Shahana is now 2+ months old.

Shahana is now 2.5 months old and is becoming more and more naughty with each day. She now responds to sounds and especially when called, and likes to interact with everyone with her "goo-goo-gaa-gaa" gibberish and charm them with her million watt smile :)
She has now also begun to balance her neck, which takes away a major concern while lifting her, of course everyone is extra careful.
She likes here space and does not like it if she is constricted too much by clothes or people, etc. She just loves to lie around and kick in the air (she kicks away her blankets, much to the concern of her mom!)

I guess only a matter of time before she begins to talk and that would be the beginning of the real fun times...

Missing my little sweet potato!

I am now in America and am missing my little baby a lot. Its just a matter of time before the computer back home comes up and I am able to see live images of my family beamed over the net. But here's a very cute pic. My daughter expresses her displeasure very vocally!

The "toothless" roar of my little lioness :)

Punyavachanam Photos

Click Here or copy paste the below link to your browser window to view the pictures.

http://picasaweb.google.com/talk2anand/Punyavachanam

Punyavachanam; Namakaranam; Jathakaranam

7-October-2007- Bangalore:
The naming ceremony for our dear daughter was conducted with traditional South Indian rituals of Punyavachanam; Namakaranam and Jathakaranam (with homa). And our little princess was given the traditional name of "Meenakshi" (First born girls are traditionally named after their grandmothers and first born boys are named after their grand fathers. A ritual which still prevails with the motive of preserving the ancestral name.) and officially she was named "Shahana", as chosen by Anshu and myself.
The event was a grand success in-spite of some initial goof up in finding the panditji and some confusion about the dates.
So now this blog is official :)

P.S. watchout for a link containing the pics.
Cheers!-
-Anand

Fatherhood....The First Days.

27-September-2007. Another day which had all the makings of a mundane thursday. Thursday's are usually one of the less interesting days of the week because they are neither the beginning, the middle, nor the end of the week. But this thursday did have an element of anxiety as I was to take my wife for a repeat examination of Blood Preassure, which had un-expectedly shot up the day before. But being a thursday, it had the promise of being as boring as ever.

We reached the hospital at 10:00 am and after an agonizing 3.5 hrs of wait, we finally got to meet the Doc at 1:30 pm. And at 1:45, the doc casually walked up to me and said, "Ok, time to act. Lets get her admitted and we will get the baby out at 4:oo pm". And I went...."W H A T" ??

We quickly got her admitted and in her room. It would have been a little better had we got a little more time to be mentally better prepared to handle the situation. But then destiny has its own ways of popping surprizes at the most unexpected of times.

Finally evening came and the procedure was finally done (after an irritating episode with the anasthesist... but more on that later, when the new mama writes) and my little angel came to this world at 7:03 pm IST.

And guess what? At around 7:20 pm, one of the attendents, washed and cleaned her, wrapped here very nicely and put her in my arms. And for about 15 seconds, my brain completely blanked out....It took a while to sink in that this baby is mine. Wow....what a feeling. At that very moment, I understood the true meaning of the phrase "bundle of joy".

What you see on the left is one of the first pics of Little Shahana.

The first 2 days of takeing care of a new life was indeed very stressful. I admit, I have been through nothing like this before. Her every shriek and moan, would put me on high alert. But then I tried my best to keep my cool and consoled myself that while my wife and I am getting adjusted to a new soul in our lives, little Shahana is also getting used to 2 people, whom she will call her parents for life!

Finally, becoming papa is a great joy and can be understood only by those who have "been there done that!".

Some more interesting pics of Shahana can be viewed by clicking here, or by pasting this link on the address bar of your browser:

http://picasaweb.google.com/talk2anand/MyPrincess02

-Anand.