Marathi immersion

My mom's been here for a month and a half now. Slowly and steadily, she started "immersing" Rian in Marathi. Rian was curious at first, then asked questions. Then he went silent, like a sponge. 3 days later, he says a Marathi poem. A day later, another Marathi poem. He learnt a long Marathi poem which included days of the week in Marathi. His latest is counting numbers upto 20 in Marathi :-) and Grandma is already leading him on from 21 to 30. This is fun stuff!

We've never forced Rian to learn or stay away from any language. This kid just shows his interest, and we are happy that he's eager to learn.

Here are the Marathi poems he says now:
(1) Yere yere pavsa
(2) Yega yega sari
(3) Shankarachya devlat Somwari (days of the week)

(4) Chandoba chandoba bhaglas ka
... few more I do not recollect.

Happy Birthday Aaba

Yesterday June 22 was Aaba's 63rd bday. Rian was very excited in the morning, and helped Daddy to fill up Aaba's bday greeting card. Daddy and Rian drew a picture of Rian and Aaba holding hands, and Rian holding a flower. Rian wrote some sweet nothings on it too.

Right after this, Rian took the card from Daddy and went into his bedroom. He was looking at the drawing for some time. Daddy spotted him and he says to Daddy: I miss Aaba. My sweet poodla had little tears in his eyes. My sweet senti baby!

Last night we called Aaba to wish him on phone. Rian sang the whole Happy Birthday song to Aaba. This is the first time Rian actually sang this song so well, and on the phone, with full attention. He now gets the concept of talking on the phone, and doesn't just want to press buttons. Thanks to Chitra Aaji for helping here, as she has been practicing Rian talking on the phone with me almost every day.

Summer and socks

Rian has always been a neatness freak :-) He hated the first time he was in sand, and the first time he landed in grass. Over time, and with Daddy's nudging, he gets better about it, and even enjoys it. But his first reaction is: eww. This is why I think it was easy to potty train him at 21 months!

He's crazy about wearing socks, and Mommy also nourishes his fetish for different colored socks. Our 9 month long winter is finally over, and summer is here with a freaking 95F yesterday. Last night we forced Rian to give up his socks. Through his crying he says: Mumma I could not walk on the kitchen floor because it's sticky! Ah, so now I know why you love your socks, little one :-) We'll clean out the floor tonight.

The funny gene

On our way back from our recent trip to Yosemite, Rian cracked his first joke. My less-than-three-year old seems to have inherited the funny gene from Daddy. He totally "knows" he cracked a joke, he was so sure of it, and he had this patented knowing smile of his which says "I know I did it right". So here goes:

Rian: Mumma is this a pepperoni pizza?

Me: No Rian, this is a plain pizza.

Rian: (after 15 second pause) Mumma, in the plane, we eat plain pizza :-)

In our very set night routine, we introduced a play on the hugging routine. First, we used to squeeze Rian between us, and give him a "tight". Now we ask Rian if he wants to be the cheese between two breads, me and Amit. After a few nights:

Rian: Mumma, I want to be the bread

Me: And Mumma?

Rian: Mumma also be the bread. Daddy is the cheese.

(After hugging)

Rian: Now, the two breads go to the bedroom (of Rian)

... and he was all giggles for having marao'ed that dialog!!

Now this repeats every night, Daddy gets squeezed every night, and Rian wants to say his joke every night :-)

Senti baby

Rian is growing into a super senti baby. He can sense from us if we are angry with him, or disappointed with his behavior. He sends in immediate corrective action: comes running by, hugs us and looks into our eyes to say Mumma, I love you Mumma! Either he's a good manipulator, which kids this age are, or he's genuinely cute and caring. When either of us has a raised voice towards each other, Rian starts making loud noises to get us to lower our voices...

Yesterday Rian said to my nanny: Yeyih, I'm sad Yeyih. Why? Because I miss Mumma and Daddy when they go to office. Since Rian's school is off for two weeks, Rian is at home and the nanny has been able to come from 9 to 6. Since he had fever last weekend, and congestion/weakness after that, he has been waking up after 9am for 3 days now, so he wakes up to see us pack our bags and leave. I think he's missing us more because we spent a major part of last weekend with him, taking care of him.

Rian dictionary

Ever since Rian started speaking, we've made a conscious effort to not talk in "baby talk", so Rian picked up language without any errors in speech or "bobda bolna". At almost three, he can have a conversation with the doctor and the nurse on his own. He does have trouble pronouncing R and L still, but he works on it constantly.

Here and there though, Rian has added his own words to our dictionary. Some have come and gone already, just wanted to pen down some memories and current favorites:

Nunoon: this was Rian's word for "red"

Mack: this is Rian's word for "truck", from the character Mack from the movie Cars. "Nunoon Mack" is his childhood obsession.

Kachi Pachi: This is his latest addition, he says this means "head". If we ask him "what grows on top of kachi pachi, he says: hair". Pretty consistent, this one.

Breems: This is from our trip to Yosemite NP. Breems was Rian's word for waterfalls. He knows they are waterfalls, but makes up a word, tells Daddy about it, and then continues to call them Breems throughout the two days, how cute :-)

School Meena: This has been Rian's word for "food" at school since day 1. Even though he can identify and tell us what he ate now, his first response to the question "what did you eat in school today?" is "school meena".

Entire songs: Rian knew many nursery rhymes before going to school, but now he has learnt to sign them in tune from school. He has two songs that he has made complete versions of his own. For the "ants go marching one by one", he says:

Aiku gaiki kangal gang kuga kuga
He aiku gaiki kangal gang kuga kuga
He aiku gaiki aiku gaiki...

He says it exactly like this every single time :-) It's amazing! Of course he knows the original song too in its entirety. When I went to Rian's school ending party a week back, I found out Rian sings songs loudly along with the rest of the children in his class, nice!

First late night

Last night, Rachana had invited us over for some yummy Rajasthani dinner. Today is her birthday. We met up after ages, and had loads of gap-shap and awesome food. Kids were busy playing. Rian didn't have much food when he was offered, with Parv and Shayona, but seemed interested later on. At 9pm bang, my schedule baby says: Mumma I am sleepy! Somehow or the other he got distracted with TV, sweet malpua, and then cake. We came home after 11:30pm, and by the time we were done with Rian's milk, brushing, sleep routine, it was past midnight. IIRC this is the first time Rian has stayed up past midnight!

Today Rian woke up ~9:30am and we were pretty sure he will not sleep in the afternoon. Wonder of wonders (or thanks to Cely), Rian took his afternoon nap at 2:30pm. Back on schedule today, I hope.

Road trips

We took a road trip to Yosemite NP last weekend with 35 month old Rian. The last one was to San Diego in Nov '10. I was really missing and craving road trips. Since the beginning of school this year, our life is topsy turvy and super-schedule-driven. Add to that the little daily things like groceries and menu planning, I just didn't have any energy for planning road trips. Also, the winter was rough on Rian, with the combination of starting school. He was constantly sick. The winter lasted very long too, summer just about starting to rear it's head up.

Memories from our San Diego trip were all very pleasant. Rian had enjoyed the time there, and the 8hr drive was also managed well by Amit and me. We had left early, at 5am, and Rian slept through most of the drive. We were super surprised when we reached SD before 2pm.

Yose trip topped that road trip. We were traveling with extended family: My mom was here from India and Swati (Amit's sister) also was here from NY. We decided to rent a minivan since Rian is crazy about "the car whose doors open automatically". BTW kid's a pro at identifying models of minivans and goes crazy when he spots Honda Odyssey and Toyota Sienna. For a little extra $$ love, we got a Toyota Sienna for 3 days. On Saturday morning when Rian saw it, he was elated :-) Wish I had captured the smile on his face when he was sitting in the van. The road trip had an awesome start!

Usually Rian naps in the car, but he was so excited with the car, and Aatya, and mom and dad being with him, he blew straight through it. We didn't even attempt to put him to sleep. He was soaking in every new thing. We also missed Rian's gym and dance classes on Saturday morning. Little sacrifices I guess.

Daddy made sure Rian was "walking" in most places. Rian is very talented at melting Mumma's heart with "Mumma pick me up" and I go swoop and a hug and a kiss and kiddo's riding on me. Sigh. I just don't get enough of him, so I *need* to pick him up. But I guess at some point I need to let go so he can be a bit more independent. Parenting is so tough on you!

Road trip = junk food. We carried Veggie Straws, Chakalis from India, Masala peanuts. This time around I also carried a bunch of Cuties oranges and fresh yummy cherries from Costco. We had our fair share of junk food at the Curry Village Pizza Deck gorging on pizza for dinner, and sweet savory nothings for breakfast the next day.

Usually we manage to get a tent cabin inside curry village. This time around we were fortunate to get a dry wall cabin. This was way better than tent cabins, and we could actually sleep well. Since I was bed-sharing with Rian, my sleep was disturbed, but Rian was asleep by 9:30pm and awake at 6:40am!! On the way back though, all were very tired, and Rian managed to nap for a couple of hours. Pictures tell the rest of the story. We did a couple of under-one-mile walks, and generally had a good time. Looking fwd to the next road trip :-)

Schedule baby

Rian has always been a schedule baby. During the first two weeks of Rian's life, we had a 2 hr alarm clock to feed him, since he had some jaundice. After that, Rian fell into a very predictable feeding/sleeping pattern right away. I could tell within a 5 min period when his next feed would be. Planning our chores/visits outdoors was easy since I just had to stick to his schedule.

Ever since Rian started school, Amit and me had to get into a schedule too. It was a much bigger commitment required from us, to keep to a specific wake up time. Only then can we get Rian into school by 8:45am. To meet this time, everything else has to fall into place, starting with his sleep the night before. Slowly, we moved Rian's bedtime from before-school days 10pm to the current 8:45pm. He falls asleep by 9 on most days.

To do this, we need to start his night milk at 8:15pm on week nights, and follow it with a rigid sleep routine. Even a single day slip in skipping his brushing results in major battles the next day. If there's even a single battle in the morning, Rian remains cranky throughout and it carries over into his lunch, where he simply refuses to eat.

As long as we were feeding Rian ourselves, Rian was a healthy 65-75 percentile weight and height baby. In the last 9 months long winter, Rian has not gained even a single pound. He remains 32.2 pounds :-( He has grown 2 inches taller. With his school and pediatrician insisting that we let him feed himself, the quantity of food that goes into his tummy is decreasing daily. We've been trying this for 2 weeks now, and we're starting to feel Rian's bones now. We are still hoping he will come back to his regular meals, which weren't much in quantity to begin with, but double of what he's eating now. For now, the resolve is to stick to his schedule/routine and offer him regular good choices.