Our Little Monkey

As I mentioned in my previous post, Shreya has been doing a lot of climbing. I did eventually manage to get the following video of her climbing into her car seat (although not of her doing up the buckles). Notice that she is comfortable performing this trick with a pretzel in one hand. She did ask for a little help on this climb; I don't know if it was on account of the pretzel or because she is self-conscious on film. Usually she can do the whole thing on her own, even if the photographic record doesn't show that.

Seats, at the dinner table or in the car, are by no means the only things Shreya has been climbing though. I was really not ready for her to be grown-up enough to climb this play structure at the park, and the first few times she did it, my heart thumped so hard  I could hardly hear anything else. I followed her around with my arms outstretched below her, ready to catch her if (when?) she missed her footing. However her personality is such that when she learns to do a new thing she keeps doing it many, many times, to the exclusion of all other activities until she is quite good. So after the first twenty or so times, I stopped holding my breath and felt confident enough to use the camera instead. Tom, who wasn't present to witness this, expressed disbelief at my filming this rather than imitating a safety net! The following week, he came along and made his own video. Here they are!

More on Independence

A few weeks ago, one night I was in the kitchen putting the last touches on cooking dinner. Shreya had been milling around me earlier in the evening, but had gone off somewhere by then. Tom was getting plates and things to set the table. Gathering them all, he walked into the dining room, and I heard him say, "Did you put Shreya into her high chair?"
"No, " I said, "didn't you?"
But there she was, sitting in her chair, all ready to eat, even though neither of us had put her there. She was even buckled in. Unbelievable as it seemed, she must have achieved this herself! Here's a picture. She looks pleased with herself, doesn't she?

The next day, armed with the camera on video mode, I tried to coax her into repeating the performance. And sure enough...

Needless to say, since then, she always insists on getting into her chair by herself. She has now also perfected the technique of getting into her car seat and strapping herself in. (Hopefully we will catch this on film before she is tired of it!) Fortunately she hasn't figured out how to undo any of these buckles (yet!)

An Independent Thinker

Shreya is definitely starting to show signs of her individuality. Since about last November, when she started going to preschool three days a week, she has wanted to do things like eat by herself instead of being fed, even if it makes a huge mess. Last week, we saw another aspect of her wanting to do things for herself. On Thursday morning, after she had had breakfast and been washed, she walked determinedly to the dresser that holds her clothes, opened one of the drawers that she could reach and pulled out an outfit, which she then handed to me to put on her. It was a two-piece set: full length pants with a long-sleeved top. Definitely a good fall/winter pick, but we were supposed to have close to 90 degree weather (32 celsius for you metric types). "You will be very hot in that," I said to her, offering her a summer dress. But no. Perhaps she didn't understand what I meant by 'hot'. Or perhaps she knew better than me what the temperature indoors at her school would be. In any case,  she had chosen, and she was sticking by her choice. When I dropped her off at school, I took the summer dress along, and suggested to the teacher that she could change Shreya's clothes if she showed signs of being uncomfortable. But when we picked her up in the evening, she was still clad in long sleeves, and looking thoroughly pleased with herself.

The blog returns

I realized with a shock that it has been nearly a month since I last posted something here! (And much longer since I posted anything about Shreya...) There are a number of reasons for this: we moved houses, we didn't have internet access for a while at our new place, even after we got it, we were (and in fact still are) behind on so many things we need to do, one thing after another. But somehow I hadn't realized quite how much of Shreya's life was going undocumented. So in the next few weeks, I'm going to try to bring this blog up to the present (not chronologically though -- this has always been a somewhat loosely ordered timeline, so why change that now?)

That being said, I'm not actually going to embark on this tonight, because it is late, and one of the things I am behind on is downloading recent pictures from the camera to the computer! But for now, here is a picture of Shreya, as a promise of more to come.

The friend who hosted our last playgroup (and sent me this picture) was intrepid enough to organize a painting session for the kids. All the little ones painted picture frames to present to their dads for Father's Day. Here is a picture of Shreya with the frame that she painted (and I did not help her with this; it is her own effort). As you can see, she has also painted her tummy, her wrists, her diaper, and the table! All that creative effort has caused her hair to escape her ponytail. This is the picture that is going to go in the frame that she painted. Tom is pleased as punch with his gift!

Shripad Ghate 1955(?) - 2010

My uncle, Shripad-mama passed away on Friday. Although in recent years my contact with him was limited to infrequent visits to Chalisgaon embedded in only-slightly-less-infrequent visits to India, my sister and I remember him from our childhood as being a lot of fun.

With niece Varsha, mid-1970s

With family, (from left to right) Nilima, Pratik, Gaurav; 2003

And a repost of a video from our most recent visit to India:
Playing "Lemons" with Shreya, 2009

Being there (without a camera)

Some of life's most precious moments are only captured in memory.

This morning, Shreya was playing on the bed, while I was combing my hair, getting ready to go out. My cell phone was lying on the bed near her and she suddenly abandoned her toy, picked up the phone, cradled it to her cheek, and clearly and unmistakably said "Hi" into it.  I dropped the comb and scrambled to find the camera to shoot some video, but by the time I had returned with it, she had lost interest in the phone and was happily playing with the comb, and I could not coax her to repeat the performance.

Aquatic Delights

Yesterday, after over a month's hiatus, we were finally able to take Shreya to the pool again. Back in February we had been going there regularly, but then a series of unfortunate events occured. First Shreya had a bad cold and we thought it inadvisable to take her, then the pool was closed for spring break weekend, then it opened again, and we were planning to go, but there was a mishap involving some exploded steam pipes and some damaged filters and some not-locally-available parts, which caused the pool to be closed indefinitely due to "mechanical failures'' . In fact the larger Olympic pool is still closed for that reason, but this week, the small and warm and shallow "therapy pool" to which we take Shreya finally opened up again, and yesterday we went there. I was worried that after such a long gap, Shreya would have forgotten all that she had picked up, but she had not. Emerging from the locker room all attired in her swimsuit, she walked straight to the pool, sat down on the edge, and jumped in, into my waiting arms. (I was already in the water.) Then she spent the next thirty minutes swimming a couple of feet back and forth between Tom and me, and splashing about vigorously. She was very excited to be there, and we're happy that we can add this fun activity to our regular routine again. Here are some pictures of Shreya in the water. These were taken in early February, and are reproduced here courtesy of William Gruner Photography. Thanks, Bill! The other people pictured are Bill's wife Prisca and daughter Mireille, our frequent co-conspirators in aquatic adventures.