He can speak full sentences now!

Since this past July, Sameer has started to speak complete sentences. Its very interesting to hear him talk about his likes/wants and dislikes. He likes his Lego, the carpet where he plays with the Lego, mango, edamame, roasted corn on the cob, cars and his ice cream. He does not like daal-chawal and yogurt anymore. :-(

His pronunciation is not perfect yet, but what I find really interesting is that he will try alternate ways of communicating his thoughts if he can see that we did not understand him. He will try to speak sl-ow-ly or even use his hands to communicate.

Travelling with a toddler: Neemrana

The frequency of our travel went down drastically the year Sameer was born, but it's been on the upswing after that. From just two short holidays in summer of 2007, and then again two vacations in 2008, this year we have managed four trips already! Three of these were plane trips. And there are still quite a few months to go before this year ends.

The first trip we took in the new year was a weekend trip to Neemrana. It's a restored fort palace in Rajasthan, not far from Jaipur. It's a wonderful place, although definitely pricey. The gardens and the fort grounds are beautifully maintained. The food is excellent as well. They have a huge buffet for breakfast, lunch and dinner with some very interesting options. Probably the only disappointing part was the room. For the price of the room, which was supposedly a 'suite', it was way too small and not at all a suite! It was a single room with the bed at a lower level than the room entrance where they had put up some chairs. Also, we had to get the bathroom cleaned again as it was full of hair and just dirty in general. So the start was not so good, but once that part was ironed out, we enjoyed the rest of the stay, specially going up and down all the staircases, where you could easily get lost. All the medieval era tales of plotting and scheming against kings, actually looked quite plausible in such a setting :-)

Since it was a small trip -- two nights, three days, we did not have to do much preparation. Sameer was 21 months at that time. It was a three to four hour drive from Delhi. His stuff took up most of the space, of course. But we did not have to worry too much about toys. Sameer enjoys being outdoors and at that time he was really getting interested in letters. So we did not really need anything else for him. We brought along a DVD for us, for watching while Sameer was napping. And oh yes, I packed some yogurt for him and some snacks for us for the way. But that was about it. This vacation was easy since we weren't really driving from place to place. We stayed put at this hotel and just explored the nine levels of the fort and the various gardens and enjoyed the winter sun.