Sundae on a Saturday!

Megha had been sick for the past few days and today for the first time in 4 days, she started being more like herself. She still refused most of the food I offered and had 2 glasses of milk and some prunes all morning and afternoon....that and a small sundae! We were at the part this afternoon and just before leaving ice cream truck was there. All the kids ran to it yelling "Ice Cream". Megha didn't exactly know what the fuss was about until I asked her if she would like some ice cream and that's that! She was all excited and wanted the ice cream right away. When I told her we need to go home and grab money she didnt want me to! We made a quick run for home and returned with just enough money to buy a sundae :); they are quite expensive compared to stores! lol

Here she is eating her strawberry sundae :); I saved some for tomorrow. Edit: not giving her any more milk products tomorrow. Afraid of colds...she got a little this afternoon. I should have just ignored her attempt in getting me Ice cream.

Edit

Flowers and Plants from Jamaica!

From our recent trip to Jamaica, I have understood that most of the flowers and plants which are in India are also in Jamaica! Warm weather plants I guess. It was so nice to see all these beautiful plants; it made me nostalgic. My mom had all these plants in her gardens at one point or the other (She is going to miss gardening after they move into their apartment after dad's retirement).

Anand slept in on the last day of our stay in Jamaica (March 2014) but Megha was up and ready to head out! We stopped by to get breakfast. Here she is with her favorite books, Dr. Suess: Green Eggs and Ham and Fast Train Slow Train (from Thomas the Train series). Nice view isnt it?

The weather was a little cloudy.

After breakfast, we set out to take a walk around the resort to capture the pictures of the flowers.
I do not remember the names of most plants...anyone who reminds me would get $5 a plant :)

Lets just say Plant 1 for the below as I dont know the name. Back home this used to be considered a weed and no one really pays any attention to it:
Plant 1:

Plant 2: This is a very common household plant which requires very little maintenance; Its also used while performing Pooja/prayers at home.

Plant 3: Its a very delicate plant. Soon after you pluck the flower, they start to whither which makes it a poor choice while offering daily prayers in a Hindu household. This looks fairly similar to "December" flowers which are also in purple color but bloom only in winters.

Plant 4: This looks fairly similar to nooru-varahalu plant and I mistook it to be the same plant until I paid close attention to it. These flowers, unlike nooru-varahaalu is purple in color with fairly thin petals compared to nooru-varahaalu plant. But I do remember seeing this too back home.

Plant 5: I simply cannot believe I forgot the name of this plant! I had grown up seeing this practically every single of my life back home! Even in Bangalore my landlords had this! This is very famous plant and is used for various purposes. I remember, my mom used to make small bouquets from these to be given to all the teachers on Teachers Day when we were in school.

Plant 6 and Plant 7: Lets just call these crotons. I never knew the name of these two plants from back home but these are mainly used as fillers in flower vases, both at home and at professional florists.

Kaagitam Puvvulu (in telugu): Ah ha! Finally a name I remember! These are very famous back home and everyone who has a little space in front or backyard are sure to have these. These are called Kaagitam puvvulu (paper-flowers) as they look like flowers made out of paper.

Mandaara puvvu (in Telugu): There are so many verities of hibiscus back home. This is one of them. This is not a fairly common verity but my mom had it on and off in her garden over the years.

Plant 8 and Mudda-Mandaaram: While I dont remember the name of the small cream colored flowers, the one beside it in yellow color is hibiscus. Mudda-mnadaram; mudda meaning think...mandaram meaning hibiscus.

Mudda-mandaram 2: Same as the yellow flowers above, this is also a hibiscus in red color. A very famous and common household plant which is used in daily prayers.

Plant 9: This plant was also called croton by my mom. I am fairly sure it has a name of its own but we always called it croton when we didnt know the specific name. We never had this plant at home (or did we?). I think I had this in Hyderabad when I was working in Bank of America...

Plant 10: This grows a very big tree unlike all the other plants we have seen so far. I dont know the name of this tree either but its not as common as the other plants out here.

Plant 11: This is one of the fancy plants which is seen usually in places like hotels/ resorts. Looks like a banana flower? little bit?

Croton: This for sure is a croton! We had this in every home we lived in back home.

Montego Bay- Jamaica! (March 2014)

Winter this year has been never ending. We had too many cold days and too much snow. Add to that, busy schedules. We decided its time to take a small vacation. We zeroed it down to Montego Bay in Jamaica.

This time Megha brought her Mickey along with her. Here she is awaiting to board the plane.

As soon as we reached MB, we were greeted by lots of sunshine and people letting us know that its OK to drink on the bus taking us to the resort :) It was such a pleasant change from the weather we had been having at home.

As soon as we reached the resort, we headed out to the beach! Lunch was closed by then but we started our vacation with small snack of Jamaican chicken, fries and chili...of course Anand was having his beer and I, Margarita!

Here we are at the beach...the moment Megha had been eagerly waiting for weeks!

In the days leading to the vacation, Anand taught her that we are going to the beach. Before going to Cancun, I taught her that we are going to Chichen Itza...

Me: Where are we going Megha?
Megha: Chichen Itza!
Anand taught her to substitute Chichen Itza with Beach.

After playing in the beach for a while, we showered, changed and came back to the main entertainment area by the pool. We had fresh coconut water after a looong time! Loved it.

Megha ate a small banana. She hadn't really eaten well all day and it made me happy to see her eat at least a small banana.

Mark my words, Megha is going to be famous! In whatever field she chooses her career in. She danced her way around the music, clapping her hands and shaking her...well, shaking her hands, head feet and even hair :) There was a dance competition among 5 ladies (over 18 years of age) and the winner would receive a 20 minute massage. The ladies were dancing so well but Megha takes the cake....when ever the music starts, she would start dancing. At one point, everybody stopped and watched Megha dance and she was on top of the world...I am telling you, she is going to be famous!
Here she is :)

Here is us, as the sun set.

We sat down by the shore and Megha loved throwing small pebbles and sea shells in the water. She would have spent good 30 minutes throwing stones. Of course she said hi to everyone passing by.

The next day, we chose another spot in the beach. We made sand castles and we played away the morning until nap time at 11:30 AM.

Sand castles:

After nap, we went to the kids pool. We played for quite some time there and by 5, we were all tired. Megha of course didnt want to step away from the pool and it took a little persuading to get the moving along. I guess we didnt take any pictures by the pool. 

 Here is us, having a snack and dancing away to the music.
Here is one favorite picture of mine.

That evening (and even that morning), we went to the swings and the childrens play area. Here she is saying, "sun, hiding behind the clouds"...it was a cloudy evening.
We had a BBQ night. With the music on, there was no stopping Megha again :)

The next morning was beach time again! Before that, here is my sweetheart in the lobby.

That day we also went into the Caribbean sea on this...boat. It was so much fun! We should have done this on day one itself, then on day 2 and then again on day 3!

That evening we went to a fancy restaurant. I had famous Jamaican Akee with salt fish, Jamaican chicken with beans rice and oxtail gravy and it was the same with Anand and Megha too :) Here is me!

Here is Megha watching Dora while eating (yes, kids meals are quite big there). I couldnt get a single good picture of Anand as he wouldnt stop a second for me to take a picture.

The next day we left :( Of course we did spend some time at the beach too before we left.

The food was awesome. There was a lot North American food and less of Jamaican. We absolutely loved the fish there; I didnt get enough Jamaican Chicken. We learned new food recipes with simple ground veggies called Ground Provisions. For desserts, custard was awesome :)

We picked up Appletons Rum, Jerk sauce, Jamaican doll for Megha, Blue Mountain coffee powder and Tortuga Rum cake.

All we did was sleep, eat, play, sleep, eat, play and more sleep, more eat and more play! Couldnt have asked for a better vacation!

On the way back, Megha slept through the night. Loved Jamaica.

Sleeping through the night!

Megha reached a big milestone yesterday. For the first time, she had  slept through the night! I believe she had done this with Anand a few days ago but when I am home alone (with A working in the nights), she for the very time slept through!

Usually, I leave her in her room and I sleep in the master bedroom. When she wakes up for the first time (usually around 12), I go give her water (previously milk) and sleep beside her. Anand sleep trained her after I trained her off the bottle (week ago). So, now she wakes up and comforts herself back to sleep.

Even though she slept through, I still kept waking every hour...thinking she will wake up now and she didnt!

A major break through. I only went into her room at 4:45 AM...couldnt stay away for longer as I had to get up and get ready for work in 15 minutes.

So proud of you baby!!

Maple Syrup Farm trip- April 2014

Living in Canada would mean that we love pan cakes and maple syrup! Last year too we took Megha on a maple farm trip; HERE is the Link:

This year we went to a different farm; Sugarbush farm, far away in Stouffville just yesterday.

Day was unusually cold for April (as you can see in the pictures, it was fairly a gloomy day). It was windy and wet. We layered up and headed out. Megha, as is her new style these days, fell asleep 10 minutes before we arrived at the destination!

Anand's friends, Alfredo and family and Rocio, momma Rocio and the twins Arianna and Kassandra joined us. Bundling up 4 toddlers here.

As soon as Megha and her new friend saw the ponies, there was no stopping them! They both ran like the ponies would disappear if they didnt run. Here she is with dad.

Here she is, all brave and all alone! I know now that I am going to look into any cowboys willing teach Megha how to ride a horse (near the cottage would be a great idea).

Here she is admiring the sheep...she was here before the pony but we came back to talk to the sheep again.

Here she is talking to the bunnies...

After those 3 stops by the farm animals, we all went to warm our hands around the fire. Here Anand is attempting to hold her back from running too close to the fire.

With the children's gang! Megha loved her new friend, Gabrielle. We were telling Rocio that the A&K would be running around like Megha in our next years trip.

Here is us again!

Here is Megha leading the entire troop into the maple syrup trail; she is a born leader. She had so much fun running around.

As you can see, she didnt want to stand still even a second to get the picture with momma!

Here she is tasting the maple syrup sample; she had not one, but two! It was so yummy, I cant blame her.

We had such a great day. We stopped by the farms restaurant and had pancakes, Megha got some balloons and in general had a great day. I bought maple butter (yet to taste) and strawberry jam. Cant wait to taste!
Anand was a touch disappointed as he was hoping for taffees which were not there.

It was very close to where my sister in law used to live. My nephew would have joined us maybe, if they were here. I was thinking about him a lot that day since were close by.

Not her fault! Lol...

Megha loves to scribble silly things on her crayola writing board. This evening I was drawing a few images and asked her to identify what they are. She got 1 out of 3 correct.
Well, she can identify all of them...if it were from a book and not drawn by mom. Lol

Bottle weaning? Done!

Very happy and proud to announce that bottle weaning process for Megha is done! She no longer asks for milk/water from a bottle during the nights.
Having said this, she is surely missing the bottle. I can see that. She is not able to express it but I can so see it. This morning my daycare provider told me that she was wanting extra hugs...poor girl. She gets plenty at home but I guess she is just missing her bottle at the daycare and expressing it in a different way.

I have to mention, Farmers Almanac was looked into before I started the weaning process. It told me the days which are suitable. Crazy? Sure, but it worked!