Our distant cousins from my Mom’s side had a wedding reception in the Bride’s hometown of Waynesburg, PA, which also happens to be in the middle of Chicago, Washington D.C., and Atlanta. We were all very excited about the opportunity to not only meet our cousins, but to get all the new babies together for the first time.

Sonali and I decided that this was time for Mira’s first plane flight. Her head has been less stuffy, she’s gotten better about entertaining herself, and it was only 2 hours away. Mira, of course, was fascinated by the airport and wanted to walk through it all herself, though she got a little surprised by train. She got into her seat pretty well and was comfortable for about half the flight.

Unfortunately, we let her get bored, and after that, there was no going back into the seat. Lessons learned!

We got to the hotel just a few minutes before everyone else and the family reunion and baby meet and greet could begin.

Mira and Vihann got along pretty well, but she was pretty unhappy when her parents paid attention to one of the other babies. Unfortunately, it seems that they had different dialects of baby talk and were not able to communicate well with each other.

Mira was less sure with Niam. She’s clearly forgotten that period of her life.

For us, it was great to see those two sweet little boys and it brought back memories of those stages in Mira’s life.

The hotel meet and greet was not the main event and the following night we went to the reception. Mira loves weddings and took over the dance floor. It was very cute to watch her try to learn the steps from the ladies doing Garba.

Since a plane flight, meeting the new cousins, and attending a reception aren’t enough for one trip, we also had the first in person Rakhi between Mira and her cousins. I appreciate and second Mira’s skepticism about this band tying ceremony.

Having my mom's side of the family together was a great experience and hopefully one that we can repeat again before too long.