Where is the Comb?

So the toddler has now started talking and it is de ja vu all over again for us. Just like her sister, the sentences have imbibed question marks in them.  All of our day and some of the night are spent answering questions posed by her, that too in style. Her unclear pronunciations and the inability to say certain letters only adds to the humor and mystery. 

At times we literally scratch our heads to catch on what she is asking for. She expects full concentration and immediate obedience from us! We have to remain perpetually prepared to decipher her commands or else face the wrath!

Interestingly, her first sentence was “kansko kya chhe?”..Translated as “where is the comb?” Well, what else did I expect from a girl? Since that day we have yet to hear anything from her that does not start with ‘where’. She never says she wants milk or that she wants her doll or that she wants to go out. What she asks is “where is the milk?” or “where is my doll?” and “where are the shoes?” (For going out).

Sometimes it is really hard to understand what we are supposed to look for because she comes up with her own names for things. Like a pen is also a pencil. So she keeps asking for a pen calling it a pencil and we look all over the place and come up with every single pencil in the house only to hear “No, No, No” and even have the pencil thrown back at us. Suddenly she sees a pen propped on a writing pad in a corner of the coffee table and makes a grab for it. “Pencil” she says happy with her discovery and we look at each other as if we had been declared the dumbest people on this earth.

Likewise ‘Princess’ covers the whole range of princess products Disney has to offer and available around the house. When she asks for ‘Princess’  it could mean anything from a coloring book to a box of crayons, a princess water bottle or a doll, the tiara or a bedtime story book, a t-shirt or a jacket, a puzzle or a ball. Like detectives on a mission, we try and read her expressions, see where the pointed finger is headed to and perform a quick dissection of her surroundings. Putting two and two together, we then try and come up with the “Princess” that fits the bill. So if she as a box of crayons, we look for the princess coloring book, if her sister’s reading a book, we come up with the baby’s own princess bed time story and if Dad is picking up the car keys, we put on her jacket knowing for sure that the next question is going to be “where are the shoes”.

As cute as her questions sound to us, we are well aware of how irritating they maybe to others. So we try very hard not to go on and on about her expanding vocabulary and restrain ourselves from getting that proud beaming look on our faces every time a new question props up.

A couple of years back when we visited my sister, Baby no. 1 was 3 and a half years old and Baby no. 2 still had 4 more months to come out of her comfort zone (!!). Baby No.1 was on a talking spree and nothing we did could make the chatter stop.  My brother in law had even named her ‘why why wubzy’ for the endless capacity she had for asking questions. This time around, my sister is scheduled to visit us soon and I wonder what title the toddler is going to earn!

p.s. – “We” in this post includes Daddy and Didi who are occasionally smarter than Mommy in figuring out the mystery of “where is ….”