Baa Baa bak bak ;-).

Snugli possssssssssssssssssssttttttttttttttttt :-D. Been a long time since I wrote a post about her. I actually thought that I'll let Snugster take over, but well, these days she yaps so much that I knew she'd be out of control, hehehee :)). Maybe some other time ;-). What are we waiting for?

• She talks and she talks. So much that I actually wonder whether about-to-be-2-years-old talk so much! She imitates just about anything we say - the other day Sri said something about logic and she immediately says "logic". She doesn't differentiate between simple and complicated words, tries to say everything! Its on one hand amazing, but irritating on the other - imagine somebody trying to imitate you when you are doing some serious talking :-D.


• Whats worse is that we have to watch our mouths all the time! I hardly ever use bad words, but one day I dropped a fragrance bottle in the bathroom (which shattered) and said "Oh sh**" and guess what, she repeated the word 4 times. I was mortified, hehehee :).


• Other times its like a continuous commentary. Sri and I have lunch after Snugli, so she usually is around us when we eat, commenting on everything we do. It goes something like this - "Amma anna, Naana anna. Amma saaru. Naana saaru. Amma Saaru mammu khaali. Amma Mosaru. Amma majjige" and so on (translation - "Mom rice. Dad rice. Mom rasam. Dad rasam. Mom rasam rice is done. mom curd. Mom buttermilk". Mind you, this is just a gist. Sometimes its wonderful, but there are times I am grateful that she is asleep when we have our dinner :-D. We don't really have to struggle to understand her as she says almost everything that needs to be said, but there are still times when we are stumped by some words :-D.


• And its not only that she talks - she understands most of the things she is talking about. She knows our names, my parents and in-laws names. She has some 5 books about fruits veggies etc and she recognizes 90% of the things in the books and relates them to real life. She listens to sounds of trains and planes and immediately recognizes them by name. If she hears/sees a baby cry, she says "baby oowaaaaaa" :-D. And sometimes it ends up surprising both of us. She suddenly brings up something that we might have casually referred to earlier - for example, during her bath, I keep referring to things so that she learns and whenever I soap her feet I tell her that I'll wash it immediately so that she doesn't slip or "jaaru" in the tub. One day I soaped her feet, but forgot to wash them off and she literally shouted "jaaru jaaru" at me :-D.


• She has all of her baby teeth now - so the total count is 20. Her 4 final molars haven't come in fully yet, so she still has some amount of irritation. But thankfully she isn't biting us/other things as much as she used to earlier. On the other hand, brushing her teeth is a pain ;-).


• She's a cleanliness freak! Not in the matter of cleaning up her toys though :-p. No food particle should fall on her high chair table and even if it does it must be cleaned immediately (or she'll protest until it is cleaned up :-p). Also she'll find some minute particles and bring it to us so that we can dispose of them - its literally as if she's mocking my cleaning skills :-D. One day she actually found a crawling worm and was afraid of it - kept pointing to it and running away from it :-D (these days I have some of my potted plants inside the house, so some bugs are common). But as I said, when it comes to her toys, she doesn't put them into her box even with pleading/scolding/whatever :-D. Doesn't find the big toy, but brings a small speck of a paper to us ;-).


• Some of the things she does are so funny. Whenever she doesn't recognize a sound she hears, she puts a finger on her chin, taps it and its as if she's wondering whats that ;-). Whenever things fall, or something happens that shouldn't she says "uh uh" (or Oh oh) and "Mmm Mmm" :-D. These 2 learnings are courtesy of her dad ;-) :-D. And when she says something complicated, we usually say "AmmO, you said that wow" and these days she says a complicated word and adds "AmmO" herself :)). Whenever she says no to anything I make it a point to ask her "Sure aa?" and these days, yes, she says "Beda." (meaning "I don't want it") and then reaffirms "No. Sure.", before I even think of asking her. Hehehehee :)). She's a constant source of fun :).


• And then there are other things which make us feel as if we are revisiting our childhoods in a whole new way :). She stomps her feet in the wet bathtub, splashes water from the bucket, absolutely adores bubbles and tries to hug me when she's totally wet (I don't know whether to enjoy it while it lasts or scold her :-D). Whenever we even mention going out, she says "Tata" and shouts at us until we take her out :-D. Even when we are in the car, she enjoys everything - "Birdie", "Chaama" (chandamaama - the moon), "Taak" (Truck), Car etc. Its something akin to seeing the world from her eyes and it feels so good to see her enjoy the simplest of things.


• I've also started to see a streak of independence in her these days. When I'm bathing her, she insists on pouring the first few mugs of water on herself. She insists on drinking water from the glass herself during mealtimes, though she still doesn't have full control of the same (usually takes her eyes of the glass and there goes the water :-p). These days she even wants to eat breakfast like chapathi/poori/bread - whatever can be eaten by hand herself and recently is insisting on even the eating-by-spoon items. So it kinda a double work for me - have to hold her hand holding the spoon and push it towards her mouth :-p. I'm not really finding it difficult to let go, I actually like the independence, but it usually ends up being tedious since I can finish the work much faster if I do it all on my own ;-).


• And finally her potty training (PT). As I said things were working out okay for us until we went on the North Hampshire/Massachusetts trip (I know, I know, I have to post on that). She surprised us on the trip by saying potty whenever she needed to go everywhere! In fact I think we took half a suitcase full of diapers and hardly used 1-2 diapers per day! It was so amazing that it was totally a letdown when we got back home. She stopped asking to go to potty completely. Imagine how disappointing that can be. These days, we are making sure we take her every hour or so and yes the diaper usage is wayy down. And she does ask to go to potty whenever we are away from home. Its like she's too distracted at home to do that. Well, just don't know what to do about it for now, we are just biding our time and hoping that she'll do it at home too :).

I can't stress enough how overwhelming her each stage of growing up is for us. Its wonderful seeing her become her own individual. I was recently holding a 3-month old and it seems like ages since Snugli was that age - so lightweight (I can't carry her for more than a few minutes these days :-D) and so still and quiet, hehehee :)). Obviously, its all worth it and more :).