Friends, Family, Ladies and Gentlemen, the 2nd Annual Gupta Family Baby Name Face-off has begun!

The tournament consists of 32 names: 16 picked by Rahul and 16 picked by Sarah. We asked Tatiana if she had any ideas, and she said “ackitow” (which translates to “tractor”), so we decided she wasn’t taking this seriously enough.

Each list of 16 names was compiled in secret.  We then pitted them, one name against another. First Sarah revealed one of her names, and then I picked one of mine to compete against it. Then I picked one of mine, and she one of hers to try to beat mine. And so on.  It was intense.

Pairings in place, they were divided into the divisions you see below.

It is now up to you. Every week you will vote, and every week the list will be cut in half ’til we have one name left (Sarah wouldn’t let me add Highlander to the list, but we all know that would have won).

The voting system we’re using allows you to vote more than one time, but we ask that you limit it to one vote per person, please. If you want to come back to the page to see who’s winning, click on the link that says “show results” instead of voting again… We’ll know if you don’t. We’re keeping track.

Also, please feel free to use the comments area at the bottom of the post for discussing the finer points of each name.

Click below to continue on to the tournament!

Read the rest of this entry »

So, obviously, this hasn’t been a good year for updating this site, but like many an earnest blogger, I intend to do better.

I was trying to come up with nice sounding excuses, like I’d rather spend time with Tatiana and Sarah than write about it, but, really, it probably comes mostly down to my travel schedule so far this year:

12/2007- Jan 4 - Bay Area (family)
Jan 20-26 Las Vegas (work)
March 24-27 Salt Lake City (family)
March 28-Apr 6 Bay Area (family)
Apr 16-18 Austin (work)
May 20-Jun 2 Bay Area (family)
June 20-23 LA (fun)
July 11-14 Atlanta (family)
July 18-27 St. Martin/Atlanta (Vacation)
Aug 11-15 James in Omaha (work)
Aug 15-31 Bay Area (family)

Though, in the short-term future, things aren’t looking so free either:

Sep 5-15 Golden, CO (family)
Sep 15-18 MN,WI (work)
Oct 1-4 Florida (work)
Oct 22 - Itty-Bitty Due Date

Nonetheless, I’m hopeful that you’ll hear more from us.

At the very least, you’re guaranteed a once-a-week post for the next 6 weeks.

Why?

Because of the 2nd Annual Gupta Family Baby Name Tournament!  Yay!

You may remember last year’s tourney, in which Amelie beat out the unlikely contender, Natalie.  Poor Natalie.  And though we didn’t choose Amelie for Tatiana’s first name, it is her middle name, so well picked, friends!

No matter.  We hope you’re ready for this year’s tournament.  It’ll be starting tomorrow morning and we’ll be kicking it off with an e-mail blast to all of you who aren’t reading this because we haven’t posted in so long and you’ve given up on and forgotten about us.

For a taste of what to expect, these are the names which didn’t make the final cut:

Rahul, Jr.
Rahul Twopointoh
Terrance
Orin
Jackson
Raj
Dashell
Heath
Barack
Dean
Enan
Javed
Satya
Rishi
Xander
Uren
Bo
Victor
Krishan
Lloyd
Boris
Atticus
Adrian
Anton
Ivan
Maxim
Misha
Roman
Julian
Aaron
Evan
Grant
Noah
Neil
AIdan
Benjamin
Rehan
Ray
Jay
Kavi

See you tomorrow!

Did we mention Itty-Bitty is a boy?

(As you can see we’re starting slowly here… just trying to get back into the blogging swing of things!)

Enjoy…

It’s been a while.

I keep telling myself that I need to “catch up” on 2007 posts before I start writing new stuff for this year, but at the rate I was going (0 posts), I wasn’t ever going to get any new stuff up.

So, as a brief catch-up:  Tatiana is walking, signing (her favorite sign is “light”), talking (her only consistent word is “dog”, but we can hear “cat”, “mom” and “dad”, too), dancing (to anything), eating solid food (loves oranges),  and seems to have outgrown her MSPI (Milk Soy Protein Intolerance).  Hopefully we’ll backfill with some posts about all of that.

But tonight, I want to write a quick post about our new morning routine.

We pretty much use Tatiana as our alarm clock.  She wakes up between 6 and 6:15 everyday, which gives us about an hour together before Mindy arrives to take over.

One of us gets up, greets Tatiana with a lively “Good Morning”, or some wake-up song, pulls her out of her crib, and brings her to our bed.  We’ll sit and chit-chat with her for a couple of minutes before one of us gets up to make her bottle and two cups of tea.

Bottle made, tea made, we all sit in the bed and enjoy a morning treat.  Usually Tatiana sits between us on the bed drinking her bottle,  and we sip our tea.

Once her bottle is done (which is usually before our tea is done) we bring a couple of toys to the bed — a book and a  dog-something, and sit around and play together for about half an hour.

It’s a really nice way for the three of us to start our day.  I know that Sarah and I certainly appreciate it.

It’s especially nice for me, I think, because it reminds me a lot of home and my family.  Sheel and I have often spent time sitting at the foot of mom and dad’s bed in the morning having tea, reading horoscopes and talking…  Since Sarah’s joined the family, she’s joined the morning bed as well (when we’re in Milpitas of course), and now we’re going to have to fit Tatiana in, too!   It’s so fun!

Anyway, I’d better get to bed so I can enjoy the morning.

This past weekend has been full of “firsts.” Baby has been sitting up for a while, and working on crawling for a week or two…but last Friday, she started crawling for real! And in the last few days she has also started pulling herself up (including in her crib when she is supposed to be sleeping), talking “sad” instead of just crying sad and holding her own bottle. It’s like she just figured out a whole bunch of things at once.

And she also has two teeth all of a sudden! Baby has exploded!

Anyway, here is another video for your holiday viewing pleasure. Can’t wait to see lots of you in California.

UPDATED POST: NOW WITH SIDE AND BACK ACTION!!
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Poor neglected baby blog. Not taking time for a much overdue post right now, just posting a few videos of our crawling, drinking and carousing baby for those grandmas and aunties that are so far away.

Enjoy!

Happy holidays everyone!

When LittleBabyGirl get sleepy, she rubs her eyes.

When she’s particularly sleepy and we’re holding her, she’ll rub her face on our chest our shoulder.

Tonight, she was doing this—rubbing her face on my shoulder—and then she stopped and looked up at my face.

She then reached up with her hand to touch my cheek, and pulled herself up so that we were face to face (I helped a little).

Next, she looked at my face, and pushed her nose gently against my nose.

Finally, she pulled back a little and smiled a big, big smile.

It was magic.

This morning we started Tatiana on solids.

She did not like it. Well, not the eating of it. The playing of it was a blast!

About 3 minutes worth of full-body squash action: