When you and didi play

You and didi are pieces that complete a jigsaw puzzle.. My heart skips when I watch the two of you play together. For now you are the follower, you follow along doing everything she is doing. When I ask you who your best friend is, you respond  "didi".

Our favorite games....

My little little little neelu singh (my cute little name for you), what I would do to keep this little for ever. You are rambuncious little boy, so full of energy, but when you are ready to sleep, you like to snuggle next to Mummy.

We play the following little silly silly games:

1) The Blinking Game -- at night or occasionally during the day, I will hold you close and we talk about something. You start blinking your eyes and I blink mine. We make a game of this to see how many times we can blink etc.

2) This little Piggy -- one of our favorite games at night. When you are lying next to me, I pick your little hands and start saying -- this little piggy went to the school, this little piggy went to tick tock, this little piggy went to the grove, this little piggy went to piano class etc.. then you add in your little notes based on whatever suits you at the moment. This little piggy went to disneyland, this little piggy went to gymboree etc..

3) Where's my son -- Every time we play this game, my heart melts. I start by asking --"where's my son?". I look around the room and look all confused. That's when you come to me and put both your hands on my ears and move my face to face you and you say -- "right here". Every single time you do this - my heart melts. You are growing up soo sooo sooo fast but I love spending my time with you.

Can't hardly keep up

Neel is growing so fast, we can't hardly keep up. We suddenly realized that all the talking and reading that we are doing is actually sinking in. We have a little alphabet book for Neel-we went through it and he did well. We were happy. Last night he insisted on doing 'ay bee shee'. He brought the box of little books over, plopped himself on my lap, and insisted on going through them. When I tried to cut it short by saying that there were no more books, he opened up the box and fished through it till he found a few more. I remember how we used to do index cards with Simone- I wrote up a bunch of three letter words and when she could remember those we moved on to four and five letter words. It is time to do the same with Neel. It is so cute to hear him say words in his neotenic English. Today Neel insisted on wearing his underwear. He pulled off his diaper, ran to his Mom yelling "Nangushingh" (which is a cute term for 'naked boy') and then put on his underwear by himself. If he cannot find his own underwear he helps himself to his sister's underwear, so we always make sure he gets his own. He got it wrong a bit, but it was very cute. We eventually convinced him to put the diaper on and then put the underwear on top of it. I took Neel to the laundry room and he first asked where the coins where-he remembered that the machines needed coins. I instead asked him to help me transfer clothes from the washing machine to the dryer, and we had fun while he helped me do that. Then he helped me put coins into the dryer. Neel has also figured out how the whole fighting thing works. He has realized that if he holds something in his hand-and whacks his sister's head with it, it is the easiest way to get her to stop beating on him. It also means we have to intervene much faster. The old days of them just pulling hair and screaming are over, now it gets to actual fighting pretty quick. This past Saturday I attempted to take Neel on a hike. I figured he would enjoy some nature. I took a push-push (a plastic car that he can sit in while I push him around). I was thinking that when we got to the park he would hop out and walk a bit. But no...Mr. Neel refused to budge from his car, and so instead of hiking, we did an urban trail from our home over to the walk of the stars, stopped by to say hello to a friend, and headed home. It was towards the end that Neel decided he wanted to push the push-push and not just sit in it. Saturday was also the first day that Neel figured out how to propel himself along. He got on a scooter and pushed himself along a bit. It was fun to see. We were at a birthday and they had a puppy party. Simone instantly found the most vulnerable puppy and started to mother it, while Neel just started at the puppies, trying to figure out what to do. He petted a few of them and then got bored. I think is on the verge of the language explosion-and we are going to make sure we take 100% advantage of it.