It has been a long, long while since I last bought us a DVD, and truthfully, I am ashamed to admit that I have kind of lost touch with the movie scene for a while. tsk..tsk..tsk. I am so out of it that I am even more ashamed to call myself a movie buff!

Anyhow, a few days ago, I decided to go kaypo at the DVD corner shop near our office and so, I came home with not just one, but three DVDs. Actually, not so unusual considering that I would usually be hoarding more than 3, but this time I hauled 3 DVDs that weren’t really for me: Happy Feet, Curious George and Looney Tunes.

Okay. I love Looney Tunes, and it was more of an after-thought than anything else. But to have bought Happy Feet (a silly penguin movie which I had disliked before just because I find the characters a bit annoying) and Curious George..? Gosh! What was I thinking!

For some reason though, the movies meant for adults in that shop I went to weren’t so interesting, and then my eyes just darted out to the cartoons that they have.Given Spud’s intense liking for penguins and monkeys these days, I figured, oh well! if it gives her some sort of education to appreciating animals, why the hell not!

Needless to say, Spud is loving those silly penguins and she is also now asking for “watch monkey” pretty constantly. She has, miraculously, stopped asking for Gruffalo when she discovered Nemo and so, we actually have not been watching that for a while.  Which is okay, I guess.

But because she now knows she has a choice of movies before bedtime, she can’t seem to make up her mind, and sometimes I just wish she’s just be happy watching that damn Gruffalo!

Spud has been full of surprises these days. Besides the ever popular No word to everything,  her vocabulary is expanding like anything,

These days, I hear her trying to string words together into small sentences. Her pronunciation is still crap, and we still have trouble trying to understand what she is trying to tell us which makes her even more frustrated, but she is getting better at letting us know what she wants, when she wants it.

Last week, she surprised me with a, “Mama. Why? What happened?” when I was dressing her up. Not that anything happened. I just happened to dress her after her morning shower and I thought I heard it wrong the first time. I then repeated what she said, only to have her repeated the same back to me. I thought it was hilarious and I just played along with her by blabbing on of “what happened”.

Just the other day, she surprised me when we were in a taxi as she mouthed off  what sounded like “eight”. I could not really figure it out at first, and then she pointed her little finger on the license plate on the door of the taxi which actually had three number 8 on it! I had a “wow” moment. Then  I figured, she probably recognises the number from the daily elevator rides to our apartment since we usually let her be the one to press the button and then tell her what the number is.

She has been nicer to me too. Now, every time I sit down anywhere at home, Spud will come to me and then goes, “Sit down. Sit down with Mama” – which she then plonks her ass right on my lap.  The “with” used to be silent, but after days of repeating back what she said by just including the word “with” in my sentence as a way of acknowledging her, I can hear it slightly more clearly now.

Although,  the “sit”, tends to sound more like “shit”.

Like I said, her pronunciation is still crap, and when she says “frog”, she leaves out the “r”. I have to pretend I did not hear what I hear when she gets excited on seeing a frog in her books and starts mouthing of  “frog” on repeat mode without the “r”…

She also has a habit of completing the last words of a sentence in the books (which apparently shocked her nanny) we read her before going to bed – I reckon this is a function of us reading the same book to her at bed time, day after day, after day for months on end. (We tried other books, but she won’t hear of it)

She chatters , she sings. A lot. And, mostly to her self.  Sometimes it is just funny to watch her and a couple of weeks ago, as she sat in the child seat behind me while Silver Bullet was driving, this little chatterbox went, “Spud…OK. Enough. Mama. Enough.”. And she said “enough” pretty much in a similar stern tone I would usually use on her if I mean business, that is enough is enough.

I had to laugh.(I also think she meant to say “Mama said enough”, but could not figure the word “said” yet)

Who would have thought that we now have our very own private label of a super absorbent sponge in our hands!