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!
Monday, November 24, 2008
"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.
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.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
"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...
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
"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...
"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.
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.
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...
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...
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