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.

It’s kind of my own recipe prepared briefly within 10 minutes and I just had to add all those words to the recipe name!!!

Just in case you had any doubts about him being the king.

…eating dip-sticks.

Hmm, Yummy!

City boys under construction.

City boys under construction with a bull dozer.

City boys under construction with a bulldozer and hugging Bob, the builder.

City boys under construction with a bull dozer, hugging Bob, the builder and pushing a kitty cat away!!!

THE END

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Posted in Kids!, NaBloPoMo Jan2010, Through my eyes ]]> http://trulyinspiredmom.com/2010/01/28/24-city-boys/feed/ 2 The_Inspired City boys Under Construction :-) With a bulldozer hugging Bob, the builder Kittycat bulldozer http://trulyinspiredmom.com/2010/01/28/24-sidee/ http://trulyinspiredmom.com/2010/01/28/24-sidee/#comments Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:59:57 +0000 TheInspiredOne http://trulyinspiredmom.com/?p=1471 ]]> 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?

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.