Adventures with wildlife

Yesterday was not a banner day for me and wildlife. There were three separate incidents that led to this post. Had they not occurred on the same day, I wouldn't have really thought anything of it. However, nature seemed to be conspiring against me yesterday, thus this post was hatched:

Incident 1: The bird at HEB
After loading up Anjali in the car and dropping Amar's lunch off at his office, I decided that I had time to do a quick grocery store run. Upon arriving at HEB, I parked the car, loaded the baby into the cart and headed toward the store. I noticed that there were some HEB employees milling around the parking lot, but didn't really think anything of it.

I was about 20 feet from the store when I felt something on my the back of my head. I quickly moved to brush it off, and then saw a bird fly precariously close to my face. Then I heard someone behind me yell, "Yep - that was a bird. I'm working on it!" I turned around to see that it was one of the employees talking, and then surmised that I had just been dive-bombed by said bird. I felt my head again, to make sure that the bird didn't leave anything behind after it said hello to me. All clear. Luckily, the bird targeted me and not the baby.

Incident 2: The squirrel
After a successful trip through the grocery store, I loaded everything (and everyone) back into the car and headed home. About 3 blocks from the grocery store, I apparently murdered a squirrel. I say "apparently" because I didn't even see him. I heard him. More specifically, I heard a "thump thump" as I ran over him, and not until I checked the rear-view mirror did I realize what I had done.

Incident 3: The bug in the kitchen
Now, you may know that I have a strict no-tolerance policy towards all members of the bug, insect and/or arachnid categories. No-tolerance. I will either kill it, or distance myself so far from it as to render its scary qualities mostly ineffective. And all of them have scary qualities.

Last night, as I was heading to bed, I turned the kitchen light on. I noticed some dust particles coming from one of the lights, and called Amar's attention to it. We both examined the light for a few seconds, and then Amar said "WOAH!" I then saw the reason: a huge, black bug started to poke its head down from the light and into the kitchen. Amar quickly handed me the baby and I darted into the bedroom, slamming the door behind me.

Now, after Amar dispatched the offending bug, he and I started to realize that Bella, the not-so-bright member of the Scottish Terrier branch of the Rama family, tried to alert us to the insect earlier in the week. She spent the better part of one evening staring intently at part of the ceiling of the kitchen. Amar and I both inspected that part of the kitchen several times that evening, but found nothing. Bella remained intent (she's nothing if not dedicated, especially when it looks like she might get some sort of food out of the operation...and I can only imagine that this bug looked like dessert to her). So it now looks like we have a good watchdog in our family. Apologies, Bella, for underestimating your intelligence in the past!

All that to say that yesterday was not my day with the local wildlife. Hopefully today will be much less dramatic!

Chaos abounds...

We had a bit of a chaotic moment last night at the Rama household. Looking back, it was pretty entertaining, so I thought I'd share.

In general, Anjali has been a great baby. She is relatively easy to calm, and very rarely gets REALLY upset. However, she is just a baby and thus, she will occasionally have moments where she is upset even though nothing is obviously causing her pain or discomfort.

Last night was one of those moments.

I fed her around 6PM, and Amar got home around 6:30. Almost immediately after he got home, she got fussy. And not just "give me a pacifier" fussy - all out wailing and flailing.

Amar and I took turns trying to calm her over the next hour. And just to underscore how easy a baby she's been so far, she's never cried for more than 5 minutes at a time; we're usually able to calm her pretty quickly.

Last night, however, she would have none of that. We rocked her. We swaddled her. We unswaddled her. We put her on her back. We put her on her stomach. We bounced. We danced. We took her outside. We changed her diaper....you get the picture.

After about an hour, I decided to try to feed her a bit more. Amar and I headed to the nursery, and right as we were turning the corner in the hallway, we somehow knocked the carbon monoxide detector loose and it fell to the ground. As soon as it hit the floor, it started emitting the most horrible, shrill, loud and obnoxious sound known to man. I think essentially the entire block thought that our house was about to self-destruct.

So I'm trying to feed a screaming child. Amar is running around the house with a small white box that is making a horrific noise and is not able to turn it off (apparently when it fell, some part got lodged inside that prevented it from being shut off). He starts threatening to smash it with a hammer. I start laughing.

Then, somehow, the house alarm starts going off. Screaming baby. Screaming carbon monoxide alarm. Screaming house alarm.

It was pretty awesome to say the least.

Eventually, Amar got the house alarm off. Then he found a hammer and started to work on the carbon monoxide detector. The baby had stopped screaming so that she could eat a second meal. And after about 90 minutes of non-stop noise at our house, we were able to rest peacefully and have a conversation at a normal volume.

Good stuff indeed!

Update: Day 10

So our little one is now 10 days old. It's been a long, but good, 10 days :) Kudos to all the parents out there - we now understand how hard but rewarding this adventure is.

We had the 2 week pediatrician visit yesterday and for those of you into the stats, here's what we found out:

• Her head grew by 1 cm, bringing her into the 50th percentile for head size
• She is back up to her birth weight, weighing in a 7 lb. 10 oz., putting her into the 40th percentile for weight
• She is 20.5 inches long, putting her into the 50th percentile for length

All in all, she's doing really well.

Here are some more pictures that our friend Krista took: