NW Trek Wild Life Park

We went to NorthWest wild life trek near Mt.Rainier park today. We went there when Kedaar was around an year old. It was nice and Kedaar had a lot of fun seeing animals and running around with his friends.

Kedaar went to see Dr.APJ Abdul Kalam

Neeraja went to see Dr.APJ Abdul Kalam when he visited Microsoft and got his autograph.

We all went to see him when there was one more opportunity in an event organized by WATS. Neeraja got an autograph again and Kedaar touched the great man with a hi.

Here are the pictures

Kedaar Portrait Session

We finally went to Picture People studio again to take Kedaar's pictures. We have been thinking of going there for 7months and it finally happened. Kedaar gave some nice poses, check it out here

Kedaar budugu

Below is a cute video Kedaar doing a Budugu act (from famous book "Budugu" by Mullapudi Venkata Ramana & Bapu)

Kedaar and his world of trains

Kedaar is extremely fond of "Thomas and friends" series. He knows around 50 characters from this show and can recognize them, can tell stories about them continuously. In the last 3 months or so, he started collecting various trains from Thomas show. Now he has around 25 trains at home and he just loves playing with them. He also keeps reminding us some 10, 20 trains that we are yet to buy every day (mummy, I want harbey, rusty,stepney, petersam etc etc) :)
Here is a small video he telling the names of his trains.

Ugadi 2009

ABC - Activities Ballplay Conversations

Recently Thomas circus came to Seattle. As kedaar is extremely interested in Thomas stories, we went there. Kedaar had a lot of fun there. Here are few pictures from the occassion.

Kedaar's recent stories

Here are his recent pictures (includes a snow tubing trip, visit to local train station, some photos at home in snow etc)

Its been more than a month since I wrote a blogpost for Kedaar. The most exciting thing with Kedaar in the past 4-5 months I would say is his ability to speak and do
conversations.He understands everything we speak and responds to it as well.He can speak sentences with proper grammar most of the times and we just keep getting surprsed at the vocabulary he has and the variation of his tone based the context , situation.
After coming home from day care, he explains about little things about his day and also different ways he interacted with each of the kids in day care by mentioning their name. His favorite programs are "Dora the explorer", "Go Diego Go" and most imporantly the episodes of "Thomas & Friends". Just like lot of boys, his toys interest is completely around trains, trucks and cars. He knows each and every character in Thomas program and he is not tired watch those episodes even after 100 times. He also likes to read about Hanuman, Krishna, ramayan, Mahabharata.

I just tried to remember few things that he did for this blogpost. Obviously we can never capture his activity in any form. But this is just for my reference in future :)
1. "Good job mummy" when we do something difficult (for him). Also words like "my god", "my goodness"
2. "This is not the time to sleep", "This is not the time to brush"
3. When we give him punishment through "Time outs", he says 'mummy, i want to give a kiss". This is his favorite act to cool people down.
4. Sings "sa ri ga ma pa da ni sa"
5. "Mummy, i want to reach aeroplane, i want to jump and catch it"
5. He knows sevral character names in Ramayana, Mahabharata, krishna story (rama, seeta,hanuma,jayau,arjuna,ksishna,jambavanthudu etc).
6. Saying "No , Never" and laughing cutely like a villain "ha ha ha ha"
7. When Chandra was going on downhill one day and had to do a sudden break, he said "careful daddy, you will get timeout". He knows when he is going uphill and when he is going downhill.
8. We have a poster with good boys habits. He looks at the poster and explain each of the habits.
9. Playing piano and asking people to dance. He has great rhythm and loves music. He can repeat beginning of songs he listens. One of his favorites "hey ta ta, veerudena
nenu korukunna" from "avakai biryani"
10. when we give him water and he doesnt want it , he sayd "mummy, too much water". He also uses "too much" in other contexts such as "I love you too much mummy".
11. One of the things I love is , if we wear new dress or something, he comes and tells "you are looking so cute mummy, you are so nice mummy".
12. he knows how to take pictures with Camera. He closes his eyes while taking picture. : )
13. He has sktechers shoes. He knows what are all his friends are wearing. he sayd "aryan has spider man shoes", "meghna has flower shoes" etc
14. if we aks him somethign lie "are you finished", he answers in full sentences like "Yes, i am finished", "Yes, i do want it" etc
15. he plays with numbers magnets he has. he pus them on fridge and says "everybody go up" , "everybody go down". He also puts sun glasses for all of us and says "everybody has glasses", "nobody has glasses" etc

Few other sentences/activities are below

shh, quiet
Thank you mummy (when you point some medicine when he gets hurt)
Thomas and Percy need to have fishy crackers
i want to put humidifier
Humming the "ringa ringa" song from slumdog millionaire and slowly tranisitioning that song to "ringa ringa roses"
that is a cop helicopter
may be
she is kinda (mix of telugu and English)
diego, sit properly
mummu, u turn faster, i am turning slower and slower
going to fly
putting dress to daddy with towel and saying "daddy has a new dress"
mummy. I will measure you, your nose, your hair
I will eat myself, you dont need to feed me
emily is hitting me (calling mummy with emily character name)
you are emily, daddy is percy and I am thomas (Giving names from Thomas program to every one)
I want to put mountain (with moisturizing creme)
I want pokemon brush
harold - hello thomas
school bus, I want to go school bus
mount rain ear
i dont want to sleep
maiyyabhartha
rakshas! why hit jatayu, why why why, I am going to give you timeout, you are a bad boy
jatayu, I will put mandhu, don't cry
kaikeyi
sita
hanuma
sorry ganapthi, I don't want to mean it
spectacle bear, chinchita,
sloth, sammy the sloth
i want to see booots
air ambulance
ambulance helicopter
I want to go on a plane, helicopter
I want to touch stars
I want to put sarigaa
thomas is my best friend
I want to mix sambaar
I want to switch on the dryer
Are you ok mummy
I am sorry, I don't want to mean it
garbage truck, fire truck, cranky the crane

Kedaar @ Snow Tubing

Kedaar's fun with Bhogi pallu & Kolatam

Some of our friends gottogether and celebrated this year's Pongal at our home. As actual Pongal (14th,15th) was on a weekday. we did Bhogi pallu the previous weekend itself. Last year Kedaar was much younger to enjoy this, but this time he had a lot of fun and thoroughly enjoyed the bhogi pallu program.
We also attended the Sankranthi event conducted by WATS this year. Along with some other cultural programs, they arranged for bhogi pallu & "Kolatam". Interesting thing for us is that Kedaar danced for almost 11/2 hrs during Kolatam program with sticks. He was just trying to imitate what other elder kids were doing (dance with the rhythm and spin). He didnt even want to come home and cried a lot when we were returning from the event.
We should soon join him in some dance/music school :)
Here are some pictures from these ocassions.

Welcome to 2009 & India trip

Wish you all a very happy new year 2009. 2008 has been fun and we hope will be lot more fun with Kedaar.

We went to a 5 week India trip on Nov 21st and just returned last week. This is second India trip for Kedaar with the first being when he was 4 months old.
Kedaar thoroughly had fun during the trip with grand parents, cousins (rutwik, Sunny,Pavan,Padma), relatives. He quickly got adjusted in terms of activities, meeting people etc though he had some trouble with change of weather, milk initially.We also visited Tirupati this time.He talked to every one without fear and impressed them. He also started speaking more Telugu words, sentences than he did when he was in US.
Some of the cute/interesting things about this trip.
1. Kedaar saw his first movie in theatre during this trip. The movie is "Vinayakudu". He saw the first hald nicely saying "big TV" "big TV". Hot got little bored by second half and made me stand outside for the rest : )
2. Kedaar's top most interest in this trip was going in auto. Starting from the first day, he managed to sit in auto by himself. Irrespective of how many people were in the auto, he wanted space for himself without sitting in lap and would look at buses, other autos going on the road. Even in night sleep , he dreamt of "go auto".
3. Kedaar's next top interest was going up and down in the elevator that was just before the door in my parents apartment. His day started with "wear shoes" to "go elevator". He also exactly remembered the floor where my parents stayed in. My brother's son Rutwik,sister's son Suny taught him to do "balle balle" dance which he would do as a routine while he was in the elevator.
4. Some other fun activities he did are making chapathis, stand on stool before the wash basin and wash hands continuously,cleaning the house with broom, putting "muggu" before the house,helping grand mother with vegetables,sitting with grand father for "Puja" time,going for piggy back rides on every one,going on motor bikes,"go out" with every one who is ready by holding their hands nicely, watching melam (procession) from the apartment,"putting hands to take "Vaddu" in tirupati (Kedaar says "la" as "va", so he said "vaddu" for "laddus"),looking at buffalos and counting them,putting the clips used while drying clothes in different shapes,swinging by standing, sitting in wood easy chair.
5.Kedaar travelled in different types of transportation during this trip. We went in train to Kurool (Kedaar always wanted to go into "choo choo train" whenever he saw Thomas train videos), returned from Kurnool in a bus, went to Tirupati in car, went on motor bikes with uncle and pedananna and finally went on autos almost daily.
6. Some Telugu words he uses very cutely these days during and after the India very cutely aer "Oka kshanam mummy","ayyayyayyooo","chichichicheee","sarigga" ,"pattaledu","battalu","thaggindi?","cheyyi thiyyi mummy"etc.One more cute sentence he started speaking recently whenever he falls down or cannot get up etc is "I am falling doown, can you help me daddy/mummy".
Here are some pictures from this trip.

Kedar turned 2

Kedaar quite handsomely entered into age 2 on Nov 8th.We had a birthday party at home that day with Elmo theme. We also celebrated his birthday at his day care on the previous day. Kedaar had a lot of fun being a birthday boy while doing things like blowing candles, cutting birthday cake etc.
Many Happy Returns of the Day Kedaar. With your cute acts, you bowled over many.

Kedaar's blog book

Just like last year, we printed Kedaar's blog as a book.
You can see a preview of book at http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/invited/283134/0504c402720fa51c70e3093bab0a1d84
It took us ton of effort this time with crashing blurb software,
but finally it made it to publishing with Neeraja's determination.
Kedaar will cherish the memories when he grow up.

Beautiful fall colors

Fall colors are realy beautiful in Seattle. Most of the roads especially in our house community (Issaquah highlighands) and Microsoft are the best palces according to me to see colors.
Here are the pictures we took today with Kedaar and fall colors.

Kedaar and friends pictures