Irrelevance Glorified

Back in May, I took a long weekend and traveled back to Chicago for my nephews very first birthday. It was the first time I had seen him since last August, so he had grown up quite a bit, and was on the very verge of walking. My other sister was traveling up from Florida, and a bunch of rugrats were invited over to ensure that chaos would ensue.

Interacting with Sachin is interestingly different from a lot of other kids. In the limited interaction that I’ve had with my other friends’ young kids, I feel like I’m met with a bit of skepticism. Like, they are not sure if I’m for real or not, and they take a while before they feel like they can address my existence. For Sachin, he took to me pretty quickly. I think that the most simple explanation is that unlike my other friends with little kids, I look a lot like his Mommy and Daddy. Sachin showed little hesitation in crawling up to me, pulling on my pant legs to bring himself to his feet, and then asking to be picked up.

In the pictures below, you’ll notice that there aren’t a whole lot of actual birthday party pictures. That’s because I was pressed into camcorder duty, and was thus unable to use my own camera. However, there are a lot of other pictures of doing cute little Sachin things that I’m sure people can enjoy. You can blame the graininess of the pictures on the fact that I used a high ISO setting to combat his fidgety-ness.

Flickr Set Here
Slideshow Below
Pictures and Descriptions after the jump.

 

Sachin loves his mommy. And cameras.

 

 

At this point, Sachin was just learning to walk. His crawling is a little faster, and he can’t go very far without falling or grabbing on to furniture for support. We thought we would entice him with the shaky noisemaker thing, but it looks like he was more interested in the mommy & daddy food.

 

Sometimes you just want to sit back, relax, and put your feet up on the kitchen table.

 

Sachin has an adorable habit of wanting to hold things in his hands, and wave them around. Ideally, the two items should be of similar shape, size, and color. In this case, he decided that socks did not belong on his hat, but in his hands. He would literally hold onto these socks for hours, unless they were taken away or better objects were given to him. I suggest they give him flags for 4th of July. He also likes to mess with doors, like you can see here.

 

When I watch this video, I always think of that Deep Thought (by Jack Handey) that goes "To me, it’s always a good idea to always carry two sacks of something when you walk around. That way, if anybody says, "Hey, can you give me a hand?" you can say, "Sorry, got these sacks." Sachin could probably feed himself, but he’s holding two socks, so hey, Grandma has to feed him. Here is also the first documented instance of the "furrowed brow" that he unleashes from time to time for no good reason. It’s hilarious. Seriously, the furrowed look is something that he will reminded of constantly when he gets older, in the most embarrassing situations possible.

 

Grandma doesn’t like to always get him off scott free during meal time, so this time he needs to work for his strawberry.

 

The return of the furrowed brow!

 

Sachin & Grandma

 

We seem to be caught in the middle of a staring contest here.

 

He doesn’t particularly like being told no. But he does like his socks!

 

Sachin loves music and dancing and stuff. So his favorite toys are really annoying. Also, my Mom apparently doesn’t know how this floor is washed.

 

We had a little grill-action going for the birthday lunch, and the rest of my family was monitoring the proceedings.

 

Sachin was being really fussy at dinner and whining a lot, so Alok had to use his iPhone to placate him with some video. Towards the end of this video, you also see another Sachinism — the tongue waggle.

 

Here, coasters take the place of socks. You can also see how he tends to grab hold of whatever is near to pull himself up.

 

My brother-in-law Rich served as Grillmaster today, although given the high concentration of vegetarians, the only items allowed on the grill were fruits, vegetables, and mushrooms.

 

In the wild, such a baby-baby confrontation would probably result in a battle.

 

As before, he loves his coasters. And he knows his name.

 

This seems like the sort of smile that proceeds mischief.

 

He got a lot of flashy, loud presents

 

I think there comes a point in every parents life where you just decide to have the kid do whatever as long as it isn’t permanently harmful or indecent.

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