From the Mouths of babes...

Chubbocks has been growing up so much lately. He is really a wonderful little guy, caring, sensitive but with a great sense of fun, always ready to be or do the ridiculous( that they get from me!). As he grows up, I'm seeing such early signs of maturity, it's really heart-warming.

The other day, we were at my parents house in the evening - they live just a few houses away - and Puddi had climbed on the sofa and was standing up. Chubbocks sat between she and I and I was just drinking my evening cuppa. Suddenly Puddi started jumping up and down. My mom and I both warned her that she'd fall down but she carried on. Mom leapt up from her chair at the opposite side of the room and I turned to put my hot mug of tea down before catching Puds, but in that split-second, she had done it - fallen from the sofa onto the floor and banged her head hard in the process. She sent up an almighty roar and wailed and wailed. Mom and I tried to calm her down but at the same time were trying to tell her that that was what we were warning her about.

Chubbocks got upset, since Mom and I have a tendency to speak loudly when excited and burst out, "Woh choti hai na - she's a little thing. Don't yell. Take her nicely on your lap and tell her quietly, 'Puddi, don't do these things, you'll get hurt'." I almost choked to see how upset he got on her behalf and how protective he was.

A couple of days later, he decided he wanted to visit me at my office in the evening and have some coffee - he loves the over-sweet machine coffee. He came over about 5:30 and amused himself practising the Calvin expressions on the Decal in our cafeteria while I got the coffee. Then when we set off home, there was a terrible traffic jam just to exit the office complex. Cars with careless drivers were turned every which way, and nobody had the patience to let anyone else get past so everyone got more stuck in. I was antsy because I had to get ready and rush off for my birthday dinner with A and I started bad-mouthing one particularly bad driver who was nervy and uncertain, and each time he saw a gap in the traffic would keep hesitating and then try to get in when the gap closed, nearly scratching many cars and causing more chaos.

Then Chubbocks spoke up, "Mama, you should have more patients(sic)- everyone wants to go somewhere, na?"

I have to say, if he didn't have a mischievous and looney side to him, I would have written him off as a prig, but knowing all his many facets, I thought it was an amazingly good piece of advice.

Just this morning, he displayed one more sign of becoming a big boy. This year he has started going to school by school bus - he'd been begging for it for a while but we were being over-protective and sending him by car. Finally, we figured he's old enough and the journey short enough, and he loves it, chattering away busily with his friends, he doesn't even look back and wave once he's on the bus. For the first few days after he started busing, he asked A to take him to the colony gate where the bus comes. Then since the last week, he's been going with our maid in the car. And today, he insisted on trotting off by himself to the car. Sigh...there goes my first baby...