Holiday Party 2010

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Roasted Rack of Lamb

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I made roasted rack of lamb for dinner last night. The two racks were marinated for a few hours in a mixture of Pinot Noir, worcestershire sauce, soy sauce and some vinegar. The racks were then coated with a dry rub made from coriander, salt, pepper, paprika, chili powder, cinnamon, cloves, all spice and sugar. I pan seared the racks for about 2 minutes on each side on high heat and then roasted it in the oven at 350 F for about 12 minutes for a medium finish.

I added the remaining marinade to the drippings and reduced it to a glaze which went very nicely over the lamb.

Thanksgiving 2010

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D90 - Initial Images

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A couple of initial test images from the D90 using the 50 mm f/1.8 lens.

Halloween 2010

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Pictures from Halloween 2010.

The D90 is here but I have not taken any new photos yet.

Nevin - 2 years and 5 months

Nevin is growing up so fast that it is getting hard to keep with him and all the things he does. He is constantly talking up a storm (hmmm...I wonder who he gets that from ;)). He mispronounces a lot of things but we don't bother correcting him because we think it sounds cute! He says BALM for barn, MAWNSTER for monster, and says PICK MY UP for "pick me up". He went for his first Disney show, a Mickey Mouse Magic Show at the US Bank Arena, and he loved watching all his favorite toon characters come to life. He was a little overwhelmed at first, but then settled in and enjoyed the show. Nevin is also becoming much better at playing the drums and can hold a pretty steady 4/4 pattern on the high hat and snare. He loves going to his Nana and Nani's place on the weekends and much to our surprise and delight he willingly spent his first night away from us a few weeks ago when he went along with them for a "sleepover" :) - a spontaneous "date night" opportunity for us!

The weather has been great this fall and Nevin loves playing outside on the swing set, kicking the ball and jumping on the neighbor's trampoline. He enjoys going to his daycare a lot and has a lot of fun participating in a variety of activities with his friends. He particularly enjoys his "Webby" dance class where he gets to pretend like being animals from the jungle and the barn. The best way to entertain him on the weekends is to pretend like he is in his dance class at school again with Pooja being the teacher and Nevin and me the students :) His current favorite DVD is "Barnyard" movie with Otis the cow, Pip the mouse and the rest of the animals in the barn. His current favorite songs are "Pichle Saat Dino Me" from the movie Rock On, and "Iktara" from the movie Wake Up Sid. He listens to these two songs in a non stop loop really LOUD as we drive him around. If I try and trick him and lower the volume even a wee bit, he immediately yells LOUDER from the back! He recognizes quite a few songs now and we play a game with him where we hum the tunes and and he tells us which song it is. He also was Superman for Halloween this year, and enjoyed a fun filled Halloween weekend.

Side note; my Nikon D40 fell to ground and the flash unit broke :( I have a Nikon D90 on order, so expect to see a lot more pictures here. Stay tuned!!

Video

Oldie but goodie :)

Nevin's first visit to the Zoo and some backyard fun

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Nevin - 23 months

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Nevin will be celebrating his second birthday next month. He has grown so much over the last few months and continues to surprise us with his antics. He is also becoming naughtier by the day, but I suspect that maybe a direct result of our collective spoiling of him :)

Nevin can now string 2-3 words together in a sentence which we can understand about 80% of the time. The rest of the time we either pretend that we understand him or go through the mutually frustrating experience of trying to figure out his 2 year old vocabulary. Some of his classic phrases are “all done” and “walk away”. “All done” could mean anything from “I have had enough of this food” to “get me out of this chair/stroller/place” and “walk away” means that wants to be left alone in his effort of doing something (usually forbidden) by himself! For some reason, Nevin chooses to stay mum in the presence of friends and/or strangers much to our chagrin ;) We are also trying, albeit in futility, to teach him Hindi. Neither one of us speak Hindi conversationally with him and I guess this will need to change if he is going to learn a second language. He does say some words in Hindi like “neeche” (which literally means “down”) when he wants to go downstairs or wants to get off his stroller/high chair. But he uses the same word when he wants to go upstairs too… to him the word just means a change in his current location/position :).

Nevin’s favorite toys remain his stuffed animals. He has a veritable menagerie in his play room and he absolutely adores playing with all the animals. He can easily identify the various animals and can also make their sounds. His pronunciation is not the best and he calls an elephant “epeechay” which we find very cute so we never bother to correct him. He always amazes us with his ability to group the animals in the same way “they came into his life”:). God help us if he sees one animal and we cannot find that animal’s friend/s i.e. the ones that we bought at the same time. He is also very particular about how they are stored and will get mad if we put the wrong animal in the wrong “barn”. The easiest way to get him to go to bed is to tell him that all the animals are doing “night night”.

His favorite food remains cheese pizza (light cheese) and pasta although he does eat rice and chicken, and some other Indian food that we prepare for him. He does not like anything sweet but has recently shown some interest in eating cookies especially oatmeal raisin and some Pepperidge Farm varieties.

Sadly for us, he has lost interest in all TV shows for the most part and will only stay engaged for a few minutes at a time. This poses a huge challenge for us when we go on long drives or take him out to restaurants where in the past we would pop in his favorite DVD and take a break while he stayed calm for 20 minutes. I know, we’re evil :).

We are looking forward to taking him to Miami over the Memorial Day weekend at the end of the month. He has flown with us a couple of times already but not in the recent past, so it should be an interesting experience. His grandparents have taught him to associate the planes flying in the sky to his Maasi (aunt) in ATL, so now whenever he sees one in the sky he says “Maasi Atlanta” .
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Nevin at 20 months

Nevin is 4 months shy of being 2 years old. He is growing by leaps and bounds and continues to surprise us with the things he learns on a daily basis. He makes all sorts of animal noises now and will even say "Moo" while passing through the dairy section of the grocery store when he spots the cow on the milk containers. Sometimes he will randomly wake up in the middle of the night and regale us with his entire vocabulary of 15 some words :) He also comphrehends simple commands like "sit", "stand" (although he somehow only does this while pretending that his box of wipes is a chair) and "throw the trash". He loves to eat pizza ("peepa"), pasta ("poopa") and chicken ("cheekin"). His favorite toys are his soft toys and other knick knacks he finds while he rummages thorugh our cabinets. He also loves music and will groove to any music that has a good beat. His favorite seems to be a Punjabi Bhangra song called ""khao piyo aish"". Nevin loves to hang out with all our friends and his favorite person is Rahil. He recognizes everyone and is able to point out to the right person when you call out their names. He even knows that Nana (grandfather) and Bobby (my father in law) are the same person :)
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