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.