snagabag

Liah went on her first road trip with me this past weekend. (It was actually Liah’s 2nd road trip as her Tata and mom drove her down to Corpus last week when I was out of town on business.) Aparna, Liah and I drove from Corpus to Austin Sunday afternoon, and it was quite the eye-opener. The first change is that I’m the chauffeur. Yep, Aparna now sits in back with Liah. However, that’s not such a bad change as I have complete music control. The real shock was how much longer road trips take when you are with child! The trip from Austin to Corpus is 3.5 hours at most, but with Liah onboard the trip took over 4 hours! Why so much longer? Allow me to show you:

Let me tell you, that’s one thing I’ve never had to do on a road trip. Not even when I road tripped with Jay. To be clear, by “never had to do” I mean take photos while Aparna changes Liah’s diaper in 100-degree heat. And to top it off, we were in the parking lot of a Taco Cabana!

Mini and Raman sent me a photo they took from my visit with them last week, so here’s a snap of me hanging out with Raman and Rishabh. He is too cute! (uhhh…Rishabh, not Raman.)

(Pardon me while I pat myself on the back)

My blog reached 100,000 hits today! I started this experiment in bad humor less than a year ago, and seem to have acquired some kind of audience. Though who you are I really don’t know! Some who I’d expect to read it don’t, and some who I’d never expect to visit here do.

I’ve averaged about 290 hits a day since I started my blog on September 15 last year. However, it took me 3 months to reach 10,000 hits, so the pace has picked up in 2005!

My blogs busiest day was when I announced Liah to the world when I received just short of 1,000 hits.

For those who don’t care about these things, “hits” are the number of times my blog has been clicked on. “Users” are the number of actual visits people have made to my blog, and that’s about 65,000.

One place you all aren’t clicking is on those silly Google ads on my site. I’ve earned a total of $7.63 from people clicking on the ads. As Google only sends payment when you’ve earned at least $100, I figure I should be getting paid sometime in 2010.

I just got back from a brief 48-hour stay in Dallas. In addition to hanging out with my parents (the 3 of us went to Fry’s Electronics together. I could not ask for better bonding!), I was able to spend some time with Mini, Raman, and Rishabh.

The four of us went to dinner at a restaurant I had not been to before, Luna de Noche. It’s Raman’s favorite Mexican restaurant, and I really liked the food. [Instructions to reader: say your favorite "Mo likes all food" joke to yourself here]

Despite my protests, Mini and Raman graciously paid for my dinner. Upon paying, Raman jokingly remarked, “You can pay for us when we come to Austin in 2 weeks!” (Raman, you do know you were joking, right?) I then replied with the very witty comeback, “Screw that!” That was immediately followed by a courtesy laugh from Raman and Mini, and then we heard it: a tiny little voice next to us said: “screw that!”

My eyes widened in horror as I turned to look at Rishabh, who met my fearful look with an adorable smile and proceeded to tell me, “screw that! screw that! screw that!”

I immediately started to apologize to Raman and Mini, but luckily they were laughing. Raman told me that Rishabh is a great listener, and he’ll pick up on anything you say. Well, we still didn’t want Rishabh showing off the new words Uncle Mo taught him, so I managed to distract him by bringing up the best attention getter for 2-year olds: ice cream. Yep, after getting him excited about ice cream, and then loading him up on sugar, it seemed he had forgotten about his new words. Whew!

This child rearing stuff is not easy! I shudder to think what words I’m going to unintentionally teach Liah!

It was inevitable. We realized it when we were thinking of the name Liah, but we were ok with it because, well… our little girl is a princess.

Behold the first personalized clothing for our little girl:

Okay, so maybe a burp cloth is not “clothing,” but these certainly qualify!

Just to be clear, Aparna & I did not purchase the “Princess” items for Liah. They were a gift from our pal Shalini (thanks Shalini!).

I suspect the facts that Princess Leia from Star Wars is spelled and pronounced (Leia = LAY-uh, Liah = LEE-ah) differently will be of no concern to most people …and I’m ok with that. I’m not so sure I’m looking forward to hearing what Liah thinks of it, and rest assured, one day she will certainly let me know she thinks of it!

Liah turns 6 weeks old tomorrow, and I have finally updated her photo gallery. Be sure to check it out for photos from the past 3 weeks, and especially for photos of Liah meeting Rani for the first time!

Another week gone by. Liah is 5 weeks old today. Hard to believe she’s already over a month old. It seems like just yesterday Aparna was writhing in pain on our bed while I laid next to her half asleep mumbling helpful words like “breathe.”

The big news this past week was Liah meeting her cousin-sister (don’t ask) Rani! They had a great time together! As you can see from the above photo, they are both adorable. Rani looks so sweet and innocent, and is having a great time in Liah’s swing. On the other hand, Liah’s expression seems to be saying, “I don’t know who you think you are, but you have about 5 seconds to get out of my swing before I go medieval on you.”

The other big event was Liah’s 1-month birthday! Since Rani was here, we decided to celebrate. As you can see below, the girls were in full party attire.

Well, I hope to post before another week goes by, but it’s hard to promise. I’m happy to report Aparna got a clean bill of health from her Doc today. In related news, Aparna is very upset she got a clean bill of health from her Doc today. (I’ll leave that to you to decipher.)

Well, Liah is 4 weeks old today. Hard to believe it’s already been 4 weeks since she came into our lives. Really, there are no words to describe just how unbelieveably TIRED I am. We’re talking pure, unadultered fatigue. I don’t believe I’ve ever had to deal with a constant state of exhaustion like I am now. zzzzzzzzzzzz. Ooops. Sorry. Dozed off for a bit.

I have new level of respect for all the other parents out there. And poor Aparna. Having to constantly pay attention to Liah AND deal with my constant need for attention.

So this might be no big deal for all you “Bobs” and “Janes,” but I met my first Mohit today. I called Amazon’s customer service line (yes, Amazon does have a phone number) and much to my amazement Mohit answered the phone. Amazon Mohit was far more polite than Tactless Mohit, but the funny thing (to me at least) was how neither of us bothered to acknowledge our common name. Of course, Amazon Mohit was just trying to finish the call as quickly as possible.

The above “anecdote” should make it crystal clear I haven’t gotten out much the past 4 weeks.

Okay, I’ll leave you with one photo of our goofy child. I wish I could say we posed her, but nope, this is how she likes to sleep. Good thing she doesn’t have B.O.