India Trip

In mid January we visited India for a month, it was an amazing trip and fortunately Ishaan kept well throughout the trip and enjoyed a lot. The occasion was Dinu Chachu's marriage for which Ishaan had been waiting since long, on skype he used to ask Dinu Chachu and Tanvi Chachi when are you guys getting married.

We stayed in Mumbai for week before going to Indore for the marriage and Ishaan had a great time with Anahat. Ishaan use to get up early in the morning so that he could drop Anahat to her school bus, and then he would wait for her to come back. Anahat also introduced Ishaan to all her friends in the neighborhood and every evening they all played together. Ishaan and Anahat use to enjoy in the big bathing tub that mamaji had, they stay in for hours and splash water on each other and laugh.
Ishaan got chance to be a part of republic day ceremony in that community, he wore Kurta Pajama and got Indian flag sticker on it. It was a new experience for him, he saw flag hosting and did stand straight to sing "Jana Gana Man". Most of the evenings, Ishaan, Anahat, Neha and Nanu use to visit a park nearby where a lot of kids played, Ishaan was very happy to see so many kids and use to wait for his turn for the swing but while he waits, an elder kid will pop up out of his turn and take the swing and then Ishaan will come and complain that others are not sharing. It was too short time for him to understand that he is India and no one shares here, if he waits for his turn, it would never come, he has to move up and grab it.

After staying in Mumbai for a week, we went to Indore for the marriage. Ishaan was waiting to meet his cousins at Indore, as he had been hearing about them since long time, specially Neil. When he met Neil he was very happy to play and talk with him, but after few days he found that Neil is not sharing with him. Whereas Neil was very very cute, he was 1 yr younger to Ishaan, he use to love Ishaan like anything he would ask everyone to tell Ishaan to play with him, if Ishaan is sleeping Neil will try to wake him up so that he can play. Neil use to hug, jump, pull, kiss Ishaan which Ishaan never liked :-) it was fun to watch both of them. Just before marriage, Ishaan's other cousin Parth came to Indore and then Ishaan started playing more with Parth, who was 1 year older to Ishaan, they both use to run, play and do lot of things together, poor Neil was not able to catch with them at times. But overall, if you ask Ishaan today who is your brother, he will only say Neil and is always ready to talk to him over Skype.
During the marriage preparations, Ishaan use to be with Neha most of the times when she was involved with the dance preparations and use to observe the steps and songs. We were very surprised later when Ishaan showed us the steps on few of the songs and danced on them. This showed his interest in Music and Dance and was an indication for use to start his training on the same. Ishaan never liked the Dhol during various functions, he found it very loud and tried to stay away from Dhol wala.
After marriage at Indore, we traveled to Jodhpur for another marriage. We decided to go by train so that we all get to spend a lot of time together and Ishaan gets experience of the train for which he is always excited. I actually wanted to take him down on every station and show him how to buy tea and other stuff at station. At Jodhpur, his buddy was Parth, he was happy to see Parth again and most of the time they both were together, playing, running etc. At Jodhpur, Ishaan had his first dentist visit, Doctor mama suggested to get the filling done for a couple of his teeth and asked us to visit his clinic. Ishaan knew mama well so he was not too tensed and I told him if the dentist is good, just like doctor mama it never hurts. Ishaan sat over the entire siting quietly, did exactly what he was asked to do and got the filling done. I was very happy to see him obeying and not shouting, crying or screaming during the procedure. During his Jodhpur visit he also got close to Tanvi Chachi, although he already knew her and called her Chachu's girl but now he actually saw and played with her. His phrase that we all remember while coming back from Jodhpur he kept saying in train "Chalo Khel" to play cards, and he use to say it in such a nice tone.
One good thing that happened during the entire India trip was he learned to speak and understand a lot of Hindi, am sure if we stay in India for 3 month he will learn it completely. He even started speaking few English sentences in Indian accent by watching English cartoons in India. His favorite cartoons were Chota Bheem and Doremon, he even insisted on getting DVDs for these cartoons.
Ishaan met a lot of relatives during his India visit in Mumbai, Indore and Jodhpur, in fact he would have met almost everyone whom we know in India. How much he would actually remember, we really dont know but we are happy that everyone was able to see him and spend some time with him. I hope we can visit India more frequently so that Ishaan can get further closer to everyone in his family and consider himself lucky to have such a big and loving family, as we do.

India Visit

Recently Ishaan has started asking a lot of questions, not that he wasn't asking questions earlier but now he has started relating the topics, and thinking a lot before asking these complex questions. His questions are so well thought and communicated that it surprises us.

As we are visiting India in mid Jan for Dinu Chachu's marriage, we have started preparing Ishaan for this trip. Starting from his daily routine to language to people around him, everything will change for him and am sure initially he might not feel comfortable but eventually he would adjust surely sooner than we think. But its important to talk to him about what and why.

Dinu's marriage: A couple of month's back when Dinu's marriage was finalized, we started explaining Ishaan what marriage is and that chachu is now getting married to a girl and he is going to stay with her, just like daddy stays with mumma. He did understand what marriage means and gave us several examples from our friend circle for the married couples, but in the process of explaining him and getting the idea of this social bonding into his innocent brain we had to answer his several questions like, why is he getting married, when will Ishaan get married and his curiosity of finding a girl to get married etc. I realized there would be several such social rules made by human beings that he would come across in his life, surely his first question would be why are we doing it and later he will accept it and follow it, without being sure if it will work good for him or not, he will assume if it worked for everyone else it will also work for him. It might be after a point he wont have his parents around to ask such questions, so a parent's job is to give as detailed answer to their kids as they can, which could satisfy and convince them that the process they are following is correct and will work in their case as well, because only satisfied kids can create socially responsible adults.

Relatives: Ishaan knows the names of most of his close relatives and does remember the time he has spend with them in past, he would usually remember the incidents that happened when they were with him and when we talk to him he recalls all such incidents and says "Daddy, you remember yesterday when ......" (for him anything in past is yesterday:-)). A lot of our relatives are visiting us for Dinu's marriage, Ishaan has never seen them and am trying to prepare him with a list of such relative and his cousins, he is excited to meet them and thanks to facebook he has seen everyone's pictures. I remember once he told me "When we go to India, you and mumma will have a lot of friends their but Ishaan has no friends so Ishaan will be sad, as all my friends are here" so I thought to tell him about his cousins and now he is excited to meet them.

Safety: I am also preparing him for safety in India, like he should be careful with strangers and should stay with mumma, daddy or someone he knows. I give him situations and ask him what he will do and if he is wrong I will tell him what exactly he should do. I am happy to see Ishaan remembers the situation and actions every time I ask him and hopefully he will follow them if required.

Hindi: Am really happy to see Ishaan now learning and catching hindi words, its extremely important so that all our relatives can communicate with him and develop a bonding with him, when he is there. His English communication is above avg and I dont want language to be a barrier in his communication with all relatives and his cousins in India. I know he wont be fluent in Hindi in just few days but he should at least understand few common words and the context by then. We started with 3 words, every night before he goes to bed and now he can understand the whole sentence and sometimes reply with grammatically incorrect hindi. Recently I started telling him simple stories and asked him to translate hindi stories to english and he was successful, now I can also try vise verse in few days. Am sure his dadi maa will be very happy if she is able to communicate with him in Hindi.

I think, location, culture, communication and company affects a child most and his personality develops based on these factors. A change in any of these factors would bring in a temporary imbalance in his life but they are so quick to adapt and absorb, that they could entirely change their personality in just few months without much problems, if these factors are changed.

Learning

Recently we visited Ishaan's school for parent teacher meeting and Ishaan's teacher Ms. Angie gave us Ishaan's feedback on few broad categories, as listed below.

1. Social Behavior : They call Ishaan as the mayor of the class, he is the one who insures no one does anything wrong, he follows all the rules and asks everyone to do the same. He never opposes a plan, so if teachers asks everyone to go out and play he will ensure that everyone follows the instructions. He is a good friend to everyone but is best friend to just one, Dillon, whom he will follow religiously and wait for him to finish his task so that they both can play. Ishaan also has a couple of followers in the class but we dont hear much from Ishaan about them and they madly follow Ishaan.

2. Language: We were told Ishaan is very good at language, he has good command on his words and uses right words to communicate. He is a bit ahead of his age as far as language is concerned, he is never shy in his group, usually loud and frank to communicate his likes and dislikes.
We feel language also includes being able to communicate by different ways, speaking different languages, hence we have been working to teach him hindi but haven't yet found any success. He is very comfortable talking in English and always prefers using it unless we strictly tell him not to speak English, only then he will try few words in Hindi. Since last few days we have been playing hindi game in car where everyone has to reply in Hindi, Ishaan is trying but at times he will ask us how should I say this in Hindi. We have also been trying 3 words (usually verbs) in hindi before he goes to bed, so we will discuss the meaning of a word in hindi and make several sentences of it. Hope he learns some hindi before we visit India in coming month.
Another important language that we try is language of expressions, when we ask Ishaan to express different feeling without speaking anything like express happy, sad, surprise he is very good at expressing all these feelings.

3. Maths : We were told Ishaan is fond of numbers, he is very good at them and knows most of the numbers, again he is much ahead of his age on this skill. But one thing that he will really need now is writing so that he can record and remember, to improve on his skill. We were recommended several activities that would help in strengthening his finger so that he can hold the pencil and write. Never thought those exercises are so important for a kid to write.
With maths we have always tried to pick Ishaans brain with most complex scenarios, at times before he goes to bed we discuss about shopping items and I ask him to count, teach him addition and subtraction and further to make his memory sharp I assign a name (one of his friend's name) to all his car and then scatter then ask him to pick them one by one and call it by name. He can remember 20-22 names assigned to his car at a time, its a very interesting activity. Also have started playing games like criss cross, snakes and ladder so that he can play more and more with numbers.

4. Miscellaneous: Other observations were Public speaking, Decision making, creative thinking and he was good at all those activities as well.

Recently at home me and Ishaan made a schedule that we refer for our daily projects. The schedule gives Ishaan a sense of responsibility to complete all the tasks assigned to him. It mostly targets at finishing all his activities by himself without any help, like complete his letter chart, take bath and finish his dinner before I come back from Gym and then we both will sit to do a science project everyday. Although we call it a science project but it includes everything a few examples of what we do are
1. Making and boat and floating it on water
2. Generating static electricity using a comb
3. Talking and referring a chart to understand human body and different organs in body.
4. Understanding gravity and magnetism
5. Taking about different countries and finding them on Map.
Etc etc.
He is always very excited about the science project and waits for me to come and talk about it. Although learning for Ishaan will be an ongoing process and he will learn at each stage of his life, but everyday when you see him learning something new and reacting to it, the kind of excitement you see in his eyes is memorable and that is what motivates me to come up with new ideas everyday that would surprise him.

Happy Diwali !!

Diwali in US is very different from what we use to have in India and specially at a place like Indore. When I try to refresh my memories of Diwali it use to be full of sweets, meeting people, crackers, new clothes, puja for at least 3 days. In use most of the times we will have Diwali parties with friends and do Puja together or visit a restaurant for party and dinner.
This year Diwali was very special for Ishaan because it was the first time he actually understood the meaning of celebrating Diwali, although he might not completely appreciate the importance of this occasion unless he see the celebration in India but at least he got an idea.
Few days before the actual festival we started explaining him why is it celebrated, he hardly showed any interest, but when I started talking about the story of Ramayan and showed him few videos of Bhagwan Ram killing the monsters he was very excited and asked for more details. More than knowing about Bhagwan Ram he was interested in Ravan because he had 10 heads. So now Ishaan knows the story that Ravan took away Bhagwan Ram's wife Sita and his brother Laxman along with an army of monkeys helped Bhagwan Ram to kill Ravan and get Sita back, and the biggest monkey who could even take Bhagwan Ram in his hand was Hanuman. Target Achieved :-)

We also had a small party at our community hall where we did Puja, played few games followed by Lunch. Ishaan was happy to meet his friends in the neighborhood and wish them Happy Diwali.

Another important event this Diwali was Neha's visit to Ishaan's school, his new Montessori tries to promote kids from different culture background and celebrate their important occasions with their school friends. Hence when Neha talked about getting sweets for Diwali, Ishaan's teachers were very supportive and encouraged her to talk about Diwali Festival. We prepared a small presentation to show all kids what Diwali means and tell them the story, but when Neha actually reached Ishaan's school with sweets, she was so surprised to see the preparation there. On the front door there was a welcome message wishing Happy Diwali for Neha in Hindi, teachers arranged for Rangoli design for all the kids so that they can color it and make Rangoli while Neha can guide them. One of the teachers brought a book on how to wear a Saree and showed everyone how to wear it, she bought bindis for everyone in the class to show that girls in India wear bindi on their forehead. Neha was so happy with this treatment and Ishaan was so proud that he mom came to school and spoke to all his friends about Diwali.

In yet another party on Diwali day, we met all our friends and did Puja and dinner with many many sweets. Host Dipika did a great decoration and made nice Rangoli at her place. But the most exciting part of this party was firecrackers, Ishaan for the first time actually put firecrackers and was very happy to do so with all his friends. We also decorated our house with lights and did Diwali Puja at home.

It was a good learning for Ishaan on how to celebrate Diwali, but soon he would forget all this as the time passes, I hope we get to celebrate Diwali in India sometime soon so that Ishaan gets an actual taste of it which he probably wont forget throughout his life and those would be the memories of real Diwali.

Vegas, Grand Canyon and California Trip

Vegas and California was our most awaited trip, we had been planning for it since long and finally we decided to go for it during Sept long weekend this year. None of these places were meant for Ishaan to enjoy but we planned it in a way so that Ishaan has at least one activity to look forward to everyday.

Ishaan hardly knew much about this trip in advance all we told him is we are going to Vegas and you will meet your new friend Aryan there, all your old friends will stay back and only you will go for vacation this time. He was surprised and asked me a couple of times why are others not coming in for this vacation.

Before we reached the re he was excited to meet Aryan and asked me
several times when will Aryan come, finally they met and became best friends in next 5 mins (they were meeting for the first time). Ishaan wanted to eat, sit, play do everything he can with Aryan and when asked about who is your best friends his answer was Aryan, and what about others Rishaab, Anshi, Adu ... he said But they are not here. So I rephrased the definition of a best friend "A person who is currently available to play with you is called a Best Friend".

At Grand Canyon it was more of a view of the valley from different angles and Ishaan was little bored of watching the same view, I tried showing him the valley and the river a couple of times and thats all it was for a little brain like him, he might be thinking "yes thats good so what but where are the slides". He enjoyed the early morning walk where we went to find birds and take picture.


Once we were back to Vegas the first place we visited was Casino Circus Circus which had a big Adventuredome for kids to play in, I checked the height restrictions and found he could do at least 5 rides and watch a 4D show which was good enough. He did all those rides and was scared in a couple of them, but overall it was fun for him. He played guitar, won a stuffed Giraffe, in one of the games, although he was unable to decide on what he should name it and kept calling it by multiple names.
Las Vegas Strip was a lot of walk for his tiny feets but we always encourage him walking rather than one of us carrying him, I would say he did a great job and managed to walk around and see almost all the casinos on the strip, without using a stroller. when we passed though those Casinos Ishaan was excited to see the colorful slot machines and wanted to play on them, he would run and sit on them whenever he would get a chance initially but after explaining him a couple of times he got it that he is too young to play on those games. His best comment that I remember was at the hotel room, he got a couple of coins that fell from my wallet, he told me "Daddy I have coins now, I will keep them in my pocket can we use them to play when we go down now", this was a good reply to our excuse that we cant play on machines because we don't have coins.

His next excitement was M&M store he asked for it every time we passed through the store but that was planned for day 3, it was a 4 level M&M Store at Strip. He was very happy to be there and picked up a lot of M&Ms and had some great pictures with the characters.
Ishaan also visited an aquarium on Day 4 and saw various colorful fishes and the diver feeding them, he was not able to find his favorite Nemo in that aquarium.

After Vegas we went to LA where Ishaan met his new friend Aayush, he was little confused to meet him and asked me if Aayush is a girl or a boy because he remembers Aayushi his friend who is a girl then how is Aayush a boy but that didn't bother him for long and soon we found him busy playing with Aayush's toys.
Next day we visited San Diego and plan was to visit Legoland, it was a big park and Ishaan was very excited about it. We were little late to reach there and got only 3 hours at the park but somehow managed to cover most of rides. I was happy to see Ishaan doing the big roller coaster ride, the best part of this park was I was allowed to be with Ishaan for all his rides, that way he was not very scared. He was happy after doing the big roller coast ride just because I was with him and holding him tight during the ride, that makes me think of the kind of comfort and security a father or a parent can give to his child, I never thought he would do that ride but just thought to give it a try and later it became an achievement for him.

At San Diego we stayed at Aryan's house and later Aayush also joined us for our visit to San Diego beaches, cliff and Island. All 3 kids had a lot of fun playing with each other and posing for pictures. Later in the evening after Ishaan happily said good bye to both of his friends and asked them to come to his house. In the flight Ishaan kept asking us questions like where are we going, why are we going back to home, why is the vacation over and we never had answers to these questions because even we were thinking "Why does a vacation gets over".

Ishaan's Friends

Ishaan has always been very friendly, he likes to have a lots of friends. He like being with other kids and makes an effort to get close to them and play with them. We have seen him approaching a new friend and sharing his toys several times. Similarly he is also very comfortable with our friends, he would sit and speak to them just like we do and he remembers their names and keeps asking about them. He knows few of my school friends whom he has never met because I tell him about my friends and compare them with his friend, its really fun.

His first friend that I could remember is Max, he was in his first day care since when Ishaan was just 3 months old, when he left that day care at the age of 2 yrs he use to talk about Max and I got a call from Max's mother saying he misses Ishaan and talks about him every night before he sleeps.

Ishaan's all time best friend is Rishab, although Rishab is 2 yrs older than Ishaan but Ishaan likes him a lot, he like copying Rishab. If we leave both of them, they speak and discuss all sort of things, they also take important decisions like who's house should they go now, in which car they should sit etc. If there is a 3rd kid who tries to play with them, he would be badly ignored and bullied, both Adu and Anshi have tried it several times but its very tough to come between Ishaan and Rishab. Rishab will fight with anyone to get Ishaan his toy back and at times he has been emotional if for a change Ishaan played with anyone else and ignored Rishab. Ishaan has said several times that he can leave his Mumma and Daddy and go with Rishab to his house, after every get together he would hold Rohit uncle's hand and would be ready to go to their house with Rishab and he would cry to leave Rishab, as if this is the last time they are meeting. Ishaan will do anything to meet Rishab, he clearly remembers the route to Rishabs house and will get excited even if we are anywhere closer to his house. Rishab is his partner for Ice skating, Soccer, counting cars and throwing stones in water. Its really nice to see them together and to know that they both give such an importance to each other in their life.

Ishaan also loves talking about Ian and Nicholas, his 2 classmates from his old school. When you ask him what he did at the school each and everything that he will tell he did will have Ian and Nicholas involved, as if those are the only 2 kids in the whole class. Its been 3 months since we left the old school but he still remembers them and asks about them, whenever we go to the old area he would get excited to see his school and will say this is my old school, Ian and Nicholas are in there, can we go and meet them ? May be some day I will take his to his old school to meet his old friends, he will be very happy to meet them.
Similar to Ian and Nicholas he made 2 new friends in his new school, trojon and Warren. He likes playing with them and talks a lot about them but they are so far not as close as Ian and Nicholas.

Khushi holds a very important position in Ishaan's life as she is the only girl with whom Ishaan loves to play, she was our neighbour for 1 yr and is 2 years older to Ishaan. In winters, when there is no outdoor activity they both use to play together for hours. Everyday evening Ishaan use to ask to go to Khushi's place and it was convenient for us as she lived just next door. When they both met, their favorite activity was jumping on the bed. Ishaan use to call her Fooshi and later when she got a younger sister, he started calling the little one, Baby Fooshi and her parents became Fooshi Aunty and Fooshi uncle so that's how he got close to the whole Fooshi Family.

After moving to our new house Ishaan has made a lot of friends in the community, they all come out in the evening with their scooters and play on slides, they also do a race with their scooters in the community. When I ask him about his new friends he talks about Aarav, Vivan, Navneet as his best friends, he keeps asking if we can go to Aarav's house to play with him.

In last few months Ishaan has also got comfortable with Anshi and Aadu both of them are 1 yr younger to him. Anshi lives in New Jersey and earlier when we use to meet him, Ishaan rarely played with him but now he talks a lot about Anshi and when they meet they both have a lot of fun. Ishaan also remembers Aadu and asks if he is still in India. Baby Mahika is his official girlfriend and we joke about them, when we ask Ishaan if he likes Baby Mahika he says No because she keeps sleeping and never plays with him (thats because she is just 7 months old Ishaan). We were surprised to see him playing comfortably with 9 yr old Tanuj and after he met him for that whole week he use to ask about Tanuj everyday.

So thats about all his friends, am not sure if he will remember any of them when he will grow up but these memories are precious and I would like to keep them on this blog so that when he grows and reads about his friends he might be able to remember few of them.

Skating, Biking and Swimming

I have always believed these 3 activities should be taught before a kid reaches age of 5 yrs, for kids its very easy to learn them as compared to an adult. Kids are born swimmers and they can float in water without putting much efforts. I wanted Ishaan to learn all 3 activities in next 2 years. Teaching requires a lot of patience, we need to be calm and need to accept failures at every stage only then kids get enough space to learn. Being a parent we think of the outcome/result and before enrolling our kids for any lesson we ask the instructors what can we expect and how much time would it take for them to learn the skill. But kids don't think that way, they look at the fun, they don't have any set targets they are just enjoying that moment as much as they can. Think about the life when we were kids we use to enjoy the same way, we rarely cared that we need to pass in exam or finish our homework unless someone told us, we just enjoyed our time with friends in school. The sole reason for going to school was meeting friends and not becoming an engineer or a doctor. So for a person to learn something, it should be full of fun and enjoyment

Skating
Keeping this in mind, and a target to teach these 3 activities to Ishaan in my subconscious mind, I started with Ice skating and enrolled him for lessons. He was the youngest kid in the group, the lessons start at the age of 3 yrs and he was just 3 year. I did inquire about the expectations from the series of 6 lessons and I did understand every kid learns in a different way and he could end these 6 lessons with little gliding, standing and getting up on his own. This was good, anyone who has done ice skating would know how difficult is life after wearing those skates, and once you fall down its a nightmare to get up because the ice is so slippery unless you get some support its very tough. To make this activity fun for Ishaan I discussed with Rohit and he decided to get the lessons for Rishab as well, so that both of them can learn together and enjoy too. Ishaan learned pretty well, after 1st session he was able to getup by himself, he use to fall several times and use to get up again, he was able to march in the ring.
He did 2 sessions of skating this winters and at the end although he was not able to clear the 2nd level exam but was doing good with marching, gliding, running with skates, getting up by himself which is a good progress for his age. I never thought he would be comfortable on ice and would learn so much, he is not waiting for next winters to start next session of skating.

Biking
In spring (April) this year when I took Ishaan for biking, I knew he was not very comfortable and I will have to hold him for biking, but I was surprised to see he wants to do it by himself and was not scared to try. Although I was always close to him, and his bike had training wheels and he would soon get bored of biking and would like to go on slides. I figured out the reason was while biking next to the play area he was always watching kids playing and was tempted to go there and play so his interest in biking was less. Later when we moved to our new house, we tried re-introducing the biking option on one of the weekdays. I found, this time he was comfortable biking and was more interested, it may be because he saw few biking videos on internet and the result was in just a couple of days he was able to bike on his own. He takes circles around the park and does all this on his own while I sit and watch him. He also enjoys biking with me and Neha, he like having a race and he says "Get set go", me and Neha would ride our bikes slow so that he can win. He always says, Daddy we should ride the bike slowly and carefully not fast fast fast. Recently when we went to a park for biking, he was on a slope when his bike went out of control and me and Neha both were on our own bikes, he was scared and was not able to apply the brakes. Fortunately Neha was ahead and was able to catch him, although he still got some scratches, he remembers that incident and says "See I told you, you should not ride fast fast fast"

Swimming

I have been waiting to teach him swimming, when he was 9 months old I decided to teach him floating and found an organization involved with teaching floating for kids under 2 yrs of age but then I was not able to implement that idea. To give him formal swimming training he should at least be 3 yrs, this year I was sure I will enroll him to a class and will take him for swimming with me to the community pool. I know Ishaan likes water but I was not sure he would be comfortable with going into the pool. His swim lessons had one instructor per child which is good and I found Ishaan was very comfortable with his instructor on the first day itself. For his regular practice I use to take him to our community pool, at the end of 1st session (6 classes) he was very comfortable with water and could now jump in water, use hand supporters to float, can kick and move ahead in water, can hold his nose and go into the water. He is trying to move his hands to swim but will take some more time to do this. I was surprised by the progress in just 3 weeks and am hopeful he would be able to be in water on his own without any floating support in next 2 months.