Like Duck To Water: September 2009

Its been 2 months since the fair came and went and I still haven't written about it. Oh well, better sometime than postpone it again and again :-p. This is not the first time the Bluegrass fair is coming to town. Its been there for a long time and we have been there every year. Somehow all this time I never really felt like writing about it. One reason maybe that compared to the amusement parks we have been to, this fair is pretty small and the rides are also not that grand ;-). The last 4 years that we've been there, we have hardly ridden any rides. Yet this year's visit unknowingly turned out to be pretty special, you can guess why :).

We didn't know whether Snugli would enjoy the fair or if so, for how long, so we thought it'd be better to tackle it once she was fed and rested (:-D), so we went there after 4 PM. The fair is actually very close to our house (practically in the backyard :-p), but unfortunately, the road is round-about. But got there pretty quick.

One of the first things we did was to put Snugli on the Merry-go-around..

Next we headed to the giant wheel or the Ferris wheel as it is called here..

Snugli enjoyed the ride and loved looking at things from that height.

Once that was done, I wanted to take her on a small roller coaster that was there, but Sri was afraid that she might be scared.

I pestered him till he gave in ;-) and took her on it - its the caterpillar.

She absolutely loved it! The first round, I held her, but later I let her enjoy it by herself. She really liked the downs and her expression was as if she was on a swing ;-). When the caterpillar stopped, she made a fuss and actually refused to get down!! Hehehee :)).

From then on we enjoyed the thrills of a typical fair, the roaming around, the eating junk - boiled corn, softies (they are called cone swirls here) and funnel cake (this is like a big jalebi, only the floor-made swirl is not dipped into sugar syrup here, instead its covered with powdered sugar ;-) - here is a picture).

Usually the fair has some shows (in the earlier ones, we once saw a bird show - eagles doing the owner's bidding, etc and a cannonball show in which a person is fired from a cannon), but there weren't any setup on that day. But there was something new - a petting zoo. And I've told you several times about how Snugli loves animals. We went into a shed like place where she touched (more like grabbed-and-tried-to-lift :-p) sheep, goats, lambs, rabbits and a horse. But sadly since they were minting money taking photos, we weren't allowed to take any. But later we went into this barn where they had cows and we got to take this one :).

We roamed for some more time talking about how it'll all be next year, when Snugli would probably be able to enjoy the rides on her own (there were more than 10 rides just for kids, but not age/height appropriate for Snugli). And I'm sure it'll be lots more fun for her and a whole new trouble for us :-D. Anyways soon we said bye to the fair and headed back home. We did want to go another day, but simply couldn't make it before the fair shutdown for the year..

Hmm, anyways thats it about the fair. But thats not it about Snugli. So many things have been happening that I thought that I'd include a Snugli update in this post itself :). Well, its my blog ;-). I don't even know where to start..

1) Her vocabulary is growing leaps and bounds. Its simply amazing to see her brain process things and her speaking words she simply didn't even know till the earlier day! She can say so many words these days that I can't even count. She also started to string 2 words together - she says "Dood maani" (Good Morning), "Appy budday" (Happy birthday), "Yech papa" (Yes papa in the Johnny Johnny poem), No papa etc. Yesterday she actually strung 3 words - she said "Amma mammu khaali" (Mom's food is over) when she saw my empty lunch plate! Moreover, she understands most of the things we say (me in Kannada and Sri in Telugu), but its another story whether she obeys or not ;-) :-D. I have to concede that she obeys for 75% of the time :)).

2) Sometimes its difficult to understand her. As parents we are able to differentiate between the empty blabber and the actual words and translate it to our kith and kin, but sometimes some words stump us too. We have to make her point and somehow figure out the context and then in turn figure out the word. Recently I bought a Legos Duplo set for her (it has bigger blocks and right now she's only into putting the blocks in and out of the box rather than play with them, anyways) and she started referring to the box as "Chakki dabba". We understood the dubba (means box) part, obviously, but not the chakki part. I hardly give her chocolates so it certainly didn't mean chaaki. We pondered over it for 2 days, until Sri finally realized what she was talking about. During Janmastami I had made Chaklis, put them in a big box, kept them on the dining table and we told her that it was "Chakli dabba" :-D, hehehehe. Now we are trying to correct her to refer to the Legos box as "Lego dabba", but its still chakki dabba :-D.

3) Trust a 1.5 year old to destroy something you viewed as indestructible. A few days ago, Snugli erased all the data from my digital diary. I thought the "Delete all" functionality was complicated and very (over)confidently handed the diary to her many times for her to play with it. The fault is mine. I guess the probability of 3 keys being pressed in a sequence out of 100-odd keys by a 1.5 year old is not so low after all :-\.

4) Its strange how things change from one day to another. Till about sometime back, Snugli absolutely loved the slide and started to climb/slide on her own. One day suddenly it all changed and she was petrified to slide down. She'd climb the steps on the slide, but refuse to slide down! And she didn't really fall or anything. Its a sudden fear of heights that too only for the slide (she climbs down stairs at home without any fuss). I was simultaneously amazed and frustrated (its a new instinct generated in her, but its like a taking a step back for us) :-p. Well, now I have to sing songs and somehow distract her when she's sliding down and it usually works :-D.

5) A new thing we have introduced her to is drawing. As you can very correctly guess, the drawing is more on doors, chairs and tables than on a book. Thankfully I've gotten washable crayons, yet don't know how the washable part of it will work on walls and the carpet (she somehow has missed "drawing" on them so far). Also, I'm extremely proud to announce that one of the crayons has narrowly escaped from being swallowed by the little one, though unfortunately it did lose its tail to a bite from those powerful teeth :-D.

6) Another thing I've introduced her to is a show called Teletubbies (it used to come in Doordarshan earlier, don't know whether it still does - its that 4 different coloured alien like creatures doing all sort of things - I used to simply hate it earlier :-p). One of my friends told me that its targeted towards toddlers and that her boy enjoyed it, so I thought I'll give it a try. Well, it didn't work for a long time, she used to watch for 5 min then run away. Recently she's become very interested. She loves watching the thing - says 3/4th of the words from the title song, jumps when they jump and imitates them in a lot of ways. Whenever she wants me to put the DVD on, she says "Teli Tubby" (she doesn't get the wish fulfilled all the time ;-) :-D) She also says "lala" and "Po" (names of the characters), "Thump" (Jump), "Appai" (Up high) and dances to the songs. The video I have has a song called "Head shoulders knees and toes" in which they point to various parts of the body and she imitates that :-D. Its kind of fun to see her do all that but I'm also worried it may become an obsession (the worry started when she cried "Teli tubby" in her sleep yesterday :-D). Oh well, bring it on :-D.

7) On the PT side, things have improved a bit. She almost always poops in the potty now and sometimes says "Potty pee" when she wants to pee or when she wants her diaper changed. Not everytime, mind you, but its like once or twice in a day, and very rarely in the night too. We are really proud of her and ourselves for keeping at it. The awareness seems to be coming in and hopefully is in the right direction :).

Thats all I can think of right now. Will come back with more soon, I hope :).