Jeyanth & Maya

The kindy teacher described it as one of those things that you feel you’re watching in slow motion and yet are powerless to stop.

Jeyanth is running on the grass in the playground, completely unencumbered, no other children near him. The ground is sloping slightly away from him, and suddenly he’s falling, apparently tripping on his own feet. He’s in a superman like dive, arms reaching out to catch himself. But he doesn’t catch himself. Instead his head comes into contact with the corner of a table.

The teacher said that he didn’t cry straight away. In fact, he asked if the table was all right. Then the cut on his forehead started bleeding copiously and Jeyanth was very very sad.

I had just arrived home around lunchtime after a board meeting, the day after we’d moved house. Chris had also just got back from a lecture. We were both about to get stuck into boxes when we got the call. By the time we got to kindy, the teachers had done excellent first aid and had Jeyanth in a good firm bandage and he was sitting on a lap having a cuddle, albeit sobbing. Since it was half an hour since the fall, the teachers had been monitoring his alertness and were able to reassure us that Jeyanth was able to speak clearly and had remained concious and coherent since the fall.

Following a tip from the kindy teachers, we took Jeyanth to the local medical centre rather than the hospital. Though its not a circumstance that I’d recommend to anyone, coming in with a small child with a head injury will get you seen absolutely instantly.

A quick inspection under the bandage by the nurse led to the doctor being summoned immediately. We laid Jeyanth down on a treatment bed and the nurse wrapped him up tightly in a warm blanket and asked that we sat on either side of him. All the while she was telling us, in a kind and comforting banter, that this happened all the time, and that they’d had a very similar one just the day before and that we’d better get used to the fact that little boys were just prone to this sort of thing.

The doctor explained to us exactly what he was proposing to do; he was going to give Jeyanth local anaesthetic around the wound, then sew up the cut (which was about 2-3cm long) and then bandage it up tight. We had to comfort him while he did the work, then take him home and watch him closely for any signs on concussion. If he showed any signs we were to whip him to hospital straight away, else, we were to come back in two days to change the dressing and then again in a week to have the stitches out. He asked if he had our permission to do this, and then asked if we would be OK to go through the procedure without getting upset. I guess he has just as many problems with hysterical parents as he does with crying children.

So Chris and I sat on either side of Jeyanth while the procedure was carried out. Initially J was scared by not knowing what was happening, and we had to explain to him exactly what the doctor was doing at each stage. Once the stitching started, the pain was duller, but Jeyanth was obviously distressed by the feeling. So we distracted him by asking him to tell us about the characters from the Cars movie, which is his favourite subject.

It is typical of Jeyanth that even when in considerable pain, his howls were very articulate: “I don’t want them to do the stitches! Why can’t they just put a band-aid on it and send me home?”. And when suitably distracted by conversation, he still managed a tone of exasperation when I claimed not to remember the name of McQueen’s friend, the tow-truck.

I don’t think I realised how much I myself was in a state of shock, until Jeyanth sat up (local anaesthetic now fully in effect) after the procedure to receive his due share of jelly beans and I suddenly felt light headed and quaky at the knees. I was glad I was sitting down.

We’re glad to report that Jeyanth has been recovering very well since Tuesday (22/7) when it all happened. He needed some paracetamol the first evening, but has since claimed to be in no pain at all. His massive bandage was removed on Thursday (which hurt), his stitches were proclaimed to be healing cleanly and he now has only a small band-aid. The doctor warned us that he might get bruising around the head and eye, but fortunately this hasn’t eventuated. He’s back to all the leaping and bounding and jumping and running (much to his mother’s apprehension). We keep reminding him that its really important that he doesn’t do anything that might bump his head or make the stitches bleed, but he seems to forget. Which I suppose is a good thing really.

It never occurred to me before that I should end each day with a prayer of thanks that my children survived unhurt, but I think I shall now.

Jeyanth is currently (not surprisingly) obsessed with how old people are.
Yesterday he asked ‘do people live to be a hundred’?
I said ‘yes they do, sometimes - but not very often’
He said ‘how old are you’
I said ‘36′
He: ‘how old is Daddy’
I: ‘39′
He: ‘Oh, that’s not close to one hundred’
I: ‘No, not really. Hundred is really quite old. Pooty was only 90 when she died, and she was quite old, wasn’t she’
He (after thinking for a while): ‘What about Uncle Duncan?’

In Jeyanth’s mind, height appears to be directly proportional to age….

Maya’s first two-word combo: ‘up ball’ accompanied by throwing said spheroid.

Maya’s first two syllable word: ‘appuhl’ while eating said ubiquitous red fruit.

(sorry, I’ve been reading patent specifications today)

As we might have noted before, Jeyanth has unusual taste in music for a five year-old. Recent obsessions have included Queen, “Waxing a Hottie” by Fat and Frantic and “Rock Lobster” by the B-52s. Always ready to experiment, we started listening to ‘The Wall’ by Pink Floyd in the car on the way to Church.

Of course, one of the inevitable consequences of listening to music not designed for kids is having to deal with the ‘what does he mean by….’ questions. We’ve been trying to explain that it’s important for Jeyanth to concentrate instead on what music makes him think or feel, so normally we just turn the question around.

So, having listened to “Don’t leave me now”, which Jeyanth explained to me was “about someone talking about someone who had just died… or maybe who had gone a long way away, like Fiona”, we got to “Another Brick in the Wall Part 3″, which, for those not familiar with the album, starts with the sound of several televisions being smashed. Jeyanth inevitably asked “why is he doing that?” and I, equally inevitably, replied “what do you think?”.

There was a pause, and then “I think maybe he wants the person who had gone away to come back so he’s smashing things that belong to both of them so they’ll have to come back”.

There was a longer pause, before I taught Jeyanth that the word to describe has Daddy was “Gobsmacked”.

We might have mentioned before that Maya seems to be attempting a handful of words. She hasn’t added to the list greatly, but she is definitely practising using them more and more deliberately. The following are in regular daily use:

More = ‘I want that’
No = ‘I don’t want that’
Boh = Ball
Doh = Dog
Koh = ‘Cloth’ - a muslin, quite the indispensable comfort toy.
Up = as part of songs
Bahbah = ‘Bye bye’ when said with wave, else a general term of approval
Ohdey = ‘oh dear’ normally following the (quite deliberate) throwing of something off the high chair.

Pretty primitive, you might think. But when combined with the rich range of gestures and auxiliary sounds that Maya has at her command, the effectiveness is quite impressive. However, it is clear that Maya is frustrated by her own inability to communicate as clearly as she’d like (she’s obviously got a lot to say) as well as her limited mobility. So quite a lot of the non-verbal communication seems to also include overtones of “why can’t these stupid people understand what I’m trying to tell them”. The current range of frequently used non-verbal communication methods include:

Pointing and yelling: The most common and versatile of the gestures. It can be translated as ‘I want to go there’ or ‘I want that’ depending on the context. For example;
Standing up in the cot, having dropped muslin over the side, pointing at the door and yelling: Easily translated as ‘I want to be taken out of my cot NOW’. whereas
Tugging on parent’s trouser leg while pointing at the fruit bowl: translates as ‘I want those grapes/bananas/mandarins and I shall yell until I get some’.

Hurling myself on the floor and kicking my arms and legs while crying: Loosely translated as ’someone has just taken away what I was playing with’ or ‘refused to give me the thing that I was pointing and yelling for’. Thankfully, these little bouts of temper only last 5 seconds, but we’re not looking forward to the two year old version!

Whimpering and pointing to the cot: ‘I’m tired and I want to go to sleep/nap’

Putting one hand to mouth, fingers first and making chewing motions: ‘I’m hungry, please can I have some food.’ This is the only piece of ’sign’ communication that Maya has been deliberately taught (by Chris).

Crawling over to someone and resting my head gently in their lap: ‘I’d like a cuddle please’

Crawling over to my big brother and hurling my arms round him, wreathed in smiles: Who needs words for this eh?

Yesterday I picked Jeyanth up from kindy. It was pretty close to ‘late snack’ time and since Jeyanth hates missing out on anything, even for the sake of going home early, we stopped at the kitchen to beg some food on the way out. Given a choice of dates or left-over crackers Jeyanth chose to have the last 4 sakata crackers from a pack.

Just then, another child, about two years old, comes out into the corridor with his mother. The child sees Jeyanth’s crackers, and in typical 2yr old fashion, howls for them. Mother takes child to kitchen, only to be told that there’s no more, and only dates are available. We’re heading out the door by this time, but I can just hear the interchange, and also the howls of the tired and cranky two year old.

We walk down the path to the car park. We hear the other mum trying to cajole the child, promising all sorts of goodies when he gets home. I suggest to Jeyanth that the little boy might be a bit sad because he didn’t get crackers, and ask if Jeyanth would like to share his haul?

By this point Jeyanth has eaten one cracker and is holding three. He looks at his fistful of crackers. He looks over at the little boy, now being bundled, howling, into a car. He looks again at his fistful. He takes two crackers and thrusts them into my hands. He takes his third cracker and walks over to the other car, breaks his cracker neatly into two halves, and holds out half a cracker, saying to the lady “would he like to share my cracker”?

Needless to say, the mother is effusive in her thanks, the two year old is mollified, and Jeyanth comes back to our car with a self satisfied smile and reclaims his two stashed crackers.

I am aghast.

Just two and a half months after the event, we finally put together the last photo page from the Florida holiday…

Florida ‘08

One each…

Jeyanth playing headers
Maya feeding herself beetroot

Jeyanth is a late comer to the world of representational art - it’s only in the past couple of months that he seems to have got the idea that he could do a drawing of something. But now he’s taken to it with a vengeance, and his chosen topics definitely reflect his interests - planes, cars, heavenly bodies and, very occasionally, people.

Early examples

His dedication to his subject matter is such that the other week, he came back from kids’ church at Revesby clutching a drawing of a car. Interested to know how this had related to the Bible story of the day, we enquired more. “Oh,” replied he, “the other kids were drawing pictures of the sheep and the burning bush, but I wanted to draw a car”…

We are, of course, woefully under-documenting Maya’s life (at least compared to Jeyanth)….

So Maya is now 13 months old, and the most striking change over the past few months has been her verbal development. She started making sounds with definite meaning back at around 11 months; ‘brm brm’ (while pushing one of Jeyanth’s toy cars around) could qualify as a first word, although ‘no no’ would be a close contender. As of now she will say things which are recognisable as ‘up’, ‘no no’, ‘more’, ‘dog’ and ‘oh dear’. Beside the obvious pointing (which, much to our satisfaction sometimes includes pointing at her cot - although more frequently pointing at the door while howling at 3am) she will mime eating when hungry and wave bye-bye at the appropriate moment. She also understands a wide range of words in both English and Tamil (the latter being mostly body part words).

Maya loves music. Although she isn’t yet cruising, or even pulling up with great confidence, she will dance to any tune she hears, and has sufficient sense of music to point and say ‘up’ at the right moment when the melody of ‘twinkle twinkle’ is played (or when the words are recited without music, for that matter).

She’s also very determined to be independent. It’s very hard to get her to eat any food unless she can feed it to herself (yoghurt, fortunately, is an exception). Video hopefully coming soon.

Most of all, though, right now Maya is incredibly affectionate. She has a habit of crawling up to you if you are sitting on the floor and resting her head on your lap which is completely melting. She adores Jeyanth, howling when he leaves the room in a way she never does for her parents, and laughing with delight at almost anything he does. Apparently at CSIROCare she will often hear his voice, and crawl over to whatever game the big kids are playing, whereupon Jeyanth will stop, give her a cuddle, and then return to the game.

Oh yes, and she’s just learned about tantrums. Mostly at bedtime, when Maya realizes that she is destined for the cot, she will start to howl and point at the bedroom door. Then, when placed down in the cot she will continue to howl, kicking her legs up and down in a pretty good imitation of a two-year old…