Year and 15 days

I taught him to push blocks through a hole and then clap. Now it's a habit with him. He follows the pushing immediately with the clapping and sometimes he is so keen that he merely places the block somewhere near the hole and starts clapping. He can do a round block quite easily but can't quite tell the different shapes apart yet. I figured out that he remembers the location of the hole that he last pushed through because when I had turned it around, he was still trying to push it through the hole in the bottom right hand corner which wasn't round any more. He sometimes gets annoyed when he is not able to do something and just comes into my lap with a very irritated cry.

He can get off the bed and sofa with relative ease now. We taught him to face away from the edge and slide himself down slowly (which I am sure is what everyone does). Ofcourse, it's the 'slowly' part that has taken him so long to master. I can tell you the initial few trys on his own ended with him tumbling down the edge as his legs couldn't quite reach the bottom. The other day he was drinking his milk on the bed as I changed his nappy and I went to the bathroom for literally a minute to wash my hands. When I got back he wasn't on the bed! He had chucked his bottle aside, got off the bed and gone up to the bedside drawers and was fiddling with the contents. The bedside drawers are his current fascination. Any thing that has a knob that can be pulled open, actually. I think we have a Kramer in the making: he opens the bathroom vanity door with an alacrity and vigour that would have forced Kramer to rethink his door-opening style. He is only as tall as the vanity and if his face were to ever come in the way of the opening door...well, let's not go there.

Meera and he officially fought for the same toy yesterday. They both wanted the blocks. This guy didn't relent until Meera decided to be the good older sister and shared one of them with him. I can only hope she will continue to find her noble side or we are all going to be spending a lot of time pulling these two out of each other's hair.

His recent talent is to close the lid on anything that comes with a lid. He doesn't let me make take the formula out of its container, doesn't let me take yoghurt out of the tub, doesn't let me fill his sipper with water. He insists on putting the lid on before I am finished with them.

He has also taken to conducting the music that comes out of his toys. He has a toy aeroplane with a button that when pressed alternates with a song, some beeps, and a welcome note. He presses the button until the song plays and pauses to wave and twirl his hands to the music rythmically and walks off. When he realises the music stopped, he comes back from whatever he is doing and starts pressing the button again. He has always had a thing for music; or may be all kids are like this and I am just being hopelessly vain about mine.

Today is Vinayaka Chavithi and he is wearing his embroidered lalchi with a bottom that looks like a panchi. Looks a million dollars. We figured out that we can use the remote control of the camcorder and take lots of family pictures so we had a bit of fun with that in the afternoon. Lunch with bisibelebath and undrallu are for the evening which unfortunately have turned out a little more than mush.