Guess who's four now?!

(P.S.  This blog hasn't totally been abandoned, but just more 'downsized' these days!)

A New Year

Greetings remaining faithful blog fans!

Seems like just a post ago we were talking about holiday traditions. Well...the holidays have come and gone, and believe it or not, we are in the midst of planning a little gathering for a certain almost three-year-old!

We have a huge backlog of pictures and updates to make. Over the holidays Terri transitioned to a new camera and hasn't had the time yet to figure out some of the logistics of uploading from the new fancy thing.

Thanks for your patience, and just know that life in Radha's world is pretty darn great these days, and there is never a dull moment between: daycare (3 days/week), music class with her favorite teacher Tyleena "The Fairy Funkmother" (1 day/week), swim lessons (past 8 weeks and wrapping up soon), and all sorts of play dates with playgroup and other friends.

Dancing (especially bhangra), singing, reading, counting (up to 20 in English, and up to 10 in Hindi and Spanish), Play-Do, and making muffins are some of her favorite activities lately.

Current favorite songs:

"You Can Call Me Al" (Paul Simon)

"Shake, Rattle & Roll" or "All Shook Up" (Elvis)

"Paw Paw Patch" (Sharon Jones)

The biggest milestone which we are THRILLED about is that over Christmas break Radha made the transition to being fully potty-trained. No more diapers, not even at night! We didn't expect it to go as quickly and smoothly as it did, but just like that it happened. Sheer luck, definitely! She has a lot of pride in this new level of independence, and we are thrilled to be done with that whole mess.

Fall Traditions Continues

It feels really cool to have established family traditions.

One of our traditions since Radha has come along is the annual trip to the pumpkin patch. This is the third year we have visited Fir Point Farms in Aurora, Oregon.

Going to the pumpkin patch gives our family a couple of opportunities. It's about saying goodbye to Summer and saying hello to the Fall harvests, a preview of Halloween jack-o-laterns, and time to explore farmland and where some things are planted and grow.

This was the first year that Radha got to ride a pony, and boy was she excited!

Life Happens

Greetings faithful blog readers!

Just a quick note to let you know that we have not abandoned this blog, and Radha is still actively growing, learning, laughing, and loving as much as documented already on this blog.

Day-to-day with a two-and-a-half year-old toddler is quite a ride. A VERY exhausting ride at times!

We are still in the process of uploading pictures from our Labor Day weekend adventures. That was only a month ago, but it feels like ages ago already. We've come to accept the fact that we are usually just too busy living life that we don't often have time to document, reflect, and share about Radha's development and happenings within the means of this blog.

There will be updates again. Thanks for your patience and interest in keeping tabs on the most amazing being in our lives.

P.S. If you're here mostly for some cute Radha pictures, I recommend you bookmark or add my Flickr stream to your favorite links.

Word Explosion

Our household has encountered a verbal explosion of words and sentences lately.

Ro and I have been waiting for these moments for a while, for when we could carry an actual, real conversation with Radha. And now it's happening! It's so much fun to hear Radha put words together, and sometimes the results are pretty hilarious. We have no idea where she heard some of the things, or where she got the concepts from, and others are fairly obvious.

Here is a sampling of sentences and phrases that Radha has been repeating a lot lately:

• Have a good day, Momma.

• Radha Simone Wiley-Sood is eating strawberrries.


• Mommy come too? Daddy come too?


• Let's eat the chocolate (pronounced CHALK-OH-LOT) Momma.


• This is the best book ever.


• It happens.


• Hop on the Dana! Hop on the Max! (reference to our neighbor's kids)


• I like broccoli trees.


• Baby Mook crying.


• Daddy driving to work. *makes sound of car driving*


• Ladybugs sleeping. (said during daycare when her class was exploring soil and looking at bugs and plants in the soil)


• Go away Momma! Go away Daddy! (usually said in fun when she wants one of us to hide and play hide-and-seek with her)

• You said it a long time ago.

• You said it, boys and girls!

• No problem! (said when pretending to talk on the phone with a real phone or her play "cell phone")

Of course, this list will only be growing, but we wanted to share a sampling of the word fun before we forget to document this fun stage.

Little Lady Meets Ladybug

Radha was mesmerized by a ladybug we found on the beach recently while exploring Kelley Point Park in Portland.

All Work and No Play

A rare dry and sunny day recently gave Radha an opportunity to help us with some yard work.

Nothing like a little dress-up for playtime after all that hard labor.

Happy Valentine's Day

Radha sends her love to family friends across the globe.

xoxoxo

Treehugger

A teaser of a sunny afternoon day in February. I can't remember if the groundhog saw his shadow or not, but at least on this particular afternoon it felt like spring is around the corner!

If We Took a Holiday

(from Terri)

What a relaxing and mellow Christmas myself, Ro, and Radha had! Although I always miss seeing my family at this time of year it's nice to avoid the stress of holiday travel (and it will be much more enjoyable to visit the Midwest later in the year!).

We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas night at Ro's parents in Vancouver, and it was Radha's first milestone overnight at Babaji and Dadima's house. Radha also got some long overdue quality time with her aunts visiting from Seattle (Geeta) and Vancouver, BC (Vandana).

Nothing makes the holidays sweeter than a generous gift of delicious homemade cookies sent from my dear friend April, all the way from St. Paul, MN. (Thanks April!)

Christmas Eve morning at our house, checking out the new table & chair set from Grandma Sandy & Denny:

Super excited to have a reading & art table!

Still figuring out this whole wrapping paper thing:

Singing and drumming with Dadima later at their house:

Santa's Little Helper:

Decorating the tree with help from Babaji:

After all that decorating, time for shoulder rides on Dad:

Learning the in's and out's of the iPhone from Bhua Geeta and Bhua Vandana:

On a walk on the wonderfully sunny and dry Christmas Day:

Run, Radha, RUUUUNN!

Chilling out story time:

Yoga lessons from yoga teacher Vandana:

You learn fast, young grasshopper!

More pictures can be found here on our Flickr page. Hope your holidays were magical and filled with good food and love!

Bath Counting

Radha continues to talk up a storm. She tries to repeat most things we say, and is often amusing herself with songs, naming family members, and anything else that crosses her mind. For some reason, after bath time is her favorite time to practice counting. Her counting song from school ends with the words "How many ducks did it take", followed by a count. Since this video was taken, she's almost made it up to 20!

Happy Holidays

Radha wishes all her relatives, friends, schoolmates, and neighbors a very Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and Happy Festivus (for the rest of us)!

Fun and Games

(from Terri)

It's true what they say...having a kid makes you feel and behave like a kid again.

Lately Radha has been having lots of fun with active, physical games. "More Momma? More Dadda?" These are Radha's popular requests these days to play hide and seek. One of us will hide down the hallway, around a corner, and before we can barely catch our breath Radha has ran over to find and "tag" us with a hug. Ro and I will often take turns hiding, or one of us might make a stealth exit out of the game to do something around the house.

We've only seen Radha do this once, but a few weeks ago she was apparently inspired by the early 80s break dancers and put on this performance, which I've titled: Breakin' 2: Radha Boogaloo.

Yeah, this stuff is fun. And Radha's fun and laughter is totally contagious.

Second Halloween

For Radha's second go round of Halloween, we ended up doing things more geared towards her compared to last year. She got all dressed up in her pumpkin outfit send by her Grandma Sandy, and we headed out. At first we went down Alberta looking for any Halloween action at the stores, but nothing was going on. On our way back home, Terri had a bolt of inspiration, and we went to Kennedy School. It was pure Halloween mayhem, and Radha loved it. Surprisingly she wasn't overwhelmed by the crowds, and even asked to go back for another round when we were thinking of leaving. Luckily this year, she wasn't too interested in the candy, and mainly looked at the offerings. After we got back home, we trick or treated at a few neighbors' houses, and called it a night by 6pm.

Little pumpkin taking a breather outside the Kennedy School.

Excellent instincts - she's suspicious of creepy clowns with candy.

We Have Lift Off

(from Terri)

It's official...Radha started walking last month and has been enjoying her new sense of mobility and independence since. Granted, she is still walking with a bit of a drunken sailor swagger but she can move from Point A to Point B if she is determined enough.

We just had her year and a half check-up this week. She has grown an average of one inch a month in the past three months! No wonder the 18-month pants seem to be fitting like capri pants on her.

Radha was also very happy to be reunited with her Dadima last weekend too, as Dadima had finally returned from a several weeks long trip to India. In this video Radha has fun with a wooden flute that Dadima brought from India, and she has been having fun showing her teddy bears how to "play" it. We have recently started a music class and maybe she's getting some new ideas from class.

Fall Traditions and Pumpkins=Apples

(from Terri)

Along with many other families, we ventured out to the country a few weekends ago to our favorite farm for their annual Fall Harvest and Pumpkin Patch festivities.

This is our second year visiting Fir Point Farms in Aurora, Oregon. It's barely a 20-minute drive from Portland and less crowded than some of the other farms we've visited in the past. We've decided that this is definitely one of our family's new traditions.

It was even more fun this year with Radha being more mobile, talkative and interactive. She is obsessed with kissing pumpkins (even cardboard versions of them at the grocery store, as discovered yesterday). One funny bit from our visit this time was some "fruit confusion" that Radha had between apples and pumpkins. She can certainly identify and say "apple" but when she saw all the pumpkins she kept calling them "apples". Pretty funny:

And remember this picture from October last year?

Radha was mostly still drinking momma's milk and barely eating baby rice cereal at the time. She looked up at her dad so longingly as he ate that delicious fresh apple donut!

Flash forward a year later and Radha finally gets to try the donut this time. Not surprisingly, she enjoyed every cinnamon-sugar-coated bite. (Hey, is that the same grey hoodie from last year that Ro is wearing?)

Pancakes

The latest installment of our ongoing series, Radha In the High Chair. This episode: pancakes!

Heading Up Rocky Butte

(from Terri)

It took a while but we finally put the hiking carrier to use again with a hike up Rocky Butte last weekend. The weather was just too great to pass up getting out in nature.

Our family shadows on the way up:

It was windy at the top, but the park has a nice lawn area:

Mount Hood was visible to the east:

Radha was happy to be out in nature:

Radha and I at the start of the hike. I was not used to carrying this much weight on my back, not to mention uphill, (Ro and I took turns) but it was a good workout!

Counting Song

(from Terri)

Last week Ro and I noticed that Radha was singing a song that we didn't recognize over and over. The song has hand motions with it and a very dramatic "Ahhhhhh!" towards the end. She was singing this in the living room, during meals, and during bath time. It was driving us crazy that we didn't know the song and couldn't sing along with her!

We finally got her singing on video and then asked her daycare teachers about it. Turns out it's a counting song (of course!). Silly parents, we should've guessed that.

A short video of Radha and her Babaji the other week at the park. Although not shown in this video, Radha has really taken to going down slides and stairs head first (with assistance, of course)!