It's a GIRL!

Guess what we're having!?!?

Yup, Luke is going to have a baby sister! Marinda is definitely looking forward to bows, dresses and general puffiness everywhere - and actually being able to do hair!  (Amit gets mad whenever Marinda starts braiding Luke's hair...). Amit is...well, Amit gets to pick the name, or at least the spelling of the name, which lasts a whooooole lot longer than either of our influences on how she will dress.  "Yeah right!"  Marinda is reported to have said.  "He's been telling everyone that it was going to be a girl forever!  He even wore a PINK shirt to the ultrasound!"  We do have a name picked out - Jacy May Misra. Jacy is a combination of our moms' names: Jayashree and Stacy, and May is a family middle name on Marinda's side going back like five generations or something.  We picked "Misra" just because it sounds good.

After finding out "it" is now a "she" Marinda decided to go shopping for a cute baby girl outfit. Check out the outfit she picked out! And she also made an announcement photo to put on facebook, but here it is if you didn't see it already. And by the way, doesn't it look like Luke's shoes are almost as big as Marinda's? It's no optical illusion - he's a kids size 10 now (which funny enough is Marinda's size except in women's). His feet are more than half the length of our feet. Was he ever really that small that he could fit into baby shoes? (Not that we'd know, since Amit is vehemently opposed to baby shoes, because they "don't need shoes because they spend more time with their tongues on the ground than their feet on the ground").  Marinda refuses to fall for his "logic" again!  Hence the cute, poofy, flower, pink, impractical baby shoes!

Ok, Marinda admits it.  She bought this before telling anyone it was a girl.
She wanted to savor the feeling a little bit before the world went crazy.

Okay, so stories from this week:

•"No music. Just drive." Marinda and Luke were in the car the other day. We normally listen to the radio, but sometimes we ask Luke what he thinks. Normally he just ignores us, but this time when Marinda asked he said "No music. Just drive." It was like something out of a gangster movie, he was so serious about it!  Next time in the car with all three of us - same thing. Apparently he likes listening to us and the sound of his own voice more than the radio.

Marinda likes taking one of these every
now and then to match the ones when he was a baby.  :)
Still super silly cute!

•Luke seems to have inherited his Uncle Steven's ability (or lack thereof) to smile on cue. We've been trying to teach Luke that when he wants something he needs to say 'please' and then smile. Except his smile doesn't actually look like his normal, happy smile. It looks more like when Toothless tries to imitate Hiccups smile in How to Train Your Dragon.

Like this but with his eyes closed.

•Related to the smile story, during choir practice today Luke wanted some of Laila's (another toddler) snacks. Amit saw him make his 'please smile' to her to try to get her to hand him some goldish. Instead, Laila handed Luke a palm to the face.

Look at the road!  He even drove his cars on it afterwards.
He's going to be a CivE!!!!

*Marinda and Luke had a Halloween party on Friday! Marinda made an adorable monster costume for Luke, but he wanted nothing to do with it. He cried while we put it on him and he took it off imemdiately when they got there. But at least they had a good time (thanks to about five packets of fruit snacks - or "vitamins" as Luke calls them). Here's hoping for a better result at the Trunk or Treat on Friday! By the way, for those of you who don't know, our family costume is: Amit as a mad scientist, Luke as a monster, and Marinda as an incubator growing another monster.

Mommy Luke doing a craft at the toddler Halloween party!

•Funny story - yesterday there was a terrible wind storm that knocked out the power from about 8pm to sometime around 1am or 2am (note: turn off the lights in your bedroom or you'll wake up to a blinding light and wonder if you died). Luke was already asleep, so when the power went out and we found flashlights, we looked at each other and said "So......what do we do now?" It's amazing how electricity is really the only reason we stay up late. We ended up going to bed early.  We did find a glow stick and thought about calling our friends over for a rav - but I guess everyone else didn't want to leave their kids or something.  :P

Enjoy Luke's Football Game Tape!