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.