The baby dairies 0 to 5 yrs
0 months (07-Jul-2007): I got a congratulatory email from Oracle SSI, the organization I was working with at the time of Freya's birth. This is the message that came:
"girl boy?!!" :)
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4 months (01-Nov-2007): What is the best way to avoid the inconvenience caused by constant pee-ing at night? Trust Freya to figure out this one. She simply pees at a spot while sleeping, then pushes herself up to dry land. By morning, she would have traveled around the bed, leaving a pee-trail that helps trace her movements at night.
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1 yr 6 months: Sometime around this time, she has started to exert her independence. Most of the things she wants to do by herself. She says "Own hand, own hand" when she wants to pick or do things by herself. Like when she wants to eat, she would say "Own hand, own hand". When she wants to drink milk (if at all!!), she would say the same words. Later, when she is around 1 yr 8 months old, she becomes all the more fussy about this. When she asks for a banana, if you peel one and give it to her, she will throw a fit!! She wants to peel it all by herself. (So, of course, if you have mistakenly peel it, just stick the peels back at the top of the banana and hand it over to her. She will be fine then)
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1 yr 9 months: Freya has this habit of sleeping on the shoulder. This means, she has to be carried around and we have to keep walking around the bed till she sleeps at night. There are points at which mom and pop think that she has fallen asleep and so we stop the walking. The little brat that she is, if she is not fully asleep, she orders her way around - says "Go!" whenever the walking stops. Aye aye commander!
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1 yr 9 months: Freya has a habit of sleeping with the music on. One fine day, a decision was reached to shake her off this habit. Now, as they say, habits do not go away, they can only be substituted. So, welcome story telling and non stop talk. It took around a week or so to make her forget her demands for music. Now, if she is fussy while sleeping, we simply talk her to sleep by using words that she recognizes and forming sentences which are total gibberish (like - the MOON climbed into a RISKSHAW which was sitting on an ELEPHANT ... now you get it!)
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1 yr 10 months: Bebu goes to the temple and sees Mahaveer Swamy bhagwaan's statue . She points at statue and says "Nangu Singh". Mom pulls her away from the statue. She walks a step or two further, then points back and says again - "Nangu Singh"!
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1 yr 10 months: Bebu ran into the bedroom where mom and dad were sleeping and shouted "Came Came!". Mom and Dad asked her - "Who came?". She says - "Bebu came!" :)
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1 yr 10 months: Mummy is taking bath in bathroom. Bebu locks the door from outside. Its providence that Dadi is present in the house and she is able to open the door and lets mummy out. Now that she has done this for the first time, expect more to come ...
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1 yr 10 months: Mom was making Bebu eat her lunch and as usual, she was doing all kind of drama so as not to eat. So mom called kaku (Sanjana) for help. Kaku asked "khati hai ki nahi khati. Nahi to bulati hoon uncle ko." And then Kaku turned her head and shouted to the imaginary uncle, "Freya ko le jao uncle". Bebu immediately got her act together and said - "khati hai khati hai". Yea right baby, thanks for the favor!!
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1 yr 10 months: Mom was rushing to get ready for office when Bebu heard dadi shout out about chapatti. So Bebu asked mom to give her chapatti, to which mom said, "Let me wear new new pant and then I will get chapatti for you". Hearing this Bebu rushed to her cloth drawer and took out one of her pajamas. She handed it over to mom and said "This one. Wear this one!!"
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1 yr 10 months: After crying a lot, she says in a matter-of-fact tone, "See, so much tears coming."
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1 yr 11 months: Freya was being fussy. To distract her, mom took dad's mobile phone and was playing the ring tones. Freya was listening to them saying "Another ... another ..." at regular intervals. Then when a ring tone came which was set as dad's actual ring tone. At this point, she pulled the phone from mom's hand, ran back to dad and said - "Phone aaya". Wow, what observation! Even I do not remember what my ring tone is, because I keep on changing that frequently.
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1 yr 11 months: Freya is developing strange habits (which thankfully last for a fortnight or so, before getting replaced with newer ones. She throws in a "My God!" at random intervals, tries to pronounce "Moisturizer" as Moisturi"ger" and always demands for her 'cut' when mom applies the same; when she hears a random noise (which we almost always miss hearing), she says "No Noise!"
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1 yr 11 month: At Udaipur, on the road right outside the house, the following animals make their appearance: Cows, Dogs, Pigs, Donkeys, Squirrels. Now, as excited as Bebu gets looks at this variety, she is actually mortally scared to touch any animal which seems bigger than her in size. So I show her a pig and she wants to go closer. I start to take her closer and she suddenly realizes that she is within striking distance of the pig. So guess what - she says "Darr jaayega pig", indicating that I should step back. The world has found a future animal rights activist.
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1 yr 11 month: Papa is sitting at the bedroom door. Bebu steps inside the bedroom and asks "Closing door?". Papa says "Yes", but Papa's shoulder is between the door and door-frame, preventing her from closing door fully. So she says - "Papa, ek minute ... papa closing door" :)
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1 yr 11 months: 18-Jun-2009 - Freya's playschool (Eurokids) is supposed to start on 18-Jun-2009. The fees is a good 20K+. During the orientation session for parents, the instruction was that we have to talk to the kid about the school and what all good things they would find in school. So we told Freya about all the good toys, and other kids, and all the fun that she would have at school. So on the first day of school, Bebu is very excited. She gets up at 6:00 in the morning and wants to go to the school right away. When mom goes to take a bath, she creates a real ruckus because she wants to get out of the house. Anyway, finally the time comes to step out of the house in new shoes, new dress, new school bag, new tiffin box and new water bottle. The school has a clear tiffin menu: Mon - bread/ upma, Tue: Fruits, Wed: Idli/ Rice preparation, Thur: Salads/ Sprouts, Friday: Roti/ Sabji. On finally reaching the school with mamma, Bebu enters the play area on the ground floor, but within 5 minutes she wants to susu (on the first floor), so she is the first to enter her class (also on the first floor). All toys are placed in the center of the classroom, so Bebu gets really happy and starts to play. Then 2-3 more kids enter the classroom with their moms while Bebu is busy playing. At this point, mom asks Bebu whether she could go downstairs and get Bebu's bag (which was still in the play area). Bebu says "Okay" and continues to play alone while mom gets the bag. This is the first time mom left her alone in the class.
Bebu continues to play and is also busy snatching other children's toys. When she repeatedly snatches toys from a slightly bigger boy (named Kapil), he pulls her hair. Bebu winces a bit and starts to play again (I think she learns her lesson, because she does not bother Kapil again). When snacks time happened, teacher took her lunch box and made her eat. She eats without any major 'nakharas'. After 2 mins, teacher gives lunch box to mummy, but now Bebu wants to eat with teacher's hand only. Finally teacher has to relent.
When the teacher is singing a poem or clapping her hands, Bebu is not aping the teacher. She is doing whatever she feels like (the other kids are clapping and trying to sing). Well, over a period of time, the "system" will get better of Bebu and Bebu will begin to learn the "norms" of the society. Or will she be a rebel? Well, until she figures out, she is a free bird to do as she pleases.
The class is only for one hour on the first day. She says "bye-bye" to her teacher while going. After school ended, she wants to directly go home - she does not want to stay back in the play area.
19-Jun-2009: Second day of school and she is again excited to go to school. And again she wants to do susu as soon as she reaches school, and again she is the first to enter her class.
Teacher shows a book in the class - Buddy's first day at school (Buddy, a rabbit, is the school mascot). Bebu moves from mom's lap and sits right in front of teacher, but that is not enough for her. So then she stands right in front of the book (almost inside the book), but now, no other kid can see the book. So teacher asks Bebu to sit, but Bebu doesn't want to sit down on the floor. Finally, teacher makes Bebu sit in her lap.
She is playing around her teacher and she sees that teacher was sweating. So she goes to the teacher and tells her "Sweating so much". Teacher found this funny and laughs and tells this to other school teachers (there are four teachers in all in the classroom).
Since today is Friday, the lunchbox has chapati with tindora - something that she wanted to eat even before coming to school. During snacks break, mom hands the tiffin to Bebu, who promptly takes it to her teacher and asks teacher to make her eat "Tindora-Chapati". Teacher does not understand what Bebu is saying. Bebu repeats, but teacher still could not understand, so mom tells teacher what Bebu wants. Then teacher (Neelam teacher) makes her eat. Freya ensures that teacher spends entire snacks time only with her. Later, while teacher was singing and dancing, Bebu again did not participate and continues to watch the proceedings from Mom's lap.
After class, Freya goes to play area and plays for a very long time (around 1 hour) until she is dragged out.
26-Jun-2009: On reaching school, Bebu enters the school voluntarily. She doesn't require pushing or prodding to get playing. This is her 7th day at school.
30-Jun-2009: School bus starts today. At 700 rupees per month, this actually turns out to be costlier than directly taking a rikshaw, but is definitely more convenient.
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2 yr 2 months: Noticeable change - her conversations are much more meaningful and she can clearly relate things in the present to other things that she has heard or seen in the past. Looks like all the learning and socializing at school is paying off.
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2 yr 2 months: In a bus from Pune to Mumbai, she is being her playful self, making loud noises and asking questions to mummy. Apparently, the two men on the seat behind wanted to sleep, so they would have non-verbally told her to shut up. Freya being Freya, she tells mummy - "Mummy - uncle is shouting at me". Then she stands up on the seat the says - "Uncle, do not shout on me!". If I were to be those back seat occupants, I would have wished to vanish right then!
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2 yr 7 months (10-Feb-2010): Mummy started telling Bebu stories in Mewadi since last 2-3 days but Bebu's reaction is not very positive (she does not understand the language!). Tonight as well Bebu asks mom to tell Cow story. Mom starts - "Ek baar ek gaay thi….". And Bebu protests "Tell properly no". So mom starts again – "ok ek baar ek gaay thi." Bebu says – "No tell nicely!". So mom said "I am telling nicely only - "ek baar ek gaay thi". Finally Bebu 'corrects' mom – "No tell like this- One day there was one cow ..."
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2 yr 7 months (17-Feb-2010): Bebu likes to play with the ash of Mosquito coil. So while mom is putting the mosquito coil in place at night, Bebu says "I will clean the ash tomorrow morning”. So mom tells her "Because you are very small, Kaku (the maid) will clean it in the morning". To this Bebu replies “When I will become big no ... I will become Kaku ...".
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3 yr 2 months (10-Sep-2010): There goes! Bebu's photo is on her school website. But this happiest-kid-in-the-photo actually cries each morning before she goes to school!
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3 yr 2 months (10-Sep-2010): Established fact - the only ice-cream that Bebu would eat is Vanilla ice-cream. However, the only ice-cream that she will insist to order is Strawberry ice-cream.
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3 yr 3 months (10-Oct-2010): Clearly, she is very fascinated with visiting rest rooms at any new place that we go. So as soon as we go to a new hotel or restaurant, she would keep repeating "सुसु आया" every 20 minutes or so. The better the rest room, the higher the frequency of her requests!
(P.S.: This continues even when she is 5 years old)
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3 yr 3 months (17-Oct-2010): Bebu slept with Regal Masi for the whole night INTENTIONALLY. Usually, she goes to Regal and comes back to mom after some time, but this time, she went by herself, slept there and did not return. Even in the morning when she woke up, she threw her arms around Regal's neck and was not surprised/ shocked at her location.
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3 yr 3 months (29-Oct-2010): Today, Regal Masi left early morning for Mumbai. When Freya woke up, she asked for Regal Masi and mom told that she went to Mumbai. To this Bebu said "To aap akele reh gaye?". Mom said sadly, "hmmmm :(". Bebu replied promptly "To mein hoon na". Mom grabbed the opportunity and asked, "Because I am all alone, please don't cry and trouble me otherwise I will become very sad." Little Bebu took most care of this and later, as and when mom reminded her that mom was alone, she stopped crying or cribbing immediately.
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3 yr 10 months (28-May-2011): IPL Season 4 final match between Chennai Super Kings and Bangalore Royal Challengers is on. Around half way through the match at 9:00 pm, Bebu’s favorite serial – Chandragupt Mourya – starts on another channel. So Bebu grabs the remote (supported and reminded by Dadi) and shifts to that channel. Papa am not happy about this (it’s the FINAL match!) and Dadi whispers to Bebu that papa is angry. In the meantime, mummy brings ice-cream for papa. So Bebu goes like – “Papa, aap cold ice-cream khaa lo, aapko gussa nahi aayega”
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3 yr 11 months (10-Jun-2011): Because her chocolate eating is become very pronounced, a rule is put in place to end the daily struggles. The rule is simple - Saturday is Chocolate day. So Freya can buy chocolates through the week, but eat them only on Saturday.
It takes around 2-3 weeks to get this concept into her head, but once its in, this works beautifully well.
Of course, later, she would find workarounds to this rule, including a self-made rule that this rule does not apply to chewing gum and times when she is on vacation. She actually reasoned with mom and dad saying - "It is vacation no, so I can eat chocolate everyday!"
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3 yr 11 months (22-Jun-2011): Bebu is doing her study session with dadi. Dadi asks her to write the spelling of leg. Bebu retorts – "Which leg spelling? This leg or this leg?" (pointing at her right and left legs). Then she decides – OK, I will write the spelling of this leg (pointing to her left leg)
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4 yr 0 months (07-Jul-2011): Anger Management! This is turning out to be a big issue - Bebu gets wildly angry when things do not go her way. This could be anything from not getting to wear a dress of her choice to not being able to strap the velcro on her floaters. In almost all cases, the fault is of the object which is not behaving well! She tells the object - "Arre, theek se kaam kar na!". Thankfully, her anger mostly does not result in any physical violence. It is mostly just contortion of her face and grinding of her teeth.
Her anger has become really pronounced since the past 2-3 months. The anger would often end in a stream of tears when mom or pop shout at her telling her that it is not alright to get angry on the flimsiest of things. To her credit, she cools down quite quickly. It just takes one moment of diversion for her to cool down. (added note as of Oct 2011: The anger, shouting and beating is only getting more intense)
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4 yr 1 months (07-Aug-2011): Freya has acquired a taste for chewing gums. Everytime she sees one, she wants one. Now, we have put a stop on Freya from eating chocolates on any other day other than Saturday. So the colossal fight going on is - can she be allowed to eat gum on any day of the week? That would depend on whether gum classify as chocolate or not. Freya keeps insisting that it does not. Mom and Pop are in two minds about this. So finally, Freya is asked to confirm from her teacher whether or not chewing gum can be counted under the category of chocolates.
(P.S. - update after two months - till date, Freya has not asked her teacher, despite several reminders)
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4 yr 1 months (07-Aug-2011): Freya as usual tries various tricks to escape drinking 3 cups of milk in a day. She tries to negotiate her way around. So the term "no compromise" was introduced. It went something like - "You have to drink the full glass of milk, no compromise!" After a while, she got the concept and knew that there was no use arguing if "no compromise" was used. And then she mastered this concept in 2 or 3 weeks and started to use it back on mom and pop! For example, she would say - You have to take me to Magarpatta City Garden today, no compromise!
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4 yr 2 months (07-Sep-2011): Mom dispatched Freya with money and a bag to get two liters of milk from the shop on the opposite side of the road. She went all the way, got the milk and came back. Though she could hardly carry the 2 liters of milk because of the weight, she revels in such responsibilities!
(P.S. - During such errands, Freya does not like to be accompanied by anyone else. I tried discreetly following her during one such assignment, and she was not pleased at all when she found out! I had to make some silly excuse to get away!
4 yr 2 months (23-Sep-2011): We are staying at Sonal's place overnight after an office party. At around 12:00 at night, after everyone else left, Freya decided to watch some TV. As Sonal is flipping TV channels, she sees a glimpse of a saas-bahu TV soap and shouts out - I want to see Gopi Bahu! Sonal is amazed that a kid this age would shout for TV serials rather than for cartoons! (The fascination of Freya towards soaps is because when Dadi comes to Pune, she watches these serials and keeps telling Bebu the story of these serials.
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4 yr 2 months (24-Sep-2011): All of us go to Katraj temple and stay there for a couple of days. When papa asked her what wish will she ask from God - she said that "Saturday should come 'jaldi-jaldi'" (This is because, Saturday is her chocolate day, i.e. the only day of the week when she can eat chocolates)
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4 yr 2 months (25-Sep-2011): Today, after chewing gum, she stuck the gum on Mom's hair. That's it - Freya got shouted on, and I got shouted on for giving her gum. Mom made the declaration that from now on, no more gum for Freya. Freya and Pop meekly agreed. (But of course, this was another of those "agreements" that was done under duress - and such agreements never last long!)
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4 yr 3 months (25-Oct-2011): Freya and dad go out on a 10-day road trip to Kolhapur-Goa-Udipi-Wayanad, along with Balaji's family and two other kids. There, Freya was under the disciplined watchful eye of Balaji, who was bent on making sure that Freya eats spicy food (Balaji saw Freya eating no-masala-only-salt Maggie a couple of days back in Goa ... and was surprised that a 4 year old would not eat masala). So he took it upon himself to indoctrinate her with "masala". During one such session, he told Freya that "When you go to Pune, you tell Papa to give you half-masala-Maggie". Then he asked her for affirmation - "So what will you tell Papa?". Papa was sitting next to Freya. So Freya looks at him and asks him - "Suna"?
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4 yr 3 months (1-Nov-2011): Freya is getting a irritated around something and uses her weapon with Papa - "Double katti, full stop!". Anyway, no one ever knows what causes these kattis! So when she finally calms down, I take her in my lap and tell her - "I want to tell you three things". One of the things was that after she fires her double katti, she should tell the reason why she is katti. She understands this expectation and after some reminders over next couple days, she no readily shares the reasons why she is katti. Just going by her demeanour, she is much more relaxed when she shares the reason for the katti. This continues through the rest of the days, and will hopefully be a defining trait in terms of trying to verbalize any emotional distress.
Oh, by the way, if she is extremely upset, she can go up to one hundred kattis with you!
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4 yr 4 months (2-Nov-2011): We go on a trek up a small hill - the five kids, Balaji and myself. On the top, there is a steep drop on one edge, and Freya and Vicky keep trying to go close to that edge. So Balaji shouts on them and orders them to sit down on a wooden shank and not to move from there until he finishes speaking with someone. The shank was wet and muddy, and Freya soils her pants as a result. She is terribly cross with Balaji after this. Some three days later, out of the blue, she tells Balaji "Double kutti, full stop". He is shocked and asks her why. She says because her dress became dirty because of Balaji. At that point, Balaji comments - women will always be women. You never know what all things they keep in their memory!
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4 yr 4 months (2-Nov-2011): We went to Soochipara Water falls in Kerela in Wayanad district near the city of Kalpetta. There is a 1 km trek from the car park to the water falls and it is raining. Since none of us are prepared for the rain, we have not got an extra pair of t-shirts. So all the boys (and Freya) too off their shirts in the car and were trekking to the falls. Naturally, it was quite cool along the way and on our way back, Freya was shivering. There were people selling masala Maggie along the way, and Freya actually ate steaming "full-masala" Maggie and enjoyed it! Guess there is something about cold and Indian spices!
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4 yr 4 months (7-Nov-2011): Freya has started to teach 4 children of laborers who stay behind our building in temporary tin sheds. Teaching from A-Z (capital letters) as well as poems. For the first couple of days, she is a little shy in coming in front of the group and reciting or teaching poems to the group. But as the days go by, she has become more confident and actually thinks of herself as a teacher. This teaching of the four girls lasted for around two months, during which time, the students actually become her friends, and she is happy bringing these kids inside the building into the garden and playing with them.
One of the days, we took the kids to a movie-day-out at Amanora Park, where a children's film festival was going on around Christmas time. The kids had to go into the make-shift cinema alone (without parents) and Bebu was very excited to go with her friends. Post the movie, all the kids had a ball of a time playing with the christmas trees put up on the mall. The snap below is from this trip.
P.S.: By early 2012, the kids migrated over to other construction sites or moved back to their home villages.
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4 yr 4 months (16-Nov-2011): Regal, Tanu, Vaibhav, Sameer and Freya had gone to a buffet dinner to Nautanki Gali. This restaurant had actual auto-rikshaws with modified dining tables. Freya was super excited when she saw this and wanted to be on the drivers seat. There were already 2 siblings playing though. So I spoke with them and asked all three to share the driving and walked back to our table to continue with dinner. After a while, Freya came back angry and with tears in her eyes saying that the two siblings were not giving her enough of a chance. She wanted me to come along to sort the issue. So I went and again requested the other two, slightly elder kids to share. They said they were already sharing enough and Freya was the one who was not willing to move from the driver's seat. Hearing this, Freya lost it. Through her tears, she get one hell of a verbal dressing to the two kids, half of which was incoherent, but anyone could tell that that she was searing with anger. After this, the two siblings got scared and returned to their table, leaving Freya in sole control of the driver's seat.
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4 yr 4 months (17-Nov-2011): We had gone with Freya to Jaffer's marriage; Jaffer is a colleague from Tadmur. As in a traditional muslim marriage, the women were seated in a separate enclosed section. Freya was there with her mom. After a while, she started to insist that she wanted to go to Papa. But I was in the middle of food and told mom over the phone that Freya be kept in the ladies section only. To which Freya correctly observed - All the small boys are coming to ladies section, then why cant I go to the gents section? (Looks like she is aware of her constitutionally guaranteed right - Article 15 of the constitution of India bans discrimination based on gender!)
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4 yr 5 months (1-Dec-2011): Freya suddenly decides that she wants to be a boy (well, kind of a recurring thought, but on this day, it was particularly pronounced). So we had to show her photo of boy vs. girl and how they are naturally different. So Freya says - why don't you cut the nangu singh of boy and attach to me. That way, I will also become boy!
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4 yr 5 months (3-Dec-2011): Its winter and while going to sleep, Freya takes off her t-shirt. So mama scolds her and ask her to put it on. She says that papa has sleeps shirtless at night, so I will also sleep without shirt. End result was that papa had to put his shirt back on and only then Freya agreed to sleep with her top on. The next day, we had to scare her saying that if she will remove her shirt and let air touch her skin, then she will get hair on her chest like papa. She hates this idea and now willingly puts on her top when sleeping.
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4 yr 5 months (4-Dec-2011): Freya was "comfortable" giving her toys (half broke ones - most of them) to her "students" and their siblings. In fact, she was even "happy" to an extent giving the toys out. She was also rummaging through some older notebooks and story books to identify the ones that could be given out to her students.
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4 yr 5 months (6-Dec-2011): To introduce her to the concept of postal system, I took her to the post office, got her to write a card to mom (the words on the card are Freya's own) and got her to post in the post box.
4 yr 5 months (13-Dec-2011): Bebu says that she will come out of Papa's tummy. When we ask her why, she says that mama's tummy is paining (which is true) and so if she will come out of mama's tummy, then it will pain more.
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4 yr 5 months (13-Dec-2011): Bebu is into the habit of having the left over portion of bath water poured over her directly from the bucket. She has a mental image of how much water should be left over in the bucket that can be poured on her. Today, the left over quantity was lesser than usual. So she told papa that she did not want the water to be poured over her (she said this with a tinge of anger and sarcasm). When papa asked her "why" a couple of times, she said angrily that is because the water in the bucket is too less. Papa said - do not worry, the water will last for a long time. So after pouring the water, papa said- See, I told you that the water will last long. To this Freya said that this is because you were pouring the water slowly! Damn right - her logic was bang on and papa had no response!
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4 yr 5 months (13-Dec-2011): Since a past few weeks, Bebu has memorized mummy's mobile number and she dials mummy's number and speaks with her whenever she desires (which is usually when she wants to complain about someone else)!
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4 yr 5 months (15-Dec-2011): What Santa Clause gave Freya on Christmas of Dec 2011: School shoes, Scooter and Toothbrush. (Santa had hidden these things at various places, and Bebu had to do some treasure hunting to find out her gifts).
Why did Santa do so: Because Freya wrote a letter to Santa asking for these three exact things! Here's the letter that got "posted" to Santa:
4 yr 6 months (25-Dec-2011): Bebu stayed at dadaji's and dadi's house in Borivali alone from Tuesday 20-Dec-2011 to Sunday 25-Dec-2011. She had a good time playing with her friends Hiva and little Namya (1 year old). She was obsessed with making Namya sit in her lap - her primary focus during this stay. She also got lice in her hair transferred from either Hiva or Namya or both!
She was also very excited on this Christmas morning, because Santa would have visited the previous night to drop her gifts. But alas! The gifts were no where to be found!! Until, that is, mom and dad played a little "treasure hunting" game with her. So finally, the new toothbrush was found in the toothbrush bin, the shoes were found in the shoe rack and the new scooter was found inside the toy cupboard! :)
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4 yr 6 months (28-Dec-2011): Bebu is drinking Bournvita milk - she is almost done drinking from her cup when mummy notices that there is a lot of Bournvita collected at the bottom. She tells Freya - Why did you not shake the cup before drinking it all? So Bebu starts to shake herself from her waist up. :).
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4 yr 6 months (28-Dec-2011): Bebu is playing in a local garden and suddenly wants to go to Magarpatta Garden at 8 at night. So I tell her that we will first go home, change, then off to Magarpatta Garden if mummy agrees. Bebu reaches home, asks for permission and mom agrees that she could go. But then papa reminded that it was almost dinner time, so may be Bebu should first have dinner and then we can go to the garden - to which mummy said - Yes, correct, have dinner first. Bebu got pretty cheesed off at this and shouted at Papa - See, you reminded mummy that is why I now have to eat dinner. Otherwise, mummy was sending me directly to the garden.
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4 yr 6 months (9-Jan-2012): Bebu starts going to a once-a-week drawing class. (For the first few weeks, the activities are limited to coloring, but then she graduates to drawing as well).
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4 yr 6 months (17-Jan-2012): Papa was telling Bebu a story about an animal whose leg was fractured. Bebu asked - what is a fracture. So while explaining, papa said - "See, suppose your bone broke. What will happen next?". So she said very innocently - "Ouch".
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4 yr 6 months (23-Jan-2012): Bebu had gone to toilet at night. After coming out, she asks - Papa, are there snakes in the sea? Papa says - Yes. Then she says - OK, so the snakes can come in the toilet as well right? Papa asks - Why? She says - because toilet's water goes into the sea, so snakes from sea can also come into the toilet, right?
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4 yr 8 months (10-Mar-2012): Because Bebu keeps on saying that she wants to come to Australia "just now ke just now", papa at one point said that he is still trying to find a house for Bebu and after he finds a house for Bebu, she can come to Australia. So Bebu was like, but where-ever you sleep, I will sleep. To scare her (or so I thought), I told her that I have use dogs as my bed and have to sleep on top of dogs.
After several days, Bebu calls up to say that Papa can get 2 dogs, mummy can sleep on one dog, papa can sleep on another and she will sleep on top of Papa.
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4 yr 8 months (26-Mar-2012): Bebu went to Mumbai with Daadi. The only thing they do when they get together is fight - especially at the time of eating food. And after Bebu fights, she picks up the phone, dials mummy and complains about daadi. So daadi gets angry, and in the evening when mummy comes back home, she calls mummy to complain about Bebu. When Bebu hears this, she gets even more angry, snatches the phone and complains to mummy that "daadi toh hameesha complain hi karti rehti hai!". This is what happens when two "kids" come together!
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4 yr 8 months (31-Mar-2012). Birthday wishes for papa from Freya. Drawn and colored by her. (She copied the drawing from one that her drawing teacher made for her).
Oh, and BTW, there were 3 chocolates. I just ate one!!
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Sameer
Wishing you and your girl boy
lots of happiness and joy.
Congratulations !
Cheers,
All of us at SSI
"girl boy?!!" :)
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4 months (01-Nov-2007): What is the best way to avoid the inconvenience caused by constant pee-ing at night? Trust Freya to figure out this one. She simply pees at a spot while sleeping, then pushes herself up to dry land. By morning, she would have traveled around the bed, leaving a pee-trail that helps trace her movements at night.
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1 yr 6 months: Sometime around this time, she has started to exert her independence. Most of the things she wants to do by herself. She says "Own hand, own hand" when she wants to pick or do things by herself. Like when she wants to eat, she would say "Own hand, own hand". When she wants to drink milk (if at all!!), she would say the same words. Later, when she is around 1 yr 8 months old, she becomes all the more fussy about this. When she asks for a banana, if you peel one and give it to her, she will throw a fit!! She wants to peel it all by herself. (So, of course, if you have mistakenly peel it, just stick the peels back at the top of the banana and hand it over to her. She will be fine then)
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1 yr 9 months: Freya has this habit of sleeping on the shoulder. This means, she has to be carried around and we have to keep walking around the bed till she sleeps at night. There are points at which mom and pop think that she has fallen asleep and so we stop the walking. The little brat that she is, if she is not fully asleep, she orders her way around - says "Go!" whenever the walking stops. Aye aye commander!
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1 yr 9 months: Freya has a habit of sleeping with the music on. One fine day, a decision was reached to shake her off this habit. Now, as they say, habits do not go away, they can only be substituted. So, welcome story telling and non stop talk. It took around a week or so to make her forget her demands for music. Now, if she is fussy while sleeping, we simply talk her to sleep by using words that she recognizes and forming sentences which are total gibberish (like - the MOON climbed into a RISKSHAW which was sitting on an ELEPHANT ... now you get it!)
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1 yr 10 months: Bebu goes to the temple and sees Mahaveer Swamy bhagwaan's statue . She points at statue and says "Nangu Singh". Mom pulls her away from the statue. She walks a step or two further, then points back and says again - "Nangu Singh"!
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1 yr 10 months: Bebu ran into the bedroom where mom and dad were sleeping and shouted "Came Came!". Mom and Dad asked her - "Who came?". She says - "Bebu came!" :)
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1 yr 10 months: Mummy is taking bath in bathroom. Bebu locks the door from outside. Its providence that Dadi is present in the house and she is able to open the door and lets mummy out. Now that she has done this for the first time, expect more to come ...
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1 yr 10 months: Mom was making Bebu eat her lunch and as usual, she was doing all kind of drama so as not to eat. So mom called kaku (Sanjana) for help. Kaku asked "khati hai ki nahi khati. Nahi to bulati hoon uncle ko." And then Kaku turned her head and shouted to the imaginary uncle, "Freya ko le jao uncle". Bebu immediately got her act together and said - "khati hai khati hai". Yea right baby, thanks for the favor!!
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1 yr 10 months: Mom was rushing to get ready for office when Bebu heard dadi shout out about chapatti. So Bebu asked mom to give her chapatti, to which mom said, "Let me wear new new pant and then I will get chapatti for you". Hearing this Bebu rushed to her cloth drawer and took out one of her pajamas. She handed it over to mom and said "This one. Wear this one!!"
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1 yr 10 months: After crying a lot, she says in a matter-of-fact tone, "See, so much tears coming."
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1 yr 11 months: Freya was being fussy. To distract her, mom took dad's mobile phone and was playing the ring tones. Freya was listening to them saying "Another ... another ..." at regular intervals. Then when a ring tone came which was set as dad's actual ring tone. At this point, she pulled the phone from mom's hand, ran back to dad and said - "Phone aaya". Wow, what observation! Even I do not remember what my ring tone is, because I keep on changing that frequently.
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1 yr 11 months: Freya is developing strange habits (which thankfully last for a fortnight or so, before getting replaced with newer ones. She throws in a "My God!" at random intervals, tries to pronounce "Moisturizer" as Moisturi"ger" and always demands for her 'cut' when mom applies the same; when she hears a random noise (which we almost always miss hearing), she says "No Noise!"
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1 yr 11 month: At Udaipur, on the road right outside the house, the following animals make their appearance: Cows, Dogs, Pigs, Donkeys, Squirrels. Now, as excited as Bebu gets looks at this variety, she is actually mortally scared to touch any animal which seems bigger than her in size. So I show her a pig and she wants to go closer. I start to take her closer and she suddenly realizes that she is within striking distance of the pig. So guess what - she says "Darr jaayega pig", indicating that I should step back. The world has found a future animal rights activist.
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1 yr 11 month: Papa is sitting at the bedroom door. Bebu steps inside the bedroom and asks "Closing door?". Papa says "Yes", but Papa's shoulder is between the door and door-frame, preventing her from closing door fully. So she says - "Papa, ek minute ... papa closing door" :)
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1 yr 11 months: 18-Jun-2009 - Freya's playschool (Eurokids) is supposed to start on 18-Jun-2009. The fees is a good 20K+. During the orientation session for parents, the instruction was that we have to talk to the kid about the school and what all good things they would find in school. So we told Freya about all the good toys, and other kids, and all the fun that she would have at school. So on the first day of school, Bebu is very excited. She gets up at 6:00 in the morning and wants to go to the school right away. When mom goes to take a bath, she creates a real ruckus because she wants to get out of the house. Anyway, finally the time comes to step out of the house in new shoes, new dress, new school bag, new tiffin box and new water bottle. The school has a clear tiffin menu: Mon - bread/ upma, Tue: Fruits, Wed: Idli/ Rice preparation, Thur: Salads/ Sprouts, Friday: Roti/ Sabji. On finally reaching the school with mamma, Bebu enters the play area on the ground floor, but within 5 minutes she wants to susu (on the first floor), so she is the first to enter her class (also on the first floor). All toys are placed in the center of the classroom, so Bebu gets really happy and starts to play. Then 2-3 more kids enter the classroom with their moms while Bebu is busy playing. At this point, mom asks Bebu whether she could go downstairs and get Bebu's bag (which was still in the play area). Bebu says "Okay" and continues to play alone while mom gets the bag. This is the first time mom left her alone in the class.
Bebu continues to play and is also busy snatching other children's toys. When she repeatedly snatches toys from a slightly bigger boy (named Kapil), he pulls her hair. Bebu winces a bit and starts to play again (I think she learns her lesson, because she does not bother Kapil again). When snacks time happened, teacher took her lunch box and made her eat. She eats without any major 'nakharas'. After 2 mins, teacher gives lunch box to mummy, but now Bebu wants to eat with teacher's hand only. Finally teacher has to relent.
When the teacher is singing a poem or clapping her hands, Bebu is not aping the teacher. She is doing whatever she feels like (the other kids are clapping and trying to sing). Well, over a period of time, the "system" will get better of Bebu and Bebu will begin to learn the "norms" of the society. Or will she be a rebel? Well, until she figures out, she is a free bird to do as she pleases.
The class is only for one hour on the first day. She says "bye-bye" to her teacher while going. After school ended, she wants to directly go home - she does not want to stay back in the play area.
19-Jun-2009: Second day of school and she is again excited to go to school. And again she wants to do susu as soon as she reaches school, and again she is the first to enter her class.
Teacher shows a book in the class - Buddy's first day at school (Buddy, a rabbit, is the school mascot). Bebu moves from mom's lap and sits right in front of teacher, but that is not enough for her. So then she stands right in front of the book (almost inside the book), but now, no other kid can see the book. So teacher asks Bebu to sit, but Bebu doesn't want to sit down on the floor. Finally, teacher makes Bebu sit in her lap.
She is playing around her teacher and she sees that teacher was sweating. So she goes to the teacher and tells her "Sweating so much". Teacher found this funny and laughs and tells this to other school teachers (there are four teachers in all in the classroom).
Since today is Friday, the lunchbox has chapati with tindora - something that she wanted to eat even before coming to school. During snacks break, mom hands the tiffin to Bebu, who promptly takes it to her teacher and asks teacher to make her eat "Tindora-Chapati". Teacher does not understand what Bebu is saying. Bebu repeats, but teacher still could not understand, so mom tells teacher what Bebu wants. Then teacher (Neelam teacher) makes her eat. Freya ensures that teacher spends entire snacks time only with her. Later, while teacher was singing and dancing, Bebu again did not participate and continues to watch the proceedings from Mom's lap.
After class, Freya goes to play area and plays for a very long time (around 1 hour) until she is dragged out.
26-Jun-2009: On reaching school, Bebu enters the school voluntarily. She doesn't require pushing or prodding to get playing. This is her 7th day at school.
30-Jun-2009: School bus starts today. At 700 rupees per month, this actually turns out to be costlier than directly taking a rikshaw, but is definitely more convenient.
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2 yr 2 months: Noticeable change - her conversations are much more meaningful and she can clearly relate things in the present to other things that she has heard or seen in the past. Looks like all the learning and socializing at school is paying off.
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2 yr 2 months: In a bus from Pune to Mumbai, she is being her playful self, making loud noises and asking questions to mummy. Apparently, the two men on the seat behind wanted to sleep, so they would have non-verbally told her to shut up. Freya being Freya, she tells mummy - "Mummy - uncle is shouting at me". Then she stands up on the seat the says - "Uncle, do not shout on me!". If I were to be those back seat occupants, I would have wished to vanish right then!
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2 yr 7 months (10-Feb-2010): Mummy started telling Bebu stories in Mewadi since last 2-3 days but Bebu's reaction is not very positive (she does not understand the language!). Tonight as well Bebu asks mom to tell Cow story. Mom starts - "Ek baar ek gaay thi….". And Bebu protests "Tell properly no". So mom starts again – "ok ek baar ek gaay thi." Bebu says – "No tell nicely!". So mom said "I am telling nicely only - "ek baar ek gaay thi". Finally Bebu 'corrects' mom – "No tell like this- One day there was one cow ..."
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2 yr 7 months (17-Feb-2010): Bebu likes to play with the ash of Mosquito coil. So while mom is putting the mosquito coil in place at night, Bebu says "I will clean the ash tomorrow morning”. So mom tells her "Because you are very small, Kaku (the maid) will clean it in the morning". To this Bebu replies “When I will become big no ... I will become Kaku ...".
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3 yr 2 months (10-Sep-2010): Established fact - the only ice-cream that Bebu would eat is Vanilla ice-cream. However, the only ice-cream that she will insist to order is Strawberry ice-cream.
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3 yr 3 months (10-Oct-2010): Clearly, she is very fascinated with visiting rest rooms at any new place that we go. So as soon as we go to a new hotel or restaurant, she would keep repeating "सुसु आया" every 20 minutes or so. The better the rest room, the higher the frequency of her requests!
(P.S.: This continues even when she is 5 years old)
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3 yr 3 months (17-Oct-2010): Bebu slept with Regal Masi for the whole night INTENTIONALLY. Usually, she goes to Regal and comes back to mom after some time, but this time, she went by herself, slept there and did not return. Even in the morning when she woke up, she threw her arms around Regal's neck and was not surprised/ shocked at her location.
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3 yr 3 months (29-Oct-2010): Today, Regal Masi left early morning for Mumbai. When Freya woke up, she asked for Regal Masi and mom told that she went to Mumbai. To this Bebu said "To aap akele reh gaye?". Mom said sadly, "hmmmm :(". Bebu replied promptly "To mein hoon na". Mom grabbed the opportunity and asked, "Because I am all alone, please don't cry and trouble me otherwise I will become very sad." Little Bebu took most care of this and later, as and when mom reminded her that mom was alone, she stopped crying or cribbing immediately.
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3 yr 3 months (10-Nov-2010): As a typical woman, when Freya is angry, she will actually tell you exactly opposite of what she really wants. So she wanted to wear her brand new white dress today to go to the garden. When she was told that the dress will get dirty, she said - ठीक है, मुझे यह ड्रेस नहीं चाहिए. Finally pop had to ask her not to be "sarcastic". So she asked what this meant, to which she was explained that this means telling opposite of what you actually want.
After this, the discussions with Freya were much more simplified. E.g., this is what happened later:
Freya: I do not want to drink milk today
Mom (sternly): No, you have to drink milk
Freya: ठीक है, तो तीन कप दूध पिला दो!
Dad: Bebu, dont be sarcastic
Freya: No, I will be sarcastic!
-----------------------------------------------3 yr 10 months (28-May-2011): IPL Season 4 final match between Chennai Super Kings and Bangalore Royal Challengers is on. Around half way through the match at 9:00 pm, Bebu’s favorite serial – Chandragupt Mourya – starts on another channel. So Bebu grabs the remote (supported and reminded by Dadi) and shifts to that channel. Papa am not happy about this (it’s the FINAL match!) and Dadi whispers to Bebu that papa is angry. In the meantime, mummy brings ice-cream for papa. So Bebu goes like – “Papa, aap cold ice-cream khaa lo, aapko gussa nahi aayega”
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3 yr 11 months (10-Jun-2011): Because her chocolate eating is become very pronounced, a rule is put in place to end the daily struggles. The rule is simple - Saturday is Chocolate day. So Freya can buy chocolates through the week, but eat them only on Saturday.
It takes around 2-3 weeks to get this concept into her head, but once its in, this works beautifully well.
Of course, later, she would find workarounds to this rule, including a self-made rule that this rule does not apply to chewing gum and times when she is on vacation. She actually reasoned with mom and dad saying - "It is vacation no, so I can eat chocolate everyday!"
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3 yr 11 months (22-Jun-2011): Bebu is doing her study session with dadi. Dadi asks her to write the spelling of leg. Bebu retorts – "Which leg spelling? This leg or this leg?" (pointing at her right and left legs). Then she decides – OK, I will write the spelling of this leg (pointing to her left leg)
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4 yr 0 months (07-Jul-2011): Anger Management! This is turning out to be a big issue - Bebu gets wildly angry when things do not go her way. This could be anything from not getting to wear a dress of her choice to not being able to strap the velcro on her floaters. In almost all cases, the fault is of the object which is not behaving well! She tells the object - "Arre, theek se kaam kar na!". Thankfully, her anger mostly does not result in any physical violence. It is mostly just contortion of her face and grinding of her teeth.
Her anger has become really pronounced since the past 2-3 months. The anger would often end in a stream of tears when mom or pop shout at her telling her that it is not alright to get angry on the flimsiest of things. To her credit, she cools down quite quickly. It just takes one moment of diversion for her to cool down. (added note as of Oct 2011: The anger, shouting and beating is only getting more intense)
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4 yr 1 months (07-Aug-2011): Freya has acquired a taste for chewing gums. Everytime she sees one, she wants one. Now, we have put a stop on Freya from eating chocolates on any other day other than Saturday. So the colossal fight going on is - can she be allowed to eat gum on any day of the week? That would depend on whether gum classify as chocolate or not. Freya keeps insisting that it does not. Mom and Pop are in two minds about this. So finally, Freya is asked to confirm from her teacher whether or not chewing gum can be counted under the category of chocolates.
(P.S. - update after two months - till date, Freya has not asked her teacher, despite several reminders)
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4 yr 1 months (07-Aug-2011): Freya as usual tries various tricks to escape drinking 3 cups of milk in a day. She tries to negotiate her way around. So the term "no compromise" was introduced. It went something like - "You have to drink the full glass of milk, no compromise!" After a while, she got the concept and knew that there was no use arguing if "no compromise" was used. And then she mastered this concept in 2 or 3 weeks and started to use it back on mom and pop! For example, she would say - You have to take me to Magarpatta City Garden today, no compromise!
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4 yr 2 months (07-Sep-2011): Mom dispatched Freya with money and a bag to get two liters of milk from the shop on the opposite side of the road. She went all the way, got the milk and came back. Though she could hardly carry the 2 liters of milk because of the weight, she revels in such responsibilities!
(P.S. - During such errands, Freya does not like to be accompanied by anyone else. I tried discreetly following her during one such assignment, and she was not pleased at all when she found out! I had to make some silly excuse to get away!
Added note - Dec-2011: She went to the shop to get 1 litre of milk. Dad was following her and watching from far away. But the shop was crowded. So Freya stood there for upwards of 5 minutes, around 4 feet from the counter, and then came back home without the milk. When she was asked why did she not bring milk, she said there was too much crowd and मुझे शर्म आ गयी! This theme of feeling awkward or self-consious has occured in the past and will continue to occur in future. The example where she did not ask her teacher about the classification of gum can be attributed to this)
-----------------------------------------------4 yr 2 months (23-Sep-2011): We are staying at Sonal's place overnight after an office party. At around 12:00 at night, after everyone else left, Freya decided to watch some TV. As Sonal is flipping TV channels, she sees a glimpse of a saas-bahu TV soap and shouts out - I want to see Gopi Bahu! Sonal is amazed that a kid this age would shout for TV serials rather than for cartoons! (The fascination of Freya towards soaps is because when Dadi comes to Pune, she watches these serials and keeps telling Bebu the story of these serials.
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4 yr 2 months (24-Sep-2011): All of us go to Katraj temple and stay there for a couple of days. When papa asked her what wish will she ask from God - she said that "Saturday should come 'jaldi-jaldi'" (This is because, Saturday is her chocolate day, i.e. the only day of the week when she can eat chocolates)
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4 yr 2 months (25-Sep-2011): Today, after chewing gum, she stuck the gum on Mom's hair. That's it - Freya got shouted on, and I got shouted on for giving her gum. Mom made the declaration that from now on, no more gum for Freya. Freya and Pop meekly agreed. (But of course, this was another of those "agreements" that was done under duress - and such agreements never last long!)
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4 yr 3 months (25-Oct-2011): Freya and dad go out on a 10-day road trip to Kolhapur-Goa-Udipi-Wayanad, along with Balaji's family and two other kids. There, Freya was under the disciplined watchful eye of Balaji, who was bent on making sure that Freya eats spicy food (Balaji saw Freya eating no-masala-only-salt Maggie a couple of days back in Goa ... and was surprised that a 4 year old would not eat masala). So he took it upon himself to indoctrinate her with "masala". During one such session, he told Freya that "When you go to Pune, you tell Papa to give you half-masala-Maggie". Then he asked her for affirmation - "So what will you tell Papa?". Papa was sitting next to Freya. So Freya looks at him and asks him - "Suna"?
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4 yr 3 months (1-Nov-2011): Freya is getting a irritated around something and uses her weapon with Papa - "Double katti, full stop!". Anyway, no one ever knows what causes these kattis! So when she finally calms down, I take her in my lap and tell her - "I want to tell you three things". One of the things was that after she fires her double katti, she should tell the reason why she is katti. She understands this expectation and after some reminders over next couple days, she no readily shares the reasons why she is katti. Just going by her demeanour, she is much more relaxed when she shares the reason for the katti. This continues through the rest of the days, and will hopefully be a defining trait in terms of trying to verbalize any emotional distress.
Oh, by the way, if she is extremely upset, she can go up to one hundred kattis with you!
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4 yr 4 months (2-Nov-2011): We go on a trek up a small hill - the five kids, Balaji and myself. On the top, there is a steep drop on one edge, and Freya and Vicky keep trying to go close to that edge. So Balaji shouts on them and orders them to sit down on a wooden shank and not to move from there until he finishes speaking with someone. The shank was wet and muddy, and Freya soils her pants as a result. She is terribly cross with Balaji after this. Some three days later, out of the blue, she tells Balaji "Double kutti, full stop". He is shocked and asks her why. She says because her dress became dirty because of Balaji. At that point, Balaji comments - women will always be women. You never know what all things they keep in their memory!
So one of the things that Freya keeps in her memory is her dislike of how Balaji disciplines here. Later (12-Jan-2012), when Balaji was at our place in Pune, Freya was really excited seeing him. But then, Balaji asked her to fold her hands in his disciplinary tone. I clicked the photo of this moment with my mobile (you can see from Freya's face that she hates this moment!). Whenever Freya saw this photo in the mobile, she got upset and angry and asked me to delete the photo अभी के अभी! Of course, I did delete it, but only after putting it on this blog!!
4 yr 4 months (2-Nov-2011): We went to Soochipara Water falls in Kerela in Wayanad district near the city of Kalpetta. There is a 1 km trek from the car park to the water falls and it is raining. Since none of us are prepared for the rain, we have not got an extra pair of t-shirts. So all the boys (and Freya) too off their shirts in the car and were trekking to the falls. Naturally, it was quite cool along the way and on our way back, Freya was shivering. There were people selling masala Maggie along the way, and Freya actually ate steaming "full-masala" Maggie and enjoyed it! Guess there is something about cold and Indian spices!
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4 yr 4 months (7-Nov-2011): Freya has started to teach 4 children of laborers who stay behind our building in temporary tin sheds. Teaching from A-Z (capital letters) as well as poems. For the first couple of days, she is a little shy in coming in front of the group and reciting or teaching poems to the group. But as the days go by, she has become more confident and actually thinks of herself as a teacher. This teaching of the four girls lasted for around two months, during which time, the students actually become her friends, and she is happy bringing these kids inside the building into the garden and playing with them.
One of the days, we took the kids to a movie-day-out at Amanora Park, where a children's film festival was going on around Christmas time. The kids had to go into the make-shift cinema alone (without parents) and Bebu was very excited to go with her friends. Post the movie, all the kids had a ball of a time playing with the christmas trees put up on the mall. The snap below is from this trip.
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4 yr 4 months (16-Nov-2011): Regal, Tanu, Vaibhav, Sameer and Freya had gone to a buffet dinner to Nautanki Gali. This restaurant had actual auto-rikshaws with modified dining tables. Freya was super excited when she saw this and wanted to be on the drivers seat. There were already 2 siblings playing though. So I spoke with them and asked all three to share the driving and walked back to our table to continue with dinner. After a while, Freya came back angry and with tears in her eyes saying that the two siblings were not giving her enough of a chance. She wanted me to come along to sort the issue. So I went and again requested the other two, slightly elder kids to share. They said they were already sharing enough and Freya was the one who was not willing to move from the driver's seat. Hearing this, Freya lost it. Through her tears, she get one hell of a verbal dressing to the two kids, half of which was incoherent, but anyone could tell that that she was searing with anger. After this, the two siblings got scared and returned to their table, leaving Freya in sole control of the driver's seat.
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4 yr 4 months (17-Nov-2011): We had gone with Freya to Jaffer's marriage; Jaffer is a colleague from Tadmur. As in a traditional muslim marriage, the women were seated in a separate enclosed section. Freya was there with her mom. After a while, she started to insist that she wanted to go to Papa. But I was in the middle of food and told mom over the phone that Freya be kept in the ladies section only. To which Freya correctly observed - All the small boys are coming to ladies section, then why cant I go to the gents section? (Looks like she is aware of her constitutionally guaranteed right - Article 15 of the constitution of India bans discrimination based on gender!)
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4 yr 5 months (1-Dec-2011): Freya suddenly decides that she wants to be a boy (well, kind of a recurring thought, but on this day, it was particularly pronounced). So we had to show her photo of boy vs. girl and how they are naturally different. So Freya says - why don't you cut the nangu singh of boy and attach to me. That way, I will also become boy!
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4 yr 5 months (3-Dec-2011): Its winter and while going to sleep, Freya takes off her t-shirt. So mama scolds her and ask her to put it on. She says that papa has sleeps shirtless at night, so I will also sleep without shirt. End result was that papa had to put his shirt back on and only then Freya agreed to sleep with her top on. The next day, we had to scare her saying that if she will remove her shirt and let air touch her skin, then she will get hair on her chest like papa. She hates this idea and now willingly puts on her top when sleeping.
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4 yr 5 months (4-Dec-2011): Freya was "comfortable" giving her toys (half broke ones - most of them) to her "students" and their siblings. In fact, she was even "happy" to an extent giving the toys out. She was also rummaging through some older notebooks and story books to identify the ones that could be given out to her students.
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4 yr 5 months (6-Dec-2011): To introduce her to the concept of postal system, I took her to the post office, got her to write a card to mom (the words on the card are Freya's own) and got her to post in the post box.
After a few days, the post card popped into the mailbox at home ... but Freya did not seem excited at this. Her demeanour was almost like - Yea, of course the letter has to come to us, since it was posted to us!
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4 yr 5 months (7-Dec-2011): Since a very long time, we have telling Freya that when people become old and sick, they die. So one day, when mummy became sick, Freya almost tearfully questioned - "Will mama die now?" Pop had to then explain to her that mama is "not old", so she cannot die. Then I told her that papa "is old", but "not sick", so he cannot die too! Eventually, she resolved to be a doctor when she grew up - and her question was will mama and papa live till she became a doctor. The answer was an emphatic yes! To take this ahead, papa told her that when mama and papa die, they will again be born as her children from her stomach.
Later, whenever she is forced to do something against her will - like drink milk, she retorts that when mama and papa will be born out of her stomach, then she too will make them drink 3 glasses of milk in a day, "no compromise". And she is mighty pleased when she sees the fear in papas eyes at the thought of drinking 3 glasses of milk!
-----------------------------------------------Later, whenever she is forced to do something against her will - like drink milk, she retorts that when mama and papa will be born out of her stomach, then she too will make them drink 3 glasses of milk in a day, "no compromise". And she is mighty pleased when she sees the fear in papas eyes at the thought of drinking 3 glasses of milk!
4 yr 5 months (13-Dec-2011): Bebu says that she will come out of Papa's tummy. When we ask her why, she says that mama's tummy is paining (which is true) and so if she will come out of mama's tummy, then it will pain more.
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4 yr 5 months (13-Dec-2011): Bebu is into the habit of having the left over portion of bath water poured over her directly from the bucket. She has a mental image of how much water should be left over in the bucket that can be poured on her. Today, the left over quantity was lesser than usual. So she told papa that she did not want the water to be poured over her (she said this with a tinge of anger and sarcasm). When papa asked her "why" a couple of times, she said angrily that is because the water in the bucket is too less. Papa said - do not worry, the water will last for a long time. So after pouring the water, papa said- See, I told you that the water will last long. To this Freya said that this is because you were pouring the water slowly! Damn right - her logic was bang on and papa had no response!
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4 yr 5 months (13-Dec-2011): Since a past few weeks, Bebu has memorized mummy's mobile number and she dials mummy's number and speaks with her whenever she desires (which is usually when she wants to complain about someone else)!
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4 yr 5 months (15-Dec-2011): What Santa Clause gave Freya on Christmas of Dec 2011: School shoes, Scooter and Toothbrush. (Santa had hidden these things at various places, and Bebu had to do some treasure hunting to find out her gifts).
Why did Santa do so: Because Freya wrote a letter to Santa asking for these three exact things! Here's the letter that got "posted" to Santa:
How did the letter come about: Well, dad asked Freya what she would wish for Christmas and gently “suggested” that she could ask for a new set of School shoes (which were to be bought since her old shoes were getting small), a new brush (because it was time to replace the old brush anyway) and a scooter to play with (because when we had gone a couple of weeks earlier to Tanay’s house, Tanay had this new scooter which Freya liked).
By the way, Freya has been told that she has to be a good girl and behave herself because Santa is watching her ever since she sent the letter to Santa. Only then will Santa come and give her the gifts on Christmas Day. (Phew! The amount of black mailing that kids have to go through!! The other way round is equally true, with kids blackmailing parents with tantrums and tears!). P.S. - Freya did behave herself to a large extent, but not without constant reminders that Santa was watching. There were a couple of times when she threw a tantrum and did not care about Santa watching; in fact, she said that she did not want the gifts from Santa during those tantrums.
----------------------------------------------- 4 yr 6 months (25-Dec-2011): Bebu stayed at dadaji's and dadi's house in Borivali alone from Tuesday 20-Dec-2011 to Sunday 25-Dec-2011. She had a good time playing with her friends Hiva and little Namya (1 year old). She was obsessed with making Namya sit in her lap - her primary focus during this stay. She also got lice in her hair transferred from either Hiva or Namya or both!
She was also very excited on this Christmas morning, because Santa would have visited the previous night to drop her gifts. But alas! The gifts were no where to be found!! Until, that is, mom and dad played a little "treasure hunting" game with her. So finally, the new toothbrush was found in the toothbrush bin, the shoes were found in the shoe rack and the new scooter was found inside the toy cupboard! :)
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4 yr 6 months (28-Dec-2011): Bebu is drinking Bournvita milk - she is almost done drinking from her cup when mummy notices that there is a lot of Bournvita collected at the bottom. She tells Freya - Why did you not shake the cup before drinking it all? So Bebu starts to shake herself from her waist up. :).
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4 yr 6 months (28-Dec-2011): Bebu is playing in a local garden and suddenly wants to go to Magarpatta Garden at 8 at night. So I tell her that we will first go home, change, then off to Magarpatta Garden if mummy agrees. Bebu reaches home, asks for permission and mom agrees that she could go. But then papa reminded that it was almost dinner time, so may be Bebu should first have dinner and then we can go to the garden - to which mummy said - Yes, correct, have dinner first. Bebu got pretty cheesed off at this and shouted at Papa - See, you reminded mummy that is why I now have to eat dinner. Otherwise, mummy was sending me directly to the garden.
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4 yr 6 months (9-Jan-2012): Bebu starts going to a once-a-week drawing class. (For the first few weeks, the activities are limited to coloring, but then she graduates to drawing as well).
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4 yr 6 months (17-Jan-2012): Papa was telling Bebu a story about an animal whose leg was fractured. Bebu asked - what is a fracture. So while explaining, papa said - "See, suppose your bone broke. What will happen next?". So she said very innocently - "Ouch".
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4 yr 6 months (19-Jan-2012): Since past few days, Bebu has been asking that someone recite नमो अरिहंताणं for her, so that she can pray to God and ask Him to give her sleep quickly.
-----------------------------------------------4 yr 6 months (23-Jan-2012): Bebu had gone to toilet at night. After coming out, she asks - Papa, are there snakes in the sea? Papa says - Yes. Then she says - OK, so the snakes can come in the toilet as well right? Papa asks - Why? She says - because toilet's water goes into the sea, so snakes from sea can also come into the toilet, right?
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4 yr 7 months (10-Feb-2012): Papa is in Australia now and discussions are on to have Vaibhav visit Australia. A suggestion coming in from Dadi was that Freya could stay back in Mumbai, since planned visit was for only 3 weeks to Australia. So yesterday, mummy asked Freya if she wanted to go to Papa. Freya said "Yes". Mummy asked why, to which Freya said - क्योंकि मै papa के बिना live नहीं कर सकता हूँ.
----------------------------------------------- 4 yr 8 months (10-Mar-2012): Because Bebu keeps on saying that she wants to come to Australia "just now ke just now", papa at one point said that he is still trying to find a house for Bebu and after he finds a house for Bebu, she can come to Australia. So Bebu was like, but where-ever you sleep, I will sleep. To scare her (or so I thought), I told her that I have use dogs as my bed and have to sleep on top of dogs.
After several days, Bebu calls up to say that Papa can get 2 dogs, mummy can sleep on one dog, papa can sleep on another and she will sleep on top of Papa.
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4 yr 8 months (26-Mar-2012): Bebu went to Mumbai with Daadi. The only thing they do when they get together is fight - especially at the time of eating food. And after Bebu fights, she picks up the phone, dials mummy and complains about daadi. So daadi gets angry, and in the evening when mummy comes back home, she calls mummy to complain about Bebu. When Bebu hears this, she gets even more angry, snatches the phone and complains to mummy that "daadi toh hameesha complain hi karti rehti hai!". This is what happens when two "kids" come together!
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4 yr 8 months (31-Mar-2012). Birthday wishes for papa from Freya. Drawn and colored by her. (She copied the drawing from one that her drawing teacher made for her).
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4 yr 9 months (21-Apr-2012). Freya told a joke to papa. "There was a small boy who had a big stomach. Then the boy boy became big and his stomach became small". This was obviously funny to her judging by her giggles. So pop asked her from where did she hear this joke? To which she said - नहीं, मुझे याद आया. Pop really had to dig into this and put Freya to sustained questionning to finally understand that "याद आया" is the equivalent of "I made it!". Should have guessed from the quality of the joke!
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