Repetition time!

This is the time to be extra careful with Sid. The other day.. he was incessantly irritating me on something, and i told him.. ‘poda.vennai..’ ..and he kept saying…vennai, vennai.. to my embarassment.
Another day, hubby tried to get something from his hand in vain, after some time in frustration he exclaimed,‘dei gunda’… and Sid repeated.. ‘gunda…gunda..’ obediently.
Its funny how he starts using a word without any effort and avers it as though he has been using the word his whole lifetime. His aunt made some paav bhaji, and I fed him some of it.. since then he has been saying..‘bhaji..bhaji..’ I realize I have stopped listing the words he is using now since over the past 2 months, he has been speaking so many new words that I have lost count of them. He tries to identify every object around him.. but does not speak a lot of sentences yet..
One of his very first sentences is.. ‘idha pathiya…?’ And he uses it with everything he loves spotting.. ‘pigeon pathiya..?’ everytime he watches them flutter over our balcony.
Another one is .. ‘Appa, CD podu’.. insisting appa to play rhymes for him, sure knows how to get a job done!!

 

Irony!

I’ve been humming this song for the past 2 days..

‘A little cock sparrow sat on a tree..
looking as happy as happy could be..
..
..’
(Too much influence of Sid’s rhymes)

Sid has been humming this song for the past 2 days..

‘Rum bum bum arambam bum bum bum perinbam’
(where the perinbam sounds like peyinbam..)

(Too much influence of FIL)

Irony, isnt it?

 

And the floodgates open!

Lets start with a side story: Apparently when I was a kid I didnt talk for sometime and my paranoid mom took me to Vaitheeswaran koil. There is a tradition there to drop a silver imitation of body parts like eyes, tongue, etc.. if there are any problems. So as you may have guessed my mom dropped a ‘velli nakku’ in the undiyal. And then lo! I started talking until I was nicknamed vaayadi in my school.
It so happens that history actually repeats itself it seems.

I didnt buy any SILVER TONGUE but since the temple visit a month back exactly, words have started tumbling like a roll of coins out of Sid and its been so much fun! Now is when I know that I’m no longer going to be able to track words that he speaks. He has started picking words that we speak so casually, that I know that we now have to be very careful what we talk! There is such a beauty in the mazhalai talk, I need to record that in video sometime soon before he moves on!

Another side story: I got married and in the process understood that a conversation means me talking with hubby never listening. Still one day, he surprises me with some statement that actually proves that he has listened!

So, everyday I sit with Sid and read out from the Animals board book and call them out one by one. So, even though I’ve been trying to teach Sid the wide variety of animals, and he has been listening with avid interest, I never thought it was actually sinking in, until.. a couple of weeks back, when he just rattled off most of the names from book…maybe he has been planning it as a surprise or else how can he not know any of them the previous day, and the very next day, he goes.. Woof (Wolf!) Pox (Fox!) Bear, Nion (Lion) etc..I think he got most of them right..except the complex ones like Rhino, Hippo..I could not come out of the shock for a REALLY long time, not sure if I still have.

Totally inspired by this, I went and got a BIRDS book. Now, when I came home and went through it, I realized my birds basics are not really good. Except the really well-known ones like parrot, pigeon, I was having a tough time identifying them without looking at the labels below. C’mon, crane, ostrick, stork, swan all seem to look a lot alike..and what about sparrow, nightingale, cuckoo..uhh!! And who needs to know..hornbill and tailorbird.. unless you’re doing a Ph.D on the said species. So under the excuse of teaching Sid, I learnt a few of them myself.. and he picked these up in just a couple of days!! I’m going to have to do book shopping this weekend again!!

Its exciting to see how he has now started communicating what he thinks.. like ..
when he comes home and doesnt find his dad..he goes.. appa.. car..baayee..
when he is going out with someone, he goes..babayyeee.. tata..
as soon as I give him a bath in the morning.. he goes.. paatti.. since he knows that I’m going to take him to his paatti’s place.

Has also started his own crisp version of rhymes..
baa..baa……
haav u …..wooool
yech char….

thether thether thunkin eather..
haadh a…gibberish..

The color coding has also improved beyong buuee..and parpel to green, red & yellow.

My tiny little boy is suddenly growing up toooo fast for me!!

 

Mini-conversations?

Me: Chidhu, vaa thoongalam
Sid: Eeya Eeya (asking me to sing Eeya Eeya Oh, from Old McDonald rhyme)

Me: Singing some song I like.
Sid: nanana..venamma (expressing his dislike for the song, and repeating this until I sing something he likes)

 

Re-union!

yes finally we are together, reunited in a very filmi style with me singing our family song and Sid singing it back to me with plenty of emotion and lo! we were together again
Ok, well sadly it didn’t happen that way, Sid was happily asleep when I stepped in and when he woke up after an hour, he was so dazed from his sleep and was so shocked to see me, that he didn’t know how to react. He just had this really shocked – ‘Oh so here you are, where the hell were you, and how did you turn up one fine day’ look! Anyway that was for just a few minutes and then it was bonding time again! Ha, sometimes you just realize how much you missed someone, not when you’re away but when you get back I guess. I’ve been stashing the thought away in a not-easily-retrievable corner of my mind, that it was good to come to terms with it finally, and just felt so great spending time with Sid again!
Plenty of smaller changes in him in just 2 weeks – now he addresses everyone with a name a lot more than he did before. Called me amma like a zillion times and guess who is the happiest person in the world. Same with patti and thiya thi (dhivya chithi) and thatha. But what has been getting the most attention from him is the cow, yeah the black dirty one that stands near a huge street dustbin outside our house, and gets picked by flies throughout the day, but is under the incessant attention of my animal lover. I don’t think I can even begin counting the number of times he says cow in a single day, getting one of us to stand outside the gate or through the kitchen window to get him a view of that. Yes, its official that the cow has now replaced dhayee (dog) as his favorite.
The next big change I saw in him is that the huge house has heavily contributed to him not watching TV a lot. He is more happy to explore around the house, climb up the stairs to the terrace, look outside at cow (what else!) or interact with the heavy influx of people, rather than watching rhymes. I think he still enjoys them a lot, but doesn’t insist on them like he did before, confirming my theory that he watches them only because he gets bored and has nothing better to do! But I think when we get back to our apartment, he is going to get on with his old ways, unless we find some creative ways to entertain him! What I like about this new naughty Sid avatar is that he has visibly become more active and smiling. Maybe, we were just a bunch of boring guys not knowing how to engage him well.
And also, he seems to understand what we are communicating to him much better, which I don’t think is a matter of him staying in a new environment, but more a reflection of how he is growing up!
Net-net I think there were some positives from this whole trial – the most important being that I now know that if there was a dire need for it, he could stay away from us and manage, which in the long run I think is good.

 

Mummy’s gone to London

The consequence of listening to a lot of rhymes with Sid is that I’ve now started humming rhymes while on my two-wheeler as opposed to the latest film music!! And you can obviously see the deeper impact with the title of this post.

Anyway, Mummy is really going to London leaving Sid at home for a couple of weeks And she is scared to death how this is going to work.

Well, its the first time and I guess it was supposed to happen at some point, so here it is. And also its just 2 weeks.  Atleast thats what am telling myself.

I’m planning to leave Sid with my mom in Coimbatore. Knowing Sid’s history of reacting badly to new places, I’m very nervous about how he is going to adapt. The last time I took him there, I discovered the clingy Sid. And so far I’ve all indicators to believe that its not going to be very different this time. I’ve planned to stay with him there for 2 days to get him a bit used to the place, hopefully the strategy works!!

Maybe I need more consoling than him! Maybe I’d miss him more than he would look around for me. As the days are approaching closer my initial resolve is slowly getting converted to paranoia.

There is also a small corner of mind that is looking forward to a bit of ‘me-time’, able to focus on work, read books, without being interrupted for the umpteenth time. And also the excitement of travelling to a new place and looking around. But thats a very small corner and its becoming even smaller with time.

Anyways, wish us both a lot of luck!!

 

Thathuvam no. 300

Piggy on the railway picking up stones

Down came the engine and broke Piggy’s bones

“Ah! “, said Piggy,” that’s not fair”.

“Oh!”,  said the engine driver – “I don’t care”.

This post is dedicated to the caring engine driver and also to Mr.X who decided this is very appropriate for a kiddy rhyme!