Sit and stand

Been long, since we blogged about Sriram. Not because he has stopped being playful, but because he is so playful, we hardly get time to write something.

Now he is a year old, and we felt, high time we started teaching him few actions like pointing to parts of body or he understand what we ask him to do. Nisha(Subhashree) embarked upon teaching Sriram to point to head, ear, stomach. She also taught him the words to mean stand up or sit down. He picked up clapping hands from me.

The routine sequence would go like this:

(well, we talk kannada to Sriram, but our kannada is a bit slangish from kannada terms, and is more a tamilish version of kannada; he is already exposed language pollution)

Me/Nisha – "Sriram, thalai elli?"
(where is the head?)

Sriram points to his head

"Sriram, kimi elli?"
(where is the ear?)
Sriram points to his ear

"Sriram, kaal elli?"
(where is the leg?)
Sriram points to his legs

"Sriram, thoppai elli?"
{where is the stomach?)
Sriram points to his stomach

"Sriram, yedha yedha maadu…"
(Do "stand up")
Sriram stands up

"Sriram, okkachi"
(Sit down)
Sriram sits down.

When Sriram generally cries over something, we use this as a diversion tactic as well. He stops crying and does this, and normally forgets why he cried in first place.

Sriram gets picky about eating…he will turn round and round, turn his head away, try to run away, and we still manage to hold his head and put the food in his mouth. He will cry…we pacify him with some diversion – game/toy/TV/rhyme (yes I am relearning many of my nursery school rhymes)/routine sequence as mentioned above…

On this particular day, he was crying as usual. I was trying to feed him. Ok, diversion time. I asked him "Sriram, thalai elli?" He stopped crying, shot a look at me, as though quizzing "so, is this what you want from me?" and without me having to ask rest of questions, he pointed to his head, ear, leg, stomach. He stood up, he sat down. And resumed crying again.

Sriram - oru siru kurippu

Sriram is growing more confident about standing up and walking on his own. He manages five or six steps without any support. He is clever enough not to fall down when he loses balance, he simply bends down and catches the ground for support. These days he tries to imitate Guru or me a lot. He keeps watching me when I comb my hair and takes the comb to do his hair. I give him his comb and he correctly places the brush part on his head and does a sweeping motion. He likes to eat what we eat. He’d always be interested in what I bring in my plate or Guru’s plate. If we are eating, he has to taste it. But if we give him tomato sauce he’ll just run away and we can eat in peace. Likewise he wore my neck chain. I don’t know when he saw me wearing it or how I wore it, but he was wearing it in his neck. Most of the times, he just amazes me with his or for that matter babies learning skills in general.

Guru taught him how to clap with his hands. I’d been trying to get him to clap for sometime now. He’d simply laugh and crawl away whenever I asked him to clap. Couple of days back, he learnt how to clap. He was so funny in the beginning. First time he missed hitting his left palm with his right. From then on, he kept staring at his left palm, frowning with concentration, and slapped the right palm on top of the left.

These days he likes to play on his own for sometime during the day. He keeps playing with the TV remote control for hours together. First he’d remove the batteries and try to fix them back. Obviously, he’d not be able to put the batteries back, but he’d keep trying. Sometimes he plays over an hour just with the remote control. I’m just amazed at how the babies can have such patience and perseverance.

He’s such a cheeky little fellow. He’d do all the mischief and give me an ear-to-ear grin. I don’t get much choice but to grin back, no matter how seriously I want to scold him for his mischief. He’s such a dear boy. I’m so proud of him.