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.

Dance, Songs and Music

Ishaan really loves to dance, we have noticed it several times, he would try to dance on few of his familiar songs or will just watch TV and try to copy. We tried teaching him few steps on "Dance pe Chance" last winters and he really picked up fast, later he learned steps on "Sheela" and "Dum Maro Dum" just by watching them on TV. I never see him sitting on the couch if there is a loud music with dance playing on the TV, he will step down and will start moving his feet. He will dress up wear his pants and put on a belt, just to dance on "Dabang Dabang" song. Most important part of his dance as of now is jumping and he will try to jump with the beats and will move his hands and sometimes feet.

More than dance Ishaan likes singing, he has been listening to songs in car since last few years and we don't change our CDs in car very frequently, so he has mugged up all the songs. He would identify a song withing few seconds of listening to its music. His first song that he really liked and demanded to play again and again was "Jai Ho", he will wait for the lyrics and will shout "Jai Ho" along with the song. He hardly understands much of Hindi but remembers all new songs, because he remembers the music, sometimes I will whistle a song and he will identify it.

His favorite songs are:
Jai Ho, Tere Mast mast do naine, Aahun Aahun, Sheela, Dum maro Dum, Bum Bum Bole, Jee Karda, All is well etc. He would even sing and remember a lot of advertizes on TV. He will call everyone when he sees his favorite advertize and will ask us "Wait, now watch this ..." as if he was the director of that advertize :-). He usually remembers the catchy songs very easily and prefers the one with English words like recently I was singing "My name is Anthony Gonzalves" and he liked it, he asked me to repeat it few times and now knows the song, he waits till the end to say "Excuse me please .." One of my favorite songs that we sing is "Tu mera dil, Tu meri Jaan" and he fills in between "Oh I love you Daddy".

We also made couple of our own songs which he really loves to sing and proudly says Daddy and I made this song like "I am gone to say, I am gone to say, I love you" and "If you want ice-cream, you got to ask your Mamma, if Mamma says, u can eat then u can eat but then you got to ask your daddy" that way we would cover all our family members and friends before the song ends.
One of the pending things that we need to do is teach him steps on song "Zubby Zubby", he has promised his Chachu that he is going to dance on this song with mamma at Chachu's marriage, so we need to work on that.

4th July Weekend

On July 4th as it was a long weekend, we decided to go to Block Island. Ishaan was super excited to go on an island in a ferry, he asked me if there will be pirates on the ferry and I told him lets go and check. We decided to spend one day at New London Beach Park and another day at Block Island.

Ishaan enjoys playing in sand at the beach, he rarely goes near the water unless me or Neha takes him there. He is currently learning to swim and has become more comfortable with water so we were expecting he might go to water by himself and thats what happened. He and Rishab were very comfortable going in the waves, jumping on them and kicking them back to Ocean. Ocean park beach did not have big lengthy waves so it was easy for me to take him in the ocean.

On second day Ishaan enjoyed the ferry ride, he was very excited to sit in there, when I took him to the deck he was little scared as it was very windy but soon he started enjoying. After reaching the island we had to walk for abt 2 miles which Ishaan was able to complete successfully by his own. When we reached the beach he was so happy and full of energy, he stayed in the water for about 3-4 hrs, the waves were really big, I took him in the water to surf with the waves few times and he liked it, in-spite of salty water going in his mouth and eyes he was shouting Daddy lets do it one more time. I feel happy to see the adrenaline rush that he gets when he does any such activity, sometimes his initial reaction is -ve because he is scared but then he starts enjoying it.