Sit, Stand, Crawl, Shout, Speak & Bite

When you write after a very long time, you tend to miss out some information inspite of your super duper memory power. That is what had happened with me. When I re-read my earlier “Vandhuttomla” posts, I realized that I haven’t covered a few updates. And here I am trying to cover up everything till date.

The way S mama’s “Cho chweet” provoked non-stop laughter in Chittu, the same thing happened for “ellam nee than”, “chill chill chill”, “oops…oops”, “Twaing…pishku” etc. But none of these lasted for more than a few hours. If you expect her to laugh the same way for any of these in a matter of 3 hours, she won’t. The charm for that phrase would be lost by then.  If she is holds onto something and starts chewing it up (like the power chord of laptop, clothes, S’s leather belt, unclean items, etc) and we lift her thinking that we are taking her away form it, the chaalu girl would tightly hold on to it and lifting her from that place wouldn’t serve the purpose. The talent of scanning the floor and “porukki pottufying” continues with increased fondness. S says, because she is closer to the floor, she is getting a zoomed view of those tiny objects. Door stoppers are her favourite and she loves pulling them up and pushing them down. One of us continuously assume the duty of overlooking her always so that she doesn’t eat anything from the floor or hurt herself with the doorstopper / getting hit in the centre table / chair. Chittu’s hair has grown a lot and she adornes a cute single Krishnar kudumi most of the times. She can now shout like anything at the top of her voice, we call it “adi thondaila irundhu katharadhu”. She does this frequently and ends up with dry cough. If she has set a target is moving towards it and we try to divert her in between with something else, she doesn’t pay attention to it and would cleverly bypass it. It is amazing and scary at the same time, that at this age, this girl knows what she wants to do!! Also off late, she shows signs of being stubborn and adamant – adam as we call it. When we stop her from doing something, she scolds us in her own language.

Apart from boiled rice kanji, Chittu has started taking Raagi kanji with milk & sugar, Boiled veggies (beans, potato, carrot, tomato with a tinge of salt, pepper, jeera powder and dhal) and Idly (with rasam / milk & sugar / dhal) Chittu’s 7^th month review got clubbed with the visit to doc for her fever / puking on June 2^nd. So I took her for 8^th month review on July 2^nd. We were supposed to start at 2.45 PM, but I had misplaced her health record and searched for it throughout the house only to find it in the usual place at 3.55. We rushed to the doctor’s clinic as she would leave by 4. Chittu’s weight gain was not as expected. She is underweight. Her weight at 7 months = What was expected at the 6^th month. However Dr.S said as long as she is active and playing, there is nothing to worry. She also prescribed Nestum Rice as an interim food for our Guruvayoor trip. After Annapraasanam we are giving dhal rice aka pappu mammu with ghee and little rasam or sambar thelivu. Chittu is taking it well. I am also planning to give her Pongal, Aavin milk and boiled apple, though the doc hasn't prescribed it yet.

We went for M akka’s wedding on June 19^th and 20^th. It was a grand ceremony and it was an inspiration for me as to how to conduct Chittu’s wedding 22 odd years from now J Someone or the other was carrying Chittu always and she had a good time. She had the vethu mugam syndrome with some, but gelled well with others. She had her own criterion set for it. Both the days, I got up early in the morning and prepared veggies, kanji and idly for her and packed it. It took solid one hour to cook and pack. M akka’s dad had sent us a Logan for our use on these two days and it was very comfortable. Thanks A aNNa!

Chittu met 4 very important milestones in the past 2 months. The title actually sums it all. Below are detailed descriptions in the order in which they happened   

Chittu can sit all by herself. Earlier she was trying to do it by turning on the sides and pressing her hand firmly on the ground, but couldn’t accomplish it and fell down a couple of times. But once she started doing yaanai yaanai it became a comfortable posture for her and she sat in Vajrasana by end of June. She is now adept in sitting from sideways too.

Chittu can stand now with support J This is a big milestone for her. She was trying hard since the end of last month, trying to catch hold of the sofa, chair, centre table, etc and accomplished it by the first week of July. Since then, she has this “standing attraction” (nikkara paithiyam as I call it) trying to hold anything and everything from bottles which are shorter than her when she is in her sitting posture to our knees, clothes, etc etc. She even fell down 3-4 times and cried, but didn’t leave the try until she was successful and is a pro now.

Chittu is teething. Another significant achievement. It was S mama who found that out first during our Guruvayoor trip on 17^th July when I made fun of him saying it could be a bit of puzhungal arisi kanji she had a few minutes back. But he said when she bites, it hurts a bit. And when I checked the next day – yes, there it was, a minute sprout of a tiny tooth in her lower jaw. Now she feels like biting anything and everything and all items are teether for her.

Finally Chittu can crawl…Yaaaaay! Something she had been trying to do for quite sometime. From last week, she started crawling. She would crawl two steps and then switch over to moving on her tummy. But for the past 3 days, she is completely crawling. Slowly but steadily. Looks like she has forgotten to move on her tummy J Seeing the way she is crawling, thatha calls her “namma aathu singa kutti” J

On 26^th June - the original plan was to go to Mahalingapuram Iyappan temple and read Narayaneeyam, but the temple cancelled the parayaNam due to some reason and so we went to Singaperumal Kovil to darshan Paatalaadhri Narasimhar and ChettipuNyam to darshan Devanaatha perumal & Yoga Hayagreevar. From there we were off to Madhuramangalam – I conceived Chittu immediately after doing a prarthanai here, so I wanted to take her to that place at the earliest possible. We started from J paati’s house at 9 Am and by the time we visited SP Kovil and started from ChettipuNyam near Chengalpattu it was 11.45. Madhuramangalam temple which was near Kanchipuram would close by 1 PM. It was a challenge. In order not to take any chances we called up the priest there and requested him not to close the temple before we come. Thanks to him, he waited for us and we had a good darshan of Vaikunta perumaL, Thaayaar and Embaar (brother of Ramanujar).

The new project which I have been assigned to is a migration of projects from the client side to our side. So we are having daily knowledge transition calls with those US clients from 6 – 8.30 PM. So my entire schedule became haywire. I go to office around 11.30 or 12 noon and I am back by 9 PM. The time I spend since I wake up till 11.30 is all that I get to spend with Chittu. By the time I am back, I am too tired and hungry and I have time only to change her and put her to sleep. Because maami leaves by 6.30 in the evening, J paati comes everyday after her office and takes care of Chittu until I am back. And after that she goes home. If not for J paati, I seriously don’ know how I could have managed all this. As soon as I am back from office, Chittu grins ear to ear, vigorously shakes her legs and comes rushing to me and refuses to go to anyone after that – including J paati & S. And I am back on my guilt ride for this helpless situation LAnd on top of it, we are not able to attend Baba haarthi for the past 2-3 weeks because of this extended work hours and I couldn’t do anything other than feeling bad about it L

I will have to go to the new far off office location from September 1^st onwards. So, after roaming around for almost 2 days in a particular weekend, we have found a rental house closer to J paati’s house which a mid point for both me and S. It is also near the railway station and makes it easier to commute for both of us. We will be shifting after mid of August. Infact, we have a flat in the same area. But I am not interested in disturbing my current tenants as they are a family who occupied the house this April and have a school going daughter for whom they recently arranged for school, van pick up, etc from that house. In the meantime we are also looking for a tenant to occupy our house here. I am planning to sell our sofa as I won’t be able to accommodate it in the new house and buy a 3 seater instead. Also there is no provision for window AC there and there is a space constraint for our dining table. So we will be leaving both in this house for the new tenants to use and maintain. Hope we get a good tenant and a prospective buyer for the sofa.

Chittu’s feeding bottle that V athai got for her during the puNyavaajanam got melted – Courtesy: ME THE GREAT. I had put it in a vessel for sterilizing and thought the vessel was a little small, but because I was planning to stand by the side of the stove until the sterilization is over, didn’t bother to change it to a bigger one. That was when I got a call from my close friend A and completely forgot about the bottle. By the time I remembered and rushed to the kitchen, the bottle had come in contact with the hot vessel and melted. Later that day S mama went and bought another new Avent bottle.

She speaks a damn lot these days. The words are in coherence with her mood. When she is angry – it is “ya ya ya ya ya ya ya ya”, when she cries it is “ma ammmmaaa”, when she is simply sitting and doing something it is “pa appa appa”, when she wants to call someone it is “ai ai ai”.

So, with this back to back post, we are up-to-date with Chittu’s diary. However we still have a backlog in Picasa as far as the photo upload is concerned and I hope to complete it by tomorrow. With my KT sessions getting over by end of July, I hope to do the updates properly. And we are planning to go to Shirdi on 28^th and 29^th July. Praying to Baba that everything goes on smoothly. So we will be back with another travelogue soon. Until then, buh-bye J