Peapod at 18

I have been taking mental notes of things the peapod is doing regularly and a few one-offs and then a few antics that take me by total surprise and then when all my notes are done I have no clue if this was always there and not 17-18 month specific.

The peapod though seems like a very quite child from an outsider's view, she is a devil let loose in the house. We are tired of putting things away from her reach. We have slowly started classifying everything starting from the morning newspaper to the 'will' as v.v.important, just important, important, need based, OK kinds. Other than the v.v.important stuff we just let her mess around with the others. A good set of audio cassettes were found completely rampaged by the 2 of them with no scope of fixing them. Once I found both of them sitting around & staring at each other with a lot of papers in between them, it turned out to be my purse, with the money, cards, bills all pulled out and put on the square tile between them, as if admiring the loot before they part with their shares.

She understands almost everything we say. If my mom is narrating something that happened during the day, she will watch my mom for a few secs and then she will enact it out in case I had any doubts. With a full time maid now, she has begun picking up Hindi. Its a complete mallu household here and English words are mostly all instructional as in "No", "Close", "Open" and so on. I heard the 'Bai' pick up a few mallu words like "ba"(come), "po"(go) etc and now yesterday morning the peapod was heard calling out "Aaja Aaja" (come, come) .... So 'Hindi' here you come.

My sister is trying to settle down with a job in a new city and so has left her daughter, the jellybean, with us. With this starts a new chapter in both their lives. Both, the peapod and the jellybean have enjoyed being the sole receiver of attention, individually, for over a year and now they have to share a grandmom, toys, food, drinks, clothes, the occasional loots, bathing time, space with each other. After the initial good behaviour put-on by both, now they are both in their real skins. This includes hitting each other, kicking, waking the other from her sleep, pulling legs(literally) and shouting at each other(this is different from crying). They have their moments when they are playing some stuff or are trying to mimic "Twinkle twinkle..." but sadly very short lived. There are also times when they feed each other but again that ends up with one hurting the other.





The peapod can identify a handful of animals, a few birds, the head, eyes, ears, nose. She enjoys rhymes. I have often seen her drum her fingers on her thighs or the floor whenever a song is on. I love to see her do that. She has a concept of time. I mean she knows I am back at 7pm. She knows her father gets back at 8:30, she knows its the garbage man, she knows its the milk man. All these knocks happen at fixed timmings most days and she knows it and it amazes me. When she knows its her Dada, she runs like someones after her life to the door. I am told she starts pushing the maid towards the door and starts waving bye-byes by her regular time. She will insist on carrying the garbage when the bell rings at the designated time.

Any guest in our house now has a time-out. 10 mins is the time set for the best behaviour that the peapod and the jellybean can pull up togather, soon the cries and screams will have all of them excuse us soon.

At 15 months, now the jellybean can walk freely around the house with both her hands stretched out in front of her. She is very free with her kisses. She will kiss you even when she is crying. The peapod is a absolute miser in this case. The jellybean needs to be carried & cradled to-fro before she dozes off to sleep. The peapod used to sleep on her own if we just laid next to her. But now the peapod needs the same. She needs to be carried for 2 rounds atleast before letting her down on the bed, just for the heck of it and she will sniff and dig around for her comfort position on the bed before dozing off. During the day, when she feels sleepy, she will get a dupatta or a sheet, lie down, spread the cloth over her and will pat herself, which is actually telling us to sing and pat.If the jellybean is sleeping, she will find a piece of cloth to cover her all up and in the process will also end up waking her up.

One thing I have observed in the last 2 months is her anger. She actually grinds her teeth and clenches her fists when she is angry. Sometimes she can be easily distracted, other times she will beat the devil out of you by the time you manage to find sufficiently interesting stuff to distract. With her cousin around, I also have to drill the message in - "No hitting". I don't want to get paranoid about the 2 hurting each other. I did rather have the 2 express their love and learn what is acceptable and what is not, meanwhile everybody else is on their toes and very watchful.