Speaking of singing, here’s a video we did when Tatiana was 5 weeks old… oh, so long ago!

Go Bears!

These days the nanny leaves around 3PM, so I get a little one-on-one time with littlebabygirl. And I’m convinced that this is Tatiana’s happiest time of day. Well, except when she’s eating… or playing with Sarah… or…

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.

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.

We have a nanny!

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…)

Well fans…looks like maternity leave is coming to an end. I’m starting school again on Monday. Feeling very mixed about going back, but I think it is going to be okay. I’m really tempted not to go, but if I just stick it out for TEN MORE MONTHS then I’ll finally get that degree! Might as well. I’ve been working on the stupid thing for six years now.

We have hired a nanny though, so I think the transition will go all right. Supernanny came last week for a few days–kinda like an orientation since I was here with her most of the time–and things went well. It’s really hard to hand Little Baby Girl over to her, but fortunately she’s awesome! Rahul and I like her so much that we are afraid she must be a serial killer or something–she’s just so great. We are really lucky to have found her.

Anyway, Little Miss herself is growing like crazy, and getting to be SO much fun! We went to California for 2 1/2 weeks at the start of the month. While we were there she suddenly discovered that her hands can DO things and she’s been very busy ever since: touching her toes, patting her little paws, reaching for toys, grabbing my nose. And she smiles and smiles and smiles now. It’s just amazing to watch her and play with her. I love her so much!

Here are some pictures of her little 3-month-old self:

We just got back last night from our first “family” vacation. I was afraid Baby might scream all the way there and back, but she was actually quite mellow (well, no more crying than usual). Rahul had to go to Las Vegas for work, so we all went! We stayed at a posh hotel and the trip was a nice balance of work and play. My mom came out for two of the four nights as well to “babysit” for us, so we even got to go to the strip for a night.

Anyway, just a quick post (since now vacation is over and it’s back to business for all of us), but here are some pictures from the trip:

(UPDATE (5/29/07): Here’s a link to all the pictures)

Dear Mommy,

I love you,
Tatiana Amelie Gupta

Do you think Rahul helped her write this? I don’t know…she’s very advanced.

We went to the Hot Shops open house on Saturday with Tatiana–not her first art show, but her fourth! I thought that once Baby was here we were going to be housebound, but so far we’ve been able to take her out quite a bit. It’s taken some practice, but we’ve gotten much better at just throwing her in the car and taking off (wait too long and inevitably you will have to feed, diaper or clothe her again).

Anyway, on Saturday Rahul was “wearing” Baby, and let me tell you: he created quite a stir. ALL the ladies had to come over to check out Tatiana (and Rahul too). One even commented to me: “Pretty cute. She is too.”

So all you single guys out there: get a baby. The ladies will not be able to resist you. Just make sure you hire a babysitter (you know…for later, wink, wink).

We’ve finally set up our Flickr account! We’ve only titled, described and tagged about half of the pictures so far, but there are 300+, nearly unfiltered pictures for your viewing pleasure! (“Nearly unfiltered” means that there are lots and lots of similar-looking pictures of Tatiana’s face.)

You can always get to our flickr page by clicking on the “flickr badge” in the sidebar, or, if you’d like, subscribe to the RSS feed for pictures directly from flickr.

We’ll keep posting pictures here, and we’ll let you know when we’ve got a bunch of updates on Flickr, but that’ll be a good place for you to keep up with our pictures.

My best friend and accomplished bloger, Jeff, has teamed up with some other bloggers to help raise money for issues which are important to them.

To that end, they have started Bloggers for a Cure, a blog where they encourage you to donate the cause, and offer up some really cool prizes you could win. The first cause is the Great Strides Walk for cystic fibrosis research.

One of the writers has a son born with CF, and has posted a letter on Jeff’s blog, writing about his past experiences with the walk, his son’s progress, and some information on CF research in general. R ead the letter here, read about the prizes here, and then donate here.

If you can, please visit Bloggers for a Cure, and lend a hand.

Well…not exactly. But you can vote for a photograph by my sister Jessica here! At the very least, go read her description about the photo (featuring pregnant Me as the unsuspecting model). I thought it was really sweet.

See her entry in the sidebar!