Brogging

Pranav is one month short of being a year and a half old. He is little in size, but big on talking.

We went to Kung Fu Panda 2 last week, and he not only stayed awake to watch the movie, but made many comments on it (If people who were sitting close to us in the theatre are reading this, I'm sorry. Yes, that was my kid, but atleast he was not crying through most of the movie like that other baby. Ha!)

At one time in the movie, when everyone laughed - he didn't get the joke but said, "Funny! Ha ha ha.". Not funnier than him.

The other day, somebody in the lift asked him, "What's your name?", and I was going to answer for him as usual. But this tiny guy in his little shorts, looked up at and said, "Pannav".

He notices things without appearing to. He loves to rinse the lentils ("pappu") before I cook them, and I let him do it most of the time. But this one time, I was in a hurry, and calculatedly put on a Dora DVD for him, so that he would not notice me rinsing the pappu. I put veggies in the pan, I chopped stuff for the pappu, I put on the rice. He was watching Dora intensely all the time. The moment I touched the pappu cooker, amazingly, I felt a soft creature hugging my legs, pawing me, and saying "Pappu! Pappu! Wash it!"

I look at him and think he's going about his business, but he's soaking up everything that's going on around him. Yesterday at the park, he was rocking on a little rocking duck. Some girls stood around talking, next to us. Pranav pointed to one of them and said, "Akka".

"That's not Akka", I said distractedly. "Akka is on her bicycle."

Then he pointed to her again, and said, "Simran Akka.". We had never met this girl before, and he had never heard that name before. Surprised, I turned to the girls and caught one of them calling the other "Simran". He must have been hearing them talk.

He is also a neat freak. I empty his box of books on the floor sometimes, so he can get to them easily. When I go back to check, I always find them neatly stacked back into the box. This kind of thing used to surprise me, but now I know that's what he does.

Once I dumped a jar of clothespins on the floor, and gave him some plastic cups from my kitchen drawer. I thought maybe he'd like to sort the clothespins into the cups by color. He wasn't interested in sorting them, but methodically put the clothespins back into the jar, and put the lid on it. Then, he stacked up the cups I gave him, and put the cups and the jar neatly away in the drawer!

When I put him to bed at night, and hug and kiss him and say, "Pranav, good night!", he pats himself on his chest and says, "Pumpkin pie, good night.", before I can say it.

When we lie down in bed at night, he goes through the happenings of the day in shorthand. "Akka school bus. Renuka is calling. Rain. Cheesy pasta." and so on. He dreams a lot, because he always wakes up saying something out of the blue. He talks in his sleep too, very clearly.

Babies are amazing. Pranav learned all this in less than a year and a half. Next year, I think he'll be running this blog. I'm only half kidding.

P.S.: "Brogging" is when you blog and brag about something at the same time. I just made that up.

Anyway, I might seem to be "brogging" in this post, and in others, but I can't help it. I'm a mom writing about my kids, and I mostly write only the best things about them and me - ofcourse I'm not writing about the times when they are total brats and I'm an absolute monster. I'm saving that for my tell-all book.