London Underground

While taking Anirud for a walk, I took him towards our local train station. Thanks to the 'Underground Ernie' programme in the telly, he is very familiar with London Underground's logo. Though my idea was to let him have a glimpse of the train from outside, the station staff was kind enough to let us inside the platform even though we were not travelling. As a train approached the platform, one could see a 1000-watt bulb glowing on Anirud's face. Thanks to the fact that the station being the last one on the network, Anirud got more time to watch the train in awe. As if that is not enough, the train driver let him inside his cabin for a couple of minutes and even let him make the train whistle. Wasn't that enough to make his day?

It is not Anirud's first train ride or anything like that. The last time we travelled in a tube, he wasn't even two. These days, he is able to appreciate things better and is able to relate to what he sees elsewhere. Someday, we are planning to take him to the train museum nearby, that has got lot of joy train rides.

Fun Fair

Anirud had some good fun in the rain marred fun fair that was held in our town. As that place is so close to his nursery, for more than a week he had been watching the place getting ready with equipment for various rides being set up on the location. The day before the fair started, they were doing the test rides and if he had had his way, he would have gatecrashed in to one of the rides. He especially like the ride on a lil' fire engine that had a 'ding dong bell' (that was exactly what he told).

Isn't it wrong?

One evening last week, Anirud stopped me and said in an authoritative voice: "Appa, ammava yen push panre? Adhu thapilla?" (Dad, why are you pushing mom? Isn't it wrong?). The sheer tone of his voice while saying this was something we enjoyed though we are not sure if he was trying to be extra smart in covering up what he did by pointing the blame on me or if he really observed me pushing his mom.

We used to pull up Anirud if he does something wrong and the above is the way that we normally talk. Seems that this brat has observed that a lot and used it at a right time. One another reminder about the choice of words that we should be using.

Letter Recognition

On the other day, we were at a restaurant when Anirud grabbed the menu card and went on like 'D potrukku, O potrukku, S potrukku, A potrukku' meaning 'Here is D - O - S - A'. We were in for a shock as we never expected him to recognise alphabets, that too from a word printed with a combination of upper and lower cases. On further prodding, we realised that he could recognise as many as a dozen different alphabets.

Craft work

Easter Greeting card done by Anirud.

Writing

In the recent times, Anirud's way of holding the pen has improved. Previously, he used to hold the pen in a clinched fist. These days he is trying to hold the pen using his three fingers (Thumb, Pointer and the Middle), although his grip needs to improve. We have got him quite a lot of books for writing practice and hoping that very soon, he will take to writing properly.

Mask

When we visited Frankie & Benny's restaurant, Anirud was given a paper mask of that of a tiger. He got so excited with the mask that all through the evening, he was wearing it and trying to 'frighten' us with tiger's roar. :-))

Tissue Boy

We wouldn't be surprised if Anirud ends up working for Kleenex. These days, he can even live without food or water, but can't do without a pack of tissues. Be it to wipe off the running nose or to get rid of the grain of rice that fell on his body while consuming food, he needs tissues. To differentiate the kitchen tissues and the facial tissues, he refers to the latter as 'tissue pack' and carries one most of the time, whether he needs it or not.

Habits & Timeout

Thanks to Anirud's time at school and nursery, he has picked up lots of habits - both good and bad in equal measure. Good ones include taking his food only at the table, wearing his jacket on his own without any help and few more. On the other hand, he is annoyingly seen spitting and at times kicks/beats us. Over the last few weeks, we have managed to contain (touchwood!) his spitting habit, thanks to the timeout technique. When one of our friend told us about the timeout technique, we were initially apprehensive. But it works amazingly well with Anirud. Hope the effectiveness continues.

Illness

We were a lot worried about the recent bout of Anirud's illness. We heaved a big sigh of relief when the doctor ruled out tuberclosis (TB) after analysing his blood tests. Upon meticulous observation of his coughing pattern for the past 10 days, we find that he coughs only when his nose is blocked due to cold. Further, there is cold on his chest. Earlier on, his vigorous coughing for few days led us to think that he might have some other complications. But that doesn't seem to be the case now. It is nothing but a regular cold and cough that dragged on for a bit too long.