Another month with Chantel

It has been more than 45 days since C returned to St Louis. Daph and C are already talking about visiting India again.
C looked very different when she arrived here. Now she is back to normal. Ever since Kavithran's birth, C has become a bit naughtier. She does not listen and would act as if she does not hear us at all. The other day I had to threaten with some 'adi' to make her behave.
Granma has a kuchchi for C and C behaves properly at the mention of it. D and Granma also have a counting scare (1,2,3...) to which C responds favorably.

Wii Fit

We got a wii fit for Daph’s bday. (D has not started using it yet!) I setup an profile for C and myself and we both were playing with it. I showed C that she got a crown for being the highest scorer in one of the games. May be I should not have. Now C does an exercise (sync step one) and eagerly checks to see if she got the crown. She starts crying if she does not get one and wii does not allow one to erase certain scores (mine) to show only Chantel’s scores.

Quite sad.

Daph birthday balloon

I took C to the dollar store to get bday balloons for daph. C was very excited. She even helped me pack the wii fit we had bought for D. (C didnt understand the relevance of cello taping while wrapping the gift and tried to apply the cello tape all over the gift.)

At the balloon shop C picked two balloons – one for herself. I told C that these helium balloon would fly away and so, I would bring it outside to the car. C was ok with that. Back at the car, I carefully pushed both the balloons into the car and tied them to the tennis racket(?) C, in her excitement, went to the driver side and opened the back seat. I told her not to do that and asked her to close the door lest the wind blew away the balloons. By the time, I reached the door to close it, one balloon escaped and took flight!

C could not believe the balloon (hers!) could fly away so fast and started crying loudly. I consoled her and told her that we would get back into the store to buy more balloons.

Amidst her tears, C asked me: இந்த balloon friends ஐ பார்க்க போயிருக்கா?

Sleep

Ever since Kavithran's birth C has been asked, nicely, to sleep along with me, so that she does not disturb the sleeping baby. (I am also being banished from the bedroom, so that ‘I’ dont get disturbed the by crying baby!)

C does not like to go to sleep and would keep traversing from one room to another. After everybody goes to sleep, C would come to me and start sleeping next to me. Around 11 pm, C would get up and go to daph and continue her sleep there. Since the bed does not have space for athai, daph, K and C, sometimes C sleeps perpendicular to all the other three.

Kavithran Birth

C came with us to the hospital for teh delivery. We were thinking of letting C stay with either Kelly or Priya. It didnt work because C asked D: “Why are you trying to send me somewhere? Neengathaaney en amma?”

During the epidural injection, C was sent outside the room with Athai. Around 11 pm C slept on the sofa. C had major plans to ‘catch’ the baby during the delivery. We didnt want her to be disapointed and so we told her that ‘only’ the doctor caught the baby.

When K was born C was still asleep. I was concerned that she might start crying when she woke up. Around 5:20 Athai woke her up. C didnt cry. She was quite happy with the baby and wanted to play with him. When the nurses took him to check / clean, C was quite annoyed. The nurses gave wrist security bands to daph and me, which left out C. I had to ask the nurses to give a fake wrist band for her.

Doravin bayananngal

C is very excited with Doravin bayananngal. She learnt quite a lots of tamil words including Nandri from Dora.

To play off her fascination with Dora, we described the route we usually take to the park to C like: airport, tunnel, vilayaattu poongaa.

C could not “see” the airport for some days but got into the idea and had lots of fun. Whenever we cross the tunnel, she would exclaim, “tunnel – check”, etc.

The other day at the grocery store, C wanted to read the ‘map’ (D’s grocery list) to direct me, even though C does not read yet!

Pidingiruuveengala?

C is into the habit of crying for everything. We try to discourage her but most of the time, I end up being the reason for her cry.

The other day she came and complained that granma had taken her stuff and would not return it to C. C asked me to go and get it. I told C , “Ok, I will get it”.

C says: “Granmatta irunthu pidingiruvingala?”

House identification

Long time ago, C got very excited to see a rabbit hopping away in our backyard and started chasing it. Daph saw her chasing the rabbit all the way to the next street. The irony is that C would not have found her way back to our house, if D had not seen her. All the houses in our block look the same.

This time around I thought of showing some locators to C so that she could find the house from the next street. I showed her our garden (nobody else has a garden!) and the BBQ grill. C seemed to understand it. The front of the house is more confusing. I showed her the electric box in the front. She still cannot identify the house. Whenever we drive into our street, C would say “Veedu engeynnu kelunga” and after we ask her, she would wait for the garage door to open and then would point to the house.

It took ‘me’ sometime to correctly identify the house… so I guess she is doing ok.