Shuchi is 2!!!

After a long hiatus, we're back and hope to be more regular in posting updates. Our little monkey just turned 2 and here are some pictures from the little party we had for her friends from the neighborhood. She LOVES Mickey Mouse :).

Yummy!!!

Atchuthan's turns 4!

Atchuthan wanted to celebrate his birthday with his friends in NY so we threw him a small party here with all his little friends.

He wanted a Lightning McQueen cake so I attempted to make him one again (that was the cake I made him for his first birthday).

India 2010

It's been a long time since we updated the blog but I'm sure you all understand how life gets with 2 little ones. Here are pictures from our trip to India in November.

Atchuthan had great fun setting off crackers during Deepavali. It was so nice to be able to celebrate Deepavali in India after so many years.

Shuchi wanted in on the action - holding a sparkler.
Playing with kollu patti (great grandma).

Atchuthan and Sriram with their arms painted.
We took the kids to the South Indian Railway Museum. It was fun to see the old coaches that we traveled in when we were kids.

Taking a train ride at the museum.

Hanging out with patti and thatha.

This was Shuchi's favorite toy to play with - her thatha's screwdriver box. She played with that thing pretty much every day. She LOVED taking them all out and putting them back in.

Atchuthan celebrated his 4th birthday in India with a really cool Spiderman cake.

Shuchi eagerly looking forward to the cake :).

Yummy!

We also got to celebrate Karthigai in India before we left. Here we are at Varadarajan periappa's flat, with Madhu and Aditi. Isn't Aditi super cute?

Lighting the lamps.
Shuchi managed to eat that whole big ppori urundai all by herself! And Atchuthan, as usual, bugging poor Madhu to fix his car.
Shuchi with Kitchu thatha.

All tuckered out. This was the day we were leaving - see his prized autos on the pillow next to him :).

We had a lot of fun. Though we didn't do much in terms of sight-seeing this time, it was fun to just spend time with the family and let all the grandparents enjoy their grand kids.

I can write!

This is Atchuthan's first attempt at writing a few letters free-hand. Until now he was just tracing them. I helped him with the "C" but he wrote all the other letters by himself!

Crawling!!! (and bath time)

Shuchi is officially crawling now. Not on her knees but she manages to get around doing a combination of army crawl and scooting. She's doing this faster than Ats did and I fear she'll be walking earlier than him too and he was an early walker at 10 months!

Atchuthan now realizes that she's going after his toys. His cars, the phone and the TV remote are her favorite things to go after. Things are definitely getting interesting around here with the 2 of them ;-).

Beginning of the month - when she was trying to get on her knees.

Now - more proficient and able to move around.

And finally, now that she's sitting up on her own, they can take a bath together!

March 2010

It's been a busy month. The weather got warmer for a little bit so we had fun playing outside and going to the park. We also went to the Bronx Zoo. Here are some of the highlights of the month -

Shuchi trying to feed herself some fruit puffs.

And big bro giving her a helping hand :-).

Dressed in green for St. Patrick's Day -

Atchuthan being goofy, as usual.

:(. I'm not very happy sitting like this right now.

All dressed up and happy -

(the red on her forehead is just the bindi that she wiped off before it could dry. I need to get some sticky ones for her).

Caught red-handed!

(that was daddy who fed her some of his chocolate ice cream :-0)

Trip to the Bronx Zoo - always a fun place to go.

On the Bug Carousel -

The Giraffes!

Taking a cat nap on mommy while walking around the zoo.

Crayola Factory

We took Ats to the Crayola Factory in Easton, PA on Saturday - sort of his Valentine's Day gift. He really liked it there - a lot of activities set up for the kids. He also really enjoyed the National Canal Museum that is located on the top floor in the same building.