Ajit and I decided that before we took Ranjit to see the Taj Mahal, Macchu Pichu, Angkor Wat, the Acropolis and the Egyptian pyramids, we needed to perhaps take him on a couple short trips to get him warmed up. Where else to begin Ranjit's travels but Beavercreek, Ohio, home of his Aaji and Dadu? We set out on Saturday, September 1st morning to beat traffic but alas found that there was no way to beat Chicago traffic unless we left at 3 in the morning. Ranjit was especially unfond of the parking lot that the Dan Ryan had become and cried the whole half hour that we were inching along 5 miles an hour. However once we got on the expressway, he fell asleep and was pretty calm during the rest of the trip (aside from the usual "i'm hungry" and "i'm sleepy" cries).
Ranjit Discovers That We are a Fast Food Nation
Along the way Ranjit went to his first fast food restaurant, a plain-jane little Burger King in some podunk town outside of Indianapolis. He seemed unimpressed. While we were eating our veggie burgers and milk shake a friendly but strange looking man approached us and started chatting with Ranjit, which he and I were fine with. That all changed when he raised his hand to shake hands with my baby... I watched in horror as his potential petri dish of a hand as if in slow motion grabbed Ranjit's little fingers and shook them while Ranjit, who had decided that he did not like this man, began to curl his lips into a pout. Luckily that pout turned into a cry and so we apologetically excused ourselves from the strange man's presence and carried Ranjit back to the car where I quickly wiped his hands down with a wet cloth before he could put whatever germs that had been transferred into his hands into his mouth. (Ladies and gentlemen, if there is anything that I've learned in my 3 months of motherhood is that moms do NOT like strangers touching their babies, especially their hands! My advice to you is if you see a cute little baby that you don't know, talk to him, smile at him, sing to him, do the hokey pokey in front of him, anything, just do NOT touch him, especially his hands!)
Ranjit's fun weekend
Ranjit's first visit to Ohio has so far been filled with new sights and sounds; he went to the Spicer Heights play ground and swung on a swing while strapped to his dad, saw goats bleating and cows mooing at Young's Dairy farm (they have ice cream there too, but he had to pass - maybe next year?), went for a hike in Glen Helen forest in Yellow Springs (home of Dave Chapelle!), went for long walks with Grandma and listened to his Dadu sing Bengali songs at Mr. and Mrs. Bhattacharya's house. He also spent hours mastering the art of thumbsucking, after a month of trying to suck on different fingers and not finding any satisfaction in any of them. About a week ago he settled on the thumb, but couldn't quite figure out the technique (on one of his tries he almost poked an eye out). But now he knows to curl the rest of his fingers in while inserting the thumb facing up...so we possibly have a thumb sucker on our hands!
Anyway, today Ajit left back for Chicago while Ranjit and I stayed on to have more adventures in Ohio... stay tuned!
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