Jahnavi turns four!

And the day has finally arrived! Jahnavi's four! She's been very excited about it. Well, she was. She was also extremely tired and fell asleep while eating dinner this evening. She moved up to the Crocodiles who don't take naps, but she's been going to bed no earlier than 9:30 each night. The deficit of sleep finally caught up with her and she went out before 7pm.

The little girl got a lot of nice gifts today. The picture on the left is her new kitchen from her aji. She LOVES it (if you can't tell). There were several other gifts, like the microphone from her grandma (which plays Under the Sea over and over...thanks, Mom), a Belle from Beauty and the Beast from her Sudakar ajoba, and several clothes. I gave her a hug. What more does she need?

Her mother, aji, ajoba, and Sudakar adjoba brought a cake to the Crocodiles today. Since she wants to be dinosaur for Halloween, her mother thought a dinosaur cake would be appropriate and welcomed, which indeed it was. And it was yummy, too.

Saturday will be a lot of fun. Two of us (adults) and three of them (children). She'll have a great time.

I can't believe that she's four already. Vidula not only put together her kitchen while I was at work, she also put together Jahnavi's new booster seat for the car. She's outgrown her old car seat...the one she's had since she was only a few months old. Man.

Almost 4

Oh, way too many months have passed and I haven't written anything. Bad daddy.

Too many little things have happened to catch up properly, so I'll just start from where we are now, which is a couple days before Jahnavi's 4th birthday. Wow. It'll be much lower-key than last year's shindig. She's moved up into a new class at pre-school (that's right, she's moved from Lizard to Crocodile), so we're planning on just bringing a cake to her and her new peeps Thursday. Saturday, however, her mother has planned a nice event: we're taking Jahnavi and her two friends, Ainsley and Ava, to a children's theater production of Beauty and the Beast. We've begun prepping her with the soundtrack already. Then afterward, the grandparents and the friends' parents will meet us for pizza. Another bouncer is years away.

Jahnavi's made some interesting developments. Tonight, for instance, she read me a story; something she made up while looking at blank paper decorated with a few scrawlings of her own. Interesting part was that she has a sound narrative structure: intro, characters, location, conflict, resolution (they lived happily ever after). She also did voices (at least for the monster knocking at the door).

Last Sunday she attended Marathi school for the first time; an hour and half of age-appropriate Marathi language instruction organized by the local Maharashtrian temple. Parents weren't allowed, so I just took a nap on the bench outside. Maybe next time I'll mingle with the other parents. I think they wondered why I was there; Jahnavi's practically alabaster compared to the rest of her classmates.

I'd noticed some curious development of her grammar a few weeks ago, but I've forgotten what it was and it's appeared to have disappeared. It seems that most everything is in place grammatically. She's now started asking what words mean as I read her bedtime stories to her. Pretty cool.

Up (and out and back again)

Vidula and I decided we'd take the monkey to see a movie this weekend. What better than a Pixar 'tune, so we caught the late matinee of 'Up.' It's a sweet, sweet animated film about a curmudgeon, voiced expertly by Ed Asner, who floats his house to a far-off land with an excess of helium balloons after his beloved, adventurous wife passes on. Great story + great animation = great time, right? Well, Jahnavi's now at an age where she gets things, lots of things, so not only did the angry packs of dogs and the mean villain (voiced again expertly but by Christopher Plummer) scare her, so did scenes in which the heroes' lives were simply in peril, like when they were in danger of falling from a dirigible. Daddy's lap was no match for the menacing music, big, big screen, and darkness. Twice she pleaded, "Mommy, Daddy, I wanna go home." So out of the theater she and I went, to fetch a cookie or just look at the movie posters. Then back we'd go. Damned if I was going to let those CGI bullies defeat my little girl...or waste my money.

On the way home in the car, she said she liked the movie, she just didn't like the scary parts. When I put her down for the night, I went over it again, just to make sure she was at peace with the film and wouldn't have nightmares. When I asked her if she liked the movie, she said, "Yea, I liked it. But when the tractor hit the mailbox and he hit the man and there was blood...I didn't like that."

She was describing a scene in which a dump truck owned by the construction company that wanted to buy the curmudgeon's aging house to finish the skyscrapers going up all around, hit his mailbox. The mailbox was of particularly sentimental value for the old widower because he and his wife had painted it together as newly-weds. When the dump truck knocks it over, he comes out and angrily tries to shoo them away, but one of the construction workers felt bad and grabbed the mailbox, promising to fix it. They tussled with the mailbox for a few seconds, yanking it back and forth, until Karl (Asner's character) yells out "I don't want your help" and hits the worker on the head with his four-footed, tennis-balled walker, knocking him down and drawing blood. Then he ran back into his house, shaken, closed all the curtains and waited for the storm of legal action to come.

There was no menacing music, no evil animals or villains, just a very uncomfortable situation for all parties involved, ending in yelling and brief violence. That's what bothered her.

Despite Jahnavi's misgivings, I recommend the flick for adults and kids (perhaps a little bit older, or via Netflix when it's available).

Father's Day and Grandma's birthday

Well, this is my fourth Father's Day and it was nice and relaxed. Vidula made blueberry and chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast after letting me sleep in this morning. Jahnavi'd been chomping at the bit to come and wake me up for hours, but she graciously held her back until nearly 10am. Lovely. After crawling atop her old man, J presented me with a card and a hug and a big kiss. Then she was done with me. The rest of the day was pretty laid back, although I'm a little disappointed I never got that nap in I was looking forward to.

In honor of what would have been Jahnavi's great grandmother's 88th birthday, I'm finally posting the remainder of my interview with her. Recap - back in March 1997, I set up a tape recorder (pre-digital), asked her a few questions and just let her ramble on. Altogether, Grandma talked about how she met Grandpa for about an hour. The tape's been converted to 7 mp3s. You can listen to the final episode via the blog by clicking over on the right, or you can click on 'Visit this podcast,' go to my podomatic site, and get all of them (which you can download. Each mp3 is about 7MB. Back in October, I'd only gotten the first 4 parts posted before we moved and then my computer crapped out. I now have a new computer and finally remembered. Enjoy.

Boston

Oh, my, but it's already been nearly a month since we visited Boston to see little Sonali Baby. She's adorable and small and really small and I forgot how small babies can get. She's tiny. Healthy, normal, cute, small. OK, she's not unnaturally diminutive. She's really quite normal for the species. It's just that somehow, with the passing of only a couple years the experience of Jahnavi's infancy is a glossy but smudged memory. Seeing Sonali, hearing her cries (the few she uttered - good baby), and holding her felt at once oddly familiar and strangely alien...what was expected wasn't expected, if you get what I'm trying to say.

But Sonali is really just lovely and we had a good trip to see her, her parents, and her grandparents on both sides. Nikheel Mama and Michelle Maushi are doing well and housed us for the Memorial Day weekend trip. The occasion was Sonali's barsa or 'naming ceremony.' It's a Maharastrian tradition involving the grandparents, the parents, the baby (of course), lookers-on, and a lot of picking up and setting down of the kid. Toward the end, the mother whispers the baby's name to her. Then there's a lot of food and socializing.

Michelle's parents own a house in Cape Cod and generously gave us the key so we could spend our last night in Mass. near the surf (which Vidula badly wanted to see). It was a nice, sunny trip down. Most of the shops were closed for the holiday weekend, but we managed to find pizza and icecream that evening, after an afternoon of walking on the beach among the sand crabs. Even built a sandcastle.

All was well after the 'za and 'cecream, but then around 10pm, Jahnu started complaining about her ear. Mind you, she'd had a runny nose for several days prior to the trip, but wasn't feeling bad. Our lovely evening turned to a sleepless night of crying and screaming...enough crying that Jahnavi caused herself to throw up (first time for that one). Some time in the wee hours of the morning she finally fell asleep on the upstairs couch, perched atop her mother's chest. When the sun finally rose, we called Nikheel, who served as our ground control, scouting the Web for a local, open, pediatric clinic from Boston. They were a little laid back at the clinic, but having doctors in the family comes in handy: Vidula's mother tugged on the bonds of medicinal fraternity and persuaded the doctor to see our tired, hurting little girl before he clocked out for lunch. We gave her some antibiotic for her ear infection and took off for Logan Airport. We feared the worst on the flight, but she was a champ.

Last Friday, Jahnavi finally went off to play with the neighborhood kids. I'd tried getting to go, but she was always too shy and made me walk over with her and stay. I don't want to be one of those style-cramping parents. But last week, a group was gathered in front of a garage, bikes parked willy nilly at the foot of the drive way. She just stood outside our garage watching and listening for a while, itching to join in. I suggested she go - without me - and she walked all the way to the end of the driveway, but ultimately came back. After the third time, she decided she wanted to ride her bike. I caught on to her plan and I helped her over to the willy-nilly wheeled collection. She parked, dismounted, and ran up the hill to the other kids. They welcomed her immediately and took care of her, she being the youngest in the group.

What's odd is how I found myself welcoming the sadness of her increasing independance.

First bicycle

Jahnavi got a bike about 2 weeks ago. For months, she's been saying - and completed unsolicitedly by anyone - that Aaji was going to buy her a bike. Apparently, Aaji was listening and finally decided now, with the warmer weather, was the time. We wanted to get her something that she can still grow into, not quickly grow out of. We just went to Toys-R-Us, which turned out to be a good thing. Another parent who was shopping for her own tyke had already scoured Amazon and other websites and found only 12" or 16" bikes available - the first too small, the second too big. But the big chain store carries the 14" middle size, which is perfect for our little monkey's legs. It's impossible to get a bike unadored by some logo. J's got Dora the Explorer in all her bilingual glory wrapped around each bar ("Amigos siempre!"). It's a nice red color, though. 

Anyways, she loves her bike and wants to ride it every day, weather (and parents) permitting. We have to be there, of course, because we live on a hill. One wrong turn and she'd be a mess of blood, bruises, and bike parts at the bottom of the street. She'll only ride with her helmet on, which we only encourage. It actually saved her Kale-Coggins noggin on only day two. She turned a little too sharply and whoop! went right over. Her helmeted head bounced off the pavement like a basketball with baby fat - low to the ground and uncoordinated, but a bounce nonetheless. There was a lot of crying for about a minute, but with a quick hug and a head/limb check, she mounted up again and peddled off. With a few painful exceptions, she can steer fine, but her peddling leaves a lot to be desired. We have to do a lot of pushing up inclines along straightaways. She's still working on those leg muscles. And while being low to the ground makes falls a little less painful, it also puts a lot of distractions close to eye level. She keeps getting off and checking out earthworms and trash and dried dog poop, so her adventures are still pretty close to home.

The other weekend, I presented at a conference, having left early Saturday morning and not returning until after she'd gone to bed. She normally hates when I leave for work without telling her goodbye, but Vidula and I prepped her this time and she was fine. I went in to her room to kiss her on the forehead while she was presumably fast asleep, but she was still awake at 10:30pm. "Daddy, lay with me." I agreed on condition that she wait until I change out of the day clothes I'd been wearing since 5:30am. As I walked out of her bedroom to mine, she raised her head and asked in an oddly appropriate tone, "So, how'd it go?" I'm glad she's taken an interest in what her old man does. 

Zoo and Farm

So we went to the zoo today. It was a lovely day, not too hot or cold and the Easter bunny was rumored to be making an appearance. After the normal futzing and crying, we made it there about the same time as everyone else in the Greater Cincinnati/Tri-State area. Oi! The crowds! Mr. Bunny was sitting and posing with snotty-nosed tykes lined up back a half mile, starting at the entrance, but we strolled swiftly around, directly into the park. Luckily, Jahnavi wasn't so much into Easter, having been visited by said bunny at daycare on Thursday. Unexpectedly, we ran into her friend, Ainsley, and her parents and grandparents in the gift shop. But they were leaving as we were arriving, so the little girls said goodbye and we were on our way. Lions and tigers and bears...followed by gorillas and flamingos and pigs and goats and...the list goes on. It's a good zoo, and this season the tulips are in bloom. Bursts of beautiful colors exploding about the green lawns...loovleh. We polished off the afternoon with a visit to the elephants, then headed home to naps.

The weekend before we saw animals as well. The school I'm teaching at scheduled a trip to a local touristy farm, so we went. Turns out nearly the whole staff went as well as a large number of students and their small children as well. Jahnavi enjoyed playing with Vanessa, one coworker's 10-year-old daughter, who took her around to see some of the critters and things for a while.

Seems whenever it's daughter and daddy out for an adventure, some mishap befalls her. Last time, at the dinosaur exhibit, she fell on her head (i.e., I dropped her). This time, after successfully petting the goats and pigs, I let her grab some grass and feed the chickens (following the approval and encouragement of one of the farm workers, mind you). No sooner had she extended her green offerings through the chicken wire than those little peckers started greedily grabbing at all they could. Like they don't get enough grass... they arrived at the fence in a swarm of feathers, wildly pecking away at anything that promised to satiate some rapaciousness deep in their gizzards. It occurred to me that I should tell Jahnavi to back away, but I was too late. Before her last blade of grass had been devoured by a blur of beaks, her finger got pecked. She dropped the remaining grass and hurriedly backed away, then, gaining her bearings, shuffled quickly up to me. Tears filling her eyes, she looked up and said, "I wanna go home now." Great, Dad. Did it again. I whisked her away to a portable sink and washed the owie with soap and water. Damn thing kept bleeding for a while because it was right on a knuckle. But soon Vanessa came over, took her by the hand, and began showing her things around the farm she hadn't noticed before. Without realizing it, she started feeling better, and when they finally came back, she'd already decided to stay.

Jahnavi's added relative clauses to her syntactic repertoire; the one I just recently noticed being, "This is for anyone who wants to have it." Vidula was away in Minneapolis for a week and the first thing she noticed when she got back was an obvious uptick in her daughter's verbal skills, both in terms of vocabulary and articulateness. This morning I sat her at the breakfast table and she said, "Daddy, would you..." She paused to think of the words, but I didn't give her any time to finish and jokingly interrupted with, "Yea, I might do it." Another pause. "What will you do?" Looks like she's wise to me now. She recognized that my words didn't match the conversation and asked the right question. Huh. The other day in the car, she asked how far away our home is. "Oh, it's not far." "No," she corrected,"not Aaji's home, our home." I thought about it. "You mean our home in St. Paul?" "Yea." Later I answered another question about what I thought was regarding our place in Minnesota and she stopped to correct me again, "No, Aaji's house." She's finally at the age where she's determining speaker intent. That's pretty cool. I had no idea it starts that early in child language development and cognition.