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.