Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Aanya's third birthday

Sunday, July 29, 2007

Moving to California and Aanya's third birthday

Wow !! What happened to the second birthday blog. How come we jumped from the first birthday to the third birthday? I should remember to bug my dad about the second and see if he remembers anything from the second birthday (I seem to remember a clown called Sodapop - what kind of name is that anyways , well - better him than me, though) .. coming back to my third birthday....

Let me start from the time we decided to move to California... it all started last August.. my parents were bitten by the California bug .. they said it was a land of plenty ... of opportunities and sunshine (said my dad) .. and taxes and traffic (my mom added). As for me, they got me at "plenty"... So, my parents told me that someone will take away our big, beautiful house in Westford, MA and give us a small, tiny house for twice the price .. it was supposed to be great deal... I still need to figure that out.. economics is tricky.. I better become a ballerina when I grow up.

So, after a few months, someone indeed took our house away and we headed out to California on a JetBlue flight. They had Barney on the TV in the flight and they had blue chips. I love JetBlue. I wish they had a JetPink for girls, though.

Our first experience in California was interesting to say the least... I was enjoying some yummy fudge at Jodie aunty's place for Thanksgiving, and suddenly my throat hurt and I could not talk well ... I started sounding high-pitched like an opera singer with a ball stuck in her throat. I started crying and I got scared... it turned out that I was super-allergic to walnuts and I got an extreme reaction.. I spent a night at the hospital and I was very shaken.. but I now joke about it.. oh.. here's one "Where does the walnut go to buy gas for his car?" "The Shell station"...

Anyways.. we settled in nicely in Sunnyvale. I went to a new school here and made lots of new friends... Sunnyvale must be the "mango lassi" capital of the world... my parents make me drink mango lassi all the time.. and we used to eat out a lot.. my dad started looking like Chicken Little's dad.

March rolled around and I was agog with excitement about my birthday... Three is a big one - I graduate with honors from the Troublesome Twos (my parents seem suitably worn after this year - but little do they know what they are in for in my third year ... I saw them hang a banner that said "Mission Accomplished" in their room the other day...hmmmm... well...)

I pestered my mom to order a cake with my favorite Disney princess characters (who said you cannot market too early to the pre-threes?). I ordered a chocolate vanilla marble cake with three layers with strawberry and cream fillings and with yummy cream topping (I learned the joy of complex orders from my mom's Starbucks coffee order - "non-fat latte with half shot espresso, two raw sugars mixed in and with extra foam").

The big day rolled along, and Geeta pinni, Nihal and Murali babai drove up from LA for the birthday. We were all set to go to Kid's Castle where the birthday party was. I wore a nice ballerina type dress, mommy wore a beautiful India dress, daddy must have worn some crumpled khakis... I was sitting in the car and I saw daddy loading my favorite cake into the car and then it happened .. I remember it so vividly.. daddy dropped my cake on the floor while loading it into the car... I was too shocked to cry. I am sure I need serious amount of therapy when I am old to help me get that image out of my deep subconsciousness. Daddy had cake all over his crumpled khakis and seemed a little confused and said something like "Houston, we have a problem".. (Houston must be code for "mommy"). Things got worse when daddy seemingly threw the car keys away along with the remnants of the cake. So, we ended up at the birthday party late, with the only cake being the one stuck to our clothes. Fortunately, Murali babai quickly ordered a new cake and added the Disney princesses and made it just like my original cake.

The party went well - everyone had a great time with all the games and play thingies and balloons and ice cream and the new just-in-time cake. There were lots of kids and their parents. We all had yummy Indian spicy pizzas.