Kaniz & Abbas +2

As most of you probably know, I've done my share of work-related traveling over the last few years. Fortunately, as soon as Samarah was born, my work travel stopped (for a couple of reasons which I won't go into).  So the past 9 months have been great because I've been able to stay home and spend lots of time with Samarah. On the other hand, I'm running out of travel miles (no 'free' plane tickets) and losing my airline & hotel status (no airport lounge access, no room upgrades).. it's a small price to pay for what I get in return, but I think Kaniz secretly wants me to travel some more to keep the perks! Anyway, that is a long, roundabout way of telling you that I had to spend a whole week in California earlier this month without Samarah (& Kaniz). It was really tough being away from home, especially because Samarah decided to get the stomach flu midweek (soon followed by her mommy). Thank goodness for cellphones, e-mail, Skype & Blackberry Mess...

Samarah's been busy as ever.. and she keeps getting cuter and cuter (as you'll see in the pictures)! A few highlights from this set: Attending her first birthday party - her friend Justin turned 1. Samarah and Justin are going to be daycare buddies! Meeting Baby Emily - congrats Hiro & Inthida! She's gorgeous. Eating, eating and more eating.  Enjoy the pictures! And make sure to leave comments, so we know you want more pictures! ;)

Hello again faithful readers. Sorry to have kept you waiting for almost two weeks for new pictures! Samarah has had a busy few weeks with teething, crawling and standing seasons in full swing, not to mention a full social calendar. Unfortunately, I haven't been as diligent lately about bringing the camera along on our outings or taking pictures at home, so this latest set of pictures is fairly light. On another note, it turns out that between the California trip and Samarah's teething, the poor girl's schedule has become a complete mess. Before the trip, she was sleeping consistently for 10-12 hour stretches at night, which really spoiled Kaniz and I. Then, for the entire month of November, Samarah was up every 2-4 hours at night! To top things off, Samarah also got her first cold and even a bit of laryngitis. But before you start worrying, don't fret! Our little princess has recovered fully - she's over her cold, her voice sounds as sweet as ever and even her sleep...

Can you believe it's taken me three posts to get through our CA trip? So where was I...?  Yes, so after Hearst Castle, the plan was to spend the next night in Santa Barbara. After a relatively uneventful drive (except for lunch at a dumpy dive where we had a run-in with a crazy lady), we got to SB and checked into our hotel late afternoon. Santa Barbara seemed to be very much a college town, or at least that was the impression I got from walking the main shopping strip.  The next day, we continued our drive down Route 1, which had now turned into the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH). The drive here wasn't as scenic as it was earlier in the trip - either that, or you just get spoiled looking at the ocean so much. We stopped for lunch in Malibu and then continued on to Santa Monica. Our plan was to have dinner in Santa Monica with a couple of dear friends, Preeti and Siva, who've recently made the move from NYC to LA. So, naturally, we went to another Mexican restaurant.. dinner w...

Kaniz and I have done the SF to LA roadtrip a few times, but we've always taken the inland route and never tried driving all the way down the coast.. so we figured it was about time. We decided to take our time driving down to LA, with an overnight stop in Cambria (a town near Hearst Castle ) and a night in Santa Barbara. We left Fremont a little later than we were hoping, and by the time we stopped for lunch in a little town called Pacific Grove (near Monterey/Carmel), it was already 2:30pm. The drive down the coast was postcard-perfect, but unfortunately it got dark midway and driving down a very dark, very curvy, very foggy, cliff-hugging road wasn't as much fun as I'd imagined. Mental note for next time - get on the road early! Hearst Castle the next day was great - most of the pictures from this set are from our tour of the castle grounds. Having learnt our lesson from the day before, we got on the road right away (pictures to follow)... in the meantime, here are the p...

I know I've got some more pictures from our California trip left to post, but I thought I'd share some exciting news with you... Samarah decided to wait till we got back from our trip to hit a few exciting milestones.. drum roll please! Watch where you put those fingers! Samarah sprouted two teeth overnight! Where'd mommy and daddy go? Samarah's starting to develop a little bit of separation anxiety, and even though it's hard to admit, she is showing a preference for her mommy. The other day she almost jumped from my arms to Kaniz's! I can't help but feel a little sad about this, although I'm told that I'll get over this quickly. Get me a GPS! Our little girl is on the move! She's figured out how to crawl (backwards).. plus she's rolling over and even somersaulting (kind of).. all this basically means that we can no longer leave Samarah unattended on our bed (or anywhere for that matter). We managed to capture the first few crawling attemp...

Can you believe it? Kaniz and I both had our reservations about the possibility of an Obama victory, but Samarah knew it all along (even when she was just a +1 back in February!). Let's just hope that Barack is able to deliver on his message of change and hope - America (and the world) needs it. Congrats to everyone who voted!

Did we ever mention how much we enjoy visiting California? Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, so Kaniz, Samarah and I are headed back to Toronto on an early flight tomorrow morning. As expected, Samarah did really well the entire trip. She was perfect on the plane, perfect in the car on our drive down the coast and adjusted to the time difference right away. We landed at SFO last Saturday and after a 90-minute wait at the car rental place, we headed down to Fremont, where my cousin Ambreen had graciously offered up her place for us to stay. The next day, we went over to San Jose to visit my friend John Nack, his wife Margot and their adorable son Finn (who's two weeks older than Samarah). Even though we've been keeping up to date with Finn's antics through his blog , it was so much fun to meet him in person. John & Margot have a fabulous home (which Kaniz is still talking about), fully appointed with every toy Samarah would want, and to top it off, Marg...

Kaniz, Samarah and I are in Irvine, CA for Halloween, visiting Sarah & Kabir. We just came back from Samarah's first 'Trick or Treat' outing, which was a great success. We had brought along a cow costume for Samarah but it ended up too hot outside, so we opted to dress her up in her swimsuit (yes, a swimsuit on Halloween - life's tough in Orange County).  The pictures from tonight aren't quite ready yet, but I'm posting some from the last couple of weeks (before we left on our vacation). Some highlights: We hosted a baby shower for our dear friends Inthida & Hiro (and Baby Sasaki).. and we got to meet Baby Jayden! Our annual Thanksgiving dinner at Atul & Sonal's place. Unfortunately, Rahul had to be in India for work, so we had to make do without him (the evening wasn't quite the same). Thanksgiving dinner #2 at Kaniz's mom & dad's place. Yummy Thanksgiving samosas! Now that fall is in full swing (and then some), we went out on a ...

This isn't really a strictly baby-related post, but Samarah, Kaniz and I went to the Chinese Lantern Festival a couple of weekends ago (thanks for the invite Javed & Nishat!).. the installations were very impressive, and to top it off, we had perfect weather. All in all, a fantastic evening.. enjoy the pictures!

I'm pretty much out of excuses for not keeping up with pictures, so I won't even try. Here are some of the latest pictures chronicling the adventures of Samarah (and mommy & daddy). Enjoy! Pictures from Days 184-202

Hi everyone - just wanted to wish friends and family a belated Eid Mubarik. Kaniz, Samarah and I were fortunate enough to celebrate this Eid-ul-Fitr (which marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadhan) with family and friends.  I have some photos and videos that I was hoping to post, but haven't had a chance to download them from the cameras, so instead, here are a couple of videos from September for your viewing enjoyment. The first one is a couple of weeks old - Samarah is a real pro at sitting now. The second one is of Samarah hanging out in Brampton with her cousin Sakina. The lighting wasn't great in the room, hence the terrible picture quality:

Can you believe it? Our little girl is growing up, and before we know it, she's going to be crawling, walking, running, asking to take the car out, moving away for school, getting married, etc. etc. Ok, so maybe I'm getting a little ahead of myself, but I just can't help myself! So lots of activity in the last few weeks - some highlights: We started solids! We ended up starting Samarah on solids a little earlier than six months, and she's already gotten through rice and barley and now on to butternut squash! As with everything else, Samarah is doing great! We took a couple of trips downtown - once for a walk around Yorkville and another time to see LeBron James (and also for some stargazing). Our friend Ateka (who's been super generous with giving us lots of clothes for Samarah) asked me to do a little photo shoot for her three kids.. so Samarah, Kaniz and I met them in Unionville and had a great afternoon. Samarah took her first trip to the zoo with Rayn, Diya and ...

Samarah is getting more and more fun everyday! It seems like she's learning to do something new every day. She's almost mastered the skill of sitting on her own (although she still hasn't figured out how to roll over just yet). This video is almost 4 minutes long, and for the first half, Samarah struggles to push herself away from the couch and then finally sits on her own. We're so proud of her!!

Just when I thought I was going to catch up with the pictures, I got lazy and missed a couple of weeks! I think maybe I need to streamline my workflow - as it is, the whole process goes a little something like this: I take (hundreds of) pictures, download them to my computer, select the ones worth keeping (and ones worth posting), add the oh-so-witty captions, publish the photos to the web and then write the actual post. The whole thing ends up taking longer than you'd think, which may explain why I'm posting so irregularly these days. Anyone have any brilliant ideas for me? Anyway, the last month has been quite busy, as you'll see from the pictures. Kaniz, Samarah and I had lots of fun going to different festivals across the city, entertaining friends and family, and we even made it out to the beach! Enjoy the pictures! More videos are on their way (.. and for those of you keeping count, the next post will be our 100th!) Pictures from Days 147-158

Here's another video that I had posted on YouTube a while back and never got around to adding to the blog. This is Samarah's 4-month visit to the doctor to get her shots on July 24:

I've been meaning to put some of these videos up for some time, but you know how it goes.. if it's not one distraction, it's another. Anyway, enjoy the videos! 1. [August 4] Here is Samarah meeting Adnaan. As you can see, Adnaan was quite smitten with Samarah (she has that effect on boys!).. 2. [August 2] Here is Samarah going to town on her fingers. For the last month or so, as she starts teething, her fingers are spending more and more time in her mouth: 3. [August 26] Samarah has definitely become aware of the video camera. As soon as she sees the red record light come on, she quiets down. I think I'm going to have to put some tape on the camera to block out the light, just so I can get some footage of her babbling away. The clip below shows her current favourite past-time: 4. [August 27] Another milestone - Samarah sitting up (almost) by herself. She's definitely better at it in the morning after a full night's rest, but even still, she does pretty well for ...

Samarah turns five months today - so Happy Birthday sweetie! It's hard to believe that it's only been five months since our little +1's been in our lives, and at the same time, it's hard to believe that five months have already gone by! Samarah has really grown into a healthy, happy, beautiful baby. Although Kaniz and I often forget how little she was at birth, we were recently reminded when Safiya brought over her baby doll wearing one of Samarah's preemie outfits! There's a picture of the doll in Samarah's car seat, and it's hard to believe that our little baby was so, well, little! As usual, Samarah has been quite active - going to parties, going swimming, going shopping, going to the library.. sometimes I feel that my infant daughter gets out more than I do (sadly enough, this might actually be true). I really have to hand it to Kaniz for putting in so much effort to keep Samarah stimulated (despite only getting a few hours a night of restful sleep)....

Although I've taken a lot of pictures of Samarah, we don't have many pictures of the three of us.. So with the goal of getting at least one good 'family photo,' Kaniz, Samarah and I headed down to Edwards Gardens in North York with my trusty Nikon D80 and a borrowed tripod courtesy of my brother Hussain. It seems that I'm falling further and further behind on the pictures - this particular set was taken on August 3rd, so I guess that means about 15 days behind. Overall, I think the pictures turned out well , especially the ones with Kaniz and Samarah. As always, enjoy the pictures ... and feel free to comment!!

You bet! I think my favourite part of the day these days is when Samarah and I share a few minutes of non-stop laughter.. it's priceless!