March 28, 2014

I prayed to have you

Dearest one
There will be some days when everything will fall apart. You will be questioning your fate, you will be questioning your parents and you will be feeling miserable. Ma wants you to remember the following words (specially the last three lines)  in those moments of depression.


I have actually prayed, and asked my peers who were going for hajj that year to pray to have you. Today I have the strength to let go everything because I have the thing that is most precious, most dear, and most valuable to me.....and it is YOU my dear jaanpakhi.

Love
Ma

March 24, 2014

milestones

I read baby milestones every now and then, and it just occurred to me, that I have not been recording yours! So I will try to pull out of my memory some of your milestones

Smiled: around 2 months

Rolling: around 4 months. As soon as you started rolling, you would first look out for the iPad and roll yourself to it

Had first solid food: 27th February, 2013 (5 months)

Pulled yourself to a standing position while holding onto the bed: June 2013 (10 months)

Crawling: ummm this one I cannot remember, but surely it was between 10 - 14 months. First you used get on your knees, and then rock backward and forward. Then after a few days you learned to crawl.

Getting first haircut: Early August 2013 (10 months) Few days before eid

Standing on your own: November 2013 ( 14 months) -  I was back home from a training, and you stood up by yourself for the first time. It made me happy and sad at the same time. Happy because you achieved a milestone, sad because you were growing so fast, and moving towards independence so fast. Me, your nanu and adil, all applauded your milestone, and you understood that you were being appreciated. But you could not understand what amused us: the standing or the falling down. So for the next few minutes all you did was stand, and fall down on purpose. It was so cute!

Drawing on the wall with pencil:
November 2013 (14 months) - I was having some exam, and was studying at night in the bed. I slept with the books and pencil by my pillow. In the morning you woke up, found the pencil and drew on the wall. I bought you a box of crayons and a big copy after that.

Reading books on your own: November 2013 (14 months) - You had books since you were 4 months old. But you understood books around this time. So you would bring books to me, and I would point at the pictures and read them to you. When you were on your own, you would turn the pages and read the books by yourself. All you said were of course gibberish.....cute gibberish!

Cutting first teeth: December 2013 (15 months)

Walking: January 2014 ( 16 months)

First Words: January 2014 (16 months) - You started saying meaningful words, and the first word is 'ball' pronounced 'bbball'. By 17 months, you added a few more words to your vocabulary, like 'nnna' for na, 'bbboi' for book, 'adil' for adil and 'kaak' for every type of winged anumal. A crow is a kaak, a pigeon is a kaak, a hen is a kaak!
And for everything your answer is 'nnna', that too with a head swaying.
Baba baire jaba? - nnna
Baba chocolate khaba? - nnna
Baba, ma tomake ador dei? - nnna
Baba, ma tomake mair dei? - nna 

Kicking a ball: March 2014 (17 months of age). Took you to roof to play, and you ran around kicking the ball. Never saw you kicking the ball before that!

That's all for now, I will record some more milestones on the way.....



and thats how we have orange around here....




Prince Charming and his.....


awww ........ the innocence!

March 12, 2014

The OCD Mom

Moms are  a mental case by nature. I too, like any other mom, want my child to be healthy. And to protect my child from all those artificial ingredients and preservatives I strictly monitor the contents of my childs diet. I seldom let chotopakhi eat anything that is not prepared at home.

He loves noodles, so I make noodles at home. Yes, by make noodles at home I actually mean preparing every strand of noodles!

Noodles in the making

Home made Noodles
 +
Chicken + Cabbage + Carrot
 =
peanuts

+ a little whiz =
home made peanut butter
Thanks to his dadu for home made cereal from corn, pulses, peanuts, wheat, sesame etc
making sure he gets his daily dose of nutrition

March 9, 2014

Cycle of life

The last few days has not been perfect for birdie. Sunday and Monday he had some weird rash from an insect bite, he could not sleep. On Tuesday we both fell down on the road while crossing. Thankfully nothing happened, but next morning he had a fever, which is most probably from the cold he had. By Wednesday evening he starts having dysentry. It started passing mucus by Thursday. As of today, he has stains of blood in his already ameboid dysentry.
Thankfully yesterday we took him to a doctor, the doctor that birdies dad visited when he was a toddler himself, and fell ill with the something similar. Talk about cycle of life!




 At that time the doctor lived in birdies dads hometown, now he is here in Dhaka.

Yet under all this distress he keeping up a jolly and playful attitude. He is truly my son!
By the way, I took the iPad with me, guessing that it would take a while for the check up. Birdie played 'perfect kick' on it during the waiting period. Being a 1.5 years old, playing game on iPad and scoring goals like a pro made him attract quiet some attention. Any passerby would stop in awe and take a look at the little genius!


March 2, 2014

measuring weight the natural way



Apologies for the explicit content, but the pics are too cute to not share.... :)

cchagoler baccha.....and 'kaak'

We went for a haircut for the little one, and after we were done, when we got out of the salon and.......
 

But instead of the baby goats, he is more interested in the 'kaak' (read hen) that is locked in the cage

March 1, 2014

Bollo pakhir chaa....tumi ki amar maa?

The paradox of being a parent is most probably that you want your child to grow and not grow at the same time. I always feel that birdie is growing up too fast, but I also want him to be at a age where he can participate in the things that I enjoy.

New year for me means fairs, trade fair in January, and book fair in February. I have been to all book fairs since 2003, until recently. Over the last two years, for various reasons, I failed to visit the 'praner mela'. When the only certain thing in life becomes uncertainty, you take drastic measures, lest it be the last time you ever get a chance. So I decided to visit the book fair, on the last day, despite the fear of huge crowd. 

Since I went early on, I did not face much crowd; but what took me by surprise is that I missed the book fair for two years, and so much has changed. Within Bangla Academy were only the stalls for children publications, little mag, media and some organization based publish houses like Bangla academies own publishing, Islamic foundation etc. The main fair was hosted in a totally segregated ground.

Since I went to buy books for the little one....who by the way is a huge fan of reading, I was almost done soon. All those kids holding the parents hand and roaming around the book fair, made me miss my little birdie. I long for the day when he will be big enough to hold my hand and visit the book fair! So here's the array of books that I bought for him


and here's a array of things that I bought from the fair, that does not count as a book.



1. From the left top corner: An Assortment of vegetables made with clay, to teach him about our heritage. He already broke a few of them.
2. right to it is a sticker of mickey mouse.
3. Left bottom corner: a mask, which was birdies favorite among everything.
4. beside it is a bag to carry all the unnecessary things that I bought.
5. lying on the back is a ghungru. Since birdie walks around the house all day, its fun to add a little sound effect to his walking.
6. in the middle is a piri-belna. Now that the little one can walk around the house, he cozies up in the kitchen, pull out all the utensils, and plays with them, the piri-belna is an addition to his existing set of hari-patil that his nanu bought him earlier. By the way, he knows exactly how to use a the piri-belna.

Now getting back to his original purchase...books, he showed interest about the books at once. He opened them as soon as he received them, and looked through them, till the robot mask distracted him.

Again at night when he was done playing with the other things, he brought me the books, and cozied up to me, and asked me to read them for him. He enjoyed the book 'are you my mother', and after that I read him the rhino book. There was a picture of a ball in it, and the ball interested him more. So he ditched reading, and one by one he looked into all the books to search for pictures of ball. Every time he found a ball, or any round object, he pointed at it, and kept on saying ball. 

So that was the end of reading for him for the first night. I am trying to put him into a sleeping routine for him, that involves brushing his teeth, reading a book to him, getting a soothing massage and then going to bed. The purpose of the reading to him is both to calm his extra energy down and settle him, and to get into the habit of reading early on. Hope he gets to be a book worm someday just like both his parents!

Chotopakhi....this book fair is very special for you. A book dedicated to you has been published and launched by your Dadu, in this bookfair. :) 
Here are some pictures of the book launching event on 8th Feb, 2014