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.