From baby to toddler

My little girl is growing up fast. She's masterd the art of walking and refuses to hold my hands for support. She wants to walk all over the house and has almost forgotten crawling. When she loses balance and falls to the floor, she gets up immediately and resumes walking. She keeps us entertained for hours by her act of walking. She can get on and off the bed and sofa with ease. However she analyses very carefully the depth or height from the top to the floor and then comes down quite slowly and carefully.
Food habits have changed recently. She wants a bite from our plates almost always. Wants to feed herself and many times refuses to let me feed her . Obviously this behavior is way too annoying for me cos the area around her highchair gets very messy and the time taken to feed her increases multifold. This is one new habit that she's probably picked up at her nursery. She is happy to share her food with the parents and tries to feed her daddy or me before she puts it in her mouth.
Talking is another new acheivement these days. Her favorite rhyme is 'Twinkle twinkle Little Star' and she likes to sing the 3rd and 4th lines of the rhyme. She goes 'Aaaaaaaaaa' in a typical tune of 'Up above the world so high' and looks up at me or her daddy giving us a minute to sing the line. Then continues to sing the tune of the 4th line and expects us to sing the same. Probably she's heard the rhyme on her musical mobile almost from birth and likes this particular one very much. She tries to talk different words other than the usual 'Thatha', mostly imitating what we speak.
Aditi can now understand whatever we speak and can instantly recognize her toys. If we ask her to get the ball, she scans the room to look for the ball and brings it to us. She can also open and close lids of plastic boxes and gets excited when she's done it. However I can never get her to wear her gloves for more than half a minute and have already lost 2 of them . She tactfully uses her mouth to take off the glove from one hand and uses this hand to remove the other one and throws them away. Most often I keep an eye for her gloves and take them away from her just in time. And she loves to kick her shoes off. Its difficult to find her shoes that she will never be able to kick off.
There have been a few other changes at home. Its been 3 weeks since I took up a new job and its going alright at the moment. We have moved home to our own peice of land and have been busy doing it up.The easter weekend came in handy and we've spent most of our time sprucing the house up. Aditi loves the new place especially the stairs and loves to climb up the stairs. She's yet to learn to come down the stairs on her own, still enjoys climbing them up. Prashanth pciks her up from the nursery whenever he's at home or gets in early and its a joy to see her face all happy and smiling. She comes running into our arms and quickly puts on her coat, hat and gloves and jumps into the pram to be wheeled away.
Its been snowing all day here and we've been watching the spring snow. There's a white layer on our well lawned small rear garden. Its Aditi's first snow and I've been pointing to the white bed on our garden (other than her birthday when it was snowing really bad and her daddy had to scrap the ice off his windscreen at 4AM in the morning) We have 2 more days to enjoy nature's beauty before we get back to work on Tuesday.

New life in the nursery

Aditi was first sent to a nursery once a week for a couple of hours when she was about 8 months old. That continued for about 3 months until we left on a vacation to India. On our return we knew that she had to be sent to a full time nursery for I was to start work soon. The nursery hunt began and I had shortlisted 3 nurseries close to my workplace. I booked an appointment with each nursery the following week. It was close to Christamas and the first one I visited was being painted and brightened up for the new year. There were no kids in the baby room and all the furniture/toys had been moved around. The lady who showed me around definitely did not know the 'Sales' tactics and I was not impressed. I rejected it straightaway and looked forward to visiting the other two. Nursery 2 was a big hit. The lady was overly courteous, took me into a separate meeting room, gave a nice tour of the place and handed me a big booklet including a balloon for Aditi and I was quite happy with the place. The only issue was the food provided was made by the school kitchen and there was no separate cook for the nursery. Nursery 3 was really wonderful from every point of view except that it would take slightly longer for me to get there and back. There wasn't much open space for the kids to play, but the weather is so unpredictable here that I wasn't bothered too much. I decided to go with the last one and invited Prashanth for a viewing. He was happy too , but somehow I had this feeling at the back of my mind that I should visit Nursery 1 when it's all completed and done. But before I could book an appointment , I left for India and left it at that. On my return we discussed and wanted to visit Nursery 1. This time I was more than impressed and decided to put my daughter here straightaway. On hindsight I do not regret my decision and firmly believe first impressions could sometimes be misleading and incorrect.
Aditi has been there for about 4 weeks and the staff there are absolutely wonderful. She's adjusted pretty well and although my first week at work was a bit of tension, I now eagerly await to see her happy face every evening. She does crafts, painting and made a mobile yesterday with the help of the staff. The nursery itself is on the way to my office and its extremely comfortable for me to drop/pick her up. They have an in house cook and cater to all types of meals. All said and done, I'm happy I reconsiderd my initial decision and decided to go with my instincts.