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.