Shantha swaroopini - 2

KG was three weeks old or so when a friend (a friend's wife who became my good friend also) came to spend a week with us to help me and my mom since my mom is old and also my father had passed away just five months before KG was born. She would sing "Thaaramaiya Ragukula Ramachandiraraa" and other lovely Telugu songs KG would calmly listen...and when she fell asleep she would be left in the little cradle and she would sleep so peacefully. I am now thinking of the first day when she came from the hospital and we let her sleep in that little cradle while I attended to KB who refused to eat unless I fed him myself. He just ignored the new little baby in the cradle for a few hours. And to think of how soon they became bonded - him playing with her tender soft feet while I nursed her, being so gracious and generous in letting me spend time with her...and how she would be entertained by him and became so used to his presence around her at most times. And how far the two of them have come...playing air hockey together like two big kids, while I was cooking this morning. Just twenty two months apart, they are now like buddies. They are so different in personality but are so close to each other and just dote on each other.

We often call KG, Danica, because of her obsession with cars. KG has always loved playing with cars. Not so much the movie "Cars" but actually playing with little cars. She still does it. Every morning after I drop KB at school and come back home with her, she goes to her train, rides it to the family room (which is their play room) and opens up the trunk and pulls out some 10 hot wheels cars and lines them up to make a parking lot or puts them in some fashion that it looks like a traffic jam. She still rides on her train from room to room and does tricks with it like lifting the front of it while sitting on it. She has to park her train in some parking spot in some corner of the house when I call her for something. If I tell her to come have her lunch, she often dodges me saying, "aaahhm...after I play cars for a littu bit"!

KG has a good sense of humor - she makes funny faces or says silly things that make you laugh. For example, we had a visitor who's daughter's name was Maya. That night KG told me, "Mamma, Maya kutti ponnu is a Maiasaura" and started giggling away. While she can do that, she is so different from KB in how she shows her excitement. She will only give a muted smile with her cheeks puffing up when she gets something she likes or finds something exciting. KB on the hand would show more raw emotion be it happiness or sadness.

KG has this playful tradition of "giving me cheek". If I grind my teeth and come rushing to her and hug her and pinch her cheeks, she would say "give me my cheek back" loudly. And if I make a sad face, she will say, "Mamma, I will give you 100 cheeks, not just one OK" and pretend like she is plucking some cheek from her own and stick it on to mine a bunch of times and then tell me "I gave you 100 cheeks mamma".

It would be quite strange if she actually became a CEO some day because of the number of times people have said that about her. Funny because she is actually quite shy by nature and takes longer to warm up than KB. But she is so strong willed and decisive in the way she conducts herself that different people have said "wow, she is a CEO"!. Once we were at the swimming pool when I playing with my friend's son. I playfully asked KG, "shall I give two odhais (spanking) for A?". She immediately gave this very emphatic and clear "Yes". I then asked KG "Why KG, why do you want me to give him odhai?". Her immediate answer was "Because I said yes"! Yes, Maam!

She still has a little bit of baby language left in her. And we try hard to preserve it. For example she somehow started saying "Cindrellella" instead of "Cindrella" . So both me and my husband always only refer to that character as "Cindrellella". Poor baby - she might get teased in preschool for saying it the wrong way.

She is a tigress when it comes to defending her brother. Let some kid come and grab "Anna's" toy...if she hears a semblance of a protest from her brother, she will join in and go and tell that kid, "It is Anna's" and make sure to retrieve it for her brother. For all her ability to take care of herself she seems so giving and generous that it sometimes worries me that she can be taken for a ride by other kids. When we were waiting on the sides at KB's swim class, KG had four cookies in her little snack bag and she had just started eating the first one. A friend's daughter came that side and just gently mentioned that she too wanted those cookies. KG immediately just gave all the three remaining cookies to her in an instant. I didn't even have to ask her to share it with her friend. She sometimes fights with her brother refusing to share her favorite train or cars but even so if he really looks sad, she would immediately give it to him.

More coming...