2007 Update

This year most of my concerns regarding Prem’s health and speech delay have melted away. He moved from Mandala to Mission College in March. There were times, when we had to explain that he was not in college yet, but just in preschool at Child Development Center at Mission College. Mission college program has worked very well for Prem, he has grown in to quite independent and much more confident kid now.

At Mandala, Prem’s preschool, parents generally sits with kids during first 15 minutes of story time, to allow for smoother transition. During one of these story times, in February, after finishing the story, teacher asked, what each kid loved, and got answers like chocolate, ice cream, Dora, pizza and so on. When teacher asked Prem, he turned around and said ‘Mommy’, looking straight into Promila’s eyes. This was extra special, mainly because Prem was delayed in speech, and we did not have much spontaneous conversation with him at the time. Most of the conversations were need based, and to understand and speak about something abstract was touching.

The year was filled with a lot of fun filled activities. We visited, multiple times, Happy Hollow Park and Zoo, Tech Museum, Children Discovery Museum, Bay Area Discovery Museum, Great America Parkway, Gilroy Gardens, Limo’s Farm and local parks. We went to Morro Bay and New Port Beach and explored couple of Southern CA beaches this year. We camped at Mount Lassen and Camp Costanovan. Mount Lassen, in July, was amazing. We had temperatures around 90 at campsite and enjoyed outdoor pool, and did snow boarding, in the same day, at top in shorts and slippers. Besides Sulfur geysers, the area was blessed with couple of big volcanic lakes and water falls.

Promila continued with her dance class with Naach group, and did one stage performance. Besides being her usual energetic self and filling up our calendar with entertaining activities, she volunteered at Prem’s preschool, designed and taught courses at Adult Education and even had a stint at teaching 2nd graders in Rose elementary school. She could hardly speak clearly after 10 days of teaching. Now she really appreciates and understands how hard a teacher job is. It, probably, is as hard as parenting and also as rewarding.

I traveled for office work to Puerto Rico twice, Scotland, Pennsylvania and Ft Wayne Indiana. I met my high school friend in London, after a long time during my visit to Scotland, and it was great fun to do sight seeing with him. Promila’s parents came to US for 6 months this year, and Prem thoroughly enjoyed their company.


Happy holidays and we wish you a happy, healthy and peaceful New Year 2008, filled with laughter and joy.
(From - Prem, Promila and Maneesh Agarwal)