Thanksgiving

We celebrated our Thanksgiving with a little nuclear family breakfast, which is definitely our favorite meal of the day. 

The real party was planned for the weekend, with a menu of a roast chicken, lots of sides, desserts, and mulled wine to go with it all.  We were expecting 6 people in addition to ourselves, but only ONE showed up!! Luckily this turned out to be a good person-to-stuffing ratio in the end. 

Mina did not like taking a family photo, but after multiple attempts we got something workable. 

We walked down to the Port Washington park to watch their Christmas tree lighting.  It was a cute little place where they had little kids singing songs and a few helpful adults handing out hot chocolate.  Then Santa showed up in a fire truck! Apparently Port Washington's entire population is composed of children, so we weren't able to get too close. 

Here is a note from Mina: qqq dddddddddedcdddddd

Brainwashing in progress

Dada has trained Mina well. 

GLC

Shopping for furniture with Masi and Mausa

Teacher's pet at daycare. One of the administrators likes to hang onto Mina while she works.

Lunch at Bareburger.  Also, she seems to be liking the new haircut. 

Mina likes to climb into pots and pans.  

Clowning around 

She looooooves yogurt

Mina is quite the snuggler. When she gets up from a nap she insists on snuggling mama, bhalu, pink bear and monkey all at the same time.  

Taking her first steps a couple of days ago!

Practicing her walking outside

She has been using lots of words: dada, mama, up, dudu (hindi for milk), booh (book), ligh (light), yewees (shoes), dots, nuze (nose), dow (down), obul (oval), nigh nigh (night night), pauh pauh (pom pom), and pumpum (pumpkin).  I'm also pretty sure she thinks the TV is called "no-no". 

Still loving the spoons

The perfect fall day back in October.  Winter is coming late this year. 

Projects: preparing for the holidays

We are surrounded by gorgeous trees so on our morning walk today we gathered fallen branches with pine needles, pine cones and bright yellow and fiery red maple leaves. I started by untwisting an unused hanger to make a circular frame.  I used some twine to tie on the pine needles, and then stuck in a bunch of pretty yellow and red leaves in two layers. I used a glue gun to make sure they didn't fall out and also stuck on a few of the pine cones.  The final step was to spray on a layer of lacquer to make sure the leaves didn't shrivel up too soon.  

I trimmed off all of the stems and extra twine and left it to air-dry outside.  Voila!  All within the time it takes to watch "Little Women" on Amazon prime.  

A plague swept through the household

An unnatural pestilence swept through our home in Mina's 13th month.  We are thinking that Mina brought home a respiratory bug that took her, both of us, Grandpa, and Masi out for two weeks.  She then proceeded to transmit a second cold to us immediately after that, so we have been sick with the worst upper respiratory tract symptoms for 33 consecutive days (!).  

Poor Mina had it worse than the rest of us because she also managed to get conjunctivitis in between the two colds.  Luckily we have a real trooper here, and she kept her chin up.

  

Here she is, finally well again, has gotten back her appetite, and is busy begging for food. 

Dancing on Diwali