Holiday Letter 2011

Dear Family and Friends,

Season’s Greetings from South Carolina! We hope you have a joyous season and a very Happy New Year.

Last year (2010), you may have noticed that we did not post our annual letter. We were quite busy from the start of the year. Here is a quick update of 2010: We learned the 2nd week in January, we were expecting a new bundle of joy. In April, Salil fell 8 feet from the playground landing us in the hospital for his first surgery with pins inserted to fix his fractured elbow. In late April, we took Salil to visit Disneyworld. (He got all the character’s signatures on his cast.) In September, Neepa gave birth to our new little man, Kiran Doshi Shah, who was born a day earlier than planned. He was welcomed into the world on September 8th, 2010. Needless to say, since then we have been re-learning functioning on little sleep. He has truly been a joy!

As both of us have continued to work, placing the boys in daycare/preschool was a big decision we made at the end of 2010. We contemplated many ideas and originally enrolled Kiran in the same daycare that Salil was in. After just a few days of that, we realized the chaos this created in our lives as Neepa had just returned to work. So, a new change was upon us. We were incredibly lucky to be able to hire an amazing teacher from Salil’s old daycare to take care of the boys at home. Erin has been an absolute blessing to our family, and has bonded with Kiran since he was a mere two month old, and also helped Salil along for the nine months before he began elementary school this year.

It’s been a wonderful year as a family of four. It has been a joy to see Salil and Kiran grow as brothers. Salil has become a caring big brother and enjoys being around Kiran, even carrying him around the house occasionally. He is such a big help bringing diapers and helping feed him. As a big brother, he is protective of certain cherished possessions that he feels Kiran may not “respect”, such as his numerous Lego models. Salil has gained a great appreciation for artwork, especially with Erin’s guidance at home. Erin also helped us out greatly by taking him to swimming, piano lessons, and play dates. Salil’s big milestone this year was starting kindergarten at Lake Carolina Elementary school. He is doing great and loving every day! We are also blessed to live in a community that places a high value on both their own children’s education and supporting the local school. Of course we are learning to juggle additional commitments in terms of volunteering and Salil’s new activities (he’s taken a great liking to after-school karate), but we are enjoying this new phase of family, friends, school, and community.

Kiran has come to idolize Salil, and will playfully follow him and pull on his clothes. Kiran has gone from infanthood to becoming a boisterous toddler, learning to walk quickly by 10 months (chasing big brother Salil probably helped). He’s developed his own unique charming personality and we have learned how different two children in the same family can be. . He is quite the character and loves to dance anytime music is played especially the Mickey Mouse clubhouse music. Erin has also taken him to a weekly My Gym classes, daily stroller rides, and play dates.

As usual, we’ve enjoyed spending time with our immediate families this year. The big news is that Mihir’s brother, Mehul and sister-in-law, Mimosa had a beautiful baby boy, Ulises, in May. We had visited Chicago earlier in March for her baby shower, and also to introduce Kiran to Mihir’s extended family there for the first time. We returned in July to see Ulises. Coincidentally Neepa’s parents came into Chicago that weekend for a wedding, and we were able to spend some time them as well. They were happy that we were able to make a few trips up to Charlottesville over the year, too.

This year, we took a few trips to visit extended family and good friends. We also celebrated our 10 year anniversary by taking a weekend trip to Charleston. We went as a family to Atlanta to visit Neepa’s cousin Sonya and husband David, and Mihir’s cousin Falguni and husband Nipul. We also made a weekend trip up to the Raleigh-Durham area to see Neepa’s cousin Reena and her husband Darshil, and also Neepa’s cousin, Sachin.

During Thanksgiving, we made a week-long trip to Virginia, visiting Northern Virginia and Charlottesville. We stopped by Mihir’s cousin, Vaishali and husband Sulay’s house first, then went up to Neepa’s sister-in-law Mausami’s house (her brother Hetal, now working in the State Department’s Consular Affairs IT unit, was working in India for a few weeks). The boys had loads of fun with their cousins Dev and Diya. Afterwards, we all went down to Charlottesville to be with Grandpa and Grandma Doshi. Neepa and Mausami helped Grandma out by shuttling her to her JCPenney Black Friday work shift at 3 am, then splurging on a little shopping for themselves and the families afterwards.

Neepa has continued her work at the Municipal Association of South Carolina, and is adjusting to blending her busy schedule to include the boys’ activities and still maintain a strong circle of friends. When she was pregnant with Kiran, Neepa joined an on-line moms’ board that had other expectant mothers with a September 2010 due date. She became quite close with many of them, including several in South Carolina and the Southeast. She met up with a few of them during our July visit to Atlanta, when we visited our cousins. Later in October, she hosted a 15 moms and their 1-year-olds (plus a few of their siblings as well)! The house was completely packed but everyone seemed to enjoy getting together and getting to know each other better. Early this month, one of the moms graciously invited us to spend the weekend with her and her family in Atlanta, and we all had a blast there, both with the kids and just the grown-ups as well.

Mihir remains working as an associate airport engineer at the South Carolina Aeronautics Commission. His major effort this year was studying for his Professional Engineer (P.E.) exam in October. Many, many hours of reading civil engineering books and doing practice problems over several months were certainly a challenge, especially for Neepa who sacrificed and took up slack for maintaining the house. As of this letter we are still anxiously waiting for results from the October exam, and hopefully Mihir will be able to put a couple of important letters after his name on his business card soon.

We wish you all a wonderful and prosperous year ahead.

Happy Holidays and as always, we'd love to see you!

Love,
Neepa, Mihir, Salil and Kiran

Restarting this blog

Hi All

We are restarting this blog! We promise to update photos and tell you what the kids are up to monthly. You can also keep in touch with us by adding us to facebook

https://www.facebook.com/neepa.shah
https://www.facebook.com/mihirpshah