Enjoying the waves

And keeping water out of our shoes

Good advice gets tossed in the face

In this house no body respects good advice. infact, it gets tossed in the face, along with Anjali's shirt.




Well, dunking her in water cured the running nose completely though, so you got to give credit where credit is due

bees saal pehle

Twenty eight years ago what did patti have in her thoppai?

"papa!"

Then what was patti doing?

(mime joola joola)

Then patti fell down

(mime fall down)

Then what happened?

(Mime crying)

And then what did patti get in her leg?

"Ouuah" (thats wound)

The evolution of human consciousness and the brain

proof of ancestery

Husband and I were astounded yesterday when Anjali began swinging from the bars in the playground. Didnt have a camera with us, but mean to take one tonight, so watch out for the video.

Then we came back and wanted to play with the brush to clean the toilet and threw a tantrum when we didnt let her.

Another tantrum yesterday afternoon when she tried to climb inside the fridge and granma didnt let her

I should get a video of her tantrums one of these days.


For the record

more anjali cute stuff

Anjali has been spending the weekend recovering from a fever. On Sunday, she slept through most of the evening and woke up just when husband and I were about to have a dinner of baked vegetables. I tried to coax Anjali into eating some potatoes, but no go, she was not very interested. So she sat on my lap and watched as i picked up my vegetables and dipped them in chutney before eating them.

Suddenly a hand shot out and picked a piece of potato. Anjali dipped it into chutney, liked the chutney, dipped the potato, licked the chutney etc.

"Anjali, you must bite the potato" I said. "Its potato with chutney, not chutney with potato"

"Anjali, here's a softer potato, its easier to bite", said husband.

Anjali ignored him

"Anjali, why dont you take this potato from mummy's plate", I said, picking the potato that looked the most juicy, and giving it to Anjali

Anjali ignored me also.

I left her alone to hone her chutney eating skills and continued to eat from my plate.

But husband couldnt sit there and watch his precious (and sick) princess eating a very roasted potato with chutney. So he kept the very juicy potato on my plate, at the corner closest to Anjali, so that she could reach and take it when she wanted to. And perhaps the sight off the soft potato in front of her nose will appeal to her more than what we told her.

Perhaps

Anjali, who was watching this exchange, perched on my lap like a koala bear, shot a hand out and picked up the juicy potato.

She spared it half a glance and put it back in her father's plate.

I hadnt laughed so hard in weeks.

trilingual conversationss, aka, why I am extremely prous of my little girl

The below conversations are examples of those that can be held in three languages, with perfect answers each time. (NB, Anjali has been learning Romanian for just over a week and thattha and daddy's mouths fall open when she talks to us.)

Example 1.

Anjali, unde car?

(points to car on road)

Cum merge car?

vroom vroom

Cum Spunem car?

Caarr


Example 2.

Krishna gave mum mum to everyone. Everyone asked Krishna - Krishna, Krishna, what do you want? and Krishna said I want Tulasi and...

Apa!!!

Example 3.

Anjali, Cum spuneem Om? (How do you say Om?)

OooooMMmmm

Anjali, cine t'a invatat com se spune Om?

thaatha.

Example 4.

Cine genius?

Points to self.

Cine intelligent?

points to self

Of all the kids in the playground, she has to choose the most monkeyish of the lot to be her role model.

Yesterday evening, I followed the imp and her father to the playground. We stayed there for about an hour, plenty of time to do  what daddy calls "monkey business".

She climbed the slide, ran around, chased the cats, etc. All this was usual. But up till now, i had not noticed Anjali giving much attention to other kids. She used to play parallely along side them, but not make any friendly overtures. I was mildly concerned, but not overly so, for after all, she was still small for mingling so fast with strange children.

Now I feel that there is a new factor that favors in. The other children were simply not monkeyish enough to hold the attention of the imp. Last evening, while we were playing we noticed another older child (about three or four years old) playing by herself. she was doing a lot of gymnastics, swinging from the poles, running up the slides, jumping on the suspension bridge etc.

Anjali watched this kid foor a while and then started following her around, and (I am not kidding) trying to imitate whatever she did (including the swinging from the bars bit) and running around. It was very funny to watch.

So i decided to step in and make some introductions.

"Anjali, do you want to shake hands with Akka?"

Anjali held out a pudgy little hand.

Akka simply stuck her nose in the air and walked away.

Well, I was not really going to give up so fast, so I cornered akka again after a few minutes.

"Can you show us how you hang from the top of the slide?"

No response

"What is your name?"

The akka sized me up and down, possibly to check if I was trustworthy. "Vinneesya"

"Do you want to shake hands with the baby?"

She shakes her head once - No.

Husband, by this time is totally indignant that some kid in the playground should refuse to shake hands with his precious princess.

Especially since the princess was looking so eagerly at the akka.

"Anjali, do you want to shake hands with daddy?"

Both kids ignore him.

Then a little boy comes up the slide, also about three or four years old.

"This is how you hang from the top of the slide." He said kindly, demonstrating.

"Ok"

"And she doesnt shake hands with people, she just beats them up."

Right!

"I see..." I said slowly. "Would you like to shake hands with the baby then?"

He looks tempted, then glances towards the little girl, who snarls and says

"Say no, otherwise I'll beat you up."

Anjali imitated her for another ten minutes and then got distracted by the mouse that ran out from under her feet.

Top ten reasons why my daughter is a clever imp

10. She pretends to be a woof woof dog and likes to be chased all around the hhouse/ bed rooom/ play ground

9. She wants to be an artic explorer and climb everything in sight - chairs, stairs, playground seesaws, daddy's belly, window ledges etc
 
8. She pretends to be a dolphin doing one of those spectacular dives and dives across her daddy's belly

7. She has food in her mouth and somersaults before swallowing the food (Exactly how does it stay down Maybe it goes directly into the brain)

6. She knows how to not do things she is not supposed to do, but pretends to do them just to see us berate her (like pouring water on the kitchen floor) and then she laughs.

5. She purposely does these things and cries when we berate her

4. She can imitate all the animals in her zoo book, but doesnt want to say "Ananya" (although she can).

3. She purposely goes in the wrong direction when you set her to walk.

2. When she walks with daddy, she wants to hang by the arm like a monkey (anybody knows whether too much brachiation is ok?)

1. She points to herself whenever anybody refers to the words "intelligent", "smart", "clever", "genius" etc

P.S. The reasons will change tomorrow but the imp status will remain.

a phone conversation

Just got off the phone with my favorite imp. And this is a nice milestone because for the first time, she responded back to me on the phone. And for those questions that she responds in actions, I received feedback from granma that she did the correct actions. If only I could find out what goes on in that brain of hers.

I mean, when we ask Anjali

"Anjali, shall we go to west mall and buy you a dress?", she shakes her head quite vehemently and has quite a disgusted expression on her face

But when we ask her

"Shall we go to west mall and buy you cake?" she smiles and pats herself on the chest.

So is she putting on the expression or does she feel really painful towards clothes?

Now her vocabulary has also gone up, and she can say words while making the associations. Mynah, car, thattha etc are common usage words, as are meoow and lol lol. She cant quite say patti, but she says paaa...paaa... and for buzau, she says bu... good enough :P

Why Anjali doesnt like being kissed by the Wooof Woof dog

I cant comment on this as I have never been kissed by the woof woof dog before. Anjali has always been keen on dogs and likes to chase them around the playground, shouting "loll loll" all the time. Yesterday, she saw a woof woof and chased after it. the woof woof was a friendly kind, however, and it doubles back to sniff at Anjali a couple of times, upon which Anjali, who had initially refused to wave bye bye to it, quietly waved bye bye and walked back home with mummy.

Later, mummy was recounting the story of Anjali's adventure in the playground to Daddy.

"... And she saw the children playing fire in the mountain and after a while she played with them, and she went doown the slide in the arms of an akka. oh yes, and she got kissed by a woof woof dog."

Suddenly, Anjali, who had been playing a couple of feet away with some go stones looks up and shakes her head vigourously, with a very disgusted expression on her face.

"You didnt get kissed by the woof woof dog?" i asked surprised.

More vigourous shaking.

"Ok. fine." I said, even more surprised.

Then she went back to play.

Ten minutes later I tried to test the waters again.

"You know, when Anjali got kissed by the woof woof dog she went behind mummy's skirt..."

Vigourous shaking of both head and hands.

I wrote it up on her white board this morning.

"THE WOOF WOOF DOG KISSED ANJALI YESTERDAY."

She watched me writing it and then shook her head.

So I changed the sentence to

"ANJALI IS A PISICA"

She likes that.

Conversation in the bus

I think she gives sweet kisses, dont you?

some people are very inventive

Who would have expected her to use the fries as a spoon to scoop the ketchup?

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.