My Son, my sweet little son who turned one last week brightens up my morning everyday with his cute little smile. A smile which shows all of his 4 teeth’s on top and 2 teeth’s on bottom like a squirrel which is so adorable. He is no more a baby, he is a growing boy. Here in US they say, he is not a infant anymore. He is a toddler now.
Toddler meaning a person who toddles, esp. a young child learning to walk. We are yet to see him walk. But he crawls so fast, we couldn’t catch him at times. He didn’t want to walk. We figured out from his laziness to put this steps forward when we tried to make him walk.
This is the right time to start walking doctors say but every kid is different. So we are just going to wait and watch to catch that moment. We did buy him a walker, hoping it will help him to use his legs and eventually he will try to walk. He enjoys his new ride in the walker which helps him to reach the untouchables and takes him to places.
As soon as he gets up in the morning, he unleashes himself and get ready for a big search like an archaeologist. He starts wandering all around the house from hall to kitchen to bedroom, making tireless trips back and forth to find every little things he can see thru his eyes and tries to pull him out and do a research on them like a scientist.
He has hordes of toys to play with but seldom touches it anymore. His interest are now diverted to search the house like a CBI to find something new every time, to poke around and play with it. He is such a Rat!!
Especially, when my wife is working at kitchen he just want to work with her like a another chef. He wants to know what she is doing. He also opens up all the cabinets and throws out the utensils from inside and tries to make his orchestra party playing and banging the spoons on the vessels. I spent my whole weekend putting up locks for the cabinets. He can no longer open it now, but he just waits for the nick of moment to get in as soon we open it to get something. He is that fast.
If he finds us going to the bedroom, he immediately follows like a security guard, opens up the dress chests and throws all clothes out. He then opens up drawer which he can reach and take out one thing at time to discover them slowly. He will try to open bottle lid if it has a lid with his strong teeth’s.
If his eye notices anything under the bed, he immediately crawls inside squatting slowly entering at one end and coming out at the other. We didn’t even know that there was enough space under the bed to crawl. He does it with so much care without getting hurt on his head and gets out with the item like a soldier.
His most favorite things were electronic items especially he is crazy about my Laptop. He takes the cordless phone, TV remotes, calculator and tries to hit the buttons and also bang them real hard in the floor. They are still surviving so far including my laptop. As soon he find me opening my laptop, he just drops everything to get close to it. He slowly peeks his hand to get the feel of the keyboard and bangs on it. He tries out to see and looks at the monitor to see anything come up. I have to beg almost every time to take away the laptop from him to get some work done.
To stop all the mess, we put him on the Sofa or bed hoping he won’t be able to get down yet. He cries for a bit and then we won’t hear a sound. When we check him out after a few, we see him trying to get down carefully to start his act again. He knows to get down with ease from sofa and bed now.
He picks up every small thing on the floor like paper or thread and try to put them in his mouth. He does it without any sound. If we don’t hear his sound, we can immediately guess he is doing some wrong.
So when my wife just calls him "ASHWIN, Where are you?!" to find where he is now.
He immediately throws everything in his hand and crawls away so fast, after hearing her voice. He somehow knows and remembers that we told him its wrong. He is so sharp.
Kids at this stage are like Parrots and my son is no different. They just try to repeat whatever we teach them. Right now he blabbers a lot and tries to call "AMMA", "MMMA", "THATA THATA", "No" "Nooooo". We are trying to teach him different words everyday so he can pick it up atleast few.
He is so crazy about watching the ad’s in the TV especially kids type ads because of their rhymes songs and colorful scenes. We have SUNTV and he is also an addict to some of the serial theme songs. He is so finicky and has his own favorite ones. He immediately gets infront of the TV as soon he hears them. He won’t even blink an eye while he watches them.
We found out that he likes to listen to music from his 2nd month. May be it the gene thing, since we both love music a lot. We use to put some good tamil songs and he sleeps without an hunch. His favorite was lastyear hit song from the Kamal movie " Vettaiyadu Vilaiyadu ", "Paartha muthal naale". Its like a magic song for us to put him to sleep.
It still continues today with the recent new songs including new release "Shivaji". I also try to put him to sleep with a bed time song which my mom always sang to us. My fav. being "Kannan varuvan kadai solluvaan, vannamara thotil kati thalathuvan…"
I try to play with him whenever I get a chance, almost all the time. As soon I get home from work and he hears my voice, he just wants me to pick him up and hold. It makes me feel that he is been waiting for me but not yet exactly at this stage. I know they just long for attention thats all.
I play Peek-A-Boo, Hide and Seek, Catch me if you can, Swing, Horse ride and more. His favorite being the Catch me if you can. He will be sitting on the floor on one end of the Kitchen and I just go close to him to catch him, he crawls fast smiling and laughing and goes to other end of it. I then try to go to the other end of the Kitchen to catch him, he immediately turns around goes the other end of the Kitchen and game continues.
We play a smaller version of Peek-A-Boo in our bed. I try to hide myself inside the bedsheet and keep shouting at him "Ashwin, where his Appa(dad)?" and he keep searching for the voice and before he finds I just surprise him saying "Peek-A-Boo". He smiles and . It is so much fun to play all these games with him.
Kids are God’s precious gift. Its tough to imagine a life without them. They are so innocent at this stage, same time sharp enough to grasp things faster. They make your worries fly away far enough with their cute smile and make your heart feel lighter.
I already hear somebody murmuring, "Wait till they grow older". Whatever it may be, they are wonderful.
These things are just a few sample of all he got going these days. My wife couldn’t able to handle during the day. So except many more to come…
