What could possibly prompt me to resurrect the blog after months of silence?

Well, it shouldn't be hard to guess :)

Some of our relatives have already received the news and at first I thought that I would wait to be further along in my pregnancy before spreading the news. After all, I am only 4 weeks pregnant, which means that there is no guarantee at all that this mustard seed sized lump of cells will hang in there for the distance.

Obviously though I changed my mind about the early announcement. The reason is that I really would like everybody to know that we are very excited and very happy at the idea of having another baby. It was discussed at great length and it was planned. If this time it doesn't work out we will most likely try again.

All this to say, I know three kids sounds like an excess to many people, but please be happy for us and show it next time you see us :) Just like the other two times...

Momma is 4 and has blue hair

When I picked up Rajiv at his preschool on the day of the concert, they gave me a little paper bag with some Mother's Day things and a plastic cup with three small seedlings growing in a little bit of soil.



Now the seedlings are only two and something must be done urgently before they die off. I don't even know what they are supposed to grow into, but a couple of clues lead me to suspect them of being sunflowers. Yikes! What am I supposed to do? I guess moving them out of the plastic cup should be a priority... On the other hand, if these little plants survive life under my "care" they will be surely ready for the big world outside, just like my children :)



Anyway, let me move on to the real subject of this post. Because we were going to the concert when I received all these things - plus a little bit of drama with Appu who seemed to have had his hand smashed by a door but then at a closer inspection was in fact ok - I just put it all in the car and I was very proud of myself when I remembered to take the seedlings in the house, but I didn't think twice of the bag.



Then a couple days ago I opened it. It contained a candle in a glass cup, all decorated with glitter by Rajiv himself, and then the real treat:

Now, first of all I would like to point out that the teacher who wrote down Rajiv's answers should have written "mamma" with an "a", because that's how I spell my name. It's incredible. I always get my name spelled wrong abroad and now even my mommy name has to suffer the same insult.. :)



I don't need to comment on the rest, except for the last line. Within myself I am debating whether this means that I am spoiling my children with too much shopping activity - for them and not. But leaving that question aside, it is funny that Rajiv should rate our shopping outings so highly.



What do you think our shopping looks like:

Like this?

Or maybe like this?

I will let you guess.



No, ok, I'll tell you: It's a little bit of both.

Spring Concert - Caution: Very Long

As promised, more about the concert.

This is *very* long, but if you want you can jump to the end of the post for some videos.

Concerto di Primavera

May 8th: Edited to add: read more and watch videos here.

Yesterday was the Big Day. It was a bittersweet experience, at least for me and maybe for Rajiv too, but I plan to tell you more in another post. Right now I am at the office and I really can't write for too long, so I'll just show you a few pictures.

The two brothers entering the building. Rajiv was a big help in keeping Rohan safe in the parking lot and inside while my hands were busy lugging around the cello, the bench, the food for the potluck and so on.

We were a bit late but we still made it in time for the tuning. Phew!

This is Genevieve, by the way, Rajiv's teacher.

This was during the concert. Genevieve sat in front of the smallest kids to help them out.

And after :) It was a long tiring loud day, which by the way had started at about 4:30 AM for both me and Rajiv - long story - and even though he did have a nap in the afternoon, at this point he was touchy and ready to collapse somewhere. I just had to make sure it was the bed :)

Chicha's wedding

With the fact that I didn't tell you much about our trip - and just showed you our photo album instead - I almost forgot to share the little video I took at Vijay's wedding in Guruvayoor.

As you will see, I better hold on to my job, because it's unlikely I could make a career as a wedding reporter. I must say though, that I could have been placed in a more favorable spot (you know, somewhere where I could actually see the couple) had I not wasted valuable time looking everywhere for my husband to make sure that he didn't miss the ceremony.

I later discovered that he was there, just on the other side. Unfortunately, he is not in this video, but almost everyone else is. Even the - by then - married couple, in the last few seconds.

May is a Big month

Little Rajiv will be four in two weeks! Birthday party preparations are underway. He said he would like a party with trains and laughing cars - these would be the giggling troublesome cargo cars of Thomas, I think. I have thought about the possibilities of this party more than I like to admit, but in the end I feel that I will be incompetent as usual, and it won't matter one bit :)

And papa' is coming to Canada, just in time for the birthday! These days you can't say "May" in this house without a little voice squeaking "Papa comin'". I wonder what Rohan thinks May really means - a place maybe? I doubt he understands months yet.

And this Wednesday is the day of the Spring Concert! For which we haven't practiced and we even missed the dress rehearsal last week, because I'm that kind of mom.. I'm a little apprehensive, especially because I just found out that it's a potluck event and I need to sign up to bring something. It is tempting to tick "napkins and paper cups", but that seems lame, no? No? Uhm...

It's so exciting!

Appu is taking part in his first concert in two weeks. His group will get to play a simple rhythm on a single string to open the spring concert of the Suzuki school. It will be him with the cello and his two little friends from class - another cello and a violin.

To be honest, so far every attempt to get them to play this thing *together* has failed miserably, but it doesn't matter because they are going to be so cute that nobody will mind :)

I just went to buy a pair of black sweatpants and a white t-shirt for next week's dress rehearsal, so I thought I would share..

Photo Album - Rohan and Rajiv in India

Cliccando su "Read more" piu' in basso potrete vedere le pagine di un libro ricordo del nostro recente viaggio in India. Per ingrandire ogni pagina basta cliccarci sopra, pero' purtroppo per caricare le immagini sul blog ho dovuto ridurre la qualita', quindi le foto non sono nitidissime. Sono graditi commenti! E chissa' se riuscite a scovare nel muchio le foto scattate da Rajiv?

Maybe you have been wondering when I was going to start posting some photos from our recent stay in India. And probably you kind of expected me to start my usual 37 part series of "Pics you have missed" posts. I admit such a thing was on my mind, but then it occurred to me that I could save myself some work (this somehow ended up being a wrong estimate..) and you some pain by showing you the book I have made for Rajiv to share with his friends here in Canada.

Below the fold you will find all the pages of the book in individual jpg files. You can click on the picture to make it bigger. The book was made using iPhoto with one of the standard templates. Even so, it did take a long time to make; and converting each page to jpg format and uploading them on blogger was another epic enterprise. Just to say, I hope you appreciate my efforts :)

Some final notes and disclaimers (see how professional I'm getting?):

Please consider the target audience for the book are Rajiv's teachers, friends and some of my friends here in Canada. If you are a family member you will find some of the captions unnecessary and if you are Indian you might find that I have oversimplified some things or maybe made some plain mistakes - in that case please forgive me and then let me know..

I really like some of the photos. Some other ones are of poor quality, but the purpose was to collect some nice memories and to give a more or less full coverage of the whole trip, so quality was not a very important factor. I have also included a couple of photos taken by Rajiv: I wonder if you can spot them? Let me know in the comments and the winner will get a hard copy of the book or a signed hand print from Rajiv, you choose :)

Il taglio della torta

(in albergo in montagna)

B-day!

Little Rajiv is now a little three year old boy. At the moment we are in Ooty with very little access to the net, so details and pictures will have to wait. Many thanks to all those who have send happy birthday emails and see you all later!

Il piccolo Appu ha tre anni! Purtroppo non posso scrivere molto oggi perche' siamo in un posto in montagna con accesso alla rete molto limitato, ma ci saranno molte foto e video da mercoledi' in poi, promesso. Grazie mille a tutti quelli che hanno mandato gli auguri a Rajiv, mi ha fatto molto piacere (Rajiv non coglie tutti i dettagli ma e' contentone in generale :) ).

The usual delayed photo avalanche

Un sacco di foto della nostra gita a Calicut per il matrimonio di Shiv e Deepu il mese scorso. Gli sposi non si vedono per niente, ma in compenso ci sono un sacco di bambini scatenati!

Pictures from our trip to Calicut about one month ago.

All abooooard!



Rohan is reunited with his achamma...



... and Rajiv lives the good life with grapes, a powerful fan and Blue's Clues.


Peek-a-boo!



The next day, lots of fun with Armaan.





Peek-a-boo!!




And then it's party time! Rohan, however, doesn't care much for it, especially with the paparazzi following him.





A glimpse of the rel party.



And then look! Everybody's favorite chicha is in town and the children go crazy :)



Follows a quiet Sunday morning practicing martial arts at home.

Dad, Kipper and some more stuff

First of all, Happy New Year!

I haven't written for a while and as you might expect there is a lot of backlog, but I will try and catch up by unloading on you massive amounts of videos and photos with minimal captioning - not a bad thing at all, probably.

The reason for the long silence is in part that I have been vary busy trying to attend some lectures and thinking about my plans for the future. However, as most of you surely already know, the main reason why I haven't made an effort to write is that my father died in the middle of December and, while it was impossible for me to write about it for several unpleasant reasons, it also didn't seem to make much sense to just keep going as if nothing had happened.

There are things I would have probably written here that now don't seem appropriate anymore. I will think about it and maybe I will come back to this topic later on, or I might not. I wanted to at least post a picture, but unfortunately the most recent I have is from a year and a half ago. Here it is, at the Torino airport.


My favorite picture of my father is another one, from my childhood, but I can't show it to you now. I took it when I was about seven years old I think, with my first camera - Fisher-Price childproof camera, one of the best gifts ever. It was Easter and we were having a family gathering. My dad posed for a photo in the act of lowering an asparagus into his mouth and although I say so myself, it is really a great picture. The only print I have is in a photo album in Torino, so I won't be able to post it until (if) I succeed in making a decent digital copy of it.

Anyway, let us move on to the promised goodies. For this first post I want to show you three videos. The first two were filmed in Calicut during the Christmas holidays. Those were early crawling days for Rohan, he is faster and less prone to accidents now. In case you are wondering, there is really no point to either of the videos, it is just an attempt to capture a little bit of comforting chaos.






The last video is not a home movie, but I thought I would share with you one of Appu's favorite episodes of Kipper The Dog. We love Kipper around here and I think nonna Laura will be especially pleased by this particular choice. I recommend you all watch it, Kipper is good for you.

Chapter One

In which Little Rajiv, also known as Appu, acquires a new brother.

Little Rohan Ernesto was born on a Tuesday night, at 9:41 PM, on June 23rd 2009. This is the story of his birth.

There had been early signs of labour for days, but on Monday night things seemed to finally be moving. As we went on our usual walk to put Appu to sleep and I started having some mild contractions, so we decided to walk to the video store and get a few dvd of mindless tv series just in case we ended up being up all night. However, after checking out the videos the contractions stopped, so we went back home, put Appu to bed and decided to sleep early to save our energies for when they would be needed.

During the night I had a few mild contractions and a little bit of bleeding, so I felt sure that it was finally happening. In the morning we took Appu to Sally's house, the home daycare center where he had been going for months, and then decided to go on a walk to see if the contractions would start again.

It was the first really hot day of the summer, so walking in the sun was quite exhausting. We went to the university library to pick up a book and stopped there to rest and have a snack. Then we walked back and stopped at the office to have lunch. By then the contractions had started again, but still mild, irregular and far apart. After the walk we were very tired, so we went home for a nap.

I woke up at around 2:30 with regular contractions, so we cheered and proceeded with our early labour plan. I took a shower, we watched some of the tv episodes we had taken at the video store the night before and we asked our neighbours Andrew and Anna Marie to pick up Appu at daycare and keep him with them for dinner. Their daughter Kalena goes to the same daycare and is a regular playmate, so it was very easy to arrange and not too traumatic for Appu, we hoped.

We packed a bag with diapers, a pair of pyjamas, Pingu and a Kipper dvd for Appu and then we also packed a bag for the hospital, just in case.

S called our midwife Mina and told her that I was definitely in labour. We weren't sure how far along I might be, though, and we didn't dare keeping too high hopes, so we just told her she didn't need to come yet. She asked us to call her back in an hour, so we watched more tv and went for a little walk. This was some time between 5 and 6 PM. We called the neighbours to check how Appu was doing and he was reported "as happy as a pig in shit" (Canadians!), which was a big relief. I was quite a bit in pain by now, but I remembered being in a lot of pain last time too and being told I hadn't even started dilating yet, so we were quite cautious with our hopes. S was a great support though, so all this part was really a nice experience and the pain was easily managed.

When we called back Mina she said she would come to take a look at me and in about half an hour she showed up with her student Joanne. She said they would stay only if I was at least 4 cm dilated already, but surprisingly when Joanne checked me I was around 7 cm already! That was an encouraging moment. The midwives started setting up their equipment - an impressive display of stuff that (fortunately) mostly we didn't need.

In a short time the pain increased a lot and I was mostly leaning on the futon, with S encouraging me to take walks to the kitchen and back every now and then. We listened to some music, our favorite Simon and Garfunkel cd, and Mina entertained us with stories of pirate pop music videos from her youth in Iran.

I was worried about Appu, because it was bedtime for him and Kalena and I was afraid the neighbours would be having trouble. Appu is not well known as an easy to put to bed kid... On the other hand I was not willing to let S go to put Appu to bed at this point, so we called Anna Marie and suggested that Appu could watch his dvd for a while if they needed a break. As it turned out, Appu watched his cartoons and then said "bed" (!!). Once taken to the bed, he promptly fell asleep (!!!!).

Around 9 PM I was checked again. The dilation was almost complete, so Mina said it was time to break the water and have the baby! The other midwife who was supposed to attend the birth, Ann, was paged and she made it in time for the birth, which happened after a short - I think - time of pushing. Now this is the part I wouldn't like to do again any time soon - not that I think I will have to ever again, by the way. Two is enough... :)

Unfortunately Rohan decided to pop out superman style, with a hand in front of his face, so I got two tears, one of which was apparently quite nasty. Being stitched up was the closest thing to crucifixion that I ever experienced, but surprisingly the recovery was easy and I already don't feel any pain after only a few days.

After the stitches I got to try and breastfeed Rohan, who by now was getting impatient in his father's arms. He took to it right away and sucked softly but persistently for quite a while. I can really see that breastfeeding right away after the birth makes a big difference. I wish I had gotten that chance with Appu, it would probably have saved us both a lot of trouble.

The midwives cleaned up the room, prepared the laundry basket, helped me to take a shower and then left us before midnight. That's the nicest part about giving birth at home, the part in which you are comfortable in your house after it is all over and the baby is right there on your bed.

We got more sleep than I expected. Rohan was very sleepy and he didn't mind me feeding him while lying down, so it was all very restful (as far as these things go...).



In the morning Appu dropped by before being taken to daycare. I had missed him so much! This was our longest separation so far and when he came back from Sally's house later that day he was ready for a lot of mom and dad. And we were ready for a lot of Appu, of course! His main reaction to the new brother so far is a renewed desire to nurse all the time. This picture is from day one of Rohan's life: the beginning of a beautiful milk friendship :)