Jeyanth & Maya

Maya likes (in no particular order):

• Looking at books and playing with Fergus before getting out of bed(cot) in the mornings
• Eating breakfast in three instalments; Maya’s porridge, Daddy’s toast and fruit
• Picking up any object in the house and identifying who it belongs to, and then going and delivering it; Ana’s car, Daddy’s shoe, Amma’s keys etc
• Playing with Ana
• Running away from Ana and hiding behind Amma when he growls
• Counting things
• Canoodling with Amma. Maya is mummy’s girl and poor old daddy is not allowed to do anything for her if Amma is around. (Amma doesn’t mind so much, since she’s definitely second choice with J)
• Finding shoes left in the wrong place and victoriously returning them to the shoe rack by the front door
• Finding shoes on or near feet and victoriously returning them to the shoe rack by the front door
• Moo’ik
• Singing to herself, often in gobbledygook
• Paper, pencils and crayons and hours of drawing under close supervision (we have a dining chair and several floor tiles that have fallen prey to the drawing fairy).
• Cooking with her new pots & pans and stove
• Talking - often getting to 3-4 word sentences
• Saying “no” to any parental suggestions
• Playing with Katrina
• Books, and more books and reading books, and getting other people to read books
• Going ‘wimming’. Maya loves the pool, despite the fact that her teeth chatter and she’s pretty keen to cling
• Dropping s’s in most of her words; (tar=star, tuck-stuck, ticker=sticker, wim=swim etc)
• Visiting Ammamma and Thaatha

This Christmas, I saw something I’ve never seen before.

It was Christmas eve, and following Sureka’s family’s tradition, the kids were opening their presents. Jeyanth had been delighted by a number of gifts that he had received, when he came to a small square box. He tossed the label to Amma, tore off the wrapping paper, turned it over - and froze. Then his jaw dropped. He was rendered speechless (that’s the bit I’ve never seen before) for at least a minute, just staring at the gift. Then, when he turned to thank the giver, he couldn’t remember who was who - amongst a group of people he has known all his life - he walked around the circle in a daze trying to work out who to thank.

The gift? A wristwatch.

OK, this one is definitely for aficionados only. As in, people who enjoy watching small children in groups singing.

Jeyanth was in the 2008 Sydney Tamil Christian Fellowship junior choir. video (41.4MB)

Maya has suddenly decided that she likes counting things. Of course, she’s been hearing counting for a while, in songs and rhymes. However, we had no idea that she’d actually grasped the idea of number until she opened one of her Christmas presents, a set of three related books. She gleefully lay them next to each other and touched each one in turn saying “one, two, free”.

I guess its another example of the second child effect. Poor old Maya doesn’t get anything like the same level of one-on-one parental interaction, but still manages to learn as if by osmosis and surprise us with skills we didn’t know she’s acquired.

Anyway, she’s very pleased with the counting game at the moment. Several times a day she’ll spontaneously grab any available hand or foot and count digits. She prefers having a donor, but will use her own if necessary. Yesterday, she was entertaining herself in the car by counting her toes while holding one of her own feet in both her hands. No mean feat of contortion since she was strapped into a baby seat at the time. She’s got one-two-three down to perfection, is a bit shaky at four (often says two again), but really enjoys arriving victoriously at five. She has not ventured beyond five yet, but I’m sure it will dawn on her at some point that there more toes available…

So, I’m sitting here at csirocare, waiting for Sureka to arrive so we can both witness the end of Jeyanth’s preschool career…

Chris forgot to mention one of the key features of listening to music with Maya. She is incredibly impatient with the few moments of silence that normally occur between tracks on a CD. At the end of every song, she’s absolutely convinced that the music is gone, and will shout “more moo-ik, more moo-ik” (on good days) or howl in inarticulate fury (on bad days). We are waiting patiently for Maya to acquire some faith in the process and meanwhile I for one am getting pretty good at hitting the ‘next track’ button on the car CD player the very milli-second the last note of a track is played.

Of course, Jeyanth, has realised that I do this, and has predictably decided that he likes the silences, and will occasionally complain. I have a sneaking suspicion that his motivation is less to do with being contrary and more that he has decided that it’s his job to explain to Maya in his patient-big-brother-dealing-with-infantile-sister voice, that the next song is about to start soon and she should ‘get a grip’.

At eighteen months, Maya is a fanatical fan of music.

When you come to get her up in the morning, she will point at the CD player and demand “mic”.
The best way to persuade her to come downstairs is to announce “music downstairs” - sending her toddling full speed for the stairs.
But most of all, in the car: the moment the engine starts is the moment her requests start.

Sometimes she will just sit and listen, often she will do a sort of ’sitting dance’, occasionally she will do her best to dance/shuffle around without falling over.

Just one real drawback: she’s picky. Whereas Jeyanth can normally be persuaded to enjoy the music we would choose to play, Maya has strong preferences. And excellent though many children’s CDs are, there is a limit to how often you want to hear them….

Maya only has one joke at the moment, but she loves it. When she’s been playing with a toy for a while, she’ll hold it out to you and say “all done!”. If you reach out to take it, she snatches it back with a “no!” followed by a big laugh.

Because both of his parents had childhood issues with their eyes, we were advised that we should get his eyes check. Avid readers with a good memory will recall that Jeyanth was checked out at 15 months; with school starting next year the time had come for another checkup.

So this week I took Jeyanth along to the opthalmologist. In place of letters, the opthalmologist had me hold a board with lines of shapes getting smaller as they went down the chart, while he sat with Jeyanth at the other side of the room, covering one eye with a cool pirate patch.

After a short confusion related to ‘left’ and ‘right’ (no, the other left), Jeyanth started to name the shapes. When the opthalmologist had to ask me whether he was getting them right or not because he couldn’t see shapes that small, it became clear that somehow Jeyanth has dodged the bullet of his parents eyesight genetics.

After a long series of tests, involving a whole load of great pairs of funny glasses, which Jeyanth loved, the final verdict: apart from the slight possibility of a minor colour vision problem (quite common at this age, apparently), Jeyanth’s eyesight is just fine.

One of the benefits of moving house is that the estate we now live in has a swimming pool. With the arrival of spring, its become warm enough (barely) to use, and Jeyanth has decided to take full advantage. Full advantage. As in, every day. And, of course, this means that someone else also has to go into an unheated pool every afternoon when Jeyanth comes home from kindy.

Brr.