Eight+

Eight+

(I am taking the cues for my blog post titles from Google+)

OK - I am relenting and letting my dad run my blog for a few more years (just like he runs my life ... (eye roll)). Moreover, I heard that Twitter is more fun than blogging as one can write only 140 characters. (Also, I heard my dad say "Who wants to be on the same social network that their parents are on?" when he received a Facebook invite from grandpa).

So, let me fill you in with happened since my last blog post - I turned eight in March and much to my parents' consternation, I am continuing my streak of tantrums and naughtiness. My dad wistfully referred to it as the "X+1" syndrome possibly hoping that I will transform next year. (Maybe he should start thinking along the lines of a "Four-ier transform" instead of one year).

I had a ball at my birthday party at Strike Cupertino (Ed's note: Not "Occupy Cupertino"?) bowling place with a  bunch of my school friends.  We had a lot of food and fun - (even my parents snuck away for  some drinks with the other parents). The actual bowling game was also interesting - the bowling places have come a long way in recent years and now they are almost as good as my XBOX Kinect Bowling game. (How did daddy manage gutter balls even with the bumpers up?).

I finally completed my check-box items / table stakes / baseline activities of swimming, skiiing, skating, biking and Bollywood dancing (although I wish my mom would stop referring to someone called Elaine every time I dance). I am also slowly getting interested in science and I seem to have a knack for finding fault with everything or pointing out why something will not work.

Other than my activities, we have been traveling quite a bit. We went to Orlando last winter for my mom and me to see the Harry Potter theme park and my dad to ponder again on the inexplicable draw of these theme parks. And more recently, we went to LA and San Diego along with my cousins who visited us from the UK. They had a funny English accent and kept saying "brilliant" all the time but it was a lot of fun hanging out with them.

At seven

This is probably the last post that I will have my dad ghost blog for me. (A quick look at the log of posts shows the drop in quality and quantity of posts and I am not going to have my digital footprint be tainted... Also, I heard that he has taken his lack to "quality and quantity" to another blog called PRBS.)

So, to fill you in for the last few years - I am now in second grade at Hoover Elementary (Go Hedgehogs!!). My parents have signed me up for a dizzying array of after-school activities (to keep up with the Joneses .. my dad, added. I need to find out who that Jones is that is putting me through this). I do chess, soccer, French, ballet, gymnastics and swimming now and have dabbled with Bollywood dance and a few other activities that I already forgot. I seriously think my parents are overcompensating for their one-dimensionality.

I still have the occasional tantrum but now that my parents listened to that NPR show on deconstructing tantrums, it is not that much fun anymore... Now, they just wait it out and worse ... they started passing wisecracks on my tantrums like those guys in Mystery Science Theater. I have to evolve to a more elaborate form of emotional blackmail now.

A few of my favorite things are (actually, what I have convinced my parents that my favorite things are) science (nerdy girls rock), French (if only the French can figure out how to pronounce the words they write in English properly), all things starting with an i (iPhone, iPad, iPod), my HKC friends, my ballet and my parents.. (in no particular order :-)

Being a Massachusetts girl, I like winter activities but given that my parents fled Massachusetts, I need to put in an extra effort to convince them that heading to a bone-chilling, snow-clad place voluntarily is actually fun.

My 5 year birthday

Yes - After all the anticipation, I finally turned 5 and I am loving it. I had a small birthday party at home on my actual birthday (March 16 th) and I also cut a cake at school. My parents also had a cool birthday party for me that weekend. We had a pinata, a few games, T-shirt painting and the cake cutting with lots of friends from Stratford School and my old Kindercare school. It was a blast. Pictures of my fifth birthday are here


That's all for now. I should pester my dad to write something more engaging and humorous.

Nearly 5 years

I am nearly 5 years now (1 month short). I don’t reflect back and become all nostalgic (like my parents do) because I don’t remember much of anything before the last two years, but I enjoy pestering my dad to tell me “Aanya stories” – like when I was born on a cold, snowy morning in Lowell, MA (some of the details that my dad includes are generally incredulous, so I am sure he is embellishing some details, but he does tell a great story. For example, I don’t think my parents originally intended to name me “Seven” (from Seinfeld) or “Susie” (from Calvin and Hobbes) or “Alpha” from my dad watching way too many Star Trek re-runs).

I also get him to tell me stories of all my birthdays and what we did for each of them – he sometimes gets carried away and shows me videos as well (but give me a break, who has the attention span nowadays – I am struggling sit through one entire episode of “Ballerina Angelina”)


Just before the Christmas break, we moved to a house in Palo Alto and I have more space to run around and create a ruckus (I view it as more canvas space for my artistic naughtiness – like most artists’ work, it will take some time for my parents to appreciate it). My grandparents are staying with us to help out with Anukha and it is great to have so much activity around the house. We have also been having a good number of people over and that is keeping me totally engaged.


School is going well – I think it is a good balance between learning (1%) and silly naughtiness (99%). I bugged my parents into getting me a Nintendo Wii and I play the sports pack and Wii Music (which I got as a Christmas present – you should see the apprehension I had leading up to Christmas. I was afraid that some of my previously unadvertised exploits may somehow be known to Santa and that would result in “coal” presents. It is good thing Santa’s good/bad database is not very comprehensive. I think I will push the boundary a little more this year). Speaking of Wii, the other day my dad enticed me to go play some “real” tennis (his term) and we got a tennis racquet and tennis balls to play in the tennis court. My performance fell way short of what I was able to do with Wii – they need to make real tennis more “realistic” so I can play it as well as I play on the Wii.

I am bonding well with my baby sister – I generally unleash controlled chaos with jumping and screaming and that seems to keep her hugely more entertained than her silly toys. Moreover, I think she is catching on to what I am doing and repeating my actions. It is so much fun …

I took a break from the Bollywood dance classes and I am going to the swimming classes along with my old friends from Kindercare. Right now, I am mostly splashing around and having a good time, but my parents hope that I will actually learn to swim at some point in the near future.

That’s all for this update.. I am in the “Eagerly-waiting-for-my birthday” mode which has only one downside that my parents constantly threaten to cancel my birthday if I am naughty or whiny or intransigent – so, I fall in line reflexively, but I am thinking of calling their bluff at some point ( I know that my dad sucks at poker)… OK then, next update after my birthday … Ciao

New home and winter break

We moved to a new house in Palo Alto last week - it was a lot of fun to run around in the new house which has a lot more space than the previous house (I think we will have a lot more space once daddy opens the moving boxes and gets them out of the way). I am going to decorate my room with a lot of pink and maybe some purple and mommy promised to paint a rainbow in my room.

I am also on my winter break from school for 2 weeks. It is kind of strange to be away from school for so long and I miss my school friends. But, I am having fun at home with a lot of cousins and friends visiting us.

At four and a half

New school and stuff ….

The big and exciting news - I started at Stratford school a few weeks ago and love my school. I was a little apprehensive about leaving all my old friends but the transition was smooth and I made a lot of new friends already. I am still only in pre-K, but it already feels a big school. My parents have to drop me off by 8:45 and despite my morning tantrums, they somehow manage to get me ready on time every day. (Parents seem to have inner depth and resourcefulness beneath all that flabbiness).

I am also ramping up my out-of-school activities with Bollywood dancing and swimming classes. I am also going for play dates with my old Kindercare friends. I am having a lot of fun.. I also keep a journal now to write down what we learn at school (oh, a journal is like a blog - only you write it in a book with a pen, instead of on the computer)… My dad also got me interested in Calvin and Hobbes (and my favorite Susie).. I have a “transmogrifier” in my room that makes me transform into dinosaurs or elephants or space aliens. My dad tells me that the “transmogrifier” can also work as a “time machine” if I flip it upside down.. I am not so sure though…..

Aanya's 4th birthday and more...

Ok.. another year rolled along and my dad was too lazy to update my blog any more frequently (but somehow we seems to have time to update his Facebook page and to monitor the stock price of GOOG every minute).. My parents kicked into high gear (or maybe it was medium gear) to celebrate my birthday season (given that I usually have three birthday parties - one on my actual birthday on March 16th, one at school and for all the friends on a convenient weekend day, it is a birthday season of sugar kicks and excessive fun).

On March 16 th, we cut a small cake for my birthday and we headed out to Munich (don't ask me why my parents pick places like Munich for my vacation). Despite my apprehension about Germany being full of germs, it turned out to be a fun place and daddy and I did a lot of sightseeing, while my mom was stuck in some conference. We also went to the Neuschwanstein Castle which apparently was the Sleeping Beauty castle. My dad told me that Sleeping Beauty has now relocated to Orlando and so we could not see Sleeping Beauty at the castle.



From Munich, we went to Venice for a quick trip. I loved the pizza and the chocolates there. We went on the boats all the time and there was water everywhere. I had a lot of fun chasing the pigeons there.



And finally coming to the birthday itself - my parents organized the birthday at City Beach in Fremont where there was a lot of jumphouse fun. A lot of my friends showed up and we had a blast (see photos here). The parents milled around aimlessly (I think these jump house places need a parent care center to keep them engaged while we have fun, so they don't get cranky and throw a tantrum. They should probably have a TV with continuous re-runs of "Mad About You"). Then we ate a lot of pizza and I cut a yummy cake and enjoyed all the great presents I got. It was a fun day!! I can't wait till my next birthday next March.

Aanya's third birthday

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.

My first birthday ...

OK .. since I am one year old year, I believe I am legally allowed to blog. (I hope daddy is accurately translating by mumblings into the humorous insights I want to share. I don't want my blog to become like this " World's most boring blog").

I don't know what my parents have been telling all of you about how well they are taking care of me, how naughty I am, how fussy I am eating, how I wake them up at night, etc., etc, but wait till you hear my side....

Well.. that year went by fast (not that I have anything to compare it with :-) I must have done my job right - daddy and mommy seemed to have a busy and engaging year. (Hmm.. I wonder where daddy found time to put on those extra pounds).

Thanks to my birthday falling on a weekday, I had two birthday celebrations - one small one at home with just daddy and mommy and another one with lots of friends (daddy told me something about some 22nd amendment requiring that all birthdays falling on weekdays be celebrated on weekends. I need to check that one )

On my actual birthday (16 th March), mommy took the day off to take me around and make me feel special. I did my best and pooped twice that morning ;-) . We caught up with daddy for some lunch and I cut a small cake in the evening. (yeah...yeah, you call that a special day ? .. I was hoping to meet one those Teletubbies .. that yellow one is CUTE)

After the minor let down, I decided to wait for the "big" party on Sunday. Geeta aunty came by for the party. She lives in Texas (daddy asked me not to hold that against her ;-)). We did some last minute shopping. Mommy packed all the goodie bags. Daddy had to work on the day (Saturday) before the party (He said something about bringing home the bacon - I thought my parents were vegetarian).

Anyways, the big day rolled in. Bright and sunny. The party was at a restaurant in Woburn - about 30 minutes from our house. Mommy said that it was a special day and I needed to feel special. I tried hard and this time I managed to throw up all that I ate that morning. Mommy said something I heard once on HBO, and cleaned me up. She still had the patience to dress me up in a dress similar to what she was wearing. Mommy is the best !!

I had a great time at the party. I was so sleepy but I was not going to miss the fun. So, I stayed awake. There were lots of kids, lots of fdaddy's and mommy's friends, lots of food and lots of fun. I cut a big cake this time. The cake was a yummy cake with Tweety toys (not edible ones though - bummer). All the kids had party hats and they all sang some vague birthday song (I guess they did not know "Twinkle twinkle" song).

We came home and I went to sleep. When I woke up, I saw a lot of nicely wrapped boxes and gift bags. COOL !! I played with the wrapping paper all evening. (Sometimes I wonder what is in all those boxes that are inside the wrapping paper)

Just kidding - I loved the gifts !!! Thanks everyone for making it a cool birthday party !!!

Daddy added a lot of photos. Click to get bigger pictures. Feel free to comment on this and any of the pictures.

- AANYA

Who said it has to be a "happy" birthday 

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Look Ma.. HANDS