Aditi at one

Aditi turned one last month.

Her date-of-birth came before her star-birthday. We tied some balloons and cut a cake. And, played some games. i devised a game where i would leave Aditi in the bedroom and run to join Santosh and Nidhi seated on the ground in the living room. All three of us would then call out to Aditi, urging her to come to us. The one she ran to would win. Three times Aditi ran to Santosh. Then Nidh and i cried major foul and asked him to leave Aditi in the bedroom. No use, she still ran to him. Hell, we even excluded Santosh from the game and asked him to remain in the bedroom urging Aditi outside. She turned in the opposite direction and ran back to the bedroom to her father. At this point Nidhi and i gave up and stopped the game. Needless to say, Appa was grinning as if his b'day had come early!

Star-b'day fell on a Friday. We performed a simple ganapathi-homam and aayush-homam at the local temple. Aditi was not willing to sit still and at last i gave her a bottle and made her lie down in my lap. Scenes from Nidhi's first b'day kept replaying in my mind - how she was clinging to me, got irritated with the garland and how the vaadhyar rang the 'mani'(bell) to distract her when she started crying. Incidently, Aditi and Nidhi have the same pavadai for their first b'day. The pavadai we bought for nidhi had extra cloth and my mom had saved it in chennai all these years - we quickly got it stitched for aditi. she also wore a 'juttu'/'peeli-kondai'(banana-plant-on-the-head hairstyle) with flowers. She even got the very first mehendi of her life done.

one of my cousins who lives here explained to me kindly 'one thing u have to understand, nothing happens on weekdays'. so when none of the people here could attend the celebrations we went ahead with just the four of us rather postpone the puja to the weekend. and we did have a jolly good time. her first wish was from her grandparents - the festivities started when my parents called up on Thur night(Friday morning for them) and wished Aditi. She loves to listen to the b'day song and watches in delight when santosh, nidhi and i sing it for her. Which we have been doing every month since she was born. :-)

For a long time i haven't written abt Aditi, the reason being i couldn't find words to write abt the magic she brings to our home. Be it waving 'haai'(bye) to her Appa and Nidhikka in the morning when they leave for office/school, following me arnd the whole day like a little kitten saying not meow, meow, but amma, amma, listening to music and trying to dance - each and everything she does brings a smile on our face. she has this style of walking when she knows u r looking - she will bend fwd slightly, raise her head, make sure we r looking at us and walk a few steps before crumbling in laughter - she thinks she is doing a catwalk for us. And, when she wants to impress us she does tiny push ups and gives us a smile and a look which says 'see what i can do'. After Nidhi's back from school and had her lunch, she spends some time playing with her sister. an hour or so. the best game is hide and seek. i think santosh started it and nidhi continued it, it's become Aditi's fav game. she would run arnd seeking her Akka and giving high-pitched cries in her excitement. she caught on fast and when Nidhi hides behind a door she spots her in the gap between the hinges. another fav game is when nidhi vanishes into a blanket and aditi has to find her out. nidhi sits on the ground and aditi climbs all over her trying to find some part of her akka. both r screaming with laughter and having such a lot of fun.

aditi has learned to point out her teeth, tongue and nose. when i tell her 'chudum'(hot), she blows with her mouth and makes hissing noises. also, 'brush ur teeth' brings abt an energetic rubbing of the front teeth with her fingers. the appearance of the first tooth was soon followed by us buying a toothbrush for her, when she takes her bath she chews on it and before i finish her bath i help her brush her teeth properly.

aditi loves to go out and the minute someone opens the shoe-closet she starts following them saying 'haai', 'haai', meaning 'bye, let's go out'. when we take her to the park, she runs arnd, plays in the swing and follows other children looking at what they r upto. initially nidhi would slide down with her sister in her lap. then we found small slides where santosh or i would place her on top and help her slide down. now she has learned to slide herself. we have to just make her sit on the top, she pushes herself fwd and slides down in joy.

serving as a reminder to us that she is looking at us and learning, she catches hold of a comb and immediately proceeds to comb her hair. similarly when she manages to get a mobile she holds it to her ear and listens with great attention and then walks arnd mumbling words in her own language.
we discovered the amazing Public Library here - 50 books for three weeks and renewals for another 3 weeks. Free, Free, Free. so after dinner everyday you will find santosh. nidhi and me in three corners of the living room each of us lost in the world inside our book. aditi runs from person to person trying to snatch the books, play with us, lie in our laps, etc. luckily we had bought her a picture-book just the week before we joined the library. so we take turns in showing her the pictures and reading aloud the words. santosh even abandons his book and plays running arnd after aditi(nidhi and i r too much of bookworms to do that much). Past two days Aditi has come to the conclusion that as a family, where books r concerned, we r a gone-case. so she has taken to sitting down with her book and flipping the pages and looking at the pictures herself. atta-girl!
 

Aditi's Pass-time

Every mom knows this rule that if ur baby (a toddler) is not to be seen arnd for sometime and it is unusually quiet, then definitely ur baby is upto something. The sooner u find him/her, the lesser a mess u have to clean up later.

In light of the above, i have been pleasantly surprised to find that when Aditi goes missing for a short while and no noise from her, she is engaged thus :

This has happened many times and though i still check on her to see what she is upto, she continues to gaze in admiration at the road and the cars whizzing by. Initially she was speechless with wonder, but now that she is used to the scene she talks/shouts out something in her own language or sometimes just chuckles loudly. I can see she is enjoying herself thoroughly in gazing out of the window. i love the fact that she has discovered at least one activity which amuses her, that does NOT involve me/her sister/her father!

Doubt No. 23847536290930379

Context : Our first halloween is approaching and many of the houses/malls have spooky things put up. One had a propped up skeleton with snickers all arnd it. All of us looked at it, including Nidhi. But, it was next morning until she voiced her doubt. apparently she had been pondering over it in her mind before asking us.

"Did they bring, like you know, a real dead person and put his skeleton there and fill it with chocolates?"

:-))

The things no one tells u abt America before u land here.

a) U will receive mail. Mail as in actual mail... snail-mail if u will. Most of it will be bills (to be paid) and advertisement pamphlets/booklets. But it is an excitement to open the post-box and retrieve the mail. (In the days when we were house-hunting, we found a lot of houses(all of them) having cute little post-boxes and wondered who on earth still uses them. Now we know - everyone does.)

b) The courier-wallah drives arnd in a truck. Contrast to Chennai - courier-wallah drives a bike, and Muscat - never seen a courier-wallah - All important mails appear in the office post-box by magic.

c) The dryer(of the washer-dryer fame - what we call a washing-machine) actually dries the clothes. so much so that u can just fold them up/hang them in ur cubboards directly from the machine. No 'onathal-business'(putting out clothes to dry in the clothes-line). no wonder the leasing agents looked at us curiously when we asked each of them if it was ok to dry clothes in the balcony. And, what's more, in most cases, the clothes look ironed. Hurray...

d) America is a forest.(Just like Oman is a desert and India is like.. well a country.) You can step out of a town and walk into wilderness in minutes. Looking at the place u can see people have just cut down forests and built houses in between. In many cases, trees r preserved and houses/roads built arnd them. No wonder there are so many birds and animals everywhere. We even found an apartment with a long line of trees, each housing a flock(?) of vultures. i found a couple of apt-reviews mentioning raccoons.

e) Strangers will smile at you or nod their head politely, on the road. but u can be sure ur fellow-indians will ignore u. Or stare rudely if u happen to wear indian clothes.

f) Buses ply. In a 45 min - one hour interval. But a 20 min drive by car can take 2 hrs by bus. Too many stops and too many red-lights. But what is most impressive is the arrangement for differently-abled. The bus-driver will stop, tilt the bus and place a ramp-walk connecting the bus and the platform. When the person the wheel chair maneouvres inside(using a self-operated wheel-chair, more like a wheel-car), a couple of seats will be folded up by the driver. he will then secure the wheel-chair using 4 or more belts. all this while the bus is stopped and others are waiting patiently outside to board. similar procedure in reverse when the person in the wheel-chair wants to get off the bus. hats off...

g) U don't need to put on an American accent for them to understand u. Speaking clearly and not very fast is enuf. But, some words can be confusing. If u've worked in an MNC u will find it easier to adapt. One of the first things we were taught when we joined work as wide-eyed campus-recruits is Xerox is photocopy and bathroom is a restroom. Some more words that i found in the past one month that we r here - lift - elevator, drawinghall - living room, balcony - patio. Most importantly, the first floor is on the ground and the second floor is what we is first for us(in India and elsewhere).

h) Most houses are carpetted. If not, they will have beautiful wooden flooring. If ur house has is completely carpetted and u have a, let's say active, baby at home, u could do what we did. Mind you, it shd be the very first thing u do after u enter the house. Just sing a 'mangalam' for the carpet. And for good measure, collect ur family arnd u and together in a loud voice say 'Govinda.... gooovinda'. Especially since in our case the leasing-agent pointed out that the carpetting was brand-new. And, within two days Aditi left kajal-marks all over the drawing-hall. This will also be an opportune moment to do what Santosh did. quietly keep aside the money they r gong to charge for a new carpet when u leave the house. i have since then hidden the kajal-dabba so well that even i can't find it anymore.

Anyway, the above list is not exhaustive and i may add more here as and when i find time...

Disclaimer : The word America in the above post must be subsituted with South California, coz that's the only part i have seen in this past one month. Which brings me to yet another point to add to the above list - America is soooooooooooooooooooooooooo huge.

Literally speaking

Nidhi was abt to take a bath and i noticed that the combination of 'Sunny California' and 'weekends in the pool' had given her a deep tan. Hands and legs were almost black.

Me, cheerfully : Nidhi, u have become black. Nanna kulli.. sheriya erumai-maade?
Nidhi, attempts to cough tentatively : ohu, ohu...
Me : what happened?
Nidhi : nee thaane chonnai.... erumai maadu. erumu - cough. Coughing cow...

:-))