While Abhimanyu’s calendar birthday is still a few days away, his birthday according to the Tamil calendar was earlier this week. To celebrate, we dressed him in a shirt and dhothi and performed a puja to bless him with a long life.

It is also common practice for a child’s first birthday to shave their head, so my dad got out his kit and we got Abhi good and bald. Then we took the hair to offer at our local Balaji temple in Malleshwaram.

It was not the smoothest process. There was much screaming (Abhi) and hand-wringing (grandparents and great-grandparent). But in the end, everyone agrees that he looks just as cute now, if not cuter.

My grandparents live in Mysore and are not well enough to travel to Bangalore, so we took the train to go see them.

I’ve always loved the train. No traffic. Plenty to see out the windows. Lots of random interpersonal interactions. The train in India is all that and more. The stations themselves offer plenty to take in.

To my delight, Abhimanyu was all about the train. There was so much sensory input! He was thrilled and didn’t get much of a nap as a result😕.

We had a lovely time in Mysore. Abhi took his first ride in an auto rickshaw! He was friendly and sweet not only to my grandparents but to the two women who were there to help cook and clean as well.

It was too dark to look at the view on the way back, so Abhi made some friends and took advantage of his grandmother’s comfortable lap to crash.

It’s been really wonderful to see Abhimanyu thrive and enjoy India. He loves the food and the bustle and and color. He loves being able to crawl around a much bigger place than ours. He’s absolutely loving all the attention he’s getting. But I have to admit that it’s a little more wonderful to see him enjoy the things that I love dearly.

My parents’ house is not far from a pretty bustling shopping area. We decided that after a few days of taking it easy and dealing with jet lag, it would be fun to take Abhi out in the stroller we borrowed from a neighbor (see here to learn why🙄) to get a taste of Bangalore.

We did a little shopping to get some new clothes for Abhi’s first birthday celebrations and to make sure we all had something to wear for Divali.

The little dude got tired before we were through

so we finished up later in the day. As usual, there was no shortage of amusing and interesting things along the way.

In one piece!*
Abhi was great. Behaved himself with remarkable grace and composure throughout.

His sleeping suffered as there was so much to see and do. And that took its toll on all of us (and those around us) in the leg from Dubai to Bangalore.

All in all, it was a rousing success. So much so that I can hardly believe any of it happened. Yet somehow, here we are: in India.

*The stroller lost a wheel in transit. Grumble. Grumble. There’s an “I told you so” in there, but with no obvious “you,” it’s not that satisfying. A story for another time, perhaps. If you ask nicely…

I’m leaving the country in a few hours. I’m leaving the country. In a few hours. Clearly, it’s not sinking in.

The bags are packed. All this

and more, actually.

Fit into all of this

So yeah. The bags are packed. The apartment is clean. The cats are taken care of. Relevant parties have been notified.

But it still doesn’t feel real. At all. I’m not freaking out. Everything has gone smoothly (I know, I know…I’m jinxing it). I’m sure there will be stress. Traffic. Airport security line. What have you. What blows my mind at this point is how little anxiety I have manufactured. I’m usually so good at that! Am I losing my edge?

Anyway, all this is to say: We’re off!

In a matter of days (DAYS!!!), we will be taking our first family trip to India with Abhimanyu. It’s been a hectic few weeks. Lots of work and preparation (getting baby’s first passport!). And now that just packing a bit of last minute shopping remains, it’s starting to dawn on me how much I’m looking forward to it.

And I’m not just talking about the five days in Goa (for just the two of us!) that Nate and I have planned. I’m really excited! To take walks with Abhi and show him all the neighborhood sights. To be there when he meets his great-grandparents. To watch his face as he enjoys fruits he’s never seen before. To pass on a really big part of my childhood.

I plan to share as much of that with you as possible, so you should start getting excited, too!

The New Jim Crow

My Kindle Paperwhite (cover art by Thai umbrella painter)

My new yoga mat

Bumble & Bumble Don’t blow it

Hidden Figures (So excited!!!)

We interrupt our regularly schedule programming (I know…I know…I haven’t written in a long time) to bring you this unabashed, bald-faced fangirl squee.

It’s been a rough couple months. It feels like every day there’s more news of a bombing or a shooting. There seems to be no end to the violence and hatred. And if that weren’t enough to bring a person down, I’ve been having a harder time being home all day. It’s draining and isolating.

So a couple weeks ago, my husband told me that I should take an entire Sunday afternoon to be selfish. To do whatever I wanted. He would do whatever it took to make that possible.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I went nuts. I bought the special Star Trek issue of Time magazine. I saw a movie by myself at the Music Box Theater. I didn’t do any chores: no tidying, no dealing with Abhimanyu, no running the sterilizer, no laundry. I spent a good chunk of time playing Wind Waker.

My husband took a very active role in this afternoon of selfishness. He prevented me from giving in to the urge to complete domestic tasks. He went on a candy and latte run. In fact! The coffee place next door was closed, so he asked me if I was “prepared to answer in the most selfish way possible,” and, as a result, went to the Starbucks down the street to get the latte.

It was really, really nice. It was nice to get everything I wanted. And it was even nicer to realize that it wasn’t actually very much. It was being thought of. It was letting go of being anything to anyone other than myself to me.

I’m really lucky. Such an afternoon of luxurious self indulgence isn’t possible for everyone who needs it. SELF CARE IS SO IMPORTANT. But without people to support you, to make it possible for you to take the time you need to renew yourself and feel like a human being, it goes by the wayside so easily.

But I implore you, take some time for yourself. Take a nap. Go for a walk. Sit outside in the summer. Take a bath. Do something for you and you alone. It probably won’t be very much. And if you need it, ask for help to make it happen. But make it happen. It’ll feel better than you might realize.

It’s been five months! It’s been. Five. Months. That’s crazy. It feels like twenty years or twenty minutes. But definitely not five months. It can’t be. Five months is almost six months. And, as my husband said, by then the “new parent” smell has worn off.

I suppose in a way, that makes sense. I get Abhi. He and I have come to a sort of understanding. He’s definitely got the power in the relationship, but I’m comfortable. He’s a good little despot. And it works. This thing we’re doing. He’s mine during the days, my husbands most nights and weekends. And his grandparents’ at least once a month. We get a pretty good balance that way. I get some nights on my own (when Nate has activities outside the house); Nate gets some nights on his own (when I have yoga); we get nights together at home and out of the house. It’s a good system. We just have to work a babysitter into the mix.

But enough about us.

It’s been an eventful sleeping month. We tried to transition Abhi out of swaddling. It’s a process, clearly. He’s no longer in his SwaddleMes, but we still swaddle his arms in his SwaddleSacks. He just doesn’t go down otherwise. We’ve tried. And tried. And then daylight savings happened. We were worried how it would affect his schedule. Little did we know, it would trigger his daytime sleeping to get “organized.” Two hour naps, bitches! Which is amazing. When it happens. But it’s much more obvious now when he should be awake and when he should be sleeping. And he gets it. Most of the time. And goes down without much of a fight. Most of the time.

And he’s become tons of fun. He clearly plays with his toys and with us. He talks! It’s the best thing ever to hear his coos and screeches and grunts. We can have little conversations where neither of us has any idea what the other is saying! He’s been doing well with EC, though we’ve had something of a setback with the new daytime nap schedule and what I believe is his growing bladder. The weather is kind of warming up, so we’ve had some outdoor adventures. We went downtown for an afternoon when he was an absolute angel while I did some shopping and then was the life of the party at an office get together that evening. He loves his new sling even more as he can face out and see the whole, wonderful crazy world. He met an uncle (my cousin) and checked out his new home. He’s starting to develop interests…in the cats, in the ukulele, in whatever I might be holding in my hands.