It’s NFL draft day, and as we know, the draft matters. Last year’s draft proved to be championship worthy for the Giants. Among the players they drafted, they found gems like Kevin Boss, Ahmad Bradshaw and Kevin Boss that were key pieces to winning the Superbowl.

Arav and I are going to be glued to the TV following what our Giants do. GO GIANTS!!!

In this internet age, new parents have another task to add to their already long to-do list – ensuring the proper presence of their kid on the web. Arav is well on his way in this regard. His arrival has already been noted not just in this blog, but in Ranjeet’s blog as well. His photographs are on my website already, as well as on my flickr and facebook pages. And we have already registered his email address and domain name.

Now that I have adjusted a little to my new life schedule, I have been able to spend some time to make a major structural change to my website, forced on me by his arrival. Tanu recommended the change in anticipation of the many, many photographs we will be taking, and the desire of the grandparents and cousins to get to them easily. I have broken out the albums related to our family life (which will now be dominated by Arav) into a new section of my website. The section is called ‘Family Scrapbook‘, and the latest album in it is a set of photographs from Arav’s first full week at home. It is definitely the first of many. Check it out.

So we’ve had a few days at home now with Arav, and certain patterns (that will be familiar to those that have been through this experience) are starting to emerge. Tanu and I are in a permanent state of sleep deprivation, and walk around like zombies all day. Our life completely revolves around Arav at this point. We’ve taken to dividing up the night into two halves and taking one each. And during the day, her parents help us out. But ultimately, it is still a lot to do. Having to feed the kid every two hours means that there is absolutely no break from the work involved. Our days and nights are an endless cycle of feeding, cleaning up, putting him to sleep, doing whatever else we need to do in 30 min (if lucky, we catch some shut-eye), and then waking him up again to repeat the cycle all over. It feels never-ending and relentless.

I feel bad for Tanu. The physical toll on her is far greater on her, considering the labor she is still recovering from and the subsequent responsibilities she has. I’ll say it again – I have no idea why women knowingly put themselves through this ordeal. I would have wilted a long time ago.

Things are much better though than his first day home. I guess the shift from the hospital to his new home must have made him irritable, but the peaceful Arav seems to have returned. He is much more calm at home, and easier to handle. It’s still a bit of a task getting him to wake up so we can feed him, but all in all, we can’t complain. We have heard horror stories from friends and family, and count our blessings in that department.

The whole thing is definitely a grind, but it is not without reward. There are moments with Arav that are a sheer delight. And watching an infant is fascinating, if just to remember that we all went through this same stage of life (and put our parents through pretty much the same thing). To lie around all day sleeping, being fed and being cleaned up – now that is the life.

Hopefully, the patterns will become routine pretty soon, and we will be able to fashion our life around them. Right now it seems like this is all we do. But since I have to work my way back into a work schedule starting next week, I have to figure out a way to make this part of my regularly scheduled programming.

Our wireless router is messed up, so it is taking me longer than I would like to get these posts out. Hopefully the situation will improve in the next couple of days. Also, our little bundle of joy is pretty demanding, so that means that thoughts of timeliness are pretty much dreams at this point.

Yesterday was a day of many “firsts” for us. It was the first complete day for Arav at home, the first complete day for us as a family. It was full of little victories – getting through the night somehow with a screaming baby, cutting his nails without hurting him, managing to bathe him. Everything, no matter how insignificant, feels like a big win, something to tell us that we are not in over our heads here. It would all be pretty manageable if not for the darned lack of sleep. You hear about it all along, mentally prepare yourself as much as you can, but when it hits you, it still leaves you a little stunned. Both of us are really looking forward to

Yesterday was also full of what I hope were the first of many precious moments – watching him smile while dreaming about something nice (do babies dream? Tanu tells me that in India they say that for the first 3 months, a baby dreams about his past life), feeling Arav’s weight on me as he slept in my arms, watching him search for the source of sounds around him, gazing at his content face as he feeds or sleeps.

And it was obviously full of the first of many anxious moments. Is he feeding enough? Is he still breathing? Why is he crying so much? Or not crying enough? It is quite unbelievable that so many people go through this experience, because it feels so non-intuitive in the way it works. The instincts for raising a child seem to be pretty alien, and no amount of reading or advice seems to make things better. There is so little that feels like it is in our control.

This is going to be interesting!

Yesterday turned out to be a jam-packed, special day for us. Arav got discharged from the hospital, and we got to bring him home. We were prepared, or so we thought.

First, in the morning, I had issues trying to get the car seat attached. My Passat is supposed to support the LATCH system, but try as I might, I could not find the connectors to attach the seat to. After 50 minutes of struggling with the seat cushions, reading the car manual and trying all manner of things, I ended up using the seat belt to tie it down. That ordeal made us late getting to the hospital. But at least it worked in whatever manner it needed to.

At the hospital, we found Arav ready to go home. The discharge process took about 4 hours though, what with all the paperwork and having to feed Arav in between. Our experience at Beth Israel has been really good. All the physicians and nurses were really good, and really helped us with lots of advice, tips and general encouragement. So we came there feeling pretty good about our abilities. But then the nurse assigned to Arav for the discharge process turned out to be really unhelpful. So much so that whatever reserves of confidence we had built up got completely destroyed. One nurse can make a huge difference. Our attempts to get someone else to help us were thwarted by the fact that it was a really busy day for them with lots of babies being handled.

When we got home, Tanu’s mom gave Arav a proper (and traditional) welcome, after which we settled down to the task of getting Arav settled into his new home. And that is when chaos ensued. Some phrase about the best laid plans comes to mind…

And the peaceful Arav we encountered at the hospital has disappeared. As soon as he got home, the munchkin decided that he was going to show everyone who is really in charge. He’s been making all of us run around, and has kept Tanu and me up most of the night. He refuses to sleep in the crib, and will only sleep if one of us is holding him close. Feeding is a chore, and I won’t even talk about the other stuff. Let’s just say that this morning finds us tired, a little frazzled, and pretty unsure about being able to get through what lies ahead.

Photographs: I added photographs from this MAJOR event in our life to the ‘Special Occasions‘ section of my website, under the album “The Birth of Arav”.

Monday turned out to be a big day for the Kaushik-Sood household. We had our first addition, a bouncing baby boy we have named Arav. Our son decided that enough was enough, and surprised us on Monday night (the 14th) at 9:54pm, having spent the entire weekend tormenting Mom.

The future New York Giants quarterback (Mom is not bought into this idea yet, but Dad is working hard on convincing her) weighed in at a decent 7 lbs 6 oz and a little under 20 inches long. So far, Arav has been living up to his name, which means “peaceful” in Sanskrit. He’s a quiet baby who takes after Mom – lots of hair, nice long nails and loves to sleep. But most folks have told me that he looks like me (poor kid). Personally, I can’t tell, but it is fun to see Tanu’s reaction when someone tells her this.

Having front row seats to his birth, I have to say something about the so-called “miracle of birth”. It is a miracle all right, a miracle that so many women knowingly put themselves through it, and not just one time (when they could argue that they didn’t know what they were getting into). What Tanu went through would have laid me out cold right at the outset. That girl of mine tapped into hidden reserves of strength that we didn’t know she had (and likely never would in any other circumstance).

Witnessing the birth of Arav was a slightly surreal, completely amazing experience. Even though you’ve heard about it a bunch of times, seen those dramatizations on TV and in movies, fully expect what is going to happen, you still don’t know what you are in for. And those first few moments looking at him was like nothing else I have ever experienced. Holding him for the first time, I just couldn’t believe he was a little person that me and Tanu (but mostly Tanu) had made. He is just wonderful.

In a twist of fate, I am not the first one breaking news of Arav’s arrival to the blogosphere. Ranjeet beat me to it because he had a computer and internet access. I have some issues with conclusions he has drawn about the timing of the birth. He thinks that Arav’s arrival during the hockey playoffs portends a future in the NHL. I, on the other hand, think that he wanted to get here in time for the NFL draft next weekend. Time will tell.

Can’t wait to get the little guy home!

Today is the first day since spring officially started that the temperature is expected to cross the 70 degree mark. After weeks of rainy and cloudy days, it is expected to be bright and sunny. I just happen to be going to the office today, so I am hoping to be able to take a long lunch break and get outside into the sun.

This morning when I woke up, the view outside our window was pretty cool. The rain last night had created a foggy morning, but as the temperature was rising, the sun was slowly burning off the fog from the top down. The result was a really cool view where the buildings of Newport, and in the distance, New York City were starting to poke their heads out of the fog.

Now if I can only get outside and enjoy the weather.

None of these by themselves would have been that extraordinary, but I happened to come across all of these within the space of 48 hours. And that is definitely an “Only in New York” thing.

Ranjeet sent us an email about “Frozen Grand Central at Improv Everywhere“. Apparently, more than 200 people (called “Agents”) descended on Grand Central Station one Saturday morning recently, and just froze in place at the exact same time for 5 long minutes (just imagine the strength and control needed to do that!). The poses weren’t dramatic by any means, giving the impression that normal people doing everyday things – dropping a briefcase full of papers, eating or drinking, rushing to catch a train, even kissing – had just frozen in place as if shot by Mr. Freeze. Watch the video below, shot with hidden camera, which shows the whole thing, including all the reactions from the hundreds of commuters not in the know, and then read the story. It is pretty amazing.

Walking up Broadway today, I passed by Lincoln Center, only to be stopped in my tracks by what I saw. Hanging on the front of the Metropolitan Opera House was a huge banner showing two feet along with the word “Satyagraha” in huge type. The word refers to the philosophy and practice of non-violent resistance that Mahatma Gandhi used to help lead India to independence from British rule.

Intrigued, I found out that the Met will be putting on a 1980 opera by Philip Glass that describes Gandhi’s formative experiences in South Africa that transformed him from a young lawyer into a world leader like few the world has seen. The opera is set to text from the Bhagavad Gita, one of Hinduism’s holiest books, and the version at the Met uses adventurous, improvisational puppetry, achieved by the Skills Ensemble, a team of aerialists. It sounds really interesting, and I am dying to go. Hopefully Tanu will be able to hold out long enough to be able to catch this.

Last, on the same walk up Broadway I passed by a nail salon called “Trevi Nails”. The name is clearly Italian, and the decor inside recreates a classic Italian scene. Yet every employee in the store was an Asian woman, with no Italians in sight. Just like American waiters in Indian restaurants, this is a unique scene from the cultural milieu of New York that you can occasionally find elsewhere, but rarely as frequently as you see it here.

There you go. 3 things that together form a unique slice of life in New York.