Sunday, December 16, 2007

Back to the sewing machine

I LOVE to sew! But dont get as much time to do it as I'd like. But since the arrival of baby Ranesh I've found some excuses to go to the fabulous Fabric Depot (the largest store on the west coast) and ooh and aah at the fabrics. I rekindled my love with a project to sew a rather simple blanket for Ranesh, but while I was there I found more cool fabric and walked away with a bunch of patterns and fabrics to sew for Anjali.

Ranesh's blanket is really cute. I found this fabric called 'Rescue me' with fire engines and police cars, and the the softest micro fleece... I love the luxurious micro fleece available now. The combination looks so great and warm. I also sew them big as the standard crib blanket is really small when kids are beyond about 6 months.I also grabbed some corduroy fabrics to make a skirt for Anjali. I decided to do a three tier with solid red and red cherry print. This was really fun and quite easy. And here it is on my busy model!

Morning routine

We have a pretty standard morning routine. Ranjeewa wakes up first and makes coffee (he and Anjali grind the coffee the night before). I don't wake up till I hear the five beeps of the coffee maker encouraging me to get out of bed. Usually this also wakes up Anjali. We take our coffee and Anjali her milk downstairs. Ranjeewa and I settle down in front of our side by side computers for our routine of reading email, news, weather, horoscope, etc. Anjali has a little play kitchen next to our work areas and lately she's been saying "hey, you guys, do you want some coffee-Chocolate-ice cream?" We think this is a breakfast food because she usually offers this to us in the morning. We have also been saying "we are not "you guys""; we are parents... so she has been saying "hey you guys parents"....! Can't win, but endlessly entertaining :-)

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

A first cousin

At 1:35 pm on December 4th Anjali was blessed with her very first cousin. We were excitedly waiting for the arrival of Ranesh Wickramatillake. Of course Anjali has no idea of what a 'cousin' is but she figured we were pretty excited about it, and realized that CD mami and Aseni nandi now have a little baby, when two weeks ago they didn't. I also realized that she took it to mean something special... when she started pulling things I had bought for Ranesh, I said 'dont pull, that its for your cousin' and she quickly put it away... so I abused the "its for your cousin" slogan a bit (anything for my toddler defense arsenal). Of course this has given me an excuse to buy boy stuff...Now she is waiting to see cousin 'wanesh' (she still does not say the R right!). CD and Aseni congrats...! We can't wait to see him...

As traditional as my brother is he called Sri Lanka with the time of birth for the 'akuru' for an auspicious name. When I spoke to my mother she asked me to write down the letters, I figured its just two and thought I'd keep it in my head, but as Amma rattled past the fourth letter I thought to myself 'wait this is half the alphabet'! Apparently if you live abroad you get more letters and 'better' letters so you can make more worldly names... another one of those Sri Lankan idiosyncrasies. But we love Ranesh... I told CD it sounds like a fast bowler... cant you hear it?