I bought her 2 wooden jigsaw puzzles, one which is a duck made of 8 blocks and then a couple of teddy bear puzzles. These are the only ones that appealed to my adult mind as jigsaw puzzles. I realized latter, it was difficult to get her started. I spent some time in the mornings doing the puzzle & showing it to her initially. She picked up and seemed quite interested latter on. She was quite busy for a few days untill she had mastered it all. It was fun to see her sit with it, turn the pieces around, trying to fit them in and many times she would be throwing the pieces and the wooden board around in frustration. My sister bought a couple of more puzzles of various shapes from local train vendors in Mumbai. The ABCD puzzle with 26pieces used to keep her occupied for a long time. I could actually flip through a magazine while she was at it. With every day, she is getting faster and I am wondering what to get next? Since I have never done or seen kids do jigsaw puzzles so young, I was very amused and am proud of my bacha.
Books. She loves her books. Whenever we buy books for the peapod, the grandparents are wondering if we are planning to get her to graduation directly. She has around a dozen books. To add to it when P returned from his onsite, he bought more books. I hid all of them and introduce one book at a time. Reading peapod a book during her bedtime was something I looked forward to when she did not seem to show much interest or around the time she had just begun to pay heed. These days I dread the bed time for the book reading. why you ask?
When I summon her for bed, she immediately starts pulling drawers, frantically searching for her books chanting "endiye..endiye"(where..where) and would tuck a book under each arm, then 2 in her hands and hug on to 1 or 2 and dump them all on the bed. I have to read each and set them aside. I yawn, pretend to sleep, try to skip pages, but none work. Sometimes I even switch off the lights but she would still make me read and enact ALL THOSE BOOKS. She has a color book, which she loves. After the lights are off, I just keep blindly mumbling stuff to get to the end of each book as fast as I can in between yawns and tears and blurred vision. So when the color book goes up in the dark, I flip through each page and she will say "black" each time. Let me see if I can click a snap of her going to bed with all those books balanced on her little frame.
The jelly bean on the other hand is not interested in puzzles or books. She knows to place a couple of pieces here and there but would never sit still to complete a full jigsaw. She watches the peapod though while she is building them. Books, she will just stay quiet the whole time the book reading is going on but would never want to SEE the contents of the book except for a few random glances. But she surprises us by pointing out to 'Abacus' in a word book and I am left wondering, how come?. She is more interested in holding on to small, tiny-weeny things in both her hands like buttons, crayons etc and keeps checking them every 10 mins interval. She knows how many she is carrying and no body can fool her with the number or color though she can not count in numbers or name the colors. The other thing about her is, you can ask her where is the toy she was playing in the morning and she can go and point to it under the bed or behind the sofa. The peapod has no such recollection. She will just act all innocent, as if she has no clue what am I talking about.
(They are selling potatoes. They roam around shouting "potatowala..potato")
The Jellybean, when she arrived was a clinger, would cry at the drop of a hat, and was a shy child. The peapod, in her bad moods would actually hit her, scratch her and all she would do was cry and yell back. Now, she hits back and because she retaliates the peapod is more careful. So overall the hit and scream have reduced a lot. Jellybean is still not very out-going but if you have met her twice and you encourage her, she would gladly come and join you in.
(There, raiding my dressing table)
They both start dancing around even to the music blaring in the streets. They can sit beside each other play their own stuff. They will exchange toys after a while. Both can say "pleashe" and "tanku" and charm you endlessly. They even imitate the other crying and make fun of each other.
