He's starting to pay his rent!

An exciting development to report! Yesterday, my little to-do diary was lying on the dining table and I was sitting on the couch feeling too lazy to get up and get it (what does that say for the to-do's in my book?) Anyway, Vir happened to be toddling by so I asked him to pick up mummy's diary from the table and bring it over. He looked a little confused - diary being one of those words he hadn't encountered before, but to his credit, he looked sincerely at everything on the table trying to piece together what a "diary" might be. No luck though, so he looked back helplessly at me. A little more maternal guidance, maternal finger pointing towards diary, and urgency in maternal voice did the trick. He spotted the diary, comprehension dawned, and goal!

Imagine the possibilities! I may even get him to open the diary and take care of the to-do's in the annoying little thing soon.

Little Big Brother

Me: Vir, what's inside mom's tummy?
Vir: A little baby
Me: Do you want a little baby?
Vir: No. Biiiiiike
Me: No, I'm asking you if you want a little baby, not a bike!
Vir: Biiiiikeeee. Biiiikeeee. Biiiiiiiiiiikkkkkkeee.

We think he wants a bike.

Looking for a partner in crime

So he gets on the coffee table, makes himself comfortable and calls out to Baggdu who is sleeping peacefully on the carpet:

"Baggdu...comeon...table pe aajaaaa!"

(That's "Baggdu...comeon...get on the table!")

Storytime

Vir has reached the stage where kids will do anything to try to stay up a little bit longer. His usual bed time routine used to be to just lie down on the bed with me, have his milk, and slowly drift off. About the time he started developing the idea that sleeping later would give him more time to do other stuff, he also discovered storytime. What a perfect excuse to stay up a little later than normal! And of course, two or three or four stories and rhymes are better than one because they take longer to tell:-). So now, when either Vijay or I take him to bed, we have a barrage of requests from him as soon as he's done with his bottle of milk. He has his favorites among the totally made up stories that Vijay and I have come up with to entertain him. There's a story about a Lucky Car - a red car that loves to take risks, yet never gets a scratch till she decides to take a big jump off a hill called Big Hill. We've never made it to the end, so I don't know what happens to Lucky Car...by the time I get to the point where Lucky Car is getting a car wash in preparation for her big day, Vir moves on to wanting a different story. If Vijay is the story teller, his favorite request if for the Lion and Monkey Story, which is about a monkey who isn't afraid of the tiger and actually manages to defeat him by jumping on a coconut tree and shaking it till a cocounut falls on the waiting tiger's head and knocks him unconscious. Another favorite is about a chipmunk who only eats peanuts...he needs three peanuts every day, one for breakfast, one for lunch, and one for dinner. He gets tired of going out to collect three peanuts everyday and decides to go for the big haul and look for a hundred peanuts in one marathon peanut hunting session. Of course, I don't know how this story turns out either since we invariably move on to rhymes by this time. Favorite rhymes keep changing too. The current favorites are Humpty Dumpty, Little Miss Muffet, and the Mighty Hokey Pokey. This last one is hilarious and Vir and I have Shroopie masi to thank for her contribution to the rhyme ensemble. I'm just glad he doesn't know what it means yet. Here goes:

I am the Mighty Hokey Pokey Tippy Top Top
All disobedience by beheading I will Stop Stop
Chippy Choppy Chippy Choppy Chippy Choppy

If you sing the last part cutely enough, you can ignore what the chopping is actually of! Vir calls this the Hokey Dob Dob poem. I wonder if this will scar him for life when he learns what it means. Time will tell I guess. Though hopefully we'll move on to more cheerful poems in a couple of weeks and he'll forget I ever almost messed up his head. And if he doesn't I'll just point him to the masi who started this whole thing!

Some things on my fun list

Hi. My name is Vir and I spend all day in the pursuit of fun and happiness. The things I think are fun are generally in inverse proportion to the things that are allowed by my mother who seems to have nothing more productive to do than to watch me like a hawk and stop me from doing my thing. Seriously, woman, get a real job! I've put together a list of things that I like to do. Read it and tell me you think they're not fun. That'll show her.

• Taking my mom's lovely colored soap bars and plonking them into the toilet. I love the little splash and the sound that comes with it.
• Hunting down the bottle of toilet cleaner and plonking that in the toilet. That creates a bigger splash and is even more fun. It's almost always followed by a loud groaning sound from my mother too.
• Okay, I've only done this once, but putting my dad's new copy of The Economist into the toilet was fun too.
• Knocking over the stack of quilts in the bedroom, then running around the house covered in one of the quilts. It doesn't even hurt when I bang into a wall. Even more fun is covering Baggdu with one of the quilts and then jumping on top of him.
• Heck, even without the quilt, jumping on Baggdu when he's sleeping is just plain great.
• Pulling Baggdu's ears, tail, lower jaw, and other stuff. That guy is just amazing. So soft and pullable. Sometimes he knocks me around too...he can manage that just because he's so much heavier than I am, but he only does it to people he loves.
• Climbing on top of the wooden, mother of pearl inlaid, freshly polished coffee table and doing an imitation of my mom yelling, "Get down, get down!"
• Sharing my food with Baggdu. Nothing says I love you like taking licks of the same biscuit.
• Eating dirt from the pots in the balcony. Anyone who says that stuff isn't yummy is wrong.
• Throwing things off the table or bed while pretending I have nothing to do with it. Just to keep the appearance of ignorance and make things more realistic, I sometimes follow this up with a loud exclamation such as "Oh....gir gayaa!"
• Disconnecting the cable box from the TV when my folks are watching. Hee hee hoohoooo!
• Throwing the couch cushions on the floor and then jumping on them.
• Spitting. When you're bored, try to make little puddles of spit (preferably on a wooden, mother of pearl inlaid, freshly polished coffee table) and then use your fingers to draw little spit shapes.

Well?