Neil, Zach, and Alyah

Yo got to meet three new comrades past week.

Cousin Neil just turned 1, and is the son of Susan's cousin Neha and hubby Rohan. This happy chap just started walking, and it's so cute to see him wander around exploring every little thing.

Zach was born Dec 12, and is the adorable son of Susan's childhood friend Mallika and her hubby Ollie. He was just 10 days old when we got to see the cute little fella.

Alyah is the beautiful daughter of Vijay and Tanya - childhood and church youth group friends of ours. She is about a month older than Yohan, and they recently came down to Madras as well for a holiday. Alyah is all dolled-up here for her christening.

Yo's First Christmas

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And we're quite happy we're not stuck in all the snow in Portland this year!

(pic courtesy Kartik Gopal)

Our hometown Madras

After a wonderful time in Bangalore, we are now spending our next phase of the vacation with Yo's maternal granparents in Madras - the city where his mamma and dada grew up. His cousins Zeph and Josh are here too, and even in the couple days we've been here there has been much bonding.

On the flight here our man decided he wanted his own seat.

Persistence

Over the last few days Yo has been getting the hang of finger-foods. First he would grab the food and make a fist, and then try to shove his whole fist in his mouth. That didn't work so well, but he kept at it. He even used his other hand to guide the food-holding hand to his mouth for increased accuracy.

Within a few days he was picking up and putting food in his mouth quite easily. Practice does help.

Today Susan gave him a whole Marie biscuit, and you couldn't pry it away from the little foodie after that. He kept gnawing at it bit by bit, and in a while he had finished the whole biscuit.

So far we could control the mess made during meal-times since we were in charge of the feeding. Now I need to go and prepare myself for the inevitable.

It is our solemn prayer...

... that this little boy not acquire his dear mother's sports genes.

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Club Cabana

A couple days ago the family went for an outing to a resort 45 minutes away from home, called Club Cabana. This was a great place - a huge area, beautifully done up, with a lot of activities. There were only a couple other folks there besides us, so we pretty much had the place to ourselves - our very own private getaway! We had a grand time, and Yo got his first introduction to large bodies of water.

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Day out with Ajit mama and Tanya chitti

We spent the day with Ajit and Tanya yesterday, and had a great time. Started off with a fantastic lunch at Fame - I think I can say I had the best pepper steak ever! And it was $4. While Ajit and the ladies were out shopping (I was enjoying a head massage and haircut), a policeman stopped by to pay his regards to Yo - pinched his cheeks a couple times and then kissed his hand after swallowing his paan. Needless to say, wipes were quickly put into action after the encounter.

He's quite taking to be in the driver's seat. This afternoon he was pretty sleepy, but happily stood in my lap holding the steering wheel looking at all the action on the street outside while we waited for the ladies to finish shopping.

Aj and Tanya have a little yes-no-maybe act that gets him going always:

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Settling in

Took us about a week, but it looks like we might be done with jet-lag. Hooray - Susan can get a good night's sleep now! Yo slept through the night last night, and is back into some sort of a schedule now. He's still battling a pretty bad cold, though.

The boy is also getting used to all the sights and sounds here, and there's quite a few of those. He's just wide-eyed when we take him out in the car with no car seat - can't believe his luck in not needing to be strapped down, and wants to stand up and stare out the window at the neat, orderly traffic and the calm, un-harried drivers.

He's also getting over the stranger anxiety that he had in Portland - not that he has much choice here. He enjoys his grandparents and uncle/aunt doting over him, and can't stop smiling when our maids at home play with him. Random waitresses at restaurants pick him up with a "You enjoy your dinner madam, I'll take care of him", and he happily goes off with them forgetting about his anxious parents wondering where he's going to be whisked off to next.

And in the between-Yo moments the Sivaram men have been brushing up on their Wii skills.

We made it!

We're finally here, after about 23 hours of travel time - 34 hours door-to-door. Whew. We almost missed our flight from San Francisco since our flight out of Portland was delayed by 90 mins. We were the last to check-in, and the last to board - and that was a first for the Narjala family, next only to actually missing a flight :)

We met up with Pia, Zeph, Josh and Sujan at SFO, and they very patiently waited for us while we checked in (hurriedly). The sisters must have had a telepathic moment while selecting their travel attire - they were identically decked-out, all the way down to the exact same pair of shoes!

The kids actually did quite well on the flights, all things considered. Yo didn't sleep very much, and was bouncing around in our arms the rest of the time. Every now and then we'd visit Pia and kids (who were seated a section away from us on one of the flights), and the kids would have a blast.

Once we got to Hong Kong all of us started to fade. We were quite ready to be done with traveling, especially the little munchkins. We were met in Bangalore by dad, mom, appa, Aj & Tanya. Unfortunately this wasn't the end of the road for Pia and the kids - they still had one more short leg to Chennai. Thankfully Zeph and Josh pulled through one more time.

Next step - recover from jet lag!