Update on Ashu at 26 Months.

I'm in the kitchen warming Ashus milk in the microwave. I take it out and while stirring it, spill some milk on the counter top. I go "chee chee chee chee"! Ashu who is sitting on the sofa in the living room hears me and asks "Amma paal kottitiyaa?" (Did you spill the milk?) I went speechless for one whole second! HOW? Am I wasting *that* much milk everyday?!

We have now entered the grand era of doing everything on our own! But theres a mix up between "you" and "I". She says "You do it" which actually means "I ll do it." The first couple of times when she said "You do it" and we did it, she screamed and did it herself. Now when we tell her - Its not "You do it" Ashu. Its "I ll do it" - she thinks we want to do it and screams again!

Yesterday we were playing with the Play-Doh and I made a tortoise. I mean, I tried. Ashu sees the finished product but does nt have a clue what it is. So I giver her a hint and then declare "Its a tortoise Ashu" and she goes "No Amma. That's a Snail!" My baby girl knows SNAIL? How?

Today as soon as Hd came home from office, the little rat ran to him and said in Tamil, "Appa, I threw the play doh and Amma got angry and Amma hit me"! LIAR! Usually when she does something naughty, we make a sad face and she goes to the other person and says "Amma/Appa is making sad face because I hit them" irrespective of whether she hit us or not. So now madam is complaining that she has a sad face because I hit her. Everyone believes the child much to my inconvenience. I dont have to hit you for the stupid play doh, Honey! You give me plenty of other opportunities, so beat it!

These days, when she says "sorry", I MUST say "its ok" or else she ll keep on saying sorry and it will get louder and louder and then her voice will break and she ll start crying. Sometimes she herself will mutter a "its ok" after a sorry and move on. At other times she ll NEVER say sorry when the occasion demands it and after a double time out, she ll mutter a sorry and would nt care if its accepted or not! The bigger the mischief, the tougher it is to get a sorry out of her. For example, if "I" bump into her, she ll say sorry immediately. But if "she" throws the remote at me and it gets me on my nose and I see stars, she ll NOT say sorry until I order her to.

This weekend we had guests over for dinner and Ashu had fun playing with 2 kids. She shared her toys, played with them and there was no violence whatsoever. Just when I was relaxing, I saw Ashu climb on our bed and saying "Ashu bed this. No!" to the other little girl. Where do kids learn these? And it was nt even her bed! I mean how do they associate that this is "our" house and "our" bed. Because according to her something is either hers or others. She always says Amma appa bed and Ashu bed or Amma laptop, Appa phone, Ashu dress, etc... But in front of a guest, Amma appa bed has become "Ashu" bed! Such a brat!

Her language is also evolving. From Babulu to Dabbu Dabbu, now she clearly pronounces W as Double U much to my chagrin. As if this "huge" change is nt enough to dishearten me, her silly dad is hell bent on teaching her to pronounce F which she says as S. Fan is Shan, Phone is Shon, 4 and 5 are Shore and Shy respectively. Until yesterday that is! Instead of doing the dozen things that has to be done around the house, he showed her how to say F before sleep time last night and she got it immediately. And he sent her to me to gloat. She did too. "Phone" sounded so wrong coming from her mouth after listening to "Shon" for the past one year. Every morning when the alarm in our mobile phone goes off, she used to say "Appa Shon, Appa Shon" and wake us up. Now it will be just a dull "Appa phone". Sigh! My lil girl is growing up.