Happy Birthday to Sarina....

At Sarina's birthday party this weekend, we got her a special cupcake. Her birthday cupcake would be her first real sugary dessert. I think she was quite overwhelmed with everyone staring at her as we sung happy birthday... then when it was time for her cupcake, she didn't dive in like we thought. Instead she poked at it and had no interest in eating any of it. No big messy frosting face or anything... even after she finally tried it, still not much interest other than playing with it. She did very kindly share it with Mommy.

At least one of us can resist desserts!

Walking everywhere

In just the last week walking has gone from a hobby, Sarina did once in a while, to her primary form of mobility. She now walks everywhere and is even giving running a try. By default, to go from one place to another, she prefers to walk.... goodbye crawling! Its fun to see her walking get better every day...

Sarina's birthday party

Today we celebrated Sarina's first birthday. We were a bit delayed with the holidays, travels, etc. and ended up celebrating on her 13 month birthday. Lots more pictures to come, but for now, here's a couple pictures of the birthday girl dressed for her party... she's wearing her very cute watermelon dress.

Sarina's magazine debut...

Sarina made her first publication... at only a year old she's already featured in a business school publication. Here she is in this month's Wharton Magazine

The link to the whole magazine is here: Winter 2010 Wharton Magazine (See pages 69-70)

Playing on the iPhone

Mommy bought Sarina a fun game for her iPhone called "Peekaboo Barn." Sarina LOVES it. Its a fun game where she gets to learn all about animals and their sounds. Sarina has also learned to use a touch screen and of course is going to be a native multi-touch user. She also loves using her pointy finger... in fact, whenever the iPhone comes out, she sticks up her pointy finger ready to play.

Is it too early for me to start with the "When I was a kid..." stuff? i.e. When I was a kid, we learned about animals with wood blocks. And when I was a kid we had to actually press buttons - there was no such thing as touch screens, when I was a kid computers made one sound, "beep" and had one color, green... etc., etc.

Expert Walker

In just a couple weeks, Sarina's wobbly walking has become much much better. She can now easily walk across a room or even go from one side of our home to the other. These videos are a week old now, but still have Sarina doing some more expert walking. In the second video, Sarina also shows her exciting clapping.. its more of an excited arm wave and some excited screaming!

Tofu eater

Here's a little video of Sarina munching on big tofu chunks. I (Smita) am especially excited because she's a picky little eater and I'm always pleased when I find anything she'll eat! Who would have thought she just wanted to pick up and eat really big chunks??

I love peek-a-boo

In just a couple weeks, Sarina has gone from just learning about peek-a-boo to it being her favorite game. Anytime she sees a curtain, blanket or in this case, my babeball cap, a game of peek-a-boo erupts. Here, while in Mexico, she took the hat off my head and started up some peek-a-boo fun.

Playing in the sand

Here is a little video of Sarina discovering sand for the first time. Suffice it to say the little monkey had sand everywhere for a week. We're at Nikki Beach (a restaurant attached to the hotel) Notice the dance club music playing in the background...

Wibbly Wobbly Woo...

One of the songs we like to sing to Sarina goes something like "wibbly wobbly woo... an elephant sat on you....wibbly wobbly wee... an elephant sat on me." It goes on and on with anything that rhymes together.

Here's a little video of our wibbly wobbly girl. Right around her 1 year birthday (Dec 24th) she started taking a couple steps at a time. She's now taking 5-10 steps and can make it across the room. She's certainly quite determined and despite all the falling on her bum, she keeps getting up to practice her walking over and over again.

This video also shows her birthday present - the fisher price house in the background.

More Puerto Vallarta pictures

Here's the rest of our (condensed set of) puerto vallarta pictures. More fun and frolicking in pools and beaches. We did a day trip to Yelapa and also did a tour into the jungle to get to some waterfalls and other sights. We also did a lot of eating (especially breakfast) and otherwise had mexican food every single day...

Holidays in Puerto Vallarta

For the Holidays, we traveled to Puerto Vallarta and spent eight days relaxing and enjoying the warm weather. It was also Sarina's first birthday and she got to celebrate turning one with a big vacation. We had a fabulous trip filled with lots of swimming, playing on the beach, sight seeing, hiking and eating tons of mexican food. Sarina did great and had lots of fun in the pools and on the beaches. She of course loved the long outdoor walks and hikes while mommy and daddy checked out the sights. She also picked up a liking towards spicy mexican beans! We have lots of photos... here's the first set: