Elmo

When our betu Sameer was an infant we made a sincere effort to shun him from TV. Now that he is almost 20-months, we are trying to slowly expose him to TV. We are thinking that he should be able to learn from watching "educational" TV programs. So far we haven't found much on TV here that would be interesting for him. So please do suggest some programs if you live in India by entering some comments.

However, youtube has come to our rescue. While we were living in the US, the Pampers diapers used to fit him the best. These diapers used to have various Sesame Street characters on it, including the red monster, Elmo. So one day during our last few days in the US, we took him to the local mall. As we were passing by he recognized a stuffed toy version of Elmo and pointed to it. We sensed that he likes this character. That lead us to search for Elmo videos on youtube from here and were pleasantly surprised at the numerous videos available. He watches a few 3 minute videos with us everyday. Now he has started pointing to the study room (where we keep the PC) and saying "Emmo". His favorite is this one with Norah Jones, from where he has learned to recognize the letter "Y".

BTW, we recently discovered that sesamestreet.org has a whole slew of such videos and they have better quality than the ones on youtube.

The two loves of his life: balls and automotives

Today morning when I was changing his clothes Sameer found a onesie that has small cars on it throughout. He refused to wear anything else after looking at it. It's a summer onesie that I wanted to put away and infact too small for him but of course, he doesn't know that. He loves cars, bikes, trains, trucks. Whenever we visit Sameer's grandparents (dada-dadi) he loves to play with Rahul's collection of cars and bikes from Rahul's childhood. Once Sameer played with a bike for 10 to 15 minutes. That is a long time for Sameer to stay on his own and not come running to call us.

His other love is 'pop'. That's the term he has coined for a ball. I think he mistook the word pop for anything round when I used to tell him to pop the bubbles. Anything that resembles a ball also catches his attention. Mausambi (sweet lime) matches that criteria very well. It's round and soft, it can roll and its fun to eat too. He just loves the juices that roll down his arm when he chews and sucks on a slice of mausambi. It's as perfect a playtoy as he could get his hands on. Once I threw a mausmabi in the kitchen trash can after slicing it in half. He found it, immediately recognized it and started eating it. A day earlier he had used this same mausambi as a ball, which is why I had had to throw it away in the first place. He kept throwing it in different directions and watched it roll away. Each time he would pick it up and throw it. That night we ate our dinner in peace and watched him enjoy playing with that mausambi :-) I don't mind wasting one mausambi for 15 minutes of peace.