Games Peanut Plays

At the age of 4.5 months, Peanut is finding new ways to amuse herself everyday. These little amusements are extremely amusing. For her. Not me.

Game # 1: Yelling

This typically happens when someone is singing to her. As with many children, Peanut's voice is disproportionately loud, and she can outshout everybody. She does it when she's getting annoyed, but she also does it when she's in a good mood, and she also does it when she's getting bored. Therefore, she does it all the time, except when she is asleep. She decided to do it when we went shopping yesterday and because I was wearing her in her sling, people kept looking at me strangely whenever these loud and long angry wails started up. Since not everyone could see the baby immediately, they obviously thought there was something very wrong with me. This yelling let to a sequence of events which led me to lose my phone, but that is fodder for another post.

The absolute worst part of this game is that the K, who is ever fascinated by anything to do with the baby, has picked up the ability to imitate this yell quite uncannily. Therefore, when the baby yells, the K yells back and the two of them yell at each other over and over until I want to bang my head against a wall. It is especially bad when I allow myself an indulgent smile at the cuteness of my baby's prolonged shouting, only to discover that that particular shout was, in fact, emanating from the K.

Game # 2 : Phtoooie

Peanut has been dribbling all over the place for a while now, but she has now discovering the joy of blowing spit bubbles, or raspberries. This is apparently a good thing and is supposed to be encouraged because it helps her learn how to move her mouth and tongue.

I've been told by my doctor that I can start giving her a little mashed banana, so have been experimenting with a spoonful or so for the last few days. It's real fun to see the disgusted face that she makes when she tastes it.

It's less fun since she's discovered that this is the perfect time to practice blowing loud raspberries. Not only does the offered spoonful of banana get a whole lot of bubbly spit suddenly added onto it, but if we're lucky, her mother may even get some of it right in the eye. Oh, ha ha.

I am saddened to report that blowing raspberries is a skill that the K is picking up quickly too.

Game # 3: Kicking

Peanut is turning into a very hands-on and legs-on kind of baby. With the enviable flexibility of all babies, she is able to use all her limbs to grasp, push and scratch at objects. It's great fun watching her with a newspaper, the crackling of which seems to fill her with great delight, and she does not rest until she has torn it apart and thrown the carcass an impressive distance.

She is also starting to try and crawl, in that weird fashion which involves using her head as an extra limb. She hasn't quite achieved success yet, because she tries to do this mostly with her head and legs, forgetting to try using her hands too. But she's getting there. For the time being, at these moments, the kicking, raspberries and yelling all seem to converge, and usually this ends in some frustrated crying.

The kicking also seems to kick in mostly when I'm trying to cut her nails. She will watch me doing so for a while in a very quiet, docile manner, and just when I think I'm going to get through this smoothly, she lifts up both her legs and slams them into my wrist. This is rather annoying because I wouldn't want to cut her finger by accident, which, I am sad to say, has happened twice already, and has resulted in a cacophony of wails quite disproportionate to the extent of damage. So at any point of time, she has always got around half her fingernails trimmed neatly, and the other half are jagged scratch-weapons.

It's quite entertaining to see her first pat Vijay's cheek lovingly, as he bends over to talk to her, and then attempt to follow this up with a swift, well-aimed kick to the chin.

Anyway, it quite amazes me to think back to the tiny unresponsive lump that she was a few months back. This feisty little creature is so different, social and explorative.

Sigh. How quickly they grow.