What has Ads been upto?

Over the last few weeks, Ads has been taking tiny steps to independence. He's been walking to tennis lessons (inside our complex) all by himself. It's a different matter that if he doesn't see me waiting outside the court 5 minutes before the end of the lesson, he bursts into tears! A couple of times, I have been really rushed in the morning and have asked him to start walking to the bus stop and I will catch up with him in a few minutes, and he's done that quite cheerfully. Anybody who knows Ads knows that these little steps mean a whole lot to him. It's taken him almost a year of staying in this complex and getting familiar with it, to even start attempting such feats. He also had his first sleepover last weekend, at his best friend's place, which is also in the same compound.

I have been sitting with him for half an hour everyday, getting him to read. It's been a little bit of a challenge because I am not a good or patient teacher. And English is an illogical infuriating language! I always remember Dharmendra's dialogue in Chupke Chupke - "If B-U-T is but then why is P-U-T put?" It's so easy for the child to forget a new word he learnt only yesterday and it takes constant reinforcement to get him to remember it and pronounce it correctly. We started with the Bubbles and Bruno books which a friend very kindly lent us, some stuff on the Internet but now I have graduated him to more advanced books. They have a lot more words that he doesn't know but I figured he can just read what he knows and the rest I will read for him. Maybe he'll get a jumpstart on the bigger words that way.

He doesn't enjoy reading as much as he enjoys doing little sums - addition and subtraction. The Tam-bram engineering/mathematical genes are on full display! Over the summer, I plan to get him to read more. His teacher told me to start him on multiplication tables which they will be doing in Grade I. My mom has already identified an art class for him in Chennai. Not to mention the field visits that eager grandparents have lined up for him. The fella is going to have a jam-packed summer!