And baby turns 3

I'm sitting at my laptop, wanting to write a post about my daughter who turned 3 last week. All the sweet awwww-inspiring things. And nothing, nothing, comes to mind. Mommy guilt strikes hard as I think about the eloquent prose I churned out when Ads turned 3. 

This happened just a couple of days ago. I gave up and saved the post as a draft, knowing that the words would come later.

I've found this time and again, that the sense of wonder, of surprises waiting around every corner, the sense of accomplishment that I had with Ads - these do apply to Y as well, just in a highly diluted form. Or put it another way, been there, done that. With Ads, one exclaimed over every new achievement and felt the same upsurge of emotion in the heart. With Y, one still exclaims (!) but in the heart, we just take it in our stride. She was also always a little more advanced for her age than Ads, who always did things bang on time, not a week less, nor a month more. We still call him our babycenter baby because he used to hit his milestones just around the same time that babycenter sent us a mail telling us to expect that particular milestone :) Because she was so precocious, we got used to her punching above her weight. I often think we have been so unfair. We expect her to do more than she should. But when she does, we never give her the credit for it! 

Anyway, our 3 year old has been going through some personal crises lately. I had blogged earlier how she was going to school quite happily and with no fuss . But then there was the kid who was hitting her, pulling off her glasses etc and she got petrified of encountering him in class. That matter got sorted out after a chat with the teacher but Y continued to dissolve into tears every time her school van came to pick her up, and sometimes even in school. She went off her food and became very quiet and withdrawn, not even playing with her friends in the complex. This continued for about a month. Over the last few days, there has been some improvement. She is eating a lot better, starting to be more social, less clingy, and so on. I was telling one of my friends that Y is passing thro some 'phase' and she promptly said "Yaar, mujhe in phases se bahut dar lagta hai!" (Translation: These phases scare me!)

Another thing that is putting her off school is the language barrier. Tamil is her strongest language and she cannot communicate anywhere at that level of fluency in either English or Hindi, although she is slowly learning both. I've seen Ads encounter the same problem in his school in the US, where he was one of the few kids who knew very rudimentary English when starting off. So I am confident Y will vault over this particular barrier sooner rather than later. 

My daughter is affectionate (VERY affectionate), very stubborn (wonder where she got THAT from? :)), very bright. She loves dancing, singing, playing the fool, reading, spicy food, especially Punjabi food, nice clothes, handbags, shoes, hairclips and bangles! In short, all the things that make life so pleasurable! She absolutely loves to go out, an area where she is diametrically opposite to my homebody son. She has an amazing zest for life, or as she puts it "I like masti!"

If there is one thing I wish for you, girl, it's this. May the masti never end.