Thursday 1 November 2012

My Precocious li'l one! -18th and 19th month

One of the activities my daughter got into at about 18 months is walking in slippers. It may seem silly and not a problem to deal with but I, to an extent suffer from an obsession to orderliness. So watching her scatter the shoes all around the house is hard to see. Nevertheless it has been a gargantuan task looking after ponutti. One incident that I should have mentioned when I was writing about her in 16months is that, whenever she is need of breast feeding her she would promptly go all the way to the bedroom, turn off the lights and climb the bed and lie down looking in my direction with unadulterated angelic eyes full of expectation. She's also been whinning a lot with every denial coming her way particularly whenever she wants to go outdoors. She is always on the go and wants to be outdoors all day, but I can't blame her. Playing outdoor or a visit to the park is a wonderful way to channelize the bundle of energy is brimming with and also we get a whiff of the fresh air as well. Even dancing, which she loves so dearly and which she is ready to do any time, is a wonderful energy outlet.
 
There has been tremendous understanding and response to single commands. She can differentiate colors and even tries to say 'bue' and 'geen'. She has also begun to involve herself in action rhymes and loves to enact action songs like one two buckle, johnny johnny(which was since 16mnths and is one of my major distractors :)), ABC's, old macdonald had a farm. She is always on the prowl to rapidly figuring out what we say, our tone and out facial expressions. I consider playdates to be especially fun now since she has begun to shed the parallel play and involve herself in interactive play. I first observed this when she was playing with watchman's kid (who is just half a month older to her). As soon as ponutti comes downstairs, shika would start running about like she is being chased and in the end, the 'chase game' begins which is something they do with utmost air of importance around them. This was repeated when her own brother(her uncle's son) paid a visit to us recently. It's so fun to watch two pint-size toddlers running about the house. But the fact was it was more of a 'running game' rathee than 'chasing', since gautam was exactly following what ponutti was doing instead of trying to chase her. Nevertheless, the enjoyed it to bits.
 
Recently, she has learned to love decking up particularly wearing powder(she wants it whenever I put some on myself), earrings and bangles. I really wonder what her thoughts will be when she reads this at some time in the future. I expect an ' arghh'. To me, when I was young(teenage years) wearing make up was something of a sin. I always considered it hiding the true beauty we all hold. I wanted to remain as natural as possible. Of course, those thoughts flew off the window after marriage. 'Life!!'. As for ponutti, she even wants to have a hair clip on the sparse thin hair she's got. Guess she is finally bringing out the little lady from her already tomboyish nature!
 
She has also accepted the achacha from kodungallur to be her achacha. Till then she wouldnt accept the fact that she had two achachans, it was a confusing concept till then. To her dubai achachan was the achacha as she is used to the facebook chatting with him and ammama. But after the whole family visit to bangalore last week, she is now all the more familiar with chetta(whom she calls very lovingly calls chotta since goa trip) and everyone else. She has learned to call gopika 'chechi' and amma, 'ammmama'. Since we photos stuck all over the house, I keep asking her who these people and she correctly names them. She also hasn't forgotten 'memma' from her visit just after the goa trip.
 
 Now it's all about stacking. At home, I give her a couple of building blocks and recently she'd achieved building the. Ever since, she wanted to do more. Before even before doing that, she would stack tins in a neat orderly fashion during a visit to the grocery store. During the family visit this time, when we visited shopper's stop, the fathers had the challenging job of looking after ponutti and gopu while we were busy shopping clothes. When we were returning from the trial room, we came across an amusing sight. The fathers were at the 'mothercare' store section and the kids at their naughtiest best. They were having fun learning, I should say. Ponutti began stacking some some baby oil bottles of the store on the floor in a highly orderly fashion and watching that gopu also started up with the activity. They were both playing parallellly with their fathers watching over them. Another interesting fact was whenever gopu tried snatching anything from ponutti, ponutti's tactic wasn't to ward off gopu by giving away toy. Instead she would yell out a shrilling sound which would be such a pain to the ears and eventually the frightenend gopu will let go of the toy. There was this incident in the car which went like this. After our visit a restaurant for lunch, ponutti got a candy from the hotel guys and when saw this in the car, they ended up with ponutti's screaming and gopu's let of the candy. After this, achachan asked for the candy which she gave away without hesitation and which achacha gave back immediately. Then ammama took the turn to asked for the candy which she again gave without any doubts. Getting the candy, ammama acted as if she just swallowed it but ponutti din't buy the story and ended up getting the candy soon enough form ammama. Watching the proceedings form the back seat, gopu finally stretched his hand for the candy like his grandparents did. But this time, knowing that it is not 'chotta' that I will have to give the candy and also knowing well that her chances of getting it back are very slim, ponutti din't give away the candy to which everyone had a hearty laugh and ammama said she was smart eniugh to know whom to share with.
 
Ponutti has become a bit of a cleaniliness freak lately. Cleaning, throwing rubbish in the bin(which she'd developed since 12 months) has been one of her favorite activities. Wonder when she would end up turning just the opposite. Her ability to assimilate what we say, may be not particularly to her, has grown leaps and bounds. On the day she turned 19months, she proved me again that she has some innate interest in dance and music. She was standing on the bed , dancing to tunes played in my mobile while I was having a bath, leaving her alone, she was dancing with all her might and was enjoying watching herself in the mirror. She has also befriended her 'chase' friend(watchman's daughter) and has started repeating her words as well like 'mummy', 'baby'. Whenever she sees a baby on TV or her own baby photos, she is so proud the synonyms she learned. She would sometimes call 'baby' or 'vava'; depending on whichever she wants to use out of her vocabulary. Just yesterday, she had learned to combine words. She used it twice. She said ' acha poyi' when nikhil left for the bathroom. And like I said about understanding, she moved a little to give in space for me while sitting in a chair when achachan and ammama came for the regular facebook videochat. She is so genuinely happy to see them. 'Genuinity' and 'innocence' that is all what they are about. I would wonder if we all could be so transparent, world have been a much better place to live in, where we could see eveyone with emotions and feelings so genuine and not hide under a facade of a fake smile. Half the people I meet seem to be pretending to be some one else they are not. If I have a whiff of their dishonesty, then it's hard for me to even talk to them. 'Life'!
 
Other activities: Ponutti has even developed whispering tata, sometimes yelling or even speaking incoherent sentences. She has also begun answering the 'who' question and has even developed a better understanding of hindi, thanks to our maid, who she considers her second mother. Understanding has reached another strata with the slipper incident. While leaving the house to shop during one weekend, I was frustrated to find my other pair of slippers missing. Ponutti not being able to contain her excitement of leaving home once or twice a week, went to the rack and soon enough brought me the exact pair I was looking for. The library incident was another one. During one our first library visit (and visits since then) she would exactly know where her board books are located. It surprisingly happened the first time and visits since then as well. She would wander about the library as if  she knew the place like the back of her hand and get to her section!

Putting her palm under her chin- another activity She is .obsessed with cleaning to the point of helping me with household chores like putting books back into the shelf or the shoes in the rack. I'm not sure if I've instilled it in her or if it was ingrained in her genes already but my mother assures me it will soon fade when I really need her helping me around. She has developed into a viguorous dancer like we say a dancer in the making with moves that she does according to music beats. The only other change I have seen in her is her emotional storms which may turn off like a switch...I have read these will last another few years when she gains a better understanding of the place around her and also when she learns to control her emotions in a better manner. Even her eating habits and tastes are similar to mine.

I could clearly witness an evolution in her playing characteristics. It seems to evolve from parallel playing to interactive playing. That is all that I need for her to be all set and ready for some fun and playing with other kids in january( she will be joing the playhome).

There are so many more interesting anecdotes, some forgettable while some memorable, but to put them down in words, I guess I may need another post. I believe I should learn to commit a few to my memory. So someday I will have something left from the back of my mind to share with ponutti and a have a hearty laugh together :)