Wake me up when September ends...

Well, I have woken up. I wasn't exactly asleep in real life - in fact, I have been suffering from lack of sleep. Too many things have been happening, and I am trying to digest everything! More on them when the time comes. Many things have been happening on the work front, due to which the time I get to blog has gone down a lot.

Anyway, on to Puttachi matters. She turned sixteen months old about ten days ago.

If there is one thing she is, she is a perfectionist. I have always been the take-it-easy kind of person. As a result, I was hounded first by my mom and now by S~, and now it looks like I have to answer to my daughter. There is no escape. :(

If she takes things from one place, more often than not, she returns them to the same place. When she is eating, even if a tiny bit of food spills anywhere other than on her bib - on the high chair, on her leg, on her dress or on the floor, she insists that it be cleaned before she continues. If I want her to eat the rest of the food, I just have to clean it. I think I should be glad that she doesn't mind food falling on her bib. If she did, I would have needed a hundred bibs for each meal.

Then there was this time I was mixing her food, and she was dancing around me, impatient. "After this, let's add some ghee..." I said, and then realized that I hadn't kept the ghee ready. I looked back to see Puttachi go to the ghee, pick it up carefully in both hands and bring it to me. I added the ghee and kept it aside and continued mixing the food - and then I realized that Puttachi had closed the lid of the ghee container, and was taking it back carefully to its place! Phew!

Even in the middle of the night, she remains a perfectionist. She sometimes wakes up because of thirst, and I give her water from a steel container with a screw-on lid. As soon as she is done drinking the water, she points to the lid, and doesn't go back to sleep until I put the lid back on. And this when she is so sleepy that she cannot even keep her eyes open.

When we go out, if I take out something from her bag, like a handkerchief to wipe her nose, and if I delay putting it back into the bag, she starts dancing around impatiently until I put it back inside. Then there was this time when we were about to go to the park. I took the key, went to the door, and then placed the key on a chair, and bent down to slip her shoes on her feet. After I was done, I got up and took my bag. I had forgotten about the key. Little Miss Perfect goes directly to the key, picks it up and goes to the door, and holds out the key to me. What will I do without her? :)

She also likes being entrusted with work. She assumes a very busy air and a look of responsibility appears on her face, and she sets about the work with great seriousness.

She now speaks in little sentences, most of which can be understood only by me. Sometimes, she tries to tell me something with great passion, and I try my mightiest to understand - when I finally do, the poor little thing becomes so happy, that she laughes loud and claps her hands with delight.

When she learns a new skill, she knows that she is doing something momentous. Like today, she drank water from a steel tumbler all by herself without spilling a drop - and she was so excited that she wanted to go on drinking water!

She remains very friendly, and I don't know if all kids are like that, but from her behaviour with other children, especially in the park, I feel that she is a really kind and considerate child. I hope I am right!

She loves to sing and she loves to dance, and she wants to watch this a thousand times a day. She absolutely loves books (yay!) and sometimes, I have to literally drag her and lure her away from her books to go to the park. But once she gets to the park, it takes all I have to drag her back!