Little Chinuku.

Pranav is growing into a cutie-pie, as all babies do. He is now six months old. To say that he is active would be the understatement of the year. I have bulging biceps from carrying him around while he tries to jump out and escape. He is busy practising his jumping, rolling, sitting, crawling skills.

I am finding that a lot of things they say about having babies are true.

They say, that after baby, your hair falls out a lot. It is true, but not in the way I thought. Pranav holds on to my hair for support, tugs on it when he wants me to go in a different direction (steering mechanism, as in the movie Ratatouille), and pulls it out by the handful when he wants to send me a subtle message that he's hungry (while slobbering on my face at the same time).

Also, they say (duh!) that having a baby hurts. Again in more than one way. Just today, I've been stepped on, my stomach has been jumped on, my head has been butted, my lip has been cut (from his head bonking it), my mouth has been pulled (from curiosity while he watched me eat). Ouch!

But how sweet it all is! One dimply chubby smile and all boo-boos are forgotten. Summy has named him a sapota ( chikoo), because he's nice and soft and juicy and sweet like one, and his eyes are black like chikoo seeds.

He is always looking for people's attention. He gets tired of me after a while, and his face lights up when I take him on a walk so he can meet new people. He smiles at them and makes baby noises, so he's impossible to ignore.

Even when we drive around in the car, whenever there is a stop in traffic, he will smile and laugh at people through the windows, and he almost always gets smiled back at. One day in the car, I saw him beaming and bouncing, and looked out to see what he was seeing. It was an auto rickshaw full of schoolchildren, all smiling and making faces at him.

Summy is enjoying him very much too. He takes a lot of attention away from her, especially from people outside. This is a little worrisome, but she is at an age when she is getting to be more quiet and private. So sometimes, this suits her.

Actually, I have talked to her about this blog and asked her what she thought. She would rather I not write about her. I asked what I should write about, then, and she said, "Pranav, ofcourse!". She wants to appear only in her role as a big sister.