Doctor and vomitting

C vomited yesterday night too. It seems D also had some stomach mantham yesterday but preferred not to tell me lest I'd be worried. I had nausea today morning after breakfast. And D called the doctor today morning. The nurse said that the reason could be a virus and since C is eager to eat, playful and drinks enough liquid, it is not an alarming prospect and added that the virus would work itself out of the system in a couple of days.
Looks like C does not like milk or oily food for the time being. The Sunday she was fine the whole day. We gave her milk around 7:30 pm and she was alright but at 8, sitting on my lap, she opened her mouth to pour out one glass of pinky milk on me. I tried to collect it with my cupped palm, but the cup overflowed. Some splashed on the tshirt and some on my trousers and a lot on the sofa. In some of the previous times, C would start crying whenever she vomited, quite understandably so. But this time, she did it in a "matter-of-fact" way like spitting something that she didnt like. Daph came and took C away, while I carefully transported the cupped palm remains to the wash basin. After the incident, C seemed to be alright and went about her way of laughing, and pulling things down...

Vomitting food

Last weekend D made biriyani. C had lots to eat and was ok when she went to bed on Saturday night. But she vomitted once at night. D got quite alarmed. On Sunday we restricted D to liquids and bread and she seemed to be fine.
Sunday evening C started asking for Milk and D gave her some milk in strawberry flavour. C drank it fine, but after sometime vomitted the whole milk. C didnt seem to be affected by the vomitting and started playing and laughing. D gave her some orange juice etc and C seems to be doing fine.

Invisibility and Crying

These days C gets up in the morning around 4 am and does not want to go back to sleep. Yesterday around 4 am, D gave her a full glass of milk (with Nestle strawberry flavour). C was very happy about it and went back to sleep promptly.
Today though, C started rolling and standing around 4 am and she even climbed out of the bed and sat next to the AC duct registers and was playing with the hot air that came out of it. I put her back into the bed. I managed to wiggle out around 5:30. Brushed my teeth and came out of the bathroom only to see C coming running towards me in the darkness. I gave her a glass of milk. She drank it but would not go back to sleep. Again I put her back into the bed and waited for another 30 minutes to escape to get my cup of coffee. C came back again (getting a little help from her mother). When I tried to close the stair gate behind me, C started crying loudly with full open mouth.
I had installed thermocol coreboard on the stair gate so that C did not try to squeeze herself through the 4" openings in the gate. The board also made it impossible for C to throw stuff (like toys, shoes, clothes) thro the gate opening. On this cold winter morning, I found another amazing use of this boarded gate!
Back to the story. C was crying with her mouth wide open and I was standing on the other side of the gate. I tried to direct her to go to the bed room. I told her "amma", "po". But C was too much in love with me, and would not want to go there at all!! She waved her hand to indicate "NO" and shook her head and increased the decibel value. I pointed again to the bedroom. When she took her eye off me for a split second, I ducked behind the board and C could not see me anymore. Surprisingly, she also stopped crying at once. I thought that she would cry for some more time and then go whining to her mom. But she stopped crying instantly, waited for 10 seconds, then happily started walking towards the bedroom. (where D played some music and made her sleep for some more time!)

Tchsk

C has learnt to say tchsk - kind of a achachcho sound without opening the mouth. We didnt teach her that and she must have learnt it accidentally. She was gleefully showing off her newly acquired skill yesterday night.
I also noticed yesterday that she has grown quite a bit. She is too tall to walk under our dining table anymore and she would bang her head onto the dangerously cantilevered TV, if she is not careful.
C also likes to precariously lie down on the hand rest of the sofa. She uses the handrest as her head rest and orukalichi lies on it.

Crying for milk

On Saturday we didn't sleep much because of the cricket match (which India won against the West Indies). So yesterday afternoon both myself and D thought of taking a nap. C also joined and was fine for some time. Then she started restless, and started crying. She seemed to want milk but was not apparently hungry. Daph was about to feed her but I said that she should not during the day and so, we let C cry. She cried for sometime and then took a brief rest. She started again and I took her. She seemed to stop for a bit and then started again. Altogether she was crying on and off for 30 mins. I carried her to the other room, and she forgot all about milk and started playing with her toys. This proved that C was not hungry but just wanted to drink Milk because D was lying down on the bed!
Lets see how this goes.

Learning to talk

C's talking has improved quite a bit. Still she does not say appa or amma properly or whenever we want her to. But she says them whenever she feels like it.
She also says really serious sentences of 5 to 6 words. Sometimes she says 2 such sentences continuously. During this elocution, her face is also very serious, as if she is saying something very important to us. Only thing is that we dont understand a single word. Typically we dont know whether to respond to her in 'her' language or in Tamil.
She says pappy (for paal for milk) and but yesterday when I offered milk to her when she said that she didnt want to drink.

learning to point things

She has learnt to point things too. This comes in handy for her. She points to the kitchen door and then to the fridge and then to the water to get water. She also points to the cookie jar, but does not succeed in getting the cookies all the time. D has this idea that a baby should not eat too much cookies. Yesterday she pointed an orange in the fruit basket. I thought she wanted to eat it and so, painstakingly peeled it off, took all the chaff and gave a bitesize to her. She took one bite but was not too interested. Looks like she pointed at the orange, so that she could play with it. But appa had already but it and demolished it!
D says that C even points to the stair gate, and then to the basement and then to the garage door indicating that she wants to go out. I have not seen it yet. But looks interesting.
We also bought a ball from Target. The ball is half her size. C has to stretch out both her arms to get a hold of the ball but still manages to carry that ball around. Her favorite game is to bring the ball to me, and take two steps backward, so that I can throw away the ball, so that she could go after the ball, pick it and bring it back. She it looked like she had more fun with the ball at the Target store before we even bought the ball than at home.

Blowing Air

Whenever we gave hot food to C, Daph made it a point to blow on the food (Oothuthal) to bring down the temperature. C has learnt this technic and tries to oothufy whenver we bring hot food close to her. She still does not understand the temperature thing. She blows for two or three times, and expects the food to be cold enough and tried to grab it. Then she realizes the food the hot and makes funny faces in a really angry sense.
C also enjoys blowing air into her drinks to make noisy bubbles thro a straw.

StairGate

Yesterday C completed her first descend on the stair from the first to the ground floor at our house. C was playing with me in the drawing room and D was taking bath. After sometime, C heard D coming out the bathroom, C started walking towards the toilet leaving me in the drawing room. I didnt realize the gate to the stairs was unlocked. C didnt go to the toilet looking for mom. Instead she, it seems, started walking down the stairs and started playing downstairs with the shoes. D heard "laughing noises" from the downstairs and went down to see C playing all alone!!!
Yesterday night C didnt sleep properly and didnt let Daph sleep too. At night, she was jumping here and there, and wanted to play. Morning too, she got up early and was very energetic. Daph was very tired due to lack of sleep, and was sleeping in the sofa. I got ready and was about to leave to office. C came around and looked at me sadly as I was about to leave. I stayed around for some more time to play with C. By then D also came and joined us.

Shopping cart

Yesterday we went to Schnucks. C does not typically sit on the cart for a long time. She would like to be held after 2 minutes. But yesterday, during the full shopping time, she was sitting in the cart itself. I guess, she has started to understand, it was more fun to sit on a moving cart rather than being moved around in somebody's arms. The other day at St Louis mills, C actually opted to sit in the stroller.
I sent C's picture taken during Christmas to some office people. All of them used the word "Cute" in their reply email. Some commented about C's big eyes. D says that C's eye color is the same as hers.

elaki

C can say "elaki" whenever I asked her "You like it, eh?" She does not understand the meaning, but keep repeating the word.

throwing stuff

Chantel has learnt to 'let go' stuff. Whenever we played ball with her, she could not let go of the ball but have to come to us and hand us the ball.
We also have a toy (from HP) which is like a ball and if we hit the ball (or dropped) the ball lights up and looks cool to see. C could never "drop" the ball and had to smash it onto the computer CPU (or any other hard surface) to light it up. Nowadays, she understands throwing and can drop the ball and laugh at the rolling lighted ball.
(Even though this 'sense of throwing' is new to her, she NEVER had any problems chucking (pushing / pulling) stuff from the cabinet / table and flooring it perfectly!!

Uh-oh

C somehow started using the phrase "uh-oh". She typically uses it whenever she falls down or whenever she drops something by mistake. Since, this was in line with the general use of "uh-oh" we were quite excited and we started using it on her, whenever she fell down and was about to cry. She thought uh-oh was a fun word, and should not cry whenever it was uttered and would control her pain / tears. Or so we thought.
She also has this habit of chucking things down the stairs whenever she got a chance. Daph feels that this is C's way of calling my attention when I work downstairs on the comp. I feel C is doing it just for the fun or the sound the objects make when they fall / roll down the steps.
Today she was playing with daph's nail polish bottles and was getting ready to throw it down the stairs. We both said no. C prefers not to understand the word NO sometimes and proceeded to throw the first bottle. It rolled down all the way. While we both were shouting, "no", she chucked the second one. And then said "Uh-oh"!