A pan crust pizza with goat cheese topping !

Yesterday was a fine Saturday morning where little Anya was in a good mood and was giving me plenty of smiles, I thought it was just the right time for taking some photos. A few of them came out pretty interesting, especially this one looks like a family size pizza to us !


It was late evening and we were watching TV, it was time for little Anya to wake up, so were thinking of resorting to the usual torture tactics that we have not had the opportunity to use for a while, since she is hungry enough to wake up on her own these days. We realised that we hadnt had a photoshoot of the sleeping Anya for a while, these days she gets a bit irritated by the shutter noise. With a father like me, I had known that this was bound to happen sooner or later, but this was a bit too soon even for my expectations ! So we thought that we could take a few photos and the camera shutter will wake her up..


We began and we have never had as much a field day with an Anya photo-shoot as we had yesterday. Despite so many photos, she refused to wake up and slept all the way till two in the morning..the result was some memorable photos ofcourse !


This one was one of our favourites because here she resembles a pizza with margherita cheese and a pan crust..to us , here she is actually a personification of cheese !

The one above is Lakshmi's favourite, it reminds her of a cake that more or less looks like the princess cake that we get here in Sweden

These photos remind us of a pan crust pizza with a goat cheese topping and in Lakshmi's words, one could also see all the 'chubb' on little Anya !

I must say that I have had urges to eat her for many days now, but so far good sense has prevailed.

Incidentally , this fixation with pizzas comes from a photo that our friends had sent a day ago, it was a family size pizza and they wanted us to appreciate the sheer enormity of the pizza..

Tempus fugit...

Little Anya is already in her ninth week. Time definitely flies, feels as if we brought her home just a few days ago. She is already 5kgs now. She was small when she was born, but her growth curve has cut across the average and now she is following an above average growth curve..If it goes on like this, she will soon be my size !

As many people said, Little Anya is showing many changes these days. She has got into the habit of moving her limbs vigorously, and is often seen kick starting an imaginery motorcyle. One often wonders how much dust has the spark plug gathered in her imaginery motorcycle. It sure does feel that she will make me buy a Harley Davidson for her when she grows up..

My magical moments are often felt when she has been fully fed, has burped and has 'done' what she has to do and I hold her in my hands totally full, clean and dry. She has both her hands dangling in the air and eyes locked into mine. It feels as if she is saying "Oh yes, I recognise you! we seem to have met before".

It feels immensely satisfactory that she returns my smile with a smile and even a grin at times. It is interesting to see the effect a smiling baby has on you. To be on the safer side and not raise my expectations too much, I still attribute those smiles to a feeling of comfort and not me. However what I have seen in the past couple of days makes me believe that it is not just the general feeling of comfort but also me ! We also think that she has some connection with the Ming Dynasty since she always smiles when she sees a wall hanging of the great wall of China in our living room. She also shows her teeth ( i meant gums ) when she sees the extreme close of a baby in our bedroom. We have often tried to capture her smile on the camera, but unfortunately she does not seem to like smiling in front of the camera. We have taken a video clipping ( attached below ) where one gets a glimpse of a smile!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4458358461381542240&pr=goog-sl

Lakshmi gets her share of smiles and grins as well. Since these days I have resumed work, Lakshmi gets the majority of smiles, but it is reasonably satisfactory to be welcomed with a few in the evening!Our little Anya is good at falling asleep in wierd positions. Atleast as of now, she finds it easier to fall asleep on Lakshmi. I succeed in making her snore at times, but the occassions are rare. We almost look forward to all the grunts and hand movements that follow when she is being transferred to her bed after a session on snoring on one of us

There are ofcourse times, when the falling asleep routine does not function as it should, usually it is due to some discomfort or the other but the consequences are dire. It has been atleast on a couple of occassions when I have had to take her out in the car to make her fall asleep. Usually the engine drone acts as a tranquiliser stronger than Valium..We refrain from having to resort to this emergency measure due to thinking that she should not get used to it. Thankfully, we have not had to use it for a few weeks now. Although this is partially due to the fact that she is settling well into the routines, but it is quite tempting to usurp all the credit for ourselves !

At times, taking the pram out in the sub-zero temperatures also comes to our rescue. The pram is also reasonably effective in 'making peace', however the car drive is still without any competition.

Art of pacifying little Anya comes naturally to Lakshmi. It feels like having achieved something big when I manage to 'silence' her ( to be read as 'pacify her' !! ). It is also suprising that she could give me some very nice smiles and the very next nanosecond could witness her bawling like anything... could never quite understand how she manages to smile if she is just about to cry the next second ! but perhaps these days they all come with advanced technology thyristor controlled elements.

When I read magazines about babies with the colic problem and hear from friends, colleagues about their problems with their babies, it feels that little Anya is an angel and we have absolutely no reason to complain, but parents as we are, what fun is life without complaining !?

Overall, one for sure learns to be prepared for the element of surprise that a little baby brings along in one's life.