Exploring the southern ridges

Over the last weekend, we have been exploring the southern ridges in two parts. On Saturday, we visited Hort Park, a new gardening park, with lots of flowers and garden themes. I guess the highlight of the park is the indoor garden, which illustrates how many plats you can actually keep in the house. Its a beautiful show flat, with thriving plants, and makes husband and me wonder why our balcony garden turns into a veritable plant graveyard.

We did buy a small pot of African violets though. And hopefully they will survive the stress. I have planted a few balsam seeds in my plant pot. I hope that they will bloom in a couple of months.

Anjali enjoyed herself in the Hort Park. She was mostly fascinated by the millipedes - there were the big red ones and the small black ones. And she loved to watch them crawl along the grass. Even shows how they crawl. She also refused to kiss or shake hands with the other babies in the park (there were any number of them). Anjali is deeply mistrustful of anything that is bigger than her and anything that moves and makes noise. Put a combination of the three and she would hide behind your skirt and point at you to put the thing outside the door or in the store room. I guess babies sometimes fall into this category.

While I am not encouraging my daughter to be afraid, the fear does come in handy sometimes. If Anjali wants to open and peek in the dustbin (which she seems to want to do quite a lot), I tell her that I will put the Vrroom Vroom remote control car on top of the dustbin. That keeps her away from it for a while. (N.B: Does it make me a lousy mother if I have to resort to threatening my daughter with the vroom vroom car to keep her from mischief?)

Anyway, back to hort park, so Anjali was fascinated by the millipedes, and the birds, and some kind of high tech watering system for plants (but that might be because it provided a nice climbing interface), and stairs, and pebbles (which, for some reason, she thought were footballs)

On Sunday we explored the reminder of the southern ridges by twilight. It was (there is no other word for it), an exceptional architecture. I think we should take the IEP kids for a long walk there sometime in September. There were the henderson waves, 36 meters above the road, the lost terrace garden (a beautiful bouganvillea garden in the middle of the forest, with a picnic spot on the top), a beautifully constructed canopy walk (which Anjali enjoyed mostly because of the many woof woof dogs that people were taking for walks), and finally the Alexandra arch which glows rainbow colors at night.


At Alexandra Arch, glowing red at this moment.


The beautifully constructed canopy walk. It doesnt show too well in the photo though, but we can see the various bridges.

Anjali playing in and on the way to Hort Park

A pretty flower
In daddy's arms, gearing for the climb
The view from faber, with loads of bats
Stargazing

Stop flashing light in my eyes!!They are blocking the stars!!

Anjali was so exhausted at the end of the trip that she fell asleep on the bus and slept like a stone all through the night.

I dont like being manhandled!!!

Just what do people take me for? First the ear piercer, then the doctor, now the hairdresser, and thats not even counting the number of times daddy tried to manhandle me into those revolting diapers!!!

I am not going to have it. Everytime people try to manhandle me, i am going to screa................m!!!!

And so she did. Non stop for ten minutes, while we got her hair cut at Toys r us yesterday evening. I mean, I understand the doctor and the ear piercer. But the haircut doesnt hurt at all!!

My ears hurt though, despite the fact that its more than 15 hours since.

aftereffects of the MMR vaccine

Anjali got her MMR vaccination last Tuesday. Granma was given panadol and was warned too expect fever in a few days. When Anjali didnt get a fever during the weekend, we thought that the danger had past and that all was clear.

On Thursday morning (10 days after the vaccination) I felt the belly getting warm. By Thursday afternoon, she had a full blown fever, despite which she was happily reading her books. I mean happy except for the times the panadol had to be forced in, during which she would scream royal blue murder (why dont they flavor panadols with Godiva? )

Last night she must have been tired, for she fell asleep before 8pm and didnt wake up till past midnight. At midnight, she was still hot to touch, but she drank her milk and fell asleep.

I still wonder if I should have left her to it. But, on some motherhood (aka. insanity) impulse, we decided to giive her a dose of panadol before asking her to sleep again.

Little imps dont take kindly to panadol. This is an important moral that all people bringing up little imps ought to remember. And more importantly, Little imps take far less kindly to panadol administered during their sleep than to panadol administered when they are happily playing in the middle of the day.

When we give her panadol in the middle of the day, she cried for a few minutes, and then goes back to play. But last night, she cried for two hours. She didnt want her daddy to carry her, because he had helped me to hold Anjali while I forced the panadol down her throat. There is not much in a dark bedroom to distract a crying baby but, thanks to modern technology, I got the light on on my mobile phone, and sat with her showing all the pictures on the phone (99% of which featured imps in various positions and activities.) That cheered her up.

It was two pm when she finally collapsed on to bed, due to sheer exhaustion that arises because of combined stubbornness and staying vertical during hours that were meant for horizontal rest. Husband and i lay down beside her and had all of one second to thank our lucky stars that vaccination is a one off thing. But we fell asleep even before the prayer finished

more play

well well... what next??

Here's a short video on a typical play session with Anjali. Pantomiming, playing, reading a going gymnastics

Want to win a jackpot?

The jackpot is for people who can tell me how Anjali knows which book to pick and who is Bharati and to shake her head for the wrong songs.

Amount undisclosed.

Why i woke up screaming last night

Last night, i had a very weird dream. I dreamt that Anjali, who was sleeping beside me had a lot of yellow stuff (probably pus, probably food, over her). I woke up screaming and calling for husband, who was still awake and fiddling around on his (brand new) computer. He came rushing in, I was practically yelling to him to turn on the lights. "She has pus all over her", I said, over and over again.

Atleast, one of us had his wits about (probably cos he was not sleeping). He turned on the bathroom light and looked at Anjali.

"What happened?"

"She has pus on her.", I repeated stupidly. "A lot of yellow stuff.". I turned around to look at Anjali. She was sleeping next to me.

These was nothing over her. Just a diaper.

"Dont worry." said husband. "You are probably traumatized by what happened this morning."

So what did happen this morning??

I blogged last Friday about Anjali's ears being infected and the screw lost, and how we could not remove the earring. Each time we tried to remove it, Anjali would cry and we would give up after a few minutes, with the earring sticking stubbornly out of her ear. And each time we did that, the ear would bleed.

On Saturday evening, we noticed the swelling. The back of the ear, from which the screw had fallen off, had swollen. On Sunday morning it was worse. There were a couple of droplets of dried blood on the mattress. I wanted to wait until Monday to take Anjali to the pediatrician. But husband was adamant and wanted to go to the 24 hour clinic. So, early Sunday morning (it was hardly 9am), we packed up the minimal gear and went to the doctor.

Anjali seems to have a phobia against doctors (probably because they manhandle her without ceremony). She was ok and laughing until we opened the room to the doctor, upon which she sent up a holy wail, over which I tried to explain the problem to the doctor.

"The good news", he said gravely, "is that this is not as bad as some of the other cases I have seen before". Later he told husband that there have been cases where the infection was so bad that the ear was replaced by a lump. Gross!

By then, Anjali (whom the doctor has hardly touched except to take her temperature), set up such a royal yell that the doctor asked me to kindly take her out while he explained matters to husband.

i have no idea of the conversation that took place between them (well, it involved a lot of fancy manipulation on husband's part, as I am sure that the doctor didnt want to touch the little imp while she screamed blue murder), but five minutes later we got called back in and the doctor asked us to hold Anjali really tight so thatt he could try to get the ear ring out.

Husband held her, and the doctor took the ring out, with the screw still attached. It transpired that the screw had somehow gone inside the pierced hole and had infected the ear from within. Ofcourse we couldnt see the screw and were tugging it out, causing the little girl all the pain. Gives me shudders to think about it. No wonder I had nightmares.

Scary story. And ofcourse Anjali was screaming the whole time, and I had to keep her still enough to press gauze to her ear to stop the bleeding. So I sat in the waiting room, held her tight and sang twinkle twinkle. She would subside to sobbing and then husband would come and she would scream again, afraid that husband would take her in the room and hold her.

After 15 minutes, we took her out of the clinic. I wanted to buy her ice cream (Swati said that it had worked with Ananya), but there was no icecream shop open, so we bought her a big cream cake from the bakery, and let her choose the cake herself. She sobs subsided when the first cherry went inside her mouth.

She even consented to let daddy hold her, though she flicked him away when he attempted to examine her ear.

And she begins to cry if any one so much as mentions "thodu" to her.

Arranging flowers

A pantomime

I did this dance at a school drama when I was about six or seven years old. Imagine my surprise when Anjali is doing it now!!

If the kid is too much like her father, i will probably have to get my hair pulled out

One of the interesting (and infuriating) things about husband is that he is a perfectionist. No, i dont mean that in a blase sort of way, but in a very serious way that has been developed by several years of psychological *sic* study. He will never display or hand in a piece of work until it is to his satisfaction (and take it from me the satisfaction threshold is high). In the same way, he will not undertake a project unless he is sure that he will succeed it.

Unlike me, whose satisfaction threshold is much lower, who doesnt mind handing in half baked goods as long as they are usable.

Yes. It is an admirable quality, but it causes me, at times, to want to pull my hair out one by one.

Now, I am alarmed to notice that Anjali may be exhibiting the same quality that husband is.

The imp can talk. She says "bye bye", "mama sharanam", "car", "ingai", "heehaw", "loll loll" and a lot of other things at the correct context. But you have to surprise the words out of her. She says these words when she is not aware that she is saying them. The only words she says when being aware are "amma" and "apa". If she is in a good mood, she would repeat sounds, mama, anna, thatha etc, but as of now she has yet to associate them with the right objects.

I was curious as to why she does not use these words in the real time. After all, if she is in a crowd and you ask her where is mama or anna or thatha, she points to the correct person. If we ask her where is the donkey in the shrek book, she points to it, not to metion the various objects around her in the house, street and her whole library of books. The kid knows the pentagon and stars.

The only explanation that I can come up with is that Anjali is exhibiting her dad's perfectionist tendencies. (God save my hair!), and that she wants to consolidate and make sure she can say all the words she understands before she actually says them.

Then again, maybe I am digging too deep into the psychology of the matter. After all, the kid's just 15 months old.

to add to the sippy cup and shoe story

Anjali lost an earring on Thursday night. We were at patti's house on Friday before we noticed the earring missing. The whole of Friday she went about with one earring, and we had given up hope of ever finding the other earring, I mean, its tiny, less than 2 mm in diameter, and has a screw. So we would need to find two parts to it.

But surprise!! Husband, who vacuumed the floor on Saturday morning found, not just the earring, but also the screw. What luck!

However, there was a problem, Anjali's ears, so sensitive from the first piercing, had not yet stabilized, and the hole had closed up. We had to get the ear pierced again, and husband refused point blank to get it done in Serangoon, as the process was very painful for Anjali the first time around. We asked a bit in the shops and found a nice joint at West mall, which does sterilized one use piercing, quick, with both the earring and the screw inserted at the same time, offering six month post piercing checkups and such (where was this shhop one month ago?)

the problem, we only wanted to pierce one ear, and the shop couldnt support the screw earrings, just the press kind. So we chose another pair of earrings, titanium, with a white stone in the center, and Anjali's ear was pierced again (just one ear was pierced), and she has a gold earring in one ear and a titanium one with a stone in the other, very cool.

Well, I think (I know) that the first piercing was very traumatic for the little imp, for no sooner had she sat down in my lap and the shop assistant dabbed her ear with disinfectant, did Anjali start bawiling. it was very difficult for the assistant to draw the spot to pierce and the struggling got louder when the piercing actually happened. But this time was faster, and I think, less painful. The assistant gave her a chocolate later, and between tears, she quietened down and ate a chocolate, and when she finished it, actually pointed to the drawer and asked for another one.

Although she was very angry with the assistant (despite the chocolate), and kept shaking her off when she attempted to explain to us the process of cleaning the wound.

Then we went to the zoo. More on that in the next post.

P.S. Swati, if you are reading this, Did you use the press earrings for Ananya? If so, arent the edges too sharp to be left on overnight? I will write you an email about this soon

goatee stuff

People usually slide down slides. Ever seen a kid that slides down stairs??

If she gets up to so much mischief now, how much mischief will she get up to when she is older?

The roll of toilet paper was only a quarter full. Good for us. After she finished with it, she walked around with the cardboard hanging from her nose.

And a small video on the mess that was left over.

Have given a few photos for printing, to make more books for the bag of tricks. Lets see

What is the bag of tricks up to?

I didnt post over the weekend and both Anjali and I had been busy with the IEP camp on Sunday, me preparing for the camp and Anjali acting cute.

After the camp, we went to a concert at the temple of fine arts. It was a beautiful concert, sitar, tabla, flute and mridangam. I was a bit worried that Anjali may cry or something in the middle of the concert and we would have to take her back. But it was very surprising. Although she was very tired after the camp, and her tiredness showed and her eyes nodded in the middle of the concert, after she had had a few minutes of rest and milk, she was back to her usual self, climbing on cushions and dancing to the more livelier parts of the music.

By the end of the day, when we asked her what Nataraja did, she would lift her legs up in some soft of narthanam.

What else is new?

Well, Anjali can do pirouettes, and when she starts spinning, she spins and spins and spins. And laughs for good measure while enjoying her spins. Thattha worries that she will get dizzy, but I dont see any lasting damage.

Her vocabulary is growing. Yesterday, she took out her alphabet book and looked at the binoculars. She kept asking granma to repeat what it was until she finally got it. Now, she keeps pointing at the binoculars and making binocular signs with both her hands (like how we do when we look through the binoculars)

Granma says that she is planning to memorize the alphabet book by the end of the day.

I was discussing with husband yesterday about abstract and concrete stuff in child education. And found another fascinating thing that Anjali did. I have discussed time and again Anjali's fascination towards apa. Couple of dayd ago husband and Anjali were watching Shrek 2. We let Anjali to watch about 15 minutes of cartoon once in a while, and somewhere when Shrek and Fiona were climbing off their carriage at far far away, Anjali points to the screen and says "Apa". Husband, mystified, looks all over the screen, and then he spots it, a fountain in the background.

How did this girl learn to form the association? I have no clue. If you do, please let me know, it will be useful in research.

She knows mimosas very well. I showed her once, while waiting for the bus, little touch  me not plants growing in the grass in the bus stop. And now the bag of tricks loves to look for mimosa plants (and she can identify them on other patches of grass, not just the one near the bus stop), and touch them to watch them close.

Yesterday, Anjali was holding her mickey mouse while hanging on to granma's skirt. More to get her to stop hanging than anything alse, granma tells Anjali "Dont hang on my skirt and show your mickey mouse the onion and garlic"

So the bag of tricks goes to the onion, garlic and potato box and shoves the mickey mouse towards it "showing the mickey mouse"

I suppose I can go on, because every activity is some sort of new trick, like how, when we plan and give her something for a certain activity, she starts three other activities with the same stuff, like how husband gave her a plate to float her duckies in the bathroom, and Anjali, after we had switched off the water, instead of crying quietly transferred all the water from the "lake" to the mug. Like how granma gave Anjali the almonds (after grounding them in the pestle) and then some water to drink in the sippy, after which the little girl poured bits of water into the pestle and grounded it, like how husband gave her his go stones and a water bottle and she not only dropped the stones inside, but did a lot of scientific study on the angle of tilt of the bottle and the noise that the stones make.

Anjali can do somersaults

No kidding. She did about 4 or five yesterday. Most of the time she topples to the side, but its only a matter of a days before she figures out how its done.

It began when, two nights ago, she refused to sleep and was doing mountain poses on the bed, peering at us with her head between her legs. Husband tipped her over and she was amused, so he tipped her over again. Then she got too tired and fell asleep.

Last night she was more fresh, and realized that being tipped over was fun, but not as fun as it could be if she tipped herself over. And there you go. stand in mountain, tip yourself over and you get a somersault.

First a sippy, now a shoe

My mom says that Anjali will grow up to be a very economical person. After all, she made sure that she did not deliver herself out until she had milked the hospital out on the gynecological package.

let me elaborate.

When we went to Langkawi, Anjali was playing with her sippy cup on the flight. Because she was flustered on the plane (cramped quarters, wanted to go with granma etc), we let her pour water all over and then when she fell asleep, tucked the sippy in the front pocket of the flight seat. When we left the plane, we forgot to take the sippy with us.

We gave it up as lost and throughout the trip managed to give Anjali water from plastic tumblers. Then, while we were checking in on the return flight, they asked us at the check in counter if we had left something behind on the incoming flight. Like a sippy maybe?

And so the sippy got returned to us.

Bizzare, but not really unusual. There is only one flight to Langkawi everyday, and flights are cleaned regularly, so it is natural that some nice attendant may give a baby sippy as lost and found.

But if you thought that this is a coincidence, listen to the story of the shoe...

Yesterday granma took Anjali to the center in the morning. Anjali has a set of pink shoes with a ducky on top. She chose them herself from the shop, and they were quite new, less then two weeks old. So, in the 189 bus, Anjali was playing with her shoes, strapping and unstrapping them, and granma said to Anjali, "dont take them off!" but as you can guess, granma got off the bus, got up the escalator and found that one shoe was missing. She climed down to see if it had fallen on the way, but no. The shoe was lost, presumably on the bus.

Since Anjali loved to walk and she couldnt walk outdoors without shoes, and since the pink ones were her only pair, husband and I took her in the evening to west mall to buy a new pair of shoes. We found a beautiful pair, orange sandals with black straps. Again, Anjali chose them herself. They are a bit big for her, but she can walk fine with them. Incidentally, her feet are at a tricky stage. The baby shoes are too small, even the largest size is too small. The toddler shoes are just a bit big. Anyway, she's growing fast and I am sure the feet will catch up. After all, I have big feet.

So we got the shoes, there was a sale at the basement for baby vests and I tossed in a few into the bargain and then we decided to let Anjali walk back home to test the new shoes. Now, Anjali is so used to me taking the bus from West mall to home that she made a beeline for the busstop instead of taking the usual walking route (I have to digress to marvel at how much this girl knows. I usually carry her from granma's house to the busstop and she knows the route. She was walking at top speed, equivalent to the comfortable pacing off an adult, she takes three steps to yourr one step, and when she reached the busstop, she stopped, because she knows that we wait for the bus there, and she flags the bus down when it comes. Well she flags all the buses, not just the right number, but hey, she's a kid!)

Anywya, we reached the busstop, got in the bus, climbed the front seat, and started fiddling with our shoes. And then mummy turns around and what do I find? Anjali's lost shoe, strapped to the place in front of the bus where the route maps are.

I mean, of all the 189 buses to take, we take the same one that granma took in the morning, and what a nice person the driver must have been, to display the shoe incase someone lost it, instead of treating it as trash and throwing it away!

Anjali, you are lucky! And now, you have two pairs of shoes!

Anjali in action

Apa?

Why is a bottle of oil in the supermarket shelf "Apa!"?

Why does the thirsty crow look all around and exclaim "apa!" when it sees water in the bottom of a pot?

Why does a drain after rain prompt a bag of tricks into exclaiming "apa"?

For answers to these and more, stay tuned on the goat site =)

tantrums left and right

I thought it was terrible twos. No one told me about terrible ones. Here are a list of things that Annjali doesnt like and throws tantrums over.

1. Washing her after poo. She likes sitting in the potty and everything, but bring her to the sink or the shower and she throws a royal yell

2. Washing her hair. So much so that she begins crying the minute she sees the herbal pack granma uses on her hair

3. Switching off the apa when she is playing with it. You would have thought that a kid who doesnt like to get washed would get off from under the tap in good time. But no. she can stay under the tap for the whole day and night if you let her. Couple of days ago, she was happily throwing water from the bathroom into the kitchen. Husband was not paying attention for five minutes and when she turned around there was a nice flood on the kitchen floor. Her tells her, "Anjali, dont pour water into the kitchen, pour it in the bathroom". Anjali gives him one look and pours the water, on the kitchen floor. Husband says "If you pour water in the kitchen, i'll switch off the tap". Anjali pours water in the kitchen. Husband switches off the tap. Anjali raises a royal yell. Husband opens the water tap, and keeps one hand on the tap. Anjali eyes the tap and plays very disciplinedly, taking water in the mug and pouring it on the bathroom floor. Husband takes his hand off the tap.

bag of tricks pours water on the kitchen floor.

4. Wearing diapers.  Now, when Anjali is going to nap and we need to put the you know what, we spell it out. Husband says its only a matter of time before she cottons on with the spelling and throws a tantrum when she hears d-i-a-p-e-r, but it will buy us some time. After that I'll check out whats Czech for diapers and use that word.

5. Leaving her in the house while going out. it could be anywhere, to the office, to get a haircut, to the downstairs shop, to throw the rubbish in the bin, but leave her behind when you go out and all the stops in her voice will be taken out.

These are just small samples. More come up every minute. Sometimes i am at my wists end on how to deal with them - Should i let her cry it out, for obviously you cant give her what she wants all the time, especially if she has finished eating her oranges and the only reason she wants more is so that she can squeeze them all over the floor and the chairs, when she has finished drinking water and wants more to throw on the couch, when she has to get in terms with my going to work in the morning and clinging and crying and refusing to go to granma will not solve any problem.
Other than the times she throws tantrums, she is really a sweet little girl. Try telling her that she is going out and so she must wear pants and shoes - she'll lift her legs up for the pants and for the shoes, she'll lie down on the pillow to put on the diaper. IF she knows she's going to play with apa, she'll help you take off her shirt and everything.