Monday, March 31, 2008

Roshan turns 2 months old

Sorry, I didn't have time to finish this video in time for Roshan's real birthday...but better late then never.

Some interesting milestones:
  • If it isn't obvious via the photos, he is a LOT bigger now. He has almost doubled his weight since birth.
  • He is almost able to hold his head up on his own.
  • He still does not sleep through the night. But last night, for the first time, he slept for 5 hours!! This warrants its own blog post.
  • He is starting to recognize people. For the first time he will cry when unknown people hold him. Finally, an advantage to being the parent.
  • He found his thumb to suck for the first time. Normally, this could be considered a bad thing. But given that it calms in down (especially at night), I'm all for it.
  • He continues to be the cutest baby in the world...as I am told from unbiased sources.

Enjoy the video!


Roshan 2 months from rishi chandra on Vimeo.

Having trouble accessing the video? View the pictures here.

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Freedom...from house arrest

One of the most challenging things in having a new baby is being constrained on where you can go. For the first month, Monica and baby were basically stuck in the house 24x7, alternating between breastfeeding and sleeping. We rarely took him out except for a few doctor appointments.

Randomly, Roshan's first official outing was to Costco after the 3-week doctor's appointment. He had the luxury of traveling in his own shopping cart. We knocked him out with food ahead of time and he slept through the whole visit. We decided to get a little more aggressive and show Roshan a little bit of San Francisco.

Ever since, we have gone out every weekend to a new part of the city. We started with brunch in the Marina (safely exposing him to white upper class), but moved quickly to sunbathing in Baker Beach, playing poker in Pacific Heights, enjoying a picnic in Dolores Park, and drinking bloody mary's at the Ramp. At this point, Roshan is a seasoned SF veteran.

We'll continue to milk the limited time he is young and naive to not recognize all of these strange environments. So for a limited time, the Chandras have returned to a normal social calendar...we are open for business!

Roshan's first visit out in the stroller


Baby Chandra sees Ocean, part 2


Roshan goes all in, but still needs to work on his poker face.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Anita visits San Francisco

Anita, after being out of the country for nearly eight months, finally returned home to San Francisco!

Roshan had a chance to hang out with his Maushi for the first time and the two really hit it off. Anita got to experience the full set of responsibilities, including deal with several "poop explosions" as she was changing diapers. She is now a certified baby sitter.

Ajay came up for the weekend to make it a full Deshpande party. Here are some pics from the full week.


Anita visits Roshan from rishi chandra on Vimeo.

Monday, March 24, 2008

Happy Birthdays

The Chandra family reached several big milestones on Monday.

Monica turned the big 3-0. We celebrated by stuffing ourselves with tons of great food over the weekend. We even had our first dinner without Roshan by leaving him with Rupa Bua. She passed the test with flying colors...

Roshan turned the big 2 months, already doubling his age. He celebrated with stuffing himself of milk, with a few long naps in between.

Personally, I am still coping with the knowledge I am married to a 30 year old woman and that my son is one month closer to become a teenager.

Friday, March 21, 2008

A day in the life of Roshan


A day in the life... from rishi chandra on Vimeo.

Lead Actor and Writer: Roshan Chandra
Director: Rishi Chandra
Producer: What do they do again?

No couches were permanently harmed in this video.

Saturday, March 8, 2008

Baby Songs

As you would expect, one of the best ways to calm down a baby is to sing them a song. It is amazing to see how quickly Roshan will fall asleep after a few verses. My biggest problem was I didn't remember any of the nursery rhymes from childhood. My first few times I had to rely on a few verses from Pearl Jam, which is not exactly the most uplifting music.

Emily was kind enough to send me these lyrics of all major nursery rhymes. Have you ever looked at the lyrics? Some of them are just terrible. For example:
  • "Ring Around the Rosies" is actually about the Bubonic plague ("Ashes to ashes" is about cremation of dead bodies!)

  • The cradle comes crashing down in "Rock-a-bye Baby";

  • "Three Blind Mice" is about Queen Mary who persecuted Protestants and burned three of them at the stake!

  • "London Bridge" is about the (multiple) destructions of the bridge

All of these make Pearl Jam look pale in comparison. So I have officially given up and decided to sing only Christmas songs. At least they are all positive and cheerful (and more importantly, memorable).

Look for Roshan to dominate the caroling season.

Monday, March 3, 2008

Sweet Pea

Mon heard this song on a commercial and was inspired to create a new video.

Enjoy!


Sweet Pea from rishi chandra on Vimeo.

Sunday, March 2, 2008

Good nights, bad nights

You always hear from current parents that no matter what you do, just expect some good nights and bad nights. And on the bad nights, just push through it and move on. Well, we had a particularly bad night that I just had to share with everyone.

3:00 to 7:00PM - Family nap. Big mistake.

10:30 to 11:00PM - Mon starts last feeding before going to bed. Diaper change. Mon puts him down to bed.

11:00PM to 12:30AM - He sleeps. Woohoo! Mon can't fall asleep so she reads her book.

12:30AM to 1:30AM - Roshan cries, Mon feeds him, Mon puts him down to bed. 15 minutes later, start it all over again. Repeat 4 times total. Throw in a diaper change at some point in there.

1:30AM to 3:00AM - Roshan sleeps. Mon is now totally awake. Can't fall asleep. Surfs the web.

3:00AM to 3:15AM - Mon finally gets tired, just about to go to bed...

3:15AM to 5:00AM - Roshan awakes. Diaper change. Feed for 40 minutes. Roshan falls asleep for...approx 3 min. He is now fully awake and in full play mode. Mon tries everything to put him back to sleep: swaddling, singing a song, sleeping in our bed. Nothing. Yes, this continues for a full hour.

5:00AM to 5:30AM - Duties transition to Rishi. First duty is to change dooty diaper (a ten on the twelve point scale). As I am about to put on the new diaper, Roshan decides to pee all over himself. Sigh. We do a full change. Roshan still fully awake. I bring in the swing to our room to calm him down.

6:00AM to 6:30AM - Success! He falls asleep in a matter of minutes. Woohoo!

6:30AM to 8:30AM - Failure! He wakes up again. But at least he is sleepy, so I bring him into bed. He finally falls asleep...but ten minutes later he wakes himself up from the congestion (he is recovering from a cold). I pat him until he calms down. Repeat every 10 minutes for the full two hours.

Family wakes up...with everyone a little cranky. Welcome to parenthood.

So don't let the peaceful sleeping pictures fool you...