Friday, December 13, 2013

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 2nd 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

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Angel in One-derland!!

Yes, my baby turned 1 year old on 14th June, 2013. She is not even a baby anymore, she has graduated to become a toddler! How time flies!

Now when I see her new-born snaps, I wonder how I must have handled her. It feels strange to think that last year, I didn’t know her properly and 1 day before that, I had not even seen her. A LOT has changed in this one year. She has become very vocal with her choices. I watch her point to things she wants, and vigorously nodding her head in denial, if that is not what she is asking for. I watch her wave and smile cheerfully at everyone when we go for our walk in the evenings. The other day, a lady came to us, greeted Angel and told me, "So you are Angel's mother." Apparently, she had met her during Angel's morning walks to which my father in law takes her. So my one year old already has a social life of her own, which I am not a part of. **Shudder** I watch her eat with her tiny hands, insisting that she will feed herself. I watch her and think that I love her with all my heart and my heart expands a little more to accommodate that much more love!

I want to write about her first birthday in great detail, as this is the only birthday where she had no say in anything and won't remember anything about it, yet is a very important milestone.

So once she got up, after her morning routine, we took her down for planting a tree in the garden of our apartment complex. We I look fondly at it every day. I then marked her height in the height chart. After having her breakfast, she slept off. We took her hand prints and foot prints while she was asleep. We did havan after that. She got up just in time when the havan was about to end. We then got busy in lunch and other preparations, tried to make her sleep in between but in vain. She slept at around 4:30 pm for an hour and got up at 5:30 pm which was precisely the time of our party.

My parents and brother had come to join her on this special day. We were planning for this party since more than a month. The party was held in the club house of our apartment as we thought it would be convenient and close to her comfort zone if she felt uneasy. The theme of the party was "Dora the Explorer". So the invitation cards, e-invites, decor, caps and cake were of Dora. I dressed her up in her pink frock with matching shoes, sandals and clip. She was looking real cute. Excuse the mother in me, I find her cute even when she is not wearing anything ;) She got unwell - had fever and cold since 12th June, but was almost okay till 14th. So she was enjoying all the attention and was enjoying her party. She even cut her cake and tasted it eagerly. She didn’t cry much and we were so proud of her. The game host kept the audience engaged for a good 1.5-2 hours. There were around 120 people who included our friends, colleagues, apartment people and a few relatives. I had ordered 2 collages one which depicted her journey for the first 6 months and the other one from 6 months to 1 year and pasted them in the party hall. We had also pasted a chart paper for everyone to write their wishes for Angel. I will show it to her once she grows up. The cake, decor and food were liked by all. After everyone left, came the task of transferring the heap of gifts to our apartment which was accomplished by everyone's help and were unwrapped later the next day. Angel was tired after a long day and slept off in no time.

And thus went her 1st birthday! Happy Birthday Baby. 

May this be the first of many many more beautiful birthdays to come!
                     




Thursday, May 9, 2013

A Perfect Breakfast

A consecutive food post from my end. Shocking, I know, but gradually I have started enjoying cooking so you can expect more of these.

I love "sooji ke dhokle" . It is a Gujarat dish made by soaking semolina or sooji in curd and its steamed followed by tempering of musturd seeds, seseme seeds, curry leaves and green chillies. Its served with pudina chutney. Its tasty and healthy too, so it has found its way to our breakfast menu once in a week. I tried to make it healthier by adding vegetables like beet root(I don't cannot eat it in raw/boiled form as salad and like this you don't even realize its taste :)), carrot and onions. And boy, I was mighty pleased with the results. Check out the pic.





We can even add spinach juice to it and get green colured dhoklas, beet root juice for red ones and plain white ones and decorate the three together. The color co-ordinated dhoklas look lovely. No pic for that as of now, will definitely click it the next time I make it. Do try it and leave a comment telling me how it came out, if you haven't already!