14 months and 29 days

People always say he smiles just the way Praveen does but I can never tell. It doesn't seem that way to me at all. Considering I can tell he looks like Praveen quite a lot, it surprises me why I can't see a resemblance in their smiles. The resemblances seem to stop there, however. He is showing us more and more of his hot temperament as he is growing up what with having learnt to smack people on their faces. We have tried the methods of shouting "Pranav!" very loudly and putting him down, shaking our heads vigorously to indicate that it's not on to do that, holding his hands tightly, and a few others, one more unsuccessful than the previous. I spoke to Anna about it and she said that she has noticed how he hooks his finger and tries to get the other person's eye when he wants to get something from them. She says it's normal behaviour for this age. As they can't express feelings in words, this is their way of talking and getting attention(needless to say, all my speech lessons are failing miserably). With hitting she suggested saying things like "Stop, no more!" and then saying "Be gentle" and showing him to pat the person gently by taking his hand. It all sounds very promising and is clearly progressive parenting I suppose but hard to persevere with it when all he does is hit you first and then pat you gently later! Yeah, not really working, is it? Still, we will have to stick with it. If there is one thing I don't want him to grow up doing, it is hitting and shoving people. That just crosses the line for me, somehow. The way he is keeping at it though, we seem to have a long, rocky journey ahead of us.

On to more pleasant doings, I think I have said before too, he is now at the stage of waving to everything that moves - cars, trucks, the bus, passers-by, trains and sometimes even to either of us for no good reason. It seems that's his way of greeting people now because when he sees his dad in the evening coming up to the front door through the kitchen window, he smiles and starts waving at him. He also associates waving with going out and associates going out with objects his dad or I use when we go out - like the car keys, his dad's sunnies, my handbag and watches. He has taken to swinging my handbag around his shoulders with one strap falling out and threatening to trip him and waving, pointing to the steps leading towards the garage. He also wore my watch and did the same thing once. He points only to the garage when he does this, not towards the front door which we don't normally use when we go out, as it generally goes in these countries. He points to the front door only when he wants to go outside for a play in the front yard.
He seems to have outgrown his nappies these days. He is waking up almost every day with wet pants and full nappy even though it's summer. The bugger hates covering a blanket on himself so I can't do much to keep him warm. We are not sure if it's the cold or his outgrowing the nappy that's causing this. We have decided to move on to the next size anyway. It's another way of seeing your baby grow: growing nappy sizes!

He is again in the lowest trough of his hunger strike days. Yesterday he absolutely ate no breakfast or dinner. Just refused point-blank. I have to wonder what he really is eating at the childcare because the girls don't seem to complain that he is not eating there. They are always encouraging me to let him feed himself sitting on his hig-chair but that doesn't work either. I have been giving him a different variety of meal each day and trying distractions of all kinds and I can still only get him to eat about half of what he usually eats and yesterday was the worst. In the end, after I decide that I should stop trying ti feed him immediately if I want to hang on to my wits, I have been giving him a bread slice with a lot of cream cheese on the side. He accepted his porridge in the morning today, so may be that's a good sign of improvement. I have hope yet, because he has done this before and he returns to his eating phase eventually. I just hope it is soon. If only my good-mood-meter didn't depend so much on the level of contents of his stomach! Are all mothers like this? Why is feeding our kids so important to us? As much as common sense dictates that they won't starve themselves, it's simply impossible for me to not get worked up about his not eating through any of his meals. Is this a plain nurturing instinct that humans and for that matter, animals are wired with? I guess I should learn to relax a little, but I know that's harder than feeding him!

Praveen is always complaining how overgrown his hair looks these days but I am putting up a resistance. I think kids look cute with lots of hair. I told him all child male models in all catalogues have long, wild-looking hair and they are cuter for it. He says its summer and will bother him, but I am not giving in yet. That's the difference between Praveen and me: he always thinks about what's right for Pranav in a practical way, I always impose my likes and dislikes on Pranav without giving his comfort enough thought. Typical, bossy parent. It's a good thing I have Praveen to balance me sometimes.

Bits and Pieces

There are lot of little things that he does which are hard to string together into a narrative so I thought I will just list them out individually because they all seem worth mentioning

He can pick the right toy if I sing the song that comes out of it. Other than that he doesn't particularly care for them.

He has learnt to wave bye with both his hands at any moving object whether it be on the road, on the TV, or as a way of letting his father know that he prefers his mum while going upstairs with his mum to sleep.

He has learnt to do a silly kind of salute to "good night"
When left in the middle of the hall he can point to the light, the stove in the kitchen, the phone and the bus outside.

He does the action to "Twinkle Twinkle" by closing and opening his fists repeatedly.

He can pick up the bark of a dog however faint it is and exclaims "tha-tha"!

He has learnt to imitate our actions like applying perfume to both his ears, moisturiser to his feet and rubbing his palms together, pretending to spit by bending into the basin in between brushing his teeth.

He stuffed all the tissues back in when I told him off for pulling them all out of the box.

He knows which shoes belong to which member of the family and can go to great lengths to ensure they reach the right person if found too far away from the person.

He is not taken by TV but likes listening to music sometimes even pointing to the music system to be turned on.

He pretends to vacuum like I do using - you will never guess - the wooden stick I use to make rotis. He does it with so much purpose including going over to all the corners that it can't be anything other than that.

The game he most likes playing is my pretending to chase after him and he walking away as fast his can without watching where he is headed.


He gets thoroughly annoyed and yells when he is trying to do something beyond his means like trying to push through a tiny wedge between the wall and the sofa or even something silly like trying to walk off with his baby monitor when it is still connected to its socket.

He seems to have aquired his seemingly short temper from his mother.


After having fallen off a few stairs once, he is terrified of coming downstairs on his own.

He always wears his gold chain across his neck and thanfully he hasn't exactly discovered that it can make a good play thing when pulled and tugged at.

He hates having his nappy changed. Screams like a banshee to lie down which means putting clothes on is also a battle and test of patience for us.

Everyday in the evening after childcare, he sits on the benchtop in the kitchen while I cook and we wait for Praveen to come home. He can sit there for as long as it takes and that's the only way he will let me cook in peace.


I can absolutely not get him to finish a meal sitting in his high-chair. That's got to be my fault. I tried putting my foot down the other day like when we newly bought it, but whom am I kidding!


He is not the most friendly child you will come across but strangers always remark what a happy little boy he is when they see him running around gleefully in the aisles. Like I always say, children are always cute when they are not yours...

Lot of strangers think he is a girl. This is the most unexpected remark for us as he has always had a boyish face. They tell me it's because of his eyes and curls. Praveen insists it's because of the mushroom-cut I have given him!

He still has only 6 teeth and his dad and I are always asking him if and when the others are going to turn up.

His cutest face is with his mouth open willing to eat what I am feeding him.

His best look for me is with his stomach full.

I love him the most when he has been sleeping for the past 2 hours.

His eyes are his best feature followed by his hair, eye brows, pot belly, his baby fat-lined thighs, feet and palms. Yes, that about covers all parts of his body I think...

14 Months and 6 Days

I knew this blogging is hard to do regularly and this long absence of mine proves it. This, despite my having the mood and material to write. I kept writing up small notes every week for the past 4 weeks but none of them got converted into a full-length blog for reasons not more significant than failing to make the time to sit down. There are too many bits and prices to write about now.
There haven't been any significant milestones since I last wrote; I don't suppose there will be any more until he starts talking which, by the looks of it will be taking some time yet.
I always have something to talk about his food habits, so let me start there. His dinner or lunch generally has rice with vegies/dal and yoghurt in the end with some variations of pasta, soup fish patties and mince meat on occasion. I feel guilty about not giving him enough variety, so I made him vegetable cheese squares from a Heinz recipe book last week. Like I was expecting, he kept spitting it out. He doesn't like textured foods; he prefers things he can just swallow without having to chew much, or rather, not at all. Finally I had to grind the vegie squares to a paste with milk to get him to eat it. And after all that, he woke twice in the middle of the night and Praveen's theory was that he didn't have his usual heavy carbohydrate dose of rice and so kept waking for hunger . So much for me trying to introduce variety!
One food he does like chewing on is sultanas. The only problem is the chewing never ends. He can go on with one like a bubble gum. When I added sultanas to his bowl from which he was already eating banana pieces, he spat out the banana in his mouth(which until then was very likable) and picked sultanas from the bowl. His dad tried to be clever by hiding the sultanas under the banana pieces but guess who is smarter? The remainder of the banana pieces were left to go black in the end.

With summer almost upon us, feeding has become an outdoor activity. Suits both of us well: he is happy to roam around the entire garden, climbing up and down the stairs, hanging by the gate and pointing and waving with both hands to the cars going past and this means he eats well. He did, meanwhile, officially kill his first fly last weekend during one such outdoor feeding fest. The poor fly got in and was flitting around the blinds and was too sluggish for my son who simply crushed it between his index finger and the window pane. He kept coming back to it later on to look at the spot it had fallen and wanted to crush it further.

I brought him home early last Friday and took him to the Glen. It is such an arduous task taking him to a shopping centre on my own! I end up having to manage two things: him and the pram because after about 10 minutes of riding in the pram sitting like a king with both hands on the arm rests, he decides to start a freedom struggle. He wriggles around so much that he gets stuck between the seat and the safety bar while trying to slide off the seat. Before you ask why his belts are not strapped, I must explain that he would have gone in and come out of it so many times by now, that I don't bother strapping his belt on after the first couple of times. If you think about it from his perspective, you can imagine it must be terribly boring to just sit around watching when he could be pulling out and exploring so many things if only we they let him free! Sometimes I let him walk by my side, but even there he has his own mind: neither should I hold his hand nor will he hold my hand. If left alone, he will wander off in completely the opposite direction, walk into any shop and promptly pull out the display items from the lower racks. And after all this, he got treated with his first ever soft serve from Wendy's. I am happy to say he wasn't exactly smitten although he did enjoy it. I also tried to put him on the mini rides but he seemed too scared to sit on them on his own. I am told once they get hooked onto those rides, there is no stopping them. Can't wait for that!

I taught him the "bow-wow" sound of a dog so he now associates the bark and the word "kukka" (dog) with his rendition of the bark- "tha-tha". Praveen took him to Chadstone yesterday and he tells me I missed a sight at the pet shop. The Pet's Paradise apparently caused him to go wild with excitement because of the puppies in the display playing around. He pointed to them running here and there crying "tha-tha" "tha-tha" all the while.
I had to move my microwave out of his reach up to the workbench level because he had learnt to press the buttons. He insists on banging its door closed if it left open. Praveen was telling me today afternoon that new microwave's empty carton in the garage caught his eye today and he went over to press the buttons on the life-size image of the microwave!

The other day there was a little girl when we went clothes-shopping for him. He was good to her for a few minutes, pointing and showing her the dresses hanging off the racks and trying to cuddle her. When she went over to the playpen and started to play with a toy there, he kept trying to poke her eye, tried to pull the toy from her and held her at arm's length when she tried to approach for the toy. For someone who goes to the childcare everyday he seems very unfriendly! Is it just a boy thing? He has never exactly been an open-arm receiver of people but I thought he will be more accepting of other kids after spending so much time around them. Part of the disappointment I suppose is also because something we full-time childcare mums tell ourselves will be an upside of full-time childcare isn't turning out to be so. Only goes to prove they are always born with their personalities and sometimes there is only so much we can do to mould them. I am forced to believe nature rather than nurture has a stronger hold over children since I have had Pranav.