Mighty Mind

One of our relatives gifted Anirud a game called 'Mighty Mind' and what a wonderful gift that was. It comes with about 30 different shapes (squares, triangles etc) which can be assembled into various different figures (house, animal etc). We taught Anirud the basics of the game and he has learnt it to play by himself with very little help from us. He is sure gonna get the next level of the game - 'Mighty Mind Super Challenger' very soon.

Image Courtesy: Baby Jireh

Overnight Success Story

For the last few weeks, Anirud has been without nappies during the night and gladly, there had been no accidents. Touchwood! Barring the time when we go for long drives, he is nappy free during the day as well - which is one another giant step towards 'big boyhood'. :)) Perhaps, this is not the kind of post that he may want to see in this blog when he grows up big, but this is the kind of news that gives us big relief.

மழலை (Mazhalai)

அது சூடூவா இருக்குமா - அது சூடா இருக்குமா? (Is it hot)

நான் பயமூமுருத்தினேன் - நான் பயமுறுத்தினேன் (I scared him/her)

Laptop Addiction

In the recent few days, Anirud has become addicted towards laptop. As he has learnt to use the mouse very well, he is happy clicking at whatever link that comes his way. That is fine if he does that during his allocated time of 15 minutes a day, when we let him wander around the CBeebies website. Most of the times, he returns the laptop after the allocated 15 minutes - if we show him the clock and say that his time will be up when the big hand of the clock reaches a certain number. But whenever we use the laptop, he sits besides us and tries to click the mouse on something or other. Sometimes, he just grabs our hand to prevent us getting anywhere near the keyboard / mouse and is particularly unhappy if ever we pull him up for doing such stuff. The sooner we address this issue, the better it will be for all three of us.

Vegetable Farm

Vegetable Farm

A week ago, we visited a vegetable farm nearby. What a nice experience it was for Anirud, that he got to pick apples from the trees, dig out carrots & beetroots from the earth with a spade, pick loads of beans from the creepers, rasp/black berries from the plants etc. More importantly, he would have probably learnt that carrots and beans don't get 'created by magic' in plastic covers at Sainbury's or Tesco. It was funny when he said, "En pa dirty carrots ellam vaangare?" (Why are you buying the dirty carrots?).

Cars

Do all the boys like cars? Probably yes. Like most boys, Anirud is crazy about cars and very often takes a vow to drive a car when he becomes a 'big boy'. Once when he was asked 'Which school will you be going to?', he replied 'Driving School'. Funnily enough, ever since he saw someone in our neighbourhood getting into a driving school car, he is pestering us to look for a Kid's Driving School. Well, he is presented with the kid's version of so many things from books to chairs to meals to what not. So, he expects a Driving School for kids as well.

That one apart, his specialisation on logos have diversified into cars as well, as he easily picks out - Nissan, Honda, Volkswagon, Toyota, Ford, Renault, Vauxhall cars by their logo even from a distance.

Flags and Capitals

One interesting bit of learning for Anirud due to the Olympic games was the awareness he gained about various different countries and their flags. These days he instantly recognises the flags of China, India, UK, Switzerland, France, USA and few others. We thought of extending this a bit further and told him about the capital cities of the above countries. He was fine with most of them, but when it came to 'Washington DC' he was a bit intrigued with 'washing', but nevertheless carried on. When we moved on to the next capital, his imagination started to run amok. Before we could tell the name of the next capital, he was like 'Dishwasher DC', 'Fridge-ton DC' - replacing 'washing' with what ever appliance name he could imagine.

Olympics

Thanks to the Beijing Olympics 2008, Anirud now has got a fair idea of what different games are about. His favourites are track cycling, boxing and swimming. Apart from the above, he claims to like 'bulti' (gymnastics), hockey, running (athletics) and diving. Through out the duration of the games, he woke up with thoughts on olympics and watched the telly to his heart's content. We promised to take him to the next Olympics (London 2012), but the problem was in making him understand that he has to wait for 4 years, as he doesn't know to think in terms of time.

Love Film

One fine day, as we were walking past Blockbuster, Anirud asked me to rent the movie 'Shrek'. I said to him that we can get that movie through Lovefilm (an online movie rental service we have subscribed to) and asked him to remind about that when we get home. I expected him to forget about it and rightly so, he didn't bother about Shrek for some time. Few hours later, Anirud went near the laptop that was not only left unlocked, but also had an Internet Explorer window open. He moved the mouse to the address bar and typed some character in random (it happened to be 'L'), pressed the down arrow and hit 'Enter'. To his joy, the website that loaded in front of him was lovefilm.com.

From that point, he started to take control. With the combination of mouse clicks and scroll buttons, he navigated around the site, reached the page where the teaser for 'Shrek' was displayed and just stopped short of reserving / ordering the movie. Leaving aside the initial excitement after he landed on the said website, not for a moment he hesitated while navigating around. Such was his confidence that it appeared that he knew everything about the process like the back of his palm.

Lovefilm.com is a harmless site. At best or worst, he could only reserve a movie. But this is a gentle reminder for us to 'sign out' properly from all the sites, especially the ones like Amazon, which has got features like 'single click ordering'.

Dialogue

(Apologies to those who can't read Thamizh.)

அப்பா: நீ ரொம்ப ஸ்வீட்டா?

அநிருத்: இல்ல, காரம். நான் தான் மிக்ஸர்.. :-))

Small Business Laptop

When we were discussing about the best place to buy our laptop, Anirud turned around and said, "Appa, Small business laptop vaangi paaru. Adhu nanna irukkum" (Dad, get a Small Business Laptop from Dell. That will be good). I vividly remember the day - several weeks ago, when I was telling my wife about the Small Business Laptop available from Dell and Anirud's focus was on his new toy. Seems that he grabbed that bit of info and used it at the right time. Though he doesn't know the meaning of 'business', we were pleasantly shocked at the way he put all of that together at the appropriate time.

Useless

One day Anirud was asking like 'appa, Tesco poy useless vaangalaama?' ('Shall we buy USELESS from Tesco?'). We were utterly confused on what he was talking about that it took a while to figure it out.

Few minutes before this, upon seeing Anirud playing with an used up plastic item, his mom asked me what that was, to which I replied, 'Oh, that is useless. Let him play with it'. He caught on to the word and thought that it is the name of the item.

Scooter

We have got a scooter for Anirud. Scooter is a small two-wheeled vehicle operated by foot and not the one that is commonly referred to in India. The one he has got is a slightly advanced version - that it has got only 2 wheels and at times Anirud finds it a bit difficult to balance. On the otherhand, the scooters owned by few other children in the neighbourhood have an extra wheel in the front for balance. As per Murphy's law, Anirud likes their scooter and the other kids like his'. The next step in this direction will be a 14" bike, which we have planned to get him by Spring 2009.

Whipsnade Zoo

Anirud was taken to Whipsnade Zoo and he enjoyed every bit of his time there. Even when we were few miles to the zoo, he could hardly contain his excitement and was like 'Idhu daan Zoo-aa? Zoo vandhaacha?' (Is that the zoo? have we arrived there?). Apart from seeing the animals that included Lion, Bear, Giraffe, Wolf, Chimpanzee, Rhino, Hippo, Cheetah etc in close quarters, he got to go on a zoo safari in a small steam train. As a fan of trains, he was looking forward to that ever since he heard the hoot of the engine upon entering the zoo. He was visibly pleased when he threw carrots at the bear although one of the bears got hit by the carrot thrown by him. He enjoyed watching the birds and sometimes egged me on to photograph them. An eagle was looking away in its cage and it was cute when he said 'Hey Eagle, look at me, look at me please'. Anirud's only disappointment was that the Asian Tiger never showed up near the viewing enclosure.

Big Boy - Small Boy

Anirud has got a theory that when small becomes big, big will become small. Going by that logic, when he grows up to be a big boy, we (his mom and I) will become small girl/boy, as the case may be. Based on the above theory, his questions are like 'Which school will you be attending when you become a little boy?', 'What kind of toys would you play with?' etc.

Flowers and Wedding

Perhaps taking cue from the movies, Anirud has somehow started relating flowers with wedding. On the other day, as we were walking past the aisle containing flowers at Tesco, he went on like "Appa, inga flowers paaru. Kalyanam section vandhuduthu" (Look at the flowers.. We have come to the wedding section). :)

Drawing

What do you think these are?
First one is supposed to be the Sun and the next one is a smiley.

Quote

"Appa, namma electrical shop-ku poy electricity vaangindu varalaama?" (Shall we go to the Electrical shop and get some electricity?)

Aliases

Mirote - Remote
Om Mano Narayana - Om Namo Narayana

Thamizh Yaanai

Recently, I pointed to a picture of an elephant and asked Anirud if he had seen that animal. I expected him to say yes as he had seen an elephant during our visit to Trichy last year. But this bugger said a firm 'no'. When I reminded him of the place where he had seen the elephant, he was like "adhu thamizh yaanai pa. naan elephant paathadhu illa" (That was a Tamil yaanai(elephant), but I haven't seen the elephant). After observing him for a while, I think he prefixes the word 'Thamizh' to anything related to India, like 'Thamizh letter', 'Thamizh TV' etc.