Eleven Months

I call my eleven-month-old Puttachi a baby and something seems wrong. She is hardly a baby any longer. She is a walking, communicating, interactive little girl. Where is my baby, I wonder, until something upsets her and she comes crying and clings to me. Ah, here she is.

But, more than a baby, she is -

My Buddy - We sing together, we jig together. We walk hand in hand, tickle one another, even feed one another (When I am feeding her a meal, she feeds me the morsels that have falle on her bib). We play ring-a-ring o'roses. I tell her stories, and we read books and play together. She talks to me, and understands what I tell her. She is my buddy!

Communicator - Overnight, she has become extremely communicative. It was as if, all these days, she had been watching, observing, listening, and storing everything in her head. And then suddenly one day she wakes up and says, "Ok, lemme show 'em what I know", and turned into another involved member of the family. The change has been really overwhelming.

There are things I have taught her, and I know she knows that. But there are some things I have no idea she knows, and this is where she surprises me with her vocabulary and her knowledge of things. The other day I heard her say, 'Taats'. I turned round to see her holding her socks in her hand. She repeated, 'Taats." She then held it out to me and said, 'Ta-ta". She was showing me her socks and saying, come on, put it on me, let's go Ta-ta! (btw, anything worn on the feet is Taats.)

When we visited my parents, she went to my mom, pulled her to the kitchen, asked to be carried, and then she pointed towards the sugar box and demanded, "Ajji, Ta-kke!" (Sakkare for Sugar). We have no idea when she registered where the sugar box was. Then there was this other time when she suddenly stopped playing, came to me, asked to be carried, and then she yawned, rubbed her eyes, put her head on my shoulder, and said, 'Taachi', telling me that she was sleepy.

Her favourite book has a cheetah on the cover. When she wants it, she says "Ti-ta-te" (Chirate in Kannada for Cheetah) and looks around for it. When she has lost something, or when someone goes out of the room, she chants, "Elli? Elli?" (Where?) and goes loking for it/him/her. She brings her toys to me one by one, and says Ta-tu (thank you) herself, when I accept them.

And then there was this time when I was singing a song, and I paused, and she completed it in her baby language. Not in tune, no intelligible words, but enough for me to realize that she was completing the song. And this with a sway of her head and a sparkle of her delighted twinkling eyes.

I could go on and on, but I am sure you are already bored now. It is just that I cannot get over the fact that yesterday this kid stared at me, apparently blankly, while I talked to her, while all the while she had been storing things in her little head to surprise me with.

Observer - I had left my mobile within her reach. She picked it up, and I called from across the room, "No, Puttachi, put that down. You use it only to call somebody. Whom will you call? Papange phone madthiya? (Will you call PapA?) She smiled, and put the phone to her ear. And I fainted. She puts her teddy bear that is almost her size, down on her lap, pats it (rather beats the hell out of it), and says, "Te-tte Taachi" (Teddy Sleep) thinking she is putting it to bed. Then there was this time I was down with a cold, and she saw me sneezing into my handkerchief. When I was seated, she brought a random piece of cloth to me, held it to my face, and said, "Shi! Shi!"

Climber - Her mantra in life is "I must climb." Steps, objects, people - must be climbed. If there is something higher than the level on which she is standing, she has to climb it. She raises her leg almost higher than herself and keeps it first on that level, and then makes all efforts to climb, in the process losing her balance too. But climb she must. I hope even metaphorically, she is a climber in life! Realistically, this is one habit of hers that has me scared stiff.

Acrobat/Gymnast - Her body is always twisting itself in the weirdest positions, and her hands and legs are flying all across the rooms. During her bath, she raises her leg higher than herself to put into the bucket of water. When she is asleep at night, she suddenly turns over, or somersaults, sits up and cries. My guess is that she can sleep through the night, and let us sleep to, if not for this strange habit of hers. When we put her back on her back and pat her a couple of times, she falls asleep without any fuss. Any ideas why she might be doing this, and how it can be solved? (She sleeps in a crib, attached to our bed).

Violent person - Not only is she extremely restless, she is also a very violent person. Her limbs fly in all directions, often hurting herself. There is one thing I am worried about. What if, when she and I are alone, she lashes out and knocks me unconscious?

Protester - All these days, if she wanted a forbidden object and screamed for it, a minor distraction would be enough to draw her attention away from it. But now, she remembers. She enjoys the distraction, but then goes back to what she wanted in the first place, and looks for it. If she doesn't find it, we are done for. And previously, she just would scream in frustration when being changed, or fed medicine, etc. Now, she protests. Loudly and violently.

Imitator - When she sees anyone do something or say something, she imitates it immediately.

Strange kid - I read in books that babies this age point at objects when asked where a certain object is.. This kid points either with her foot, or with her head, or with her mouth (by licking the object in question). Only very recently has she started pointing with her finger.

She has been sick for a while, and she has become extremely clingy. She wants no one but me. When she is feeling particularly low, she screams until I carry her, buries her head in my shoulder and then calms down. I am writing this specially because when, a few years down the line, she will be ashamed to be seen with me in public, I can read this and comfort myself with the memory that there were such times too!