Avinash {hearts} bunnies

They are cute, fuzzy, and white.



They hop all over the place.



And, they love for you to laugh and chase them.





What's not to love????

Avinash's first birthday party!!

or, the best smash cake performance ever.

I so wanted a beautiful, colorful, cake-filled, outdoor, low key birthday party for Avinash. Oh, and balloons, tons and tons of balloons. And a bubble gun.

And it was!

We had such a glorious 70-degree day at Discovery Green. My Dad even flew down from Pennsylvania and my brother drove down from Dallas for the occasion.



Ryan was a little worried that we got too many balloons.

I mean, what if Avinash grabbed hold of them and started to float away? How would we get him down? Valid concern.



I didn't even realize that we knew so many people with kids in Houston.



Avinash just loved being at the park. I think he was happy that our picnic table was surrounded by gravel, especially since he could put it in his mouth.

He was so fascinated by all of the other kids too.



Plus, everybody loved the bubble gun. Nice to know that I have same interests as toddlers.




The best part had to be the smash cake though. We bought three cakes from Central Market. I bought tons of candles from Papyrus. And, yes, I filled every cakes with candles. Avinash knew what to do with his cake right away. After singing happy birthday.



And, with some help from his friends blowing out all those candles.



We set the cake in front of him and, with a look of serious determination on his face, he dug right into it. Icing, check. Cake, check. Filling in the middle, check.



I think he might have eaten the whole thing had we not stopped him.



We let him splash around in the fountain afterwards and put him in his monkey costume. Then we fed him french fries too, ha!

Happy birthday Avinash!!

Urban pumpkin patch.

At Central market, the pumpkin display was the perfect photo-op for Avinash.









Our urban pumpkin patch was tons of fun, everyone stopped to see the baby and there was no long drive there!

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Wishing you all a very happy and healthy Diwali!

P.S. Did anyone else notice how Bing had up a beautiful Diwali background and Google did not? Why is google falling behind?

Monkey business.

We all dressed up for karva chauth this year because we decided to go to Mandir with some friends instead of doing puja at home.





Avi had already worn his orange kurta and his gold kurta in the last few weeks.

So what was a baby to wear?

Monkey costume!

And once he had it on he wanted to hang out with all of his monkey friends.



about five seconds later...


What else can you expect? Actually I'm still amazed that he posed for the picture at all!

Avi's 1st Birthday!

Happy Birthday Avinash!!

We are so proud of how you are turning into such a great little boy right before our eyes. It feels like yesterday that we were still waiting for you to come and wondering if we were about to have a boy or girl. I am still so amazed by how wonderful your birth was.

And how did we celebrate the first anniversary of the most amazing day in our lives ever?



Why, shopping trip, Italian food and ice cream of course! Though, it seems that Avinash's favorite part was the escalator.

Which he promptly escaped from us in order to go right back to as soon as he could!



This baby has definitely taken us on an adventure over this past year. He is now practically running all over the place, surviving his first real cold, eating real food, learning to drink from a cup, saying mama/dada, playing ball, doing gymnastics, getting up to standing unsupported, climbing off the side of the couch, and getting into a hundred new kinds of mischief every day.



I wonder what he has in store for us next!