The real birthday

In my hurry to hit submit, I forgot to mention about the real birthday. We had been to a party the previous day and came back exhausted; so went to sleep early. By 3 am the next morning, both Prashanth and I were up and excited about Aditi's birthday. Prashanth had still not got back to normal sleeping patterns after a busy week of nights, so we had nothing much planned for the day except a special lunch at home and just being together. After all birthdays hardly come on sundays, especially when Prashanth is not working.

The little girl woke up by 7 am unaware of the excitement of her parents. We wished her and sang the birthday song for her. A short while later, wishes came pouring in from both sets of grandparents in India, from her aunt, cousin and uncle in Dubai and from some more relatives and friends. After breakfast, I gave her a shower and dressed her up in the pattu pavadai that she had worn for her first birthday. She was too happy to be decked up all bright and red; and kept calling otu to her dad to come and admire her. Dad came over, armed with camera in hand and she posed for some of her best pictures.

Soon our neighbour came over to wish her with a huge gift, an automatic cycle with a gear box, that moved by the press of a button. As with anything in this country, it had to be assembled and our neighbour and Prashanth sat down with the hammer and screwdrivers. Aditi was extremely co-operative, waited for the pieces to be put together and sat on it. Alas! it worked only backwards. It turned out to be faulty. So we trie changing batteries, but still no luck. We got it exchanged later in the week and Aditi now enjoys her cute geared cycle.

We spent the rest of the day at home and Aditi changed in all about 7 dresses that day and I gave in bcos I did not want to make the poor girl cry on her special day. We went out for our usual grocery shopping and enjoyed a cake roll. Simple, yet relaxing was how we celebrated her second birthday.