Tid-bits from the past month

Anirudh has been after my case for losing weight since the past few months. And now he even cracks jokes on me relating to my weight and my paunch. Here are two anecdotes as a proof -

There were two cars parked next to each other in front of the relatives house we were visiting. I looked at both sides of the cars trying to see which side should I use to go inside the house as Nishka was in my arms.

Looking at my dilemma Anirudh says "Aap to kahin se bhi fit nahi aayogi!" (You will not fit from either of the sides) and ran away laughing leaving me fuming.

Another incident was when one day I was lying in a posture that was making my tummy/belly protrude quite a bit. So he comes and starts caressing and talking to it as if there is a baby inside still. I actually spanked him for that :)

He is becoming such a tease these days..uff!!

Coming to Nishka, she has been walking quite comfortably since a few days past her birthday. And she is loving it so much that if she is awake, you will see her walking around the whole house all the time. It does get a bit tiring keeping an eye on her lest she gets herself in trouble.

One funny thing is that when she has to get in or get out of the kitchen, she crawls out instead of walking. And this is because the kitchen floor is about half an inch lower than the rest of the floor outside it. And we all laugh as if she is climbing down/up a big step :)

She is also completely comfortable drinking milk from glass. Its been more than a month since we weaned off the bottle and minus the initial hiccups in the first week, it has been a smooth sailing.

Its really fun watching her talk. The expressions on her face, the movement of hands, the intonations...everything is just so precious. Both me and hubby feel that she is going to be a big chatterbox.

Recently I started singing few nursery rhymes with her and she has picked up some words and actions for each of them. So when I sing the "Johhny Johnny! Yes Papa!" rhyme, she will say "Ha! hah!" after the lines "Open your mouth..."

She makes twinkling action using her fingers when we sing "Twinkle twinkle little star..." and even says "Up" after we've sung the line "How I wonder what you are..".

She loves to sing "Eeya eeya o" from the rhyme "Old McDonald's had a farm.."

But for all this she has to be in the mood. Coz if she isn't, how much you coax her she just won't say all these stuff.

Some of the other stuff she has learnt is kissing. Or shall I call it licking? :D The reason being whenever I ask her to give puchha or pyari kar do, she licks us :D

She has also learnt to do flying kiss. But its a little messy flying kiss because she kind of blows out her drool along with the kiss. Anirudh especially runs away whenever she does that as he finds it really 'ewww'.

I'm trying to introduce her to veggies in her food these days. I had been making her khichdi with carrot, lauki and green beans for sometime now. Also introduced her to palak and methi paranthas besides the aloo ones now that its the season for fresh methi and palak. One day made her taste soya nuggets and she ate that too with interest.

Cheerios has been her favourite snack for a long time now but recently I gave her wheat coconut cookies from a bakery nearby and she enjoys eating those too on her own.

But despite adding more of home-cooked fresh and nutritious stuff, she still is loosing the baby chubbiness that she used to have. I guess its because of her being too active and walking around a lot. There are times I wonder if she ever gets tired with the amount of walking she does.

A picture post

Sep 8: Bhaiyyu saath masti

Sep 8: "Mujhse panga mat lena!"

 

Sep 8: Bhaiyyu saath piggy back ride

Sep 9: Counting fingers

Sep 9: "Aise count karte hain!" 

 

Sep 9: Wrestling in progress

She has to have whatever you are drinking/eating.

Sep 16: "My happy babies!"

Sep 23: Pouting and crying because Bhaiyyu scolded her.

Sep 24: Sweetie pie

Sep 29: Enjoying sitting on the terrace at 6 AM.

Sep 30: Birthday girl

Sep 30: Nishku-Nanu

Growing up really fast

There are so many different things that I have to write down here about Nishka and Anirudh since the last time I wrote. Nishka continues to amaze us with the new things she is learning. She is super active and wants to do everything that any of us is doing.

Her talking has improved a lot lately. Some of the words she says clearly are - Dadi, Daddy, Mumma, Chiya,  Nana and Daada. She tries to imitate the words we say and some words she is able to say exactly. But after saying them for a couple of times, she just refuses to repeat them again however much we try. For e.g. she said "good girl" for two whole days but however hard I tried later she ust wouldn't even utter it. Same happened with "Chalo", "Betu" and few other words. Some of the words she says sound similar to the original word. For e.g. diaper she says as 'dapa'.

I had been playing a game with her where I count her fingers and say one-two-three-four-five. And now whenever I start counting, the moment I have said the word "two" she says "thee" or "tee" and feels so happy after saying it. When we earlier used to ask her "Nishka kitnee badi?" she would just raise her hands over her head. But these days whenever we ask her the same question, she raises her hands and simultaneously says "ittee". Its just too adorable to watch her do that.

She walks more confidently now even though she falls down after 7-8 steps. I think she tries to walk too fast and that is why she falls. If she tries to walk a little slowly am sure she will be able to walk longer distance and not fall down.

She conveys what she wants to by making different sounds, whining or by other actions. For e.g. she is playing with Anirudh and I pick her up she would immediately push me back and start whining and I can understand she wants to go back to Anirudh and the moment I put her back, she is happy and playful again.

Other day she was making a lot of noise when I was trying to get Betu finish his homework. Since Anirudh was not able to focus, Anurag called out to Nishka and then put his fingers on his lips to shush her up. She looked at Anurag, immediately put her finger on her lips and shushed Anurag back. Me and Anirudh both just rolled over laughing looking at this. And I told Anurag that he has a tough road ahead :)

At the same time since about a month she has developed greater affinity with Anurag. She calls out to him, wants to go to him and showers him with her hugs and her trademark sunshine smiles. Its so precious to see both of them together playing and laughing and just being together.

But nothing beats the love/fondness she has for Anirudh. He wrestles with her, twists her, hangs her from her feet and she loves it while I get so damn scared lest she gets hurt. And when I get very uncomfortable with this wild play of theirs' I ask Anirudh to stop. But she immediately comes back to Anirudh and starts jumping over him to start it again.

She is very fond of flipping pages in a book. Be it her books or Anirudhs or for that matter any magazine. Her hair after mundan have grown but we feel they are growing at a very slow rate. I like to put those cloth hairbands but she just doesn't let us put any. She just pulls them out within seconds. We really have to distract her to some other things so that we can at least click a picture.

Nishka turned one on Sep 30th and we had organised a party. She was clinging to me most of the times but was not cranky or fussy and was giving her sunshine smile to all as long as she was in my lap. She enjoyed walking all over holding my hand and playing with the balloons. For the first time she even enjoyed the bits of chocolate cake that Anirudh fed her after cutting her cake. She was so excited during the birthday celebrations that even though she was sleepy she wouldn't sleep. Seems like she also wanted to fully enjoy her birthday celebrations :)

I've been wanting to get her off the bottle since about two months. But after trying about 1.5 months back I just stopped trying. But a day before her birthday i.e. on Sep 29, I again tried giving her milk using a small silver tumbler. She did fuss a bit but eventually drank it. I did a silent victory dance as it was too soon and I didn't want to jinx it. Later in the day also she did fuss looking at the milk in the glass but drank it. And since then there has been no milk bottle for her but only glass. Its been 5 days today and she still continues to fuss the moment she sees the glass of milk in my hand but I say "Nishka is such a good girl." and start singing her favourite rhymes and she starts drinking the milk. She doesn't finish the milk in one go and we need to give her a break of 10 min for her to finish the milk completely. But I'm glad the way it is progressing and glad that she is off bottle now.

Yesterday was Nishka's first day at daycare all by herself as her home nanny, who used to accompany Nishka to the daycare, is not well. In the morning Anirudh was so very worried as to how will Nishka be all alone. He tried really hard requesting me to take off from work but as I was not agreeing he started crying. I had a tough time consoling him and telling him that it will be fine (even though I knew it may not go fine and was a little apprehensive myself). I told him that even he went on his own and it takes a few days and it will be just fine. But as expected Nishka cried a lot in the first half. Was slightly better in the later half and was clinging to the head of the daycare in charge. And once Anirudh reached there after school she was better. Today her papa will drop her there at noon and I'm hoping things will be better today than they were yesterday.

Things have been improving with Anirudh with respect to his behaviour/attitude. He has also been doing better at school and there have been lesser spelling mistakes be it in Hindi or in English. His scores in tests have also improved even though me and Anurag both know that he can do much better if he is given better attention. And we tell him so too.

Although he doesn't say it but there are days when he feels I'm not giving attention to him as much as he wants. It shows in his behaviour. Sometimes I feel he also doesn't know why he is behaving irritated but I've observed many times that the moment I try and spend time with him, he gets fine.

Earlier packing lunch for Anirudh was never difficult. I used to have so many options. But now whenever I give him options of what I can pack for him, he will just say no or wrinkle his nose. Oh God...he makes me go crazy!! He will always demand stuff which is not possible. He used to love uttapam and now he hates it. He used to love omelets, now he abhors it. He used to love palak paranthas and now they are yuck. Uff!! I hope its a phase. I really really hope.