You know what the best thing about parenting is? The carefree moments, the innocence of a child's statements that make you drop everything, take notice and laugh incessantly. They make you forget all your worries and enjoy the moment. Makes you feel privileged for having all the good things in life and for once, you feel you can't ask for more. And such moments come all too often when you toddler starts speaking.
A little while ago, I settled LG into bed and got ready to change in night clothes. It had been a long evening: visit to the doc for my food poisoning, getting back home to get dinner ready for LG, in-laws and myself, feeding LG dinner, changing him into night clothing, having dinner myself, the medicine routine. It's been a sick month with LG and I taking turns to fall sick with cold-cough-fever, stomach upsets - in short, not a month I would like to remember for a long time. And, it's not easy when your partner is away for so long.
Well, so I got ready to change and my son says, "Mama, no. No change." Pointing to the dress in my hand, he says, "Idhu nana illa". (read: this is not nice). He didn't want me out of my jeans/shirt into some drab salwar. I found it so amusing that I laughed uncontrollably. Was this my son who could barely talk a few sensible words until a few months ago and cared little about what his mama dressed like?
I feel so much better now :)
Mama, you're looking good. Why change?
Games of the Season
The games we play at home keep changing with time. The current flavor is puzzles, of all kinds. Li'l General has overgrown the alphabet, numeral and body parts that we played about 6 months ago. I had got him this set of three games when he turned two in December. 
Now he loves doing animal jigsaw and noddy puzzle. Noddy is all the more fun because he gets to spell out the letters and show off his skills. As if to tease me, he will time and again point to "A" and call it "B" or show "Q" and say "U". Asking him to say it right doesn't help. I just stare, grin and ignore. He gets the point and gets back on track.
The animal puzzle is a collection of 24 self-correcting pairs of mother and baby animals. It's cool because we make quirky sounds like a pig, goat, cow or horse. When it's turn to join the mother frog with the babies, both of us jump around like a frog and do the whole animation routine for a Kangaroo too.
What games do you play with your toddler? I'm looking for ideas.
Mama Makes a Boat
Li'l General and I were seeing TV after lunch this afternoon when the Airtel Special 5 ad aired. You know the new series from Airtel which has the potential to give a tough competition to my all-time favorite Vodafone's "Happy to help" series (the girl and the pug.
Anyways, as we sat admiring the boat ad, my dear son wanted me to get a boat. How long does it take one to make a boat? A minute. And here it is:
Happy son. Happy mom.
Big Ears Lives in Big House
Big Ears from the Noddy series used to be one of his favorite characters a while ago. 
One the third day of his school, this session, he was a bit reluctant to enter. The first two days are generally fun and then reality dawns upon them that fun times will not last forever. Sometimes discipline also features in the daily scheme of things which is not so fun. And then there's the much dreaded rhymes-alphabets-coloring as well.
So we were at the corner of his school lane when LG threw a fit saying he would rather spend time on the road playing in the sand and in his school's adjoining wilderness than go inside. He was particularly drawn toward a big pink house that had numerous mango trees in its front yard, a huge porch, a much bigger veranda with cylindrical pillars on the first floor. Both of them are fond of big houses and stood in the middle of the road admiring the house.
While The Seniol said, "Big House". LG followed it with "Papa, Big Ears. Big House". He meant to say Big Ears lives in the Big House. We had been doing too much of Noddy those days. So came the association. It's fun in many ways to see them make and break associations and learn with them. A whole new perspective, in adult terms.
Priceless Moments
Last evening, I took LG along to run some errands. Most days when it's not raining we usually go for a long walk looking at the trees, hearing koel sing ku-ku-ku, watching the traffic pass by at crossings and stopping briefly outside pizza outlets.
I wanted to get back home before it started pouring so I was hurrying. LG, on the other hand, was laid back stopping after every 5 steps insisting that I either lift him or pointing to how swiftly squirrel jumped the trees. I went along with his carefree style for a while but had no time for it after 15 minutes of loitering around where we started, after hardly moving forward by 10 steps. So I resorted to my old trick of just going ahead in the hope LG would catch up with me soon.
The trick, however, didn't work this time. I peeked from behind a curve to see what he was up to. All I could see was he was sitting on the walking track, deeply engrossed in some activity. It seemed like he was picking up something and trying to hold whatever he had gathered in his small hands. I called out for him. He saw I had gone quite far from where he was and stood up to catch up with me. No longer had he walked a few steps, whatever he held in his hand fell. So he went back to the same spot to pick up some more of whatever that was again.
I called out for him again and waited. There was no sign of frustration on his face that it kept falling again and again. He became all the more dedicated ensuring he held it tight in one hand while picking up from the other. When he was ready, he sprinted (yes, literally sprinted) to catch up with me. And he said in excitement, "Mama flowers. Mama flowers". He was truly happy. And went on to count them. One, two, three. He sported a ear-to-ear grin of having made it. A gift for his mama.
This was the same kind as this one.
I was touched. Moments like these don't come too often later in life. I have began to treasure every day I spend with LG and truly enjoying this phase in life. The guilt of not working is past me.
In MasterCard style,
A bouquet of flowers: Rs. 100
Seeds as gift from your son: priceless
Then what? We walked hand in hand to run our errands, came back a while later to go on our evening walk and enjoy nature! Story over.
Haseen Lamhon Ko Chura Lo
This song is playing on TV. LG starts jumping "Mama song. Mama song. Mama song." Yes, I was very fond of this song when it first aired and still like it. But my son is more enthusiastic about it because his mama likes it. If I'm busy elsewhere, he makes it a point to tell me my song is on air :) even with his rationalized TV time.
And, when this one plays, it's my turn to jump up and say "LG's song. LG's song" H love "Jai Ho" because it has a scene with his most favorite thing in the world - aeroplane. He gets to such energy levels on seeing this song that it takes a great deal to get him back to normalcy. Truly enjoys it.
My Sons Speaks in Sentences..
"I said no touching tomato", said my two-and-half year old son. After concerns on his language development and comprehension skills, this comes as a big surprise. This is one of his many sentences of late. Yet another significant change is his ability to say the same word in three languages (English, Tamil and Hindi) based on who he is speaking to. But sentence formation is still a milestone we've yet to cross but we'll get there.
"Aby" has given way to "helicopter" as has "buchachy" to "butterfly" and "ou" to "phone" and "hot".
But "bournvita" still remains "motita". The non-stop talker is giving his mama a competition.
Touch Me Not
After another bout of catching the cold virus from school followed by the running nose-throat ache-throwing up at nigh—tantrums for gobbling down syrup-steaming-zillion home remedies-making mom say never to second baby routine, all is good at the LG house this week. So far, I should say. LG resumed school yesterday after the cold 'n cough break - yes, like winter and summer breaks, we have this all too frequent kind around here.
Just around the place where I park my scooty to cross the road and drop him off at school, I spotted a patch of "touch me not" plants. For the uninitiated, touch-me-not plants are a sensitive variety that close their leaves upon touching, within a few seconds. The action is source of amusement for kids who spend hours playing with this houseplant. Or so I did as a kid. I was naturally quite excited after discovering one small patch after years. I showed to LG how it behaves. And, what? Nothing - we were late to school :)
Funny how life gives you an opportunity to relive your childhood with your kids.
