The proud parents

The proud parents in us have been trying to silently enjoy the many intelligent ways of the lil one but,the happiness and elation refused to be contained and we decided to record some of our overwhelming feelings, for later use.
The very cute ways in which Ananya is picking up on stuff she sees and listens, is having us go gaga.There are just too many things to record, I wouldn't record all of them even if I could because, this is not a daily journal or something.I just want this beautiful picture of her intelligent early days coming to my mind, when I want it to,many years later.
Not that we sat down to teach her every thing she has learnt, we don't even believe in teaching at such an early age.What we do believe in is, encouraging her to express and stimulating her creativity.All we do and want to do ,is, communicate. There has not been a single attempt so far, to teach her the regular alphabet, the numbers, the days of the week, the names of months etc.Will they mean anything to her?She is only an year and four months and she will get a lot of time to learn the 'must-know's once she starts school.And then the 'should learn' stuff will be an inevitable part of her daily life.
For now, we enjoy her switching the lights and fans on and off, her shutting the doors on instruction, her carrying her dirty clothes to the washing machine, identifying the places where her favourite things are kept, her identifying household stuff, her folding her hands in prayer and saying 'jota' whenver and wherever she sees an idol of the lord or hears some chanting of hyms or shlokas,her bringing her padama(pyjamas) and thowel(towel) when asked to, her pointing to objects in books and papers and trying to identify them,her pointing to the cookel(cooker )on the stove, her animated conversation on a phone,her calling me 'mummy' a dozen times and in a dozen different styles and tones and then trying to converse with me, her picking up and handing us each toy as we call out the names while packing up her cupboard at the end of the day, her going up to dada and babbling something when I ask her to convey a message, her trying to make innumerable faces and pouts and expressions, her trying to blink and look away after having done something cute, trying to imitate the actions of the kids in her nursery rhyme CDs, trying to mimic our actions and words........
Yeah, I admit this learning is not 'display enabled':-).I cannot say 'chalo aunty uncle ko sunao'.We wouldn't even want to resort to that.After all, her learning should be for her own fun and not to please us or others.Anyway, our lil one is so strong willed , you cannot coax her into doing something.She does something she totally enjoys.And that perfectly coincides with our idea of 'proactive learning'.
We are proud of our independent, strong willed, persuasive, confident and creative lil lady in the making.