Naughty Aditi

Yesterday :
After a lot of persuasion, Nidhi went to sleep in the afternoon. She was sleeping on one side of me and Aditi was on the other. As usual, Aditi took a power nap of 20 mins and woke up refreshed. Trying yet another tactic of getting her to sleep in the afternoon, i acted as if i was asleep. She kept pushing me and pulling me, but no avail. Then, she climbed on me and looked at her sleeping sister's face. Immediately her face lit up in a huge smile. She started making loud noises to attract Nidhika's attention, but thankfully Nidhi was sound asleep. Naughty Aditi didn't give up and suddenly gave a big lunge over me and aimed for Nidhika's face. She wanted to paw her awake. after this, i had no choice but to get up and take Aditi to the next room. Her sister spent the next couple of hours sound asleep. One way or the other Aditi got what she wanted - someone to play with her!

Aditi at 6 months...

Aditi at 6 months...

1. Red is her fav color. Her Nidhika got her a Red-Balloon at one of the fests and it has become her fav toy. It's a helium balloon and although it's becoming smaller and less bouncy each day, Aditi continues to amuse herself with it.

2. We have started an award in our house every week - 'The One who gets Most Smiles from Little Aditi'. It's a rolling trophy and Aditi has been bestowing this award on Appa, Amma and Nidhika equally in turns, with no partiality whatsoever.

3. She has learned the 'Aanai Muttu, Muttu.... Muttu!' game and brings her head fwd for a gentle 'muttu' when we play with her.

4. Since the weather is not too hot nor too cold, she has been accompanying Appa/Amma to see her Nidhika off to school every morning. This involves smiling at anyone who stops by her stroller. i was surprised at the no. of localites, both men and women, who stop on their way to office(next to our bldg) and smile and say Hello to her. Aditi obliges each and every person with the widest open-mouthed smile she can manage.

5. Although we can feel her teeth thru her gums ever since she's born, the 'bokka-vaai' smile remains. And, is one of the cutest i have ever seen!

6. Opinion on her looks is divided equally between 'like her father' and 'like her sister'. But as one friend pointed out correctly, Nidhi and Santosh look like each other. so actually all three look the same. So, i am only one in this family who looks adopted, but it's ok. When Aditi sleeps, i love to look at her eyes coz they resemble her father the most, just like Nidhi. Also, Aditi has the brownest of eyes among us.

7. Aditi is becoming naughtier and naughtier day by day. Ever since Nidhi's school has started, Aditi is after her books. She'll keep on pushing herself fwd until she manages to grab her books. And once she gets hold of it she'll tear it apart in secs. we understood her intentions when we tried to distract her with one of Nidhi's old notebooks which was ripped apart beyond repair. so now we r very careful and when Nidhi's busy with her homework i am the one who stands guard for her books. Shudder to think of the months of guard-duty awaiting me this year!

8. Although i tried to be fair and kept repeating "Amma, Appa, Nidhika, Aditi" to Aditi, now i feel i shd have just gone ahead and taught her the one word i am waiting to hear - "Amma". Aditi proved yet again she is her father's darling by saying 'Abba..ba...ba...ba'. And, a little later 'Ga..ga..ga..ga' which sounds a lot like 'Akka..ka...ka..ka'. And, both these things happened today.

She has taken to screaming in the loudest possible voice today and now i have to stop typing this coz i need my hands to close my ears. Fun times!

Ignorance is... funny!

Nidhi likes to talk. Whenever we r doing something with her, you can expect that u will be entertained with non-stop chatter. we usually encourage her to do this coz it helps/amazes us to understand how/what she's thinking.
One such day last week when she was getting ready to go to school, she starts talking. it usually is some random subject and she started telling me abt when she was younger, she thought when we move houses we'll shift the toilets as well! :-)) She has lived the first 5 years of her life in the same house in this foreign country(unlike her mom who had stayed in 3 cities(obviously shifted house and school) when she was that age!). Later when we started searching for a new house to move to, she tells me now, she was surprised to see toilets in the new houses. it was then it dawned on her that every house has it's own toilet and we don't need to carry them with us! :-)

When we r children, we make many such assumptions too and don't realise for a long long time. i told her a couple of incidents from my childhood.

(a) i didn't realise humpty-dumpty was an egg(until recently)! even though i had seen many pics beside the rhyme, i always thought it was a strange-looking bald-man. And one day out of the blue when i was singing this rhyme for Aditi, it struck me i was singing abt an egg. But, of course!

(b) When i was small, my most fav activity was going to the beach. And everytime i went there i would fall ill too. Also, the beach was quite far from my house in chennai, so my parents used to tell me 'it's too late today, the beach is closed'. This made me create a pic in my childhood-head that the beach is actually a huge tank of water that's let out for people to play with and at evening all this water gets pushed back and locked up by the watchman. Thankfully, geography lessons start pretty early in school and by Std I or II i was aware of what sea is and how huge it is. But even now whenever anyone says it's too late to go to the beach, i think of the tank and smile!

Nidhi enjoyed hearing these things abt me, and we talked of one more thing from her childhood when she would end the nursery rhyme Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star with :
"..like a Demon in the sky!"
i would always smile at this and she got thru KG I and II with this particular version of the nursery rhyme and then i half-heartedly corrected her. Ignorance can be fun sometimes!

A milestone for amma

/* Milestone alert */

Last week, i changed the gas-cylinder in my house.

/* End of Milestone alert */

I started this blog to record the milestones reached by Baby Aditi. Little did i imagine that the first milestone i record will be mine!

If u know me u will understand how important this is to me - changing the gas-cylinder. It's a big accomplishment for me. Never mind that changing the gas cylinder in this country just involves just unscrewing a tube and screwing it to a new cylinder(of course after making sure the gas valves r closed), unlike in India where fixing the regulator is an art i can only hope to master some day. i would watch my dad, mom, mom-in-law,etc do this back in India and wonder how talented they are.

Changing the gas used to be such an important(and dangerous-looking) activity that only the most experienced in the kitchen would be allowed to do it. Forget it in my house, even when i got married, it would be Santosh or my mother-in-law who would do this. i mean, here i was, barely learning how to tell different dals apart - me changing the gas? Unthinkable!

Then Nidhi was born and 5 months later we shifted to this new country. Having no one else in the ktichen was a big plus coz this was my first chance for hands-on and though it took sometime, i started cooking well. But the gas-cylinder was still off-limits - coz most of the time the gas-cylinder guy would fix it himself.

Whenever i think of my early days of cooking i am always reminded of this incident when i was just married. The first time i made rasam, it didn't taste good. Santosh insisted i cook it again so that i could improve the rasam. i made it thrice before i realised my mistake - i was forgetting to add tur-dal(cooked and mashed). i gave myself the hon title of the-Girl-who-could-not-make-rasam. Step by step, mistakes after mistakes(though none as pathetic as the rasam), i progressed. Till today.... meal for 25-30 people? Bring it on, i say!

And last week, Santosh was at office, Nidhi had holidays and was helping me in the kitchen. Suddenly the gas got over and Nidhi started worrying how we r going to finish our cooking.  Since we already had a spare cylinder there was no point in calling the gas-cylinder guy. So i literally rolled up my sleeves and started Operation Change-the-Cylinder. The only tool i needed was the screw-opener and a few moments of hard labour later, i changed the gas-cylinder. Meanwhile Nidhi was running all around me, shouting instructions and trying her best to help. Aditi also helped me by staying asleep during all that time. Seeing Nidhi so tense, i got worried myself and called up santosh. he offered to drive home immediately, but i had him take me step-by-step thru the procedure on the phone until i was sure i had not ignored any safety rule. Operation Change-the-Cylinder was deemed successful!

Nidhi was over-joyed and told me she thought the world of me. I realised the next generation is now here watching in wonder when her Mom changes the gas.

As for me, now i feel completely in-charge of the 'choola-choukha' of the house! Hooray!

A Doubt

Nidhi and I were learning countries, capitals, currencies. We came across Rupee-Paisa, Dollar-cents, Rial-Baiza, Dirham-Fils, etc. Nidhi asks me which country uses the currency 'bux'. Bux? Is it the hindi bux (buxa meaning box) i wonder in my mind. i ask her where she has heard it - bux. She tells me 'u know, like 8 bux or 10 bux, like that..'

Oh i c, (light-bulb glows on amma's head) Bucks! :-))