"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".