Tenglish

The sad state of affairs which is his Telugu speaking is plainly visible in this sentence where he meant to say that his dad is pulling out weeds in the garden: "Nanna is peeking trees". He has obviously mastered the art of using root words("peeku" - to pull) from Telugu and anglicising them by adding the -ing. As nice as it is to hear him belt out English words and sentences, it will be very welcome to hear him speak some real Telugu. All in good time, we hope.

ABC's

He has a book of the alphabet with Winnie the Pooh theme. His dad and he used to play a game of arranging the fridge magnet letters using the letters in the book. As Praveen would turn the pages, he would move the corresponding letter from the bottom door to the top door of the fridge(have I written about this previously?). He therefore associates the letters with the pictures in this book so much so that when asked to name a letter he sometimes names the object instead of the letter itself, or he recites in one breath, "M for Milk". It is never just "M", it is always "M for milk".
So far he recognises about 15 letters without any prompting from us. A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H are very quick, he knows "I" only as "Ice Cream" and can't name the letter, "J for jump", "K for Kangaroo", "L for lollipop", doesn't know "N" properly yet, "O" is sometimes a "circle" and sometimes "Owl", "P for Piglet", "Q" is more like "kuu" and as it stands for "quiet time" he shushes us with a finger on his nose, "R for vaddit(rabbit, in case you are wondering)", "S for sun", "T for Tigger" always comes out louder than the rest, he only remembers "Umbrella" and can't name "U", V also apparently stands for "Umbrella", and the rest is all "don't know.." until "Zip".
Give us another month or so and hopefully we will have all the 26 down with a pat.

Zoo

We planned to take him to the zoo yesterday, so I asked him which animals he would like to see at the zoo. He started off quickly with "tiger", "lion", "elephant", "giraffe", thought a little, then "zebra", thought a bit more and stumped me with, "Dinosaur, I wanna see dinosaur!" So we are looking for a time machine now or may be a copy of Jurassic Park.

Talking is the order of the day

We can see a marked advancement in his sentence construction these days. He still falls over himself trying to get words out most times. He often repeats the most important word with some incomprehensible mumblings in between - the mumblings generally come in the place where prepositions or verbs would go. He also mixes a good number of Telugu in his sentences: "That's amma's buvva, that's nanna's buvva..", "No cheekati pappoyi"(not dark yet), which he acutely observes when we ask him to have his afternoon nap. His latest new question is "Where are you, nanna?" when he can't find his dad around. I was in the kitchen when he woke today; he came down the stairs announcing, "I coming down amma, I waking up, I coming down".
This morning he was literally trying to drive his toy stroller on the TV screen so Praveen switched the TV off and we tried to pretend that it doesn't work any more. He looked from the TV to us for a few moments and declared, "Nanna switch off, nanna switch off TV. Why switching off, nanna? Switch on TV, can't see it."
During breakfast, he asked for the jam and Vegemite to be served on the plate(like when he eats chapati) instead of having it spread on the bread slice. I exclaimed rhetorically, "How can you eat it like this!" which he took literally and explained, "Open mouth aaa, bite (showed the action of biting) and eat mummy.." Well, thanks for clearing that up!
He has picked up the habit of blessing people when they sneeze from the childcare. He also blesses himself with "Bless you!" as we both never remember to do it for him. We were driving back from the childcare the other day when he sneezed twice in a row and said, "Two bless you!"

"Hurting me"

After what was a welcome long time, he fell sick two weeks ago. He manages to catch a cold even before the existing one leaves him, what with the childcare and the seasonal changes. The constantly blocked/running nose led to an ear infection. He didn't develop any fever so we didn't see it coming. He has either never had such a severe one or he didn't know how to express pain before, but all three of us had an almost sleepless night on that ocassion. When he complained "hurting me" pointing to his right ear I couldn't at first decide if he was crying from the pain or if it was a sympathy cry. He doesn't usually demand attention for the sake of it unless he is in pain, so we decided to give him a dose of Nurofen. That definitely calmed him down as he understands the concept of medicine and is always willing to gulp down the entire bottle if only he could. We thought that should give him a good night's sleep but he kept waking abruptly through out the night crying for pain. I had worked late that night and slept only at 2am and he pretty much kept me awake since then. At about 5am Praveen decided to try a bottle of milk and that thankfully helped all of us sleep. The next morning, the doctor decided the middle ear was sore enough to call for antibiotics straight away. Pranav was of course only too happy to go on "white mandu" and insisted every time on taking it himself.
He developed a fever through the rest of the day but you would have had to swear ten times that he was unwell. I think he gets that from his father: he continues on in his own vein even when he is considerably warm to the touch. All the jumping, playing and much to my peace of mind, feeding too. So far I can only remember one ocassion when his sickness really affected him behaviourally and that was when he was 9 months old and had his first ear infection. I remember I was very concerned then as that was the first time for all three of us. He had the most pitiable expression on his face for two days to go with his high fever. I am glad he didn't take on me here; I am such a pathetic, self-pitying moaner when I am sick.

Baby-sitting

For the first time yesterday, after much deliberation, consideration, cajoling, preparing and planning, we baby-sat Meera in the evening for a few hours so Ganesh and Niru could enjoy their anniversary dinner at a restaurant. It was a cake-walk really. There, I said it. All we needed to do was sit them in front of the laptop with Mickey Mouse and Dora. I have never seen Meera finish her dinner of pumpkin pasta in under 5 minutes. She was done by the time Pranav could finish a few mouthfuls. Dinner was followed by a long stretch of watching cartoons and then she decided she was very tired and wanted to "lie down on the bed". She might even have fallen asleep if they had come to pick her up a few minutes later. We have decided it is Pranav's turn next. Let's see if Niru gets to write such an eventless report.

"Mana intlo..."

He has learnt to co-relate objects he notices when he is outdoors to similar ones we have at home and happily for me he expresses it in Telugu saying, "Mana intlo..."(in our house). I try to get him to add the verb part "undi" (it is there) but it hasn't stuck with him yet.

Most placed objects are his toys, DVD's he watches, kitchen appliances and sometimes even food items. He also gets similarly excited when he goes through catalogues from the junk mail. He positively squealed with delight the other day when they came to the kitchen page that displayed - you guessed it - saucepans and spoons. He kept flipping back to that page and insisted on pulling out the particular similar pan from the cupboard and having it placed before his eyes.

We were with Niru and Meera at the Glen Target today when I was narrating to her about this new habit. We were in the toy section and the toy Niru gifted for his birthday was on display on one of the top shelves. It is a colourful, four-in-one wonder and has a dentist's that teaches oral hygiene, a pizza shop that teaches shapes, a numbers apple tree and a animal abacus-like window that teaches colours. He is quite fond of it and it showed when he got thoroughly excited to have spotted it at the store. He almost fell over himself with "Mana intlo..mana intlo..". I asked what the toy is called and only after a few more "mana intlo..", he could bring himself to remember that he calls it "Pizza shop".

"Mama here..."

Praveen decided to work from home today and as the father and son were still going through their morning ablutions when I was nearly dressed, I decided to take the bus to the station instead of waiting for them. I knew it will be a bit of a risk leaving his dad to drop him instead of dropping him at the childcare personally, but I wanted to test if he will be OK with it. I did ask his permission too; I asked if amma can take the bus and go to the office and he nodded. I should have known better. Praveen told me later that he went through every room upstairs looking for me crying "mama here"(which means mama is wanted here). Praveen went looking for him downstairs and heard him crying through the closed powder room door. Apparently he looked for me in the laundry and then went into the powder room, closed the door and cried. Praveen had to distract him with PlaySchool on TV and then he settled down to drink his milk. So, point taken: never ever leave the house without him in tow. When Praveen leaves early, he asks for him and might sometimes even cry but he is quickly pacified. Apparently that doesn't happen when I leave early. This is why we switched our roles recently; Praveen leaves early and picks him up in the evenings, so I can drop him in the mornings and get back late. We will have to stick to that even when Praveen works from home.

The Four Questions

What with his diction refining by the day, he is at the stage of posing a question at every chance. The four often used ones are, "Whatu dooooing mummy?", "What is this one(like 'won' but with extra o's)" and "What happened mummy?" with the cutest tilt of his head and Praveen's peeve, "Whata noooooiiise!" The last one could be an exclamation or a question, we are still not very sure. Praveen is constantly correcting him, "It's not noise, it's sound, sound..". All the questions have an adorable tone of innocence and genuine curioisty with a raising inflection at the end.

His "What is this one?" most often refers to objects he is very familar with and very rarely you find the need to give him an answer he doesn't already know. Yesterday I tried Niru's idea of answering him with some non-sense, like saying "spider" when he pointed to my mobile and asked the question. Of course, he came back emphatically with, "That's a spider(he swallows the 'not' and instead shakes his head to indicate the negation), that's a phone" and repeated it until I agreed that it was a phone and not a spider.

He also repeats his requests until they have been granted or attended to fully. All through the making of a jam and cheese sandwich, you will hear, "I wanna sandwich...I wanna sandwich..I wanna sandwich..". Alright, I am making it right before your eyes, aren't I? Niru says I haven't seen the end of this parroting!

"Pranav Kitchen"

He plays in the kitchen with renewed interest these days. You can also tell his style of playing has matured; he pretends to cut up vegetables with the edge of his palm and puts them in the saucepan and stirs them while making hissing sounds. He also has the idea of adding salt and oil. When I cook, I have noticed that he very intricately follows what I am doing.

He is not content with a few utensils, he empties the entire cupboard and arranges them in a neat half-cirlce around himself, complete with the proper lids. Every pot and pan should have a proper lid on; no swaps and supplantations allowed. He will bug you to insanity with, "Where is mootha?" until you give him the right lid. Unfortunately, I have two saucepans which share the same lid and the day they are both available for him to play with, good luck to us!

He pretends everything is hot to the touch and also uses my pattakaru to hold things. He genuinely believes they are meant for him to play with; when Praveen asked him to come out of the kitchen so amma can cook, he replied pointing to the cupboard, "This is no amma kitchen, this is Pranav kitchen. Amma kitchen up there" and pointed to the gas burners on the platform above the cupboard. Who is setting whose boundaries, I ask myself.

"Indian Shop"

When I dress him in clothes that Vijay or Amma brought for him, I tell him that "babai" or "ammamma" gave him those clothes. I then also try to teach him that babai is in America and Ammamma is in India. The babai part seems to have stuck because when I asked him this morning who gave him the shirt he wore, he said it came from "babai", who lives in "Nicca..". I wanted to know if he remembers where ammamma is, to which he replied, "Indian shop"! Obvisouly, he is more familiar with the idea of "Indian shop" which he visits often to buy his favorite "Idli pindi" rather than "India" as a place...

"Go to Safeway"

When he was 22 months old, (I remember because that was the month Praveen went to India for 4 weeks), one morning during breakfast, he asked for juice. Not wanting to ruin his appetite, I tried to evade it with the popular excuse of the juice carton being empty. Imagine my surprise when he actually said, "Go Safeway". You have to know, this was when he had barely started to talk and only just grasped the concept of a supermarket. Clearly, he grasped it a lot better than I gave him credit for.

"Go Safeway", has thus come to be a panacea for all our running out of stuff issues. My son tries to buy a variety of things from Safeway when he discovers that we have run out of them at home: milk, laundry powder, eggs, batteries, his bath lotion, nappies, soap, ear buds and other sundry items. You would have thought he visits the supermarket with my weekly list! He did get carried away with the concept the other day when he said that we ought to buy his new shirt from Safeway...

"Not working, amma!"

One of his often-used phrases is "not working", while twisting his palm . He mostly reserves it for electrical and electronic equipment but has recently stretched it refer to his own piece of equipment too. When I asked him to pee during his bath, he responded with, "Not working, amma!"

"Chal Nanna!"

Praveen and the other fathers see each other off with the Hindi farewell, "Chal!" followed by the name of the person and a hand wave. He now gets on his bike, raises his right arm and says, "Chal, nanna!" and "Chal, amma!" before setting off.

He rides his bike in the living room most times and has an annoying habit of continuing to press his foot down on the accelerator in the forward mode when he hits an obstacle. He is well aware of the switch to reverse the bike, but it almost seems like he lets it whirl for a few seconds against the obstacle just to test its limits, as though hoping that one fine evening he will be able to break through it and continue on. He always needs a yell from me or a reminder from his dad - as the case may be - to use the reverse switch.

Weekday Morning routine

He usually serves as our alarm clock, irrespective of what time he wakes up, which is usually anywhere between 7 and 8 am. He needs to warm up for a good 15 minutes while holding his brush with the paste on it if he is to brush on his own. Since 15 minutes is an ill-afforded luxury at 7:30 in the morning, brushing is usually an ordeal, involving one of my arms around his neck holding his face in position and the other trying to reach all areas of his mouth through his screaming. I tell him that he doesn't realise his screaming with his mouth wide open only makes my job of brushing easier about. These days he takes his revenge on me by neatly swallowing the entire foamy spit and eyeing me vindictively. I, in turn, have taken to cleaning his mouth before he has a chance to swallow to by absorbing it all with a tissue. Cleaning his tongue proves a bit more challenging, which I mostly fail at, as he simply won't open his mouth for that part. Forcing an object like a tongue-cleaner on a two-year old, is, I am sure not highly recommended, so I give up there. Who's the boss now, I hear him say.

This neatly sets the stage for the next operation of having a shower at which point he refuses to part with his night-suit. Sometimes Praveen pretending to jump in the shower before he does, tends to do the trick. Most other times the crying will continue until about half-way through the shower. He will insist on soaping his tummy and few other choice parts of the anatomy during this. The crying will resume when the time comes to switch off the taps and get out of the tub. If I thought at first leaving him to enjoy the running water for a little while will get him out without a fuss, I had another think coming. Even 30 minutes won't do it. Praveen's trick for this is to surrepticiously reduce the flow of the hot water and then accusing him of finishing off all the hot water and leaving nothing for amma and nanna. Works like a charm, everytime. My improvisation on this is to run the hot water from the other outlet at the wash-basin. Aah, the joys of a two year old's innocence and our taking advantage of them!

He will sometimes insist on going back into his night-suit after the shower. If I can appease that with a promise of a Tigger trouser or a Pooh-bear shirt, he is all set to happily drink milk and play around leaving us to dress in peace. If I can manage to get through the first 30 minutes of his morning with a cleaned and dressed Pranav at the end of them, without loosing my temper, it's a good start to the day.

Long time no see...still a baby, though

It has nearly been a year since I updated his blog, and needless to say, Pranav is a very different person now. As much as I still think of him as my baby, especially when people back home remind me that if he were in India he would be going off to school in six months' time, he is very much a toddler now, reminding us on a frequent basis the provenance of the term "terrible two's".
He is very much his own person, always trying to assert his independence and eager to try his hand at things. Starting with heating up his milk bottle in the microwave to climbing into his car seat, loading his animation "DVDV's", cleaning up his spills, blowing his nose into a tissue, emptying the dishwasher and stacking the dishes away neatly, there is no end to the number of things he insists on doing on his own.

His current motto in life seems to be: it's not important whether the job is done; it's important who did it. As can be expected, the said person tends to be himself, more often that not. He has proved to be a strict disciple of this: he will re-open the microwave door after you have closed it and will close it again, same with a tap or a bottle lid or a DVD in the DVD player and even something thrown in the dustbin. This also sometimes manifests itself in the insistence of "the favoured parent of the moment" doing a job, which, can sometimes mean that we have to switch dish-washer loading and feeding duties half-way through or that he has to be re-buckled to the car seat so the preferred parent can unbuckle him.

On the other hand, he still cries when left at the childcare, still instinctively calls out for me when he wakes during the night, still wants mummy or daddy to feed him, still wipes his dirty hands on his shirt, still refuses to brush his teeth, still refuses to come out of his bath and still refuses to tell us when he has pooped in his nappy.

Yes, he is still only a baby...