The past one year is one of the fastest years of my life, where the rest of the fastest years came only after you were born. You set an example right in front of our eyes about how fast a person can evolve. At the same time, the fact that you are reaching 3 is putting more pressure on me. First 3 years in a person’s life is supposed to be the most important. This is when your brain is supposed to grow most and your learning is at it’s peak. And I don’t mean learning alphabets, numbers, poems, mathematical and chemical formulae. In fact I didn’t consciously teach you any alphabets and numbers. Whatever you know, you learnt from your daily 1 hour of TV time and the songs that I sang to keep your attention.

What I’m really thinking about is what kind of mother I have been in the past couple of years? Have I taught you basic life skills? Have I taught you how to think? how to respect people? how to understand time and money? how not to waste food and resources? and to make the best out of it?

It may not be realistic to teach you everything that I know in my age, but I believe the foundation is supposed to be set right now. I think I have done a pretty good job and I believe in improving and to give you the best experiences in the coming months.

Even though I see you all the time, sometimes you really surprise me. The other day you came to me saying “Let me see what’s in the fridge. Oh, I want cheese. I’m a mouse”. Another day we were looking at a picture of a boy doing something and you were making your own story about what the boy was doing. The truth is, you were right. Out of pride I exclaimed “Is there something that you don’t know?” You promptly replied “I don’t know this boy”.

You seem to be a little choosy about things. Of course all kids are choosy but you seem to be little too choosy about people. Most of the time, you behave like a normal child being shy with some people but at times, you surprise everyone with your outspoken-ness and ‘public speaking’ so to say. You don’t even mind ‘performing’ in front of strangers if need be.

One of these days you went to the library with grandma and demanded an elephant book. Your grandma didn’t know where it was so she asked you to wait. You didn’t want to wait, so you approached the librarian and after making sure you had her attention, said “I want ‘eleshant’ book. Where’s ‘eleshant‘ book?” Obviously the librarian didn’t understand ‘eleshant‘ (That’s how you say elephant, you still pronounce ‘f ‘ as ‘sh‘). Knowing that she didn’t understand, you showed her a wall hanging picture with lots of animals, pointed to the elephant and said “That is Eleshant. I want eleshant book”. The lady was a little taken aback, she laughed and spent a good amount of time going through the colored picture books to find one for you.

About 3 months back, when you were at a book stall, you started browsing some of the books there. You finally chose one and walked to the shop keeper. Your grandpa was watching you converse with her. You walked back to your grandpa and said “I want 1 dollar”. He handed you a dollar, just out of curiosity to see what you were planning to do. You took it and walked back to the shop keeper,handing her the dollar. She promptly wrapped the book and placed it in your hand. Well, being a little 2.5 year old I should say, you surprised us.

And did I tell you that this book was a story about a little elephant named Ellie. That brings me to your craze about elephants. To say that you love elephants would be an understatement. It started more than an year back when you favored elephants over other animals in the zoo. But the craze set it’s own stage when your grand parents came here for a long visit. Your favorite game turned out to be playing elephant, not just riding on their back pretending to be the mahout (an impact of the elephant show at zoo), but then changing yourself into a little elephant having a blast with the bigger ones. At times I really thank God for having my parents here with me because it ain’t always fun to be on all fours pretending to be an elephant, at least so in my age. May be when I’m past 50, it will become fun. You spend atleast an hour every day playing ‘elephants’.

During the rest of your waking hours, you pretend play other things. You include your 2 good friends in your imaginary play buying them ice creams and acting out every little detail of the incidents that you make up. You don’t even forget to put the imaginary change that you got from the imaginary ice cream vendor after paying the imaginary money inside your imaginary ‘pant pocket’ before you attend to your imaginary ice cream. Sometimes the whole family is involved imagining a story like the jungle book, a movie that you love to watch and also a book you love to read. You assign a character to everyone at home and ask us to play our part. You observe things that we do and often reenact the show at the most unexpected time.

Sometimes you play tricks on us. When you want a favor, you make up a series of questions which would eventually bring us to answer the way you wanted. Sometimes you think too much.

You love to sing and to perform. You got that quality from me. By singing one of your favorite songs, I can really change your mood and get you to behave like an angel.

And you are so flexible. You got that quality from your dad. You almost know the value for your tears. Almost. Sometimes you do throw worse fits, but that’s when you know that what you want is so reachable and it didn’t harm anyone, like watching your favorite video, or putting on your favorite shirt again or even wearing that uncomfortable pair of shoes anyway. But you perfectly understand when things are different, things that were not going to come even if you cry, things that are dangerous or inappropriate. It always breaks my heart to see you swallow your tears trying to act like a big guy and announcing “I big boy. I very happy’ on the way to school after 2 months holiday or when your dad and I leave for another business appointment without you.

He uses real time vessels to make dosas in his imagination (actually he does all the steps involved in making dosa perfectly). He then serves it in a plate and tells us to taste it. And then he fills up a bowl with sambhar from another big vessel to eat with the dosa. With all the cuteness involved in this process, this dosa-sambhar combo must be the best in the world, if only it was real.

He relates things from his book and sometimes let his imagination flow. One of his books have a big picture of a milk bottle and on the opposite page is a hobby horse. A couple of months back, he saw those pictures before closing the book, thought for a moment and then immediately opened it again and said that the horse drank milk from the bottle. One day after many weeks of not seeing the book (we went to India in between) he found a similar hobby horse in a shop and said that horse wants milk and acted as if giving a bottle in the horse’s mouth and made a sucking sound. After that every time he views that page, he keeps doing the same action.

He stands on his walker (actually he climbs on it reminding me he is too old for a walker), holding onto it’s handles and says that he is driving an auto. It’s an experience he got 2 months back in India and he still remembers how they drove it.

The other day, he found a large circle in a book he reads everyday but this time it reminded him of a steering wheel. He said he was driving, steering with his hands, making a car engine sound and occasionally using one of his hands to change gears. The driving went on for some time and then he recognized it as a circle and moved on to the other pages of the book.

He reached the height of pretending the other morning when he woke us up from sleep and announced his dad’s name is one of our friends’ name. And then he fished out the name of this friend’s wife and said that’s mom’s name. Hubby and I were surprised and hubby asked “Then who are you?”. And he announced he was baby A, who is the son of the same couple.

We ended up laughing out loud even though we were so surprised not only by the extent of his imagination and pretend play, but also that he understands the concept of family very well.

I try so hard to remember the incidents from this period of his life, but he keeps doing and saying things all day long and in the process, I keep forgetting what had happened in the morning. While I wish I had recorded everything, still I’m so happy and feel blessed for what’s happening right now and for what tomorrow has in store.

One of my favorite words in the dictionary and in life is change. Looking at you, I recognize that you are the word itself. Change. I’m amazed at how much a person of your size can learn everyday. Come on, how much memory is there in your little brain? And how much processing it does everyday? every minute?

You surprise me every waking moment of your day. Sometimes I ask you questions to which you wouldn’t know the answer. But you think for some time and start guessing the answers. Most of the time, you are right. Even today morning I asked you who my parents are and you immediately identified it as your grand parents. You have a great memory for people. You precisely remember people and incidents from at least 6 months ago. I know that you didn’t get your memory genes from me. It must be from your father. He is the one who even recognizes his school mate from kindergarten after 20 years in a city that doesn’t belong to either of them. As I always keep saying, your father is intellectual. And so are you.

Actually you think a lot. When I talk with you in big people style, you absolutely understand it. I can see you trying to digest any new information I pass to you and you ask your doubts and even reaffirm what I had just told you, all in terms of single words. Your most recent book is “Being fair”. You love the book and I love it too, for it contains sentences that I keep repeating to you when you are among others. Now you have more reason to believe me!

You also know genders. You can identify whether a person (even most babies) is boy or girl and you are right all the time. And of course, if you called those tomboyish girls as boys, it’s not at all your fault.

You know all your shapes, colors and numbers. Okay, you know numbers from 1 to 10 and then lots of 2 digit numbers. One of our favorite games when we are waiting for something or someone in public (and when you are impatient) is to identify shapes in the rest of the world. When I tell you to find out a specific shape around you, you really go out of the way to find it even if it’s a tough one to crack. You have learnt to identify numbers too, you recognize many numbers when you find them even in different locations and different sequences.

Our singing and dancing is going on really well and you have started singing. You love to perform in front of known people and sometimes strangers too. You take a good place to stand and sing some of your favorite (and easy) rhymes. Your words are not clear but your keep to the exact tune of the original song. You talk quite a lot of words even though you don’t seem to be talkative. Your father’s genes, I bet. You talk when it is required. But you say it clearly and fluently. You still haven’t learnt to speak in sentences but you say words together. You communicate everything this way and these days, even outsiders are able to understand what you say, most of it.

It’s so funny to watch common words becoming a tongue twister for you. Chicken soup would become “kackan soup” and then “chinken choup” while you try to say it. And you realize it if you say it wrong and you keep trying. The cutest part is, you have to spit some saliva out while saying your tongue twisters. Don’t worry, I’ll try to keep this part a secret from your teenage friends to be. Triangle, rectangle, water melon are some of the other tongue twisters. You still don’t pronounce ‘f’. You say ‘sh’ instead. Whenever you see a McDonalds restaurant, you point out to the big M and ask for ‘shench shies’ (french fries).

You love to eat. You have favorites even though you enjoy most fruits and vegetables. It helps that I avoided biscuits and chips (even baby versions) almost completely from your diet during the initial months. (I had to do it to make sure you were eating enough fruits and veggies for snacks because you didn’t start out as a good eater. I replaced whatever little amount you ate with the healthiest options) You still take fruits for your snacks, vegetables during lunch, fish and chicken whenever they are served. I had been thinking you were a fussy eater during the first year but now your have totally changed into someone else. You even eat whole boiled eggs now and a little milk too.

Quite often you say something called ‘see-ma-pop’, as I hear it. This is the only thing in your vocabulary that I do not understand. You say it when you are happy, when you are jumping and having fun. I hope I’d find it out soon.

You understand cause and effect. Everyday I tell my mom on phone about you and one day when I was probing you with questions (like I always do) you smiled and said that I had told your grandma about it on phone. Of course, I did talk about that on phone but I thought you were playing and had not listened. That gives me an early alarm about talking about you to others, good or bad.

You love Barney. And you love to watch TV. I love the former too, but not the TV factor. Your screen time is around 1.5 hours a day even though I try to cut it short. Not that I’m a strict mom but I just don’t want to spoil your precious physical play time. I truly believe and I do see that you tend to sit idly in front of the TV for longer periods. But I appreciate that you learn a lot from TV, why I do too. In fact many times, I use Barney’s name to get things done from you. Recently, I also discovered that singing the “clean up” Barney song will make you really really clean up the place and put your toys away with very little help. Sometimes you even claim that I sing the song and you start tidying up by yourself.

You are so confident about your common sense that you do not even need my advice. Today you were helping me putting away folded clothes and I handed you a old towel (that I wanted to use for kitchen cleaning here after) and asked you to keep it in the kitchen. When I saw you carrying  it towards the bed room, I reminded that that cloth would go to the kitchen. You looked at me with disbelief and said “towel. there!” and you proceeded to the bed room. Oh yeah, towels are supposed to be kept there and who am I thinking I should recycle old clothes. Common sense, you see? Is it time for you to learn the 3Rs of saving the environment?

You are getting increasingly friendly with strangers, and are wary with them at the same time. It depends purely on the strangers themselves. There are times when you totally get playful with one person in the train and all of a sudden you find someone else noticing you and if you don’t like them, you try to hide yourself. You either hide behind me or you tell me you want to sleep. As if, closing your eyes would make this person disappear.

You have reached a stage of independence where you are slowly moving out of the protective nest within your parents’ arms which kept out any kind of negative energy and was always feeding your mind with positive thoughts. I know this is being hard on you when a much bigger boy pushes you out of the play car and I had to take you away from there saying that you should wait for your turn and that the boy will soon try to be nice. It must be hard on you when you get smacked by another kid in the play ground. I also realize that soon you will go through similar situations in my absence and I wouldn’t even know it.

I’m not sure if you fully understand this when I say, but I say it anyway. People are sometimes unfair, why, we all are. It is forgivable. But be kind for as much as possible, because nobody likes to be bad, and nobody is. There’s good everywhere in the world, it’s only up to us to dig and find the good. And I’m sure that the sensible person that you are, you will be able to identify it!

I love you,

Mom.

Soon the lullabies were restricted to bed time and other songs and rhymes took it’s place for the rest of the day. I almost never saw him throwing a tantrum because most of the time, I was able to sweet talk him into good behavior, while at home and while running errands. Usually I’m truthful to him and reasoning works but when it doesn’t, I distract him with singing. Oh yeah remember seeing that crazy woman in the middle of the street singing and dancing to children’s song? It’s me! I don’t mind this crazy look, in order to avoid getting the ‘horrible mother’ look I got on that day when I let him cry in the food court. I’d rather sing than getting angry or upset.

In the process, I started inventing new songs. Every morning and at bed time, I sing different brushing songs to get my son to let me brush his teeth. And I sing eating songs during lunch times to get him to stay put in the high chair. What a terrible mother I should be, lunch is served only to people who sit in their high chairs. And then there are time when he wants to watch TV. Unfortunately, that’s about most of the time we stay home, about 10 to 15 times a day. And given that the maximum screen time allowed is 1 hour, I again have to distract and start singing. When I’m tired of carrying him around, I sing dancing and running songs to get him dancing and at the same time keep moving.

This morning, when he woke up, my brushing song was this:

This little puppy went to market

This little puppy went to school

And this little puppy loves…

to let mummy brush his teeth!

Son was excited to hear the puppy who always said “wee wee wee” now willing to brush his teeth. When our brushing task was over, I took him to change his diaper. Son thought for a moment and said “puppy…. diaper change?”

It was a sweet moment. Sometimes it’s worth getting a broken voice!

Dear self,

Yesterday I understood how it feels to be a badly behaved mother. Yeah, it was absolutely and truly myself when I was forcefully carrying a wailing and crying 2 year old as I was walking inside the food court and I had a gait that would suggest “I don’t care how much you scream, I’m going in to gobble that da** food anyway” attitude. In my defense, I was really really hungry!

I was seriously considering to suggest the meaning of the word ‘unreasonable’ to be changed as ‘toddler’. I felt that he was giving me the hardest time of his life and I’m pretty sure he must be thinking the same too, only with a switch of responsibility for the hard time mentioned.

All because he saw a barney play train outside of the food court and I ignored when he wanted to play. And he had to forget that he was just playing in another barney play car and before that in elmo play car and before that in bob play car and before that in an endless number of play cars after we entered the mall 2 hours back to buy something for 5 bucks. By the way, I do not understand why they have to keep these huge coin operated play equipments every 10 feet apart in shopping malls. But that’s totally out of my hands. And what does matter is, these equipments are spotted only by kids of age 10 and below. We, adults are totally ignorant of it’s presence unless the little one spots it and take a flight to reach there not caring if the parent is following or not.

Surprisingly, I heard myself saying this screaming toddler “Have I ever stopped you from having fun? Don’t you think there should be some reason if I’m doing it now?”. Even more surprisingly, I had to give up after 10 minutes of angry fighting to leave the food on the table and join him as he played happily in the barney train, all the while thinking that I should have done it earlier!

Yours not-angelic-anymore,

Myself

Dear baby,

Our past 2 months have been totally busy. The first month was all about shopping and packing for our India trip and the second was spent in India. I’m surprised what a difference one month can make in a person’s life.

The first thing you learnt while we were in India was aggression. Really, and more surprisingly, your father and I were happy about that…. Earlier we used to notice that you were one of the most soft spoken and gentle kids that we had ever seen. Yet you were one of the most active and smart too. But there was this brief time before our trip that we started getting worried that you were becoming rather too soft when we doubted that other kids of your age and older were easily manipulating you.

But you proved us wrong on the very third day of our trip that you learnt to be more aggressive and started defending yourself perfectly. I’m just happy that you can survive any situations that might call for.

We had a great time travelling and enjoying with the whole family. You enjoyed the bonds among the family, understood a whole lot and were perfectly amused by visitors and guests. Sometimes I feel that I should have chosen a lifestyle that would allow you to have more family bonds but what we have now if equally important too.

One lazy morning, you were trying to wake me up. You were actually very playful and when you saw that I was not going to get up that easily, you fished out a couple of words from your vocabulary that immediately popped me up in the bed. It was not easy to understand when you said ‘good morning sun shine’, just the way I have said for many mornings in the past when you were waking up.

I carried a few CDs for you while travelling because watching about 30 – 45 minutes of CD every day had almost become a habit for you. That one month helped creating your first real obsession, Barney the dinosaur. By the time we got back home after the month, I had become so cautious about using the name of Barney and friends because you would immediately want to watch it. I had been determined to let you watch only an hour of TV a day and any mentions of Barney after that and I’d have to take you out of the house to avoid watching more TV. But luckily we found Barney goodies from the store that softened the video craze a bit. In fact, things are much smoother now after your father and I have learnt to use Barney’s name to make you do things. Oh yeah, “let’s feed barney” and “let’s make barney sit down safely” would have you do the same too.

For the first time, we stayed for a whole week in India after your father returned to Singapore. Initial 2 days was very hard. You understood that your father had gone somewhere but you seemed to want him during bed time. During the day you were enjoying yourself and singing merrily but by bed time you missed him so much. But you were pretty matured enough for your age and you soon understood that your father had returned to Singapore where you were soon to reach. You seemed rather happy when we reached the airport and immediately waved good bye to your grandparents.

I sense a preschooler growing up in my house now that you have learnt to answer very schoolish questions like “what’s there in the sky”, “what do you see on the road”, “what’s there in the shop”. You have learned these by yourself. You have mastered identifying and naming shapes (except that you still say gangang for triangle and rangang for rectangle). You even attempt to draw and paint shapes. You use a paint brush, chalk piece, crayon or pencil to draw. You make round movements with your tool and call it a circle or oval and you name straight line movements as square (soiy), triangle, diamond or rectangle.

You are learning to read alone without me. Sometimes I don’t hear you for a long time and when I come in to check, I find you sitting with a book and quietly turning the pages and going through the pictures. But that doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t bug me to come read with you just when I’m doing something urgent at the computer. It’s just that you are learning to enjoy your independence.

Your passion for dance and music is growing. You love to dance everyday to some music which includes my funny singing. You try to sing real songs now. Most of the times, your attempt at your favourites rhymes is successful. You get the tune right even though you still can’t say all the words right. You can play harmonica with such continuity and grace like an expert, even though I know nothing about harmonica expertise. What I do know is, you play it at least as good as me or your father.

You are beyond the stage of learning the ‘first words’ and I believe you have entered the world of ‘secondary words’ as I choose call it. Like, you now know that every ball is different. You can say when you see a foot ball (shoot ball) and you know that you kick a foot ball. You know that you play throw and catch with a bouncy ball but I have a hard time teaching you that not every ball can be hit with a bat. You can say the difference between spoon and fork. You are learning opposites, like mom’s hair is long and your hair is short after a haircut.

Cooking has become another obsession for you. You want real vessels and the proper accessories that go with the dish that you pretend-cook just the way I use in the kitchen. Now you know how to make tea, dosa, omelette and more if I’m not wrong.

You know a great deal about gender. You say boy for male and girl for female. And if I ask you whether a person is boy or girl, you get just about everyone right.

You have recently learnt the joy of covering yourself in bed. You surprised me on the first night you told me to help me cover you with a blanket while in the past, all you had done was to kick the blanket out right from you first couple of days. You have also learnt to sleep on your own without much carrying around or singing. Sometimes you do ask me to sing ‘by-a-bye’ (lullaby) and you choose what I should sing and what not to. And you prefer to lie down on your warm and cosy bed for some time after waking up (as if you are taking rest from sleeping) before you gain lots of energy and jump out of bed.

And not to mention the day when you first let me know that your tooth hurt when you ate something sweet. We had noticed the cavities in your teeth for sometime but you surprised me by expressing clearly how it hurt. Every now and then, something gets stuck in your teeth and you ask me to clear it up. When I do, you say “bye bye” to mean that which was stuck had gone. Anything that is ‘gone’, has gone ‘bye bye’.

There are these times that you remind me that you aren’t a baby anymore. You behave so big-boyish that I have to pause and think who I am dealing with and then decide on my action.

• Children grow up too fast.
• You want your child to be smart and all, but there are some skills that you wish your child hadn’t learnt, like opening the zip of your purse or removing his own diaper.
• You’d love your ‘me time’ so much that you wouldn’t mind being awake at 3 am in the night making use of the time.
• You will learn to give-in.
• You’ll be convinced that there needn’t be a source to everything. There are some things that are learnt from nowhere.

Sometimes it’s hard to accept the amount of change that happens in one short year.

Today I had a remarkable amount of stories to tell hubby about my day with son. I have stories to tell him everyday but today’s was a bit of the “surprised to shocked” variety rather than the “surprised to happy” type. A friend of mine was having health challenge so I went over to help her with her 10 month old son. Pappu seemed to be very happy and after some time, he told me that he made potty. I didn’t smell anything but still I tried to check his diaper but he didn’t let me touch his pants. He wanted to go to my friend’s room to change his diaper. I finally gave in and took him in to change his diaper even though I knew it was clean (because I was engaged in an interesting conversation and I didn’t want to be disturbed). As soon as I removed his diaper, he ran to the shelf and pointed to my friend’s son’s diaper pack, insisting that I put it on him. I didn’t want to, but guess who won?

Whenever I tried to carry the said baby to give my friend some rest, Pappu started throwing some of his worst fits ever insisting that I carry him and return the baby to his aunty. He caught me trying to put the baby to bed by singing a lullaby and this time I really did return the baby to his mom to give my son some peace. Pappu laid on my shoulder and started pleasing me that I sing the lullaby to ‘kaka’ (himself). It was then that I had a second thought on what I had decided a minute ago. I thought the innocence he had an year back is totally gone. May be it is not.

You turned 20 months old. Wherever we go, people keep asking me your age; complete strangers and also people who we know every well. I started saying ‘almost 20′ a couple of days back. I get a feeling of nostalgia remembering your teen months. Somehow 20 months sounds like a big thing. As big as when you would turn 20 years of age.

The change that has happened during your 20th month is amazing. I bet I don’t remember most of the things that happened in the past month, but I try to say a few here.

Your dance video has become a local entertainment program here. Especially our immediate friends and family have been watching it repeatedly enjoying every action of yours. I wish I had shot the video during the day so we could see you better but when I can see you better, I’d rather put the camera down and enjoy looking at you. You have been getting better at your dance, picking up new steps from our dance program. How you remember the steps even now, I don’t know.

You have learnt to play in the play ground all by yourself. You are very strong and careful when it comes to climbing big kids’ ladders. I find it hard to relax and watch you fighting your way up the ladder, but you want to do it all by yourself and I want that too. Other than the sliding and climbing, your other favorite outdoor activity is hanging in a bar. You not only hang but also swing in a to and fro motion that reminds me of the way kids (and adults too) play holding the hanging roots of a banyan tree.

You walk for longer distances now. We don’t take the stroller while going out unless we go to the nearby market and buy lots of things for which I use the pram as shopping cart. You are very understanding and even though you run around everywhere we go, one loud “this way please” gets you in front of me, moving in the direction that we need to go.

Your talking has caught everyone’s attention now. I can’t really find out what you can’t talk anymore. If you are in the mood to, then you talk everything. You have mastered one and two syllable words but when it comes to three or more, you either omit a syllable or two or add your comfort zone letters (like baba) in the place of the syllable. It’s so cute when you put a stress on word endings especially when they end with s, x or ck. Some of the fancy words you speak this month are “gaabox” (garbage box), “mabox” (mail box), “babex” (the multivitamin that we take here), “koths” (clothes), “tatsh” (catch), “kosh” cross, “pesh” press and really a lot lot lot more. When asked where you want to go for vacation, you say “hawii” (Hawaii).

Edited: (How could I have forgotten this?) You seem to prefer x, s or ck only in the end of the word. You say “tetix” for taxi, “titush” for tissue and “bibis” for busy.

I’m still waiting for you to speak in sentences but as of now, you can relate to a story or incident or just about anything else by putting together upto 4 words at a time. For example, when you say “appa shoe buh-bye kaka”, you actually mean “appa is wearing his shoes to go out so I want to go too”.

Kaka is how you say your name. You absolutely answer when people ask you what your name is. It’s good to see you answering even when strangers talk with you. You respond to most questions and you keep on talking when somebody engages in a conversation with you. But now a days, I turnout to be the only person who can understand what you really mean. Even your dad turns to me for help in decoding your language. This is probably the only thing in your life which your dad can’t do himself!

You know who is uncle and who is aunty but when it comes to mentioning somebody, you use their names. You even address everybody by their names which makes our friends and relatives feel happy and for some reason, I think they feel important when you call them by name.

Books are serious business. You fix your own time for reading everyday. When you are ready, you call me to come help you with reading (studying?). When I enter the room, I find you sitting in your tiny baby chair in from of the table and you point to the book shelf waiting for the books. You go through all the eleven books in the series of baby’s big book in one sitting and if you are still interested, you continue reading your first book of the world. After every word has been said, every page has been grazed, you feel a bit content about the reading session. This takes a minimum of half an hour everyday at one stretch. All of your other books are scattered around the house which you spend separate time in reading.

We go out a lot so when we do stay home during the course of the day, it’s mostly filled with your chores, nap time, reading time and limited play and painting time. If we do stay home longer during some days, you demand to watch TV. I’m okay to let you watch TV for 30 minutes a day after which I start regretting my decision of not going out that day.

You have learnt to sleep on your own. I still carry you and walk during the day until you fall asleep but your night time schedule is very clear. You take a small cup of milk after dinner, we all get to bed and read a few pages of your prayer book and say a few short prayers. Then I switch off the light and you lay down and fall asleep. Well, that last sentence was too fast. In between ‘laying down’ and ‘falling asleep’ there are a few more steps that can’t be clearly defined. In short, it includes tossing here and there, climbing in top of dad or mom and jumping, laughing, singing and much more.

But falling asleep on your own also means that we have to be home by bed time. You claim the comfort of your own bed. We gathered with our friends on new year’s even in a beach and when it was your bed time, you started showing the exit and insisting that we go back to lay you down on bed.

The biggest change that I went through in the past month is that we are both free of nursing for the past 2 weeks. You still remember breastfeeding and sometimes wish that I feed you but you are perfectly okay when I don’t. I’m happy not seeing the disappointed look you used to have in the beginning when we stopped nursing completely.

I love you monkey boy!

Mom.