Want to Walk

While Deven & Daddy were having fun here, Mommy & Rohan went for a quick trip to Naani & Grandpa's house in MD.

Rohan had lots of fun in the warm weather, splashing about in water, drinking water, burping & saying 'burp' then giggling like crazy as he made Naani & Grandpa laugh.

Mommy enjoyed the warmth, the greenery, and the country crickets, but not the mosquitoes.

On the way home, Rohan kept using 3-word sentences like 'Want to walk' in the airplane - which we did, up & down the aisle endlessly (the flights were longer than expected for weather delays, ugh). So nice that he's speaking well these days.
Missing MD already!

Fw: Gourmet pizza

----- Forwarded Message ----
From: [Daddy]

Went to a pizza place rated the best in SF - Delfina. All Deven 'ate'
was apple juice. 'i want to eat fish at home' he said to my chagrin.
The spicy water melon caused an intense but short crying bout. $40
later, I am at Dolores Park at a big artsy hippie event, Deven
playing and half a gourmet pizza in a doggy bag. But a day with my
quirky older son: priceless. :)

What took me so long?

Because I work in the renewable energy industry, and we live in eco-conscious San Francisco, you'd think that I'd have an appreciation for things like basic home energy efficiency. I guess I have done a teeny bit: We have already
- replaced horrid old aluminum-framed single-paned windows with high-efficiency double-paned ones,
- caulked and weather-stripped around leaky doors and other windows.

But about a month ago, after living in this home for 4 years (and knowing that it's cold and drafty and not very energy-efficienty the entire time, and Daadi's complained since day 1 about it, saying the heat just rises away), we paid for a proper Energy Audit by the energy audit firm Recurve.

They were great - spent a few hours crawling around our home, checking things out - and the results were surprising. Fully 45% of the heat in our home & 57% of the cooling (we don't have A/C, but we still pay ~$200/month for electricity) is lost, straight through the roof.

Basically, insulation should cover ~ 12" thick above the top floor (which our unit is in our building); and ours covers 0 - 3", for a R-Value of ~ 3.

Just sealing some holes into the attic, checking some old wiring, and adding insulation up there should take us from the R-Value of 3, to 38.
There are also more-expensive things we could do - but not that expensive; such as upgrading our baseboard-heater units, and replacing our boiler (but those won't be as impactful, so we'll likely forego those upgrades). So even a minimal amount of spending now for a bit o' caulking and insulation - while it won't be free, assuming we decide to stay in this home, it will pay for itself quickly. Wow!

Rohan is Robin, and I'm Batman

Deven announced this, this morning as both were eating raisins. Rohan agreed, but preferred to be called Rohan, not Robin (understandable!)

Photo is of 'huggies' - when we ask them, the boys will spontaneously hug each other nicely. It's a good contrast to things like biting (Deven broke skin on Rohan's back with his teeth yesterday, for no apparent reason).

Back to the main point of this post: I think I know what costumes the boys will wear for Halloween this year. More importantly, I love that our boys are friends.
:)

Old Family Photos

I've always loved old family photos; and I've always loved the power of digital to bring old photos back to life. I can now see where Rohan gets his impish grin (my mom), and where Deven gets his good looks (looks a little like my great-great-uncle!)

When I was at Uncle Helly's funeral, Aunt Carolyn allowed me to take 1 small album with some precious images, because I know of a service here in San Francisco that can digitize and fix image problems. Finally, 18 months later, I can report that the service, Digital Pickle, did a beautiful job. Some of the photos were in *very* bad shape; but they did a great job of fixing lines/creases/spots/etc. It wasn't free, but it was absolutely worth the price paid; and I will use them again (and Mom & Dad, next time I'm there, I'm going to ship a lot of what you have there off to Digital Pickle - because they have free shipping, and were so good at scanning and fixing these old images - it's totally worth the price!)

Family members have been emailed a link to the entire album; but I won't add them all as some are private (if you're a friend and want to see 'em, please let me know and I'll send you the link too). Family: I have the high-res versions of these too; that I can share/print/download if you want, as well.

Photos here include:

My Grandma Frieda - a woman for whom I have only 1 faint memory, but I hear was a wonderful person.


My Uncle Helly, Aunt Sigi, Grandma Frieda, my Mom (now "Naani" - she's the infant), and Uncle Joergi - this photo must've been taken in mid-1945, given my mom's age. I know my Mom is going to love this, because very few photos exist of her ages ~ 0-5, because post-war Austria was a tough place, and there simply aren't that many photos like this that exist. The original is so tiny that you can't see my mom's face, but you can in the digitized version, which is wonderful!


Uncle Helly & Uncle Joergi


My Great-Great Uncle, (I don't even know his name, I think the caption in the album said "Motz" but I can't really read it).

There are LOTS more for the family to enjoy, including the only known photo of my grandparents on their wedding day. Please, everyone in the family, check it out -and help me correct any mistakes in the captions! :)

Reading with Chaacha

Chaacha Satya (Yogesh's Uncle, 10 years younger than Daada - younger-brother Uncles are called "Chaacha" in Hindi) came to visit us for the evening, and we had a grand time together. He's en route to a 50th Anniversary party for Chaacha Jaggi & Chaachi Kanu in Ithaca, NY (leaving tomorrow morning from SFO @ 6:15am...luckily Yogesh is taking him to the airport, not me!)

It was lovely to see Chacha reading Rohan & Deven stories, talking about "titli" (butterflies) and other characters in the Hindi-English books they read together. I wish we lived closer to relatives and could do this more often...

Bye-bye, bumblebees

We spent a lovely weekend with Satya Chacha (Yogesh's Uncle), at his hotel (photo from the pool/courtyard area) in Yuba City, California; where he is on a summer research assignment (he's a professor of Anthropology @ the University of Saskatchewan in Canada).

The summer here in San Francisco has been particularly cold & foggy this year, and we'd never been to Yuba City, so we were so happy to have the 2 days of unadulterated bright-blue skies, a pool and hot-tub (latter treated as a kiddie-pool of course) and warm balmy evenings.

The weekend also marks a milestone - last Friday Deven 'graduated' from his first classroom ever, and is no longer a Bumblebee at Holy Family Day Home. Tomorrow he starts as a Kangaroo - and instead of having 13 other "young 2s" as classmates (most, but not all, potty-trained) & 3 teachers, he'll have 23 other fully-potty-trained 3-year old classmates & still just 3 teachers. Frankly, the idea of 24 screaming 3-year olds in a 8:1 ratio sends a shiver down my spine - I have no idea how his teachers Megan, Tahoe, and Jenny (who he knew before briefly in Bumblebees) are going to do it. This is 1 example of why he's already in preschool and I'm not a stay-at-home Mom. :)

Yogesh said that both he and teacher Victoria in the Bumblebees classroom got a little verklempt on Friday when we realized it was Deven's last day in that classroom. Deven, of course, has been prepared for the transition, with visits to the classroom and lots of discussions and meetings with the new teachers - so I have no fear of his transition - I'm more worried that I'll pop into the Bumblebees classroom and start hanging his sweater on his old hook, before stares from the new kids make me laugh and go to the classroom. Besides, in Bumblebees, Deven had been hanging out with another classmate, who will go into the other classroom for 3-year olds; this isn't altogether bad, as I blame him for Deven's rascally statements of late... *grin*.

Rohan is doing well - has been saying "NO!" with gusto (along with many other words in his growing vocabulary) for a few months now, and is as cute and charming and difficult as any 19-month old little brother can be.

It seems like just yesterday, we were leaving Deven at HFDH in tears every morning...and now he leaves us happily, and comes home chattering about school every night. Tomorrow, we have a short-day for the first day in the new classroom - I suspect as much for the teachers to get their bearings with the new kids, as for the kids. We will see how the first day of Year 2 goes!

Rohan and his Blaaanket

As everyone who knows Rohan knows he loves his blanket. Specifically
the green froggie blanket Naani Gerda made for him. Deven and I
(daddy) have taken to tease him a bit about it - and he follows along.

Here are two pictures of Rohan and his blaaanket (that's how he says his).

You CAN try this at home

A new safe form of bungee jumping has evolved. No helmet required!