Christmas 2021

And, just like that, it’s over.

My favorite holiday has come and gone. And it, honest-to-goodness, was one of my favorite Christmases ever. It’s exactly how I envisioned them to look and feel like.

Reading books by the tree, sitting in my PJs all day, eating freshly baked chocolate chip cookies.

No stress, no unnecessary gift giving.

Just family and books. And a tree, of course. But that’s redundant. Because the tree essentially becomes family, y’know?

But all good things must come to an end.

So we packed up our bags and flew down to SoCal for a week. And now we’ll get to celebrate the next holiday here!

Before we jump headfirst into all the SoCal festivities, I’ll do a quick recap of our Christmas weekend, complete with all the fun photos!

Christmas Eve (Friday)

Ishu definitely looks like the boss of all his Chachas and Buas (and Papa!) in this pic.

We made plans to meet up with some of the NorCal friends and family at a park in Fremont. It was only supposed to be an hour or so. They wanted to meet Ishu and we wanted to see them after so long!

And, in typical Indian fam fashion, it ended up being half the day.

We went from the playground at Lake Elizabeth Park to the dog park because, hello, Rosie needed some fun too! Then, when we started to get hungry, we moved the party to a strip mall with both a Starbucks and a Curry Pizza House. We pushed three tables together and, though it was a tiny bit cold outside, none of us were eager to head home because it was so nice catching up.

Eventually we made our way back to San Ramon cause Dad wanted to spend some time with Nikku before he left the next day.

Ishu passed out in the car ride home and was so pooped that he continued sleeping even amid all the noise we were making in the living room.

An hour or so later, he woke up and made sure everyone was at his beck and call, reading him books, waiting on him. Y’know, the usual boss stuff.

We watched some Jeopardy, we made some cookies, and mostly just hung around watching Ishu Pishu for entertainment because he really is better than any TV show out there.

Christmas Day (Saturday)

Nikku’s flight was at 7am so he left before we woke up. East coast + two flights = early departure time! Luckily, we get to see him again in March when he’s in Chicago for a conference.

It is the best best BEST seeing him be Ishu’s Chacha. He’s got so much love for him and they both have so much fun together.

Picture from earlier in the week when we celebrated Nikku Chacha’s birthday!

The morning started off kinda slow since everyone was tired from waking up so early to drop Nikku off.

So I thought I’d take advantage and quickly race down to Safeway to see if I could snag a coffee from Starbucks in store. But the line was crazy long and all the local Starbucks stores had turned off their ‘order ahead’ feature. Probs smart, to be honest.

So I drove home feeling defeated and made some instant coffee.

Which is fine. When you drink coffee in sweats by the Christmas tree, watching your toddler be fascinated with all the ornaments, life ain’t all that bad.

At noon, we met up with the Just Cuz crew on Zoom for our annual Secret Santa reveal.

And, this year, two new babies joined our clan so that was probs the most fun part. Seeing those smushy babies on the screen.

When that was over, we watched some basketball (and by “we,” I mean Ankur and Dad. I was just physically there, but lost in my book!). We ate some salad for lunch because my body was desperately crying out for some vegetables. And…

…are you ready for this?

…

We cut Ishu’s hair.

OOF.

I know. I know. His bangs were getting in his eyes and it was meant to be a trim. But one thing led to another and we chopped so much of it off. I may have cried a teeny bit, looking at this big boy without his fountain ponytail.

Luckily, hair grows back.

And he’s my cute baby no matter what.

But WHO KNEW YOU COULD HAVE SO MANY EMOTIONS ABOUT HAIR?!

Certainly not me.

Day after Christmas (Sunday)

We got up, packed some more, cried some more tears, and drove to the Oakland airport for our flight to SoCal.

Ankur flew back to Chicago and Ishu and I flew down to SoCal.

It’s always been hard to leave Ankur when we’ve had to go our separate ways – whether it be for a trip I had to go on or when he was gone for weeks during his traveling rotations. But I think it breaks my heart even more now watching him say bye to Ishu.

OOF.

Luckily, we’ll see him again soon.

Our flight was nice and short and I got lucky in that Ishu slept the entire time.

Peep those sandwich crumbs on Mama’s sweater. (What you can’t see is that there are some in Ishu’s hair. NBD).

Once we were out of the plane, he ran all the way to baggage claim and he kept screaming “bumpy airplane!” and “Nani Nanu house!” the entire way.

My mama and papa were too excited to wait the 5 minutes ’til we got our luggage. So they had me go sit with the car while they hung out with Ishu at baggage claim.

Ha. Priorities.

Once we got Ishu buckled in, his Nani pulled out some seaweed and grapes. That made for one happy toddler.