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!

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.

During this rotation she’s had (and will have) a couple of overnights at the hospital as well as some late nights. Tonight is a late night.

We’ve got a really nice routine in the evenings, the three of us, and when Sarah’s not here, it’s a bittersweet. I miss having her here, but I also get some extra one-on-one time with Tatiana.

We had a *very* fun night tonight–after dinner and a couple of diaper changes, of course.

First we danced together for about 20 minutes or so. Louis Armstrong providing the accompaniment.

Then Louis and I had a duet. Louis playing the trumpet, me playing strawberries (that’s what they’re called, right?) on Tatiana’s belly–much to the amusement of all.

Then we played a little hop on pop, which right now is one of Tatiana’s favorite games.

And then, as it was nearing Tatiana’s bed time, we did a bunch of talking. Tatiana gets a bit loopy when she gets tired and usually has a whole lot to say about it.

Finally, the bedtime routine: bath with bathtime song, storytime, and to bed with bedtime song.

A most memorable evening!

And now, for the (grand)moms, some video with baby sounds:

Laughing Baby:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Pretend I’m Wearing Pants:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Quick: What’s grosser than gross?

Tatiana spitting up down the inside of Sarah’s tank-top.

What’s grosser than that?

Tatiana spitting up in Rahul’s mouth.

GROSS.

I’ve been pretty lucky in the spit-up department. My shirts? Not so much. About half of my favorite t-shirts now have a long dark patch down one side of them. Some of them even have patches on both sides of them!

Today, however, I had the worst spit-up luck EVER.

So, I was holding Tatiana like this:

…and Sarah said she was smiling, so I looked up at her and started to say something… probalby something like “having a good time up there, little baby girl?” Who knows, though, ’cause right when I opened my mouth, it was full of spit-up.

Gross.

I’m not sure if the bile I tasted was mine or hers.

So gross.

Okay, third happiest time of day.

Anyway, what we usually do is have a sing-a-long! For donating at BloggersForACure, The Lovely Mrs. Davis sent us a set of 4 children’s CDs, 3 of which are by Elizabeth Mitchell (On her site, click on “flower” or “sunshine” and then “listen” to hear  some tracks).

They are GREAT!

So, as the nanny is closing the door behind her, I lay Tatiana down on a blanket near Baby’s First Boombox, put in a CD, and, on my hands and knees, put my face about a foot away from hers and sing some duets with Ms. Mitchell.

Some days, Tatiana’s already a bit tired out, so she just stares up at me, smiling from time to time… but on other days! Oh, on other days, she’ll start singing along with me!

Mostly in the form of “agagagagag” or “pfffvvvvt”, but it’s music to my ears. Ain’t never been better lyrics written than those.

Here’s a video from a couple of weeks ago (when I was still learning the words):Hmmm… watching it again, I guess I’m the more entertaining part of it… but she’s still adorable.

Click here to view the embedded video.

We sing a lot around here. Tatiana has a bathtime song, a bedtime song, and a whole slew of made-up nonsense songs throughout the day. Sarah is especially good at making up lyrics—all of that improv experience… and genius. I, on the other hand, am very good at highly-repetitive 5 word songs like: “Diaper Change Time”.

It goes:

Diaper change time!
Diaper change ti-ime!
Diaper change time!
Diaper change ti-ime!

It’s a catchy little ditty.

This month Mindy started coming in to watch Tatiana during the day, allowing Sarah to return to medical school and allowing me to keep my home office a home office instead of a home office/nursery.

As Sarah noted in her last post, it’s really hard to hand littlebabygirl over to someone else in the morning, but it’s somthing that our lives necessitate.

It’s still nice to work from a home office, though–every hour or so, I can pop my head out, say hi to littlebabygirl, and get back to work. I think it’s nice for her to have some continuity with me and Sarah, and it’s nice for me to be able to go out, see her smiling face and lend a little perspective to my day.

In the meantime, Tatiana has learned a new batch of tricks:

1. Sleeps on her side!

2. Rolls onto her tummy!

3. Sleeps on her tummy!

4. Sing-a-long with Daddy!

5. Looks at us and cries when she wants something instead of just crying. (Actually, she cries very little these days: When she’s overtired, or when she’s rolled over onto her tummy and doesn’t want to be there anymore.)

(And, of course, we have more pictures up at flickr. We probably update that much more frequently than the blog, lately…)

There’s more story to tell, about all of this baby-birthing stuff, but there’s one thought that I’d like to capture before I forget. It’s not really sweet or life-changing, but it was an interesting realization I had during Sarah’s laboring.

In imagining what labor and delivery would be like, I had imagined everything much larger than life.

I believed that Sarah would be impervious to pain.
I believed I would be able to sooth her discomfort simply by laying my hand on her forehead.
I imagined that when standing by Sarah’s head, that the OB would be delivering the baby 10 feet away.

I think that by making everything so abstract, I was keeping myself from getting too scared.

As it turned out, everything was exactly life-sized. That was far, far scarier.

I was only the man I am and Sarah was only the woman she is. Which, happily, was more than enough.

(photos: Jessica Hutfless, new Auntie)

In the last few weeks, however, I’ve been able to put a present from Cathie-mom to good use. For my last birthday, when Sarah was about 6 months pregnant, she got me a great Prana sweatshirt. It’s very comfortable, looks really good on me(!), and, most importantly, is sweat wicking.

As the delivery date was approaching, and Sarah’s nesting instincts kicked in, and I was sick, and have I mentioned that Sarah’s in medical school, and oh, by the way, she’s pregnant, there was an occassion or two, where Sarah needed to shed a few tears.

But let me tell you, this sweathshirt has kept me snug and dry through the whole thing. I remember the days when I would let her cry into my t-shirt-wearing-shoulder! Damp, damp, damp! Now: Damp no more! Thank you, sweat-wicking outerwear!

According to my uncle, they grew up as “Garg”.

It’s a long story… and I’m still not sure which parts of which story are true.

Anyway, with that information in hand, we figured if my dad could make up his last name, perhaps it made sense for us to change both of our last names from Hutfless and Gupta to something else.

We had a list of names, but the one we kept coming back to was Jalebi. We thought that would be very funny.

“Sarah Jalebi”

Good, no?

Obviously we didn’t do it then… but it’s not too late now: Jalebi Gupta?

Jalebi Gupta.

I like it.

(And for those of you who don’t know: Jalebi, picture above, is an indian sweet�deep-fried, syrup-soaked batter.)