Growing up with Yash

Recently, Yash had gone on a drive with his grandmother (my mom) and his grand aunt (my father's sis). As my mom stepped out of the car for a quick buy, the following conversation ensued between Yash and his grand aunt: Y: 'Avva, you can scrunch over to the other side because there is a lot of traffic and ammamma (grandmother) will not be able to get in from there. She can get in this side and later you can exchange places if you want.' (conversation happened in Tamil) As you can imagine my aunt was left speechless by a 5.5yr old giving her these instructions. The above was narrated to me when I met my aunt the following day. And yes, it brought the tears of joy :) What i found astounding was two things, he perceived that traffic was a problem for his grandmother to get into the car comfortably and two, he kept in mind the needs of all involved in the solution. He not just understood the problem but was able to find a solution for it too. This is an indication to me of...

Reading is something very close to my heart. And as a natural progression, when Yash was just a few months old, I had started reading to him. I remember the first book that I read to him was 'Dora the Explorer, Bubba Bugga Baby'(Don't ask me why!!) I know the lines in that book better than the lines on the back of my hand, even today! Maybe it was the rhythm, or maybe just the feeling of being read to, whatever it was, Yash started showing a reaction to it. He would gurgle and 'hmmm' with each line, egging me to go on if I stopped. That was all the encouragement I needed. I went out and bought a host of other books. But for some reason, he wanted Dora. His affection was shared by another book by the time he was 6 months old. It was a bath-time squeeze and splash book. He enjoyed it for all the different ways he could handle it, exploring the sounds it made when we squeezed it, and definitely exploring it with his mouth :) This book became the bait many times, ...