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.

Yes, that’s what we did last night. Oh wait, but a flood in singapore? In a high rise building? It wasn’t even in the news? It could not have been. Here goes the story.

I rushed out of the house last evening in a hurry carrying my son and a huge bag (which I always do) because I was getting late for a business conference which was across the city. I briefly stopped before leaving to check the gas stove if it’s off because leaving the gas stove on while going out is my worst nightmare that had been cooking up in my mind among all other ‘what if’s.

When we returned back after midnight, all we wanted to do was sleep. As we approached the door, we noticed water seeping out of our front door. Actually it was quite a lot of water. I let out a curse word, and another and another. I haven’t used curse words in the past 3-4 years. Then I immediately set to action. One of my ‘what if’s kept flashing in my mind. What if I leave the tap open?

Leaving the tap open is common but what if I leave it open when the drain is blocked? The drain was blocked 2 days back but we didn’t have proper equipment so we put the work off for the weekend.

I opened the door to find more than an inch of water everywhere. Luckily there wasn’t much stuff lying on the floor except for my electronic weighing scale and the internet modem. And it was pretty evident that so much more water had drained well out of the door. Hubby and I started working before we knew what we were doing. Our 2 yr old son refused to get down on the floor and spent some time in his high chair watching all the action. Later we sent him to bed when we realised that we’d have situation under control soon. Two hours and exchange of some hot and angry words later, Hubby and I had drained most water out and went to bed with a thin sheet of water in the living room but all of the 3 bed rooms were clean.

We woke up in the morning to see all of the water having magically disappeared. I would have thought it was all a dream except for the super clean house and the cleaning stuff lying here and there.

Later in the morning I was singing son’s brushing song while attempting to brush his teeth. Hubby stood in front of me and laughed.

What did YOU do?

And I realized that he mentioned what I was singing. It goes like this:

And while I’m brushing my teeth and having so much fun,
I never let the water run!
I never let the water run!

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!

Me: 5 minutes. You sit and wait.

Son: Time?

Me: (Surprised) Time? It’s 9.15 now.

Son: Fifty? (Pauses to Think) Sixty. Forty. Amma, shop! (excited)

Me: Shop? What about the shop?

Son: Fifty. Dol.

Me: You mean dollars?

Son: Yes. Fifty. Dol. Shop.

Me: (Thinking) Now I know you are the son of a shopaholic.

I got my diet planned last week and scheduled it for today because I wanted to shop for things required for today. The weekend was extremely exciting and busy that I still haven’t got what I wanted. I don’t have the fruits I’m supposed to take today before lunch and I still haven’t bought battery for my weighing scale. Nevertheless, I have started the regime as planned and will take challenges on the go.

Numbers:

Weight in kgs: I have no idea

Waist Circumference: 85 cm (Cut off WC is actually 80 cm)

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.

1. Get some professional photos taken.
2. Feel the snow.
3. Refresh my personal library and read my favorite novels again.
   1. Gone with the wind
   2. Doctors
   3. Love story
   4. Ponniyin Selvan (Tamil)
4. Have my hair permed.
5. Take son to the zoo or beach all by myself atleast once every month.
6. Visit Lake Palace, Thekkady and stay at the same suite we stayed on our honeymoon.
7. Sail in the sea.
8. Be awake all night doing whatever.
9. Collect favorite movie DVDs in HD.
10. Watch Ellen Show whenever I wish. And watch it live atleast once.
11. Buy Calvin and Hobbes full collection.
12. Maintain an Oil Pastels daily sketch book.
13. Inspire people and be a blessing in someone’s life.
14. Make my own personalized flash cards for son.
15. Sing on stage atleast once.
16. Perform with a professional dance group.
17. Go on a tour of Indian classical dances and learn a few steps in each.
18. Learn ballroom dancing with hubby.
19. Make a really good mouth watering curry.
20. Interview a famous person I really appreciate and admire.
21. Get son to spend quality time with my parents.
22. Spend a night at the beach with closest of family/friends.
23. Teach son to read tamil.
24. Camp in a jungle and not be afraid.
25. Read a book in a lonely beach.
26. Consciously allow myself to be addicted to something and pamper and nurture the addiction.

I’m sure the list is not complete yet, but I have some raw material to work with in life.

I believe in believing. Why yes, it all dates back to the days in my past, with disbelief in the almighty, even though I was an optimist in actions. I believed in myself and everything was possible. Except that I didn’t realize that I was missing something important. That part which I didn’t know, I either was ignorant about it or I subconsciously chose not to dig into it, lest I have to face a truth I’m not prepared for.

Anyway, things turned out well and before it was too late, I understood this important thing in life. The thing that changed me, my life and family and undoubtedly will continue to do so, in a positive way. I’m sure I wrote something related here and here, but these are topics that keep showing more new meanings in life, the more we look. There’s always a lot to explore and the things that we are going to learn shall never end.

What the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve. -Napolean Hill

Belief. All things tangible are so because of belief. All things superstitious are so because of belief.

A couple of days back hubby was wondering why he was fine when he ate ice creams as a child, but now when he takes ice cream, he gets a sore throat! I said, ‘yeah, when you were a child, your mind was not poisoned with the thought that ice creams cause sore throats, but now that you do, you believe in it and end up getting one’.

The demonstration of Power of belief starts early in life. Everyday when I get ready, son stands next to me and insists that I do makeup on his face. I act as if I’m applying makeup on him but he doesn’t know that I actually closed the accessories safely before putting it on his face. This happens everyday and then he would stand in front of the mirror and admire the work I had ‘done’ on his face. Sometimes I play along saying how the eyeliner made his eyes more beautiful. He feels proud and sometimes when he is not in mood, he even tries to remove the makeup with his shirt, you know, the makeup that really isn’t there.

Belief is a basic of everything. If not for this factor, what would the world look like today?