Raghav at 3 and now in India

So much has happened in little Raghav's life in the past few months, and he has all taken it in his busy stride, not stopping for a moment to ponder.

We are now back in Delhi, and have left Singapore and Raghav's first real friends and first real school forever, and he doesn't even realise it yet. Till a few days back he was still collecting rubber bands for his friends Fefe and Dawn.

But he goes to the big school now, and knows the name of his school also when you ask him. He got a bit overwhelmed on the first day when he saw all the children at primary school lined up in the foyer, and perhaps we too were expecting too much from him, thinking he would take to his new school like fish to water, since he has always been such an adjusting child, but it took him a few days of clinging while we were there and crying when we left before his teacher recommended that we don't enter the classroom with him, and say bye to him at the door itself to allow for an easier transition. And it has worked since then. It is also a way that he was used to in Singapore, where parents were in any case not allowed to enter the classrooms, and we would just let him carry his bag and go in by himself. So he does the same now and is very happy at school now. Teacher Treeya has been replaced by Swapna Ma'am, and his best friends Julien etc. are slowly slowly not being mentioned that often.

The first thing he came back from school and told me was that everyone knows Chota Bheem and the song. He seemed quite happy with that. Also he has noticed how people speak Hindi here, and that roti is served at lunch (things he never saw anyone else speak/eat at Singapore).

The first person he got familiar with at school was a boy named Arjun, who is not a Pandav, apparently. It's so interesting to see his world of comics and books come alive in India. We cross the Yamuna river to get to school, and he says "from the Krishna story?", and we go to the temple almost everyday and he sees all the characters he has read about in his comics -- Rama, Sita, Hanuman, Lakshman, Krishna, Radha.

He has also seen his nani fold her hands, close her eyes and mutter something, and he does the same, when I ask him what he says, he says he's just moving his mouth, like when he whispers in our ear now he just says "phus phus phus phus" and only very recently has started realising that one says actual sentences while whispering in the ear.
He has been collecting sticks, day in and day out, and then uses them as weapons, sometimes it's a sword or a trishul, a trumpet or a drumstick, or just a weapon. Playing with toys is again at a low, and he just loves to either watch his favourite Chota Bheem on TV, or play fighting games with his weapons.

Manipulating with cute talk is at the highest now, and everytime I am angry with him he keeps asking him if I love him, and then one day when I told him mamma will always love you, even when she's angry with you, he now says in the middle of my loud scolding "when you angry with me do you still love me?" . Forget about the topic at hand, all that he is concerned with is whether he is loved or not.

He has been rattling off dialogues from Chota Bheem.. "Yeh chota sa bachcha.. tum ise gajar (takatwar) kehte ho?" And also loves to sing the Chota Bheem songs and also the Mowgli one, in his own lyrics which he has understood on his own.. But he sings with gay abandon and with a good head for tune.

He has almost stopped reading simple stories like Dora, Diego etc and loves to read comics instead, Chota Bheem ones or Amar Chitra Kathas. We started with Hanuman to the Rescue and then went on to Rama, Garuda, Churning of the Ocean, Prahlad, Tipu Sultan, Abhimanyu.. He even pretends to read by himself when I tell him no more stories and that we must sleep now. He even does a good job at it. His principal at this new school was quite surprised that he reads comics, saying that children his age usually just go from one page to the next, whereas Raghav can actually follow a story from one small box to the other. He reads with extreme concentration and if you tell him something different from what you told him the last he corrects you. In fact, he also does a lot of monkey business while reading familiar stories now, so once Nalin read the whole Hanuman story as Hanumanu. He gets a big kick cracking these jokes!

Phuket etc.

We went with Raghav to Phuket recently, and it was seriously a great time to travel with him again. He used to be great when he was a small baby, and I sill remember our perfect Gran Canaria holiday where he slept in his pram right in the middle of the hotel's restaurant. But then it became more and more difficult as he was too excited to sleep in new surroundings, no matter how tired he was. Also, without a proper afternoon nap, he was a disaster to be around. But this time in Thailand, he was really great to be with. He was interested in what we were seeing -- he had had some exposure when we travelled to Bellur near Bangalore and he was touching and feeling all the statues in the temples and getting excited at identifying the Ganesh or Nandi or Shivji or Hanuman or Krishna etc. This time also he was great when we took the canoe and had to lie down to go inside caves etc. He was so excited and interested and enthusiastic about everything he saw. He was also great with the food, as his appetite has now quite stabilised -- he still loves his rice and soup, and will eat it everyday of every week.

Also, the actual travelling with him on a flight has become slightly more bearable as we now let him watch the iPad for a bit. Of course he always wants to do more than a bit and then gets into trouble with me because of that. When I took him on my own to Delhi-Fatehpur this time, he was literally fighting sleep and would force his eyes open as soon as they started closing. He finally slept for about 20 minutes on a 5.5 hour trip. But trains, thankfully, he thinks are for sleeping since the Delhi-Fatehpur train is an overnight one. He says there are beds inside and that we will all sleep there. Poor boy kept saying to me "excuse me mamma" all night this time on our way back to Fatehpur on the train since the berths are so thin and he and I have to share.

He's also become stricter with his habits now. Mornings are only for Daddy, as daddy goes to get him for the cot and then they spend some time together before I wake up. If I ever go to pick him from his cot, he tells me "you go!" and only wants his daddy. Same after his afternoon naps. (He's started waking up more and more often with a bad mood and it seems only TV can fix it.. or very seldom some sort of calculated distraction will work.) He stopped having his milk from a bottle when he was about 2.5 years, and now eats cereal when he wakes up, sometimes with milk -- which is a big step from his only milk breakfast all this while. Again, before sleeping at night only Mamma will do, and he also doesn't like it if sometimes Daddy lays him down in bed even though I'm around in the room. he makes me pick him up again, kiss and cuddle for a bit "like a baby" and then put him down in his cot. I then have to sit beside his bed and pat him for a few minutes before I can come out. It used to be tougher till a while ago and he would call me back again and again and want to be picked up etc. But now he seems to get it that this really is his time to sleep and that that's non-negotiable. I've had to have a talk with him about how he's now a big boy and that he must sleep on his own now and that Mamma will not come now when you call me. (He sleeps by 9pm now and wakes up anywhere between 7 and 8am.)

He likes going to school, but I think he's a bit lazy to get dressed and actually leave the house. He said that also once, "I'm lazy" when Nalin asked him what the matter was. He likes going to school, but I think he's a bit lazy to get dressed and actually leave the house. He said that also once, "I'm lazy" when Nalin asked him what the matter was. We dropped him at his class the other day and had to go right up to the class because of the HFMD screening, and all the naughty kids in the class came out to meet him. It was the cutest thing! They all said hi to us and were looking on curiously as Raghav was getting checked. Later, another girl Dawn came in wearing sunglasses and they were all very curious about those as well. Raghav talks more of his friends now and who's his friend in class and who isn't. He's also very excited when he meets a friend at the playground and tries to follow what the other is doing.

He's now got into the habit of brushing his teeth in the morning and night after shi-shi -- he doesn't struggle anymore when I give him one brush for himself which he uses just to eat the toothpaste, while I do the actual brushing with the other brush. He's become very opinionated about the water for his shower though, since we went to Ftp and he discovered very hot weather where once drank cold water and took baths with cold water. So now he demands cold water even though in Singapore one can have the water slightly warm.. So we always end up having an argument and he always ends up crying and me always telling him I'm never going to give him a shower again etc. He also briefly started demanding cold milk straight out of the fridge, and I didn't mind because the weather is usually quite warm and one can have a cold drink.. but he still continues to like only plain milk with no sugar and doesn't like me adding Milo or Roohafzah either.

Trying something different..

He's so great in the water now. He's going for swimming lessons and really enjoys them. He's so comfortable in the water and doesn't mind when his head is inside the water. At the beaches in Phuket, he would be singing a song and a wave would go over his face and he would come out of it finishing the song. He also loves the beach and playing with the sand... although he can be quite finicky about the sand sticking to his body and in his clothes. In fact he's really obsessive about his clothes being clean and dry and makes me change as soon as something drops on them. He got slightly better with it at the end of the Ftp trip this time, when we told him it will dry in the fresh air (of the fan or cooler) and sometimes he listened.

2 years old..

It has been so long since I updated this blog. Raghav is growing up so quickly, it seems even as i sit down to note down his developments, he does something new and surprising behind my back.

He's in a bigger class now, called Senior Toddler Peter Pan, even though he says he's not a Senior Toddler, he's in "baby class", and he's getting promoted to N1 next week. We were a bit worried in the beginning of Peter Pan because his best friend Matthias was sent to N1, and also we thought he would miss his favourite Teacher Rocell, and he did refuse to go a few times, refused to wear his uniform etc., but now he's forgotten all about Teacher Rocell, and his current Teacher Treeya is his new favorite.

When we were called for his end-of-session report, his Teacher Rocell was very very pleased with him. She told us he hung around most of the time with Julian, Matthias and Vivaan, and that he's not naughty per se, but when others are naughty he joins in. In fact we came to know later that when someone asked the teacher why their child was not as happy and vivacious as Raghav, Teacher Rocell said, but every child cannot be like Raghav. We were very pleased with that :)

He also really surprised us at their annual concert, where he was placed bang in the middle of the stage, and did his steps most cutely, while some others were sort of too shell shocked to even move. We were afraid he was might get scared with all the people looking at him, but he really lapped up all the attention, and didn't seem out of sorts at all. He was looking at the older children while doing his steps and also at the teachers in the front row, and then when the dance finished and everyone clapped, he also jumped up and down clapping!

He talks all the time now, using big words like "I'm wondering" and "how about" and disappear and injured.. We had gone to bangalore for about five week in January, and all these two older kids on the campus there were amazed at how well he speaks English. They must have been about 9-10.. I heard them discuss it and they were wondering where he was from. Then they called him and asked him in Hindi, tumhara naam kya hai, and he said Raghav Mehta, and they were even more surprised tha he knows Hindi, too. Although he wasn't speaking much Hindi then, he still knew how to answer this question.. Then they finally called me and asked me where we lived and how he knew so much English. The next day there was a ring at our door in the evening, and raghav's two new friends had come to call him outside to play with them!

But Raghav started speaking a lot more Hindi when we came back to Singapore; perhaps he realized that it was not something that only mamma spoke, and that there were other people too in the world who spoke the same language. He now speaks a LOT of Hindi and is constantly translating for me what daddy has said to him in English. He's also now often asking me "isko Hindi mein kya batate hai?".. Also, earlier because he replied to everyone in English, everyone tried to speak to him in English only, thinking he will not understand Hindi, so even my mother was speaking to him in broken English, and getting worried that he will be one of those foreign children who doesn't know his mother tongue.. But now especially when he and i had gone to Fatehpur when mummy was unwell, he picked up a lot of hindi, and continues to speak it with me in Singapore.

But what he picked up the most from Bangalore is his obsession with Chota Bheem. 

It was probably the first time that he watched so much TV. He wasn't going to playschool there, and I used to take him to the playground in the mornings, but ultimately in the day there always used to be a time when he used to watch TV, and Chota Bheem seemed to be playing all the time. Then he saw a Chota Bheem comic at the bookshop one day we bought it for it. And thus began his obsession. He was examining it closely throughout the mall that day, sitting in his pram. He had recently moved on to comics of Hanuman and Rama, and the lots of pictures and little dialogue format fascinated him.

LOVES his Didi. They're always giggling when they meet.

Then of course Sabby came to know that he followed Chota Bheem and sent him lots of CB goodies, like the whole jingbang's statues, a mug and a couple of more comics. Then Dadaji also sent him CB t-shirt, which one day recently he told daddy, "daddy, I love my Chota bheem t-shirt!".. Nalin also got him a CB music CD, which he used to play 50 times a day and dance to. Now he seems over it.

Anyway, so we had to also come back to Singapore and get the baby channels, and so continues our struggle everyday with getting him to watch lesser and lesser TV.

He's got into the habit of watching TV first thing when he waked up in the morning. With Nalin being sleepy that early in the morning, he also doesn't protest much and R ends up watching about an hour. He's beginning to understand things, much more than I gave him credit for. And sometimes when he doesn't understand, he says "this for bigger boys, it not for babies".

He also loves Dora and recently Diego. We read a lot of Dora and a little of Diego.

Learning to wink. Looks most silly..

But he knows that I'm stricter with him about the TV, and so he asks me shyly knowing I will most probably say no, but asks Nalin coaxingly, knowing that daddy will most probably give in and say yes. He asked Nalin yesterday about watching TV and Nalin said I will think about it. He came back a few minutes later and asked Nalin, "Daddy, did you wonder about the TV?"

We also had this really terrible phase of when he refused to wear anything new. It lasted about 4 months, and his shorts became tighter and his t-shirts became really ratty, but he just didn't get that he needed to wear new clothes. If I would insist, he would just start bawling. We had many many struggles with it. Sometimes I made him wear something without him noticing what it was, and then he would take it off as soon as he saw. He's just in that stage where he refuses to do anything you ask him to do. So it's a struggle to get him to brush his teeth, or take a shower, or wash his hands after loo, or even wear any clothes at all.

The clothes thing suddenly got resolved in Delhi, when he got to choose for himself some new clothes. Earlier, he used to be too distracted to even choose. Now suddenly even the old clothes that he had rejected earlier have become favourites. 

Loves to take pictures by himself.

He does the same with his food off and on, and I find that if I don't pester him, he will eat whatever we are all eating. We all eat together now at 7pm, and offer him salads and baby kai lan, which he seems very enthusiastic about, but never tastes. There's also a show he watches called Ni Hao Kai Lan, which is what might have helped raise his interest in this Chinese vegetable, but at least he's getting aware of the fact that it's something to be eaten. He still sticks with his rice and daal (soup) or roti and daal, or pasta, chicken, paratha, if sometimes he feels like it. 

He tells us now clearly what happened at school, who bit whom and who got scolded by Teacher Treeya, who pulled whose ponytail etc. He tells us if he didn't eat his lunch and what he ate for the evening snack, and it's usually from that day and not from a month ago, like he used to do earlier. 

He keeps switching from wanting to be a grown up/big boy to a baby. Usually when he's lazy and wants to be carried in our arms or when he gets hurt and wants to be cuddled, he says he's a baby. However, his ultimate image of being a grown up is when he has beer or wine and eats "grown-up candy". He's constantly pretending to be a grown up.

Favourite fancy dress -- Chota Bheem

He's also become very involved in acting out scenes and characters, especially from his Chota Bheem comics. So all day he will act out how CB lifted the bear and threw it, or how he ate a laddoo and lifted the rock etc. -- the scenarios go on all day long. He will even often wear a dhoti, my necklace and bracelets and act like CB. I suppose even his acceptance of Hindi finally came from the CB series where everyone speaks the language and he stopped finding it odd.

He is also very fond of his daddji and chacha, and they figure in several act-out scenarios. At least once a day he will pick up any sort of instrument that looks like a phone and start calling dadaji, and then say "it's ringing. he not picking up." (He's speaking his English in the Singaporean style, and there are often no articles in his sentences.. no "is" or "am" etc.) He's also often on his way to London to meet chacha, where he says chacha will give him a candy.

Birthday bonanzas

Raghav's various birthday parties have certainly left an indelible mark on him. Yesterday he was in a terribly good mood, and despite the fact that we didn't do much all day he was jumping and skipping and dancing at home all evening. While I was cooking and Nalin was working, Raghav busied himself with this and that and would only come to me to show me something clever that he had done.

He put a chopstick in his football (in that indentation where the air is filled) and sat and sang "Happy Birthday" to himself. As soon as I saw him do that I remembered that he had a football shaped cake on his birthday, and that we had put candles on it and sang Happy Birthday to him.

Another invention of the chopstick was when I gave him a piece of apple to eat, he put his chopstick through it and ate it like that ! I don't think he's ever seen anyone eat fruit like that.

The Boy and the Whistle

On the birthday that was celebrated in his class, Nalin and Nitin had carried some whistles for the kids. Throughout the party, Raghav was stuck with obsessively trying to blow that whistle. There was another kid who was able to do it, and Raghav seemed obsessed with trying to do it as well. He was able to unfurl it by blowing into it, but he couldn't get it to produce any noise. Even while the birthday song is being sung, all he's doing is blowing the whistle. Even when it was time to blow the candles, he's trying to blow the candles while the whistle is still in his mouth. The video then shows either Nalin or Nitin taking out the whistle from his mouth, and when he's finished with blowing out the candles and clapping for his birthday song, he goes right back to demanding the whistle back.

Jabber jabber

Raghav has started talking a lot since we got back from India. Not only does he repeat what we say to him, he also repeats what we say to each other. Some of the things he has repeated off us were... “Don’t worry, dadi !”, “Forget it”, “Bangalore.. theek nahi” and then “Bangalore achcha hai”. Not only does he just repeat things, he’s often actually understanding them. It’s possible now to explain things to him and give him a reason why, for instance, we cannot go to the pool today, or that his dinosaur t-shirt is dirty and that he cannot wear it today.

He has also become far more opinionated. For the past two days he has become more interested in the clothes he wears and always asks for clothes he recognises – his dinosaur t-shirt, dog t-shirt, B shorts, boat t-shirt, “wheel bus” t-shirt. He doesn’t like simple clothes with just stripes etc. Even when you’re trying to put him to bed, he will demand a certain t-shirt that he has just remembered. But sometimes when he’s making a demand in the morning for a certain t-shirt, you can explain to him that he needs to wear his uniform and he will not argue.

He has also become loud and opinionated in what he wants us to do. When he’s trying to sleep, he will order us “Daddy, lie down !”, pointing to the single bed in his room. After coming back from India, he had got used to sleeping with us in our bed, but now he has to sleep in his cot. In Singapore, for the first few weeks, he wanted to either sleep on the bed in his room alongwith Nalin, or he wanted either Nalin or me to sleep on the bed, while he slept in his cot. But now, he gets upset when we leave him in his cot and come out and he starts crying, but I can now explain to him that mamma’s cooking or that daddy is having his dinner, or that mamma-daddy are going to sleep in their own room, and that Raghav everyday sleeps in his bed, he seems to get it and lies down quietly.

He also went through a major Daddy phase, where he wanted daddy to do everything for him. He wasn’t well for a little while, and he wanted only daddy to pat him or pick him up or change him etc etc.

Such fun jumping with didi !

The cutest thing he does now is when he sings his nursery rhymes. He can sing full sentences now, even though he doesn’t talk full sentences as a habit yet. He can sing the whole Twinkle Twinkle, if only repeating “like a diamond in the sky” twice instead of singing ‘up above the world so high”. But when you sing with him, he seems to know all the words and tries to sing the whole song. He knows “Baba black sheep” and the ABC song. Every other day he also tells me to sing a song that I haven’t actually taught him, and that I know he has picked up from school, like “Ringa ringa”, or “This is way we brush our teeth”, or “Row row” which I used to sing for him very long back, but he certainly can’t remember it from them. His current favourite is “Wheels on the Bus”. He has watched it enough times on the computer at dadaji’s place, and then on the iPad a few times. He also has it on his song CD at home. He tells you which line he wants you to sing. He says “swish swish” for the line “wipers on the bus”, or “wah wah” for “baby on the bus” and so on.

He has become more agile in the playground, climbing quite a bit of the monkey ladder and hanging from bars here and there. He also loves to sit on the wheel there or make me sit on it, while he sits behind me, saying “mamma drive”. And then he makes me sing “wheels on the bus”. Going to the playground is an everyday feature now after school, and he gets very upset if you don’t let him go. The only way you can drive him away from it is if you say the other magic words “biscuit” “cake” “Robinji” or “pool”.

Loves his umbrella. Carries it everywhere !

We have bought him a “boy doll” from Ikea. He liked the little black boy with curly hair and we now call him Baby Raka. He seems to quite enjoy it. He shares his toys with it, indulges me when I feed it apples and then tries to do the same, he makes it “sit” (propped against the sofa) while he plays with his train – like they’re really playing together. I can even get him to brush his teeth if I pretend to brush Baby Raka’s teethe first. He also puts Baby Raka on the pot and then asks me get the wipes to wipe its bum. He asked me to put the reducer the other day on the big pot and then make Baby Raka sit on that. Thanks to all this, he has started sitting on the big pot before he goes to sleep. He doesn’t do anything yet, but it’s still a start. But we were shocked that he knows exactly what needs to be done when one does pee-pee and poo-poo (sit on the pot, wipe with the toilet paper, flush) but he won’t do it himself. In fact, I always thought that he thinks sitting on the big pot is only for adults, but the other day he got Baby Raka to sit on the big pot as well, so he does know it’s something he should be doing also (but is probably too busy to do just yet). He was getting Baby Raka to do exercises with daddy this morning, “baby shoulders !” when daddy did stretching exercised for his shoulders, and “baby push-up !” when daddy did push-ups.

At school, his teacher tells us that he’s a very enthusiastic, happy child, always willing to participate in class. Even in the Chinese lessons he’s eager to learn, even though he doesn’t know any Chinese at all, while the other kids in class speak it. He might not eat his food happily, but drinks his milk like a fish. He also loves the afternoon snack, maybe because it’s usually cake.

Was too scared to feed the elephant
himself, but squealed in delight
every time daddy did.

There was a complaint about him from school the other day. A little girl (we later came to know it was a boy), called Eee-e (or something), came whining and clutching her ear which was red. Raghav was in her vicinity, so the teacher assumed that Raghav was involving in some sort of pinching or pulling. She asked Raghav to say sorry, and he didn’t, and when she insisted he started crying. But he came and told us about it later when we asked him, and kept saying “Eee-e sorry”. And now the teacher says that every time someone does something wrong in class, Raghav jumps in and starts saying sorry !

He has started telling me a lot more about school now. He tells me the names of his friends, and that he “shared” with them – I think it’s also something they learn at school, because while earlier sharing only meant that when he wanted something he would shout “share share”, and when I would ask him to share something with someone else he’d say “no !”, whereas now he willingly shares his toys with other kids and even tries to involve Baby Raka in his games; of course only to change his mind seconds later and want his toys back. Usually, his conversation about school is about “milk finish” and about who fell and got hurt where (“Ankita gir, Ankita chot knees”).

He's convinced the monkeys were eating mishri,
because of the way they were eating their nuts from the
palms of their hands.

He met his friend from class yesterday just as we were leaving the pool, and they both stopped and started laughing at seeing each other. Raghav kept pointing to him and telling me his name “daiche” (Dongje?) or something, and the other kid kept laughing at having met Raghav, like “hey, what’re you doing here!”.

At school they do a lot of activities like making bubbles, cutting out various shapes, identifying body parts... and he comes and tries to tell me over the week what they did. I only understand a bit of what he says when I look at his school worksheet and what they’ve been doing the past week.

He is great at remembering things. Shreya’s mum Manjeri had left for us a bag of Shreya’s toys before they left for New York, and as soon as he saw Shreya’s ball, Raghav said “Shreya ball”, even though he had only played with it once in her house, over a month ago.

Every time he sees daddy wear a belt, he says “formal belt” because when we were going to Jaipur, Nalin had asked Nitin to buy him a formal belt from CP, and Papa and Nitin had taken Raghav to buy the formal belt for daddy. So he tells you the whole story, “formal belt, chacha, dadaji drive”.

Also, every time I put powder on his back, he says “nani powder” because he saw the same powder bottle at Nani’s place in Fatehpur, and even though I have never told him that nani gave this powder for Raghav.

He had a fun time at the zoo when we went recently, and still remembers things from there, like when he fed banana to the elephant, and carrots to the giraffe, and that the rhino (he says the full word "rhino ceros", like that, with a space in between) was sleeping, and that the leopard was having a bath (there was a little stream in his cage), and that he sat in the pram and we went to Robinji. We bought him an umbrella there, which he has badly wanted ever since he saw one at Nihal's place in Delhi. He now takes it everywhere with him -- to school and even tries to take it to the mall -- and his small orange backpack that was a birthday gift.

Raghav is Two

Blowing the candles with didi

Little Raghav turned Two a few days ago. He has already celebrated his birthday twice, with two massive birthday cakes, and will be celebrating it a third time today at playschool.

We were in India with family and friends during the time, and Raghav was too busy and excited all month to eat anything or sleep on time.

In Fatehpur, he first tried to grow familiar with his Nana, much to Nani's disappointment. First, he was very impressed with Nana's scooter and wanted to ride it all the time, then whenever Nana came home from the clinic he followed him round the house while Nana took off his shoes and changed his clothes etc. and told him all that he had done during the day.

His no. 2 cake. It also had a bee on it.

His monosyllabic dialogue mostly comprised "chot" and "gir"... when and how Raghav fell and how he was hurt, and his potty concerns, among others. (For some reason he is obsessed with the two phenomenon; his first full sentence also was "I fall down" at the emergency room while we were waiting one Sunday afternoon for someone to come and dress the slight injury which he had sustained quite innocently at a mall earlier.) He's also very repetitive, carrying on with the same thing again and again, perhaps not sure yet whether people understand him clearly or not. But even though he doesn't speak full sentences yet, there's never a moment when we don't understand what he wants. Since we've come back from the India trip, he's been going on chanting "i-pad i-pad", which I'm conveniently hearing as "apple". (Robin and Leslie have given him a baby i-pad for his birthday, but after observing it for a good two minutes and trying to move the icons like he knows how to do on a real i-pad, he realised it was "for babies" and he abandoned it and has not returned to it since.)

The famous cow that came to eat "patatha"

His Nani thinks he has a fantastic memory and it's remarkable how he can connect things. Even now when we speak to Nani on the phone, he remembers all the things they did in Fatehpur -- "Nani teeka", "Nani pooja", "mishi" (Nani used to give him mishri), "Nana office", "Nana scooter" and then of course the cow coming for a snack incident. It has perhaps left such a lasting impression on his mind that very often he remembers it and says "cow patatha", "cow brkfast" and "cow blessyou" (when the cow had sneezed in his face and I had encouraged him to say "bless you!").

Throughout the vacation he also asked about his school friends -- Fefe?, Shreya?, Teacher? and sometimes even Kaku (Shreya's dad)-- and only when I assured him that everyone was asleep and had sent messages for Raghav to sleep, too, was he satisfied. After the Fatehpur trip, while in Delhi, he asked about his friends in Fatehpur -- Madhu? Mohii? (Mohini) and Changu, and sometimes Sanoni (Saloni). When he first saw Changu with his two ponytails he thought it was Fefe and started calling him Fefe and going and hugging him etc. Changu never played with him, but continued to be Raghav's favourite, and when I told him "he never plays with you, still you keep going Changu Changu", he started calling him Changu Changu, thinking that was his name.

Delhi was so insanely exciting for him that he actually had no time to sleep or eat, and so he only ate what he just could not refuse (cake, apple, juice, biscuit) and slept only when everyone else had fallen asleep, creating a very upset Mamma. I once smacked him on his head when he had just refused to sleep after some four vain attempts from me, and he went out to the living room where everyone was sitting and said "mamma chot" and did the being smacked-on-the-head action for everyone to understand, much to my embarrassment.

A make-up kiss after an afternoon of fighting.

He knows all about birthdays, even before he had his. I was lighting the gas one day, and it lit only half when I stepped in to blow on it and light it all the way; and he saw me and said "Happy Birthday", and then when I asked him more, he finally told me about what appeared to have been Fefe's birthday and that the teacher sang "Happy Birthday To You, Dear Fefe", and Fefe blew on the candles ("very hot") and everyone clapped and the cake was cut. On his own birthday he was very excited to see his "2" shaped cake, and knew that you had blow the candles and cut the cake and clap and then sing Happy Birthday. He also excitedly pointed to the bees on his cake. At the second party, after I'd taken the cake away (because he and Tanvi were busy licking the frosting) I gave them one piece to share before lunch, and he was busy planting plastic spoons on it the way that I had planted the candles on it earlier.

There was even a fight at the second party when Raghav and Sanjeev's daughter Shyambhavi went tug-of-war over the same car. Hair were pulled, tears streamed down and mothers were called for solace, and even when Shyambhavi had moved on to crayons, Raghav kept coming back to snatch a crayon from her, not because he wanted it, but because he did not want her to play with it. Once he even came and gave her a couple of colour pencils before snatching the crayon from her, as if he could have her play with anything except those very crayons (the ones he actually never played with)!

Opening the presents.

When I gave all the kids their return gifts, Raghav asked for one for himself, too, and when finally given one of the presents he had received that day, he sat on the floor and proceeded to unwrap it for several intensely attentive minutes. He was asleep within seconds in the car when we left the party.

He had the best time with Tanvi and Nihal at the party, and all toys that we had put together for the kids to be busy with, were a waste for the three. They held hands and jumped, climbed onto Nihal and made him into a horse, climbed on the sofas and generally did a lot of horsing-around.

He has started becoming extremely attached to people, and I always dread that he's going to throw a fit when he's leaving his Dadaji behind, or when Chacha goes away, but he always manages to get distracted and it's not necessarily a mess. Although for the past couple of days he has been only demanding Daddy. He had fever two nights ago, would not be quiet in my arms, kept saying "daddy paas" or "daddy godi" and then was immediately calmed when daddy picked him up and then proceeded to sleep on daddy's chest all night.

At other times, he's too busy too to even spare a kiss, and you have to work it into a routine -- for instance, when you say goodnight or when I make him wear his shoes and demand a kiss, he seems ok with it.

He smiled through his haircut with chacha and dadaji.
And when you ask him where is hair went, he says
"monkey head" - monkey took his hair - I taught him.

I left him for the first time for all day and all night when Nalin and I went to Jaipur for the day. He managed pretty well, although without eating much and skipping his afternoon nap, and then Nitin called in the evening to say he was just ready to cry and was saying "mamma paas", but when I called back and wanted to speak to him, he'd been distracted by then and was demanding for the TV to be switched on. He had a bad night when we reached back, though, with severe constipation that he'd been trying unsuccessfully to clear for 2-3 days. He slept on my chest all night, and whined as soon as I tried to move him onto the bed; but was brilliantly bright and cheerful when he woke up the next morning.

Nursery rhymes at school

His teacher keeps putting up their pictures from school, and it's so interesting to see the various things they do. He's currenly obsessed with bicycles and cars, but of course his first love remains balls. But he has recently developed a soft and caring side, too, perhaps from something he's seen at school. He hugs and kisses the little sherrif hand puppet he has and even sometimes takes him to sleep with him in his cot while patting and caressing it (he mostly hates to be patted or caressed to sleep, though, because he's always trying to fight us putting him to sleep; but from weeks of co-sleeping in India, towards the end of our trip he had starting almost snuggling into me till he was finally ready to sleep, which is when he would go and find the most comfortable spot on the bed for himself -- mostly one that let him dangle a leg, hand or head from the edge of the bed). Leslie has given him Poo Bear, which he again sometimes hugs and kisses and even took to Vivo City with him yesterday, even though he refused to hold it once we got there. But seeing his school pictures I feel I miss out on so much that goes on in his life.

Six quiet dogs

Swimming still his favourite activity

Whenever Raghav is upset and crying, he goes on this random call of pointing to the computer and saying "didi, dadaji, chacha, niti, nani"... the list is quite endless. It's like he will only be calmed when he speaks to any of these people whom he will complain to about us, and who will entertain him in return. He doesn't even speak so often to "didi" (Tanvi), yet she's one of the prominent influences on him when he's upset. I think he truly had a great time with her when we were in Delhi.

He sits perfectly "gentleman"-like on the dining table now, and behaves very well when we go out for meals. Most of the time some food item catches his fancy and he busies himself with it throughout the time that we eat. He can also entertain himself for quite a while with dumping, scooping and counting (in his own language) sugar sachets (at least till the time he starts throwing them about, and then that becomes the game).


Since he joined school he has had a renewed interest in his toys. I had kept them all away because he had stopped playing with them, and would only like to climb tables and sofas and chairs and do monkeyness; but now again he can sit and entertain himself for several minutes, playing with Lego blocks and reading his books.

Eats like a gentleman

He identifies many things in his books; like in this doggie book that he has, every time I say "One dog", he goes "woof!" because that's how he's heard me read it for months to him. Also, at "six quiet dogs" he puts his finger on his lips and says "shhhh" (although currently that finger rests more at the side of his mouth and near his nose.)

New love

He also brings his tiger book (Tiger Who Came To Tea) saying "teya", and the Goldilocks book saying "fin" because he knows that Goldilocks eats all the porridge and that it's finished. He brings the Cave Baby book saying "baby", and finds it hilarious when I read to him the lines "a cracken in the bracken, a hyena's laughing there" in my loudest and most threatening voice.

He likes his Teacher Nana at playschool, and gets worried when he doesn't find her when I leave him. He also goes and puts his head on her knee while sucking his thumb -- which is his way of showing that he likes that person.

He now rushes into his class when I go to drop him, and doesn't look back as I leave. I go in to say bye, and sometimes get a kiss from him when I ask. (He's adjusted well to playschool.)

I took him to Ikea the other day (just on my own) and he started a chant of "icy" as soon as we got out of the cashier section. I had bought him a hotdog, which he did not touch. All the while that I ate my hotdog and cold drink, he continued his chant of "icy", and then uttered squeals of excitement when he finally saw me getting the ice-cream. He holds it and eats it on his own and screams every time we try to take a lick.

Learning new things at school

He likes to sit in the sink and take a little bath, which he calls "nahne". I think in his head when he sits in the tub and has a bath it's called "bath", and when he sits in the sink and has a bath it's called "nahne". So every time I tell him let's go nahne, he's expecting to be put in the sink, and gets very upset if I start filling the tub. (I think this has happened because I used to always say "bath" for bath, and only recently did I start saying it in Hindi for him.)

He has started saying a lot many words, like "wash" for when his hands are dirty and he wants them to be washed. He knows quite a few body parts -- eyes, ears, nose, teeth, cheeks (although he doesn't point this one out every time), feet, hands (these he learnt at school) and belly button. He also makes several animal noises -- bow wow for dog, meaow for cat, raises his hand like an elephant's trunk for elephant, hoo hoo for owl, sometimes mooo for cow.