First words

Little Rajiv is beginning to form his first real words and it is a fascinating process.
It is a bit difficult to keep track of his vocabulary, because sometimes he will use one word one day and then never again. For example he said his name - "Appu" - a few times, with a strong American accent by the way, but just when we were getting all excited about it he dropped it. Sometimes he makes vague "m" sounds that could be interpreted as mommy requests, and occasionally he will say "mamma", but now he hasn't said it for a while.

The one word we are sure he understands and speaks himself is "ball" ("palla" in Italian). He has a toddler sized soccer ball and if I ask him for the "palla" he goes around and looks for it. He also looks for it immediately if he sees a picture of the ball in a book or on his alphabet blocks. For a while he was saying "ba" or "pa" for it, but now he seems to have settled for "bai" or occasionally "pai". If he sees the picture of the ball he screams "bai!" and then we go to find it.

He probably thinks there are many other things he says, in his cute tonal babbling, but unfortunately his his parents don't get it. Sorry Appu, please don't give up on us... :)

News

Colour blind parents

Apart from making a fashion statement, I am posting this so that everybody can admire the nice sweater that was knit by aunt Zarina especially for our little hero. Now that his drooling has subsided a little it is safe for him to wear it...

Prego notare il fantastico golfino, fatto a mano dalla zia Zarina. Naturalmente lei non sospettava quali abbinamenti avremmo osato...

Spaghetti

It's getting cold around here...

Note the completely off-centered picture due to dad's request not to be in it...

Italian family

When you thought they would not come anymore, here they are: a few pictures from Italy!

In the first two our little hero is at my aunt's place, playing with her super-cute puppy shaped cushions. Appu loved my aunt's house so full of little glass objects and every sort of expensive and very fragile things... - we had to be faster than lightning to keep everything safe. In spite of that apparently now she misses him. Go figure... :)





The next pictures instead were taken at the airport the day we left.

My mom had a great time with Appu. They went to the park once while we were busy at the university for S's talk and apparently she demonstrated baby somersaults for him and even got him to try it once. Unfortunately we do not have pictures of that. Here they are together in a more quiet moment.



We end with a family picture. After several attempts and pictures we better not make public, I managed to trick my dad into smiling. Here we are!



Unfortunately I don't have any pictures with my sister, we will have to remedy it next time.