Aashish Sangoi, Papa of little Ananya in the San Francisco Bay area, shares some moments from his first few weeks of fatherhood.

Our baby – Ananya – is seven weeks old. At this stage, she is pretty much asleep most of the time and only plays for an hour or so every day – although that time is increasing every week.

Since she is not mobile and her eyesight can only focus up to a foot away – her playing ‘activities’ are limited. She mostly plays on her own when the conditions are right – full stomach, empty bowels. Her hands box and her legs kick when she is in a playful mood. We use a couple of props to play with her. One is a bouncer and another is a play mat – both hand-me-downs from cousins.

The bouncer has hanging props that she can hit when she is ‘boxing’ with her hands. Sometimes we also jingle these to catch her attention and help her move her eyes to see if she can focus. These props are right now at just about the right focus point of her eyesight. We use the bouncer a lot since she can play in it and we can use it to gently bounce her to sleep.

We use the playmat for shorter periods during the day. The playmat has a lot more hanging toys which we rattle and shake to play with the baby. It can also play lights and sounds but I think the lights don’t attract her yet – perhaps because they are a bit out of her focus. I sit down with the playmat and rattle each hanging toy in a circular fashion continuously so she is entertained.

We’ve also tried to play with her using soft toys but she doesn’t seem to fancy those – perhaps at a later stage.

Sometimes I also carry her – holding her such that she is looking just over my shoulders – and walk about the house. This position is particularly useful when we have to calm her and burp her. If it is light out, we show her outside the window and talk to her about whats going on outside.

Her final play time is just before going to bed. She is a late sleeper usually sleeping past midnight. However, at this time, we don’t actively engage with her to play. We try to rock her to sleep but usually end up carrying her in our arms and pacing the house. We generally sing lullabies to her while pacing back and forth. I also talk to her in hushed tones that she will be sleeping soon and gently swing her in my arms. Usually talking and singing to her and gently swinging her in a figure-of-eight motion does the trick and puts her to sleep.

Some of the songs we sing are Lakdi ki Kaathi, Nani Teri Morni, and one more homemade Kutchi song about going places. Ananya also likes it when my wife makes faces and talks expressively, which holds her attention for short spans of time.

AskAmma thanks Aashish for sharing this note, part of a series on Play.
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Books, movies, puzzles …
from Murthy, Nanna to 9-year-old Sahith in Seattle

Here are some things that Sahith and I enjoy together. I had to stretch the time into last year also for some of the fun activities 🙂

Murthy and Sahith

– talking about characters and events in the books he reads (for example, the recent Ranger’s Apprentice)
– watching superhero movies such as spiderman
– singing some songs when Sahith is in the mood — usually, having him take the lead in conducting/singing/directing the song gives him extra motivation and incentive.

– bicycling — did this a lot last year.
– harmless wrestling — did this quite a bit last year, simple ground-rules such as not using legs and always doing it on the bed, makes it safe. Sahith has quite a bit of fun with this.
– putting together jigsaw puzzles

hmm… what else? I’m sure there are some that I can’t remember now. All I can think of at the moment is how often he says “can I go read now?” 🙂

AskAmma thanks Murthy for sharing this note, part of a series on Play.
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Bicycle for Two
from Somnath, Baba to 5-year old Adrita in Arlington, Massachusetts

Developed with direct inputs from Adrita:

I am very careful to not hurt the plants and the trees so I go with my Baba on the bicycle wherever we can. Of course it cannot be negative 16 deg C when we use the bicycle. But we can still walk to school in negative 16 deg C…well I walk half the way and Baba walks the full way and I sit on his shoulders the other half of the way. During the last snow we made a snow-woman which stayed for a long time with pebble-eyes and twig-ears.

I really like taking the bus and the train a lot but at times we do have to drive 😦 But when we are in the car we take turns in humming tunes of songs we both know but we distort it intentionally and the other one has to identify the song. I really enjoy this game. We have several Bangla and Hindi songs that we have learnt together. On rare occasions we have also used the boat like the people of Sunderbans.

In the summer and autumn we spend a lot of time outside. We go to the Mystic lake on hot summer days and swim with lots of other people. I like to generally stay in the shallow part while Baba goes for a swim after which he comes back and holds me by the belly so that I can try to swim. I don’t like getting out of water but invariably that happens.

Adrita is on the road with Baba

We have lots of parks around our house and we go to at least one park everyday. The parks are named after the AID people who live close to it – Funny park is close to Raju’s house because he is funny. We have Tatha park, Umang park…and of course there are non-AID parks also that we go to on the bicycle.

When spring comes we mix compost in the garden and plant mustard and methi. I love playing in the land while making beds and putting in the seeds. In some time we see baby plants sprouting. Oh, I forgot to say that I like earthworms a lot. I don’t pick them up myself but ask Baba to hold them. When it rains and they get stuck on the road or the pavement we try to pick them up and put them back in the soil. I think they have difficulty moving on the roads.

Lately, we have taken to playing ping pong on the table in our house…I am improving. There are many things I do with my Maa which I will write about in a different post.

~Adrita

AskAmma thanks Somnath for sharing this note, part of a series on Play.
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Behind the stars …
from Uma, Nanna of almost 3-year-old Yogya in Vijayawada

A cow on the street religiously comes in the morning. Yogya and I feed the cow daily. She loves touching the cow. I take her around and show where more cows are. She loves touching the దూడ / calf.

The other day a cow gave birth to a calf in our street. Yogya spent so much time playing with the దూడ (calf). She kept calling the దూడ to come and play with her and when she came, Yogya stroked her neck. I took her to Goshala and show hundreds of cows to her. We took her to the zoo last time when we went to Tirumala and showed her all the animals she has toys of at home. She keeps saying “నేనుపట్టుకొంటాను” (I will hold) for not just cow, but every animal (she wanted to touch the lion and the giraffe as well).

Inside our house, I play Hide and Seek, arrange stairs for her with the sofa pillows, arrange blocks for her, try to spark her curiosity by introducing new things and new experiences.

I prefer being with Yogya in nature rather than indoors. I wait till she gets up to water the plants. I ask her to pluck flowers in the garden (regardless of whether she plucks the flower or the stem, sometimes she just plucks leaves and puts in my flower basket). When weather is good, I take her to the park or somewhere outside, but not regularly (my schedules).

Yogya likes playing in the sand and hence I sieved a whole bag of sand for her. Swapna and I spread the sand over a large plastic cloth and made a forest for her by putting all small animal figurines in it and this we used for her బొమ్మల కొలువు (doll display*). She also wets the sand and builds castles with it, something she learned by herself after one beach outing.

We answer every question of hers and do not tell her any fake things like there is a బుచ్చాడు (bogeyman) in the dark, etc.. We get involved in activities even if they might sound childish to others only to understand with her the beauty of the world.

Last night, I took her to the top floor and spread a mat and we both just lay down and watched the stars and the నెలవంక (crescent moon). I showed her the brightest star and told her that it is lakhs of kilometers away. I don’t care how much she understands. My job is to answer her every question. She knows that to reach her uncle in USA, she has to go through a plane in the sky.

We have the Amar Chitra Katha story on Kalpana Chawla, and have read and looked at the pictures together. Yogya remembers everything from the picture where Kalpana as a child doesn’t like oil being put in her hair to when she goes into space in a rocket. She knows that Kalpana Chawla went up once, came down, went up again and stayed there only and never came back. If you ask her where Kalpana is, she will say that she is behind the stars.

Yogya and Uma

She likes to bathe in her tub. We take her to the river bank, show her people bathing, take her to the Durga temple on the hill and on the boat on the river Krishna. We go to the beach as well. I was telling her the thirsty crow story when I realized I could easily show it to her. I brought a round cup, poured water just to half and then brought those stones which we would use in a acquarium. She put the stones in the cup and the water came up. She shows anyone who comes to our house that this is how the crow drank water and went away.

Her granddad or I take her to the shop to fetch groceries or vegetables and she picks her chocolates. She is also expert in picking vegetables from the trays. I give her a cover and ask her to fill in tomatoes or beans or potatoes or onion. She does it till she gets bored and moves to the next item. I don’t care whether the vegetables she picked are good or not. I just get them billed. For me , it is important now to respect her independence. I will worry later about teaching her what is a good tomato and what is a bad one. I learnt again that from experience. When I tried to teach her once, she just gave the bag to me and said “Nanna, నాన్న, నువ్వు తీసుకో (Nanna, you pick them). I let her pick the apples, the pomegranates, the chips, etc., She knows the vegetables names more by playing with them.

I schedule my breakfast, lunch and dinner to her food timing. Lunch many a time I miss, but breakfast and dinner, I try my maximum to be with her.

* బొమ్మల కొలువు (bommala koluvu) is a doll display traditionally set up in during the festival of Sankranti

AskAmma thanks Uma for sharing this note, part of a series on Play.
Gentle Reader, how do you play?  AskAmma will feature selected stories every Wednesday.

16 ways to play with a baby
from Abhishek, Papa of 1 year-old Aarya in Connecticut:

Here are a few games we play together

1) peak-a-boo with a blanket
2) hide and seek- where she hides, I find her and say “boom”
3) catch me if you can – when I catch I tickle her belly
4) where is papa’s nose ( we call it nosey), we do that for ever with papa, mumma, Aarya, baba (grandfather), nani (grandmother) and her toys- sofie, elizah, micky, mini and basanti
5) we stack rings and roll balls
6) I sing animal sound song
7) we read her book – her favorite book “baby day”
8) when I wave a blanket, she comes running to grab it and swing on it
9) Show and tell-she points at various thing with her fingers and I tell her what they are
10) counting her toes and fingers
11) we nuzzle our noses
12) we make funny faces and funny noises and she laughs- she tries to grab my tongue, she examines my teeth
13) using a small flash light, I make shadows with my hand and she tries to grab it
14) she loves to play with water, she splashes her drinking water on her high chair table
15) when I pour water, she tries to hold it between her fingers
16) she is fascinated with my cameras, I let her play with them, she loves to push buttons, put cap on the lens

AskAmma thanks Abhishek for sharing this note, part of a series on Play.
Gentle Reader, how do you play?  AskAmma will feature selected stories every Wednesday.