Niranjana, Melissa and Andy

In recent weeks, our parenting strategy has taken a somewhat competitive turn. It began innocently enough, but we aren't quite sure where this will lead.

Niranjana can be somewhat pokey in the mornings, but we learned a technique to speed her up when we want her ready for school. We've turned things into a competition.

As Melissa has chronicled, I've taught Niranjana the fine art of "Pull my finger."

Tonight at dinner, Niranajana presented her finger to me, so I pulled it. She waited for a second, looked around, shrugged her shoulders and said:

"Nothing happened!"

A year ago, Niranjana hadn't yet experienced Halloween. She was, in fact, not interested in leaving Mommy's side by the end of October last year. But the first time she rang a doorbell and got a piece of candy, she began to understand the concept of one of childhood's favorite holidays.

This year? No problem. Niranjana dressed up as Princess Jasmine (thanks to Ammaji for the great outfit). Melissa was prepared for cold weather by buying Niranjana a brown turtleneck that did a good job of matching her skin color and keeping her warm.

It's dinnertime, and Melissa is not giving in to Niranjana's requests for M&Ms.

So, I just caught our perfect little angel picking her nose and eating her boogers instead. I asked, "Do your boogers taste better than M&M's?"

She smiled devilishly and replied, "Uh-huh!"

I didn't ask if the boogers were plain or peanut flavored.

Our company put on a community-wide yard sale Saturday. For unfathomable reasons, I was dubbed the M.C. and given a live microphone for four hours. So I walked around making fun of people's junk as about 1,500 folks milled through 30 vendors' stuff.

I found a VHS copy of the Kevin Costner trainwreck Waterworld. I quipped that someone needed to buy it because there is just one copy of the film - and it moves from yard sale to yard sale.

I got a CD of The Best of Beavis & Butt-head, which my co-worker Eric will no doubt cherish.

For our one-year anniversary of arriving home from India with Niranjana, we went to India Palace in Kennewick for dinner last night.

The owners are from Mumbai, but the chef is from Chennai. He came out to talk to Niranjana in Tamil, just to see if she might remember any of her native language (she didn't).

As we have documented previously, Niranjana is a pretty athletic little girl. This evening, my mother (Ammaji) came to visit for the weekend, so we went into the backyard so Niranjana could show her how well she kicks the ball.

This video might indicate she never misses, but that's why we edit. However, she connects more often than she whiffs, and most of these skills — this drop-kick style — have been learned in the past five days.

Over the past year, I've been meaning to work up the video we took while in India. With this week marking our one-year anniversary of traveling to Chennai to bring home Niranjana, I decided to put together this quick montage from our time there.

A year ago Sunday, Niranjana was all ours. We weren't necessarily expecting to have our daughter handed to us, but we were good with it.

After meeting Niranjana on the 13th, we went back to the hotel and had dinner, which included a bottle of Pinot Noir from India. We recounted the experience with my mother, who came with us on the journey. The next morning, we were picked up and transported to Guild of Service's main office, where we met with Kamala, as well as the man who has run the operation for decades.

A year ago today, we met our daughter.