Shake a Leg!

from Praveen, Nanna to 6 month-old Vihaan in Baltimore

Parenthood has be the most joyous relationship we have experienced. Right from Vihaan’s birth till date we have not followed any fixed protocol when it comes to playing and spending time with him.

Everyday is a new experience for us and we make sure he experiences some thing new each day. From the very beginning, my MIL made sure all of us talked to him like we talk to each other. Till date we spend most of the time taking to him with wide expressions and gestures. I also dance for him once in a while, move my arms shake my legs. Last night I just moved my fingers like an octopus’ arms and he just loved it and started to laugh. The key thing to keep him engaged or make him show some keenness into every thing is to provide him a variety. Be it with toys (like spoons, cups, containers apart from the regular toys) or be it with expressions or baby talk. Having said that there are certain things that he always likes, for example, all the basic rhymes, ABCD, baba black sheep, twinkle twinkle is some thing he loves to listen when he is drinking his milk.

We have discovered that he loves certain Bollywood expressions like, chaiya chaiya, oh la la la, et al. Not the songs just those couple of words that sounds interesting to him. We come up with our own words and expressions and he has loved it.

Of late, he has started to like balls. We noticed his affinity towards balls when he was first introduced to them in Swarith annaya’s place. After which we got him a couple of balls and he loves me juggling them. He loves to see bright changing colors. He loves to watch TV, some times we break the rules and let him see the colorful screen for a couple of minutes.

Even though he has enough toys to play with, he enjoys listening and talking (yes, talking !! he has stared to make loud expressions, and some times when all of us are busy he reminds us that we have left him alone) to amma, nanna and nanamma. He also loves talking to his ammamma and tatha over the phone 🙂

Snuggles!

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

ఏనుగమ్మ యేనుగు! (Elephant!)

from Rajeev, Nanna to almost 3-year old Charan in California

My son is almost 3 years old now and for him the most exciting thing to do is be able to replicate whatever his mom or I do. So instead of trying get through our daily chores as quickly as we can by doing it ourselves we try to find a way to integrate him into the activity in a way that makes sense to him, even if it takes a little longer to do. And that turns into a play routine for us.

For example when I am vacuum cleaning my house, he is my partner in picking up stuff from the floor and putting it in appropriate places. It’s a lot of fun for him because when we are picking up stuff we have a routine where we say “నాన్న ఒకటి, చరణ్ ఒకటి” (meaning dad picks up one – Charan picks up one). By doing that he sees how I am doing the cleanup and he repeats it. In his mind he’s able to do what his dad is doing. So he gets super excited. Sometimes we try to count things while we are picking up stuff, or identify the items with their names and its phonetics etc. He likes pretending the cleaning game with the real vacuum cleaner too (with it unplugged of course). I let him have his way. We just make sure that the vacuum cleaner is itself clean all the time (it’s probably one item that is always sparkling clean in our house. 🙂 )

When we go shopping he’ll be helping me put the vegetables / fruits etc into the covers. I give him the vegetable and hold the bag for him and his task is to carefully put it into the bag that I am holding and ask me if we need more. Our most favorite part of shopping is walking through the aisles and identifying the numbers, letters, colors, shapes that we find around us. We also try to go through our shopping list (which he would have helped put together in the house) to see what else is needed. This is an exciting part too for him because he’s the one who tell me which way to go in the grocery store to find the item we are looking for. Shopping this way takes a more time than if I just breezed through the store myself, but we wouldn’t want to miss our play routine.

Rajeev and Charan

We do a lot of regular playing too. Some of the old time games like “ఏనుగమ్మ యేనుగు” (Where dad is the elephant he rides on) and “ఉప్పమ్మ ఉప్పు ” (“salt” – where he gets to be my back luggage) are still some of our favorites. Sometimes we create our own improvised versions of hide and seek games where either I am a tiger trying to catch him or the hiding part is actually done by his teddy bears and he gets to find them. We also like drawing our stories on our black board (these days it’s been more of paper and colors pens). Some of those stories are our own cooked up stories using his favorite things (like fire trucks, trash trucks, mountains etc) and some are just good old stories from books. Sometimes we paint on computer too using MS paint or create our story characters using paper and scissors. Off late throwing and catching ball has been our favorite. During the summer months, playing in the park in the evenings was our favorites. Since it gets dark quickly during this time of the year, we now get to do all the jumping and running around in our living room instead.

As far as toys are concerned, We try to do our best to make sure that the toys are not plastic and don’t need batteries. My son *loooves* cars and planes. He has both wooden and plastic cars and planes but the advantage with liking cars and planes is that practically anything that he can pick up will do the job. Pencils, pens, phones, blocks everything is a car or plane for him. If nothing’s available, I see him using his hand as his plane. It’s a riot to see him play like that.

Just like most other kids he too gets bored with a particular routine as he grows out of it. But the trick that has worked so far for us is to see what kind of things are capturing his interest / imagination and weave a routine around them. We’ll have to see how long we will be able to effectively engage his interest.

Charan walks on the fence

Rajeev and Charan

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

یہ ایک سیب ہے
(This is an apple)

from Kashif, Abbu to 3-month-old Salsabiel in Boston

Regarding playing with Salsabiel, she is 3 months old so it is mostly me trying to entertain her and also see if I can teach her something. Most of the time I make nonsense sounds to make her laugh and smile but also I try to have conversations with her as if she is understanding what I am saying. I talk to her about my books, recite her some Urdu poetry, sing her songs, and we also take her with us to places that we visit like meetings, protests, etc.

Kashif likes to take everyday items and activities and go over them and explain them to Salsabiel in Urdu… here is a moment I captured of him showing her what a سیب (apple) is and how to eat it…
as you can see she is beside herself with the prospect of trying it one day 🙂
Photo and caption provided by Zainab Lakhani

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