Chit Chat with Jenicca Contd..............

Ulsoor lake

Jenicca has grown now in 2 month's time and likes to talk a lot and picks up fast. She remembers the house ,the Block layout and remembers to ask for Rukmini aunty as soon as we reach the security cabin .

 She says a lot of English, Hindi and Gujarati  nursery rhymes ,in her mazhalai, not with  clear pronunciation. She cannot pronounce 'la,' 'ra ',ta'.

Last time when she came she was finding it difficult to say my name and now she is clear of it and says nicely with proper pronunciation. 

To make her pronounce mosquito, it was split in syllables as mos- ki-to and bingo she could say from machiko to mosquito .

TTD Temple at Malleshwaram.

She has picked up a lot of English words like hair wash, hair comb, 'thachi' time,  doctor check up, what's this, and she herself answers this is chikku's, mama's etc.

She can identify shapes like circle, triangle, square, oval ,crescent, rectangle,pentagon hexagon and also colors apart from the primary violet, pink, light shades.Earlier she could not identify white ones now she is clear of it.

While helping her out to write something on the slate, I introduced sleeping and standing lines instead of saying them as straight lines and for the strokes it's up and down or left to right. This is how they are taught in nursery to learn to draw the lines.

She can say the Tamil rhyme Aroru thalai mela aattukutti meyudaam kandava, kettava sollaadeengo' it's a game where something is placed on one's head  [the one is mostly a child ]and the same person has to find it and take it out .

The meaning is a goat's  kid is grazing on someone's head and those who have seen it heard others saying it should not reveal  about it.

She enjoys walking on the road freely talking about what comes to her mind , it could be what she sees or from her memory, once she started talking about her trip to the zoo with her relatives.

You ask her to dance, she would do so in circles as she was exposed to 'garba' dance .If she is in a good mood , she would come charging at me and sink her face in between my legs and say 'Zoom'. Anjana says that she loves me and likes to play with me. She will shower me with a lot of kisses 'vaali' on my cheeks, face forehead and lips. She loves to be pampered and attended with love.

She loves dancing, playing with the cooking set, preparing watermelon juice, khichdi, applying butter and jam on bread slices to make sandwich. She loves to play with her Cooking set,she has two sets and loves to make dosa, apply  Amul butter and  Kissan jam to the bread slices, make khichdi in the cooker, vada in pan, makes watermelon juice and serves the juice glass  on a plate and says,' please take water melon juice.',when asked how is the juice, she says, 'super'.
 

 She picked up a lot of sentences in English like,' I want to sit here, go there, to go to park, computer abcd, don't go anywhere, don't leave me and go, I go to park, I want to sleep, excuse me, all the best, sleep tight, sweet dreams, happy wedding anniversary, can sing the Happy birthday song fully, wait, I am coming.... where are you going, what is this, no., not again... 'patti please give me this'... or names them, 'patti I nayine  Dettol soap', I am Dettol soap bath   [ bath] where is mami',  etc.

She loves Anoushka , her new born cousin, though she had difficulty in saying the name as anushka, she would often say anuksa, and later corrected it.

To get her into the habit of washing hands, Anjan has trained her to count up to 'twenty or sing the happy birthday song' or she sings dhobi aaya.. so that by the time she finishes the song she can wash off the soap. She has learnt to count one to twenty in Hindi also.


She has found out that while speaking in English, if she doesn't know the apt word in English she substitutes it with either Gujarati or Hindi or Tamizh word and it looks so funny but we need to appreciate her talent.

I play with her baby elephant and mother elephant, I crawl on all all fours and take her  under me and as  I keep moving she also moves like a baby elephant. I jump like a frog and rabbit she also does the same. 

 She loves to say in Tamizh, dosa venduduthha.... vegalai,,, [whether dosa is cooked or not]and venduduthu for cooked. She has picked up Tamizh words like iru, vaa, odivaa, odivaa, inga vaa, enge pore, utkaan [ can't say 'ra'] poyitaa, poren, podu, kudi thanni, vaayi, kannu, kaalu, etc, she says, 'paatti ,jenicca ,katti thaachhi'

Some of the pictures are the kittens and the  dogs she normally sees in the campus. She loved the kittens playing hide and seek!

Once she picked up the word,'shut up' and I told her to say,' I will not say shut up' she was going on saying later when she forgot she said, I will not shut up boluchu'', I burst into laughter coz, she knows 'bolu chu' is for 'say'. 

Once I told her to apply cream on the slices and she immediately responded by saying that, cream is applied on legs , it was my fault I should have made it clear to her that it's milk cream. She knows that cream is for applying.

 
She has learnt to 'Om Jai jagadeeshagare .... the Bhajan  song ,the first four lines as I used to sing when she comes and joins me while doing pooja.


It was my dream come true for me, always whenever I prayed to God for grand kids, I made it a point to imagine them sitting with me and doing abhishekam to the small idols that we have and when I prayed for Santaanams for my daughter and son, I would hold a baby in my hand and Pray.. She would wait patiently and do the pooja with me sing and offer flowers and in the end would show her palm and ask for 'prashad' that is the 'diamond sugar'.You can make her eat anything by saying it's 'prashad'. 

She has found out that while speaking in English, if she doesn't know the apt word in English she substitutes it with either Gujarati or Hindi or Tamizh word and it looks so funny but we need to appreciate her talent.


I only taught her to knock and ask for permission by saying, 'May I come in,' and many times I just kept forgetting it and as soon as I entered she would say it for me, ''Patti, may I come in? '' It seems she insists everyone to ask her permission at Baroda.  

Every day she brushes her teeth by standing on the small plastic stool and almost after a fortnight she started opening the tap on her own to wash her hands, rinse her mouth. Sometimes she says out of anger she won't was her mouth for that she is told that bacterias and germs would eat her teeth, so after cooling down she would mention this and wash her mouth fearing the germs.

 It was so funny Revathi used to come wearing jeans and tee shirt, once she came wearing a salwar suit, chikku did not go to her as she could not recognize her in salwar.. in spite of Revathi conversing to her in Gujarati.. it took sometime to go to her..

Anjana told me that even in Baroda once Dipen went and had a hair cut after months and also shaved off his stubs Chikku neither recognized him nor went to him , it took so much of reassurance from Dipen and finally in the night she played with him. I think she fixes up a mind impression of people and too early for her to come to terms with changes.

I remember when Arjun was two and half years old, when I went to deliver Anjana, one of my cousins, Suresh  [due to his height] was temporarily made to step into the role of appa for Arjun. All the time he was shown as appa, and all of a sudden after my delivery nearly a  week later, when the real appa came and said  'hi' to him he was spell bound and with his gaping mouth was looking at him in awe and this worried my husband thinking that Arjun has lost his speech!

To scare her we always would call Alex, and bark like him , and she would keep quiet, sometimes she would say, 'don't call Alex, chikoo good girl, mum mum kaaliye'

 At night she keeps telling me' patti, don't make noise, chikku is sleeping,' as soon as she sees me in her room.  ..


Once Arjun barked like Alex and told her that he would call him ,and after she finished eating, she just knocked at his room and told him not to call Alex, since Arjun did not hear her, he opened the door and asked her, immediately ,she softened her voice and told him in a clear voice, 'mama, don't call Alex, chikku had eaten mum mum ' we were taken by surprise at her adult way of handling.


Whenever she answers the phone the first thing she says , 'hu... Bangore me chu.... 'and all the planes that fly over ,go  from Bangore to Boston or Baroda [ Boston coz Arjun went for 15 days when she was here]

She loves ghee, after her quota, if we say , 'no more ghee, ghee katam' immediately she would say, 'thatha, ghee katam shopping ma thi le aavo' and she would add to her list badam ,chana, goode  [jaggery ]and ghee pan.....




If she can't open a bottle or something which needs strength, she would automatically go to thatha and ask him to open, we do not know how  she knew this..

All  I need to do divert her attention is to take the doll named Anoushka and start talking to her saying, 'come Anoushka, Patti will play with you cooking set, hockey, bat ball, ' she would come running and take the doll from me and would say, 'chikku would play with Anoushka..' No one should take her Anoushka.

She loves to give me company in the kitchen and would say, 'paati, I want to sit here' and show the platform, after sitting there or on the rice tin, she would ask umpteen questions watching me do something and would like to know what I am doing and later would start saying all the nursery rhymes on her own.

She loves to play with people who come down to her level and play , in that way she prefers her grand aunt Lily as she also has two grand daughters of 7 5 years has a lot of experience. Chikku does not like men folk esp if they have mustache , she keeps asking, 'uncle gaye'?

 She loves dogs and there are plenty in NGV, everyday she would identify and say the names of them, loves to touch them and comes home to report to members in the house. Pugs: Oscar, Minto, Nano, Brownie. Labrador, and golden retriever: Melon, Peepo, Zimbo, Jasper, Ganesh, Sunny, Pinky, Brownie, Plinto [pup] Rikky, Lika, Cyber, - Alsatians, sam is dachshund, leo, spike, ruby fashion are Pomeranians.She loves to play with people who come down to her level and play , in that way she prefers her grand aunt Lily as she also has two grand daughters of 7 5 years has a lot of experience. Chikku does not like men folk esp if they have mustache , she keeps asking, 'uncle gaye'?

She likes to play for herself once she finishes her lunch or dinner or after nap banana. She takes Anoushka the doll , the elephant , teddy soft toys and makes them sit in line and plays train.. She makes a bed for Anoushka the doll, wraps her on a sheet, puts her to sleep imitating what all we say to make her sleep by threatening her that she would call Alex, and would not sing om sai namo namaha etc.. She sings four lines of this song.

She wants me to play atleast ten times doctor check up.. if  she does not have anything to do. I take  mobile ear phones and use them as stethoscope  and make her breathe in , deep breath etc and examine her chest, back , mouth, nose eyes and finally the pulse, by counting upto sixty..She won't even allow me to do all she wants is injection!

I call the nurse and give her injection by rubbing her arm and she smiles , and asks for chocolate?I give her and demand fee, she gives me either one rupee, or three rupees.

Her doctor would dive her chocolates at the time of her visits and she follows it. The good thing is she does not know that chocolate is for eating! she likes the sound of the wrapper.

 After sitting on a sofa, she sits on my  shin and i keep moving my leg up and down like an elephant , after her safari, she has to feed me with banana, coconut and jaggery, in this way she would know what an elephant eats , and later I ask for money , in return, i bless her on her head and spray water with my  palm. [ like trunk ]

When I take her out to buy or go for a walk, she wants her 'motu purse' and transfers coins from my purse to hers, and some times I used to wonder how the changes disappeared, this I came to know once when I saw her transferring, poor girl she does not know the value of paper currency all she is fascinated is the tingling sound of the coins! 

When we play hide and seek, after counting when I ask her 'ready' she says 'ready' and as I keep looking for her saying to myself where is chikku, she would blurt out 'behind the door', but to surprise her, I would go to all the rooms and finally come to her and say 'thappo',on her turn she would come and see in the same place. She likes to hide behind the window curtain.

She is a bundle of energy wrapped in her body and never tires unless she wants me to massage her legs!

 She was attending a 'mother toddler' school for activities for small kids below 2 yrs along with her mother, She is used to be with her mom in school, now she has to be without her in background. Prayaan has moulded her a lot and she has atleast tried to come out of her shell, started mingling with like aged kids. This school was a good beginning for her.

Very soon she would be going to a play school from 'Prayaan' to 'Learning Tree' in Baroda, I wish her and pray that she enjoys her play school as she enjoys with us! God Bless her!