linguistics

 Two days ago, we took Anjali out for a walk. On the road, we saw a frangipani tree. She picked a flower and said "ca".

"car?" i asked.

She shook her head. "Ca!"

"But where is the car?"

The took the flower and put itt behind her ear.

"Ca", she repeated.

I was puzzled for a while, and then it dawned on me.

"Oh! kadu. You want to put it in your ear!"

"ear!"

One thing that makes life interesting when your kid is communicating in multiple languages is that she has (or had) single language answer to multi language questions. For example, water was always apa, wet was always iaa (iram). But now, she is learning to answer a question in the same language, for instance,

"Anjali, cat te iubesc?"

"mu!!" (thats mult!)

"Anjali, how many hands do you have?"

"Too!"

However, sometimes, like the situation above, she tends to pick an answer in a different language. Then it takes a while for us to understand what she wants to say.

For instance, she keeps pointing to her drawing stuff and saying "ow"

We are still not sure whether she is articulating "Draw" or "Om", because patti taught her to draw "Om"

Well, we know what she needs, so its alright.

But what is amusing is Anjali's expression when patti speaks in english, or when husband speaks in Tamil. She stares at them as though something totally unnatural is going on. I'll try to get a video if I can.

A lot of new words have gotten added into Anjali's repertoire including "dirty" - even if there is a speck. She should read Horton hears a who, "bubba" for bubbles, "bi" for biscuit, "ca" for cat, as opposed to meow meow.

"Is Anjali a boy or a girl"

"ga"

"Is daddy a girl or a boy"

"bay"

"Is mummy a boy or a girl"

"ga"

And so on. She gets them all correct!

(There is a secret to getting it correct, but I am not telling!!)

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Anjali and Ananya at the zoo

At the start. with the macaws
Will Anjali let the sea lion kiss her?
nope, only mummy gets kissed.

I drink my own thair!! Keep away!

Fruit bats at the fragile forest. Better watch carefully, I need to imitate them at home

Anana!
A meow meow? No. its a lemur
Playing in the rain
raindrops and roses
sticking our legs out!

It was nice to see Anjali and Ananya together at the zoo. They took a bit of time to warm up, but later ran after each other, doing mostly parallel play with their respective parents, but the play was nonetheless enriched by the presence of each other. the highlight oof the day was their playing together in the rain.

Anjali does not like me carrying Ananya though. And she doesnt like Swati to carry her (Anjali) either. She is really an ammamma girl. Wonder what we will do when the new papa comes.

Lemurs!!

Playing with Ananya in the rain.

Note to Self!! Make a book once Swati sends her pictures

talks a lot but...

Just wondering if kids who talk a lot continue to babble. Anjali has suddenly started speaking proper words... has a growing vocabulary of something like 50 words and increasing... but a conversation with a colleague suddenly gave me pause. His daughter holds babble conversations. And then I stopped. Anjali doesnt babble. Infact, she doesnt talk if the word she utters doesnt make sense. I mean, we get things like Baa baa and o ac ac, and ooo followed by dancing around the living room, but they mean stuff to us and to her. For a while she was saying sha la la sha la la... for a long time, which I thought was babbling, but turned out that she was asking for the china chiru kiliye song. Yesterday, she was in West Mall and said "ba ba". and we were looking around all over for sheep, but turns out that she saw a balloons on a shop ceiling.

Here are some dance photos. We took her home from patti's house after four days (husband came back from Paris yesterday morning), and she got all excited.. as I guess she missed her toys and books (she has an entirely different set at Patti's house and probably an equal number of stuff in both houses, but then...)

So she came home, said "aw" (which means draw, and puts marker all over the living room table and chair arms... I have told her not to draw on the upholstery, so its ok), then she got me and daddy to draw with her. (Something cute. She opens the markers, draws and puts the caps back. The correct color cap on the correct marker. This just happened yesterday. Its a definite milestone and I am very glad). Then she came to the bedroom, found her playdough and wanted to make meow meow. At some stage, the playdough got all over the floor and we usually wait until she gets to the next activity before cleaning up the remnants of the previous one.

The next activity was, if I am not wrong, putting coins in the pooh,  book, followed by taking a bath. I took the time given during the bath to clean up the house a bit... it was dusty from inhabitation. And then there was the milk and finally bed.. and all this within about 1.5 hours.

Between this and that, we need to see how to come up with a set of shelves for stacking Anjali's books. They are all over the place and I feel that they can be used a lot more effectively than they are currently getting used.

A more exciting news.. two of the tulips I planted from Amsterdam have grown. Maybe we'll have flowers after all, despite the weather.

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Well Well.. what next?

Anjali, where is the baby?

Anjali points to mummy's tummy.

then she taps the tummy. Anjali, dont tap baby, you must rub.

Anjali rubs the tummy.

You want to kiss?

Anjali buries her head in mummy's tummy.

Anjali, what the baby will call you?

"Akka"

Cool!

A couple of days ago, Anjali opened the fridge and took out the box of truffes (no idea how she knows there are chocolates in them). Since she obviously wanted the truffes and since I didnt want to give her the whole thing, I cut one into half, and put it into a bowl, intending for her to eat half and for me to have the other half. Anjali, smarty pants that she is, stuffed half in her mouth and took the bowl away. So, what was I to do then?

"Anjali, the baby in mummy's thoppai wants some chocolate. Do you want to give the baby some?"

Anjali takes the chocolate and puts it on my belly.

"Good girl. Now, if mummy puts the chocolate in her mouth, it will go to mummy's thoppai and the baby will eat it."

Anjali shakes her head vigourously.

I took the chocolate and ate it.

Extremely puzzled, disappointed and reproachful look.

The baby in the belly

I am worried about this baby in the belly. The cravings are getting from weird to downright bizzare. With Anjali, it was just cravings for healthy stuff - apple juice, tomato soup and the like. With this one, it is pepsi, and coffee and doughnuts and fried Romanian bread (as opposed to the healthy covirch) And now the cravings are for fried idlis and pani puris and dahi puris.

Husband says that he really needs to have a few words with the baby when she comes out.

Bu is meanwhile still convinced that it is a boy because of all the wierd symptoms that are totally opposing to Anjali

Everyone knows more about Anjali

"Eid is here on a crescent moon night"

"Anana!"

"Friends we meet"

"Anana, Anana ANANA!!"

"Ok ok!! Twinkle twinkle little..."

"tar"

"How I wonder what we.."

"Up."

"Right. Up above the world so higgh. like a diamond in the sky!"

"Ky!!!"
======

Chinna Chinna Asai

"Aa"

Muthu

"Mu"

Muthu Asai

"Aa"

Vennilavu thottu

"Tho"

Muttham ida asai

(does a flying kiss).

No one taught her this. Honest. I cross checked with patti.

=======
At 10.30 at night, Anjali does fruit bat business on the bed. After a while, she gets tired of it, and tried to pretend to be a weight lifting champion and carries the pillow high.

"Anjali, Are u Hanuman?...Jai Hanuman jnana guna saagar..."

Anjali drops out of bed, drags mummy with her, makes mummy switch on the living room light, crawls under the dining table, takes out the Ramayana book and asks for story, at close to 11pm.

King Dasaratha had everything. What did he not have?

"Baby"

So he made a fire. And then what did he pour into the fire?

"nei"

Then the god came and gave him

"paa" (that is payasam)

and it goes on and on, until Kumbakarna wakes up and then gets hit by arrow and falls again, and how many heads Ravana has

"Te!"

And what is on each head?

"Meow Meow" (A moustache)

And finally Rama and Sita getting on the throne and living happily.

says on the back of the Ramayana book that he who reads it frequently gets blessed. But I am sure that you dont have to read it at 11pm at night!

More vinegrettes

Gosh! How does Anjali know that amma is on the phone? She comes to the phone, talkes and cries when i say bye and want to hang up.

Husband's in Paris for the week, and if we ask Anjali where daddy's gone, she says Pa.
=========
She's still on the wake up late, sleep late (last night she slept at 11.30pm) mode. After her 10pm milk, she walks around the house, wakes everyone up, sits on bed and reads (kumudam, of all the books in the world), looks at her baa baa book, where the press button duck has gotten lost somewhere and so she says "oo ac ac" (that apparently means that there is supposed to be an old Mc Donald duck out there and where is it?), says "out" a couple of times, refuses to get carried on the shoulder, says "out" and "up" another ten more times, and then finally cries, drinks milk and goes to sleep.
========
Anjali is sitting in the potty

"Ammamma?"

"yes baby?"

"baby!"

Later..

"Ammamma?"

"Yes baba?'

"baba!"

A couple of seconds later..

"Ammamma"

"Yes darling?"

"darga... appa!"

"Yes. Appa calls you darling."
========
Mummy: Sa sing the sunflowers... Re ring the red roses...

Anjali.. Anana

Mummy: Yes. Ananya bought you the book... ga go the gulmughers

Anjali: Anana Anana

Mummy. That's right. Me murmur the marigolds...

Anjali: Anana Anana

Mummy: Are you going to let me sing?

Pei, Apu and Annie

Yesterday, I finally found the time to put together the photos from Romania into a nice Album. For a long time, i was deliberating the mode of presentation. The initial idea of ring bound books didnt appeal because of the sheer number of pictures, there were 120 of them. So I would have to make atleast 12 books, as I dont like giving Anjali small thick books.

After much deliberation, I decided on one of those contact sheet albums, where the number of photos on each page can be changes, and we can add our own captions. This was a better idea because Anjali is already outgrowing her single page picture books and now likes to look at multiple pictures (her favorite are the Winnie the Pooh encyclopedias, where she identifies everything from truffle mushrooms to Taiga forests (I still dont know what they are:P))

Yesterday a friend of thatha's came to lunch and got truffe chocolates. So i told Anjali that they were truffes (as opposed to chocolates, as I wanted to see what she would do). She went straight for the Winne the pooh book (which unfortunately was the wrong one, the one with the truffle mushroom being in our house and the nature one in Patti's house). So I explained to her that it was the wrong book and then asked her what she does with the truffles. She imitated kissing  (We have a game where Anjali kisses all the things in a book that she likes, namely bears, truffles, Christmas trees, Taiga forests etc, and mummy has to kiss the stuff she doesnt like, namely mosquitoes, lemons etc, because they are bleh bleh.)

Anyway, back to the Romania book story, I got the photos in, but hadnt had time to add captions yet. But Anjali wanted a bit of new entertainment, so i got out the album and she got interested in the pictures. She had a good time identifying everyone - Bu, Tata, Athai, Anna etc, and shook her head vigorously whenever we pointed to Alfred uncle, and insisted that we turn the next page (incidentally, she refused to kiss the photo of Alfred uncle, but kissed Bu and Tata and the rest)

But Anjali's favorite story was that depicted by the photos of her baptism. She turned the pages and stared intently at them. here's the conversation that followed.

"That's the priest from your Baptism" I said, somewhat cautiously.

And then,

"Where's the priest?"

Anjali pointed to the man in gold.

"Good", i said, turning the page.

"Pei."

"Excuse me?"

"Pei"

"Oh priest". I turned the page back. "Here's the priest. What the priest did?"

"Apa".

"Who did the priest put in Apa?"

"Annie"

"I see! the priest put Annie in Apa. Where's the Apa?"

Points to picture of Anjali being dunked in Apa.

"Ok. So what did Annie do then?"

"Waah"

That was the point where I couldnt keep a straight face anymore.

Anjali's exercise routiine: Day 1

This is the first time Anjali tried to exercise with her father. She did a longer routine yesterday

Will Bunica believe?

Husband wants Bu to believe that we wash this girl in the sink. Will Bu buy the image?

(Well, we do wash her in the sink from time to time. :P)

The Indian Warrior

One that draws not only on the floor, tables, an TV remote (no surface is safe), but also on herself. Her fingers are permanently ink smudged. One fine evening she was happily drawing on her hands and I told her

"Anjali, if you draw on your hands, Patti will have my blood."

And she said,

"bloog"

How could I not let her draw after that?

conversations

Suddenly, Anjali's talking and understanding are growing too fast for me to keep up. Here are some of her quick conversations

Anjali, Who calls you Mottu?

Thattha

Who calls you Sri Maa?

Patti

Who calls you Gundoos?

Amma

Who calls you bag of tricks?

Appa

Who calls you Puyut,u?

Bu

Bunica?

bu cu ca. (Incidentally, Bunica has not called Anjali puyutu since she was in Singapore, and that was around 9 months ago, and we are very mystified as to howw she remembers.)

===========

Anjali, to manunce lemon?

(shake head)

Deci?

um?

Cum este lemon?

bleh bleh.

Cine trebuie sa manunce lemon?

Appa.

Si amma pot se manunc?

shake head?

Deci?

bleh bleh.

====================

Anjali, cand merge tu la schola, pui geant pe manut,a si ce spui?

Bye Bye
(This is one of the things she says in three languages)

Yesterday evening, Anjali was playing with her playdough and then she got up, said "bye bye" and walked out of the door.

Anjali, where is your bag?

Anjali looked around. No bags in sight. Undaunted, she turns around, finds the bucket of playdough, slings it over her shoulder (as high as it can go) and says "bye bye"
=======

More conversations coming up.

A larger role

Husband says that Anjali should be given a larger role in the forthcoming concerts. It is because she is an excellent pantomimer. Yesterday, she half acted, half sang the whole Anjali Anjali song. I hope to put up a video of this soon.

One of Anjali's favorite books is the Disney Encyclopedia with Pooh and friends. There are three in the series, Animals, Nature and earth. I bought the earth one for her a month ago. It covers various aspects - Tundra, Grasslands, forests, water etc. There is a page with information about Hawks in the book, with three pictures on one side - a hawk sitting on a perch, looking and flying. Ask Anjali howw the hawk sits, and she kneels down. ask her how the hawk looks, she bares her teeth, makes her eyes big and peers at you. It amuses Husband to no end.

By the way, what are Taiga forests? Anjali can identify them from the picture. Me, I have no clue what they are.

reflections on travelling as a mother

On our trip to the mountains in Romania, husband was sitting in the front seat of the car with Alfred so that the back seat was free to hold me, Anjali and Anjali's gear. Once in a while, he would point to something nice passing by - cows, sheep, a beautiful stream crossing, a bridge, a train, a mountain path. More often than not, I would glance out of the window, exclaim over the sight, and then go back to Anjali, who needed a good bit of entertaining especially because she was getting bored in the car.

Here are some things that mom's should expect when taking an infant (or perhaps even an older child) on long trips

1. You will never get to watch a movie on the plane (though they had an excellent selection in the one we were travelling with). This is because you are constantly singing, juggling, drawing, etc and when the kid is sleeping, you dont dare to take a couple of hours to watch a movie because she is liable to wake up at any moment and then you are in for it.

2. There is always a chance that you will need one or more changes of clothes. Anjali barfed on me no less than 5 times during the trip to Romania - twice on the plane, twice during the mountain trip and once just after we got back to Bu's house. On the plane trip, I had one change of clothes, so ended up in Bucharest airport smelling strongly (despite my efforts to wipe most of the barf with wet wipes). There were issues with customs and so I didnt have time to change before getting in the car (the choice was to wear husband's T-shirt)... so that was an additional two hours before I could get somewhere to change my shirt. On the mountain, my spare clothes were in the trunk, so I just stowed away the T-shirt and pulled the sweater on. That's one nice thing about going in the mountains, there are always layers. What is very interesting is that when husband carries her and she wants to barf, she usually cries until I pick her up and then she barfs on me.

3. Take a spare set of elegant clothes. I had to borrow my sister in law's top and make do with one of my more elegant skirts for a dinner when Anjali decided to pee on my saree.

4. Hard situations will be even more harder as you are coping for two people. When we were climbing up to the top of the mountain, we decided to take a telecabin. This one was amazingly fast and crossed almost 2000 meters in ten minutes, which meant that Anjali had to cope with a quick change in air pressure. She didnt like it at all. To make matters worse, the telecabin is usually crowded. That was both good and bad, bad because she couldnt run around, and good because other people could distract her, like the nice lady who gave Anjali a small packet of biscuits and showed off her many rings.

5. You will notice the small differences between home and the foreign place more acutely than the larger and more exotic differences. Examples include how the leaves get blown away by the autumn wind, the number of dogs on the street, the cracks in the pavement, the way the houses have a small window near the ground for the basement, the way the birds fly etc.

6. You cant sit for more than ten minutes to eat a meal at a restaurant. It is recommended to take the kid running before the meal is served, so that when the meal comes, she can sit and eat with u - atleast for the first course. After the first course, usually her hunger abates, and either husband or I had to take turns taking Anjali out while the other ate. The worst was in Brasov, where the restaurant opened directly to the street and didnt have any doors. Anjali ran faster than lightning from table to outside. But thankfully, the street opened to the town square, which had many people but no vehicles.

7. Be careful about luggage. On the SIN-BUH trip, we overpacked Anjali's gear, and took about 10 books for her, and close to ten cans of baby food. Unfortunately, Anjali is not the kind who looks at books one by one. She likes them spread around her so that she can cross reference information. So the only toy that we used, with the exception of a couple of books, was her magnetic drawing board. Then there was the trip around Amsterdam, where poor husband had to lug around all the baggage, which included bottles of baby food, books and toys. On the way back, we were extremely blase, opting to give Anjali plane food and just packing two bottles of baby food for "incase".

8. Dont take for granted that eating habits remain consistent across four months. When we went to Langkawi, Anjali loved Heinz food. Egg custards and fruit salads and lentils etc. But then at that time, Anjali was just over a year old and didnt have such developed taste buds. Now Heinz is bland. She is used to salt and sour and spice and wants them all. The Heinz doesnt go in properly unless she is veritably starving.

9. All the same, the trip is more fulfilling with a kid. Exhausting, yes, but very fulfilling. I have no clue why, especially after listing all the reasons why it is so troublesome. But strangely, if given three choices - stay at home, go somewhere without Anjali, and go somewhere with Anjali; going with Anjali will take first choice.

Everyone knows about Anjali

Sudha aunty finished her walk yesterday with a armful of flowers. Seeing Anjali, she came and said,

"Here are flowers for you".

Anjali took a flower. Then

"Amma"

"what does she want?"

"She wants you to give me a flower also"

"Ok. Here you are". Then...

"Thattha"

Sudha aunty was running out of flowers. So she picked up a leaf from the floor and said

"Here's the pretty leaf. Give this to your thattha"

Anjali shook her head, stuck up her nose and walked away.

-----------

At the doctor's for patti's *oua*.

"Patti has a oua. So we must go to see the doctor. Anjali, you mustnt cry at the doctor. he is only checking patti".

At the receptionist...

"pa.. oua, Paa oua"

"Yes. paa has a oua."

At the doctor...

"What a cute baby. let me get her a chocolate"

Doctor comes back with the chocolate. then...

"Paa"

"What does she want?"

"She wants a chocolate for the grandmother"

"Ok. i'll go in to get another."

Another chocolate given to patti. Then...

"thattha?"

"One more for the grandfather"

Once all her companions were sated with chocolate Anjali was happy and ate hers.

=======
Anjali saw a baby cat in the playground. she followed it around for a while and then went to play in the slide. The cat, after a while, also began to play in the slides.

After a couple of rounds, Anjali came to ask me to slide with her.

"Ammamma?"

"Yes baby?"

"Up!"

"Up where?"

(points to slide).

I slid down.

Anjali ran around a little and then saw the cat sitting at the foot of the slide

"Meow Meow?"

"Yes Anjali. Thats the cat".

"Up!"

"Who must go up?"

"Meow meow."

The meow meow ignored her and licked its tail.

We thought it was hungry and got a small packet of milk to give the cat. Anjali watched very interestedly as the cat slurped some of the milk. then it lost interest and wandered away. She then wondered why it went away without drinking.

"Paa"

"yes. There is paal there"

"Meow Meow! Paa.."

"Meow Meow is not hungry any more Anjali. it will come back and drink when it gets hungry."

At the swimming pool

As a special treat for the Hari raya holiday, we took Anjali to the jurong pool a large one with a wave pool and a river. Anjali loved it. She especially was fascinated by the wave pool, which was the right height for her to explore and was very fascinated by the way the waves came crashing around her.

Of course, Anjali wants all her happiness to be shared by those she loves, so she wanted ammamma to come into the waves with her.

That is a new characteristic. If Anjali enjoys something, all those people around her must do the same. This includes things like eating chocolate, swinging on the monkey bar or going down the slide (is it ok for pregnant women to slide?), going in the swimming pool, watching tv etc.

At the children's pool

At the wave pool
Exploring the wave pool
Here come the waves
Look hhow they crash at my feet!!

Tutu's first stage performance

Getting ready to go to the temple
Ramya, at the temple, all dressed and made up.
Anjali, all dressed up. Isnt her pavadai beautiful?

Just before going on stage.

In front of the kolu, looking at Apa. And getting used to the new surroundings.

On stage...

She was supposed to put flowers on the plate from the bowl, along with the other children. She began well, and put a few flowers on her plate. then, me, who was standing at the side, decided to encourage her by clapping. So Anjali thought that I was prompting her to clap, which she does to all her favorite songs, and began to clap. Its cute anyway. This is the first program at Tank road temple. Yesterday Anjali performed again at the Kaliamman temple. That was cute, she interchanged the flower arrangement with the clapping very regularly.

I forgot to bring the camera for the program at the kaliamman temple. But some of the other parents would have taken pictures and I'll put up the video asap.

Husband thinks that I am a very lousy prompter when i told her the backstage story behind the clapping.

After the episode at the Church, I was afraid that Anjali would get overwhelmed by the audience and cry/ refuse to sit by herself. But I think she was conditioned. We have been instructing and rehersing with her for over a month, singing the song, giving her flowers etc. And she was very quiet, went and sat behind the plate, facing the audience, and stayed on stage until the song finished. I was impressed.

Husband wants to be Anjali's agent for the next show, as he feels that her part was too short. Perhaps we shouldd get Anjali and Ramya to do a dance next year. That would be fun.

We wanted to, for this year, but felt it might be too distracting.

Afterwards, when we asked her whether she wanted to put flowers or do thalam, she says "tha", guess it means thalam.

I am glad I learnt to babywear

Sleeping outside a church in Ansterdam

At bran castle
Up the slope of bran castle
And down the stairs
Daddy resorting to babywearing to carry the sleeping baby. Daddy didnt want to be seen with a very ledyish silk wrap around him, so he is wearing a jacket. (actually, its because it was freezing outside)


This is not the first time that I have said it.. but the reasons for learning how to babywear gets stronger and stronger. In Romania, Anjali developed a strong Ammamma tendency. There were periods when she would not go to anyone except me, and more than that, expected to be carried around. When she was in my arms, she would laugh and play, but every few minutes, needed ammamma.

Being 5 months up the pole makes it very hard to carry a 11 kilo baby up the stairs and up the hills, which happened when we went up the mountains. Babywearing saved me there, as I could carry Anjali for much longer periods without having to strain my back. Up Bran Castle and Peles castle we went with our baby wear. Initially with all the jackets I was unsure hoe to hold the babywear. Then we came up with a simple solution. Wear the baby without the jacket and then put the jacket on both you and the baby. And when Anjali fell asleep in Amsterdam, babywearing helped us through to carry her when she went to sleep.

Bu ic ca?

That means Bunica.

Some other conversations:

Anjali, how do you give patti wet clothes to hang?
one onna

(Incidentally i was very surprised when she said this one, because patti talks to Anjali in Tamil, and was asking her in the taxi. Husband wanted to know what all the exclamation was about and I was explaining the situation to him in English, and then asked her the same thing in English and she gave the correct answer. Thattha was extremely surprised that she was able to correctly understand the question and context even in a different language. Now, if I can create something like that, why cant I create a computer model that does that same thing? *sigh*)

Anjali, how do you say patti?
Pa.
Pa... ti
Paaaaaaaaaati

Anjali, do you want to go home and drink paal?
Pa
Paalu
Paaaaapu

Anjali, what is Swati aunty's baby's name?
Anana
What is mummy's baby's name?
Annie
Anjali
Annani

Anjali, what do you do in the potty?
Aie
What else?
pee.

(so why do you pee on the floor?)

Yesterday I was tired in the morning and was lying down a bit. Husband came in to talk to me for about three minutes. Anjali was playing in the living room. She was quiet for a bit and then we heard a lot of meow meows, and assumed that she was randomly exploring the house.

Three minutes later Husband went to check on Anjali. From the bedroom, I heard the following exclamation

"No no, Anjali, you must not do this. It is very bad."

I was amazed. Husband was usually very relaxed with Anjali, and no matter what mischief she does, he usually tells her "very good", "you are a scientist", or some such stuff. The exclamation that "it is very bad" actually made me get up and check on what was going on. And what I found made me laugh.

The imp had (from somewhere), managed to procure a black marker, opened it, and was drawing meow meow on husband's super expensive, and super precious go board. By the time he had caught her, the go board was full of marker ink and the imp was saying "meow meow". thankfully it wasnt permanent and we were able to wipe it off with some oil.

Then she decided that there has to be more scope for imagination with the go table. Somehow, she managed to discover that the woood of the go table was softer than the wood of the other furniture. And her next project is

Sculpture.

Using the sharp point of the saffron box

To carve the go table.

Unfortunately carving cant be wiped off with oil.

I suggested to husband to wait until the second baby turns five years old and then buy a new go table.

Baptising the baby

If you are planning to Baptise a baby, it is better to do it young. or else wait until the kid is about three years old. The same goes for ear piercing, and giving hair cuts and all those sort of things. If that means that you will have a wildcat with too much hair, it is not that much a problem.

Then again, you may wish to take a deep breath and just do it, as other people (namely us) have.

Anjali's Indian baptism ceremony was done when she was a year old. She cooperated beautifully, but that was mostly because she didnt know enough and had a much shorter memory than she does now.

since we were going to Romania, we decided to club together with our visit two events - husband and my Orthodox marriage ceremony and Anjali's baptism. After speaking to Bu and Tata Sile, it was decided to hold both ceremonies on the same day and to hold the baptism before the marriage, given that Anjali may be tired if she had to sit through a one hour ceremony before the action began for her.

I discussed in detail with Bu about the ceremony and found that it would be an hour long, would involve Anjali staying with her Godfather (little Alexandru) throughout the ceremony, the priest putting perfumed oil on her, and what worried bu the most was that the priest would dunk her in water.

Bu offered to negotiate with the priest to sprinkle water over Anjali instead of dunking her in water.

"Would the water be cold?" I asked.

"No"

I remembered how we had poured cold water over Anjali, the priest, me and husband, during her puniyajanam and decided that dunking Anjali in Apa would be alright.

Of course, i had not reckoned with the increased awareness, stubbornness etc (for more details, see top of post).

It began fine. Anjali took her (admittedly shorter than usual) afternoon nap and then got dressed in a beautiful traditional costume, wore stockings to complete the picture and came to the church. The ceremony began. She was suspicious, but decided to see what was going on. As the priest read passages from the Bible and Alexandru did the same, Anjali listened very carefully. The priest, seeing Anjali decided that it would be a better option for me to hold her through the ceremony and that Alexandru could simply keep a hand on her.

All went fine until we were given the instructions to remove her clothes for the dunking in water event. Anjali, already suspicious, put up with us until she was back in my arms. Then the priest came along with perfumed oil. The crying began then. But it stopped soon after the priest withdrew.

Then the priest had to take her away from me to put her in the bucket of water. Now, there was a problem she hadnt foreseen. Who was this oddly dressed man who is taking her away from her mother? She didnt like it, not one bit. So the crying and screaming began. And you can see how it was.





When we took her out of the apa, she had to get dressed, and fast. But I wanted to hold her a minute against the towel, to comfort Anjali as she cried out her indignation.

That was
When we went around the icons after getting dressed (her "thai" had brought her nice clothes to wear for the ceremony), the crying began again, and then she pointed to the doors of the church, saying "Out"

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Incidentally, I want to retract the blog post where I was worried about Anjali talking. Ever since we got to Romania, her vocabulary has been growing ever stronger. Pity that her favorite words for the moment are

"No" (For almost anything), "Ammamma, Up" (when i am sleeping), "Ammamma Out" (regardless of the time of the night or day) and "va va", (for when she is going out and I dont want to follow)
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Back to the baptism, just to conclude the story on the Baptism ceremony alone, we respected the "Out" bit and took her out for five minutes for a break before the start of the marriage ceremony. The minute we stepped out of the church, we saw two dogs across the street and Anjali got all excited, saying "loll Loll".

But then we had to go back inside (for obviously the priest cant perform a marriage when the bride and groom are outside the church looking at loll lolls), and then the circus began all over again, but more on that later...

Some photos for now...


A quiet beginning
The godfather's part in the ceremony


Just before dumping in apa
The actual dumping. there were no frontal photos
We dont like this one bit.
Here is when she peed on me.

Refusing to leave mummy

Some funny scenes from the mountain trip

There are still many photos and videos to process and add. Here are some really funny ones from the trip to the mountains, where Anjali either learns something new, makes important discoveries, acts funny, interacts with others or is simply amusing.

Town squares

The thing about Europe is that many towns have a historical center, which has a central square. The town squares became a very interesting spot for Anjali because, firstly, they were very big, with plenty of space to run around, secondly, no one would stop her when she ran around because there were no vehicles around the square, thirdly, the squares were full of people, and surrounded by shops, so there was plenty to see.

Most importantly, for some reason, the town squares were full of pigeons. They provide a lot of chasing and running after material, which Anjali enjoyed very much.

You can distinguish the town squares by the fact that in each new one Anjali wears a different dress. The first one is in Amsterdam, the second in Sibiu (Romania) and the third in Brasov, also in Romania.

Bu and tata

Anjali took to Bu very fast, thanks to photos and because Bu played a lot with Anjali on the floor.
In the morning, the little madam would get up, point to her shoes and say "su"

Once the shoe gets on, she would go to the top of the stairs and call

"Bu, Bu"

And when either Bu or tata sile came out she would laugh very loud. It was quite funny to watch.

Mostly she was very cheeky with Bu, going to the kitchen, calling "Bu, Bu" and when Bu came out, screaming and running back to me.

When we came back, there was a stop over in Ansterdam, where was we sat in a sofa in the airport. A woman sat at our back, with short hair.

Anjali kept pointing to the woman and saying "Bu, Bu", refusing to understand when i told her that that was not Bu. She kept calling, puzzled when the woman didnt turn. It was not until the woman turned and she got a glimpse of the face, did she realize that it was not Bu and then she went back to other monkey business.

But she didnt voluntarily go to Bu, not until we were about to leave and then she said bye and went into Bu's arms. That, i guess made Bu cry after we left.

Playing at Bu's house

This is Anjali watching and reacting to her video and then dancing to the teddy bear rhyme.

If she wants it on tv, she would stand in front of the tv, say "T", then "Aaannie", meaning that Aaannie should go on the tv.

it runs something like twice a day. every one else is bored of it, except for Aannie

Romanian trip in a nutshell

Anjali is extremely jet lagged. slept at 3.30 am last night. As a result, so am I, and am sitting at the office, eating coffee flavored toffees to keep me awake. Here are a few quick photos to summarize the trip. The trip was so wonderful that it would probably take several weeks of posts to talk about it all, and videos and everything, so details will come in as and when i can put them up.

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At Singapore airport, start of the trip
Amsterdam, on a three hour trip during a 7 hour stop over. We visited the town square, a church courtyard, a flower market

And took a boat ride around the canals of the city
In romania, we took a five day road trip to the transylvanian mountains (Carpathian range). Some photos of the road.

An apple tree
Outside an old church with Bu (Bunica)
Lets get back into the car asap, the wind is cutting through the bones - on the way to Bula lac, high up in the mountains

Bran castle. Garlic anyone? It is a beautiful castle, set in very nice surroundings.

At Sinaia, 1800 meters above the sea level. Sheep grazing in the background. Anjali has some interesting opinions about sheep and horses as you will see in some videos.
Peles Castle, Sinaia, with mountains in the background
Anjali's Baptism and our Religious marriage ceremony
Group photo outside the Church, more details coming soon.
Buzau, mud volcanoes. One of the most exotic places I have ever seen, less than an hour's drive from Buzau, Anjali enjoyed the volcanoes very much.
Eating watermelons in Bu's garden
The vegetable market at Buzau (apples sell at one dollar a kilo, peaches at 2 dollars. Grapes hang from Bu's garden by the tens of kilos). i tried to get as many as possible back with me but had to return most due to over baggage :(
Back in Schipol airport, Amsterdam for a short transit before coming home.