Two and a Half

For all of you who complained that I don't give you enough Puttachi updates:

At 2.5 years, Puttachi is great fun. For one, living with her is like being in a musical. She sings all day long - mostly twisting songs, substituting words to suit the current situation. In effect, she sings parodies all day and laughs at her own jokes. She is constantly clowning around, and jumping around

She has learned this annoying habit of whining when things don't go her way. The only way I can get her to stop it is to pretend that I cannot make out anything she is saying when she is whining. Then, she puts on this artificial smile and asks me "nicely".

Another worrisome habit is that she is sticking to me a lot, protesting hotly when I am not around. I think it is just habit more than real unease.

She loves doing jigsaw puzzles. She did 4-6 pieces with ease, and I thought she was ready to move to bigger puzzles. But they didn't seem to interest her. Just then, S~'s nephew's Disney 24-piece jigsaw puzzle came down to her - and this one has giant pieces. And Puttachi could do it, with a little help at first. She can sit with it all day, making it, breaking it. So I realized that at this age, giant pieces are better.

Puttachi also loves alphabets. More than a year ago, S~ bought refrigerator alphabet magnets - when each alphabet is fitted into a slot on the main piece, it sings out the name of the alphabet, and the sound it makes. Since that was always on the refrigerator, she played with it often. Without our even realizing it, Puttachi started recognizing a few alphabets, and nearly six months ago, made me fall off her chair by recognizing A, B, O and V in the newspaper. She then discovered that my laptop has alphabet keys, and I let her carefully tap the keys and see the results on the monitor. I made her type her name a few times, and voila, she started recognizing all those letters. Now, any printed material she gets, she tries and picks out the letters of her name from it. It is great fun to watch her - and a pleasant surprise too, because it came about by itself.

She loves to play with clay, and she loves books. Oh, and yes, I hadn't been speaking to her much in English before this, but after she started going to the Montessori and picking up English, I have started telling her stories in both English and Kannada, one after the other. I read a sentence in my mind, tell it to her in Kannada, and then read it in English, stopping to explain one word or the other. She is now picking up English so quickly that it surprises me. She supplies the English words for Kannada words without my asking her, and any thing she hears, or any English rhyme that she learns, she comes to me and asks me to explain it to her.

A mandatory visit to the park every evening helps in satisfying her urge to run around, (and my urge to be around people) - and both of us come back happy.

This age, I have realized, is one where they are tremendously curious, and eager to learn. And the more we stimulate them, the happier they are!