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.
Gentle Reader, how do you play?  AskAmma will feature selected stories every Wednesday.

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.

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.