18 months

18 months. At the cost of repeating myself, I say, how time flies!

This is the undoubtedly the best age for a parent until now. I am no longer unsure of myself as a parent and my baby can express herself quite well – with words and gestures, she somehow communicates the message across. The other day, I was making an excel sheet of all the words she can speak and I listed around 120, and these are the words that she actually understands, apart from other words that she just repeats.

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Its delightful to watch her form small sentences like “Give me water” and “Mamma come” and other grammatically incorrect sentences.

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The biggest update is Angel has started sleeping through the night since 2^nd Nov. At times, she gets up at night but then goes back to sleep with little or no help from me, so I am one happy momma.

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She still remains a little fussy eater, but let me not go there.

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She is hyperactive. She does not, or rather, can not sit at one place and not do anything for a couple of seconds. She is always on a move, doing something or the other.

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She understands everything. For things which we don’t want her to understand, me and J* have started using English, but somehow she understand that as well, I think we shall soon resort to spellings.

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These days she has started deciding which shoes she’ll put on while going for our evening walks. I thought I had a baby, but I have a tiny decision-maker at hand.

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She simply loves books. She brings a book, hand it over to me, settles on my lap, and wait for me to start reading to her. She indicates or she identifies the object either by name (kaa for car, bat, bed) or by making sounds (bow wow for dog, baa baa for sheep) or by hand movement (moves her hand in air for aeroplane, rotates her index finger for fan, moves backward and forward for camel)

The other day, she held her grandpa’s hand, pulled him and went to room, insisted that he switch on the light, took out a book, brought him back to the hall and made him sit at the sofa, all this while still holding his hand and demanded that he read that book to her. It was hilarious.

On our good days, we sail through the meal times because of books since we are still going strong with our “No TV Rule”.

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She identifies almost all her body parts now.

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The little devil also tests my reactions when she is doing anything forbidden, like putting something into her mouth. She brings it close to her mouth, keep it there and looks at me and laughs with delight when I tell her not to and repeats it again and again. How on earth do people discipline kids?

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She goes outdoor twice a day. Once, in the morning when my father-in-law takes her on her tricycle and again in the evening with either me or J* or both of us. In the evening there are a bunch of kids of her age and they have a great time playing together.

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She recognizes the symbol of heart and now she spots it everywhere, be it on clothes, toys or bottles, which make me realize that the world is so full of love and we adults are just too busy to notice it. It’s fascinating to see the world through a toddler’s eyes.

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This has been a pretty long update,  oh wait, did I tell you that she loves babies. Also, she can watch and enact this n number of times. Okay, I better stop here, and if you are reading till now, then either you are family, or someone who is really interested in Angel, in which case, thank-you J

ETA (18, December, 2013) – Today at 6 am when Angel was sleeping away to glory, me and J* cut her hair. She was half awake by the time we were half done, but she let us finish our work. When she got up completely, I showed her reflection in the mirror and told her that we have cut her hair.  She let this information sink in. While she was roaming and playing in her room, she came to me and indicated that her hair is small now and said – “Poto”, i.e. she demanded to be clicked and happily posed J