9 Months!

Dearest Athiboy, 

You are 9 months old today. This phase of life with you seems to be one of the bestest till date. You play and respond to people when they do something to entertain you. People always want to be around you and similarly, you enjoy people's attention. It gives you a high which you exhibit through your roaring laughs (sounding like a lion's garjanai) 

You are the Thatha's pet and Thatha is your pet, because he is the one who takes you on rounds in the terrace or the car parking and holds you in his arms and stands by the gate as you stare at every passing vehicle turning your neck, left and right. You simply love his attention. Especially when you are playing at home in the floor and Thatha just walks past or gets up from his chair for something, you immediately see him and plead with him to take you along wherever it might be. If at all he goes off without taking you, avlodan...your pleading turns to a desperate cry, seeing which Thatha will run over to take you along. 

These days all you want to do is. play... play... play. You have got bored with all the toys that you have (Even though I make it a point to keep rotating the toys we give you), so you have found other ways to keep yourself engaged by playing with random household stuff. You love water bottles, tap and play with them, to the point where the lid eventually comes open. Your tissue pack is another thing that you love, mainly for the sound of the plastic cover that gets crushed when you hold it. On days when we buy vegetables and sit around to sort them, you play with them. But your absolute all time love is utensils, primarily because of the sound (noise to us) they make. You seem to enjoy the clanking sounds and get more excited and keep banging them again and again. Kind of torturous to the ones sitting near you, but they don't try to snatch it away from you for the fear of you getting disappointed. 

I am amazed at the sharpness of your eyes, for you go around touching and attempting to lick the tiniest of dirt bits on the floor. Somebody has got to keep their eyes on you all the while when you are playing about. 

You have started to sit comfortably (when you're made to sit) without any support for a good 5-10 minutes, after which you slowly fall off onto the sides. For the last one week you have been constantly trying to lift yourself up with your knees. Every time you roll over you want to try to lift yourself, but you can't hold on in that position for more than three to four seconds, but still you try doing it all the time.

You have learnt to understand a few phrases and actions and respond appropriately. Like, you clap your hands when we ask you to. You give a cute hi-fi when someone raises their hand for one. You tend to recognise when people call you and turn around to see who it is and what they're doing. 

Your reserve your best reactions when you see me / dad or anybody at home for that matter, after a long gap, i.e., more than a couple of hours. You just jump at them and become all konji-konji and give your trademark laughing garjanai. It's always a sight to cherish. In the morning, once you wake up, you just want to jump into your Patti's arms and tour the whole house, as if you're seeing it for the first time. In the noon or evenings when I come out for a break from work, you'd want to jump on to me and demand to be taken either to the terrace or the swing in the car parking area.

Your journey with food is taking amazing turns with each passing day, together with a lot of adamance and begging. Adamance is refusing the food prepared for you, begging to be fed the food we eat. You love to experiment with new tastes and once we did try feeding you a lemon. The expression you gave when you took a lick of the juice was priceless, and guess what, you wanted to keep licking and giving the same reaction.

In this month's new song find, we've bumped into one of the Super Star's hits. It happened one day when Thatha was randomly humming the "Oho Oho" tune of the Kicku Yerudhe song from Padayappa and you just started laughing. From then on, every time someone hums that song, or it's played on the TV, you flash your biggest, no longer toothless, grin. Yes, it's high time I stop calling you toothless because one small front teeth has finally made a sneak peek into the outside world. 

You take your own sweet time to interact with people, and get a little panicky and scared if a large group of people not known to you come over and play with you (apparently, it was his cousin sisters who desperately wanted to play with him, but he got too scared of having too many unknown people around at the same time and started crying). 

Our newest entertainment is a sitting swing, gifted by a dear neighbour. You love swinging in it and play ball throws from it. This swing has conveniently replaced the usual Thooli, as you absolutely refuse to sleep in it off-late. You get so angry when we put you in the Thooli and cry your lungs out even though you are quite sleepy. These days we make you sleep only through a couple of rounds of walking in the car parking area, and then swing for some time. Gone are the days of making you sleep in the legs or thooli. Day naps are in two extremes. One is either sleep through most of the day, or don't sleep at all. The surprising element here is I'd never know which day would be what. It's impossible to find out a pattern. Nights are quite manageable, because my body and my mind has become your friend, and can cater to your requests without having to wake myself up fully. (Poor V still hasn't got completely used to your middle of the night disturbances and struggles with his sleep)

Our beach routines are still going strong and you seem to liking the place, the water and not to forget, all the attention and random antics of the strangers who spot you there. 

To more lemony adventures and beach hopping

Love,

Amma