Water, Air and Earth

No, this post is not actually about the 3 classical elements. But  these 3 seems to be other favourites of our Muddu.

Water is his new favourite. He can play in water for hours. Every time the bathroom door in open, he rushes in to play in the bucket, and yeah we have leaky tap. He just loves to put his hand in the flowing water, if tap is open, else he has learnt to pour water with the mug, which invariably makes him wet. If he is extremely cranky, I just take him to our utility/balcony and open the tap, keeps him busy for some time.

Wind – was discovered by Muddu just two days ago. We were taking our usual evening walk, that is I walk and Muddu on pram, and it was windy. The first time he felt it, he called me (makes uuu sound) and showed his head. I couldn’t figure out why he was showing his head. And then couple of minutes later the wind blew on our faces and he showed his head again…and then I realised, aah he never has experienced wind before.  Sounds strange, but all during his first year, if it was windy or cold, mostly we would stay indoors or he would be packed from head to toe with cap and high neck , full shoulder shirts, basically minimum skin exposure to wind. Now it’s summer that he is actually feeling things on his skin and he seemed to like it.

Earth – yes. I have started gardening! haven’t got any plants though. Still digging. And Muddu is very co-operative around. He usually wears my slippers and struts around OR just plays in the mud. He seem to like the stones better ,once he gets hold of it, it’s difficult to make him throw it.  He also loves playing in the mud when we go to the park, though there the preference more seems to be getting inside the tunnel, but nevertheless, mud gets enough attention

Muddu's introduction !

Let me formally introduce Muddu of ‘mudduandme’. He is our 16 year old toddler. Muddu doesn’t happen to be his real name. He is a normal toddler . And so for most of the things he does around the house, he keeps hearing 'No' ! He loves being cuddled and kissed . He loves being on my arms or his dads all through the day.
He is quite shy, not very social and prefers to be with known faces. But , if the stranger/new-face doesnt pounce on him for sometime, he does loosen up a bit and starts getting friendlier. He is fussy earter , but seems to love sweets. He loves being outside and running around.

I know I have to recall a lot of his last 16 months activities. For now ,I am listing down a few of his current favourites …in no particular order.

Muddu LOVES fans. I think that’s one of the first things he learnt about his physical surroundings. He would point his finger up whenever somebody asked ‘fan yelli?’ (Where is fan?) , maybe around 7-8 months, or could be earlier. He loves all sorts of fans and he can spot every exhaust fans on the road when we go for our evening stroll. And once he sees one, he makes sure he shows me that by circling his finger and humming uuuuuuuuuuu. And during the crankiest days when he wouldn’t eat, we would show him the exhaust fans of our neighbours, schools, in our toilets and he would open his mouth.

Muddu’s current great passion is music and dance. Or maybe it had always been, just that we recognised it now. These days, after his morning milk, he brings the DVD/CD remote to me and shakes his bum up and down. And once I switch on the music his shaking continues for a few minutes.  He has learnt to do bhangra since 2 days, just the hands.  Even as a baby, I would take his musical toy whenever we went out .And as long as the music was being played, we had some quite time. But his real music love was only recognised after he got a colourful bicycle with music, of course. He would go switch the button on and raise his hands and clap. And we were like “voila, he loves music!

And yes, as every toddler does, he loves to put everything in his mouth. But his all-time favourite is slippers. He does run to pick up any shoes, sandals which come under his sight. It had become such a big task to hide shoes around the house. For the time being, I have kept relatively new rubber sandals for him to put into his mouth. He does try to put that into his leg nowadays, which seems like a big relief.