No, I’m not talking about any animated character here. Son saw this ad posters in the train and got excited about it.
He calls it Sidee (CD). Yup, it does look like a CD, doesn’t it?
Category: Kids!
Old friends…
Reunited.
Actually my only non-indian friend so far!
She was new to Singapore when I met her and had just started to learn English. We had a lots of communication challenges and after a long struggle, I learnt to speak broken english to match her at that time. She is getting better at her language these days. Thanks to her, I don’t have to speak word-after-word anymore.
I had a tummy bug last week when hubby was working late. Incidently I hadn’t taken Pappu out for the whole day, so he had started behaving differently when my bug was at it’s peak. Well, it’s not fun when you are sitting in the toilet bowl and trying to catch your vomit in a plastic bag when your 1.5 year old son stands next to you and tries to imitate your vomiting inside the same bag. So I just let him loose and allowed him to have a liberal day. As I was sitting and watching him do things, I realized how different he was, when he is not under my authority.
Some time in between, he digged his favourite shirt from the dirty laundry basket and insisted that he wear it. Guess what I did? I let him wear it.
And then he wanted to wear the pants that are rather loose for him and keeps coming below his diaper. I let him do that too.
This was followed by several activities that were performed while I just watched. Then he hanged my camcorder bag around his neck and wanted to go out. By this time I was already fed up and wanted fresh air too. So I took him out for a walk. As soon as we were near the next block, he returned the bag to me and didn’t want to carry it any more.
I called my friend to the play ground so that I can sit in the play ground bench for a while. She was running behind Pappu and advising him what to do when he was playing football with other kids’ balls without their consent and climbing on their big cycles. I wanted peace so I just pretended that I didn’t see anything.
Not that these are big things but everytime he did these things before, the outcome was different. I never told him ‘no’ but I made up my own custom ways of telling him what he should rather do. And he would listen to whatever I say and follow my advice.
That day was different for both of us…
A few weeks back, I bought 5 books with the title Baby’s Big Book.
When I got back home, I put it away and totally forgot about it. The books later came out one at a time and soon got Pappu’s full attention. I noticed that he loved the series of books, even his father and I did. It’s bright, colorful illustrations are large and simple enough for a child of Pappu’s age can understand easily. Pappu was reading them everyday and insisted we repeat every word again and again. Soon, he learnt almost all the words from the pages.
Another reason I love this book is it’s not a chunky board book. Of course, until Pappu was an year old I was always looking for board books for my son but when Pappu got his first couple of teeth, I decided that he was not in the ‘baby book’ stage anymore. This book is flexible non-board books, but is robust enough to handle a toddler’s use. I didn’t find the rest of the books anywhere and actually did go through a lots of pains to get hold of them. Now, it is in Pappu’s daily study schedule. He seats himself in his little baby chir in front of the table and calls for me to sit and read with him. He finishes all the 11 books in one sitting and after that he starts with his other books, including his all time favourite, ‘my first book of the world’. This is something all of us look forward to, everyday!
An year back……
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.
I wish I had captured what remained shortly after the second photo was taken. But that would have made this post look sad. I’d rather let the tiny hands have all the credits of being cute and only being cute….
Dear baby,
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.
We had our year end party last week and I gathered our business team for a dance performance. This is the first stage performance for most of them and others had danced on stage once 15 years ago. We started rehearsing a week before the party and I was their coach. Frankly, I had expected some frustration but the group surprised me with their work ethics , punctuality and teachability. We mainly had fun, more often rolling on the floor laughing especially because this was among a close group of friends. We kept the kids with us while we practiced and the kids coordinated very well too.
I didn’t know how Pappu had taken the whole event. We didn’t explain anything to him except creating his curiosity by mentioning that mom and dad are going to dance on stage with his other uncles and aunts. It wasn’t until the next day after the party that I found out how much it had impacted him. I was humming our dance sequence and Pappu insisted that I play the song on the computer. The boy had actually caught some of our dance steps and was clapping and turning around exactly when we had done in our sequence. I had no idea that he had learnt the dance himself even though he looked very quiet and disinterested when we were rehearsing.
And the highlight was when the sequence was over, he raised his arms just the way we had done. These clips were originally shot for my mom and it makes me laugh everytime I see it.
Extended thought: He actually dances like this for 5 minutes continuously, many times a day along with his other activities. No wonder he doesn’t gain weight.
