas mass here in our local church since  we skipped christmas mass in 2008 due to heavy snow and bad road condition . This year we decided to skip the mid night mass and attend 6.30pm mass just for the sake of NR. He loved the ambience and was running happily around the church. It was a quiet and satisfying time .  I thanked god for answering my prayers I'd for all these years.

New year 2010: We went to the local Indian temple for evening prayers. NR stayed like a good boy and listened to all the bhajans and prayers. We had the dinner at temple and reached home around 9.30pm. Overall it was a quiet new year's day .

Feb 2010: I threw a surprise party for my husband's  birthday. Planned, organised and prepared food in the pretext of helping my neighbour with her church party . Invited friends and colleagues who knew us for last ten years. First time I felt I did something other than being a mom for last two years . Now I can  officially say that I know CB for half of his life ; ) .