Ronan seeing the world from a different angle

Ronan has become playful and moves his hands and legs in the air. When kept on the bed, he tries to turn 180 degrees with his head in the position of his toes.

When kept on his tummy, Ronan can lift his head and balance himself well on his stomach. He loves it. He can see the world from a different angle now. He sees the trees and birds outside through the window. He enjoys the wind blowing and the leaves swaying.
I sing this song for him (tune of Una, Paloma, Blanca),

The wind is blowing,
The leaves are swaying,
Singing a sweet song specially for you.
You are my sweetheart, you are my darling,
And I cant stop loving you.

Tummy Time for Ronan

Ronan is trying to roll over on his tummy. He is 3 months old now. He turns his body half way but cannot lift his head completely to roll over, as he is on the heavier side. He turns on his side and then shouts angrily as he cannot roll over. I give him a little push and lo, he shouts with glee as he reached his mini-goal. :)
Then he does mini-pushups to strengthen his little shoulders. He tries to grab the toys around him with lot of puffing and panting to reach them.

3 months old baby - Mama, mama, what is this?

Kids nowadays are really smart. They also have a very good sixth sense. They start understanding the outside world at a very tender age. Ronan completed 3 months and he already wants mama to tell him what is happening around. When I take him in the garden, he looks at the plants, birds, the blue sky as if to ask "Mama, please tell me what is this?"

When we go for a walk, he looks at the cars, motorbikes, cycles, buses and wonders what sounds are those? I repeat "whrooommm, brooooomm" and he stares at me. He looks at the neighbours cats and dogs and when I say "The dog says, bow-wow", "The cat says, meow-meow" , he looks at me and smiles.

Yes, Ronan is growing up fast. You can feel the difference and know that you have a budding individual who wanna make a mark for himself in this world.

How is your baby growing up? Isn't he or she inquisitive about the world? Does she/he ask you questions?

Rattle Rattle Shake Shake Shake

Ronan is almost 3 months old. He can hold rattles well and shakes them when I say "shake, shake, shake". He stops, smiles and shakes it again. I guess he loves the sound of the rattle and wants to listen to it again and again. Rattle, rattle, shake shake shake.:)

Which month did your child achieve this milestone? Did you record it?

2.5 months old baby - milestones

Ronan is 2.5 months old and is growing well into a cute chubby baby. My elder son Richie was on the thinner side. I used to have lots of difficulties taking care of Richie. Richie used to cry a lot as he used to suffer from colic in the evenings. Maybe being a mother for a second time, it is different. You know how to handle stuff better and can do it easily.

Milestones:
Ronan is trying to recognize faces. He turns in the direction of my voice.
He has started laughing out loudly whenever he is tickled.
He also tries to imitate and laugh whenever someone laughs.
He tries to hold our hand and tell stories.

Ronan started cooing today.

It was a wonderful day today. We went for 7am mass. It was bit cold due to the misty dew. When we came back I changed Ronan and kept him in his pram to play. We were all having breakfast when Paa went to talk to him. He was asking him questions and Ronan started cooing back for the first time. It became louder and louder with Ronan smiling and throwing his hands and legs in the air as if to say "Lift me up Paa. I wanna play with you".

Ronan smiled for the first time

Ronan smiled for the first time today. He is almost 2 months old now. Yesterday, we had been to my moms place to pay them a visit. He was studying the new environment. He met lots of new people and wanted them to carry him. He thoroughly enjoyed himself. When we came back home he was completely a changed kid. He started responding and smiling back.

Richie doing pee-pee

Richie has started doing pee-pee and has become "pants-man" as the Japanese call it :). Finally he can tell us that he wanna pee and does it in style.

Richie joined playschool

It is almost 3.5 months since Richie joined playschool in our native place. We can see tremendous change in him. He can sing a lot of nursery rhymes with proper pronounciation. His favourite songs are "Humpty, Dumpty sat on a wall, Jack and Jill, Johnny, Johnny yes papa, Incy Wincy Spider, ABCD song etc.". He also does picture coloring, paper craft, finger painting etc. He can recognize and read capital and small alphabets and numbers till 20. He can speak in long sentences with proper tense. He knows names of everyone in the family and sometimes calls us out with our names instead of mama and dada ;).

Sometimes he getz lazy to go to school, but once he is there he is lost in his world. He comes home happy and tells a lot of stories of school and what he has done.

Birth of our second angel - How it all happened

Just the last week I had written that I am in my ninth month. And today I am already holding our dear lil one in my arms. He came 2 weeks before the due date. As I was saying, he/she doesn't follow any trend. He tries to take his own decisions.

Last Saturday, I started getting slight pain at 4am in the morning. I felt that maybe itz just that the baby was uncomfortable when I was sleeping and hence the pain. But then the pain started happening every 30 mins and I was feeling like running to the loo. From my last pregnancy experience I knew something big was coming up, but thought maybe itz a false alarm considering it was just 8.5 months. Then at 6.30am, I felt slight water coming out. I felt maybe thatz the signal. I woke up my hubby who was fast asleep and explained to him the situation. I had not packed my hospital bag thinking there is still time. So I hurried up doing it. The contractions had become regular by now.

As there was noises in the room, Richie woke up, though it was unusual for him to wake up so early. But he has a sixth sense. The moment we told "Mama's stomach is paining", he said "Mama, baby paining, going to doctor? Change my clothes". We were surprised. Without telling him he already knew what was about to come and he did not want to miss the adventure. ;)

I phoned the doctor and he told me to see him immediately as he was afraid the baby maybe in the breech as was shown in last week's report.

We hurried off to the hospital. After all the hospital formalities, I was admitted to the hospital. By now the contractions had become regular and strong.
Yes the baby was on itz way to meet us. After the water bag burst, I was taken to the labor room. Since it was my second delivery, it seemed a bit easier just as the doctor had mentioned. After some good efforts by the doctors and me, we got to hear the first cries of our baby who almost shook the hospital.

In all this, I forgot to mention what Richie was doing. When the contractions started, Richie was holding my hand as he could see mama in pain. Can you believe that? Since Dada had to step out for a little while, he was prompt in taking care of mama. Then I was taken to the labor room. When he heard the baby, he said "baby crying" and then happily and tired from all the activities, fell fast asleep.

Welcome home - Richie's younger brother

We are happy to announce the birth of our second baby. Welcome home my dear lil second angel. :) We are so happy to have you amidst us. Richie is all excited to have a lil brother to play with him.

Our Second Baby - 9th month of pregnancy

OMG. I am already in the ninth month of my second pregnancy and I have hardly written anything of my second baby. In fact time passed so fast that even I did not have a breather to realise that the 8 months have already flewn by.

Richie has joined school and I was working too so I hardly got time to update my blogs.

Now I am on maternity leave and feels good to be back writing my blog.

Baby is growing well and moving a lot in the night. Even last week baby's head was in the transverse position and the doctor seemed a bit concerned. Usually babies drop down in the head down position between 32-34 weeks. But my baby seem to think differently. ;) Maybe does not want to follow the same trend as others.:) Today I can feel my baby has dropped down in the head down position and can feel the arms touching my sides.

Though I am having problems sleeping in the night, it is worth the wait.

Picking up words fast

Nowadays every second is learning time for Richie. He picks up words spoken by others and repeats them whether it is in the native language or English. He has started speaking in short sentences.
His cousin sister loves music and dance. And whenever she puts music and dances, Richie imitates her and dances with her. If we look at him, he feels shy and comes running to us.

Richie says "sahi" for sorry

Richie loves to play with Pa. He will try to sit on his lap by climbing on the chair. They watch action movies together and guess what, Richie tries the new stunts he learns on Pa. He tries to do "dishum, dishum" and Pa has to defend himself. He throws objects at him and poor Pa is at the receiving end.

One day while playing with Pa he hit Pa and fell down and he uttered "Sahii". We were wondering what it meant. Then he happened to say it to other cousins too whenever they got hit while playing together. Itz when we realised that when he says "sahi" he means "Sorry". :)

Oh, Itz almost a month for the second baby

Time flies and babies grow so fast. My second baby, Ronan completed 1 month already. Pheeeww, it was wonderful. ;) As an experienced mom, it did not take much effort to take care of the second one. But having 2 small kids is a different experience. And specially when they are close to their mom and both need attention at the same time. :)

Ronan is a demanding child. He wants attention all the time when he is awake. I have started playing music for him. But he needs people in his vicinity. Hope he changes as time passes by.

Saying Thank chu (you)

It was just another day. As usual, we were playing and Richie expressed that he was hungry. I brought and gave him his favorite choco biscuit. He said "more biscuit", "2?". I gave him one more. And he said "Thank chu". O' wow!! He could say without anybody instructing him to do so.

and btw he also says "Oh Wow" and puts his hands to his mouth if he likes something very much. ;)

Learning Opposites

As Richie was going for a day care in Japan, he learnt a lot of Japanese words too. He is practicing saying opposites in English and Japanese. He says "Big car" ,* "Chisi (meaning small in japanese) car" and arranges them together.

Some more words he is learning are : Long stick * short stick, fat book* thin book, heavy*light, empty cup*full cup with ice cream.

We try to add his favourite foods to the vocabulary of opposites so that he can associate it and learn faster.

Saying colors and numbers

These are the days of fast learning for Richie. He can recognize and say the basic 12 colors and describes things with 2 word sentences like "green ball" ,"red car", "blue bedsheet", "pink pillow", "orange t-shirt".

He also tries to count objects and says he wants "5 balls", "2 biscuits", "more sugar","4 trees" etc.

He looks at picture book and says numbers till 10.

Richie knows all the alphabets

Richie is 2 years 3 months old now. We are at our native place after the Japan earthquake and Richie seems to enjoy with his cousins. He tries to imitate them and does cute new actions everyday. It is fun to watch him grow.

These days he has started a craze for alphabets. I got him a puzzle where he has to arrange the alphabets and he does it quite well. He can recognize and read the alphabets. He also points and names all the pictures on the alphabet book. He loves to watch the alphabet phonic songs and repeats after them. Last night he was not ready to sleep. He kept repeating the phonics and making new words with the alphabets he had learnt.

Japan Diary - The day of the massive earthquake

It was yet another normal day. We got ready to go to office as usual. Since it was my turn to drop Richie at the nursery, I tried to hurry up. Usually Richie makes a big fuss to get ready and it takes almost an hour before he is tucked in his baby-car and is off to the nursery. But today was different. Richie willingly got ready and I was so proud of my young boy that I prayed hope he is like this always.

After dropping him to the nursery, I shoot off to office. It was a normal day at office. We were preparing for our big release in 4 days time. In the afternoon, one of our Japanese counterpart came in for a meeting and as Japanese custom goes they bring in sweets if they are known people.

He had got castella cake for us. As it was nearing tea time, we thought we would have a piece of the cake. I was enjoying a piece of the cake and suddenly the office shook. We thought it was usual earthquake which were experiencing for the last couple of years. We were cool. But it continued shaking and it increased in magnitude. We realised it is not a simple earthquake. Somebody has made the earth angry and it was rattling back. We held onto our dear lives.

The emergency door exit was kept open. We could not stand. Some rushed under the table. The things on the table started falling. It was the worst experience I had of the earthquakes. Though people were scared, they were calm. Even it was a first time experience for them, but they seemed mentally prepared. I saw somebody holding onto the printer and coffee machine and I was amazed at his bravery. As soon as the shocks died down we rushed out of the office with our little belongings.

We went to the nearby park where all the people had gathered. The phones were not working. Some people could access the internet and they told us that the earthquake happened near the east coast of Japan near Sendai and the magnitude was >8.5. Internet/Iphone came to the rescue. There was no means of contacting my hubby or finding about Richie. I was a little nervous but was praying that all were fine. After sometime there were more strong aftershocks and we could see the trees swaying in the park.

It was like when will it end. I was pregnant and was trying to remain calm as too much excitement is not good for the lil one. While I am writing this I am getting goose bumps remembering all that had happened. After sometime the shocks died down and colleague offered me a lift straight to Richie's nursery. I was lucky in one way.

Met Richie and I was relieved. I came home and saw that luckily not much damage was done. After I fed Richie, I remembered my hubby can access mails using his iphone. I had completely forgotten about it. I started my computer and there his mails were waiting for me.

Happy that we were able to get in touch again. But the day did not end there. There were a series of aftershocks. The trains had stopped. And the vehicles on the road were moving at snail's pace. My hubby came walking all the way from office and I was waiting for him with bated breath burning the lamp after midnight.

More to come.....

I am expecting the second one

Wow !! There is news. I am expecting the second one. I am excited. Time passes so fast. Just the other day I thought I was pregnant with Richie and here it is again. Richie toddling away and I am preparing for the coming of the second one. :)

Celebrating Hina-Masturi in Japan

The Japanese Doll Festival (Hina-matsuri), or Girls' Day, is held on March 3. Platforms covered with a red carpet are used to display a set of ornamental dolls (雛人形, hina-ningyō) representing the Emperor, Empress, attendants, and musicians in traditional court dress of the Heian period.

Richie celebrated this festival with pomp in his nursery. They made dolls depicting the prince and princess and hung them on either side of a straw. The faces of the dolls were really worth admiring.
Some kids put mouth on top and eyes below, while some put them on the side. But whatever it was, their creativity was at its best. :)

Perfect Somersault

Richie has unique ways of surprising us. As he turned 2, he has become sweeter. He understands and responds well. Says a lot of new words everyday, some in Japanese and some English.
He also tries to tell stories of his adventures in the nursery but we cannot understand much of it.
But we make it a point to listen and respond to whatever we can make out of his stories. :)

Yesterday, after dinner, I was arranging Richie's bed. Though he has his bed, he loves to sleep on our bed ;). Making his bed has just become a ritual. It gets hard to put him to bed as he does not want to stop playing. As always, this little guy was in a play mood. But today was a bit different. I saw him doing something new. He put his head down on the bed and did a perfect somersault. When we clapped he went on and on. I had not seen him practising at home even once, so when did he learn it. The only answer can be "in the nursery". Kids learn fast by watching others and definately thatz what happened.

Toilet training - milestone

Completing 2 years marks another milestone. Kids are considered to be big enough to understand their body as well understand whatz happening in the world.

These days Richie has started with potty training in the nursery. Today marked the 1st day of his training and Richie completed it successfully. Soon after he got up from his afternoon nap, he was taken to the toilet. He was told to remove his pant's nappy and go to toilet. The teacher said that Richie found it interesting to see how the pee falls. Cute lil babies. They find joy in every new thing they see and do.

Drawing a circle and a straight line

Richie loves colors and he can recognize and name most of them. He usually scribbles and makes a circular drawing. Yesterday was different. In the morning, he attempted a full circle without overwriting it .
In the evening, dada and he were playing with colors when I was in the shower. Dada did some straight lines with him with all the different colors and then went to do his work. When I came back, I saw him picking the "purple color" and with the sound of the train "zhuk-zhuk-duku -duku" he draw a straight line. It felt great. He could distinguish the circle from straight line. Another feather to his cap.

Richie - 2 year milestones

Richie completed 2 years now. Wow, kids grow fast.He is going to Japanese nursery school and learning a lot of new stuff. So his language is a mixture os Japanese and English.As you are reading through, you will realise there are lot of cute lil expressions and words he uses in both the languages.
Here are some of things he loves to do:

• running fast and balancing himself at turns.
• kicking the ball well.
• making a train out of chocolates, toys, pens etc.
• balancing himself on a beam kept on ground.
• eats well with a spoon and drinks from the cup by himself.
• given a new toy, tries to figure out how it functions on his own.
• plays board games using dice.
  
• loves to draw with crayons.
• loves listening to story books with pictures.
• learnt the numbers from 1 -10 and says them loud.
• loves to imitate dada and does sword fighting with him.
  
• loves dancing and does steps based on the tempo and style of music.
• creates and sings his own songs.
• imitates action songs.
• likes a lot of cartoons, Mickey mouse and club house, Winnie the pooh, Chip and dale, Mr. bean, Tom and jerry etc.
  
• saying color words like aka(red), blue, elloello (yellow), purple, oelegole(orange), pink, black
  
• saying body parts eyes, nose,mouth and pointing to all parts.
• saying tshirt, pant, sheez.
• saying apple,ba(nana),orange (oelegole), papaya and points to other fruits
• greetings such as hello, hi , ba-bye.
• saying ba for butterfly, bus, butter, bird, ball.
• saying book and bookapeeka.
• loves to play hide and seek.
• loves when we say "yoidon (japanese)" and runs as fast as he can.
• talking on the phone imitating us and saying "aah, mama, yes".
• saying mama, dada, pa, ma, pooh, anpanman.
• understands 2 sentences japanese and english commands (like, take the crayons and put them in the container).
• says juice,cheeze,moon,sta (star),che(chair),water, con -for corn and coin, crock - for clock, crayon, color.
• saying the letters O, T, P (pooh), J, I, K, G, M (mmm),B,D,R.
• asking questions in japanese "dare - who is this?","Nani kore - What is this?"
• saying tamachi,dangi or tom and jerry, dame da -Thatz bad, this.
• ninjin - carrot
• saying a strong no when he does not like or does not want to do something.