No matter how many times I said the word "CELERY" to Aga, he'll always repeat it as SARA LEE. CELERY. SARA LEE. CELERY. SARAA LEEE. CE-LE-RY. SAAAA-RAAA-LEEE. CERELY!!! Oops! CELERY!!!! SARA LEE!
We had a small birthday party for Lila on Saturday. It wasn't really a party, we just did it for the sake of having this delicious cake.
Aga dubbed this cake as "the most delicious cake ever". He said it over and over. His favourite was lemon cake, but this one he really really loved. It was, in fact, really yummy. I had two servings. It's vanilla and pecan cake.
I dressed her up with the Indian dress Visali had bought from India. I dressed Aga up in one of those as well.
The daddy doesn't have one. Otherwise we would have been in a band wagon.
We cut the cake at Visali's place.
The next day, we went to the Werribee Open Range Zoo. It was good fun. Aga saw hippos, a cheetah, lions, rhinos, giraffes, zebras, antelopes, and many more.
Now Lila's very much into climbing. Climbing onto anything. Like this one for example.
I've gotten bored of facebook, so I'm not going to upload photos there. Instead, I'm going to post it here with the aid of photobucket. I know I should have used the gallery, but it's buggy and I'm too lazy to fix it.
They're playing, giggling, laughing together. What's so funny, you may ask. I have absolutely no idea.
Lila really looks up to him, tries to do everything he does, and laughs for every 'funny' thing he does. If he giggles, it must be funny, so she laughs. It's contagious, because they set me off laughing too, without knowing what's going on. She can say 'Aga' long before she can say 'Mummy'. Ain't that fair?
I think Lila has a 'schedule book', a list of what she's supposed to do when she turns 7 months, 8 months, etc, but she only looks into that 'book' once in a blue moon. And when she does, she goes "Oops! I'm supposed to do this ages ago! Time to tick some boxes!", then puff, suddenly newly gained skills.
One good example is her teeth. I remember two months back I was still wondering where the heck are they?! No sign of them. Suddenly, one teething episode after another and now she has SIX of them.
Another example is walking. She suddenly started to walk, and when she does, she did FIVE steps in a row. She skipped one, two, three and four. This she did one day before her first birthday, only so that she can say "Hey I can walk before my first birthday! TICK!"
Agastya loves reading and writing. He loves me to read the same book over and over, just so that he can pretend he can read the book all by himself. He writes 0 to 10 very well now, A to L (capitals), O, t, U, V, W, u, v, w. He impresses me from time to time with English vocabulary I've never used. One day, he said "Mommy, I want to sit on the bench." Simple, you may think. But I have never used the word 'bench'. Not in front of him, at least. To think that in September last year he barely speak anything English, this is impressive.
He has this fascination with dinosaurs, and now can identify at least: T-Rex, Stegosaurus and Triceratops. I swear he knows one other thing I just can't remember. You see, my son has already surpassed me in dinosaur knowledge! I knew nothing about dinosaurs, let alone when I was his age! I sing better when I was his age, though :p He loves singing, but still in a very childish way, he misses some of the notes, etc. I could not speak English but I sang perfectly good English songs with words I invented myself. Ha ha.
[This is embarrassing, but I still remember how I sang the song back then. I can still sing them in my pre-knowledge-of-English version. It's that bad.]
Oh I must record this also:
Last Sunday I went for a date lunch with Sioe. A date lunch, yes. As in just the two of us. Without the husband. Without the kids. Not even the little one! Oh! The! Liberating! Feeling!
Now also, as I'm typing, I'm in a messy house, with unclean dishes, but no kids! The husband had taken them shopping. It's only for half an hour so cleaning up and washing up can wait!
There are two entrances to the classrooms at the Maria Montessori. Students enter through one door while parents drop off shoes and snack boxes to respective lockers through the other door. Today I stood by the partition trying to find out what he does.
Teacher #1: Boys and Girls; Today, we are going to learn about insects!.
Kids do the usual hoopla hoopla hoopla; excited about the topic instantly
Teacher #1: How many legs do insects have ?.
None of the kids answer.
Aga: TWO !!! Teacher #1: No. Aga: FOOOOOOOOURR !!! Teacher #1: No. Aga: EIGHT ? Teacher #1: No, spiders have 8 legs. Aga: Mrs. Irene (Teacher #2) looks like spider. Teacher #2: Sounding a little surpirsed, I look like a spider ? Aga: YES !!
I am thinking; Ooooo Shit. What he is doing and how is he going to get out of this.
Aga: You are big spider. I am small spider.
Phewzzzz: Thank God for that.
Teacher #1: So, how many legs do insects have ?
May be Aga was thinking to himself; "This smarty pants teacher will probably say no to everything I tell her anyway. I am going to give her an answer she cannot dispute".
Aga: MANY !!!!
All the teachers have a laugh .. the other kids stay there dumbstruck !!!
Teacher #1: Insects have 6 legs. All insects have ....
