Good thinking amma.

All my stories start with, “Three weeks back”, so does this one. Three weeks back we went to a friend’s house for dinner. They have a baby girl, about a year older than toddler. Toddler was pretty kicked on seeing new toys and wanted to play with everything. Predictably there was the issue of establishing territory. In the middle of one heated fight where hands and legs were about to be used to make a point, I pulled toddler away and lectured her on the lines of how nice it will be if they take turns. She listened to me intently, shook her head up and down and with a straight face she tells me, “Good thinking amma”. What?!!!! Girl, enough of the appreciation, step on the implementaion part!

Amma, you go make pasta.
Toddler is in the “I want to do everything by myself” phase. It takes her 20 minutes to wear her shoes and at the end of 20 minutes, she discovers that the shoes are in the wrong legs, so another 20 min to wear them the right way. Add another 20 min to stop and smell the roses while walking to the car. And 20 more minutes to sit in her car seat and wear her seat belts. I usually stand next to her to make sure that she wears her seat belt properly. She hates it. (May be she does not like begin watched when she is intently doing something. Just like her mother!). She keeps telling me, “Amma you go that way. You go sit in your car seat and do round and round”(Meaning: Move away from me, you go sit in your seat and start driving). Anyways…she was trying to do her puzzle and was struck at some place and was getting impatient. I tried helping her and she tells me, “No amma, no. You go to the kitchen and make pasta.”. Talk about gender typing!!!

Appa you are making a big mistake.
We have a vague division of labor at home. In the mornings, I feed the kids and hubby gives them a bath. Last week he was trying to drag toddler, who had her eyes glued to the TV, to give her a bath. She protested quit a bit. When she found that hubby was not yielding, this 30 month old, mischievous, naked child standing in the bath tub, tells him in a very menacing tone, “Appa, no appa, you are making a big mistake”. The next thing we know, she will be making us an offer that we cannot refuse!

The master story teller
Her vocabulary is increasing by the second. An average 2.5 year old is supposed to know 1000 words on the average. But this one knows at least 10,000 words, I suspect. Okay enough blowing my trumpet, the point I am trying to make is, her expanded vocabulary combined with her photographic memory, she can now repeat a whole story. Yesterday she said the story of the Lion and the mouse(the lion getting caught in the hunter’s net and the mice chews through the net to free him) verbatim.

There is a flip side to this. Sometimes she blurts out things. Even though thats what children do, it is pretty embarrassing to us as parents. The other day we were standing in a store. A cyclist walked in. He was wearing biking tights, a hip pack, a back pack, thick sunscreen and had bronze red colored hair. Our little chatter box looked at him and screamed at the top of her voice, “Amma, look clown”. I just went all red, as red as our man’s hair!

Lispick on toes
She saw that I have nail polish painted on my toes and told me,
“Amma, pretty toes. I want lispick(lipstick) on my toes.”

And many more to come…..