Yesterday, November 18th, was Arjun's 2nd birthday! I can't believe our sweet, baby boy is already two. Two years of fun times just flew by with his amazing, bubbly personality while Daddy and I had the pleasure of watching him develop into this bright, happy, spunky, and brilliant little boy.
He has always been a smiley baby and continues to be a cheerful, smiling toddler. Our friends from our classes call him the happiest baby and say "I don't think I've ever seen him not smiling or happy! Does he ever cry?" (yes). Our swim class friends call him the class cheerleader because he is always cheering on his friends whenever they accomplish a swimming goal with "Yay Hattie" or "Yay Bella"! Our Kindermusik teacher calls him the singer of the class because he sings all the songs with her. He just loves singing! I often call him our personal juke box because he never stops singing, especially in car rides! In addition to "Happy Birthday", his favorite songs include the usual nursery rhymes (The Wheels on the Bus, ABCs, Twinkle Twinkle, Old Macdonald, Little Boy Blue, Humpty Dumpty, London Bridges, Skip to my Lou, Jingle Bells--pretty much any song he's heard at least once he can sing impressively well), "We Will Rock You" and "We are the Champions" (thanks to Daddy), his swim class songs, Gymboree songs, Kindermusik songs including his favorite, "Allee-Allee O", and garba tunes including "Dholida Dhol Dheemo" and a Bollywood favorite, "Nagada sang Dhol" (which he is reminded of when he sees dandiya or bangles).
He has so much energy and is extremely talkative (just like his Mama)! We can see him developing a memorable personality because he loves to talk so much and is not shy at all. From very early on, we were impressed with his vocabulary and all the words he was saying before the age of one-and-a-half years. In the past three months, we have seen him progress from three word phrases to full sentences! He typically likes to follow any statement with a name. For instance he says, "Goodnight Mama" or Thank you Daddy". He also says "Sit with me Mama", "Krishbhai, sit with me" or "I want Daddy". He always says goodnight to me after I put him in his crib before leaving his room. He is also extremely polite and always says "please", "thank you", "sorry", and "you're welcome"! Sometimes when he is playing upstairs and I am looking for him downstairs, he will say, "I'm coming Mama!" and I will bring him downstairs. Just yesterday on his birthday, we were impressed to hear him say a full sentence after we lit his birthday candles, "Okay, I'll blow it out!" It
is one of his favorite things to do and he was so excited! He also brilliantly points out the moon whenever we're outside (day or night!) and says "Moon, Mama" and at night it's followed with "It's sleepy time!". He used to call it "moon-o", and Daddy and I thought it was the cutest thing! He can't quite pronounce Krish's name yet and calls him "Frishbhai" which is also what he calls himself when people ask him his name. He also loves saying the words to the actions he's performing. For instance he loves to give hugs and cuddle so when he's hugging us or his pillow or stuffed toy, he says, "cuddle cuddle" or "hugs". When he's giving a kiss he says "kiss". It's very cute. After saying "I love you" to him, he always says, "I love you TOO!". He has so much to say that sometimes he goes off on tangents of gibberish, but it is so cute and fun to listen to while nodding with him in agreement and assuring we understood him an "Oh yeah Arjun?!".
He also loves to read and more recently he has been wanting to spend more time reading books before his bedtime and nap. When he was a baby, his favorite book was
Peek-a-Who? and I wish we had a video of it (although I think we might) because he would giggle so much when we read it to him. His current favorites (which change all the time) are:
The Zoo Train!,
Chikka Chikka Boom Boom,
The Wheels on the Bus, Poke-a-Dot Old MacDonald,
The Little Engine that Could,
The Alphabet Book, any Lightning McQueen Cars books and Thomas the Train books, musical books, pop-up books, nursery rhyme books and Dr. Suess books. One of his favorite things to do, and it's the cutest thing too, is to pretend that he's grabbing a picture out of the book and eating it whenever the picture is food. He does this with
The Very Hungry Catterpillar book, a shapes book, and a Trick-or-Treat book he has. He says "I want it, I want it", pretends to put the picture in his mouth with his hand and then makes eating/slurping noises. He then says "Mmmm, yummy, yummy!" He is such a spunky little character--so full of life and energy and always entertaining his family!
Arjun is a very good eater so there's not much more to say about that. He loves all food and has a great appetite so will eat and try pretty much anything. He loves palak paneer and rice, Nani's pizza, a homemade macaroni I make for him, Ba's dosas, theplas, and bhindi, and all Indian food. He loves fruit. His favorites are berries - strawberries, raspberries (he has a special way to eat them we all learned from Shreyabhen), and blueberries, peaches and plums in the summer, and pomegranate in the winter. He loved the fresh fruit smoothies I used to make in the summer. He also loves fresh, home-made kale chips and brussels sprouts chips as a snack and all kinds of cheese. Of course he also loves his milk! He honestly eats pretty much anything you give him, especially when he's hungry. Krish is such a picky eater and the ironic thing is that the one thing Krish loves, dal bhaath, is the one thing Arjun won't have! He, of course, has a sweet tooth and loves when Daddy gets him doughnuts on the weekend mornings as a treat. He also enjoys baking with me and Krishbhai and licking the bowl and whisk of the cake, cookie, or brownie batters!
He has the sweetest heart and loves his brother so much! When we are home, they are usually always playing together despite the age difference and consequent different interests. Daddy and I especially love seeing that. He looks up to Krish and wants to do everything he is doing. Unfortunately for Krish, this means trying to play with Krish's little legos that he just can't quite handle yet. Now that Arjun is into toys, they do fight over wanting to play with the same thing at the same time every now and then, but that was eventually bound to happen. He also loves taking Krish to school and to his class. I know he will definitely love school just as much as Krish does one day. I just don't know how his transition into school will be given how attached he and I both are!
While at home, Arjun has shown so much interest in learning and reading. Since he turned one, he has begun to understand and remember so much. Neil and I often remark how impressive his memory is! Since the late spring, he had recognized and identified all of the letters in the alphabet. He sometimes calls the letter Y "yo-yo". He can count to 20, identifies shapes including a circle, square (he sometimes calls it a box), triangle, heart, and oval, and he can recognize the colors blue, green, yellow, orange, purple, red, and pink. He recognizes all typical farm and zoo animals and likes to imitate animal sounds including moo, quack, meow, bow-wow, cock-a-doodle-doo, hoot hoot, baa, cluck cluck, roar, and ee-ee-eee-oo-oo-ooo (monkey).
In addition to his cognitive developments, he has developed quite a bit physically as well. He can climb up and down the stairs by himself, climb onto chairs and tables, jump, run more fluently (without wobbling as much), pull himself onto furniture such as sofas and chairs, log roll, somersault on his own, twist, stomp, twirl/spin around, and hold his breath and glide under water for 5 seconds (counting with Mississippi-s) in his swim class. He seems to do this effortlessly and has never once lost his breath or cried during this technique practice. He can also jump off the steps to me in swim class and after sliding down the baby slide, he will glide to me under water for 3 seconds!
His favorite toys are anything and everything that has wheels. He absolutely loves wheels! He loves to spin them and watch them turn. This is a fascination he developed very early on so he loves all cars, trucks, and trains, and especially fire trucks which he unfortunately pronounces "fire-fuc*". I can't deny that Neil and I have been entertained by it and let out some chuckles everytime he says it. He also loves playing with tops since they spin as well. He likes watching fans for the same reason I imagine-they spin. He's also obsessed with lights and turning light switches on and off. Of course he also likes all toys Krish likes. He surprisingly does not like play dough at all, but maybe he'll grow into it now. He does love to finger paint and make fun handprint and footprint projects with Mama! It's something that brings me great joy and happiness as well. His favorite characters are of course the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse gang! We still can't wait to take him to Disney World to meet all his favorite friends! While Krish was attached to his blanket that Dadi made for him, Arjun has his brown pillow that Dadi made for him. He loves cuddling with it and can't sleep without it. In addition to his pillow, he loves cuddling with his stuffed animals, including his Curious George puppet, Krishbhai's blue penguin from the State Fair, his Mickey Mouse, and all his teddy bears! It is easy to find him rolling on the floor hugging and holding some of these larger furry toys or giving them kisses on their noses!
Outside of the house, he loves going for walks and wagon rides, playing with our neighbor friends during block parties or afternoon hang-outs on our street, going to various parks and playgrounds to climb the forts, slide down the slides, swing on the swings, go on the see-saws and try anything new he sees! He also loves going to our neighborhood lake to feed the ducks, and he loves picking flowers while we're on our walks! "Flower, Mama, flower!", he says excitedly when he spots flowers along our trails. He is actually quite obsessed with them. That is a unique trait we never saw with Krish.
In addition to developing such a smart, sweet and spunky personality, he's also developing into a toddler, and we're definitely seeing some characteristics of the terrible two's! He's pretty amiable and appeasable, but he's starting to fake cry loudly to get his way. He has developed a terrible habit of walking out of a store with a new knick-knack toy or car which I previously was able to remove from his hands and put back before leaving the store. Now, he makes sure we take it to check-out and yells, "Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine..." continuously at the check-out clerk until he/she scans it and gives it back to him. He then promptly smiles, giggles, and says, "Thank you!!" I'm pretty sure most clerks are more annoyed than amused by it, and I'm definitely embarrassed. Daddy and I have often noticed how demanding he can be. The woes of the terrible two's!
Arjun's most memorable characteristics are that he loves to talk, sing, cuddle and give hugs. He loves all his family members and loves seeing them or talking to them over FaceTime. He has to say hi to each one of them while saying their name (Hi Dada, Ba, Nana, Nani, Tanya Masi, Tricia Masi, Atul Masa, Dada, Dadi, Pranav Mama, Purnima Fui). He is such an intelligent, charming and lovable little boy. We are so blessed to be his parents!
Happy 2nd birthday to our sweet Arjun! We love you so much!
