Update on the little one

It has been a really long time since I wrote a post about the little one. I have been meaning to write one for her birthday but it has been more than two months since she turned 1 and I have not done it so far.

One of the things which I really regret is not blogging during my pregnancy. It would have been so nice to read all about it now. Use hindsight to establish how things could have been done differently. Anyway I digress.

My little baby girl is no longer a baby; she is a toddler in the real sense of the word. I remember reading somewhere that the minute your baby starts walking, she is no longer a baby, but a toddler. Children adapt so much better than us adults – she was cruising along comfortably and one day about a month or so before her birthday, she took her first steps and there was no looking back from there. She instantly transformed herself into a toddler, while I still have trouble accepting that she is no longer a baby.

She has literally started running around now and is much more fun to play with. She has been playing hide and seek, catch me while I run and all those toddler games for a while now. We literally need eyes behind our head now because she follows us everywhere. She is really quick too, so she comes running behind.

She follows everything that we say now, in both English as well as Tamil. She knows most of her toy characters and will hand it over one by one if you ask her for it. She has still not started talking more than a few words and no appa as yet, so calculus is still waiting. He patiently tries to teach her everyday, only for her to say amma or tatha.

Her grandmother has taught her how to dance now. So if you ask her to dance, she does this awfully sweet routine of turning round and round, moving her arms around if she is in a good mood. She has a real mischievous grin on her face while she does this little twirl and will then come running into your arms. Great fun.

She has started eating all the food which we eat. It’s a real benefit, because we don’t need to make anything separately for her anymore. She loves her spice, sometimes eating more spice than what Calculus can. She definitely doesn’t have a sweet tooth though, and eats JUST the desserts which I like. Calculus is rather pleased secretly, he says more for him !! Typical man. So far she has proven to be quite a non-fussy eater, eating all the vegetables that we have given her. I just hope it lasts this way. She loves rotis and paranthas.

Her all-time favourite food has to be papad though. Give her a piece of papad and she is lost to the world. She will sit on her high chair without a fuss, break her papad into tiny pieces and not leave even a miniscule particle. In fact the last time I gave her a haircut (because she absolutely bawled at the parlour and did not let the hairdresser touch her), we gave her a piece of papad and she remained mostly still.

She absolutely loves my chanting. While I chant, she has to sit beside me. Nothing else matters for her at that time, not even going out, which is saying a lot. She will play with my beads, a piece of paper, a pen, and my writing books keep her occupied for hours. In fact on weekends, sometimes if I am too lazy to chant, she will demand to be taken to my altar and will not stop crying till I chant. She has heard a lot of it while I was pregnant and maybe it soothes and calms her. It truly is amazing how much they pick up from being inside your womb.

She indicates what she wants to eat quite clearly. She has been doing it for a while now and has a clear hierarchy of things to eat. For instance, she will demand to be taken to the kitchen, ask for rotis first and if we show her the empty casserole, her next choice is toast. If there is no bread then she will ask for a biscuit. Her vocabulary is limited to mostly one word – ‘aaa’ but with that she is able to communicate most of what she wants quite clearly.

Last night for instance, we were all sitting in the living room and she was seated on my lap. I was singing ‘Five little ducks’ to her and as soon as Calculus joined in, she pointed to him and said ‘aaa’. Then she points to me and says ‘aaa’. What she was trying to say was that calculus should not join in and as soon as he stopped singing with me, she was fine.

She loves being read to and we read regularly to her. She knows most of her books now and as soon as we near the end, she goes ‘aaa’, which means we have to start all over. She also remembers peculiarities of each book, for instance, in one of her books, the character goes to sleep in her soft white bed and there is a headboard detail on the book, which is soft. So the first time, I read it I took her hand and made her touch it to let her feel it. Now each time we reach that page, she will force you to hold her hand and make her touch that.

She climbs over the sofa, bed, any surface that’s worth scaling. Now if only she would learn to not squirm so much once she is up on the sofa.. !!

Like most other children, she hates the word ‘no’. She whines, moans and cries till we give in. I mostly try and divert her attention, but sometimes that is futile too. Also she knows certain things like the TV remote, my spectacles for instance are off limits, yet sometimes she will touch it ever so gently and then look up to you and give this sweet smile to try and woo you over. And it’s bloody hard to keep a straight face and carry on with the whole act. I always feel like just giving in because her smile is so worth it, only to catch myself in the nick of time.

She has this fascination for my mama. Since he is the country, he visits once every couple of weeks, pampers her no end, carries her everywhere and gives in to everything that she asks for. He adores children and it clearly shows. We show the little one a set of photos that we have printed out because she likes to see them and each time we get to the photo of my mama, her face lights up like a thousand watt bulb and she points to him. She will patiently wait through the entire set of photographs for just that one photo.

More than anything else though, the feeling that she has grown up so so quickly is one which comes to my mind very often. Its just yesterday that I was pregnant, where has the last year and a bit gone. Reading about other pregnancies, births makes me feel maternal in a way I have never felt before and the yearning for another child grows stronger and stronger each day.