Safeguarding the Narjala household goods

Yohan has been taking his Explorer role rather seriously, and is in every nook and cranny pulling out wires and whatever other stuff he can find. Our home entertainment setup was a little too tempting, and Susan found herself having to physically extricate him from its immediate surroundings many, many times a day. After a lot of fruitless searching for a TV stand with doors that would fit the area, I spent some time over the weekend adding some plexiglass doors to the existing stand. Was quite proud of the finished product - it even had a magnetic latch and all! (As an aside, these rudimentary skills were acquired by many hours of watching my dad do household projects as we were growing up).

In any case, we figured this would be enough to keep the Explorer out of this - at least for a while. Sad to say, that isn't the case. The very next day Susan calls me at work to report that he has figured out how to open it; and knowing the construction, I now fear for its structural integrity if he decides to exert extended pressure on aforementioned doors. Some more beefing up in the securing-doors-closed department is probably on the agenda.

Laughing

Yo was in a particularly good mood one evening when I came back home from work... grabbed the camera towards the very end of his laughing spree.

Holding his bottle

Over the last few days we've been helping Yo hold his own bottle while drinking, and he's quite happy to do it by himself now. He's also been standing without support for much longer periods; he tries to take half a step forward after standing for awhile, but very quickly thinks better of it and re-positions himself into crawl mode to reach his destination.

Anika and Yo

Our good friends from Seattle - Sam, Ramya, and little Anika - visited us over the Presidents Day weekend. This was a reunion of sorts for Yo and Anika - they were born just a week apart, and it was interesting to watch them "investigate" each other. When one wanted to play, the other wouldn't - and then a few minutes later their roles would reverse. Here's a short video of the two young 'uns in action.

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Valentine's day also happened to be over this weekend, and while I'm typically not a fan of this "holiday", Sam and I decided to make breakfast for the ladies. We had sausages-a-la-Sam, which were delicious, and - drum-roll please - heart-shaped pancakes!

The ladies also dolled the kids up in honor of their first V-day. Sam's got some nice pics on his camera, but till we get them, here's a sampling.

Shake those hips, baby!

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The teeth, they are a-comin'

Our family is growing

True to the title of this blog, we have another one on the way! We found out in early Jan, and we're quite excited - again! The new one is due Aug 30. We were not busy enough with 1, so we figured we'd add a little something to the mix :)

Yo will be about a year and a half when the new arrival shows up, and it will be very interesting to see how he reacts. Susan has been having a tough first trimester so far, but says it's getting better now. She's going to have her hands full(er) in a few months.

We had an ultrasound in India, and the next one is coming up in a couple weeks. At this next one we get to "see" the baby - it's like deja-vu, but the excitement is very much there!

Settling in

It's been a week since we got back, and it looks like things are starting to get back to normal. Yo's doing much better, thank God, and we're looking forward to him getting back to 100% soon.

I got back to work Thu last week, and this was what my cube looked like.

As per Intel tradition, the sabbatical-returnee is welcomed back with a "decorated" cube. The more time it takes the returnee to "un-decorate" on their first day back, the better.