A call for help

I have been teaching Xena to take off her shoes herself. She can take the velcro straps off but has difficulty removing her shoes. So I taught her to say "Please help." after she had removed the straps. She soon caught on the significance of this magic phrase and the doors it can open, sometimes literally. At first she used to say what sounded like "Pizza hut" but now she says it more clearly. It's nice to see her use "Please help." in other relevant scenarios, like when trying to open a door, pull off her socks, get down from her high chair, etc. In this video, unable to open the tightly-closed play-doh containers, she decides to stack them instead, but eventually says, "Please help."

Party pooper

Lately, I have been singing Hindi songs to Xena and stopping just before important key words to let her sing them instead. I don't know why, but it's mostly party songs. For example, I sing "Where's the party tonight? On the...?" and she says excitedly, "Dance floor!" I sing "It's the time to...?" and she yells out "Disco!"

(Slight diversion - a friend was trying this out and he mixed up the two songs, and ended up singing "Where's the time to disco?" and we laughed for like ten minutes because of how true and sad his 'remixed' version was.)

Anyway, so I was changing Xena's diaper once and she was squirming so much I decided to sing to divert her attention. So I said, "Baby baby, listen! It's the time to...?"

"POOP." She said with great clarity and certainty.

Letters (of the alphabet) from a daughter to her mother

Last year, around the time Xena turned 18 months, I noticed a shift in her interest. From the characters of her storybooks to the characters in the text of the storybooks. She had started pointing to the letters in the text and asking me what they were. So I went and bought a set of alphabet flashcards and we started going through the letters and corresponding pictures.

You know how they say kids these ages are like diapers? No wait, sponges. Sponges that absorb anything and everything you teach them. I was very pleasantly surprised to see that it was indeed true. Within a week, she knew the uppercase letters and over the next couple of weeks, she knew both uppercase and lowercase quite well.

The only trouble I had was trying to capture the whole thing on video at one shot. This is the best I could manage. As you will see if you have the patience to watch the whole thing, here I was, trying to speed to Z, and there she was, my Basanti who wanted to chitchat about the weather, her blocked nose, and what not. She even managed to put in a song request! (By the way, the song she's asking for is 'Naam ada likhna' and if you have never heard it, omgdoitnownownownow!).