Twins at Edward Hospital are Naperville’s first babies of 2013

Pranitha (left) and Naveen Ballari pose for a photo with their newborn twin daughters, Samiksha and Sahiti, on Tuesday, January 1, 2013. The twins were the first babies to arrive in 2013 in Naperville. | Jeff Cagle~For Sun-Times Media

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Updated: February 3, 2013 6:24AM

So, you’re still a little tired after a long New Year’s Day? Get over it.

You stayed up late? Quit your whining.

For a truly exhausting New Year’s Day celebration, try delivering twins in the middle of the night. Now that’s a great way to ring in a new year. Just ask Pranitha Ballari, who gave birth to twin girls at Edward Hospital Tuesday morning — the first babies born in Naperville this year.

Sahiti Ballari was born at 4:59 a.m. She entered the world weighing 5 pounds, 1 ounce and measuring 18 inches long. Five minutes later, Samiksha Ballari who born. She weighed 4 pounds 13 ounces, measured 18 inches and has slightly chubbier cheeks than her slightly older sister.

The girls were not due until Jan. 21, but babies have a way of making their own calendar.

“I was wanting one more week at least,” Pranitha Ballari said.

In fact, Pranitha and her husband Naveen Ballari had planned a huge family dinner for Tuesday afternoon. Twenty people were supposed to come over. Half of the food was cooked and the table was set. Naveen’s family had even come in from Atlanta. But they ended up eating hospital food instead and couldn’t have been happier.

“The girls decided it was their day, not ours,” Naveen said, laughing.

The Ballaris are both software engineers for AT&T in Hoffman Estates. They live in Aurora’s Concord subdivision, just west of Naperville. The couple has a way with numbers: their son was born on Aug. 9, 2010 — 8/9/10. When they checked into the hospital Monday night after Pranitha’s water broke at 10 p.m., they weren’t thinking much about being the first family of the new year. And midnight came and went but, for some strange reason, neither of them were concentrating much on the clock. Their attention was elsewhere.

Tuesday morning, hospital staff informed them that they’d officially become the first local family to add diapers to their shopping list in 2013.

The girls will likely start school in 2017 and probably graduate from high school around 2029. They’ll find a job, perhaps start their own families and try to make their mark on the world. With any luck, they’ll get to retire around 2077.

But all that’s ahead. On Tuesday, Samiksha and Sahiti were laying quietly, side by side in plastic bins.

Both the girls’ names roughly mean knowledge, but there is an unusual story behind Samiksha’s name. When he was in 11th grade, Naveen moved to Delhi. He kept getting phone calls at the new house. They were from a little girl who was apparently dialing the wrong number. The little girl said her name was Samiksha and asked to speak to her daddy. She called several times and asked the same question whenever Naveen answered.

From them on, Naveen decided if he ever had a girl, he would name her Samiksha. And so on Jan. 1, 2013, he did just that. Not that he could always remember who was who. Tuesday afternoon he kept checking name tags to tell the twins apart. Pranitha would gently remind him that Samiksha’s cheeks were slightly chubbier. (Mothers always know.)

But Naveen could be excused: he had not slept all night. But, he was beaming and didn’t look like he’d been snoozing anytime soon.

“Now that we are finally seeing them, all my tiredness is gone,” he said.

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